My Best Sellers: Background and History of Two Books

The Purpose of the Program and the Meaning of Best-Selling Books

Decided to do something rather different this morning. I wanted to sort of talk to our Regular viewers not about so much an apologetic subject as about my two Best-selling books. Now when people call you a best-selling author.

I'm not really sure what that means. I'm certainly not a best-selling author. I mean I write Christian nonfiction in apologetic categories things like textual criticism and the doctrines of Trinity. That's that's not gonna get you real real big book sales these days in most Christian bookstores and.

So.

Most of my books have sold You know fairly small numbers in comparison to almost any type of fiction work or anything like that. But my best-selling book what what do you think that one would be people who know who I am.

King James Only Controversy and the Background of the Book

It's pretty easy. It's King James only controversy, and I wrote this in 1994 came out in 1995 need to do an update on it because it's been coming up on 13 years now. This books been out. It still sells very regularly.

It's used as a as a textbook all across the country. It's been very very well received. And of course has gotten me such titles as the high priest of the Alexandrian cult and various sundry things like that but it's definitely the best seller because it is used as a text textbook and so it it sells each and every year and and What I really appreciate about the book is that it it reached an audience the very audience I wanted to reach.

It's a friendly introduction to textual criticism most books on textual criticism are not overly friendly. They're not overly exciting things like that so you know it it did exactly what I wanted to do and It's reached the audience in it, and it helps to honestly I believe increase a person's Confidence in the text of Scripture because they can see how the Bible's been transmitted to us so even if you've never Run into a King James only advocate believe me once you do you're gonna want to read the book.

But even if you haven't I think you would find the book a useful read just simply because it helps you to understand Where we got especially the New Testament why we can trust it things like that. I wrote the book I Had started actually studying King James only ism as far back as the early and mid 1980s when I was taking Greek and Bible college.

My parents went back to as I recall it was Nashville and they came home from this trip, and they said there were churches Splitting down south over this King James only issue and so at that time I had started reading some of the books by a David Otis Fuller the which Bible Society Even had a little correspondence with him before his death.

And so I had studied that initially and then sort of moved on from there didn't have a whole lot of more contact with folks. We even had some programs on King James only ism on the early editions the 1980s editions of the dividing line on local radio stations here in Phoenix and then in 1994 a volunteer called and said you've got to listen to one of the local Christian radio stations.

There's this woman named Gail Rippling her on and I remember listening to the program as I was driving home almost drove off the road and Ended up being on the air with Gail. I really need to do a couple videos.

The of the resultant programs we had with Gail Rippling her because it was it was about the last time she ever let herself be put in a situation where she actually had to answer direct questions from people because she just can't do it and.

So.

That then led to my putting my notes together because I had to read her a book before we did the program putting my notes together we put this little booklet together and Christian bookstores from all across the nation were Writing and asking for this and that's what led to the writing of the King James only controversy in 1994 and so that's that's the bestseller now my second bestseller.

Grieving Our Path Back to Peace and the Experience of Hospital Chaplaincy

Most people don't even know I've I've even written the book and it could not be any more Different of a book than the King James only kind of King James only controversy. You're looking to back here and there's all these charts with textual variants and manuscript evidence and stuff like this my second best-selling book is Entitled grieving our path back to peace.

You you couldn't have two more different books subject wise Level wise audience wise. This little book came out of the fact that back in the early 1990s this ministry almost shut down on one Monday 65 of the monthly funding we had which was almost nothing to begin with disappeared, and I had to get another job and I in a very providential way Ended up working as a hospital chaplain at a large hospital in the Phoenix area and that was the toughest work I have ever done.

I'm I'm a Scotsman for crying out loud. It's it. We don't just naturally Walk into a hospital room of someone. We've never met before in our life and start chatting about things that that was that was hard and.

To be honest with you.

I had never seen anyone die at that point in time in my life the closest person who had died was my grandmother and we were in Arizona, and she was in Kansas and so I certainly hadn't been there for that, but being a hospital chaplain was was the toughest work I ever did and Seeing death going into the CCU and and Seeing good deaths and bad deaths seeing Christians die and non-christians I changes it really does and the toughest part of this job was on Sunday afternoons I would run a lost support group, and this was not a Christian hospital.

And so I would have many non-believers in this lost support group and I discovered very very quickly that the key to whether The person would be able to move on with their life and do so in a positive fashion Was whether they had hope for the future and you know We even have a little tape in in the bookstore actually it was a tape.

I think we have it on CD now called Christians grieve too and You know some people look at what the scriptures say and say oh Christians aren't supposed to grieve if you actually look at what Paul Said it says we are not to grieve as those who have no hope Christians grieve in hope anyone old enough to love something or someone Will grieve the loss of that something or someone and we Christians are lousy about talking about death we should be the best people talking about death, but we're pretty lousy about it and I learned a lot in the few years that I did that work in regards to Grief counseling and the grief process and things like that.

I recognize our society doesn't know anything about it. Two weeks you'll be fine back you don't even start hitting the the real feelings of grief for months until months after the death and So what happened was an acquaintance of mine lost his 29 day old granddaughter in a tragic accident and I attended the funeral and there's something just completely unnatural about Attending a funeral the casket is only this large and so I got back to my office I just I just cleared everything off my desk and over the next four days I wrote down pretty much everything I knew on the subject of grieving for my friend.

Well, it wasn't long before I realized that what I had written down was was a small book and it it might be useful to other people and so I I submitted it to my editor at Bethany House Publishers and He loved it.

But the interesting thing was Before he brought it into the the publishing house. He said I'm taking your name off of it I mean think of the other books. I had written the King James only controversy the Roman Catholic controversy books like this.

He says there's there's no way I want to believe you actually wrote this and so he took my name off. It brought it in the inside house editors loved it and said who wrote it and only then did he tell them?

It was I that had written it and Like I said, it's my second best-selling book. It has been very very well received very very Widely used in fact to my understanding on September 12th and 13th There were volunteers at ground zero September 12 13 2001 distributing this book to the the people working At ground zero in New York City, and it's not long.

It's very friendly people who are going through grief don't want huge long books tomes to read. Very practical. It's not deep theology. It is written you you really could give it to believer or non-believer because believers and non-believers both grieve.

Though obviously it does have You know a Christian perspective to it and it has really helped a lot of folks and you know, it's funny. Both have really helped a lot of folks when I write books. I don't want to write books that other people have already written.

Why should I I'm not trying to get in on on you know, some sort of audience or something like that. I try to write books that meet specific and special needs and I'm very thankful that my two best-selling books have met Very important needs but very different needs as well.

Why I Write Books and a Note About the Bookstore

And so I thought I'd take some time to share some of the background to to some of these books. Maybe I'll do some of the rest of the books too. And if you find it interesting And give you some idea that believe it or not.

This is in our bookstore for some people who have Followed the ministry for years have heard about this book. You wrote a book on that never even seen it yeah, well, it's it's there and so if you want to take a look at what I've done is I keep a few around because unfortunately That particular book on grieving you never know exactly when you're gonna need it.

And when you need it, you need it right then and so hope you found this interesting. Thanks for watching.