ISBN: 080245951X
Note: The version reviewed is probably the 1987 version. It has a blue and white cover with some pictures on it. The book has been updated several times, probably to keep it “new”.
Ralph Gower has put together a masterpiece. If you want to deepen your understanding of the Bible, there are few works with as many hidden gems as Gower’s has.
There are so many positives to this book that it makes sense to begin with the negatives. The worst thing that can be said about this book is that some of the pictures do not show the kind of detail that the text describes. The reader is left wanting the ability to change the angle of the view of the lens of the camera to get a better idea of subjects like the architectural layout of a certain kind of Biblical-era home. Toward the end of the book, it feels a little like Gower is rushing us through the end of the suggested three weeks of time it takes to thoroughly explore the sites he discusses. Probably, these sites are options he would work into a given tour of Israel depending on how fast or slow the tour in question was.
As for the positives, there are almost too many to list. A better way to discuss some hard-won expertise is to pose some questions that are answered by the book:
- How was salt used in the Holy Temple?
- What word did the Messiah use to calm the stormy waters?
- Why was the above word used?
- What does it mean if you eat a meal together?
- Who was given the honored guest title in the Last Supper setting?
- What was given him (the guest) that conveyed this?
- What were the roles of women in Biblical Society?
- What are notable exceptions to those roles?
- Why was the Samaritan woman at the well at noon?
- What distinguishes a Seer from a “navi”?
- Where did the Sanhedrin re-locate after the Temple was destroyed?
- What was there?
- Why might that be significant?
These are but a handful of issues this book addresses. There are many textual breaks that have full-color pictures that show or reinforce what the text was saying, along with yellow-attention boxes at the end with what are often referred to as “call-out” types of information. Many great nuggets of wisdom can be found in these yellow boxes. Be certain not to skip them or gloss over them if you choose to read this book.
Another interesting perspective Gower offers is why the Pharisees were such a problem during the time of the Messiah. There are certain kinds of realizations present in the discourse that transcend the political and go directly to the spiritual. Often the point is emphasized that the Pharisees were concerned with the law, but why they were so preoccupied is seldom mentioned. Gower makes the differences transparent.
The best thing for the casual reader is probably that the chapters are arranged in a manner of reading that is more bite-sized so that if you happen to be busy during the day with other tasks, you can easily return to where you were last reading without any loss of context. This is reminiscent of a textbook meant to emphasize retention and the form works well in this instance.
It would be interesting to compare more recent copies to this edition to see if any subsequent edits have compromised the book. Revisionism in the publishing industry is a sad fact, and it would be a shame for this book to have been subjected to such myopic procedures. Perhaps if the opportunity presents itself, a follow-up review will be added to this one.
There are many books on the Bible out there. It is simple to do far worse than this one. Looking around on Ebay, it appears to run in the six-dollar range. For the information it has, it six dollars would be well-spent.
ASIN: B078WF52H3
Thomas Horn, is sadly no longer alive. Fortunately, he has left some of his work behind as a kind of legacy. In The Saboteurs he outlines many pieces of what he believes are connected shadow government entities that are gradually attempting to control America and also the world.
The usual suspects are present. There is the Vatican, Bohemian Grove, Masons, and nearly any other “secret organization” that comes to mind. Where most authors go wrong in this kind of analysis is that they begin to examine a given arm of any of these organizations and then interpret the symbolism of that specific piece. Horn, on the other hand, finds the unifying narrative with Biblical underpinnings that all of them are engaged in doing it would seem, and then explains their behaviors and symbols in terms of that identification. This keeps the work from being a type of fragmented, disjointed narrative that traces nefarious kinds of influence.
This work was written in 2017, and so it naturally looks forward to the Donald Trump versus the globalists narrative that took place. Horn rightly notes the media at first thought Trump was a joke, and then became serious later as the American media is controlled by globalist influences. As Trump came from “outside” the normal political clubs, he was not warmly welcomed by either his own party or the opposing party. The media also disliked this, and so pounced upon him and his administration.
The Saboteurs posits that all these career politicians are under one kind of influence that come from the spiritual conspiracy it outlines. It uses many quotes from the people themselves to prove these facts. One such quote is from Obama wherein he states, “Whatever it is that we were, we are no longer a Christian nation”. There are also references to Franklin Delano Roosevelt and correspondence between he and his vice-president, Wallace, that have stilted, occult, coded verbiage implying something about the nature of their beliefs and what they were doing while they were in office.
