Our castaway this time is Paul Pease, pastor of West Kilburn Baptist Church in North West London. He has pastored there for the last ten years and is presently on a four month sabbatical from regular preaching. (published Winter 1994)

Years ago the Topper comic provided me with one of my favourite characters: Desert Island Dick. He was a strange man who lived in nnothing but black half-mast trousers on a 2 inch patch of land with one palm tree and surrounded by sharks! Week after week a crate full of something useless would be washed up to him.

On my desert island I would look for a crate to be washed up which had the following useful books.

First, Knowing God, by Jim Packer. Someone famous suggested that this book should really be called Knowing About God. Fair enough. Yet I find this book gives me a real desire to know God more and more. The chapter on "God's Love" made me write, "Wow!" and "Praise the Lord!" across its pages in pink fluorescent pen. The chapter entitled "The Heart of the Gospel" introduced me to the doctrine of propitiation for the first time ever, and I understood the cross of Christ as never before. The chapter on "The Sons of God" resulted in me crying out "Abba, Father". In this chapter I learnt about inferential assurance and immediate assurance, and even went from one to the other. Such a book, so closely tied up with my first Christian experiences, is never far from me.

Then I would look in the crate for the blue cover of Doctor Lloyd-Jones' Sermons on Romans, 3:20 to 4:25. This book tells me about the meanings of forgiveness, faith, blood, justification, grace, and once again, of propitiation. All these are explained in such a clear and moving way. I remember sitting on the settee and calling out to Mum, "Listen to this", as I read out the pages on Abraham not staggering at the promise of God. I had never heard Doctor Lloyd-Jones preach and this was the first book I ever read of his -- it was living and vibrant.

I would rummage through the crate to find Hugh Martin's book The Shadow of Calvary. Here are gripping expositions of those verses in the gospels that tell of the passion of the Lord. But light is also shed on loads and loads of other Bible verses, of Jesus in Gethsemane, and the control and triumph of Jesus in His trial. This book keeps me lookin up at Calvary and even gives me reverent and glorious insights into the suffering of my Saviour.

As I delve deeper into the crate I spy Thomas Brooks, Volume Six! I would have this book because it contains a sermon entitled "A Believer's Last Day His Best Day". It also has lots of other goodies, but this sermon preached on Ecclesiasties 7:1 shows me quite clearly that a believer's dying day is better than his birthday!

I'm surprised the crate didn't sink under the weighty content of the last book, John Murray Volume Two. Here are his Lectures on Systematic Theology in which he states the doctrine, explains the verses from whence we get the doctrine, and writes about the doctrine with warmth and feeling. His five chapters on sanctification are glorious and would remind me of my need to be holy, even on a desert island.