A winningly open, lucid, and eye-catching explanation of the apocalypse.
An architecturally themed work examines the Christian end times.
Taking the title of his book from Psalm 127 (“Except the Lord build the house, they labor in vain that build it”), Eberly lays out the step-by-step procedure necessary for his fellow Christians to construct their “doctrinal house” from the ground up. The author starts with the blueprint and proceeds to explicate the shape and sequence of what he refers to as “endtime prophecy.” Eberly creates his outline of that prophecy in chapter after chapter of extensive scriptural quotations. Every page of the volume rests on quotes from sources like the book of Zechariah, the Gospels, the book of Ezekiel, and, of course, the book of Daniel, the typical mother lode of end times extrapolation. The author’s decision to present all this material in an oversized, workbook-style format is an extremely sound one. The technical sequences of the end times, the tribulation, and the rapture are here broken down in ways that make them immediately accessible. Eberly indents all of his quotes, includes graphics to show the timeline of events as predicted in Scripture, and adds simple but colorful uncredited illustrations in order to keep the pages smoothly turning. The book’s exegesis is likewise invitingly straightforward. “Before we even attempt to interpret a particular Scripture, we must first establish what that passage is literally saying,” the author writes at one point, and he follows this simple approach throughout the volume. The main aim here seems to be to make the intimidating mass of Christian eschatology as clear and graspable as the step-by-step plans for building a house. Eberly’s Christian readers, many of whom will have only the haziest conception of this part of their faith, will appreciate the work’s clarity.
A winningly open, lucid, and eye-catching explanation of the apocalypse.Pub Date: May 8, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-72831-103-6
Page Count: 314
Publisher: AuthorHouse
Review Posted Online: March 18, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2020
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
© Copyright 2024 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
bookshelf
