The American Frank

After a week, I finally finished and the American Chronicle has just published my book-ideas review of Terry James’ new book Rapture Dialogues (Dark Dimension), published by Musterion Press (March 2006, Sisters,  Oregon). Here are a few interesting things I left unsaid in that review (I’m reading my notes).

Here’s a paradox:

We are deceived by the Good – we don’t understand it and we don’t accept it. We are also deceived by the Evil – we don’t understand it either and we accept it as the Good.

The book makes much of the fallen angels of God.

Watch out for the Fallen Angels. They will show the Eternal Flame but it is really the Eternal Fire.

Thinking beyond the obvious, the book tells me the Great  Battle is for the mind of man – no matter that the protagonists are only Americans and Jews. I take it that the Americans and Jews in the novel are only metaphors for the whole of mankind.

Watch out for fallen angels! When the Bene Elohim (fallen angel) inhabits you, you become somebody else despite your body. In the real world, isn’t that what you can be?

The Grand Deception is that the battle is between you and an enemy that is different from you. Do not forget that the spirit is willing but the flesh is weak. That’s you! That’s me!

I would expect the fallen angels not to work on this world using only Chosen Ones but using all kinds of people, ordinary and extraordinary, including the disabled, lesbians, divorcees, widows, widowers, children, Whites, Blacks, Browns, rich, poor, Christians.

Terry James’ book tells you that if you are inhabited, you can’t remove the deception by yourself. The deceiver will have to remove the deception itself.

The Protestants call themselves Christians and nobody else. To them, the Catholics are not Christians. When they say ‘Christian,’ they mean ‘Born Again.’ One who has accepted Jesus Christ as ‘personal Lord and Savior.’ They make it all very personal.

Can I say the book is a triumph of the human spirit? It is.

But I don’t like the implication that man should simply wait for God to defeat the Avenging Angel. The idea that we should simply wait for God to tell us what to do. If we simply wait, that is what I call The Great Taking Away. The taking away of responsibility to be Christians not in name only but also in deed, not in theory only but also in practice. The taking away of the Christian duty to follow The Ten Commandments and not reject even the reciting of them in the classroom when it’s a legitimate subject matter. It is The Great Taking Away of Wisdom.

The book at the end hints at more secrets to be revealed from the  Qumran cave. Why not from the Bible?

And why not from the ancient philosophers, from tradition, from the saints?

If you are a Protestant, the book raises your confidence in Sola Scriptura (solely the Scriptures, or the Bible only) as the acceptable basis for the truth from God. The book is not for Catholics like me who deny Sola Scriptura and lace their practice of the faith with ancient wisdom and what the  Vatican Councils and Magisterium teach.

So why did I do the book review? I wanted to find out if I could be a good book reviewer. I wanted to see if I could appreciate the whole and not simply the parts. I wanted to learn if I I could see beyond the obvious. I wanted to try and be agreeable when agreeing, yet not be disagreeable when disagreeing. I wanted to know.

And I did.

18 May 2006