Sometimes people ask me, “Can you recommend some good Christian books?” At other times I see the books that people are reading, and am saddened at the decline into self-help and psychology that is evident in them. And then again at other times I ask if people have heard of such and such an author, and they haven’t. In the midst of all the information clutter, the “good stuff” is lost sight of.

So here is a list of recommended books. The list, of course, reflects my own personal bias and experience. I certainly don’t claim to have read, or even to be aware of, “all the good stuff”! The list was first compiled in 1995, and some good books that I’ve read since are not included. Others are available online as free downloads, or available for use within Bible software packages such as e-Sword.

Books marked with *are particularly recommended.

Click here for Dr. A.W. Tozer’s list of recommended books.

• Strong’s Analytical Concordance to the Holy Bible. This gives every Hebrew and Greek word a unique number, so you can see how each is translated in different verses.
• Young’s Analytical Concordance to the Holy Bible

Other great Bible study aids are:

• Interlinear Greek/English New Testament (Bagster)
• Greek/English Lexicon of the New Testament—Thayer
• Vine’s Expository Dictionary. A great resource for detailed study
• Word Studies in the New Testament—Vincent. Almost a verse-by-verse commentary, giving many shades of meaning derived from the Greek
• Word Studies in the Greek New Testament—Wuest. These are detailed studies of the Greek text of several books of the New Testament, giving a very literal translation.
• Halley’s Bible Handbook.  An introduction to all the books of the Bible.

• *Jamieson, Fausset and Brown’s Commentary (1 volume or 3). A good, spiritual commentary.
• *Matthew Henry’s Commentary (1 volume or about 20). A devotional commentary that gives more in the way of application than exposition.
• John Wesley’s Notes on the Old and New Testaments
• C.H. Spurgeon published a book “Commenting and Commentaries” which is worth consulting.

It is also useful to have a Harmony of the Gospels. This is a book that sets out the passages from the gospels in chronological order; often with parallel passages set out in parallel columns. There are several available, based on different Bible versions.

There are many other biographies to be recommended, particularly those available second-hand, e.g. Adoniram Judson, J.C .Paton, Mildred Cable, Charles Cowman, Gladys Aylward, Praying Hyde, and so on.

• *The Pilgrim Church—E.H. Broadbent.  From the Acts to the early 20th century.
• The Torch of the Testimony—Kennedy
• Church History—A. Miller (Pickering and Inglis)
• The Reformation in England—Merle d’Aubigné (Banner of Truth)
• History of the Reformation—Merle d’Aubigné (5 vols)
• Foxe’s Book of Martyrs

• *The Price and Power of Revival (Lewis Revival, 1940s)—Duncan Campbell (Faith Mission). A short booklet by one who experienced it.
• *Asuza Street (America 1900′s)—Bartleman.  Origins of the Pentecostal movement.
• From Death Into Life (Cornwall, England)—W. Haslam (Good News Crusade)
• Lectures on Revivals of Religion—Charles.G. Finney (second-hand)
• Finney on Revival (condensed from the above) (Bethany)
• *Why Revival Tarries—Leonard Ravenhill. A no-nonsense look at why.
• *Remarkable Miracles—Bevington (Logos). Some of these will make your hair stand on end!

*The Power of Prayer—R.A.Torrey (Zondervan).  One of the best books on prayer available.

Books by E.M. Bounds, Leonard Ravenhill, R.A. Torrey, Madame Guyon

The Genesis Flood – Henry Morris (Creation-Life Publishers)

The Genesis Record – Henry Morris (a commentary on Genesis)

Books by H.M. Morris, J.C. Whitcomb, Gary Parker and others of the Institute for Creation Research.

My views on prophecy differ from most, so read at your peril!  In my view many of the books on prophecy that are popular today are not worth the time.

• Books by Ralph Woodrow (Riverside, California) are good on prophecy, e.g. Great Prophecies of the Bible; His Truth is Marching On. He writes from what is really a historicist position.
• Babylon – Mystery Religion (Ralph Woodrow) exposes many of the “traditions” of the church that are just paganism in disguise.
• Books by H. Gratton Guinness may be obtained second-hand (if you are lucky). He was a historicist of the 20^th century; some of his calculations of dates are now known to be inaccurate!
• His Waiting Bride – Edgar F. Parkyns. This appears to have been republished under the name of Betts, but I cannot confirm that it is the same book.
• The Church and the Last Things—D. M. Lloyd-Jones (Crossway). The most sane treatment I’ve read, with a very good synopsis of Revelation.
• Discipleship on the Edge—Darrell Johnson (Regent College). A thorough exposition of Revelation, with some very useful information about how the book is structured.

Much has changed, of course, since the list was first created in 1995. One of the most important changes is the availability of many old titles on the Internet. Bible software is also available as free downloads at e-Sword and other places.

• Hundreds of older titles (mostly out of print) are available at the Christian Classics Ethereal Library. Others are available for purchase or viewing at the Internet Archive. We have a few available on the present site.
• Sermons are available for download at Sermon Index and many other sites. Another good site is biblebase.com – which shows my background!

Recent Reading

Here is a list of books recently read and recommended.

• Secret Believers – Brother Andrew. What happens when muslims believe in Christ.