Grace Fellowship Church - Friday Panel

The following recording is from our Grace Fellowship Church Conference 2025. Please visit us at graceedmonton .ca to learn more about us. You can also find us on Instagram, Grace Church, Y-E-G, all one word, or on Facebook.

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We know it's getting late. It's good that you're still with us. As a way of introduction, I'm Sam. I'm one of the elders alongside Shane at Grace Fellowship Church, and the church that's putting on this conference.

And what we have done, if you have not noticed yet, we love books, and we love reading. And what we have done is we decided to put together a panel discussion. And the goal is to encourage you to read and give you some tips, perhaps, or some insight, or some encouragements to pick up a book.

Or if you don't know where to start to read, you like to read, you're not quite sure how to go about it, we want to answer some of those questions for you. And so we've tracked down some of our local friends from local churches here that are well-read and have some wisdom to share.

And I'm going to ask them some questions, and we just want to invite you guys to really join in and listen in this discussion as these men share some of their experiences with reading, and even share some of the books that have blessed them and they have benefited from.

And yeah, we just want to invite you in. And so before we begin, perhaps, can we open in a word of prayer before we do anything? Heavenly Father, oh, it is so good to be together as your people. Oh, what a blessing it is to meet, as has been already said, so freely and so openly, and to sing your praises, and to worship you, and hear your word preached.

We bring now this discussion before you as well. Lord, everything we do, we want to do in honor of you and see your name glorified in all things. And so we ask that you will bless this discussion, that you would give these men a wisdom to share, a wisdom that always would point every listener here to Christ.

And we ask all these things in his name. Amen. So before we start, brothers, not everybody here might know who you are. So if you would, if we'll start over here, if you would just give us your name, your ministry, and what church you're involved with, and then we'll go around and begin our first question.

I'm a pastor of six.

There we go.

There we go.

Elias MacDonald, husband and father of six, and I'm a pastor at Lighthouse Baptist Church in Edmonton.

Four, and then I'm also a president and professor at Foundation Baptist College in southeast Edmonton.

My name is Terry Stauffer. I guess everybody else is saying that. I'm a husband and a father of four as well, and my wife is away at a Bible quiz meet in Calgary, so if you want to know more, ask me about that.

And I am the pastor at Gospel Grace Church in Sherwood Park.

My name is Guy Shields, and I'm a husband and father of two sons, and I am the executive director of Village Missions of Canada. Oh, and I attend at Grace Fellowship Church.

That's important. That's important. Thank you. Brothers, we're talking about reading and books. When we do that, we should start at the beginning. Why should Christians read? Why should we be readers?

Why should the Christian life involve the reading of good books? Take it in whichever order, however you feel led. Take it away.

Why Christians Should Read Books

I'll start it with a—I'll make a suggestion from—how about this is my authoritative source. I'll take it from the Quran, and the Quran refers to, and somewhat pejoratively, it refers pejoratively to Christians as people of the book, and pejorative is the intent, and I'll take it, because it is central to our faith that God has given us words.

There's a longer discussion about all of what goes into that, but our faith is fundamentally—it's truth, it's propositional, it's a message, it's the gospel, it's the living words, the living words which God has given in a book.

And so what that means, then, is we are—and fundamental to our flourishing as Christian believers—is we are text-focused, text-interested people. We are people who must learn to engage with texts and handle them well.

To be a flourishing Christian is to be able to hear a truth and engage with it, comprehend it, apply it, and live it. Okay, now most fundamentally and centrally, then, that's the word, the scriptures, the book that God has given us.

But from there, I'll add another idea, and that is this—I'm taking from a different book. It's a vision of—it's about the seminary, philosophy of the seminary—but the vision of the seminary as a community gathered around the text, and that's really stuck with me as a metaphor.

What's happening in a seminary? What's happening in a classroom? You put the text in the center, and we gather in a circle around it, and we discuss, and we learn together, and we engage and understand that text.

But the seminary is a text-centric community. We're focused on the text. Okay, well then, I can stretch that out across time and just say that generations upon generations, God has given teachers and people who have engaged with this text, and I have a ton to learn from them.

And so, if you enjoy preaching, if you enjoy good teachers who are able to open the word for you, don't just settle for the living ones, but also benefit from the ones from another time and another era who bring richness and wealth, and they've given it to you in a text and engage with that text.

And in the process, then, I'm engaging in a community that stretches across the ages,.

