Customer Reviews

The Next Step

5 star:		(7)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(3)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(4)

 

 

I love this book. This book shows different ways in which the enemy will attack the Christian. I used to think I was terrible because curse words and images of porn would pop into my head while praying. It is a direct attack from the enemy on a new Christians prayer life. I notice a lot of people are giving this book low ratings. Take that as a sign that this is the real deal. The enemy will only attack things that are a real threat to himself and the souls he is trying to devour. I would like to buy one for each member of my family. As for the people upset about the "attacks" on Catholicism, the bible says to "Prove all things; hold fast that which is good.-1 Thessalonians 5:21. Ask the Pope what happened to the 2nd commandment which is listed in Exodus 20:4, 20:23, 34:17; Leviticus 19:4, 26:1; Dueteronomy 4:23, 5:8; 1 Corinthians 10:7,10:14 and 1 John 5:21.

This little book is excellent for babes in Christ. I currently use it to mentor young women who don't know anything at all about the bible. It's easy to read and based on God's word. I have used it for over 20 years and those I taught still talk about what a difference "The Next Step" made in their lives. I highly recommend it.

excellent info on growing spiritually for new believers especially, but also more seasoned believers, prayer, bible reading plan, false religions, how to witness tell others about Christ ect. those people bashing the book are simply showing their true colors they're probably not even saved, how someone could have such a mean critical spirit when they were just saved raises serious questions, 2 of them in bondage to Roman Catholicism so it's obvious why they dont like it, Catholicism is a cult truth hurts sometimes :)

After reading this book, I have found it to be very good. Although this book may seem simplistic, it gets its point across. This book is not meant to be a dissertation on the spiritual growth of a Christian, but rather a quick help guide. Things don't have to be complex in order to make a point. Jesus even said his teachings could be understood by children before adults. If you have ever been in a theological library you would soon find out you are feeding your intellectual life and not your spiritual life. This book does not claim to be a future theological masterpiece to collect dust on a bookshelf somewhere, but rather, as a short and simple guide to help a person connect to God under the salvific blood of Christ. So if you want deep intellectual reading, find another book, but if you want a simple how-to guide to learn how to make your practical Christian life more spiritually pleasing, buy this book. By the way things look, you could pick up a used one for 35 cents or so, a small price to pay for easy Christian help.

I came to get a new copy of this little book, which has been a great blessing and help to me for the decades (yes, decades) I've had mine. I could hardly believe seeing the bad reviews by anti-Christian people featured first, unlike with any other book I've found here. The 5 star reviews outnumbered 1 star reviews, but the 1 stars were put first. Why? I'll leave it up to you. One note: there is no "step 4" about "cross dressing" in the book. This book is for helping new Christians (maybe old ones, too) to grow spiritually, to pray, to witness, and to show Christ's love. Makes me wonder what problem those 1-star folks had with this.

Too bad this book is serious else it would be a wicked parody on the idiocy of the Religious Right which has engulfed the country since the 1980s. While placing a Crusader on the cover, Chick proceeds to claim that the Crusades were a bad thing and that Catholicism started it all. In the chapter that Chick claims Satan is controlling the world religions, there are very few religions that aren't mentioned. I think Conservative Southern Baptists are the only Christians who get to get into Heaven in Chick's worldview. What is compelling in this book is how nice Chick sounds. While contradicting himself and throwing out garbage at his audience he presents himself as a godfearing man who only wants to bring people to the gospel. A must-read for anyone who wants to know what all the fuss is about when people declaim the religious right

A friend of my wife's gave her "The Next Step" as a gift several years ago. The most charitable thing I can say about the book is that it is naive and condescending in its advice to "new Christians". Its author, Jack Chick, is famous for writing numerous fire and brimstone "comic" books that depict eternal damnation for anyone disagreeing with his beliefs, such as Catholics (referred to as cultists). If you are the type of Christian who believes that ours is a spiteful and vengeful God and that Jesus taught you to judge and hate your fellow man then this book belongs in your collection. True Christians would do well to avoid this hysterical nonsense.

I had originally entitled this review "A Decent Resource for New Christians". That was before I went away and learned Church history for myself rather than receiving it from a third party resource such as the comic books of Jack Chick. What I found has shaken me to my Protestant Evangelical Anti-Catholic roots.

