Saturday, September 27, 2014

A Review and a Small Rant

Yesterday I received a package containing a book and a note, requesting that I please read and review it on Amazon. I have to give the author props for bravado and risk-taking. In this brave-new-world-of-publishing era, inventive alternate avenues to market books not backed and promoted by established publishing houses must be cleverly devised and tried by the not so faint of heart. Given my fifteen year dug in maverick position on breaking the barriers of staid good-ole-boy publishing tradition, I cannot help but be impressed by this author’s audacity.

That said, I have no idea why I was chosen by this author, perhaps because I am an honest reviewer on Amazon and I am committed to saying what I think–the good/bad/indifferent? I am quite sympathetic of the desire for a serious review as opposed to the ‘friends and family’ attaboy that is so common in the accolades following self-published works. 

So, intrigued, with nothing pressing on my schedule, today I settled into my favorite chair and read it with a few minor interruptions.  

Attributable to it being only 155 pages, and my well-practiced ability to skim past irrelevant banter between characters, which is a common style flaw in first fiction, I was able to read it in just over three hours. A record even for me.

And then the dilemma set in. How shall I, no, should I? If this were merely a simple fiction story based on a theme constructed entirely from imagination, I could easily address the technical/mechanical issues so that the author might grow from the review, perhaps make some needed repairs. I would encourage him to pay for a professional editor and formatter. But this fictional representation of Biblical prophecy follows and repeats all the same tired mistakes of so many other attempts to predict the End Days Antichrist that I cannot in good conscience advise the author on the physical construction when the premise, however earnest, however painstakingly extracted from hundreds of End Days Doctrine sites on the Internet, is actually false and potentially dangerous. 


Thus, I am doing the review here because it promises to be more lengthy than a normal review ought to be. While I do honest reviews, I am not an arrogant know-it-all whose only joy in life is to smack down aspiring writers and thus this is the better reason I am not reviewing this in Amazon.

The book, Twisted Linen, by C.W. Cook, covers events over the course of a couple of weeks in September, 2017. The US has been all but destroyed and a quick but decisive war has concluded with Israel triumphant and putting finishing touches on the Third Temple. A dark and evil cult, the Hermetic Order of The Golden Dawn, is working overtime to bring certain Biblical prophetic mis-interpretations into being, i.e., the artificially manmade creation of the Unholy One Charismatics have come to refer to as The Antichrist. 

There’s plenty of action, twists and turns in the development of the characters. There is a sufficient amount of tension to keep the reader wondering how it will turn out. That’s the good news. 

Here’s the part that will not set well with those who think the Beast of Revelation 13 is a person, created by supernatural ‘scientific’ means: 

The Great Delusion is the misinterpretation of Scripture, having been cherry-picked from OT and NT over several centuries to fit the specific and temporal needs of clerics and theologians, all the way to modern times to include authors of best selling books like the Left Behind series. While Twisted Linen does not promote or even mention The Rapture, as fostered by Left Behind, it still clings to and depends on the now tightly woven fabrication of the Great Seven Year Tribulation and the Man of Perdition who stands in the Temple and desecrates it. 

All this flies in the face of Scriptures as they really are and not as they have been abused and misused over the eons. The theology of the Great Seven Year Tribulation comes, not from Revelation, but from the presumption that there is a 2000 year gap between Daniel’s 69th and 70th week prophecy. Christ warned His followers would suffer tribulation. Period.

How much more simple it is to shake off all the layers of man’s self-serving exegisis to grasp that Christ was the fulfillment of Daniel’s prediction that Israel had 490 years to ‘get it’ from the call to rebuild the second temple. That the second temple was destroyed on the 10th of August, in A.D. 70 -- the 9th of Av -- in Jewish reckoning, the very day when the King of Babylon burned the Temple in 586 B.C., the Temple was burned again. Titus took the city and put it to the torch. The fire raged so hot, the gold and silver  melted and ran down into the crevices of the floor stones. When it cooled down, soldiers tore up the stones to get to the precious metals, fulfilling Christ’s words that “no stone would be left unturned.” He also said that He would destroy the temple and raise it up again in three days. This was Christ Himself, in His own words, establishing the last Temple as being Spiritual, not physical. To ignore that or set it aside is to dismiss Christ Himself. A dangerous choice?

I could write an entire lengthy treatise on the fallacy of the concept of the 2000 year gap, but more importantly the absurd conclusion that Christ’s sacrifice and resurrection was merely a blip in the continuum, that rather than the spiritual turning point in God’s plan for humankind, Christ uttering, “It is finished” only meant that He was done with His human body, not that He, Himself, being the final, perfect sacrifice, was the one who made the covenant with many, (Mark 14:23) And he took a cup, and when he had given thanks, he gave to them: and they all drank of it.  (14:24) And he said unto them, This is my blood of the covenant, which is poured out for many.) not some future super power standing in a temple made by man. By the way, the word temple is used eleven times in Revelation, and in every case it is a spiritual reference, not a physical building.

How long shall we be allowed to blaspheme God by setting aside, making light of what Christ did, does, and is, just to make room for and accommodate manmade doctrine? How long shall we depend on skewed, misleading dogma to trust and count on? 

Not to put too fine a point on it:

The Third Temple is spiritual  - not made with hands

Christ’s death and resurrection was the ultimate and final sacrifice–to begin animal sacrifice again would be the ultimate blasphemy. Why would God allow that?

The Beast of Revelation 13 is a global man-made system, run by many who are anti Christ, and is already fully functioning in this era

Jesus Christ is our All in All, our First Fruit, Sabbath Rest, Latter Day Rain and the truth of this is as easy to find as reading Scripture without being bound up to preconceived notions.

That whosoever will believe will be saved, whether Jew or Gentile, slave or free, male of female. This is what I refer to as Inclusion Theology. 

I realize no one wants to hear these things, as simple as they are. But if we are allowed to believe an error how can we ever know the truth? If we are open to trust false doctrine, are we set up to be blindsided? More importantly are we open to being allowed to be blinded like the Pharisees were?

I’m going to wrap this up with a profound teaching by T-Austin Sparks, an anointed man of God who said it better than I ever could. Take from it what you will.

I tell you the truth, you will all see heaven open and the angels of God going up and down on the Son of Man, the one who is the stairway between heaven and earth. (John 1:51 NLT)

No thought that God has ever expressed dies. There is no lapse of any thought that God has expressed. God expressed His thoughts in the very conception and constitution of the Israel of old. They were in all that was said about Israel and in all that was revealed as to God's purpose in Israel. God expressed His thoughts concerning Israel in a multitude of ways. That Israel failed to answer to the thoughts of God. His thoughts concerning Israel were never fully realized because of their rebellion. So that Israel was passed by, but God's thoughts were not put aside. All those same thoughts are taken up in a new Israel.

Jesus Himself becomes the inclusive new Israel. You remember that when He referred to Jacob, whose name was changed to Israel, He said to Nathanael: "Ye shall see the heaven opened, and the angels of God ascending and descending upon the Son of man" (John 1:51). So Jesus is the new Israel in person. All the communications of God and Heaven to man are by way of Jesus, the new Israel. All God's thoughts in the past ages are taken up in the Lord Jesus in the first place. All that was ever intended by God concerning Israel and was lost by them, is carried on in the Lord Jesus, and then transferred by Him to His companions and the companions of the heavenly calling – the new Israel, which is spiritual. This opens up a very big realm for you.

For Him,

Meema


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