I just finished reading this book and I enjoyed every paragraph. If you love history, especially church history, you will enjoy this book. If you don’t like to read and especially do not like history, I still think you will enjoy this book. Reeves uses words to paint such a vivid picture of the Reformation.
The Unquenchable Flame gives us a picture into a world where “justification by faith alone” was a truth that had been hidden from the Christian world for a long time. It reminds us that there was a time when hundreds of years passed in which believers had no Bible to read and were at the mercy of priest to explain God’s living word to them. It reminds us that Luther, Zwingli, Calvin, Tyndale, Knox, and the many, many who spent their lives and died for the Reformation, did so because they ached for people to know that they could not merit God’s favor through works and good deeds, but that central to the heart of the gospel is the fact that we can only be justified, or made right with God, through the blood of Christ Jesus.
A basic understanding of the Reformation should drive each of us into God’s word with greater fervor. As a Puritan once said,
“Lord, whatsoever thou dost to us, take not thy Bible from us; kill our children, burn our houses, destroy our goods; only spare us thy Bible, only take not away thy Bible.”
This statement may sound extreme in a Christian culture where we all have multiple Bibles in our home yet still “struggle” to find the time or the desire to read God’s word, but “for the Puritan, the Bible was the most valuable thing this world affords.” (Reeves) How I pray that would be true for me as well!
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