"The Youngblood Memoirs" speak of another David-like type or figure. Alamp. A lamp, that, this memoir makes clear, has helped to guide countless individuals from the depths of the cave of Adullam, as associated with debt and distress to the heights of prosperity and peace, as associated with the St. Paul Community Baptist Church, Mt. Pisgah, The Nehemiah Project, MAAFA, and much more.

Johnny Ray is a lamp, not because of his own prolific, charismatic, and innovative way of thinking, but because that way of being in the world continues to pull thousands out of the muck of lost identity.

• Archbishop Emilio Alvarez

As for Rev. Youngblood, the closest thing to a prophet I'm ever likely to know, he retired from the Saint Paul pulpit in 2009. Back when I first met him, when he was in his early forties, Rev. Youngblood had promised to step down at age sixty, imagining sixty as pretty darn old. Once he got there, though, he didn't feel so ready for the retirement home he'd bought in Houston.

And there was a small, struggling congregation at Mount Pisgah Baptist Church in Bedford-Stuyvesant who wanted him to become their full-time pastor. So, early in his sixty-first year, he reported to another one of God's Alcatrazes, which is just another way of saying the Valley of Dry Bones, called once more to prophesy.

• Samuel G. Freedman, Award-Winning Author, Columnist, and Professor