New series begins Monday

Yesterday we finished the study on Hosea. I was formatting it in book form as I wrote it, so I can tell you that this study will soon be published as a 2-part series. But first I have to go through it carefully and smooth it out, and others have to proof it a few times. Hopefully, these books will be ready by the first of March.

Meanwhile also, we have finished Haggai and have designed a cover for it. It is a 49-page book that will be staple bound like many of my books. It should be ready by the end of next week.

For the next series, my intention is to begin on Monday with my second novel, entitled Through Timeless Mountains. If you have not read the first novel, please do so, as it would be helpful if you knew the characters before starting on the second book. The second is a sequel, where we are taken back in time to the days of Israel at the start of Eli’s ministry as High Priest.

If you decide to read or reread the first book, I suggest that you go to the “Books” section and read it from there, rather than in the weblog section. All of my books represent the final, corrected form of any study. The added bonus is that I have included over 200 footnotes that will give some explanations of what is written, so you can understand it better and learn from it.

I already know the direction of the third novel in this series and will begin to write it shortly. I want to have three books finished before sending it to Amazon to publish. (Amazon is getting into the publishing business, as well as selling books as an online bookstore. They will print up copies and bind them as normal books, whereas I am limited to spiral binding.)

Once I get three novels completed, I want to give the series an overall title: The Anava Chronicles. Each individual book, of course, will keep its own title within that overall heading. I need at least three books to give it this overall title, but I plan to write more than just three books. There is really no limit, because I can go back to any event in the Bible (or in history) and re-live the story and interact with these real people in the past.

I have had some interesting inquiries, where people wonder if these stories are true. People wonder if we are experiencing the changes of the feast of Tabernacles. The short answer is that we are indeed, but we have not fully arrived yet at the place seen in the novels. It is, after all, just a novel, and this allows me to use some literary license. It is said that every artist paints his own face, and authors write from their own experiences. That is what I do as well.

For example, when I speak of angels, I am sharing my own revelation. When I mention my father telling Yaqui Joe stories when I was a child, that really happened, because he was a good story teller. I have a picture of my dad sitting in the middle of the floor of a large bedroom in the boarding house of the mission school in the Philippines, telling stories to wide-eyed kids on the bunk beds. All the kids were excited when they prevailed upon him to tell them a Yaqui Joe story.

Last month I was sent copies of letters that my parents wrote to their parents while they were in the Philippines (1953-1963). In these letters, they mention the Yaqui Joe stories that were so well loved by the missionary children.

So now I have been inspired to build upon those stories as part of my novels—especially in the second novel—as my dad’s supposed adventures are verified in my own generation. The difference is that I have twisted his stories into Bible studies, as I always do, in order to teach spiritual principles.

I have also developed the stories somewhat along the lines of C. S. Lewis’ Chronicles of Narnia and Tolkein’s Lord of the Rings. The Narnia series is a study of various parts of Church History, and Tolkein’s books, though he denied this, is a history of Europe from the 1400’s to the mid-1900’s (when he finished the series).

My books are not allegories, however. Instead of telling an allegorical story like John Bunyon's Pilgrim's Progress, I am actually taking the characters back in time so that the biblical characters come to life. This way, we can get a feel for the problems of their day, and because the main character (Anava) is “me” in today’s world, I interact with the biblical characters from a position of greater knowledge of the future. So I get to prophesy and to teach them New Covenant principles, which would have been very beneficial if they had understood these things in their day.

Of course, I also use talking animals and the dove who whispers to my wife whenever we need to know something that we could not otherwise know. This suggests Kingdom life, where (I believe) we will speak all languages and will be able to communicate with animals and to rule nature as part of our inheritance. Because animals are used so often in Scripture as allegories and metaphors of God Himself or of spiritual principles, this literary tool is very useful to me.

In the second novel, my wife and I are loaned two wonderful horses, Pegasus and Pleiades, who obviously represent Christ and the overcoming church. (The seven sister-stars of the Pleiades are the seven churches in the book of Revelation.) I also get to meet and befriend a pair of lions, whose son (in Book 3) will later be killed by Samson. The death of the lion, of course, prophesies of the death of Christ, the Lion of Judah.

It is surprising how many biblical characters were contemporaries who almost certainly knew each other. I have been able to tie them together in a single story, even bringing in Goliath as a “young giant” guarding the gates of Timnah, the Philistine city where Samson’s friends lived. This was long before he became the Philistine champion warrior. But because giants were Nephilim, they lived for hundreds of years, and I get to prophesy to him as well, knowing that he was to be killed by David about 70 years later.

Anyway, I hope you will enjoy reading this book as much as I enjoyed writing it. If I post a chapter a day, it should only take about three weeks of weblogs. The book itself is 113 pages, plus more for footnotes at the end.