My friend, Ralph E. MacKenzie, has written a helpful volume titled Revealing Snapshots: People and Events That Shaped Christianity. I asked Ralph to tell our readers about it. Here is what he wrote:
Let me begin with the central reason why I wrote this book. I discovered at seminary that I enjoyed church history, but found that many books dealing with the subject are quite dense and boring. Also, some volumes skip over material that I thought readers would find interesting about people and events that impacted the growth of the Christian church, which is the largest religion in the world.
I could not have written this book without the help of my wife and my publisher, David Costantino. We decided that each article should be at least three hundred words, but no more than five hundred, which makes the snapshots flow easily. There are 226 articles concerning men, women, and events. This book is divided into six parts:
PART ONE The Ascension of Jesus / Pentecost in the Book of Acts; Philip and the Ethiopian Eunuch; the Council at Jerusalem; Persecution in the Second, Third and Fourth Centuries; and the Creeds and Councils.
PART TWO The Middle Ages
Christianity comes to the British Isles; the rise of Islam; the East/West Schism; Thomas Aquinas; and the Renaissance.
PART THREE Early Modern to Early America, including the
Reformation; the Counter-Reformation; and the Council of Trent. Also, the Enlightenment Movement, Jonathan Edwards, John and Charles Wesley, and William Wilberforce.
PART FOUR The 19th Century
The Restoration Movement; the Oxford Movement; the Free Methodist Church; the Seventh-Day Adventist Church; Soren Kierkegaard; Charles Spurgeon; the First Vatican Council; Sigmund Freud; Albert Schweitzer; the Dead Sea Scrolls; and Ecumenism.
PART FIVE The Church in Transition. Vatican Council II; Catholics and Evangelicals; Mother Teresa; Henrietta Mears; and C. S. Lewis.
PART SIX The New Millennium to the present.
Bill Creasy; the Allies for Faith and Renewal; Homosexuality and Christianity; the Emmaus Ministries; Islam in the Twenty-First Century; the American Islamic Forum for Democracy; and Raniero Cantalamessa.
There is a foreword by Dr. Norman Geisler, an Introduction, Conclusion, Bibliography and an Index of people and events that shaped Christianity. You will recognize many men and women, also a number of important events which impacted the growth of the Christian Church in over two thousand years. Finally, my personal testimony.
