Barry Jackier. God’s Covenants with Mankind. Word and Spirit, 2023.

God’s Covenants with Mankind—the title sums it up. This is a book enumerating and describing the covenants God the Creator established with His people. There are six in the Hebrew Scriptures, and, of course, the New Covenant in the New Testament. (Testament is an older word for covenant.)

Jackier focuses a lot on the first covenant, the covenant with Adam. In a sense, there are two parts to it, before and after the transgression. Before the Fall, Adam was told to be fruitful and multiply and have dominion over the earth. Sadly, the Fall meant Adam surrendered the dominion to the devil. But after, God in a sense ratified His covenant with Adam and Eve by killing an animal to clothe them and making a promise that the seed of woman would crush the serpent’s head.

He notes, correctly, that the warning God gave about eating the forbidden fruit was literally, “In dying you shall die.” That suggests a state or condition, not an instant poisoning as we might imagine today. Our ancestors now had a sin nature which would be passed on to the rest of us. He notes, as others have, we do not become sinners because we sin; we sin because we are sinners by nature.

So God’s first promise of redemption from that sin nature was given to Eve. Because of the cutting of the animal, it was in the form of a covenant. (The Hebrew word for covenant, b’rith, simply means “cutting.”)

The second covenant God made was with Noah. That covered a few things: that God would not flood the earth again, that mankind could eat animal flesh but not the blood, and, most importantly, “seedtime and harvest” would remain as long as the earth remained. In other words, people could trust that the seasons would continue so that they could plan their lives and their sustenance around them.

The third covenant was arguably the most important of all the Old Testament covenants, the covenant with Abraham. This covenant is given in detail and covers at least three chapters of the Book of Genesis. In his explanation, Jackier makes an interesting observation. God deliberately limited Himself by His Word. Because of what he had established at the beginning and even with Noah, He could not continue His plan of redemption until He found a man of faith, someone who would take God at His Word in spite of what it might mean to him personally. He found that person in Abraham.

So the Adamic covenant was one of multiplication. The Noahic covenant was one of seedtime and harvest. The Abrahamic covenant was one of faith. We see with Enoch, with Noah, and especially with Abraham, that faith in God brings God’s righteousness to the believer. Any righteous acts follow. The covenant with Abraham was intimate. God told Abraham His plans for Sodom. Abraham was willing to give up his only legitimate son. They could trust each other. Yes, we read that Abraham still sinned, but his righteousness was based on faith, not on his good works, though he had plenty of those, too.

The next covenant may be the most dramatic, the covenant with Moses. The Mosaic covenant manifested God’s glory. It was this covenant that established the formal sacrificial system with the Tabernacle or Tent of Meeting. God demonstrated by His miracles that He was indeed superior to the gods of the nations, including Egypt, which was the most advanced civilization at the time. He established the Law, which was more specific about proper behavior and which provided order to the newly-formed nation of Israel. Both the glory and the Tabernacle system pointed to God’s ultimate plan of redemption in the New Covenant.

Jackier also notes that what distinguished Moses himself was that he was concerned and focused on God’s reputation. He saw and understood what God was like, and wanted to be sure that others understood. This was why he sometimes got angry. The incident with the golden calf, for example, only happened about two months after the crossing of the Red Sea. Had the people forgotten so quickly? When God said that He was frustrated and was thinking of starting over with Moses as a kind of new Abraham to begin a new chosen people, Moses reminded God of what the other nations would think if the God of Israel had His people miraculously escape only to die in the desert.

Next is the covenant of David. God promised David that an ancestor of his would be the world’s savior. This was more specific than even the promise to Abraham. David’s covenant involved a number of things, but its main emphasis was praise. David established his tabernacle, not as a place of sacrifice, but as a place of praise. David, of course, wrote many of the Psalms. We are told that he had a heart after God.

The sixth and last covenant was that with Solomon. Solomon built the Temple, the place of “God’s permanent abode on earth.” Solomon’s name means “man of peace.” His rule was largely peaceful and perhaps in a minor way illustrated God’s heavenly city, a habitation of peace for God’s people. But more importantly, “Jesus, the Messiah, David’s greater son, called the Prince of Peace, built God’s eternal habitation, the Church” (1495).

Jackier sums up the New Covenant, the seventh and final Scriptural covenant of God:

Jesus had the dominion originally given to Adam; He practiced the law of seedtime and harvest as given to Noah; He lived in and relied completely on faith, as was shown Abraham; He fulfilled the law and declared God’s glory, as was demonstrated through Moses; He lived a life of continual praise, as David’s greater Son; and He created a habitation for the people of God, as did Solomon. (1500)

Ultimately, of course, “The chief aim is to say, along with the apostle Paul, that Jesus came to save sinners” (1507).

God’s Covenants with Mankind, then goes into detail about Jesus’ sacrifice; and not just a sacrifice but a legal punishment as a result of sanctions for mankind breaking the various covenants. God ultimately established the New Covenant, not with symbolic substitutes, but with Himself.

This review is a mere overview of what this book offers. It really is a summary of God’s plan for history and gives us great insight into the nature of God Himself. Unlike, say, Trumbull’s The Blood Covenant, it focuses on the Bible’s story (or, as some like to say today, the Bible’s metanarrative).