Gathered together around this beautiful text. I remember when I was an unsaved boy, and I helped an older lady move out of her apartment, and to reward me, she gave me a book. And I was so angry, and that was my unregenerate, unthankful heart, just venting its own sinfulness.

And then, when I got saved, suddenly a whole world opened to me of God's truth from his word, and then I found out that it's not just in the Bible, but there are people that have explained the scriptures, and I can actually get to know the word of God in a much deeper and rich way from people that have studied.

It for longer. So, have you had the experience of, maybe you get a new vehicle, and you're driving around town, and you go, I didn't realize there were so many gold Honda Odysseys in the city, you know, that kind of idea, and maybe you've had that experience reading, and you read a new phrase, and you go, oh, that's really great, that's a great quote.

And then, the next four or five books you read, or you hear it in the pod, everybody's mentioning the same quote, and you're going, what's going on? I had one of those a while ago, maybe a couple years ago, and it's the opening line of a book by L .P. Hartley, it's called The Go-Between, and it says, the past is a foreign country, they do things differently there.

Great opening line, so I got the book, I don't recommend the book, even watched the movie, it wasn't any better, but the great opening line, you know, the past is a foreign country, they do things differently there, and I think just being able to see the world through someone else's eyes, whether it's an old book, or a new book, or a book outside your tribe, something that you wouldn't normally read, makes you go, huh, I hadn't thought of that before, and it really stretches your wisdom, it stretches your life experience, it enables you to relate to people, again, that are different than you, if you're able to get into a book, whether fiction or non-fiction, and see that it is a foreign country, and they do things differently, and it's a great cross-cultural experience for somebody that's been quite North America.

Continent bound like me. As I thought about this question, two texts came to my mind, the first is in Romans chapter 11, oh the depth of the riches and wisdom and knowledge of God, how unsearchable are his judgments, and how inscrutable his ways, and then in Ephesians chapter 3, in verse 7, or beginning verse 8, to me, though I am very least of all the saints, this grace was given to preach to the Gentiles the unsearchable riches of Christ, and I think that for those who believe in a God whose wisdom and knowledge is unsearchable, and a Christ whose riches are unfathomable, we should, of all people, be interested in exploring, looking into the depths of God and the riches of Christ, and how do we do that?

We do that in part by reading, right? We do that through the faithful labors of others who have searched the scriptures, and understood the truth, and expressed the truth in written form. We do that by walking with other believers who have lived faithfully for Christ, and their story has been written and recorded for our benefit.

So, just the nature of God and the nature of Christ should be reason enough to motivate us as readers. If we see the value.

In reading, and somebody here says, I'm on board. I can begin to see what you guys are saying. I want to give it a try. I want to purposefully read a book, but I've either never done this, or it's been a long time since I was a kid in school.

What would you say to someone to help them? How can a person develop the necessary habits to begin a good reading habit and start.

Developing a Reading Habit

Again? Start with the Bible. I think that should go without saying. Read the book of books. That is a book filled with books, and you'll get through 66 books in just reading one book, and you depend upon it for your life.

Then, when you have questions about what the Bible says, then you can go search for answers from trusted sources, and your delight and your inquisitiveness about that topic will drive you to get into a book, deep into a book, and find answers.

That's a simple thing, is find a reader to help you. Like, find somebody that's read a lot of books to be a guide. If your pastor of your church is a reader, and he should be, and maybe been to seminary, I think the biggest benefit that I got from going to graduate school was getting rails to run on, you know, to understand who the good authors are, how to understand an argument, that kind of idea, so that I could be a bit of a judge of books, not an expert.

But talk to your pastor, talk to other people in your church that you know are readers, and say, where's a good place to start, and that's what this is about tonight. But, I mean, you can, you have people in your own life, too, to talk to.

Don't do it alone. I was just going to say that,.

You know, with respect to the practice of reading, like anything else, like many things in life, it begins as a discipline, right? You just simply have to make up your mind, I'm going to do this, and then you have to take yourself by the scruff of the neck and do it, right?

And it really doesn't get any more complicated than that. It's just a matter of saying, this is something that I believe is important. It needs to be done. I don't necessarily feel like doing this, right?

I don't have this massive drive. It really, in one sense, is a step of faith, right? I believe, I believe, I understand that this is going to be rewarding. This is going to bear fruit in my life. This is going to help me know more of Christ and walk faithfully with Him, so I'm going to take this step.

