mawilliams
kickbox
This is my first post. I wrote a book and don’t know how to capture people’s attention. This Website seems attractive to me because I can post excerpts form it and hear what you readers think of it. If you want to comment on it, feel free to say anything you think. If your comments sting, then they are good advice. I will learn from them.
My book is “Revelation: Fall of Judea, Rise of the Church.” It is almost ready for publication. Here are some excerpts:
Chapter 1
Introduction
The farther we get from Revelation’s composition, the more conflicting the interpretations. Of the four major schools of interpretation: preterist, futurist, spiritual, and allegorical, the futurist interpretation is, today, the most widely accepted. It was popularized by Hal Lindsey in the 1980’s and now by Tim LaHaye and Jerry B. Jenkins, whose thirteen-volume series “Left Behind” has sold millions of books. Their adding fictional characters and presenting the interpretation as historical fiction very effectively popularized the futurist interpretation.
But is it correct? The notion that righteous people are suddenly taken during the proposed rapture, no matter what they are doing, even flying airplanes or driving cars, exposing those left behind to plane crashes, train wrecks, and highway accidents makes one wonder. How many righteous pilots do we have? How many unrighteous would die in crashes while the righteous are raptured? The authors propose that infants and young children are raptured because they are too young to sin. However, the people left behind have children who are just as innocent. Why are those children not raptured? Might the original visions be more symbolic and not written to be understood so literally? For example, the description of locusts as huge mechanical grasshoppers seems far-fetched.
Preterists claim many of the predicted visions were meant for people who first heard them preached. This position makes more sense. To recognize how plausible the preterist theory is compared to the futurist theory, we would have to be as familiar with the events of that time period as we are with our own “current events.” Curious, I spent many years studying the “current events” of the early Christian era to see if there are reasonable connections between those early events and the visions. I found compelling connections.
Chapter 3
The Word Unleashes the Four Horsemen
The horrors symbolized by the horsemen are fourfold. First is the horror of human ambition that refuses to serve God and demands to be served by others. It rides out of the human heart, like the white horse, in a spirit of conflict and envy, conquest and tyranny, exploitation and greed. The second horror is the reaction of humans who, not willing to serve God, are hardly likely to accept servitude to other humans. Their resentment will speed through the world, like the red horse, in a wave of rage calling for resistance and war. The third horror is the result of such activities. The tasks God requires us to do remain undone, and what we have already accomplished is attacked and destroyed. Ruin results and famine, blind terror, and despair. These spread behind the combatants like a black scourge that afflicts the innocent as well as the guilty and ruins everyone's happiness. In the wake of these three, comes the fourth horror: sickness and death, the pale horse. This is the worst horror of all: humans seemingly abandoned by God, torn from the joys of this life and thrust into the unknown terror of death.
Such are the immediate risks of granting humans freedom, but there are more. Many will die; all will suffer if humans abuse their freedom. And God will punish the abusers. The lamb's opening of the seals, unleashing each horseman, represents the Son's divine nature. The Son, as God, created all of us and keeps us in existence as we disobey and spread havoc. The ability, the power for anyone to do anything comes from God. This, in a way, makes God our accomplice. It is our will that chooses to act but God's power that keeps us in existence and functioning as we actually carry out our deeds. This power comes through the Son, who unflinchingly carries out the Father's will that we have genuine freedom.
Chapter 8
Glimpses of the Temple Site
At this point in Revelation, John has been asked to measure the Temple and see who worships there. Judea has just suffered a terrible tribulation through the four winds and two of the three woes. I have shown that the four winds compare very well with historical events between the crucifixion of Christ and late A.D. 66, when Vespasian conquered all Judea except Jerusalem. The Judeans trapped in Jerusalem suffered even more acutely during the first woe. Disaster came during the second woe when Titus brutally conquered the starving people. There is still another woe coming, the third woe, which will extinguish Judea as an independent nation when Bar Kochba leads the Judeans to total defeat and exile. In the following chapters, I will provide more information about Bar Kochba and the war of A.D. 131-5 than any other book interpreting Revelation.
