Francis P. Martin

When I ordered this book from the library, despite the strange, old-fashioned title, I was unrealistically expecting that it would be a modern book, recounting numerous examples of people paving their way to success by insisting on maintaining positivity in their speech. However, I was much mistaken,

It turned out to be an older book (or at least seemed to be – there was no publication date), couched in religious language and propped full with biblical quotes; though the main point of the book was in fact that we should watch our tongue and talk only about what we would want in our life, this did not seem to take up much space. If I were to be somewhat unkind, I could say that it was mainly composed of religious ramblings. That is not perhaps true, but that is what I felt. The surplus of biblical quotes no doubt conspired to give this impression,

I found the book to be hard to read, practically unreadable, in that I could only get through a couple of pages at a time, except close to the end, when I was greatly encouraged and inspired by knowing that the end was in sight!

However, I have found a few good, intrinsic quotes, which contain the book´s presumed essence:

1) “What you say is what you get.”
2) “The words of your mouth have control of your life, whether you like it or not, or whether you believe it or not.”
3) “You can have whatsoever you say.”
4) “If you feel tired, just say ´my strength is renewed as the eagles´.” I´m not sure what “renewed as the eagles” means. Perhaps the author means “eagle´s” (strength).
We are informed that thoughts can come from three places: 1) our five senses 2) Satan, and, finally, 3) God.

There must be no fear in our thinking. “FEAR IS DEVIL FAITH. Faith is of God and produces life. Fear is of Satan and produces death. FEAR WILL ACTIVATE SATAN AS FAITH ACTIVATES GOD.” I am always wary of books comprising many capitalized sentences. It makes me feel as if the author is yelling at me.

Death and life are in the power of the tongue. We can speak life for ourselves and others, or we can speak death to ourselves and others.

We must become “God possessed” and refrain from jesting, which the author believes to be a negative thing. We must let our words be few. (He may be right about this.)

We are the ministers of life, not death. We are builders, not killers.

We should also be careful of what we hear.

The author explains to us about blessing and cursing. When we make negative statements about others, we are cursing them. I believe he makes a good point here.

I have awarded the book two stars instead of one, because the author´s message is good, in fact important – we should watch what we say, since this has a habit of coming true. If we continually make positive statements about our life, whether these are true or not, it will change for the better (see the works of Esther & Jerry Hicks – the Abraham books). But the language, including the excessive amount of biblical quotations, is off-putting and makes it practically unreadable (at least in my view).

I thus can´t recommend it, despite the basic importance of its message.… (más)