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The Lamb
Large hardcover w/ dj; includes narration and music CD. Many years ago on a very important day, a remarkable story was told about a Lamb. The story took the listeners on a journey thorugh the Bible, from Creation to the Cross. It explained the central message of scripture and revealed the true significance of the Lamb. Now here in this book, the story is retold--an unforgettable message that everyone should hear.
180 pages, Hardcover
First published January 1, 2004
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Displaying 1 - 10 of 10 reviews
July 8, 2016
I loathe books that wrap simplistic systematic theology in the guise of biblical theology. Even more abominable is when this is done in presentations for children.
Jesus is beautiful. His story in the Bible is complex, deep, human, rich, good, loving, just, and worth knowing. When presented as the Bible presents him, Jesus is a lovely person to introduce to children.
Not so in this book.
Though the literature surrounding this book suggests that it is a summary of the Bible's narrative for children, from which they may be introduced to Jesus, "The Lamb of God", instead it is a paper-thin presentation of substitutionary atonement in the Bible, with little else of the beauty in the biblical story included. In this retelling, Jesus is reduced to a mere plot point. About a page is spent on his entire adult ministry and life, while three or four are spent on telling a child that this Jesus ought to be trusted. Jesus is presented in orthodox evangelical fashion as God incarnate, but without hardly any more added to his character that would show us what God as man might be like.
Over 100 pages are used to describe the first three chapters of Genesis alone (over half the book), with most of that ink describing our sin-and-death problem. Unsatisfied with the actual biblical text's description of Creation and Fall, the writer instead helicopters in various context free passages from all over the Bible to create an unnecessarily complex demonology and angelic fall that actually occurs before the human sin of Genesis 3. Why the author finds it necessary to obscure the clear story actually presented in the biblical narrative with the more controversial and unclear story of Lucifer's fall and the promise of a future Lake of Fire before he even gets to Adam and Eve's sin is hard to know for sure. However, it certainly does create a frighteningly extreme image of this loving Creator for a five to ten year old (the suggested readership for this book) that the actual original writers of these first few chapters did not find necessary to present.
Though the writer did include this demonology throughout the book, his summary of scripture misses important biblical narratives such as The Flood, Abraham's Covenant, slavery and rescue from Egypt, desert wandering, establishment of the Kingdom of Israel, Exile in Babylon, and the return to Israel entirely. It also completely removes the establishment of the church, early Christian organization and development, and the New Creation. I am not suggesting that this book needed to include every one of these details. However, by the absence of all of them, the writer has excised from the biblical story everything to do with life lived as a Jesus follower in the earth now. There is nothing of redemption of real life lived in a fallen world. There is nothing about the establishment and growth of The Kingdom of God (Jesus' primary message according to the four gospels, and the message that the early Christians called "the gospel", their main reason for organizing and preaching). By replacing all of these stories about real life as lived now as agents of light and justice and redemption in a world oppressed, with the stories of invisible sky-beings that are given the tiniest fraction of attention in the actual Bible, the author takes a messy, real, lived reality and makes it into something abstract, intellectual, internal, and individualistic.
The message of this book, to children, is a simple math problem. It's a one or a zero - Heaven ("God's Special Home") or Hell ("The Lake of Fire") - and which of the two is the eternal destination of the reader. No hope is offered for life before death. No examples are given for how one might manifest the goodness of God on the earth after one mentally ascents to the propositions of this book. There is no visiting of widows and orphans. There is no justice for the foreigner, no building of gardens in Babylon. Instead, there is just a shiny yellow Jesus flying up into heaven, the answer given to the abstract problem we didn't even necessarily know we had until the book told us so (in 100 convoluted pages). Jesus is simply a value plugged into this mathematical formula, not someone to know or by whom to be known.
The result of such a simplistic and individualistic reduction of the gospel is selfishness, arrogance, and insularity. This book is some of the worst of American style evangelical fundamentalism for children. There's poison in that well.
Far from a simple explanation of biblical scripture for children, this book is instead a simplistic understanding of a single thread of scripture condescendingly packaged in a convoluted way as the whole of biblical scripture.
Skip this book. From what I see on their website of their descriptions of their other material, I'd recommend skipping any other material for children from John Cross and Goodseed as well.
