The Island of the Seven Kings is an epic romantic adventure. It takes you to a fictional island where young Rebecca and her friends serve their kingdom as dragon riders and learn about relationships between themselves and the world around them in peace and war. Idos, the creator god and the seven gods he created to rule over his domain watch over them and lead them toward his purpose for them. It is the old story of the struggle between good and evil and how the "Sky Raiders" came into being.
In the year 937, the new king of England, a grandson of Alfred the Great, readies himself to go to war in the north. His dream of a united kingdom of all England will stand or fall on one field—on the passage of a single day. At his side is the priest Dunstan of Glastonbury, full of ambition and wit (perhaps enough to damn his soul). His talents will take him from the villages of Wessex to the royal court, to the hills of Rome—from exile to exaltation. Through Dunstan’s vision, by his guiding hand, England will either come together as one great country or fall back into anarchy and misrule . . . From one of our finest historical writers, The Abbott’s Tale is an intimate portrait of a priest and performer, a visionary, a traitor and confessor to kings—the man who can change the fate of England.
The book of Revelation is perhaps the most theologically complex and literarily sophisticated — and also the most sensual — document in the New Testament. In this commentary John Christopher Thomas’s literary and exegetical analysis makes the challenging text of Revelation more accessible and easier to understand. Frank Macchia follows up with sustained theological essays on the book’s most significant themes and issues, accenting especially the underappreciated place of the Holy Spirit in the theology of Revelation.
Sometimes the best way to let one know what something is, is to let one know what it isn't. Today's typical academic book in eschatology provides the reader with a brief history of the various positions in the field followed by why certain positions should be considered the better options. This is not that book. Over the course of twelve chapters, six sequences will be presented from the three major sources in the New Testament regarding the subject, i.e., Paul's letters to the Thessalonians, the Olivet Discourse, and John's visions in Revelation. Through a careful reconciliation of those six sequences, Dr. Steven R. Bates will show that there's only one sequence of end-times, which he has labeled "The Post-Armageddon, Premillennial Resurrection." He asserts that had any other sequence of end-times been correct, whether pre-tribulationism, pre-wrath, mid-tribulationism, historic pre-millennialism, post-millennialism, a-millennialism, preterism, or any other sequence that one could possibly imagine, then the proponents of that postulation should be able to take the same six sequences from Scripture and reconcile them precisely with one another, sentence by sentence, and prove whatever sequence they propose. But, of course, no one will ever attempt such an endeavor because it's theoretically impossible. Scripture's six sequences only confirm one sequence, and it is the one which has been presented in The Sequence.
The Word Biblical Commentary delivers the best in biblical scholarship, from the leading scholars of our day who share a commitment to Scripture as divine revelation. This series emphasizes a thorough analysis of textual, linguistic, structural, and theological evidence. The result is judicious and balanced insight into the meanings of the text in the framework of biblical theology. These widely acclaimed commentaries serve as exceptional resources for the professional theologian and instructor, the seminary or university student, the working minister, and everyone concerned with building theological understanding from a solid base of biblical scholarship. Overview of Commentary Organization Introduction—covers issues pertaining to the whole book, including context, date, authorship, composition, interpretive issues, purpose, and theology. Each section of the commentary includes: Pericope Bibliography—a helpful resource containing the most important works that pertain to each particular pericope. Translation—the author’s own translation of the biblical text, reflecting the end result of exegesis and attending to Hebrew and Greek idiomatic usage of words, phrases, and tenses, yet in reasonably good English. Notes—the author’s notes to the translation that address any textual variants, grammatical forms, syntactical constructions, basic meanings of words, and problems of translation. Form/Structure/Setting—a discussion of redaction, genre, sources, and tradition as they concern the origin of the pericope, its canonical form, and its relation to the biblical and extra-biblical contexts in order to illuminate the structure and character of the pericope. Rhetorical or compositional features important to understanding the passage are also introduced here. Comment—verse-by-verse interpretation of the text and dialogue with other interpreters, engaging with current opinion and scholarly research. Explanation—brings together all the results of the discussion in previous sections to expose the meaning and intention of the text at several levels: (1) within the context of the book itself; (2) its meaning in the OT or NT; (3) its place in the entire canon; (4) theological relevance to broader OT or NT issues. General Bibliography—occurring at the end of each volume, this extensive bibliography contains all sources used anywhere in the commentary.
If you were God, writing a book you wanted men to understand, would you write it in such a way that men would have to make up meaning in order to understand it, or would you write it in such a way that those that seek to understand could actually come to a knowledge of its truth (Mt 7:7)? The present commentary takes the position that God wrote Revelation such that with sufficient effort and intellectual honesty, readers can understand it. Certainly God uses symbols in Revelation, but when He does, He provides inspired interpretations of the symbols. This commentary seeks to avoid the mistakes of the views that use the symbolical approach to Revelation (preterist, continuous historical, spiritualist, and idealist). These approaches suffer from two basic flaws: assuming the text is symbolical when it is not and making up meaning regarding the text based on stream of consciousness word association, much as one would do looking at Rorschach inkblots. This commentary seeks to avoid telling God what He should have said and strives to understand what God actually meant. Of all the existing approaches to understanding Revelation, this commentary is most closely aligned with the dispensationalist (premillennialist/Left Behind) view in that it views Revelation from a literalist perspective. It is different from the typical dispensationalist schema in that it views the seven seals as the powers of the Lamb, understands the exercise of the powers of the seven seals to be simultaneous processes, and casts chapters 8-22 as three parallel prophecies of the Lamb's power over the course of the histories of Israel, the nations, and the saints. This commentary also makes use of many of the non-canonical works that provide insight into the spirit world and detail regarding the end of the present age.