All of this is so harsh on Judea that I want to move some distance away and view Jerusalem through the eyes of history. Then you and I both can place these sad events into a wider perspective, a perspective that offers more hope to Judea than the four winds and three woes did. Imagine that you are hovering above Jerusalem, high enough that you can see the whole city. Imagine your head pointed north, your feet south, and you are looking straight down on the city. Today is the morning after the birth of Jesus. The sun's first rays slowly creep from your right but have not yet swept across Jerusalem. The rays will, in a few moments, illuminate the Temple's front wall. Covered with gold leaf, this wall will shine almost as bright as the sun. Right now, nothing is illuminated. The Temple, the homes, the streets are all clothed in darkness, too dark to see any details. But in your imagination you can clearly see anything you want to look at.
Imagine yourself just above The Temple. It is almost sunrise the morning following Christ's birth. The Levite on morning watch just sighted the sun's first light illuminating the east behind the Mount of Olives. "It's becoming light!" he shouts down to the others, "The East is bright!"
Someone shouts, "Is the East bright as far as Hebron?"
He looks to his right. "Yes!" he shouts back, "The light has risen."
Then the priests and Levites, who were waiting for that moment, begin the morning sacrifice.
As the lamb is sacrificed, the Temple’s front begins to glow with the reflected light of the rising sun. The Temple is the city's tallest structure. Part of its outer surface is plated with gold. It shines brilliantly, a symbol of those marked by the covenant, that they should reflect God's glory because their ways should reflect God's ways.
This day, the day you are watching, the savior God promised to restore all things has finally arrived. The priest and Levites who are conducting the sacrifice this morning are, of course, unaware of his birth. If they were aware of it, they might have conducted the ceremony with more fervor and joy. If they realized the prophetic implications of the sacrifice they just made, they might wonder why God would allow such things to happen. And they would be apprehensive over the choices they must make as they and their fellow Judeans interact with the promised one now that he is here.
Well, the above are three excerpts. I would very much appreciate any comments you want to make.
Sincerely,
Maurice A. Williams
My book is “Revelation: Fall of Judea, Rise of the Church.” It is almost ready for publication. Here are some excerpts:
Chapter 1
Introduction
The farther we get from Revelation’s composition, the more conflicting the interpretations. Of the four major schools of interpretation: preterist, futurist, spiritual, and allegorical, the futurist interpretation is, today, the most widely accepted. It was popularized by Hal Lindsey in the 1980’s and now by Tim LaHaye and Jerry B. Jenkins, whose thirteen-volume series “Left Behind” has sold millions of books. Their adding fictional characters and presenting the interpretation as historical fiction very effectively popularized the futurist interpretation.
But is it correct? The notion that righteous people are suddenly taken during the proposed rapture, no matter what they are doing, even flying airplanes or driving cars, exposing those left behind to plane crashes, train wrecks, and highway accidents makes one wonder. How many righteous pilots do we have? How many unrighteous would die in crashes while the righteous are raptured? The authors propose that infants and young children are raptured because they are too young to sin. However, the people left behind have children who are just as innocent. Why are those children not raptured? Might the original visions be more symbolic and not written to be understood so literally? For example, the description of locusts as huge mechanical grasshoppers seems far-fetched.
Preterists claim many of the predicted visions were meant for people who first heard them preached. This position makes more sense. To recognize how plausible the preterist theory is compared to the futurist theory, we would have to be as familiar with the events of that time period as we are with our own “current events.” Curious, I spent many years studying the “current events” of the early Christian era to see if there are reasonable connections between those early events and the visions. I found compelling connections.
