Book Summary & Review: Snakes in the Pulpit by Reuben Armstrong

October 04, 2007

Snakes in the Pulpit by Reuben Armstrong

First of all, this book is not worth the $22 cover charge. That’s #1. If you are going to pay that type of money for a book, it had better be on par with a classic such as Gone With the Wind or To Kill a Mockingbird. Otherwise, it had better have some dynamite information in it that cannot be found elsewhere.  This “Snakes” book has none of those assets.I read 90% of this book while sitting in the beauty salon getting my hair done.  I read the rest at home. But realistically, if you can read a book that quickly, it shouldn’t cost you $22.

Okay, where do I begin? I know. I’ll take it chapter by chapter.

About himself: Armstrong lists his criminal record.  It includes possession of cocaine, bank fraud, issuing worthless checks, theft, contempt of court, failure to pay child support, and forgery. Letter from author:  In his letter, Armstrong talked about his former pastor who had told him that he was called to preach. Armstrong preached for awhile but left the pulpit for good once he realized that was not his true calling.  That same pastor told him that he was interested in getting the church to purchase him some worldly goods such as cars, houses, etc.Chapter 1 - Armstrong talks about the huge churches being built, the crooked people in those churches and his belief that greedy pastors of such churches are hell bound.  He then started a story about a couple who were his friends. The couple had been having marital problems. He talked about how the pastor of a church invited the woman to his church and it appeared that there was a build up to the pastor and the woman having an affair.  But…the story was abruptly dropped. One never learns the end result because Armstrong did not really finish the story. Strange.

Chapter 2 - I’m shocked that Bishop Eddie Long has not hired a lawyer yet (or maybe he has) because this chapter opens with the accusation by Mr. Armstrong that Bishop Long sleeps with men. He made that accusation several times in his book with no proof or evidence as back up.   In fact, he appears to have a personal issue with Eddie Long, as he talks about him constantly and accuses him of all sorts of things, including being on the “down low”. 

Chapter 3 - In this chapter, he attempted to give us some dirt on Creflo Dollar but all he came up with was that Dollar once appeared in a video with “booty shaking” women.  Ohhhhhhhh-kay. And then he talked about Creflo’s worldly possessions and love of money.  YAWN

It was around chapter 2 or 3 that I realized I’d been suckered out of $22. And the book pretty much went downhill from there.

Chapter 4 - Nothing happened in this short chapter. Nothing. He mentioned that folks always say “touch not my anointed…” and, well, why did he even bother to write that chapter?  Filler pages?

Chapter 5 - He repeated that the pulpit pimps lie to their church members and give them false promises. Hmmmm….. again if I’m paying $22, I want more than the obvious.  He then re-listed the material possessions of various pastors.  YAWN…somebody hand me a pillow!

Chapter 6 - He quoted the scripture about “beware of false prophets” and went on to talk about the material possessions of various pastors. YAWN.  Then he gave a list of traits of false prophets.  That part’s okay but you’ve heard it all before.  In fact, you could have written a more thorough list yourself.

Chapter 7 - This is what caused my jaw to DROP.  As stated in another article, either he plaigerized Pastor Craige Lewis’ article or Pastor Craige Lewis plaigerized his book (that was not released at the time that Craige’s article was published on the internet).  Almost word for word, Pastor Craige’s entire blog article appears in this book.  I’ve offered Mr. Armstrong the opportunity to come to this blog to write his side of this weird story, but I have not heard from him.

Another blog covering this peculiar situation is Independent Conservative

Chapter 8 - The rest of the book was tough for me to read because chapter 7 threw me for a loop.  I’ll just sum up by saying that the remainder of the pages were more of the same. Bad mouthing pastors in general and well known pastors in particular.

On a scale of  1 - 5 stars (one meaning, very little effort was put forth in the writing of the book and five meaning superb, I give this book one star.

Save your money, please!

I also discussed this topic HERE

IC blog is discussing the topic HERE

Read more!

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