Stuart Briscoe wants to bring life back into the Church. As a minister, of course, this is an appropriate desire. The author died on August 3, 2022, but although he is passed, the character he has chosen is appropriate regardless of his physical presence on Earth or not. Mr. Briscoe has picked Ezekiel to demonstrate how “weird and wonderful” YHVH is.
For most Christians, Ezekiel is a “wild ride” because it touches on mysteries that common Christianity has lost touch with or worse, treats as topics that are not to be discussed. Briscoe is an early author of this type of work, and so there are a few errors present. For one, he totally avoids the clear astrological associations being pointed to in Ezekiel by proxy of the creatures that Ezekiel first describes. (A zodiac wheel is, after all, a wheel.) Secondly, he is not certain why it is that YHVH strikes Ezekiel dumb. The details are included in the narrative:
“Moreover, I will make your tongue stick to the roof of your mouth so that you will be unable to speak and will not be a man who reprimands them, since they are a rebellious house.” –Ezekiel 3:26
Ezekiel’s imposed silence is to keep his anger from getting the better of him, and then speaking to Israel in a way that a reprover might. This is done presumably because YHVH all ready knows their hearts and this path simply is not going to be open to them. Briscoe might be playing at being a skeptic on this matter, since he is showing how YHVH sometimes proceeds by methods that appear contradictory.
Other than these minor points of contention, Briscoe does a laudable job in telling the story of Ezekiel in a contemporary way that makes the narrative accessible. The heaviest theological lifting he does is to show how the vision of Ezekiel’s temple is never actually constructed. He offers several theological views for why this might be so, but informs the reader he himself is not going to take the risk to explain the discrepancy.
The rest of his telling of the story of Ezekiel makes it clear that the life of the Prophet was not easy, and builds steady momentum and pressure on the point up until, as the astute reader of Ezekiel knows, his wife dies as part of the larger lesson to Israel. Another good point made as this is occurring is how Jeremiah is also doing something similar, and how YHVH is looking for someone to fill the gap. Briscoe points out apparently neither Jeremiah nor Ezekiel counts as these gap fillers, perhaps because they are not numbered as “people who have lived in Jerusalem”–at least not in the sense that the penitence YHVH is looking for is demanded or meaningful.
By the time Ezekiel is preaching to the dried bones that come back to life, it becomes clear that Briscoe is addressing the Christian churches in no small way. Many congregations are dead, and they talk about much but do little. This fact becomes something of an uncomfortable joke in the book for Briscoe. He is looking, it seems, for something a little like Ezekiel to happen where the houses that are “dead” come back to life and are made into an army. “Christian soldiers” would seem to be the call, although not necessarily in a military sense. Certainly, revival. Ezekiel, although a ministry first and foremost about “woes” becomes, after the woes have been rendered, a Prophet that is concerned with eventual revival. Some of what he sees, Briscoe lets us know, overlaps with John in the book of Revelation. It may be, we are reminded, that some of what Ezekiel saw was about the end times as opposed to anything that was to be prior.
The most impressive thing about this book is for the time in which it was written, it reveals much. The edition used for this review was written in 1979 although the first printing appears to be 1977. For any work like this to exist in the 70s as a Christian mainstream book is, indeed, wonderful and weird. One understands that Briscoe must have had some special calling in order to have been able to write it.
Victor Ostrovsky’s other book review, By Way of Deception, can be read here. This, might be a necessary step to understand this work, Black Ghosts, as it is a “fictional work” although given Ostrovsky’s background, it might not be all that fictional after all.
The premise of the book is that on the eve of a nuclear arms treaty between Russia and the United States there is unrest in a former KGB intelligence unit that has the designation of the Black Ghosts. It turns out that a former leader of the group is staging a prison break, and is not happy with what has happened to Russia politically as a result of his imprisonment and so intends on re-taking the unit and then utilizing it to reboot Tzarist Russia via a plan to kidnap the US president and to kill the Russian president and replace him in a coup.
Of course, there are those who are opposing this plan who are a ragtag bunch of former soldiers and intelligence operators. Edward is one of them and though he has been out of the game for some time, his friend Larry has been very much in it. When Larry shows up badly wounded on his doorstep with a mysterious woman, Edward finds himself unwillingly dragged back into the world of intelligence he has tried to leave. Before he knows it, he is off to Russia to try to stop Peter Rogov, the former head of the Black Ghosts, from carrying out his plans to disrupt both countries and to return the world back to the threat of the Cold War standoff which it is on the verge of overcoming.
The technological backstory in this book has some surprises in how the media will be used once Rogov is in place. Keeping in mind this was written before the modern era of de-platforming and its ilk, in many ways it displays a kind of prescience.