When I was a young Christian I bought this book for myself and found it very helpful. I was very attracted to the comic style layout, with plenty of eye-grabbing pictures to keep my attention. This book gave me the incentive to read through the entire Bible. It introduced me to Church history and encouraged me to preach the gospel which I had accepted as being true. It encouraged me to live a holy and blameless life in this crooked and perverse generation. It also has many helpful insights into the tactics of Satan in the life of the believer. Lots of good things I still believe today. However, there are many things in this little cartoon booklet that I have come to strongly disagree with. So strongly in fact that I feel it is necessary to rewrite this review in the hope that others will not be led astray by Jack Chick's revisionist Church history.

Jack Chick has many strongly held fundamentalist type peculiar beliefs, and he isn't afraid to preach them. Among them is King James Onlyism, Anti-Catholicism, Conspiracy Theorism, Pre-Tribulationalism and he holds to the Pilgrim Church theory of ecclesiology. I have come to realize through many years of personal study (much of which was heartrending) that these theological stand-points (most of which I held to) are not what the Church originally held to. When I began to read the writings of the early Church (the men whom Chick lifts up as heroes of the faith) I was startled at how "Catholic" they sounded. Words like Eucharist and liturgy and practices like praying for the faithful departed, using the sign of the cross on ones body, and veneration of icons all sounded like Roman Catholic and Eastern Orthodox "heresy" in my mind. Yet what was I to do? I now had a choice: believe Jack Chick's version of events which gave no support to back up his huge claims or believe the writings of the Church of Christ established by his Apostles and secured down through the ages by the laying on of hands (or Apostolic Succession as it is called today).

Chick calls Origen an "evil genius" and an "enemy of God". I have dealt with that and many other claims such as his claims regarding the Textus Receptus and the King James Bible in my review of his book Did The Catholic Church Give Us The Bible?. He says on p.10 that Constantine was the first pope. This is simply not true. The title was carried by the Patriarchs of Alexandria before they were by the bishops of Rome. The first man recorded in Church history with the title of Pope was Pope Haracleus (232-249 AD). Some sources state that the first bishop in Rome to be called Pope was Pope Marcellinus (304 AD). That's about 10 years before Constantine's Edict of Milan granting religious freedom to persecuted Christians and about 20 years before he sat in on the Council of Nicea to try and bring some peace to the situation involving the Arius.

Ultimately Jack Chick is not working from the evidence that history presents to us, but is working frist from his stanpoint as a fundamentalist Christian and then reading that theology back into the historical record. Smudging, ignoring, twisting and contorting facts where it suits him best. I believe he is probably doing this without full consciousness of what he is actually doing, believing that he is doing God's work. The book that opened up my eyes to these things was David Bercot's Will the Real Heretics Please Stand Up: A New Look at Today's Evangelical Church in the Light of Early Christianity. Although I have come to disagree with many of Bercot's solutions. He rejects the historic Church of today because of doctrines he feels he cannot harmonize with his understanding of the ANF's, thereby rejecting the Church of the Ante Nicene Fathers and thus in my mind creating a logical fallacy. In this he becomes just another Reformer. Another Pope. Standing in the faith of his own judgements and interpretations, rather than in the Church which Jesus established and promised would never fall. This is the ecclesiology of the Ante Nicene Fathers, and although both Chick and Bercot reject it, Bercot comes much further and for this reason he may be seen as a bridge between the two. That is at least what his book was for me.

Many Protestants hold strong views against the RCC and EOC, and this strong emotional response makes it sometimes impossible to look at the facts in a dispassionate way. Yet if we are to come to the knowledge of the truth, we must be willing to lay aside our prejudices and weigh up the facts as they are.

This book is a great overview for newly saved Christians. The simple, straight-forward layout covers the major bases for a new convert looking to fill in some blanks. Anyone involved in a ministry may find it a great book to hand out.

This book is so great for the new borns, the book talks about every important subjet in concern of the life of a son of God, its very easy to understand and talks simply of the hard things, such as satan and demons and what is the world going to say to the new christian,proposes a way to read the Bible in a year and even a way the evengelize and everything is explained with cartoons (believe me, new borns hate the papers without draws) and the more important, everything is based on the Bible