It is fitting i believe, that as we near the final hours of the year of our Lord two thousand and eight my final words on this blog for this year be to review and present to you one of the most essential and useful books ever printed, in my humble estimation – the more than aptly named ‘The Greatest Words Ever Spoken’ by Steven K Scott. Mr Scott does not presume to consider his own words the greatest, indeed as James Robison put it « The greatest words ever spoken were delivered by the greatest man who ever lived: Jesus Christ ».
What Mr Scott does is to offer us a compendium of the words of Jesus by theme. Thus you are afforded a clear picture of what Jesus said about Himself – his identity, mission, death, resurrection etc., about God the Father, about eternity, about humanity, about how to know God, about the Christian’s mission, about success in life, relationships, i think you get the picture. Kudos to Steven Scott for having undertaken such a herculean and no doubt controversial task.
Since birthdays are for me a time of meditation, of stocktaking, of self-assessment, of refocusing and worship, yesterday on my birthday, i sat to the strains of Mahalia Jackson and
meditated on the portion of the book that deals with the Christian’s mission on the earth. It was mind blowing. These are words i have read, many times, but put together in that particular format, they spoke to me afresh as to who i am, what i am about and why i am hanging out on this dear planet of ours. 200 such topics are covered, more than one thousand nine hundred sayings of Jesus included.
The book is a companion to and not a replacement of the Bible, to begin with, context is essential to fully grasping the meaning of a saying, secondly the actions of Jesus are just as meaningful as His words, thirdly, other components of the Bible outside of the exact words spoken by Jesus also represent the communication of God with us. Bearing that in mind and understanding the limitation of the work here presented, we can fully utilise it and derive the maximum benefit from its easy topical outlines. It will serve as an excellent devotional and reference work for beginners and serious students of the Bible alike. A truly useful resource that you cannot afford not to have in your library. Thank you Mr Scott.
