by Steven R. Harrel ‧ RELEASE DATE: April 15, 2016
A new and urgent reading of Christian Tribulation Scripture.
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A debut book provides a comprehensive analysis of the Christian doctrine of the end times.
Harrel’s wide-ranging and ambitious work takes on a familiar topic in Christian theology: the schema by which God will bring about the end of the world, the end of time, and the kingdom of heaven. The rough outline of this schema has been laid out in countless works of theology, beginning with the emergence of Israel as a nation, moving to the Tribulation, then the rapture, then the opening of great seals and the Battle of Armageddon, then the dawning of the millennium and the thousand-year reign of Christ on Earth, eventually ushering the faithful into heaven. Arguments and various calculations about the precise nature and timing of these events, grounded in differing readings of the Old and New Testaments and the book of Revelation, have filled countless volumes. Harrel buttresses his own with two assertions: first, that all Christians have failed to determine the timing of Christ’s return (whether through erroneous scriptural analysis or because God has made the truth unknowable), and second, that God has made everything clear to the author through direct personal revelation. To non-Christians this may seem like the ultimate example of game-rigging, but the main strength of Harrel’s highly readable, searching book is its tremendously engaging textual analysis, not its opening claim of personal prophecy. He leads his readers through a painstakingly thorough, historical, and line-by-line analysis of Revelation-relevant Old Testament books, such as Daniel, Ezekiel, and Zechariah, and he steadily builds some real-world warnings into his narrative. He cautions that mistaken readings of Revelation can have serious consequences if the faithful are led astray by their own pastors. And since Harrel examines the highest of stakes, his book’s closing chapters, dealing with the end of the world, are appropriately forbidding. But the research and cleareyed exegesis in these pages should fascinate all students of end times lore.
A new and urgent reading of Christian Tribulation Scripture.Pub Date: April 15, 2016
ISBN: 978-1-5127-3406-5
Page Count: 416
Publisher: Westbow Press
Review Posted Online: Aug. 25, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2016
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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by Albert Camus ‧ RELEASE DATE: Sept. 26, 1955
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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by Stephen Batchelor ‧ RELEASE DATE: Feb. 18, 2020
A very welcome instance of philosophy that can help readers live a good life.
A teacher and scholar of Buddhism offers a formally varied account of the available rewards of solitude.
“As Mother Ayahuasca takes me in her arms, I realize that last night I vomited up my attachment to Buddhism. In passing out, I died. In coming to, I was, so to speak, reborn. I no longer have to fight these battles, I repeat to myself. I am no longer a combatant in the dharma wars. It feels as if the course of my life has shifted onto another vector, like a train shunted off its familiar track onto a new trajectory.” Readers of Batchelor’s previous books (Secular Buddhism: Imagining the Dharma in an Uncertain World, 2017, etc.) will recognize in this passage the culmination of his decadeslong shift away from the religious commitments of Buddhism toward an ecumenical and homegrown philosophy of life. Writing in a variety of modes—memoir, history, collage, essay, biography, and meditation instruction—the author doesn’t argue for his approach to solitude as much as offer it for contemplation. Essentially, Batchelor implies that if you read what Buddha said here and what Montaigne said there, and if you consider something the author has noticed, and if you reflect on your own experience, you have the possibility to improve the quality of your life. For introspective readers, it’s easy to hear in this approach a direct response to Pascal’s claim that “all of humanity's problems stem from man's inability to sit quietly in a room alone.” Batchelor wants to relieve us of this inability by offering his example of how to do just that. “Solitude is an art. Mental training is needed to refine and stabilize it,” he writes. “When you practice solitude, you dedicate yourself to the care of the soul.” Whatever a soul is, the author goes a long way toward soothing it.
A very welcome instance of philosophy that can help readers live a good life.Pub Date: Feb. 18, 2020
ISBN: 978-0-300-25093-0
Page Count: 200
Publisher: Yale Univ.
Review Posted Online: Nov. 24, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2019
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