Book Review: I AM THAT I AM {BookCrash}

I AM THAT I AM by Judy Azar LeBlanc
ISBN: 9781936746101
Paperback, 469 pages
Publisher: Crosslink Publishing
Retail: $29.95

About the book (from the back cover):

I AM THAT I AM, Tracing the Footprints of God is a book that you’ve always wanted to have in your library but could never find. I AM THAT I AM provides a biblically based, theologically sound narration of all eight covenants of God –presents main themes and summaries of over forty-five of Jesus’ timeless parables –describes over fifty supernatural miracles that God executed through the hands of Jesus –and traced over fifty divine names and title reflecting different facets of God’s nature, character, and personality. The captivating pages offer commentaries by over seventy-five renowned bible scholars, includes archeological images of recent excavation findings of biblical events, and historical illustrations and map images showing relevance to contemporary locations –all uniquely woven into one convenient reader-friendly volume.

About the author, Judy Azar LeBlance (from the back cover):

Judy Azar LeBlanc is an award winning internationally published author of several other works including the 2011 international award winning title Theology 101 in Bite-Size Pieces. A graduate of San Jose State University, she currently resides in East Texas where she devotes her time to writing.

My thoughts:

I have long wondered about all the names and titles for God in the Bible. Also the covenants of God and man have interested me. I feel that these are important to me personally and have wanted to delve further into these. I thought this book –especially from the back description –would be a great addition to my library.

It is a rather large book. I’ve had over 3 months with this book and I am not done with it. It is not, in my opinion, that “reader-friendly”. It is packed –I mean packed –full of information and many references to the Bible (verses, people, books, events, etc.) as well as commentaries –as it touts on the back cover –from many well-known scholars. It is a book that I’ve highlighted and marked up quite a bit. But it’s not a book that can be read and then set aside. At least not for me.

I anticipated the book going through the entire Bible, for the most part, and trace the “footprints” of God. Because God is in the entire Bible. This book however goes about following in a different format. Have a look at the Table of Contents as you can see on Amazon (**that’s an amazon affiliate link**). She first gives a short introduction that includes a list of the names and titles of God. Then she goes through the Covenants (Edenic, Adamic, Noahic, Abrahamic, Mosaic, New- each with its own dispensation*), followed by the Ministry of Christ (Parables, Miracles) in the gospels, and she ends again with more on the “names and titles of the Great I AM THAT I AM.”

*Dispensationalists look at the different times of the Bible and group them according to how it appears God dealt with the people at that time. They feel that we are now in the Dispensation of Grace. The dispensations are:

• The Dispensation of Innocence
• The Dispensation of Conscience
• The Dispensation of Human Government
• The Dispensation of Promise
• The Dispensation of Law
• The Dispensation of Grace

In the beginning pages there is a section titled “The Recreation” where LeBlanc talks about the earth in terms of science. She apparently believes that the world is billions of years old. She also makes some statements about the rebellion of Satan and recreation. Here is what she says:

“..[A]t some dateless point in time, between the perfect creation of the heavens and the earth (Genesis 1:1), and that period when “the earth became formless and void, and darkness was over the surface of the deep, and the Spirit of God was moving over the surface of the waters” (Genesis 1:2; Isaiah 24:1; Jeremiah 4:23-26), the first angelic act of rebellion occurred in the heavenly sphere, Lucifer was judged, and one third of the heavenly hosts were cast down to earth (Revelation 12:4). (pg. xiii)”

She also quotes Dr. Merrill F. Unger:

“The heaven that God created (remade) was evidently not the sphere of the planet and stars, but he immediate atmospheric heaven surrounding the earth, as the re-creative activity of the first four days suggests (1:4-19). Light on the first day was solar. But light from the heavenly bodies, which God had made in eternity past (v. 16), could not penetrate the chaotic shroud that enveloped the earth. Verse 2 in Hebrew is apparently circumstantial to verse 3. It tells the earth’s condition when God began to re-create it, and specifically to separate light from chaotic darkness. It “was” a chaos of wasteness, emptiness, and darkness. God did not create it in this state (Job 38:4-7; Isa. 45:18). It was reduced to this condition because it was the theater where sin began in God’s originally sinless universe in connection with the revolt of Lucifer and his angels…(pg. xiv, xv)”

I put both of those portions here to help one see that if this isn’t something that you believe, you might question the rest of the book’s credibility. Of course many will find the book useful in some parts and discard the others.

Some of the commentators that LeBlanc quotes are:

• Louis A. Barbieri Jr.
• George R. Beasley-Murray
• Edwin A. Blum
• Jack S. Deere
• Craig A. Evans
• Norman L. Geisler
• Robert A. Guelich
• Donald A. Hagner
• John D. Hannah
• Matthew Henry
• Allen P. Ross
• C. I. Scofield
• and many others

She quotes from only one encyclopedia, although she does attribute photos to a few encyclopedias in the book itself:

• Eerdman’s International Standard Bible Encyclopedia

The websites listed throughout the book are too numerous to list in this review but can all be found in the bibliography of the book.
LeBlanc relies on lexicons, ‘handbooks’, dictionaries and concordances such as:

• The NAS Old Testament Hebrew Lexicon
• Halley’s Bible Handbook
• The Concise Oxford Dictionary of English Etymology
• Strong’s Exhaustive Concordance of the Bible
• The New Unger’s Bible Dictionary
• and a few more

Some of the scholars quoted are:

• Benjamin B. Warfield
• Raymond C. Stedman
• David Padfield
• Josh D. McDowell
• and others

There are also black and white –and some are rather pixelated (such as on page 201) –images that show a location or other relevant images (such as on pages 22-23). All scriptures quoted are from the New American Standard Bible.

In the end, I found the etymology in the book the most fascinating. The book itself is okay. There are some parts that really just roll along; they are informative and interesting. Yet there are other parts that just confused me. Not that being confused is bad because it made me think and try to understand. But with a book, especially of this nature, being confusing most likely wasn’t what a reader would be hoping for. In terms of stars, I’d rate this a 3 out of 5. I can’t even begin to try to say how it could be improved because the amount of time, research and energy it took to put this book together must have been quite impressive.

**Disclaimer: I received the above book for free from Book Crash for the purpose of this review. No monetary compensation was given. All opinions stated are my own. This post does include affiliate link(s). See Disclosure/Policies.**