A fair number of fundamentalists / evangelicals are familiar with such books as Lee Strobel’s The Case for Christ or John Stott’s Why I Am a Christian. Such books detail the conversions of those who have accepted Christ.

The books with which we may not be familiar, however, are such books as Bertrand Russell’s Why I Am Not a Christian. Tonight, I came across several interesting books on Amazon.com that I would like to read sometime. They are David Currie’s Born Fundamentalist, Born Again Catholic, Patrick Madrid’s Surprised by Truth: 11 Converts Give the Biblical and Historical Reasons for Becoming Catholic, and Scott and Kimberly Hahn’s Rome Sweet Home: Our Journey to Catholicism. These books detail the (reverse) conversions of people who were fundamentalists or evangelicals (or at least Protestants) and yet converted to Romanism. These books are intended to be Romanist apologetics, but they could have more value for fundamentalists. God’s truth is stronger than man’s error, and so why not enlist man’s error in the service of God’s truth?

There is a proper place among the books that we read for accounts of people who have accepted Christ by grace through faith alone. Such books can teach us how to lead others to a saving faith in Christ and cause us to rejoice in our own salvation. But these other books that detail people’s reverse conversions can teach us why people reject salvation for some perversion of it. The sad fact is that many people who know the gospel chose to accept lies and errors. Obviously such books shouldn’t be given to people who are struggling with their faith. But for those who have a responsibility to protect other Christians, these books can be an invaluable resource. To know why people reject salvation by grace through faith and instead accept Romanism or Mormonism or Buddhism or Islam or atheism or Seventh Day Adventism or Hinduism or secular humanism or some other -ism is to know what can be done to better witness to or protect them.

So, if the Romanists are so obliging as to publish their playbook, why not take advantage of it? “Be ye therefore wise as serpents, and harmless as doves” (Matt. 10:16).