So, Lord, help me, strengthen me, strengthen my resolve, and then we simply, we discipline ourselves, and it really doesn't get any more complicated than that. The thing is, I think we live in a culture that feeds on the idea that we do things that feel good to us, or things that are, that are, that taste good, that feel good, that we enjoy, and that's true with some things, but it's not true with everything.

Not everything that's valuable and important is going to be pleasurable at the beginning. Sometimes it's just plain work, but the beauty of God and His goodness is that oftentimes what begins as a discipline becomes a delight, and what we initially had to work at becomes something we can't wait to do, and I think that that's been something of my experience when it comes to reading, and I think it'll be yours as well.

I like that a lot. I just add in the notion, too, it's kind of like exercise working out, so I used to run regularly, and then recently I've been biked some, and then it was cold, so I didn't bike, so I've not run in a while, and I just don't feel like running, bluntly.

I just don't feel like it, but then I get into the cycle, and then, like you said, it kind of flows, and I enjoy it. I just gotta get into it, so getting over that initial, it can be, like, it feels hard at the beginning.

Get over the hump, and you'll get the point where you'll love it, and I would also say, like, we'll, if we get to the recommendations, we'll mention all different levels, some pretty aggressive, and stuff like that.

Some of these people, like, okay, I'm gonna do it, and they jump straight for something really aggressive, something really tough. My choice for the fiction category was Chronicles of Narnia. Just do that.

Like, if you're not doing it at all, start there, and you're gonna get into it, and it's so much fun, and you can build up, right? But start with something that really engages you, and work your way towards eventually doing, like, Augustine's Confessions, or something big, right?

But work your way there, little by little. Social. I love social. Book clubs can be really great, because you have a deadline, and six other guys are coming, and they're gonna talk about this book, and so there's pressure to get it done.

Audiobooks count. People always wonder about that. Yes, audiobooks count. Use them. Break it up into tiny little segments. Like, I'm gonna do, initially, five pages a day. Like, five pages just before I go to sleep.

Just start there, right? And build yourself up bit by bit. You don't have to go straight and huge. Just.

Little by little. Just to build on that last point, just for wisdom from somebody with, like, a lot of kids, is you've got, if you're younger than me, and you have less kids than I do, you have more time than I do, and you can squeeze reading into bathroom breaks, and into sometimes even driving, and different odds and ends throughout the day, and you can accomplish a lot with just a little.

Audiobooks, right? Yes. Excellent, thank you. One question that someone might ask is, okay, what do I read, though? Perhaps we'll start with genre. Is there benefit to reading widely, to read several genres, rather to narrow oneself down to one book, or one specific genre?

Follow-up question, perhaps, or with that, what is your guys' favorite genre, and how do you make.

Reading Widely and Avoiding Narrowness

Sure that your reading doesn't get too narrow? It was interesting to read, or to learn, that John Stott, you know, who wrote so many books on, you know, theology, biblical exposition. He also wrote a book on birds, right?

And it was just, you know, it was kind of surprising to me to read this, but he was an avid bird watcher, and so that was just a really good example of someone who had a wide variety of interests in not only in reading, but in life, and I think that's important.

It's really easy to funnel down and focus, you know, on those one or two genres, or subjects, or areas that you're really, really interested in, but again, as those who believe that this is God's world, and that it's a creation of God, and therefore it is a revelation of God, then we, of all people, should be interested in a wide exposure to the subjects that we encounter.

In the world. My friends in the panel can disagree with me on this one, but I think a great place to start, if you're not, you don't consider yourself a reader, is reading biography, and if you read some biography of the saints, you're going to get some Bible, and theology, and history, you know, and a really compelling story about what God's doing in the world all at the same time.

So that particular aspect of reading biographies can check off a few of the boxes right away. I do think it's great to read widely in the genres that we're going to talk about tonight, but just a little.

Tip, and a great place to start. That kind of made me think it's neat how scripture itself contains so many genres. You got a little interesting clue there, don't you? I liked your idea earlier that find a reader, and so building on that, like, I think have some, invite some input into your life where you're going to be pushed to read something you otherwise wouldn't read, because we do have this problem where we can do a self-reinforcing thing.

It's like, here's what I like to read, and so that's what I read, so that's what I read, that's what I read, and that's how people get weird. So don't do that, right? But be part of a book club. There's, I've got, there's, I'm part of two different book clubs that do more theology-oriented books.

