Charles Whisnant, Personal Library

 

John MacArthur books

 

 

HOW MANY BOOKS ARE TOO MANY

In a previous post I asked: How Many Books are Too Many?

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The second photo was taken in 1969 after Charity and I were married. We lived in Fort Worth Texas. Our living space was in our two little rooms, inside a house where we lived. But I needed space for a book case for all my books. We had more books than clothes. When we moved from Fort Worth to Wooster, Ohio, in March of 1970, we had our clothes, kitchen necessities and thirty-two boxes of books!

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The first and second photos were taken in 1990's when I was Pastor/Teacher of First Baptist Church in Altoona, Kansas. Kurt Nunnenkamp built these extra nice book shelves, built to fit the room in my church office. These books were my technical books used to study. Plus, I had a room where I had my other books, used as the Church Library.

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Reading books has been a part of my schedule since I was a young person. I loved reading in middle school, I read history books, and books about people mostly.

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In Seminary, Dr. Luther Peak took us to his Church Library and gave us information how to catalog books and papers in our library. I had cataloged my books by numbering them one to 150. Dr. Peak said start with the books you have now.

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Over the years, the number of books for my studies increased.

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When I moved to Altoona, Kansas, I started my own system of filing my books. I was able to catalog each book on a library card with a specific number. It was my own "Dewey Decimal System". That was great since I had several thousand books I also filed papers and articles so as to find them when needed.

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FILING ALL MATERIAL IN A SYSTEM WAS NECESSARY:

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All my sermons had a numbering system, (I used the John MacArthur's system in cataloging sermons) all my religious papers had a numbering system, and all my books had a numbering systems, all my church papers and folders had a numbering system. I catalog all three ring binders.

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I read that Charles Spurgeon read books, and his desk was filled with books while he studied. I picked up on Spurgeon's practice.

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You couldn't have too many books in those days.

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TODAY IS A LITTLE DIFFERENT I AM AFRAID

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When I moved to Lexington, Kentucky, I had little room to put my books. (I left most of my books and many of the papers in Altoona, Kansas). Finally moving to Portsmouth, I had less room and most of the books are stacked in boxes. But I do manage to keep some books in book cases. When you don't have a nice church office to keep all your study material, you are in disarray.

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This has gone down the history road. My Dad had a Christian book store, and he had a few books himself. I wished I had been old enough to have kept those books.

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So how many books are too many? Good question.

OLD BOOKS AND BIBLES AND STUDY

PAUL SAID, "Bring me my books!"

The photo are some of my oldest books and they are as listed:

1. Scripture Natural History - J.G. Woods's Bible Animals 1877 Gift By Majorie Keaton


2. The Life and Epistles of St Paul - W.J. Conybeare, J.S. Howson 1870 Gift Allen Barnhart


3. Dictionary of Religious and Denominations - Hannah Adams 1817


4. The Story of the Bible - Charles Foster 1877


5. The Reference Passage Bible New Testament - I.N. Jones 1915


6. Past, Present, and Future - James E. White - 1909


7. The New Indexed Bible - John Dickson - 1949


8. SERMONS BY CHARLES H. SPURGEON – THIRD SERIES - 1859 (orginial)

SOME OF THE BIBLES I HAVE WHICH I USE REGULAR

• The New Analytical Bible - Dickson Bible, (used in Seminary, 1966, 1972


• Thompson Chain Bible -My Dad's Bible when he lived in Ashboro, N.C. , 1930's


• The MacArthur Study Bible - The latest Bible in my library - 2007 Gift by my Kids.


• The Hebrew - Greek Key Study Bible - Spiros Zodhiates - 1988
  

BIBLES I USED IN STUDY FOR SERMONS AND BIBLE AND THEOLOGY STUDIES

• The New Testament Study Bible - The Complete Biblical Library - Study Bible, Greek-English Dictionary, Hebrew - English Dictionary- Interlinear, Textual Apparatus, verse by verse commentary, various versions, and translations of Greek Words - used since 1986


• Greek by Gresham Machen - 16 volumes


• 26 Translations of the Bible 1983 - two volumes


• The Reference Passage Bible NT with OT references


• YES, I HAVE THE HOLY BIBLE KING JAMES VERSION 1611 EDITION (1990)


• The NT in four versions - KJ, RS, Phillips, and NEB one volume


• THE CHRONOLOGICAL BIBLE - Edited by Edward Reese, 1978 Prof. Hyles Anderson

SPURGEON SAID, AND I TOTALLY AGREE:

• "I believe that there is no mistake whatever in the original Holy Scriptures from beginning to end. There may be, and there are, mistakes of translation; for translators are not inspired; but even the historical facts are correct."

THE STUDY OF THESE BIBLES TO PREACH AND TEACH.

• There are some fundamentalist who say, "We use and read and study only from the KJV bible." To them I say, great. They must have special abilities from the Lord to be able to do that. Praise the Lord for those folks. These men will say, "The message today is totally from the Holy Spirit." Again that is wonderful.

• In my forty-five years of teaching and preaching, and some five thousands times doing just that, I have being afraid to speak for God from the Word without studying. The Holy Spirit leads, directs, confirms, empowers, but doesn't give me revelation, maybe inspiration.

• Like my Dad, after forty years of preaching, and study, he could preach without notes and from his stored up knowledge, could preach or teach on the spot.

