MY CHOICE OF BOOKS

I was the first in a South African family of nine boys, and thus was expected to be a perfect example to my brothers. That is one reason why the Bible was the first book to make an impact upon my childhood days. Devotions every morning and evening were the strict rule of life, and so before I was twelve years old, I had read the Bible through around the table.

At age twelve, I had a profound encounter with Jesus as my Savior. From then on, I wanted to be like him. His earthly father, like mine, was a carpenter. But mine was also a reader, and in his bookshelf I soon found Pilgrim’s Progress. Here in simple story language were the truths of the Bible. They rooted my life more firmly in the Word of God.

In later years, when more and more problems appeared, I found Bunyan’s Holy War a great help. His writings so impressed me that I often wondered whether one would have to go to prison in order to write such wonderful books.

One such problem arose when my parents, because of their interest in divine healing and the practice of speaking in tongues, were publicly disfellowshiped from the Dutch Reformed Church. However, from our new friends in the Pentecostal movement we heard of Andrew Murray and began to read his works. He had just recently passed away at the age of eighty-nine, and it was a great comfort for us to find this Dutch Reformed minister saying such things as “The blessing of Pentecost is a supernatural gift, a wonderful act of God in the soul. My brethren! It is an unspeakably holy and glorious thing that a man can be filled with the Spirit of God.”

In another place he wrote: “Pentecost makes the Church what it ought to be. The power of Jewish prejudice, and of pagan hardness of heart was overcome, and the Church of Christ won glorious triumphs. This grand result was achieved simply and only because the first Christian Church was filled with the Spirit.”

I collected a complete set of Murray’s writings in both English and Afrikaans. I still recommend them, especially The Spirit of Christ, The Full Blessing of Pentecost, The Divine Indwelling, and The Power of the Spirit. They give a firm foundation and a balanced ministry according to the Word of God.

As I gave leadership to the Apostolic Faith Mission of South Africa throughout the 1930s and early ’40s, I gathered books from Pentecostal movements in other countries on salvation, healing, baptism in the Holy Spirit, and the Second Coming. In this way I learned of an American named John Alexander Dowie, founder of Zion, Illinois. Unfortunately, the writings of many of these old pioneers are now out of print.

A hint of things to come in my ministry occurred when I read The Christ of Every Road by E. Stanley Jones. I was tremendously impressed by his brand of ecumenism. Could it be that the Pentecostal movement, denounced by most churches as a passing cult, would some day be accepted as a work of God? I eventually read all of Jones’s works.

I became more interested in the autobiographies of pioneers in missions and Christian unity, drawing inspiration from them to press for reconciliation in the body of Christ. The book that helped me most was The Household of God by Bishop Lesslie Newbigin. Two years before it was published, I had met him at an International Missionary Council meeting, and we had enjoyed a lively exchange about the unique contributions of Catholicism, mainline Protestantism, and Pentecostalism. When pieces of that discussion appeared in his books I was thrilled but I was also challenged. He pointed out that experience without the discipline of doctrine leads to fanaticism. However, doctrine alone can become pure formalism.

It was at the same meeting that I met Willem Visser ‘t Hooft, general secretary of the World Council of Churches, who invited me to that body’s Second General Assembly in Evanston in 1954. This launched me on a serious review of all books on Christian unity. When I found myself as the only Pentecostal observer at Vatican II in the 1960s, I knew I had even more study to do. One book I found most helpful was Steps to Christian Unity by John A. O’Brien, a Notre Dame professor of theology. His key text throughout was John 17:20-21, a Scripture that has become the passion of my ministry because it was the passion of Christ.

I thank God for books, both classic and modern. But as the apostle John reminds us at the end of his gospel, there are yet other things that Jesus did (and is doing) that, if they were published, the world itself would not be large enough to contain.

David duPlessis has for 35 years been Pentacostalism’s unofficial ambassador to the rest of Christendom.