If one is looking for a stellar spy story to rival Ian Fleming in this book, one is going to be disappointed. It is more in league with a Tom Clancy read. If one has seen any movie from the 90’s one has the basic story plot. Russia bad. United States, good. New World Order, bad. Nukes, bad. Guy willing to use them to bring back terrible times, check. No, there is nothing especially new about any of this, but putting Russia at the head of the New World Order is somewhat different. The idea of sleeper cells of former KGB agents is also not different, but has a distinct “Black Water” signature as a unit which makes that part of the story also interesting.
Another piece present here concerns the actual industrial military complex that are referred to as “metal eaters”. They are a force that causes the plot to move and by the end of the book we are left with unanswered questions as to their involvement. This is likely meant to create the structure for a sequel, but to date, no sequel appears to have been written.
As previously mentioned, what makes the book more interesting is not the plot or the characters but the fact that Ostrovsky may well be here writing something that is more like a confessional than fiction. One should read it with a discerning eye, and not merely for the sake of entertainment alone.
Mr. Allen Taylor did something bold. He decided to publish an anthology. If that in and of itself was not enough, he decided to publish stories about Biblical themes without the usual characters. The settings all feature moments of punishment: The Garden of Eden, Sodom and Gomorrah, and finally the Biblical Flood. These are the settings of expulsion, fire concomitant with brimstone, and water–respectively. Taylor chose to do this because “the stories (concerning the themes) lend themselves to a high degree of speculation.”
Mr. Taylor’s work features within the anthology, and somewhat forebodingly the introductions proclaim that he is simply a publisher and that he received many unexpected submissions but that his job was first and foremost to publish and not to act as a censor. Additional disclaimers are that any heavenly personages that are offended may take up their dispute with the proper authorities. It is a fine line to walk in this increasingly polarized age as no one seems to understand the concept of the ‘Freedom of the Press’. Voltaire wrote in Friends of Voltaire the following: “I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it.” It is hard to think of a stronger stance than this concerning the freedom of the press, and one that it appears Mr. Taylor would support.
The Biblical Legends Anthology Series might best be likened to a kind of Rorschach test about the Heavenly Father in the role of YHVH. If so, the submissions sent show, on balance, something about which to be troubled. True, most of these scenes lend themselves to the judgment of an angry God, but that is not the totality of what could be written about here. More than a few pieces seem to enjoy trying to push evil to the edge. Of course, what makes these more lurid descriptions “okay” is that the evil people are going to be killed in a rain of sulfur or be drowned in a pool of unforgiving water. There is more than a smattering of actually creative Science Fiction takes as well. One particularly original piece considered the Garden of Eden and God as a computer process. Another one concerned pieces of dust being named and a kind of sisterhood that had vague overtones of being a possible coven of women who are mad about being created. Still, later pieces feature Solomon trying to rescue something he knows should not be rescued, and still another ribald take narrates a breakdown of the whole affair in contemporary kinds of hipster-speak.
Stranger entries concern disembodied spirits (Maybe they are familiar spirits?) undergoing reincarnation loops and there is no shortage of Sodomites doing well, what Sodomites do. (Hint: It begins and ends in fire) There are pieces here that could easily become books on their own, and there are more than a few folks who are probably as of yet undiscovered talents capable of achieving something in the art and process that wears the title of “author”.
What was missing was the kind of love and respect the Heavenly Father typically represents. There are moments of this present, but more than a few have a defiant tone in the end because many pieces, it seems, are written from the perspective of evil. (Is it just being in character? One wonders.) Toward the end, there is even a tale about a kind of sympathetic ‘this is the VH1 Lucifer behind the scenes’ take where the reader is supposed to understand that Lucifer hates humanity only because they were ‘kinda mean to him’.
The poetry entries are fewer, but that is not surprising since what Mr. Taylor put together was not inherently a poetry anthology. No, instead he took the risk to open the field wide, and what he got might be a better look at where people who submit pieces to anthologies lie on the spectrum of “Deep Daddy issues.” If so, it is little wonder everything has been so dysfunctional in the past ten or so years.
What the Torah and New Testament make clear as the YHVH hates to destroy humanity. He tries every other avenue and has great patience before these consequences are enacted. No piece hinted at this deep sorrow. More than a few treated it like a flippant comedy. Sure, as a writer, one can assume poetic license. However, it is abundantly clear that YHVH is heartbroken by performing these acts even going so far as to repent Himself for having created man before destroying the world using The Flood.
Nobody can control what is submitted to an anthology, but are we, as humanity, really this disconnected from understanding not only the terror of these scenarios but the deep sadness of The One who created us due to these events? Sure, we can make entertaining stories based on that, but should we not also balance this other aspect? It does appear within this anthology, but not as much as one might expect–or perhaps as much as one might hope to expect.
Author’s Note: While writing this there was a Church in New London, Connecticut that was constructed in 1850 that simply fell. If we are a little sad about losing that kind of history, how much more so must the Creator be over losing large portions of His creation? Link
Thanks to Mr. Taylor for providing reviewer copies of his work! Subscribe to him here.[Send Lightning!]