Jackier does espouse the so-called Gap Theory, that there is a time gap between Genesis 1:1 and Genesis 1:2, that God created the earth and earlier beings led by the devil destroyed it. He notes that the King James Version of Genesis 1:28 which uses the word replenish. However, the original Hebrew is better translated fill, not refill. The word replenish had a little different meaning in 1611 than it does today. Other than these minor quibbles, which honest Christians do discuss and recognize, this book has much to share. Like Moses, it does glorify God. Jackier is a true son of Moses.

N.B.: Citations are Kindle locations, not page numbers.

Tyler Kepner. The Grandest Stage. Doubleday, 2022.

The Grandest Stage is subtitled A History of the World Series. I suppose there is a certain irony or appropriateness that it is published by Doubleday.

The Grandest Stage will fascinate any reader interested in baseball. It is divided into seven chapters—like the best of seven format of the World Series. Each chapter is thematic rather than chronological. It
is not a historical overview: “In 1903 the first interleague baseball championship featured the Pittsburgh Pirates and the Boston Pilgrims, later renamed the Red Sox.” No, not that. Instead, each chapter focuses on a different theme.

Kepner has been a sports reporter for various publication including the New York Times for over twenty years. Much of what he shares is from interviews with players, coaches, managers, and team officials—both from his own interviews and those from others. For example, he occasionally quotes from The Glory of Their Times, the well known baseball oral history of the early years major league.

Chapter One, for example, is about how players, coaches, and managers learn to handle the pressure of being in the World Series. It begins, perhaps for obvious reasons to baseball fans, with a discussion of Reggie Jackson. Some players like Jackson, a.k.a. Mr. October, handled the pressure just fine, thank you. Others, not so much. Quotations from a variety of people give us a sense of what it was like. The solution which seemed to work for many was simply to treat the Series like any other game.

Chapter Two is a record of overlooked plays and events in well-known World Series games. One example resonated with me because as a boy I attended the seventh game of the 1960 World Series between the Pittsburgh Pirates and New York Yankees. Yes, it has rightly gone down in history as a famous back-and-forth battle decided by a walk-off home run in the bottom of the ninth inning by Bill Mazeroski. What is often overlooked was the three-run homer the inning before by Hal Smith which put the Pirates ahead of the Yankees. Kepner notes that by modern sabermetric standards, before that two-out home run, the Pirates had a thirty percent chance of winning the game. Afterwards, they had a ninety-three percent chance. Of course, the Yankees tied the game in their half of the ninth, so that set the stage for Maz’s blast.

It also explains in some detail why the Cincinnati Reds were the better team in the 1919 World Series and probably would have won it anyway apart from the Black Sox scandal. Other interesting notes include about the unusual event that set the table for Kirk Gibson’s famous homer in the 1988 World Series or the possible strategic pitching change that happened before Joe Carter’s walk-off in game six of the 1993 World Series.

Other observations include, yes, the Cardinals got a bad umpire call in the 1985 World Series against the Royals, but “the Cardinals deserved to lose” (66). Later in the book, Kepner tells the story that Royals’ starter Mark Gubicza never got to play in that World Series though he had won the deciding game in the ALCS. When his manager apologized for that, he told him that he did not care because they won the championship. Gracious.

Chapter Three tells of unlikely World Series heroes like Del Unser of the 1980 Phillies who had been called out of retirement from baseball for the season and was basically a pinch hitter and utility player for the team. All he did in the World Series was hit three home runs in three consecutive at-bats pinch hitting. There is also an interesting discussion on Bill Wambsganss who achieved a World Series feat that has never been equaled—an unassisted triple play. (There have only been fifteen in the entire history of the Major Leagues).

Chapter Four sets the tone for much of the rest of the book. It is a chapter on managing the World Series. Sometimes the managers are goats—and I do not mean GOATs. Sometimes they are the heroes. While it is likely that 1960 would be Casey Stengel’s last year managing the Yankees, his decision not to start Whitey Ford in the first game, thus making him available for games 4 and 7, would haunt him. (For what it is worth, I wrote a poem about why Red Sox manager Grady Little did not replace Pedro Martinez in game seven of the 2003 ALCS.) Terry Francona, who has managed both Boston and Cleveland in the World Series, said simply, “If you win, you’re smart; if you lose, you’re dumb” (119).

One weird thing to me in this chapter was an alleged quotation from Casey Stengel saying that he chose the pitchers he did because Pittsburgh had a small park. That is absolutely not true. Center field was 457 feet. They kept the batting practice batting cage on the field in center because hardly anyone ever hit balls that far. The shorter left field had a tall scoreboard and right field had a large screen in front of the stands. It was hardly a band box.

Chapter Five also speaks of a different kind of strategy. It is a overview of how front offices build or attempt to build a World Series winning team. Baseball is unique among professional sports because of its long season of 154 or 162 games. To reach the playoffs requires one kind of approach, much of it having to do with endurance and cohesion. The postseason is basically a tournament which has to do more with players getting hot at the right time. In other words, Kepner would say, luck. Often trades made during the season especially near the August trade deadline can make a difference. Again, using many examples and quotations from many sources, readers get a sense of how the World Series team sausage is made.

Chapter Six is titled “It Wasn’t Your Fault, Kid.” It takes a look the ignominy associated with certain plays or player in the World Series. Probably the classic example is Giant outfielder Fred Snodgrass who dropped a ball in the tenth inning of the last game of the 1912 World Series against Boston, allowing the Red Sox to win. Even though he had made a spectacular score-saving catch earlier in the game, he was never forgotten for dropping the ball in the tenth. I can honestly say as a baseball fan, that that is all I ever knew about Snodgrass.