Much of what Horn outlines here actually happened in one way or another in the intervening time since 2017. There is, however, one problem with Horn’s scholarship, outstanding as it is, in terms of easily explaining complicated tendrils of nastiness. He tends to give these organizations perhaps too much credit for their plans. An example might be the US Founding Fathers. He correctly notes that Benjamin Franklin had many morally questionable activities. He infers that part of what was motivating Franklin where these kinds of organizations and so Franklin was interested in founding the US in the interests of these entities. On the other hand, Franklin was a politician and an ambassador to France. How many people could hold those positions without being in the kinds of “clubs” Horn outlines?
Indeed, though he is not directly mentioned in this book, it is well known that Mark Twain wrote about Israel as a kind of prophetic fulfillment despite Mark Twain knowing anything about what he was doing. The founder of Bohemian Grove himself, it seems, was used by God to write about the purposes and plans of God. It brings to mind the quote from Corinthians where it is noted that “…the foolishness of God is wiser than human wisdom.” So, really, it does not matter so much what the plans of all these groups are. One should of course, not be blind to them and what they hope to do. What takes precedence is what God is doing or has done. Therefore, whatever the beliefs of the US Founding Fathers, the question is not so much what they believed so much as it is what God was doing when He used them to found the country. The most nefarious secret plans of the past were confounded by the same God that will confound them again.
Another “Christian problem” this book outlines is the tendency also to see the Anti-Christ everywhere. Again, this is not to say a believer should be blind, but while the book considers whether or not certain organizations or spiritual beliefs might produce such a thing, one wonders if such introspection is being utilized on the sponsors and advertisers that make people like Horn able to be authors in what is a kind of niche, apocalyptic field.
Toward the end of the book, Horn allows some other authors to voice some of their perspectives, rather akin to the panel on Skynews which is a show that Horn helped to found. One of these authors speaks about a concept called Christian Dominionism, which believes that Christians should politically take over the world and impose their morality on everyone else. It is a curious fact that a company called Dominion was heavily involved in the US election as it dealt in software that was supposed to ensure secure voting. Whatever the case with the voting claims, something asserted dominion, whether it was Christian or not (subsequent actions suggest not). The debate is a distraction since one should simply do whatever it is that God is directing them to do. All Power rests with Him, ultimately. For some, that might mean being a politician. For others, it might not be. A Christian, however, ought to be able to recognize that the world surely is not going to be a better place by sitting around and praying and never taking action on the nature of what that prayer life reveals. Taking over the world and imposing Christian morality is not really necessary since the morality there underlies all moral decisions when understood rightly. The Bible is all ready the definition of morality, and righteousness. There is no world to take over, since the only thing required is for the world to recognize what is right, and therefore righteous.
Other voices at the end of the book do a better job with this in suggesting that faith should produce action. The problem with all of the voices toward the end, though, is they “weaken” the narrative of the book that Horn has developed. It’s rather like listening to several sermons after a guest lecturer. The sermons are, of course, great on their own, but they do not fit well with what Horn has put together. Some of the voices actually detract in that they introduce other elements that are not necessarily relevant. Such are the troubles with panels of speakers. If the focus is not clearly outlined, the product is often commentary that touches on but is not directed at the topic. A book could easily be written about any of the introduced speaker subjects alone, but then, that is not why one is reading Horn’s book. The purchase was not “Reasons the economy is going to be hard to fix for Trump,” but we get that anyway. Curiously absent from the reason that the economy might be hard to fix is the suspicion, normally ubiquitous throughout the work, that the economy itself MIGHT BE RUN BY THE ANTICHRIST. Of course, everybody, one supposes, has to draw their conspiracy shadow paranoia lines somewhere. Where those lines are drawn, though, tells you much about the person supposing them.
If Horn were still alive, it would be great to have a follow-up work to this one. Perhaps one exists that I will find since his death was relatively recent in 2023. What did he think, one wonders, about how things played out during Trump’s presidency and what did it mean to these shadowy orders? What about the medical system? What about technology? What about blue chip stocks, and 401ks? There are many questions this reader wishes Horn’s commentary extended to. For what it did extend to, however, Horn did an excellent job.