HOWEVER, if you are looking for something for your children that is wholistic, deeply scriptural, thoroughly biblical, that covers the entire breadth of the biblical narrative simply, without being simplistic, I HIGHLY recommend THE BIG PICTURE STORY BIBLE by DAVID HELM, illustrated by GAIL SCHOONMAKER, published by CROSSWAY BOOKS. My family has been enjoying this book since my children (twins) were only two years old. Now six, we all still love it, and even four years after first exploring it, continue to see beautiful ways that the writer and illustrator collaborated to introduce deep and complex beauty from the Bible in ways that very young children can be touched by it. Jesus figures prominently in the book, and is presented as a fully formed character, beautiful, rich, loving, wise, and real. The evangelical "born again" experience is covered beautifully in THE BIG PICTURE STORY BIBLE, but within a much richer and broader context of real life change, community redemption, world transformation, and New Creation. The Lamb reduces the Bible to something simplistic, and convolutes it. THE BIG PICTURE STORY BIBLE simplifies the breadth of the biblical narrative for children in such a way as to maintain its awe and beauty, and to present Jesus in his wholeness as central and lovely and good, all while speaking to children with a profound respect for their ability to understand and receive.
Please, please do not give The Lamb to children. If this book was your first introduction to the Bible, please start over elsewhere. It is all so much more beautiful than this book. The Bible didn't need John R. Cross' help to be made beautiful or understood.
Grace and peace on your journey in truth.
☠
There wasn't a good place to say this in my review, and it is far less important than everything else I say here, but I thought it prudent to also mention the following:
The illustrations in this book include a single dinosaur in the midst of modern animals, without any other animals from any other period, extinct or living, representing a diversity of creatures in Creation. Some may find this problematic for different reasons that I won't list, but it's something for which a reader should be prepared before presenting the book to children (which I strongly recommend against doing).
Adam and Eve are Caucasian, with pale skin. They have no body hair, and contemporary haircuts. All the other characters in the book are also white, and mostly look like contemporary Americans. What this means to most thoughtful readers will likely range somewhere between mild irritation and justified offence. At best, in the case of Adam and Eve, it's at least inaccurate both biblically and anthropologically. Like the dinosaur, it is at least something of which readers should be aware before presenting the book to children (which I strongly recommend against doing).
Jesus is beautiful. His story in the Bible is complex, deep, human, rich, good, loving, just, and worth knowing. When presented as the Bible presents him, Jesus is a lovely person to introduce to children.
Not so in this book.
Though the literature surrounding this book suggests that it is a summary of the Bible's narrative for children, from which they may be introduced to Jesus, "The Lamb of God", instead it is a paper-thin presentation of substitutionary atonement in the Bible, with little else of the beauty in the biblical story included. In this retelling, Jesus is reduced to a mere plot point. About a page is spent on his entire adult ministry and life, while three or four are spent on telling a child that this Jesus ought to be trusted. Jesus is presented in orthodox evangelical fashion as God incarnate, but without hardly any more added to his character that would show us what God as man might be like.
Over 100 pages are used to describe the first three chapters of Genesis alone (over half the book), with most of that ink describing our sin-and-death problem. Unsatisfied with the actual biblical text's description of Creation and Fall, the writer instead helicopters in various context free passages from all over the Bible to create an unnecessarily complex demonology and angelic fall that actually occurs before the human sin of Genesis 3. Why the author finds it necessary to obscure the clear story actually presented in the biblical narrative with the more controversial and unclear story of Lucifer's fall and the promise of a future Lake of Fire before he even gets to Adam and Eve's sin is hard to know for sure. However, it certainly does create a frighteningly extreme image of this loving Creator for a five to ten year old (the suggested readership for this book) that the actual original writers of these first few chapters did not find necessary to present.
Though the writer did include this demonology throughout the book, his summary of scripture misses important biblical narratives such as The Flood, Abraham's Covenant, slavery and rescue from Egypt, desert wandering, establishment of the Kingdom of Israel, Exile in Babylon, and the return to Israel entirely. It also completely removes the establishment of the church, early Christian organization and development, and the New Creation. I am not suggesting that this book needed to include every one of these details. However, by the absence of all of them, the writer has excised from the biblical story everything to do with life lived as a Jesus follower in the earth now. There is nothing of redemption of real life lived in a fallen world. There is nothing about the establishment and growth of The Kingdom of God (Jesus' primary message according to the four gospels, and the message that the early Christians called "the gospel", their main reason for organizing and preaching). By replacing all of these stories about real life as lived now as agents of light and justice and redemption in a world oppressed, with the stories of invisible sky-beings that are given the tiniest fraction of attention in the actual Bible, the author takes a messy, real, lived reality and makes it into something abstract, intellectual, internal, and individualistic.
