EXCEPT THE LORD BUILD THE HOUSE
A Biblical Examination of the Return of Jesus Christ and the Rapture of His Church
by Norman Eberly
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.