ISBN: 9781558250956
This book is published in what might be the most ideal way. The printing press is subsidized by the donations of congregations of the Church from which the book issues. Herbert Armstrong, the author, established a Church, although it appears that that Church has now, as of 2009, rejected those initial teachings and have substituted some other. This is probably “not good” as what Armstrong has to say is more correct than incorrect.
The basis of the book is that there are prophecies concerning Israel that do not appear to have been fulfilled. It is the contention of Armstrong that these promises have indeed been fulfilled, only the identity of the tribes fulfilling these scriptures has been lost. The key to this mystery, suggests Armstrong, is understanding who Israel is.
Armstrong takes careful pains to separate the term “Jew” from the label of “Israel”. The Jews, he argues, are people from the tribe of Judah. The Israelis, he argues, are not the same as the Jews. While this is a great argument in terms of semantics, it is not an especially good one in practice. One need only remember World War II history to recall that anyone that looked a certain way was labeled Jewish. If a person happened to be from the tribe of Benjamin, for instance, that was not a nuance the Nazi regime cared to make. Anything that did not fit the definition of Aryan was placed in a discard pile. Anything that looked Jewish, whatever tribe that might be, was placed first on that heap.
Next, Armstrong reveals who he thinks the identity of Britain and the United States is in terms of prophetic fulfillment. While the idea he presents here is not now perhaps a new one, it was definitely a newer concept when the book was first published back in 1980. The key to unraveling the identity of these places concerns, in part, what the definition of a Jew is or isn’t, along with the identity crisis that the US and Britain are having due to their own self-inflicted amnesia.
Armstrong deduces much about Britain and its role to Israel that are not necessarily born out by history. One need only recall, for instance, that Britain decided to deny the Holocaust survivors a place in the land of Israel after declaring that they supported such an endeavor to appreciate that Britain, whatever role it is playing, is not entirely the one Armstrong believes is occurring.
On the other hand, Armstrong deduces, well before it is more commonly accepted, that Saturday may well be the Sabbath day. He also correctly notices many aspect of the United States and its role in Israel and development and subsequent prosperity. He runs dangerously close, however, in more than a few moments, to instituting a kind of replacement theology that moves the throne of Jerusalem to other places and Kingdoms that are not, by definition Jerusalem. This kind of thinking can make for some unusual prophetic interpretations about who “actually” is Israel and who or what the King or Kingdom is. Ultimately, Armstrong points back at Christ as being this, and even identifies a lot of outward Christianity as a kind of fake version or religion that was instituted, in his accounting, by Simon the Sorcerer. While he makes this case, though, he also has a very pro-industrial attitude suggesting that all the manufacturing and steel industry is a blessing or favor from God. In terms of resources, he is probably correct, but the industrialization of the country could be argued to be a kind of curse as opposed to a blessing. Since Armstrong was born in 1892, it makes sense that he would have this opinion as his life would have been during the development of industry which was seen as a positive force for that generation although the two World Wars in between times should have been a hint that not all was as it seems.
Armstrong is, without a doubt, a kind of spiritual pioneer and he got more right than he got wrong. As someone who lived through the Holocaust period, though, he sounds a little too sympathetic to forces that are not necessarily Israel and in some cases had closer ties with the enemies of Israel and elements of the Catholic Church. Britain had to fight Germany mostly because it had no choice. It then had to have the help of America to finish the fighting. Britain was not allied to America because it wanted to be, but more because it had to be. Once that alliance was over, it was back to “business as usual” which included the typical “we are not especially supportive of America because of that whole American Revolution thing.” Indeed, if we examine the alliances of Britain in the current time period, does it appear to be more aligned with Israel, or Saudia Arabia?
Once again, Armstrong does conclude that some kind of world government is likely approaching, and it will probably be in Europe. What he doesn’t appear to see, however, is what parts of Europe might be engaged in these activities. If he were seeing it clearly, it might undermine his main thesis.
Still, the book is worth a read, and a valuable addition to any modern Church library. This edition was published sometime around 2007, and that is probably the best edition to get since, as mentioned, after 2009, some heavy revision came into view that reformed the entirety of the Church Armstrong helped to birth.