Review: Do Not Hinder Them by Justin Peters
Hey y’all! Welcome to our latest book review! We are big readers in our home and thought this may be a good way to serve our brothers and sisters in Christ.
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(((If you would like to see/listen to a review of this book, check out our Youtube review, our Podcast review, and/or our Rumble review)))
***FULL DISCLOSURE*** Before we dive into this book, it’s important to know we are Baptist and hold to a view of credobaptism. This book by Justin Peters is written from a credobaptist position about children being baptized. If you hold to a paedobaptism (infant baptism) view, this book review will probably not be of much interest to you, which we totally understand. We don’t debate this difference of belief with our brothers and sisters in Christ because it is a secondary issue and we have the liberty to disagree on this. But we wanted to let y’all know before getting into this review and/or book.
Now, to dive in. Do Not Hinder Them is written by Justin Peters. We have been blessed by his ministry since very early in on in our walk with the Lord. We highly recommend his videos which you can find here. He really helped us grow in discernment and we hope he can be a help to y’all as well.
We discovered this little gem about a year ago. We had been discussing children being baptized earlier and earlier, so we thought it would be a very helpful resource to us in determining when (or if) it is appropriate for baptism of children. We had formed our own ideas on this from reading Scripture, but thought it would be good to get another perspective.
Do Not Hinder Them mainly discusses when should children who profess to believe be baptized. How can we know? What should we be considering and looking for?
We are going to do our best to review this book without giving too much away as we would encourage EVERYONE to read this and think on it. It’s also not long at all (5 chapters total) which makes it easy to read even if you’re busy. Justin Peters makes it clear going in that he knows he will be going against the today’s mainstream views of most in the church who hold to credobaptism beliefs. Ironically, he did a wonderful job of fleshing out with examples and Scripture what we had come to believe from our own study and observations.
One of the points Justin makes in this book that we can’t emphasize enough is what passes for “children evangelism” resources today is sad to put it mildly. It’s all watered down, stuff and fluff, bright colors, games, and silly illustrations that look like they came out of a fairytale book. These are superficial and breed a superficial Faith and understanding. If y’all have followed us long, you know by now we do NOT care for these things.
Justin also addresses the home and the spiritual leadership of the husband/father. It is up to the father to lead and instruct their children. It’s not enough to have them in church every week. Making them go to children’s programs doesn’t count for more than play time or hanging out with friends a lot of times, so that obviously isn’t going to count as discipleship. The Word of God must be taught by the head of the household—the father/husband—to the children and his wife. He is to disciple them and instruct them, and not allow the buck to be passed because that’s how it’s done. That’s not biblical, and we need to shift away from that model. Justin Peters does a great job of laying this out in this book and what that looks like. He even addresses what this looks like for a single mother who is the head of her household due to the circumstances. We appreciated that he took the time to address that since we hear from many single mothers asking about issues relating to the issue of head of household and discipleship.
Do Not Hinder Them goes on to help us understand what to look for and how to know if what a child is professing is genuine or if it’s more of repeating what they have heard, but don’t quite understand it yet. This is a tough subject, but Justin Peters lays it out in a way that is easy to understand.
We really love that the final chapter of this book goes straight to Scripture and the Biblical record and evidence to support the views laid out. It also talks about “what now” and “what do we do with this information.” These are things that we all, as parents, and even simply as church members looking out for our other brothers and sisters, need to wrestle with. What does Scripture support? Does it support what we are doing or not?
We HIGHLY recommend Do Not Hinder Them to everyone—parents, grandparents, pastors, church members—baptism is something we should take some time to think about. You may agree wholeheartedly with this book, or you may not. As always, if you disagree with something, make sure you’re standing on what God says and not what you feel or “have always done.”
And don’t forget to check out our Adult resources page for more reviews and recommendations.
Have you read Do Not Hinder Them? Are you planning to? Let us know on our social media pages! We love to hear from y’all!