EPL does book clubs, and I found it actually really great for evangelistic opportunities, because sometimes the books are not great, and we'll skip those, but when they're decent books, and they'll connect into, like, worldview issues, I'll read it, and we'll go, and we'll have a worldview discussion at the public library.

It's pretty cool. I obviously have an interest in this, but education is a thing that pushes you to read books that you would not otherwise read. He said, gives you rails to run on, but you're, in a class, the teacher makes you read that, makes you read that, makes you read that, and so you don't just read the stuff you want to read, and I've been forced to read books I hated, and I got to the end, and it was like, that book, even though I virulently disagreed with it, that book helped me, because it solidified a truth that I now believe deeply.

So, I do think some, inviting some factor into your life that will push you to read things you would not otherwise read is really important.

Yeah, I agree with Terry that biography is a really good place to start. You know, it's narrative, so it's interesting in that sense. It's historical, so it's, kind of, pulling you, you know, unless it's a contemporary biography, but typically we think of the past, so it pulls you out of your own contemporary moment, you know, and that's helpful, right?

I was talking with someone earlier today that, unless we are reading outside of our own time, we struggle to get a proper perspective on our own time, right? So, if we want to, kind of, understand ourselves in our own present moment, read about the past, read of believers in the past, and so biography is really, really valuable.

You know, the example of faithful lives and even the struggles of saints from the past. So, biography is really, really helpful. The first biography that I remember reading, it's not really a, well, it is kind of a biography, but it was Hudson Taylor's Spiritual Secrets by Howard Taylor.

I read that as a teenager, as a high school student, and that was just really encouraging, you know, in my own walk with the Lord. So, I would recommend that. Michael mentioned earlier today the two-volume on Lloyd-Jones, and Lloyd-Jones happens to be my hero, so I read that, and again, that's really helpful.

Dallimore's biography of Whitfield is really good. Murray, Ian Murray and his work on Jonathan Edwards, those are just some of the biographies that have been helpful for me.

If I could, something that I, like the era that I like to look into and stay there for a little while in church history is the Puritan era, the 16th and 17th century Puritan era, and sometimes I want to reverse engineer the Puritans and try to get to where they got, and that's going to include reading mythology and metaphysics and all those kinds of different things that stretch the imagination.

Obviously, a lot of it is false, but I mean, they used illustrations from Greek mythology in their sermons and in their writings. But then, as for, so the Puritans, the English Puritans, I recommended Thomas Watson and William Ames, the former Thomas Watson, can say a lot in just a little amount of time, and then with William Ames, you've got a systematic breakdown of a mind that is chock full of theology, driven for the heart, driven for walking with God.

You guys are already going in the direction where we want to take it. We have C .S. Lewis, for example, said, it is a good rule after reading a new book never to allow yourself another new one until you have read an old one in between.

Do you guys think this is a good rule? Do these authors from so many years, even centuries ago, have anything helpful and applicable for us to say in the context that is in so many ways so.

Different? I'm going to go fast and do this one because I want to claim it before Terry references it. I think he's going to think of the same quote. C .S. Lewis in his introduction to On the Incarnation by Athanasius.

Did I do it? By the way, On the Incarnation by Athanasius is one of my picks, and it's awesome. Fabulous reading. It's online. You can read it for free. It's a beautiful book. Three hundreds. It's one of the early church fathers.

It is a great example of this. Lewis comments in the introduction to this, every age has its own outlook. It is especially good at seeing certain truths and especially liable to make certain mistakes.

We all therefore need the books that will correct the characteristic mistakes of our own period, and that means the old books. All contemporary writers share to some extent the contemporary outlook. You can't escape it because it's the air you breathe, right?

It's the fish in the water. We all share the contemporary outlook, even those like myself, Lewis says, who seem most opposed to it. The only palliative, only answer is to keep the clean sea breeze of the centuries blowing through our minds, and this can be done only by reading old books.

Last year we did a class where we did The Great Books of Christianity. We started in the New Testament era with like Philo and Josephus, and we read all the way up to the modern era, each week a different section.

If you want that reading guide, I would gladly share it with you. The guys started out in the class and they said, I don't know, this seems like it's going to be boring. They got to the end and one of the guys came to me and said, if you offer this class again, I want to take it again.

