Many times when I say the I “know” an author, I am saying that I’ve read his or her stuff. When I say I know Matt Brown, what I am saying is that I remember when he was a young high-school kid whose passion for music was only eclipsed by his passion for the Lord.
So when Matt told me about a book he just finished writing, I wasn’t surprised. I’ve always known that God was going to to great things through him – and he has. This new book, Revolutionaries, is simply a record of the men and women God used to advance and build His kingdom.
What I liked about the book is that it is wonderfully organized in sections covering the lives of revolutionary men and women each century from the birth of Christ up to the present. In reality, this book is kind of a Church History for Dummies because of the amount of information it covers.
The format is simple. Matt gives a brief summary of a “Revolutionary” man or woman’s life, then brings application from that person’s life into how we can become revolutionaries. I will admit, that I found some of the examples of people described as “Revolutionaries” was bit controversial. But what I realized at the end of the book, was that Matt wasn’t trying to find the “most perfect” or “best behaved” “most theologically sound” men and women of faith. He was simply telling the story of how God utilized people to accomplish his will.
That truth is encouraging because on any given day I may not feel like a Billy Graham or a Martin Luther – but what Matt’s book beautifully displays is that people like Billy Graham and Martin Luther were not anything more than simple people like you and me, who allowed God to use them extravagantly. And that’s a good enough reason to pick up this book.