Some players can overcome mistakes. We read about Oakland’s Dennis Eckersley, who served up Dodger Kirk Gibson’s home run in the 1988 World Series. Eckersley had a distinguished career and is in the Hall of Fame. He is able to look back with some good humor about it. In game four of the 2018 World Series at Los Angeles, Eckersley threw out the ceremonial first pitch to Gibson.

Chapter Seven may be one that will generate the most discussion. It is a chapter of interesting and probably controversial lists. One especially stands out: who Kepner believes would have received the Most Valuable Player award for the World Series before 1955 when the prize was instituted. Another one was MVP mistakes, that is, who should have gotten the award instead of the person who did.

There is one that I have noticed before, and Kepner noticed the same thing. The 1960 World Series MVP was Bobby Richardson, a player for the Yankees, the team that lost. As a ten year old, that is when I learned about coastal, especially New York, media bias. I thought it was even brave of Kepner to say that since he writes for the New York Times. He also notes that while Richardson did break a record for the most hits in a series, he made most of those hits in the three Yankee blowouts (16-3, 10-0, and 12-0) when the whole team was hitting.

He also puts together two World Series all-time all-star teams. Why two? The Yankees have been in so many series (forty in all) that he made one list of Yankees and one list of non-Yankees. This includes players who have played in the World Series, so, yes, it does not include Hall of Famers who never made it to the Big Dance. His player choices focus on the postseason. He chose Roberto Clemente as a starter and Hank Aaron as a backup, for example. Clemente was a better fielder and his World Series record was better, even though Aaron held (some would say still holds) the all-time home run record.

Even just from these examples, readers can see how this book could lead to many interesting discussions. More than most baseball books, it also takes a close look at strategies, including in game decisions of the moment, pitching decisions, decisions about who starts, as well as decisions by the front offices in putting teams together, and yes, even umpiring decisions. This is a thinking fan’s book.

One criticism is that the copy I received the pages listed in the detailed index do not correspond to the pages in the book. If this goes into a second edition, hopefully that problem will be corrected.

Jeffrey Perso. Water Bodies. Black Rose Writing, 2019.

“Violence is different in small towns…” (42)

Water Bodies is weird and wacky. Some readers, especially those from the Mississippi River Valley, may find it hilarious. Others may scratch their heads.

Water Bodies is a novel. That is, it is a fictional prose narrative. However, the plot is secondary to the setting and character sketches that make up the bulk of the story. We are introduced to a small city on the banks of the Mississippi in Wisconsin, across the river from Minnesota. It is not too far from Lake Onalaska.

The narrator, one Professor John Voltaire, has returned to his hometown of L after many years of being away—and, we the get the sense, not really relishing the return. Like some nineteenth century novels, the dates and town name are not filled in; for example the story takes place in May___. However, we are aware that the letter L, especially when pronounced in certain dialects, sounds like hell. That could be where we are.

Instead of the five classical rivers traversing the Underworld, there is one, the mighty Mississippi. But since Dr. Voltaire has returned, there have been many unfortunate accidents, most somehow involving the river. Readers soon lose track of the body count. The deaths include picnickers, drunks, partiers, students from the nearby college, boaters, swimmers, suicides. The means include assaults, accidents, miscalculations, murders, and simple stupidity.

In the course of the novel we are given sketches of many of the people and institutions: the bars, the churches, the gangs, the politicians, the law officers, the lawyers, the fishermen, the civil engineers, among others. L sounds like a decaying city, perhaps like Empire Falls expressed with a lot more hyperbole. The population seems largely made up of hypocrites.

The deaths appear to be caused by an unspecified miasma or pestilence or river monster or random fate. Since some recent graffiti in town has smiley faces and similar images, law enforcement begins to think there is a mass murderer out there who is leaving these images. People start referring to the Emoticon Killer.

Among chapters of such descriptions and wild speculations, we learn that Prof. Voltaire has returned to help settle the family legacy. His mother is dead and his father has been confined for many years to a mental institution. His brother and sister still live in the family homestead. The sister Lara wants to sell the house; the brother Cristo does not. John returns because all three have to agree on whatever the disposal of the estate will be.

Lara has been married four times and is single again. Cristo has never married and considers himself an artist and writer. He mostly wanders the town with a shopping cart collecting cast off items in alleys to use for his art or to describe in his writing. The opus he is working on will supposedly solve the problem of fate versus free will.

All three siblings were affected by the death of their parents. The mother was hanged and the father shot point-blank in an apparent murder-suicide attempt, except that no one could determine who initiated the crime. The father survived the wound to the head, but it affected his mental capacity, hence his institutionalization.

So it goes on. Cristo takes John on a tour of the town’s seedy places as a Virgil to John’s Dante in this modern Inferno. No one is pleasant or comes across positively. It is a satire not unlike Dante’s, except (one hopes) that all the characters are fictional.

While the tale tends towards the gonzo style, there are literary allusions. The story begins with an epigram from The Waste Land quoting Wagner. One of the family names in L is Sosotris, like the fortuneteller in the Eliot poem. London was the center of Eliot’s wasteland. L is Perso’s. One of the characters happens to quote from “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock.”