The message of this book, to children, is a simple math problem. It's a one or a zero - Heaven ("God's Special Home") or Hell ("The Lake of Fire") - and which of the two is the eternal destination of the reader. No hope is offered for life before death. No examples are given for how one might manifest the goodness of God on the earth after one mentally ascents to the propositions of this book. There is no visiting of widows and orphans. There is no justice for the foreigner, no building of gardens in Babylon. Instead, there is just a shiny yellow Jesus flying up into heaven, the answer given to the abstract problem we didn't even necessarily know we had until the book told us so (in 100 convoluted pages). Jesus is simply a value plugged into this mathematical formula, not someone to know or by whom to be known.
The result of such a simplistic and individualistic reduction of the gospel is selfishness, arrogance, and insularity. This book is some of the worst of American style evangelical fundamentalism for children. There's poison in that well.
Far from a simple explanation of biblical scripture for children, this book is instead a simplistic understanding of a single thread of scripture condescendingly packaged in a convoluted way as the whole of biblical scripture.
Skip this book. From what I see on their website of their descriptions of their other material, I'd recommend skipping any other material for children from John Cross and Goodseed as well.
HOWEVER, if you are looking for something for your children that is wholistic, deeply scriptural, thoroughly biblical, that covers the entire breadth of the biblical narrative simply, without being simplistic, I HIGHLY recommend THE BIG PICTURE STORY BIBLE by DAVID HELM, illustrated by GAIL SCHOONMAKER, published by CROSSWAY BOOKS. My family has been enjoying this book since my children (twins) were only two years old. Now six, we all still love it, and even four years after first exploring it, continue to see beautiful ways that the writer and illustrator collaborated to introduce deep and complex beauty from the Bible in ways that very young children can be touched by it. Jesus figures prominently in the book, and is presented as a fully formed character, beautiful, rich, loving, wise, and real. The evangelical "born again" experience is covered beautifully in THE BIG PICTURE STORY BIBLE, but within a much richer and broader context of real life change, community redemption, world transformation, and New Creation. The Lamb reduces the Bible to something simplistic, and convolutes it. THE BIG PICTURE STORY BIBLE simplifies the breadth of the biblical narrative for children in such a way as to maintain its awe and beauty, and to present Jesus in his wholeness as central and lovely and good, all while speaking to children with a profound respect for their ability to understand and receive.
Please, please do not give The Lamb to children. If this book was your first introduction to the Bible, please start over elsewhere. It is all so much more beautiful than this book. The Bible didn't need John R. Cross' help to be made beautiful or understood.
Grace and peace on your journey in truth.
☠
There wasn't a good place to say this in my review, and it is far less important than everything else I say here, but I thought it prudent to also mention the following:
The illustrations in this book include a single dinosaur in the midst of modern animals, without any other animals from any other period, extinct or living, representing a diversity of creatures in Creation. Some may find this problematic for different reasons that I won't list, but it's something for which a reader should be prepared before presenting the book to children (which I strongly recommend against doing).
Adam and Eve are Caucasian, with pale skin. They have no body hair, and contemporary haircuts. All the other characters in the book are also white, and mostly look like contemporary Americans. What this means to most thoughtful readers will likely range somewhere between mild irritation and justified offence. At best, in the case of Adam and Eve, it's at least inaccurate both biblically and anthropologically. Like the dinosaur, it is at least something of which readers should be aware before presenting the book to children (which I strongly recommend against doing).
February 18, 2016
Wonderful, like no other I have read for children. And I say this in the sense that the author explains in detail what it means for Jesus -and for us! that He IS the Lamb of God.
April 13, 2024
It has become a family tradition to read through this book in preparation for Easter each year. The gospel message is presented with both simplicity and power, and our children eagerly anticipate each encounter with the book's material. John R. Cross does an excellent job of showing how the sacrificial system in the Old Testament foreshadows the redemptive work of the "Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world" (John 1:29). The abundant use of illustrations captivates our children's attention--which is great except for one caveat.