• Cecil Nunnenkamp, a member of our church in FBC, Altoona, Kansas, said, "Pastor Charles has enough stored up study that he could go without study for several months."

• When you preach from the text, verse by verse, and you want to learn what that text is saying. If you want to stay fresh week after week, you will study.

• If you want to talk about what you believe and think about the Bible, it really don't take a lot of study. But if you desire to know what God is staying, you will need to study.

I personally don't believe its spiritual to say, "I just read the KJV and preach as the Holy Spirit leads." "The Lord spoke to be last night (Saturday) and gave me this sermon." I have heard that all my life, and I believed them as a child. But when I became a man, and a preacher, I realized that was childish

READ THE BIBLE, STUDY THE BIBLE, ITS OKAY TO STUDY OTHERS WHO BELIEVE THE BIBLE IS THE WORD OF GOD.

HOW MANY BOOKS ARE TOO MANY

HOW MANY BOOKS ARE TOO MANY?

THE WRITTEN WORDS

READING BOOKS AND SERMONS, AND ARTICLES

I love reading, let me be clear, I love reading in order to gain knoweldge , understanding, and wisdom. I don't like reading for fun, or to relax. I like Charity to read out loud on trips. She will read an enjoyable book she likes. Charity likes to read for the enjoyment of the story she is reading. She will read a book almost every night.

Reading is good. Understanding what you are reading is better. Knowing how to read a book is best. How to read a book is not all that easy. You might not read the Bible the same way you would read Elwell's Evangelical Dictionary of Theology. When I am John MacArthur, Jr.'s book Faith Works, or The Gospel According to Jesus verses reading Jerry Falwell's Autobiography, or even Charles Spurgeon's biography "Spurgeon & Son" they would be different reading styles. When I read most books, I can't read without marking, and unlining key thoughts. For example: Walter C. Kaiser, Jr, "Toward An Exegetical Theology, Biblical Exegesis for preaching and teaching. This book is marked, written in, highlighted, and read and read read, and even outlined.

Any of Watchman Nee's books are read, slowly, a little at a time. the books are marked up a lot. So would reading Wayne C. Booth's book "The Craft of Research" slow, learning, put into practice and so forth. I am still reading it. The principles in this book takes practice, and practice.

I buy books when the need comes about. For example in 2007 when I was for a brief time the Christian Educational director at a church last year, I bought books on the Children's Ministry. I used those books as research for ministry. For example: George Barna's "Revolutionary Parenting". Along with about ten others books.

I bought Alexander Strauch's book " A Christian Leader's Guide to Leading With Love." and also the study guide. Then I down loaded "The Mentor's Guide to Bibical Eldership: Twelve lessons for Mentoring Elders" by Strauch and Richard Swartley. 150 pages by the way.

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When Charity and I were in Lynchburg, Virginia, the beautiful mountains of Virginia, my birth place, and home for eighteen years, last year, we were at the Thomas Road Baptist Church, visited with Jerry and Macel Falwell, Macel gave me "Building Dynamic Faith" by Jerry. Outstanding book to read.

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Then I also download books and papers from the web:

• Christ-Centered Preaching: Preparation and Delivery of Sermons: Bryan Chapell & Covenant Theology Seminary: over one hundred pages.


• Why I Am A Premillennialist: Pulpit Mazazine Blog: over one hundred pages


• Dispensational Hermeneutics: Thomas Ice


• Dispensationalism, The Church and The New Covenant: series of papers


• The New covenant by John MacArthur


• The Shepherd Conferences 2007 all sessions. Over one hundred pages


• John Pipers's weekly sermons. All his sermons in 2007


• John MacArthur, Jr. sermons. Over thirty sermons


• Ray Pritcher's weekly sermons.


• Apostolic Hermeneutics: many resources: ExpositoryThoughts.blog.


• John Piper's The Future of Justification. Fifty pages


• Vern Poythress's New Testament Worldview. Twenty five pages


• The For the Gospel Conference. All the sessions.

Then there is the reading the bloggers of Bloggers and WordPress. The weblog number in the hundreds.

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As by father in law Bob Temple, Sr. says, "Charles your problem is, you learn and read so much, and you don't have an outlet to give it out, and that you get discouraged." And few want to hear it. People are not into Biblical language around here.

As an updated having visited Pulpit Magazine Blog

• What is so interested I just took out this book from my library today, and posted the book on my blog. It was in 1983 when I was at the Shepherd Conference when there were only 300 men there. And the book I bought was “Toward An Exegetical Theology.” I flew out of LA X and was stranted in the Denver Airport for eight hours and I read this 265 pages book

I was so mad, because I had graduated from BBS in Bible, but I had never read such a book on preaching. So I went back home and begin developing the principles I recieved from the Shepherd’s Conference and John MacArthur, and this book by Kaiser. For the next thirteen years I begin to learn how to use the principles in this book. And in those thirteen years taught the Scriptures from a exegetical theological and build the sermon based on the scriptural text
I liked the opening remarks Kaiser said about Tenney, “I first learned the analytical method of exegesis and who instilled in me an insatiable love for the Scriptures and the idea of applying the rudiments of this method to Hebrew.”

Along with John MacArthur who helped me put into practice this method of knowing the Scripture and applying the prinicples when preaching.

Learning to preach that is totally Biblical in that it is guided by God’s Word in its origins, productive and proclamation.

By far the best book I have read on how to learn to preach.

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This has been good to put down. I will address more later.

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Charles