The ending suggests—perhaps—there is another river, more inviting than the deadly, ravenous Mississippi. Perhaps there is a Paradiso somewhere? I was reminded a bit of the ending of Fahrenheit 451 as well as the ending of the Book of Revelation. After all the disasters, plagues, and curses of John’s Apocalypse, including such things as the sea turning blood-red and waters infected by wormwood, it ends with a far different image:

Then the angel showed me the river of the water of life, bright as crystal, flowing from the throne of God and of the Lamb through the middle of the street of the city; also, on either side of the river, the tree of life with its twelve kinds of fruit, yielding its fruit each month. The leaves of the tree were for the healing of the nations. No longer will there be anything accursed… (Revelation 22:1-3)

Water Bodies (which reminds us, by the way, that the human body is about 60% water) might not be for everyone. It does contain some ribald and scatological humor, but it is a wild entertainment with an intellectual current propelling it along.

Dave Coles. Jonathan Edwards on Movements. Beyond, 2022.

Dave Coles has written a couple of books that we have reviewed on recent people movements to Christ in non-Western cultures. As with any move of God, there are critics. And as with any move of God, there are those who exploit it in a way that the Lord would probably not approve.

Coles recognizes that there were many critics of the Great Awakening in the 1700s for similar reasons. Jonathan Edwards, of course, was a major theological figure during this time. He wrote several treatises—essays and books—dealing with the same issues. How do we deal with critics who say this movement is not from God? How do we deal with those in the movement who go astray?

I expected a book more like Guy Chevreau’s Catch the Fire. That book showed parallels with the Toronto and Pensacola revivals in North America in the nineties with the experiences of Jonathan and Sarah Edwards during the Great Awakening. Jonathan Edwards on Movements is different. It summarizes Edwards’ observations on the various critiques of such movements. While there is an element defending the people movements (often called CPMs, church planting movements), it mostly simply and extensively quotes Edwards and shows how and if they apply to the modern CPMs.

There are numerous takeaways. Perhaps the most obvious Edwards puts simply this way: “What the church has been used to is not a rule by which we are to judge.” (8) He also notes:

…it is not an argument that the work in general is not the work of God any more than it was an argument in Egypt, that there were no ture miracles wrought there, by the hand of God, because Jannes and Jambres wrought false miracles at the same time by the hand of the devil. (14, cf. II Timothy 3:8)

Besides quoting Edwards, there are references and allusions to Scripture from both Edwards, as above, and Coles.

He notes also that “Edwards also cautions (begs!) against questioning the salvation of others who give a credible profession of faith.” Yes, there will be cultural differences and differences in church practice, but we are reminded that “man looks on the outward appearance, God looks on the heart” (I Samuel 16:7).

Henry James. The Bostonians. 1886, Penguin, 1986.

I recall once having a conversation with an English professor about Henry James. She said she loved reading Henry James because the stories are told in a very leisurely manner, as though the reader has all the time in the world. “Nothing much happens,” she said, “but it is great how it’s told.”

That is a good way to describe The Bostonians. There is a lot of detail, especially much discussion or analysis on what the characters are thinking, especially the three main characters: Verena Tarrant, Olive Chancellor, and Basil Ransom. All three are single young adults; the two ladies are indeed from Boston, as are most of the other characters, and most of the action is set in Boston with major interludes in New York and on Cape Cod.

Even though this is set in the late 1870s, this reader realizes that the character of “proper Bostonians” has not changed that much. I confess that I read much of this as satire, ironic, but satire nevertheless. Historian Paul Jehle has noted that when the Puritans abandoned their Christian orthodoxy, they still maintained behaviors of their Puritan background. They were looking for new intellectual challenges. They experimented with other religions and philosophies. And they were still looking for causes to advocate and believe in.

With a few technological tweakings (automobiles, telephones, etc.) a story like The Bostonians could happen today. In the first part, we are introduced to a group of Boston blue-bloods who attend salons and lectures and are truly looking for causes. Slavery has been abolished, so many of the former abolitionists have taken up new causes. While some discuss mesmerism, spiritualism, and prohibition, the cause this novel focuses on is feminism.

By feminism, I do not merely mean women’s suffrage, but what today we sometimes call second generation feminism—that women are superior to men and can do perfectly well without men. Miss Olive Chancellor is a big advocate of that position. She takes the younger Miss Verena Tarrant under her wing. Miss Tarrant is the daughter of a fairly popular mesmerist and spiritualist. She has performed for her father occasionally.

A performance at a salon gets the attention of Olive. Verena is attractive with a lovely speaking voice, and the spirit she supposedly channels is a feminist spirit. Olive sees the two of them developing an intimate relationship and having Verena lecture around the country promoting women’s rights.

Verena’s performance at the same salon also gets the attention of Basil, Olive’s cousin from Mississippi. He is no Bostonian. He is a veteran of the Civil War, on the side of the Confederacy. While he accepts the defeat and freedom for the slaves, he sees things from a more traditional, conservative perspective. He sees Verena as a beautiful young, unattached woman with a lovely voice and personal charisma. He is smitten with her and wants to get to know her better.

That, honestly, is what most of The Bostonians is about. We see Olive, somewhat in the background, grooming and encouraging Verena. We see Basil attempting to woo Verena in fits and starts. Basil is a gentleman and attractive himself. Olive’s widowed older sister, Mrs. Luna, likes him and hopes to hire him as a tutor to her son. Basil has read the law and is beginning a law practice in New York City. Like many new business ventures, his practice also moves in fits and starts.