That caveat is the unfortunate Eurocentrism communicated through the illustrations. For a book rooted in ancient Hebrew practices and culture, it is odd that the depictions of historical events is whitewashed, as if communicating eternal Scriptural truths necessitates every character in the Bible looking decidedly Caucasian. Eve, for example (who is featured prominently throughout the book), is depicted as a blond-haired, white-skinned woman, contrary to historical and scientific evidence.
To be sure, this is not just a problem with The Lamb. Most Christian picture books and children's Bibles that I've come across seem to fall prey to an ethnocentric perspective, which can subtly communicate several harmful ideas, including not only that the ethnic distinctions within God's creation are unimportant and inconsequential, but also that Christianity itself is a religion only appropriate for westerners. These messages (as unintended as I'm sure they are) mar an otherwise fabulous children's book.
That caveat is the unfortunate Eurocentrism communicated through the illustrations. For a book rooted in ancient Hebrew practices and culture, it is odd that the depictions of historical events is whitewashed, as if communicating eternal Scriptural truths necessitates every character in the Bible looking decidedly Caucasian. Eve, for example (who is featured prominently throughout the book), is depicted as a blond-haired, white-skinned woman, contrary to historical and scientific evidence.
To be sure, this is not just a problem with The Lamb. Most Christian picture books and children's Bibles that I've come across seem to fall prey to an ethnocentric perspective, which can subtly communicate several harmful ideas, including not only that the ethnic distinctions within God's creation are unimportant and inconsequential, but also that Christianity itself is a religion only appropriate for westerners. These messages (as unintended as I'm sure they are) mar an otherwise fabulous children's book.
January 21, 2021
Libro único y bien hecho
Una !maravillosa joya para enseñarle a tus hijos. Ya que la Biblia tiende a ser un poco aburrido pero con este libro complementarias las enseñanzas biblicas. Lo recomiendo
Una !maravillosa joya para enseñarle a tus hijos. Ya que la Biblia tiende a ser un poco aburrido pero con este libro complementarias las enseñanzas biblicas. Lo recomiendo
January 20, 2010
Compelling illustrations, simple stories and review of previous lessons at the beginning of new teaching combine to make this an effective story for teaching the gospel to children.
Creation, sin/ fall of man, God's holiness, and Jesus' sacrifice are covered in 10 lessons. The one surprise for me was the inclusion of Satan's fall and the rebellion of dark angels - something I haven't seen included in other children's material.
We have yet to listen to the included CD, and I will finish this review when we do.
Creation, sin/ fall of man, God's holiness, and Jesus' sacrifice are covered in 10 lessons. The one surprise for me was the inclusion of Satan's fall and the rebellion of dark angels - something I haven't seen included in other children's material.
We have yet to listen to the included CD, and I will finish this review when we do.
Read
April 4, 2013Substitutionary atonement for kids. I enjoyed reading this aloud to the older kids, but I wouldn't want to read it without a heavy dose of theological editing-as-I-went (which means I wouldn't want them listening to the enclosed CD. ahem). N.T. Wright, who you know I love, would hate it because it's all life after death and no life after life after death (and little enough abundant life here and now). And Adam and Eve are blond. But the kids like the big glossy pictures, and again, with my own parental edits, I found it a useful resource.
September 7, 2014
I am going through this with my son and so far, I love it. I love the dinosaur in the garden and I love putting Satan's rebellion between creation and the fall of Adam and Eve. I think it brings more context to the story. Adam and Eve being white and blonde was weird. If they ever reprint this book, they should maybe work on that image. But! I love it so far my son, who is very visual sees that it is not a snake talking, but the dark shadow of Satan controlling the animal and be knows that Satan is a bad angel, it is deepening his understanding of the Gospel.
February 19, 2008
Incredible! It comes with the story on Cd and my kids ask for it all the time.
April 14, 2017
The faith of a Child
Pure truth straight from the Holy Bible, the gospel (the good news) is truth beyond compare, in childlike format. Easy to understand, vital acceptance to each one of us.
Pure truth straight from the Holy Bible, the gospel (the good news) is truth beyond compare, in childlike format. Easy to understand, vital acceptance to each one of us.
Displaying 1 - 10 of 10 reviews