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The Puritan Hard Drive at SWRBBook Review: Puritan Hard Drive
Puritan “Book” (Books on Hard Drive) Review – SWRB Puritan Hard Drive
Reviewed by Dr. C. Matthew McMahon
5 Stars
The Puritan Hard Drive
made available by Still Waters Revival Books
1 Hard Drive Packed with Great Information and the best books!
There are many book publishers today that have taken up the task of publishing old Puritan and Reformed books for the glory of Jesus Christ. For instance, Banner of Truth Trust, Soli Deo Gloria, International Outreach, Sprinkle Publications, Reformation Heritage Press, Old Paths Publications, and others, are among those who are serving the Christian community with books that need to be published and read. The revival of Puritan and Reformed literature in the last 50 years, beginning with the popularity of the Banner of Truth, is something every Christian reader should be grateful for. The expertise and theological precision that the Reformers and Puritans possessed in exegeting the Word of God can only be rivaled by men like Augustine or Aquinas. Reformation and Post-Reformation dogmatics provide the Christian community with tools to study and interpret the Bible, as well as refresh the Christian through sound exposition and godly sermons of the Reformers and Puritans of old. It is no doubt, then, that the greatest revival in the history of the church other than the coming of Jesus Christ in the fullness of time and the expansion of the Gospel through the apostolic witness, was during the time of the Reformation and the Post-Reformation through the Puritans.
It cannot be denied that Reformation theology took root and grew even after the Reformers and Puritans had gone to their heavenly rest. Certainly men like Jonathan Edwards, Samuel Davies, and the Princeton Theologians at the turn of the 20th century continued to cultivate Reformed Theology after the manner and exegetical prowess of their theological forefathers. So it is with thankfulness that such publications have been made available to the Christian community. However, if the Christian were to buy all of these works, those at least that are available, they would certainly have to purchase thousands and thousands of dollars of books over a long period of time in order to gain a substantial library (especially if they were in pastoral ministry or some academic circle) unless they were providentially wealthy. For example, a library of about 1000 books in today’s Christian market, if one was to buy the choice volumes of puritan and Reformed literature, would cost anywhere from $20,000 to $30,000. Martin Luther’s works alone run $1400 (and that is a bargain in many ways). So what does the serious theological student, or the church-going laymen do? How can they instantly attain a large library of choice theological works without going into financial debt?
The Puritan Hard Drive.
Though the “smell” of a hard drive can never replace the smell of a new theological book delivered to your home, software today has opened up the ability to increase a student’s library by exponential amounts. Still Waters Revival Books has offered the professors, pastors, theological students and church laymen one of the most valuable hard drive of Reformed and Puritan literature to date. Certainly Christians should be grateful for all the software providers already digitizing published books electronically. These are a wonderful help toward exegetical study. However, SWRB has compiled over 12500 Reformed and Puritan works on a drive that, for the most part, are not available anywhere else but in an extensive theological library, or a rare and antiquitous book room. In fact, many of the books that are on this CD collection are not in Seminary libraries at all because the works have never been transcribed or modernized for the public.
Let us look for a moment at the “worth” of the drive. It contains material that ranges from contemporary papers, to works over 500 years old. For instance, works by William Cunningham (such as his Historical Theology set), much older works such as Williams Ames’ Fresh Suit Against Human Ceremonies in Worship, and very old works such as the complete Works of John Knox. Cunningham’s works are available to buy in book form for about $40 through various book-sellers. Ames’ works are not found anywhere except by Xeroxed copy from SWRB. Knox’s works were once reprinted, but have been out of print for quite a long time. Yet, all three of these are available on the Reformation CD collection, and are at the fingertips of the user. To give you an example, authors can be found such as John Knox, John Calvin, the Westminster Divines, the Covenanted Church of Scotland (General Assembly), the famous Synod of Dort (1618-1619), Thomas Manton, George Gillespie, Samuel Rutherford, Matthew Henry, C.H. Spurgeon, Jonathan Edwards, John Owen, John Brown (of Wamphray), John Brown (of Haddington), Francis Turretin, James Durham, John Howie, William Hetherington, David Steele, Samuel Miller, John Girardeau, Edward Fisher, Robert Shaw, A.W. Pink, Loraine Boettner, Augustus Toplady, Andrew Symington, Patrick Fairbairn, William Roberts, Richard Baxter, William Cunningham, John Anderson, Andrew Clarkson, David Scott, John Cunningham, George Smeaton, Larry Birger, Francis Rouse, Dr. F. Nigel Lee, Bill Mencarow, Thomas M’Crie, Hugh Latimer, David Calderwood, Andrew Melville, David Hay Fleming, John Welch, J.C. McFeeters, A.F. Mitchell, Peter Lorimer, P. Hume Brown, Taylor Innes, James Kerr, and William Morison. Awesome. More? John Arrowsmith, Oliver Bowles, Anthony Burgess, David Dickson, William Gouge, Alexander Henderson, George Hutcheson, Augustine Marlorate, Steven Marshall, George Newton, George Petter, Robert Rollock, Thomas Shepard, and John Trapp. To collect these works alone would be practically impossible because of the rarity of most of the works in the collection. The worth of these to the soul is even more important than their affect to your wallet.
