God's Not Dead by Rice Broocks

Rice's hope “is that every believer will be able to grasp the reasons to believe in God and be able to communicate them with the world around them.” (x) In this era of aggressive atheism, Christians cannot afford to be passive and disengaged, Rice argues. Christians must speak the truth boldly. He wants people to have a faith that is intellectually satisfying and spiritually fulfilling.

His book is an overview of the evidence for God.

Rice begins by looking at atheism and the nature of evidence and faith. Reason demands we examine the evidence for faith, as we do science. He argues that good and evil are real and that, if there is no God, there is no evil. He then explores the kind of world God created.

Science indicates the universe had a beginning and Rice explores the inadequate attempts by naturalists to explain it. He follows by arguing that life is no accident, especially because of the complexity of DNA.

He addresses how life can have meaning and the despair of atheism. He explores the uniqueness of humans.

Additional topics he covers includes proof for the historical Jesus, His death and resurrection, the validity of Scripture as reliable, a defense of Christianity and grace in general (including the positive effects of Christianity on society), the growth of Christianity as proof of its authenticity, and personal stories of atheism to faith.

Rice ends with a chapter for those seeking God

This is not an academic work. It will not answer the sophisticated arguments skeptics use. It's content is aimed at the every day conversational level.

Rice has included many anecdotes and that makes this book very readable. It is also a very basic book on apologetics. It is for the unbeliever, a new believer, or a novice in the subject of apologetics. This is sort of a “conversational” book in that Rice writes like he is having a conversation with you, rather than lecturing you. This is the kind of book you might give your atheist neighbor or an atheist friend with whom you share coffee. It is the kind of book around which you can start a dialog with your atheist friend, after you've read it yourself, of course.

Rice Brooks is the co-founder of the Every Nation family of churches, which currently has more than one thousand churches and hundreds of campus ministries in more than sixty nations. He is also the senior minister of Bethel World Outreach Church in Nashville, Tennessee, a multi-ethnic, multi-site church, currently meeting in locations in Middle Tennessee, Texas, and Arizona. He is a graduate of Mississippi State University and has a master's degree from Reformed Theological Seminary in Jackson, Mississippi, and a doctorate in missiology from Fuller Theological Seminary in Pasadena, California. He is the author of several books. He lives in Franklin, Tennessee with his wife and five children.

Thomas Nelson, 304 pages.

I received a complimentary copy of this book from a publicity group for the purpose of this review.