Chapter 3
The Word Unleashes the Four Horsemen
The horrors symbolized by the horsemen are fourfold. First is the horror of human ambition that refuses to serve God and demands to be served by others. It rides out of the human heart, like the white horse, in a spirit of conflict and envy, conquest and tyranny, exploitation and greed. The second horror is the reaction of humans who, not willing to serve God, are hardly likely to accept servitude to other humans. Their resentment will speed through the world, like the red horse, in a wave of rage calling for resistance and war. The third horror is the result of such activities. The tasks God requires us to do remain undone, and what we have already accomplished is attacked and destroyed. Ruin results and famine, blind terror, and despair. These spread behind the combatants like a black scourge that afflicts the innocent as well as the guilty and ruins everyone's happiness. In the wake of these three, comes the fourth horror: sickness and death, the pale horse. This is the worst horror of all: humans seemingly abandoned by God, torn from the joys of this life and thrust into the unknown terror of death.
Such are the immediate risks of granting humans freedom, but there are more. Many will die; all will suffer if humans abuse their freedom. And God will punish the abusers. The lamb's opening of the seals, unleashing each horseman, represents the Son's divine nature. The Son, as God, created all of us and keeps us in existence as we disobey and spread havoc. The ability, the power for anyone to do anything comes from God. This, in a way, makes God our accomplice. It is our will that chooses to act but God's power that keeps us in existence and functioning as we actually carry out our deeds. This power comes through the Son, who unflinchingly carries out the Father's will that we have genuine freedom.
Chapter 8
Glimpses of the Temple Site
At this point in Revelation, John has been asked to measure the Temple and see who worships there. Judea has just suffered a terrible tribulation through the four winds and two of the three woes. I have shown that the four winds compare very well with historical events between the crucifixion of Christ and late A.D. 66, when Vespasian conquered all Judea except Jerusalem. The Judeans trapped in Jerusalem suffered even more acutely during the first woe. Disaster came during the second woe when Titus brutally conquered the starving people. There is still another woe coming, the third woe, which will extinguish Judea as an independent nation when Bar Kochba leads the Judeans to total defeat and exile. In the following chapters, I will provide more information about Bar Kochba and the war of A.D. 131-5 than any other book interpreting Revelation.
All of this is so harsh on Judea that I want to move some distance away and view Jerusalem through the eyes of history. Then you and I both can place these sad events into a wider perspective, a perspective that offers more hope to Judea than the four winds and three woes did. Imagine that you are hovering above Jerusalem, high enough that you can see the whole city. Imagine your head pointed north, your feet south, and you are looking straight down on the city. Today is the morning after the birth of Jesus. The sun's first rays slowly creep from your right but have not yet swept across Jerusalem. The rays will, in a few moments, illuminate the Temple's front wall. Covered with gold leaf, this wall will shine almost as bright as the sun. Right now, nothing is illuminated. The Temple, the homes, the streets are all clothed in darkness, too dark to see any details. But in your imagination you can clearly see anything you want to look at.
Imagine yourself just above The Temple. It is almost sunrise the morning following Christ's birth. The Levite on morning watch just sighted the sun's first light illuminating the east behind the Mount of Olives. "It's becoming light!" he shouts down to the others, "The East is bright!"
Someone shouts, "Is the East bright as far as Hebron?"
He looks to his right. "Yes!" he shouts back, "The light has risen."
Then the priests and Levites, who were waiting for that moment, begin the morning sacrifice.
As the lamb is sacrificed, the Temple’s front begins to glow with the reflected light of the rising sun. The Temple is the city's tallest structure. Part of its outer surface is plated with gold. It shines brilliantly, a symbol of those marked by the covenant, that they should reflect God's glory because their ways should reflect God's ways.
This day, the day you are watching, the savior God promised to restore all things has finally arrived. The priest and Levites who are conducting the sacrifice this morning are, of course, unaware of his birth. If they were aware of it, they might have conducted the ceremony with more fervor and joy. If they realized the prophetic implications of the sacrifice they just made, they might wonder why God would allow such things to happen. And they would be apprehensive over the choices they must make as they and their fellow Judeans interact with the promised one now that he is here.
Well, the above are three excerpts. I would very much appreciate any comments you want to make.
Sincerely,
Maurice A. Williams
