Disclosure: I am reviewing this book as a part of the booksneeze.com book review program.

The economy is in a mess. People are losing their jobs, homes, and life savings. Violence is on the rise. Natural disasters seem to be stronger and faster. Morality is down. Dr. David Jeremiah aims to address how we should live in such troubling times.

While he does a fantastic job of pointing to specific verses from the Bible on how we can “weather this storm with a calm heart,” I often got the feeling that he was trying to scare the readers into thinking that the Apocalypse was upon us. Two examples:

Just before Jesus Christ returns to earth, keeping the promise He made to His disciples, this troubling time will finally arrive. And, my friends, it’s quite possible that we have entered the early stages of those events.

And while writing about meteorological warfare:

The last book of the Bible indicates that catastrophic disruptions in earth’s meteorological patterns will wreak havoc on the world during the Great Tribulation.

Maybe he’s right. Maybe Christ is about to return, but I couldn’t get past the idea that Dr. Jeremiah is just using scare tactics to sell a book. That said, he makes some very good points and gives Biblical examples about how we should live, regardless of whether the Apocalypse is upon us or not.

Maybe I’m being oversensitive about the “Christ is about to return” message. Maybe I’m reading too much into it. I just don’t think that Dr. Jeremiah has the authority to predict when Christ is returning. I do recommend reading this book for the overall message, though.

I never really cared about history when I started reading this book. I did, however, care about beer. Plus, I’m a Christian. So this seemed like a good book for me to read.

What I expected was a book about how beer (Guinness, in particular) affected Christians. What I found was a good book about how Christianity affected the Guinness family, and in turn, affected society.

However, the reason I give this book only 3 stars out of 5 is because while it was interesting to read the history of Guinness, I got a little bored reading about the entire family tree of the Guinness family. It would have been sufficient to talk solely about the key players of the brewery, and how Christianity affected how they ran the family business.

It was very interesting to see how the brewery survived some of the hardest economic and political times, and stayed one of the best selling beers of all time.

And I’m proud to say, that after learning about the history of Guinness, I’ve become much more interested in other history, as well.