Joseph from Atlanta writes in to ask Pastor John, if you were stranded on an island and had

to choose only three books to take, which ones would you choose?

I never know how to answer a question like this, but everybody knows the first one.

I would take the Bible.

I cannot live without the Word of God, and though I have enough of it stored up in my

mind, maybe to survive, I don't want to just survive.

So I would take a Bible, and then I would cheat, and ask, can I take the collected works

of Jonathan Edwards?

Well, that depends now, if it's a banner of truth or the Yale edition.

I would take the Yale, okay, yeah, that's totally cheating.

Yeah, okay, it's cheating, then if I had to pick an Edwards, I would take the religious

affections, and I would take them because they had a huge impact on me years ago and

because they are such a deeply-convicting analysis of the human soul and how to describe

the godly soul, and I know I would want to be godly on this island.

And I'm going to surprise everybody with the last one.

If I had to throw them in a suitcase right now, and tomorrow it may be different, I would

throw in Richard Baxter's a Christian directory because it's 900 double column pages of biblical

analysis of the Christian life and all of its challenges of every possible kind.

It's a Tim Keller has on the front of the book, this statement, the greatest manual on

biblical counseling ever produced, okay, that's enough for everybody.

And J. I. Packer wrote the forward for this reissue of the book and calls it stunning

things as well.

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