Don West. Joy in the Night: Stops along the Journey of an Itinerant Preacher. TEACH Services, Inc., 2014. ISBN-10: 1479602965. ISBN-13: 978-1479602964. See here to purchase the book.
Don West is a Seventh-Day Adventist itinerant preacher from Jamaica. Joy in the Night
is a collection of ten sermons that he delivered in various places,
including Jamaica, Trinidad, the United States, and Mexico. West
provides background information for each sermon.
Some of the sermons were more comforting and grace-filled than
others. West does depict God as a comforter of those with problems and
Jesus as a healer for the spiritually sick, and West says that we should
not try to clean up our lives before coming to Jesus because we need
Jesus to clean up our lives. I do agree with West about the importance
of spiritual solutions for the problem of depression, but I would add
that people who are clinically depressed may also want to seek natural
solutions, such as medication. For a lot of people, singing hymns in
the night and praying do not make them feel better.
I could identify with West’s story about the time when he was a
student and he feared that he would not pass a particular course.
West’s conclusion was that God led him to be a minister, and God would
see to conclusion what God started. That sort of mindset gave me peace
when I was a student, apprehensive about papers, exams, and
presentations!
Some of the sermons were not particularly comforting, but they were
thought-provoking. In preaching about the Parable of the Ten Virgins
(Matthew 25:1-13), West says that there are well-intentioned professing
Christians who will not enter into the Kingdom of Heaven, and that there
will come a time when the opportunity to seek God has passed. As I
read this, I had to think about the extent to which this message
reflects the teaching of Jesus and the rest of the New Testament. While
West’s sermon did appear, overall, to be a faithful and understandable
interpretation of the Parable of the Ten Virgins, I wondered if the
Parable could be reconciled with more hopeful teachings (i.e.,
universalism). While this particular sermon by West did not make me
feel spiritually secure, I did agree with his point about the importance
of the Holy Spirit in a believer’s life: if someone has lots of Bible
knowledge but the Holy Spirit is not moving that person to apply the
Bible knowledge in a loving manner, then is that not a problem?
Believers should seek that oil of the Holy Spirit while it is still
available, West was saying.
More than one sermon had the usual Adventist apocalypticism, an
emphasis on Jesus Christ coming soon. In one sermon, West says that one
of the signs that Christ is coming soon is the increasing acceptance of
homosexuality. West quotes Luke 17:28-29, where Jesus likens the end
times to the days of Lot, who fled Sodom. My reaction to this point was
two-fold. First, the people of Sodom in Genesis 19 tried to gang-rape
Lot’s guests, and we generally do not see that sort of thing among
homosexuals today. Second, Ezekiel 16:49 criticizes Sodom for not
strengthening the hand of the poor and needy. Should not that be
mentioned when one is criticizing the sins of Sodom, or seeking to draw
analogies between today and the time of Sodom?
One sermon in the book was especially intriguing and made the book a
keeper, even though it annoyed me in some areas. In this sermon, West
was defending the idea that Jesus on earth had sinful flesh. This is
not to say that Jesus actually sinned, for West is clear that Jesus did
not sin. Rather, his point was that Jesus’ flesh had the same
propensity towards sin as all other people’s flesh. West is not always
clear about how this practically played out: he favorably quoted someone
who likened Jesus to a snake without venom (symbolizing sin), and he
said that Jesus was born of the Spirit at his birth, showing that we all
need to be born of the Spirit (born again) to overcome sin. Do not
these things make any propensity towards sin in Jesus’ flesh practically
irrelevant? What made most sense to me in this sermon, though, was
West’s point that Jesus relied on his Father to overcome sin, and, in
doing so, he was a model for our spiritual lives.
This sermon made the book a keeper because it went into Adventist
history, particularly Adventist interaction with this doctrine about
Jesus’ flesh. Where the sermon got annoying (yet still intriguing) was
when West was trying to argue that the Antichrist in I John 4:3 was the
Roman Catholic Church. I John 4:3 states: “And every spirit that
confesseth not that Jesus Christ is come in the flesh is not of God: and
this is that spirit of antichrist, whereof ye have heard that it should
come; and even now already is it in the world” (KJV). West regards the
doctrine that the Roman Catholic Church is the Antichrist as “the clear
testimony of the Word of God” (page 96), but he acknowledges that Roman
Catholics believe that Jesus came in the flesh. He concludes, though,
that Roman Catholicism actually denies that Jesus came in the flesh
because it does not think that Jesus came in the same flesh that
everyone else has, namely, sinful flesh. West quotes the Roman Catholic
teaching that Jesus was born without original sin. Personally, I tend
to interpret I John 4:3 in light of docetic beliefs that existed in
John’s day, and I regard the view that the Roman Catholic Church is the
Antichrist as mere interpretation and opinion, not as “the clear
testimony of the Word of God.”
All of that said, I give this book four stars because it was an
enjoyable and an interesting read, even if I did not agree with
everything it said.
The publisher sent me a review copy of this book through Bookcrash, in exchange for an honest review.