Much of the satire comes from the self-assurance, perhaps even arrogance, that many of the Bostonians have about themselves and their worldview. Basil really does not fit. Not only is he more polite, but he is very skeptical about all the things it seems the Bostonians hold dear: Transcendentalism (Emerson is admired, Thoreau imitated), socialism (Brook Farm also is admired), spiritualism, feminism, séances, and lectures on all of the above. Still, he is polite and even equanimous about these things.

Verena has numerous gentlemen callers and admirers. She is familiar with the Harvard campus where it seems that most of these young men have studied. Basil believes that if he can honorably get Verena to see the error of her beliefs, he can win her heart. We also note that Olive is determined to have nothing to do with men. Olive even refuses to have much of anything to do with her cousin who has moved north.

Much of the conflict and satire come from the differing worldviews. You have the position of Olive with her moral superiority, if not self-righteousness, contrasted with the more traditional views of Basil. The true psychological conflict is with Verena, who wants to support the “right” causes like her parents and Olive but who also finds Basil attractive and gentlemanly.

The wooing and the analyses go back and forth fairly slowly. At times it does seem that this could be another Pride and Prejudice. But then the climax hastens the pace as things come to a head with all three of the young people: Verena is now speaking at a standing-room-only venue, and there is a sense that all three are losing something.

The Bostonians may require more patience than some readers have today, but it is worth wading and waiting. It also is a satirical portrait of an urban elite that really has not changed much in a century and a half. Henry James still gets it.

Gordon Korman. The Unteachables. Balzer + Bray, 2019.
———. The Superteacher Project. Balzer + Bray, 2023.

One year I was between jobs. Like many teachers between jobs, I substituted. One day at one of the high schools, I replaced a distinctive teacher. I forget what the official name of the class was, but it was basically the proto-delinquents. They stayed in the same classroom all day and had to be supervised any time they left the classroom. When I entered the classroom, one of the custodians was using a heavy duty cleanser to wipe off some graffiti that had been written on some desks with a magic marker. Teachers there asked me whom I was subbing for. When I told them, they all shook their heads and offered their sympathy. It was not too bad of a day, but that was the only time I ever had to sub for that class.

Gordon Korman’s The Unteachables is about one such class of eighth graders. Just as Welcome Back Kotter’s group became known as the Sweathogs, this group was nicknamed the Unteachables. As is true with many of Korman’s YA tales, the story is told from numerous points of view, but the main character is truly Mr. Kermit, their teacher.

Twenty-seven years before, Mr. Kermit was caught up in a cheating scandal. He was innocent, but he took most of the blame anyhow. After that, he simply lost motivation. He was given different assignments no one else wanted and ended up with the Unteachables. Guess what? He does not teach them. He does crossword puzzles and hands out worksheets. Nothing is ever graded. The class is simply a student holding tank for a year when Riverview Middle School can pass them along to the high school.

As usual, there is a cast of distinctive characters. Their town of Greenwich is somewhat rural, so Parker has a provisional driving license to drive his family farm’s produce to town even though he is only fourteen. Aldo has anger management problems that get him into trouble. There is Elaine, bigger than most of the students in the class and feared by everyone in the school for her strength. She is always referred to as “Elaine, as in pain.” And by pain, we mean physical pain.

Then there’s Barnstorm, top athlete on the football team until an accident puts him on crutches. Not only is he off the team, but teachers no longer give him a “gentleman’s” passing grade just because he is a sports’ star. He ends up in the Unteachables, too. Bitter.

And Kiana, whose parents are divorced. She lives with her mother normally, but her mother is an actress on a film shoot in the Utah desert. Kiana, then, goes to Greenwich with her father and his new wife and their baby son. Her stepmother never bothers to register Kiana at the school, so she wanders into the Unteachables room and stays there. It’s only going to be eight weeks, so who cares if she learns anything?

To complicate things for Mr. Kermit, there is a new young teacher next door. She had been teaching kindergarten and still does things like a kindergarten teacher. She has her seventh and eighth graders sitting in a sharing circle for part of each class. She has various charts with stickers showing student accomplishments. She keeps a pet lizard in the classroom. She also is the daughter and spitting image of Mr. Kermit’s former fiancée who broke their engagement because of the accusations in the cheating scandal.

Mr. Kermit has a plan, though. He turns fifty-five this year, so he can get early retirement and get on with life. It happens that the superintendent was Kermit’s principal twenty-seven years ago, and when he sees that Kermit will be eligible for retirement, he decides paying for the retirement of a cheater is a waste of taxpayers’ money, so he has taken on the role of getting Mr. Kermit fired before it is too late. The Kermit family is known for its longevity: Mr. Kermit’s father is in his eighties, and his grandfather is still alive and lively at 106. That could mean a very long pension payout.

This simply describes many, but not all, of the complications. There is the typical Korman fish out of water situation (Kiana really does not belong in the class) and lots of other incidents involving Parker’s pickup truck, a thousand Vuvuzelas that end up in the river, and much more. Readers will laugh. Readers of his No More Dead Dogs can anticipate a humorous denouement as the class begins reading Where the Red Fern Grows. I remember being told in high school that a good story usually has characters change in some way. Many changes happen here. It is a hoot how they happen.

The Superteacher Project also takes place at a middle school, in this case Brightling Middle School, somewhere in the middle of the United States about the same distance from New York, Miami, and Denver. This features the uncanny and mysterious Mr. Aidact, a new math teacher at the school, who seems to know everything about anything.

