Sunday, July 8, 2018

The Last Book Review



The Last Book Review

John 21:25
And there are also many other things which Jesus did, the which, if they should be written every one, I suppose that even the world itself could not contain the books that should be written.







            There was a time when I wrote copiously. I began just after 9/14/2001 and the writing didn’t cease until about 2012. I wrote enough material by myself to self-publish 11 books. Another three were co-authored with my wife. I blogged on one site about 1,500 entries which had over 100,000 hits. The reason I am conveying this here is to give you an idea that I know about book reviews. It is not to pimp my work.
            I wrote. I wrote, let my wife edit the work, and simply walked away. Some folks liked the writing, others, I guess not. I had one Yale English professor tell me I needed to review one of the books I wrote and condense it for word count by 50%.
            Two of the books were pieces that followed current events around 2009-2010. They spoke to the reality of things as they truly were during the time. If I were to rewrite one of the pieces I’d amend only two bits of the work as I misjudged character qualities of two folks I mentioned.
            As I watched the world spiraling into chaos, I needed to find a subject that made sense. Through the writing cycle I met a man of God. Pastor Paol is a Jamaican born American. As my partner and I wrote a co-authored auto-biography, he had written a testimony, “I Have Seen the Living God”. Our title was “Convoking Hell”. The old saying ‘opposites attract’ was made for this friendship and brotherhood.       
            At our first meeting, he got around to inquiring of my intentions with Tracy who at the time was as indicated, my partner. Now we are married. It was an abrupt question to be sure. Knowing he claimed to be a man of God who had written a personal testimony, I gave him a respectable honest answer which for the time quieted his curiosity. I simply said, this woman humbles me.
            Around the same time we made introductions, Tracy had kept watching a Sunday morning program called “Give me an Answer”. Two or three times I told her to change the channel as I didn’t want to hear some holy roller on a Sunday morning. She did until I gave up telling her to change the channel. Then one morning while trying to ignore the broadcast I heard this skinny guy Cliff totally shred this college kid that seemingly knew nothing about formulating a question.  It was like a wait a minute moment. After a couple of weeks of intense watching the same guy Tracy mentioned we could go to his church. I said, yes.
            It is important here to realize that when our relationship began, Tracy had asked me what my plans were for a Christmas Eve that we were speaking to each other via phone call. She had indicated that she might go ahead and attend a Christmas Eve Mass. I had told her I’d be lucky to avoid jail, or the emergency room. Furthermore, she’d never catch me dead in any church. I hated religion and all the hypocrisy that goes with it. I still do.
Long and short of it comes down to a personal testimony of my own.
During the time of my writing it can be said that opportunities for work in the service business industries weren’t available. The TARP bailouts had crushed the economy. At the same time, I also suffered a back injury that left me pretty much useless. I had a surgery which enabled me to walk, but the rehabilitation didn’t allow me to go back to steady work. I overmedicated myself trying to kill the physical pain as well as the guilt associated to many bad decisions I made earlier on in life. And even after writing of things I knew to be true, which if ever were seriously read by anyone of influence willing to take a chance, my financial luck might just change. Thankfully it did not. I was quite literally broken on the Rock of Christ.
In 2013, we decided to move to NC. We had been living in CT. And we had been pressing into God’s word seriously since 2010 when we were married on September 4th by none other than Pastor Paol.
Before that time Tracy had been the bread winner of the household. The tables turned. Some amazing things had changed. I was able to work regularly and well over 40 hours. It was her turn to write and study while I went out and met our provision from the Lord. Mind you, doctors responsible for my health had instructed me to file for disability due to my back condition. The prognosis was determined on several MRI’s indicating I had an extraordinary amount of bone spurs in my lumbar sacral area of the back. Today I’m 54 years old and on average I work 60 hours a week. My answer is that I received a miraculous healing.
Now in regards to the title of this piece. Let us delve into it.
I have already stated that I have written books. Five genres. My greatest work is five books of fiction. They are all in the Hard Justice Series. Violation, Peregrination, Expurgation, Final Destination and Terminus. The total page count of all these books is around 960. The writing is very dark and brutal, some of it pornographic. But it is clean writing that doesn’t give physical descriptions of characters. The descriptions of the characters come only from their actions. I wrote it as such for purposes of it being made a movie. Easier for the director in actor selection. Race of any of them wouldn’t have mattered.
As a fiction I am told it is very believable. For a movie production the screen play would not need any continuity checks. So here is the thing, I know how difficult it is to write a story that is believable.
If you read the Bible accepting it as literal, it would be difficult for any author, if not impossible to write such a work. From the beginning to the end, the intricacy of the stories in the Bible connect almost impossibly.
Prophesy happening time and again with historical substantiation as it has, makes the Bible a numerological anomaly for certitude. If many prophesies have already happened why wouldn’t the ones yet unfulfilled not happen?
Considering what the prophesy of Jesus says in the Book of Revelation, at His coming all things, elements of this earth will be consumed and melt away in fervent heat. Everything in this world will be laid to waste.
Jeremiah 4:23-27 gives a pretty good visual.
People will have one of two choices to pick. Light with the Lord in eternity, or death and hell with the wicked.
As I said, I hate religion of men. What I put my whole life value on now is a relationship with the Lord. How do I do that? I read God’s word. I make his commandments my focus. I realize what He did for me and all mankind in paying our debt for being sinners and not good or nice people is worth all of my effort. Every day I ask for the Spirit of God to lead me to what Jesus taught said and did. His mercy and grace are working on sanctifying me. Sometimes I get down on myself for what I perceive as failures. But after time most of what I consider failure is just God’s way of perfecting me. The stories in the Bible are timeless and help show these hard-known truths. And for learning them, I can always point to Jesus as my honest teacher loving me unconditionally.
In becoming a worthy workman rightly dividing God’s word, my life has done a 180 degree turn around for the better.
I would love to have more five-star book reviews for my writing. It would be a well-received relief from the work I currently do. It doesn’t matter though. My comments for the Bible are simple. For every problem man knows, there is a solution in the writing of God’s word,
The Truth
Is the Last Book review that will ever be written.
Amen.




















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