Original and worthy addition to the growing library on eschatology.
Refreshingly well-read and open-minded exploration of the Book of Revelation.
Debut author Collene, a pastor, presents the results of his own personal struggle with the New Testament’s most mysterious book. He acknowledges that modern authors have provided many works on eschatology but defends his own work as a fresh approach, which it indeed is. Unlike other works in this genre, Collene avoids copying and restating dispensationalist theories about the End Times and instead gives weight to the sacred text itself, reading it as God’s revelation to creation. Noting that, “The Revelation is a book of sevens,” due to the prominence of that number in the book, he concludes through his own study that “seven keys,” as he terms them, can be found to help the reader understand the book’s message. These seven keys—basic facts about Revelation—are remarkable for their simplicity and serve to refocus the reader of Revelation from wild theories that pervade much of eschatological study back to the message of the prophecy. The keys include such assertions as, “Jesus is the focus of The Revelation,” “God’s people are His audience,” “heaven, the spiritual dimension, is the perspective of The Revelation,” etc. Collene spends the great bulk of his work fleshing out these seven keys and finding ways they can help the reader of Revelation understand the prophetic message within its pages. Collene’s motive seems to be to refocus Christian views of Revelation. “Traditionally,” he notes, “the study of eschatology has suffered from two opposite attitudes: neglect and overemphasis.” As an alternative, he proposes that the church continue to focus on its main mission of spreading the Gospel. He concludes that the Revelation should be a source of hope and even an end-goal for the church as it goes about its work in the world.
Original and worthy addition to the growing library on eschatology.Pub Date: Oct. 7, 2016
ISBN: 978-1-5127-5703-3
Page Count: 326
Publisher: Westbow Press
Review Posted Online: Feb. 1, 2017
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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