Rap lyrics, yes. German opera lyrics, the same. He catches spitballs in mid-air. He does not mind detention duty, and detentions end up becoming popular. He even coaches the perennially losing girls’ field hockey team to a winning season. Superteacher, indeed.

As is typical of Korman’s school stories, we get the story from multiple points of view. There is a girl on the field hockey team whose single mother has developed a crush on the new coach. How embarrassing is that? There are two boys who are pranksters extraordinaire. Yes, even the principal and other teachers have a chapter or two.

Nathan and Oliver, the two pranksters, have devised the ultimate prank. Some of the school rules are holdovers from when the school building was a new elementary school, so there is a prohibition against riding Big Wheels in the school. Now, most middle schoolers cannot even fit onto a Big Wheels plastic bike, but Oliver has decided that rules are made to be broken.

Field hockey referees give Mr. Aidact the nickname Eagle Eyes. He argues for his team such things as her stick did not hit the other stick, it came within 2.5 millimeters, but they never touched! The girls on the team begin to respect him because he actually teaches them field hockey strategy and sticks up for the team—even to the point of being ejected from a game.

Most alert readers will figure out this genius’s secret, which is revealed for every reader in Chapter Five. Between crazy pranks and clever perceptions, this story becomes another very funny Gordon Korman tale. He recycles one or two plot elements from previous books, but this is still an enjoyable YA read. Korman knows his audience, and he knows what is funny.

N.B. People who followed the 2010 World Cup remember vuvuzelas—the long plastic horns used by South African sports fans as noisemakers.

James T. Harman. Daniel’s Prophecies Unsealed. Prophecy Countdown, 2018.
___. Daniel’s Prophecies Unsealed: The Final Countdown. Prophecy Countdown, 2023.

In spite of the similar titles, these are two different books with little overlap. The Final Countdown builds on the first one, Daniel’s Prophecies Unsealed.

The author assumes, as many writers have done so since the 1970s, that we are in the last days of the earth’s present state. The title of the first book comes from the Book of Daniel 12:4-5:

But you, Daniel, shut up the words and seal the book, until the time of the end. Many shall run to and fro, and knowledge shall increase.

The author understands that much of the prophetic pictures and explanations in the Book of Daniel are not easily understood, but that the meanings will remain obscure “until the time of the end.” The book purports to “unseal” Daniel so we can understand it in terms of the end times. The second book focuses on one thesis which we will take a look at.

Chapters 2, 7, and 8 of Daniel have similar images of four kingdoms represented by four different creatures or images that show the four kingdoms or empires that will rule Judea or Israel. Generally, interpreters have understood that the three chapters describe the same four empires: Babylon, Persia, Greece, and Rome. Indeed, chapter 8 names specifically the first three empires and tells us that the fourth empire will conquer the Greek. Alexander’s empire was divided by his generals into four regions, all later conquered by Rome, so Rome is generally understood to be the fourth empire.

However, Harman sees the four creatures in Daniel 7 differently, He sees them referring specifically to the end times since the culmination is the Son of Man being given rule over the earth, something that has not physically happened yet. If we are in the end times, then, he sees the four creatures as Great Britain, Russia, an Arab or Muslim Alliance, and a fourth, possibly the United States but perhaps another nation.

While Harman basically agrees with the traditional interpretation of the four creatures in Daniel 8—after all, three of them are specifically named—he does note that some of the latter verses that chapter parallel descriptions of the Antichrist (“Beast”) and False Prophet of Revelation. Verses 3-8 describe the four historical empires, but verses 9-14 and 23-25 speak of end times. We can see parallels between Daniel 8:23-25 and Revelation 13:11-18, so it does appear that part of the prophecy is about the Second Coming of Christ, not the first time He came.

He also notes a few things about Christ and Antichrist that may be overlooked. The description of the man in Daniel 10:5-6 who prophesies to Daniel is virtually identical to the vision of Jesus that John has in Revelation 1:13-14. I also note that Daniel calls him lord and is not corrected for it, the way the angel would correct John in Revelation 22:8-9. The “abomination” of Daniel 12:1 and 12:11 is similar to Matthew 24:15 and 24:21.

This close reading gives us some things to consider.

The Final Countdown contains some of the same things as the first book but emphasizes a few new things, or things not emphasized in the first book.

One is that the author believes in two raptures of believers. He understands the parable of the Ten Virgins in Matthew 25:1-13 a bit differently from traditional teaching. He states that the virgins all belong to Christ: they are virgins and they were all given oil. But the five virgins who enter in are those who are ready for Jesus’ coming and they are raptured before the tribulation. The others have to learn faithfulness through the tribulation and will be raptured later. He says that Revelation 12:17 notes the Antichrist will war against “the remnant” of the godly who will have to learn to overcome.

But the main theme of The Final Countdown is based on Daniel 9. In an article we posted here, we showed that Jesus’ arrival in Jerusalem being hailed as king on Palm Sunday was precisely described in Daniel 9:25. From the time the order was given to rebuild and restore Jerusalem until He comes was described to the very day—if we accept the idea that prophetic years are 360 days. This has been pointed out by many others. (My personal contribution to the discussion was noting a connection with Psalm 118.)

