Detailed and fervent, yet likely to ring hollow for many contemporary Christians.
An impassioned argument for observance of the Christian Sabbath on Saturday.
McCarver (Is Buffy in Heaven?, 2012) enjoins the ancient Sabbatarian argument with an unusual level of fervor. His overarching claim is that the Catholic Church changed the weekly Christian Sabbath from Saturday to Sunday against scriptural evidence, and that most Protestant churches have not corrected, or even noticed, this error. Readers may have a hard time grasping McCarver’s main point until well into the book, as he first focuses on the larger issues of obedience and perception. For example, he sees the Sabbath day issue as a prime example of widespread disobedience to God, and as a test of each Christian’s resolve to reject false teachings. As he gravely notes, “Purposeful and willful disobedience (which is rebellion) against the standard of God’s righteousness will keep you out of his kingdom!” McCarver begins by rejecting the idea that Sunday commemorates the day of Jesus’ resurrection, instead providing a detailed alternative reading of Scripture that asserts that the resurrection occurred on a Saturday. Further, he argues against the idea that Christians are free from Sabbath Law as defined for Judaism (such as dietary laws) by stating that Old Testament scriptures, Jesus’ teachings, and original church practice all retained it unchanged. He concludes that the church must “eradicate the venom of the lie.” Many readers, reflecting upon current practices, will ask why McCarver focuses so vehemently on the day of the week, yet says very little about believers’ lack of Sabbath observance at all on Saturday or Sunday. This would seem to be a natural point to make, in addition to stating his belief in Saturday observance. Although some readers may be aware that the question of the Sabbath’s proper day has arisen through church history, few will have thought much about it, and McCarver’s zeal—not to mention his lengthy mathematic and scientific explanations, especially in Chapters 6 and 7—may be overwhelming and even off-putting.
Detailed and fervent, yet likely to ring hollow for many contemporary Christians.Pub Date: July 25, 2012
ISBN: 978-1-4497-5636-9
Page Count: 214
Publisher: Westbow Press
Review Posted Online: March 5, 2018
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
If the authors are serious, this is a silly, distasteful book. If they are not, it’s a brilliant satire.
The authors have created a sort of anti-Book of Virtues in this encyclopedic compendium of the ways and means of power.
Everyone wants power and everyone is in a constant duplicitous game to gain more power at the expense of others, according to Greene, a screenwriter and former editor at Esquire (Elffers, a book packager, designed the volume, with its attractive marginalia). We live today as courtiers once did in royal courts: we must appear civil while attempting to crush all those around us. This power game can be played well or poorly, and in these 48 laws culled from the history and wisdom of the world’s greatest power players are the rules that must be followed to win. These laws boil down to being as ruthless, selfish, manipulative, and deceitful as possible. Each law, however, gets its own chapter: “Conceal Your Intentions,” “Always Say Less Than Necessary,” “Pose as a Friend, Work as a Spy,” and so on. Each chapter is conveniently broken down into sections on what happened to those who transgressed or observed the particular law, the key elements in this law, and ways to defensively reverse this law when it’s used against you. Quotations in the margins amplify the lesson being taught. While compelling in the way an auto accident might be, the book is simply nonsense. Rules often contradict each other. We are told, for instance, to “be conspicuous at all cost,” then told to “behave like others.” More seriously, Greene never really defines “power,” and he merely asserts, rather than offers evidence for, the Hobbesian world of all against all in which he insists we live. The world may be like this at times, but often it isn’t. To ask why this is so would be a far more useful project.
If the authors are serious, this is a silly, distasteful book. If they are not, it’s a brilliant satire.Pub Date: Sept. 1, 1998
ISBN: 0-670-88146-5
Page Count: 430
Publisher: Viking
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 1998
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK TO SCREEN
This a book of earlier, philosophical essays concerned with the essential "absurdity" of life and the concept that- to overcome the strong tendency to suicide in every thoughtful man-one must accept life on its own terms with its values of revolt, liberty and passion. A dreary thesis- derived from and distorting the beliefs of the founders of existentialism, Jaspers, Heldegger and Kierkegaard, etc., the point of view seems peculiarly outmoded. It is based on the experience of war and the resistance, liberally laced with Andre Gide's excessive intellectualism. The younger existentialists such as Sartre and Camus, with their gift for the terse novel or intense drama, seem to have omitted from their philosophy all the deep religiosity which permeates the work of the great existentialist thinkers. This contributes to a basic lack of vitality in themselves, in these essays, and ten years after the war Camus seems unaware that the life force has healed old wounds... Largely for avant garde aesthetes and his special coterie.
Pub Date: Sept. 26, 1955
ISBN: 0679733736
Page Count: 228
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: Sept. 19, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 1955
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