THE UNPREDICTABLE IMPACT OF THE INSCAPABLE JESUS
John Ortberg has the gift of pointing out his thoughts through simple words, of not only enlightening the Scriptures but especially of exemplifying them through small stories and old adages, sayings and writings.
Thus the reading of “Who is this Man?” becomes so fascinating that makes us want to read it in one go. In the same way, the author has grown his reputation as a reference in today’s Christian Literature, with works such as “Everybody’s Normal Till You Get to Know Them,” “If You Want to Walk on Water, You’ve Got to Get Out of the Boat,” and “Know Doubt.”
Ortberg, pastor at Menlo Park Presbyterian Church, in California, answers the question that serves as the book’s title by presenting a point of view; not one that is held by a pastor or theologian, but by thousands of characters that were impacted throughout the last two thousand years by that wonderful figure, Jesus.
From historians to the illiterate, from priests to the peasantry, from elders to the children, contemporary to the Messiah Himself or from the Middle Ages, wretched destitute folk or wealthy sharks, slave owners or philanthropists, men or women – from the most diverse places, the author shows how much influence Jesus had, and how much more He has today, on our society.
And just as the heading foreshadows, this book delves into what was and continues to be “the unpredictable impact of the inescapable Jesus” on people’s lives, believers or non-believers, on nations, on businesses and on governments.
Jesus had great empathy towards the reviled, the sick, the poor, the subjugated and the abused, thus his importance to the striking majority of the world population through and through. He dressed as a slave, worked as a slave and died as a slave, (though a Rabbi, he was) a personis mediocribus.
As the US ex-Secretary of State Condolezza Rice writes on the book’s preface, “John Ortberg has demonstrated that nothing in our human existence has been quite the same since that fateful Sunday so long ago.”
Ortberg depicts the events of Jesus’ decisive days between His condemnation and resurrection in the last few chapters, completing an exposé on this mixture of humanity and divinity – Jesus.
