Truth That Will Set You Free

A systematic analysis and exhortation of the prophecies found in the King James Bible, particularly the New Testament.

Haffenden, a Pentecostal churchgoer in his early 80s, dedicates his nonfiction debut to a passionately detailed deconstruction of the various prophetic texts in the Bible, his strongly voiced preference being for the King James Version. Haffenden considers these prophecies to be a kind of blueprint for spiritual survival when the present-day “church age” comes to its foretold end and ushers in the various stages of the end times adumbrated in the book of Revelation. “God in His great wisdom and providence has graciously given us guidelines as to how we can know and possess the truth about our conduct during the church age, the rapture, the great tribulation, and the remaining prophecies,” Haffenden says. Only the Holy Spirit knows the heavenly mind behind the biblical prophecies, and Haffenden claims to know this in the most direct means possible: “I have often received illuminations from God while studying His Holy Word,” he says; “the Holy Spirit would suddenly open my eyes, ears, and discernment to let me fully understand certain Scriptures.” While this raises problems for Christians who might read Haffenden’s book and disagree with his scriptural interpretations, it nevertheless lends his exegesis a headlong immediacy that infuses eye-opening clarity into his readings of such biblical texts as Isaiah and Ezekiel and Thessalonians. Along the way, Haffenden details the present-day signs among us that indicate the coming of the end, the tribulation, the rapture and the second coming. Jesus Christ, he says, is the basis for the “unfailing hope” available for Christians, and it’s by the faith and grace of God that his readers’ “spiritual eyes, ears, and discernment become alive and sensitized to God and His Word.” Jesus becomes more and more prominent in the course of the book as the great hope of the church, although Haffenden calmly asserts that this hope is only available to his fellow born-again Christians.

A thorough study of prophecy narrowly construed for a fairly thin audience of faithful.