Harman takes issue with this interpretation and says that the year that Artaxerxes gave the order to rebuild was not 444 B.C. but 454 B.C. He cites Floyd Nolen Jones who gives the second date. The book would have us believe that this was a new discovery by Dr. Jones. It is simply a different interpretation. The order was given in the twentieth year of the reign of Artaxerxes (Nehemiah 2:1). Artaxexes co-ruled with his father Xerxes I for ten years. It depends on how one interprets Nehemiah 2:1. Was it the twentieth year beginning when he was installed as co-regent, or when he began ruling on his own?

So Harman takes the earlier date and assumes regular 365.24 day years, and the 483 years come out to A.D. 26 or 27. Harman then takes this as the beginning of Jesus’ ministry and the year of his crucifixion as A.D. 30. (It has to be either 30 or 33 as those are the only two years in which Pilate ruled Judea and Passover began on a Thursday evening.)

Perhaps the most interesting thing Harman does, then, is he says that the final seven years in the prophecy describe Jesus’ earthly ministry, about three and a half years followed by the Jews hearing the Gospel. The “strong covenant” becomes Jesus’ ministry to the Jews and the conversion of many of them. Halfway through the seven years He will put an end to sacrifice because he would die as the perfect and complete sacrifice (see Hebrews 9:12 and 10:10). At the end of the seven years, approximately three and a half years after Jesus’ resurrection, the ministry of His church would begin to focus on Gentiles with the salvation of Cornelius or conversion of Paul. This is certainly plausible, though the New Testament is fuzzy about dating many of the events.

The Final Countdown sees a second significance of the prophecy of years in Daniel 9. He points out that between 1537-1541 the Ottoman Emperor Suleiman the Magnificent began a program to rebuild Jerusalem. The rebuilding included a moat, a term used in many of the English translations of Daniel 9:25. What if that also was prophetically significant? Then 1537 plus 483 (using calendar years) comes out to 2020. Does this mean we are in the last days? Harman thinks so.

As with all writings about prophecy, even what I have done as noted above, we need to examine the evidence and realize that we may not truly understand the prophecy until it happens. Nevertheless, Jesus’ words apply to us as much as they did to his disciples twenty centuries ago:

Therefore be alert, because you don’t know either the day or the hour. (Matthew 25:13 HCSB)

Yes, let us be alert.

Glenn Beck and Harriet Parke. Agenda 21. Threshold, 2012.

“They think they can mandate things. Create this much energy every day. have this many babies every year. But it just doesn’t work like that. The more new laws and regulations they issue, the worse the results are.”

I had no idea what they were talking about. (26)

We pledge our allegiance
To the wisdom of the Central Authority.
We pledge our dedication
To the earth and to its preservation. (86 passim)

About ten years ago when Agenda 21 came out, dystopian novels were big sellers, especially to the young adult (YA) audience. Think of The Hunger Games and Divergent. This is Glenn Beck’s contribution, though there is evidence that a greater contribution came from his co-author Ms. Parke.

Now the two other series mentioned both played on youth identity crises to some degree. Agenda 21 does also. Our main character is Emmeline, fourteen at the beginning of the book. The United States, or at least part of it, is now called simply the Republic. It takes on some of the worst parts of Communism with a focus on radical environmentalism. People are seen to be the cause of all the problems in the natural world, so most of the country is left fallow and people are prohibited to travel outside the compounds (communes?) where they live and work.

The compounds include concrete apartment buildings with one room to a person or a couple. Children are reared by the state. There are echoes of Brave New World here, except that the state has not yet developed the manufacturing of human beings in that novel. The off-limits land outside of the compounds reminded me of the hinterlands of John the Savage in Brave New World or the wilderness of We.

Emmeline lives with her mother and father in one such compound. She was one of the last people to be reared by her own parents. This makes her a kind of freak to others her age. She has just menstruated for the first time. The authorities require this information to be reported. She undergoes a physical exam, and pretty soon she is “paired.” There is no romance; mates are assigned. Babies are expected and taken to the child care compound as soon as they are born.

Some people do work at the child care unit. Some people work on transportation. Automobiles and most transportation except the railroads have been outlawed. Railroads are used virtually only for freight. Transportation is either by bicycle or bus-box, carts pulled by six people. Emmeline’s father, for example, pulls a bus-box for a Transport Team. Human horsepower.

It is understood that the world was almost destroyed by energy demands. Now people produce most of the electrical energy being used. Bicycles all have generators that get discharged. Most people who are not working for the government work on “boards,” treadmill-like devices that produce energy. Everyone is expected to produce a quota of energy every day. Punishment or some kind of deprivation result for those who do not produce.

Through most of the book, Emmeline simply goes to work every day on her board to produce electricity. The people are fed nutrition cubes twice a day along with a daily quota of water. When Emmeline becomes pregnant, she sometimes get an egg in addition to the nutrient cube. Some older people remember the old days when people prepared meals and dishes, perhaps a bit like Winston Smith remembering real chocolate bars in 1984.

Life is regulated and, frankly, very boring. Authorities cannot understand why so many young people are not producing babies and why many of the children raised in the child care compounds are physically unfit. Unlike Brave New World, there is no soma drug to give relief. Not even vodka, which was ubiquitous in the old Soviet Union.

Meanwhile, around them and outside the limited compound areas, wildlife thrives. People are commended for feeding squirrels and birds. Let nature take its course and the oxygen supply will increase. Let most energy be created by the people themselves.