There are three aspects that make this collection invaluable: 1) cost for worth, 2) availability, and 3) simplicity of use.
Do you like listening to books? If you like MP3s, there are hundreds of them on the drive. They have the complete Westminster Standards for you to listen to, as well as works by Calvin, Knox, Owen and others.
Here is what SWRB says –
•The Puritan Hard Drive Is Your Own Personal Rocket Fuel For Remarkable Christian Growth!
•Turbo-Charge Your Biblical Studies. Grow in Grace. Increase Personal, Family and Church Sanctification. Praise and Love the Lord More!
•The Puritan Hard Drive is Comprehensive, Portable and Unprecedented In Its Usefulness – A True Technological (Puritan and Reformation) Treasure Trove!
•The Puritan Hard Drive Contains the World’s Most Powerful and Practical Bible Study Software Fully Installed and Ready To Use Right Out of the Box.
•No Installation Necessary, Just Plug the Puritan Hard Drive Into the USB Port of Any PC or Mac Computer and Start Enjoying the Most Advanced and Amazing Digital Christian (Puritan, Reformation, Calvinist, Presbyterian, Covenanter, Reformed Baptist, Protestant, etc.) Library in History.
•The Unsurpassed Reformation and Puritan Library On the Puritan Hard Drive Already Contains Over 12,500 Of the Best Reformation and Puritan Books, MP3s and Videos, Which We (SWRB) Have Published or Gathered Over A Period of More Than 25 Years, and Is Fully Expandable As New Reformed and Puritan Books, MP3s and Videos Are Integrated and/or Published For the Puritan Hard Drive In Days To Come.
•All Data Related to the 12,500+ Books, MP3s and Videos is Fully Searchable, Through the Powerful Proprietary SWRB Software Engineered Exclusively for the Puritan Hard Drive, In Regard to Titles, Authors, Summaries, Categories, the Personal Notes You Add to Any Resource, Indexed Words Inside Books, Etc.
•The Majority of the Books Are Also Fully Searchable Concerning Their Content and You May Copy and Paste From these Books too. The Embedded Indices In these Books Also Make these Searches Lightning Fast, Even When You Are Searching for Multiple Occurrences of A Word or Phrase Across A Complete Book – As You Can Pull Up Hundreds of References, Clickable and In Context, In Seconds or Less, Even In Books That Are Over 500 Pages Long!
•Not Only Can You Search Within Every OCRed (Optical Character Recognition) Book Individually, But You Can Also Search Across the Entire Collection of Searchable Books At Once, With One Search Query, to Obtain Results (Clickable and In Context) for Every Occurrence of Your Search Word or Phrase Across All the Searchable Books on the Puritan Hard Drive. You May then Click On Any Link In Your Search Results to Immediately Access the Exact Page In the Book Where Your Selected Search Result is Located. Your Search Result Will Also Be Highlighted On the Page Where You Arrive, So You Can Find the Word or Phrase You Searched for Quickly and Easily. This is A Very Powerful Feature, Full of Benefits That Will Help You to Effortlessly and Expeditiously Expand Your Christian Studies In More Ways Than You May Be Able to Imagine – At Least Until You Have Actually Experienced This Exceedingly Robust Reformation Research Capability, for Yourself, Through the Puritan Hard Drive.
•When You See All You Are Getting On The Puritan Hard Drive You Will Be Amazed – All Thanks and Glory Be to the Lord for the Great Things He Has Done in Bringing this Marvelous, Wonderful and Extraordinary Christian Study Tool Into Existence!
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