I already got the credit, but I learned so much. I want to do this again, and it was the experience of walking through every century or era and seeing the richness of those eras. There's so many treasures.

Back there, and you've got to get them. Well, Joel actually came prepared with a quote. I was reading an old book for every new book. I am way out of sync. I haven't practiced that very well, but as time goes on, I do try to read more older and classic books, and C .S. Lewis prompt for that.

That essay is available called On the Reading of Old Books as well in a lot of his essay collections, or just read Athanasius and then you get the introduction thrown in, but no, it's a really wise idea.

I read a book and I was reminded of it when Joel was talking about being forced to read painful books, and it was by Jacques Alluol called The Technological Society. He spent 30 pages in the introduction defining the word technique, so it wasn't a lot of fun to read, but I think of that book often because that book was really helpful in kind of ripping me out of my age and helping me to think like a pre-modern, and some of the things we've lost in our modern era.

It was written in 1968, so it's not a contemporary book in that sense, but in our modern era, it's very new. So anyway, just an example of, yeah, it's very good to get ripped out of this age and live a while in another age, and then we can look at our age much more wisely, and that's what Guy said as well.

There's also an appeal to smelling the book that is so old. It smells so beautiful, and so you just, you pop it open and sometimes you can even feel the print of the book, and so for that reason, yes,.

Read old books. All right, we eventually want to get in some of your guys' book recommendations, but before we do that, one last question. So with the vast amount of books being written, good as well as very, very bad, can we read books by authors that we disagree with, that may be slightly wrong or very wrong, or should we completely stay away from that and.

Focus only on the good ones? Just a quick thought that comes to mind. I think you need to tread carefully there. Life's too short to read bad books, and especially if you don't have a lot of time to read, but if you're reading a lot of books, like one in a dozen or something like that, that'll stretch you, but generally speaking, yeah, be really careful on that.

Just a little thought here. Joel would have more to say on this because this is his world, but it's really striking to me that if you go to an evangelical seminary for pastoral training, you're going to learn a lot about the development of liberal theology and the decline of theology.

If you go to a liberal seminary, they don't study conservatives, you know, so it's just a little bit of a reminder that it's good to know what we're up against. It's good to know what's out there in the world, what Bart Ehrman is saying or what N .T. Wright is saying about Paul or things like that.

For the most part, you can talk to your pastor about that, make him read the bad books, but if you're a voracious reader, yeah, you can dip into that, but just tread carefully.

I think, obviously, part of it is why are we reading? What's our purpose, right? If we're reading for personal enrichment and growth, then obviously we're going to want to read what we understand the Bible to teach, what accords with that, but if we're teaching or if we have responsibilities that are broader than that, then we may find ourselves having to go further afield in terms of our understanding of things just so that we can be informed and give guidance, so it kind of depends on why we're reading what we're reading.

I know I've said a lot, but just a quick little thing here. If you hear of a book that's really popular, like John Michael Comer or that kind of thing that a lot of your Christian friends around the city are reading, you can go to a place like TGC, like the Thimelios, you can read reviews.

Tim Challies is a great source for reviewing popular books. You don't have to read the book, read the review, and you might even want to pass the review on to a friend if they've.

Gotten into some dangerous territory with bad books. It's my head that it's probably an area of discretion. I mean, so I read a book, Occurs to Me, and it was on gender and how to analyze that whole space.

Well, it was from a Catholic author, and so she would cite scripture and next to it something from a pope and next to it something from some other tradition, and it was all mixed in there together, and it was a very helpful book, but I really do think it very much depends on your level of ability to sort through that, and so, you know, I would catch the insight from scripture right after that from the pope, not so much.

You keep on going. It really does depend on where you're at, and I think what helps with that is some of what Terry just said, reading not in isolation. So again, I've got a view on this, but I do think an educational framework can help with that where you're part of a reading community and you might read a work and then a teacher or fellow students engage and they keep you out of the weeds.

I think a book club can help you with that. I think your church can help you with that, and so if you do get into one of those, tread with prudence, and different people probably have different levels of tolerance or different levels of discretion with what they can engage with and be okay, but don't do it in isolation, and then book reviews are another.

If you can't get any of those other structures, a book review would at least help you there. Very quickly, the writers of.

The New Testament, they engage with outside sources. Very minutely, though, just a quick quote here and a quick quote there, mostly to audiences that are unacquainted with the gospel. This is the one quote, I think, in Titus, quoting Epimenides of Crete and 1 Corinthians 15, quoting a comedian, but most of what you get from an apostle is quotation or allusion.

