Review: An Alarm to the Unconverted

An Alarm to the Unconverted by Joseph Alleine
My rating: 2 of 5 stars

Someone told me that I should read some of the classics of Christan Literature. I thought, OK, let's give it a try. Over a year ago I decided to search online for classic Christian Literature and came up with a site called 'Classics On The Wing' (http://www.onthewing.org/Classics.html). I grabbed the first one on the list (at that time) and started to read the book.

I do not often give a book less than 3 starts. I can always learn something and nobody is that bad a writer that they do not deserve less than three stars. However, this is one of those cases. If you follow me on Goodreads you will see that I started this book over a year ago. At about the 1 year anniversary I decided that I needed to find a way to finish it as it sat for the longest time at 50%. Though no one can find Mark Twain ever saying it, a quote that is credited to him was something I had to do to finish this book: "Eat a Live Frog Every Morning, and Nothing Worse Will Happen to You the Rest of the Day". Who ever said it, never read this book. I basically had to force myself to read 5% every day so that I could finish the book.

I am sure that it is the time that this was written but the author has a one track mind. You are a sinner, you are going to hell, repent and show that you are Christian by your acts. Chapter one told us this in about 30 ways. Chapter two was more of the same. I remember reading this and thinking I did not know there was that many ways to be told I was going to hell. I am not discounting the message, but if I was a non-Christian reading this book, I would not have been influenced by it in the least. If you tell me 100 times I am a sinner in the tones that this author used, well, I most likely would have told you that you will see me there as well.

I had someone say, 'well that is just the way that Puritan authors were. That may be so. He wrote the book in 1652.

I cannot recommend this book to anyone of today's times. It is a heavy theological subject or how depraved we are as sinners, but does not offer help to those who would be converted, just more condemnation.

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