Michael Barber from the blog Singing in the Reign was nice enough to send me a review copy of his book Coming Soon: Unlocking the Book of Revelation and Applying Its Lessons Today
The book is a verse by verse examination of the Book of Revelation. This is easily the most misunderstood book in the Bible so you can understand why throughout history some wanted to dump it as being part of the canon of scripture. So much bad theology, badly written fictional novels, and bad movies have been based on this book while providing no light as to understanding this last book of the Bible.
If you have read excellent books like Scott Hahn’s The Lamb’s Supper you would be aware of some of what Michael Barber covers and he does reference parts of the Dr. Scott Hahn’s book in his book. But he also covers a lot more information and as shown by the very rich bibliography and notes in the back of the book he has drawn from a considerable amount of both Catholic and Protestant sources in putting together this book.
The book starts by addressing the authorship of the Book of Revelation and anchoring it in time as to when it was most probably written. The choice he makes in this I think most fully draw out the historical Catholic understanding of the events in the Book of Revelation. He also gives a good summary of how to approach Bible study and goes over the genres and senses of scripture. All of this is a necessary prelude to getting the most out of Revelation.
The rest of the chapters of the book concentrates verse by verse on the actual text of the Book of Revelation and then giving a good solid Catholic exegesis of the meanings of these verses. He also makes the effort of explaining when there have been more than one understanding of a a text.
Each chapter ends with some Multiple Choice Questions and some Discussion/Study Questions. This makes the book ideal both for personal study or group study. The format of the book and the clear writing really makes this book one of the best resources there is for Bible study of the Book of Revelation. I know for myself I really learned a lot from this book and found it to be the most informative compared to other books on the same subject. I know in years to come I will be referring back to this book when checking on specific verses.
Throughout the book there are also plenty of verse comparison tables. It really is interesting all the comparisons of prophesies in for example, Daniel, Ezekiel, Isaiah, etc and the Book of Revelation. You could almost accuse St. John of plagiarism if the Holy Spirit wasn’t the author of those other books also.
Michael Barber has done a great job of not only making the Book of Revelation accessible, but really understandable.
9 comments
One insight I can offer: please realize it is the Book of Revelation — singular, not plural!
This may seem a quibble, but there is a significant difference:
“revelations” suggests a bunch of images and ideas revealed, the meaning of which we have trouble spelling out;
Revelation suggests a unified message — and this is, in fact, correct: the Revelation (singular) is of Jesus Christ.
Simply dropping the plural — which is wrong anyway — is a big step forward in grasping the work’s message.
Fr. Fox,
Thanks, fixed.
Sounds awesome. I just ordered it.
Jeff,
Thanks for the review. This book has been near the top of my list of books to purchase for a while now. I’m curious about one thing: Does the book contain the actual text of the Book of Revelation, along with the commentary? Or does it contain only the commentary, thus requiring you to have a copy of the Bible on hand while reading the commentary?
Paul,
It does include the scripture text.
looks great!
Jeff,
Thanks for answering my question above. I recently purchased Steve Ray’s commentary on the Gospel of John, and so far my only complaint about it is that it doesn’t have the actual Gospel text in the book — so that you essentially have to have two books open at once (the commentary, and the Gospel of John itself). I’m glad to hear that that is not the case with “Coming Soon”. Hopefully Mr. Barber’s book will be “coming soon” to a bookshelf near me!
(Ouch! Sorry, that was a terrible pun.)
I got this book last month; of course I had to pay for it:(
I think its pretty good. Also, the fact that it is non-technical will be an advantage to those who know little about Revelation, Scripture, or Scripture study. EMMAUS ROAD PUBLISHING puts out some fine introductory studies. Their “Kingdom series” is excellent. They can be used individually, or for group study/discussion.
After reading the opening chapters of The Lamb’s Supper, I realized I needed to read a study of Revelation, only no one I knew could recommend one.
Then I came here and found this. Call that a sign. It’s in my amazon shopping cart right now. 🙂 THanks.
Comments are closed.