To the Old Testament. That was their book. We have about 10, 15 minutes left, and we want to get practical. If you haven't already, take a pen, take a piece of paper, try to write some of these suggestions down, maybe.

Brothers, give us suggestions on what we should read. Give us some books that have been very helpful to you guys, that have been a blessing to you, that have had an impact on your Christian life and your Christian walk, and feel free to give us some background to the book and how specifically it has impacted your life.

We'll go through some of the genres that we addressed earlier. Why don't we begin with Christian living? What are some books in the Christian living that have really impacted you.

Guys? Just some of us have brought along our stacks of books, and a great way to remember a book is just to come and take a photo of it, so if you want to take a photo of any of these books that we have, you can do that.

Christian Living Books

This Discipline of Grace by Jerry Bridges, well-known fellow, he wrote a book back in 1978 called The Pursuit of Holiness, and then about nine years later, he thought, oh, that was a bit moralistic. It needs more gospel, so he wrote a book called Transforming Grace that was really gospel-centered, and it was as he was growing in his appreciation and application of the gospel.

This book is putting those together, and he calls it like two wings of an airplane, and I would say as a pastor for 34 years now, the number one counseling thing that I deal with with people is, as we heard in the message tonight, I keep doing the same sin.

Am I even a Christian? So it's that struggle of sanctification, and am I even getting grace because I'm not changing? So if that's a struggle with you or somebody you're counseling, this is a fantastic book for that.

The Discipline of Grace by Jerry Bridges. God's role and our role in the pursuit of holiness, and it's really about preaching the gospel to yourself all the time.

The Reformed Pastor by Richard Baxter. So it sounds like it's just addressed to pastor types. It's an incredibly convicting book, very deeply convicting. If you just read the section, chapter three, section one, The Use of Humility, that could get you pretty far.

And a nice thing about this book is it's free, so you can pull it, just search for it, and it'll come up. I'll read you a paragraph. The very design of the gospel is to abase us, and the work of grace is begun and carried on in humiliation.

Humility is not a mere ornament of a Christian, but an essential part of the new creature. It's a contradiction in terms to be a Christian and not humble. All who will be Christians must be Christ's disciples and come to him to learn, and the lesson which he teaches them is be meek and lowly.

And he just builds out from there that the gospel both gives you joy and confidence and freedom while also giving you none of the credit for any of it. Jesus won all of this on your behalf, and it creates a delightful, joyful, confident humility that is the right expression of humility.

So that chapter always floors me, incredibly.

Convicting, every time I go back to it. I have two books here. My first book, this is a second copy that I have because the first copy was stolen from my backpack at Hope Mission when I worked there. I went and bought this again because it was very good.

E .M. Bounds, A Treasury of Prayer. It's compiled and condensed by Leonard Ravenhill. He says some things in here about how prayer, God upon prayer, rescinds his decrees and things like that. That's nuts.

However, if you want to know the power of prayer and really buckling down, A Treasury of Prayer is very good. And then also, The Law of Christ. There'd be some disagreement maybe among brothers about the application of the moral law to the Christian, but The Law of Christ by Charles Leiter is very good for understanding the whole counsel of God and our relation to the scriptures, Old Testament and the New, and how we are to dutifully obey God as free sons.

Next to scripture, obviously, the one book that has impacted me the most is Jonathan Edwards' dissertation on the end for which God created the world. The focus, the book is, the dissertation is divided into two sections.

He establishes this, he unpacks this idea that God does everything for his glory, and he does it from reason, and then he does it from revelation, right? He reasons out the ends of things, and then he goes to revelation.

And in the process of establishing or supporting this conclusion that God does everything for his glory, he introduces the idea that the glory of God and the happiness of the creature are not opposite pursuits but one, and that it's in pursuing the glory of God that we find our greatest and fullest joy.

And so I would highly recommend that. It took me months to read it. It's only like, you know, in the works of Jonathan Edwards, it's only maybe, I don't know, 30, 40 pages. I don't know, it's not very long.

But I'd read a paragraph, and then I'd say, what in the world did he just say? And I'd go back and read it again, and then I'd put the accent on a different part of the sentence trying to figure out. You'll have to work at it, you know, although you're probably smarter than I am, so, but it's worth the effort.