The government is simply called the Authority. There are no elections. Stories about elections tell how foolish and superficial they were. I was reminded of the footrace from The Aeneid where the racer Euryalus who cheated is voted the winner because he was good looking. Vergil was writing for the Emperor Augustus who had gotten rid of the republic. Dictatorship and monarchy are superior in both fantasy worlds.

The term Agenda 21 does not appear in the story. Unlike the fictional Republic, Agenda 21 is real. It is the 300 page environmental protocol passed by the United Nations as part of the Rio Accords in 1992. Beck and Parke imagine what would happen if all of those protocols were actually adopted. Maybe “nature” would prevail, but what would happen to humanity?

I was a little surprised to see cover endorsements from action-adventure authors Brad Thor and Nelson DeMille on what I thought would be a political analysis. This review has mostly described the setting, but the story is a page turner. Emmeline faces numerous challenges including multiple pairings when previous ones are not productive, and, especially when she finally does give birth and has to give up her baby immediately. What happens to mothers? to families?

This is neither the “boot in the face” of 1984 or the psycho-sexual fantasy of Brave New World though some elements like the wilderness area may have echoes of that novel. This is not a post-apocalyptic disaster novel like much sci-fi. This Republic may avoid the eco-apocalypse, but we are reminded that “scientific” social structures from Plato to Marcuse to Xi may look good on paper, but the reality reminds us that humans are not squirrels, and the life well lived will have friends, family, and a higher purpose.

Robert Louis Stevenson. Kidnapped. 1886; Amazon/Project Gutenberg, 2012.

I had read a recent review that mentioned Kidnapped as one of the reviewer’s favorites. Now I have read Treasure Island more than once, Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, Black Arrow, The South Seas, and even Weir of Hermiston. Oh, and I loved A Child’s Garden of Verses when I was a kid. Somehow I missed reading Kidnapped.

Now I have read it, and I can say that it is a real page-turner. Young David Balfour is betrayed by a devious relative and kidnapped. Today we might say shanghaied. He was captured and made to serve on a sailing vessel back in 1751 and 1752 in Scotland.

To tell the story, Balfour alludes to other adventure stories occasionally. He is shipwrecked on a tiny island with virtually no vegetation. He mentions that he has read other books about survival on a desert island, but the people always had tools or access to a sunken ship with supplies to get him started. That sounds like Robinson Crusoe or Alexander Selkirk. Fortunately for him, he discovers after three days that he can walk to the mainland of a nearby populated island at low tide.

At one point his traveling companion mentions the Odyssey. That is perhaps the closest comparison, though after the initial kidnapping and shipwreck, most of David Balfour’s adventures are on land. It may help some readers to have a map, as he travels throughout much of the Scottish Highlands (Stevenson, or Balfour, spells it Hieland) to eventually get back to his home town and try to get his uncle to do right by him.

While David Balfour is a fictional character from a Lowland Loyalist town, his traveling companion carries the name of an actual historical figure, Alan Breck Stewart. Readers may tell from the time period, his name, and location that Stewart is a Jacobite, a supporter of the claim of the Stewarts to the English throne. He has recently come from France where Bonnie Prince Charlie and his father James “The Old Pretender” hold court. He is considered an outlaw because he deserted the British Army when the Stewart uprising against the sitting king began in 1745.

The Stewarts in particular hate the Campbells. Much of the territory of the Jacobite lords was taken by the Crown and various members of the Campbell clan were given the authority to collect rents and act on behalf of the king. Mr. Stewart knows his way around the Highlands, and in the course of the journey we meet many people, mostly those who are Jacobites or who are neutral.

In May of 1652 David Balfour witnesses the Appin Murder—the sniper assassination of Colin Roy Campbell, a Campbell leader known as the Red Fox. Because Alan Breck Stewart has been reported back in Scotland, he becomes a prime suspect. That, by the way, is history. The murder was never solved, Stewart was never apprehended and likely had nothing to do with the assassination, but he was wanted and probably would have hanged if he had been caught. In the tale, David is also wanted, though it is unclear whether anyone knows his real name.

Much of the time Alan and David are living among the wild heather in all kinds of weather. David does become ill more than once, but they keep on moving. At times they are hiding very close to British soldiers. We see a wide variety of Highlanders, including one clan leader who lives at least some of the time in a moss-covered hive-shaped hut that blends in to the side of a rock. The color of the rock conceals most of the smoke that comes from the hut’s fireplace.

Much of the time, David, a Lowlander who only speaks Scots’ English, has no idea what people are saying as many in the highlands speak only Gaelic. Alan acts as a translator. But also we learn that some Highlanders can speak English but do not want to let on that they can.

It is complicated by other factors as well. David’s parents have both died, and the person in his village looking out for him is the pastor of the church whose name is Campbell. While David claims to be indifferent about his religious beliefs, when he does speak of them, everyone says he sounds like a Covenanter, and the Stewart claimants and many of the highlanders are Catholic. Still, every Jacobite respects Alan Breck, and David carries a button from Alan’s coat which carries the family arms, so among many in the Highlands, that is a golden bough.

On sea and land, on mountain and valley, by streams and by lochs, in woods and on moors (muirs), David goes “there and back again” with many lively encounters and adventures. Perhaps not quite as exotic as Treasure Island, this is still a great page turner, well worth the time. It also gives an idea of the historical period and some of the political conflicts of the era.

Kidnapped has many words unique to the Scots’ dialect of English. The edition reviewed here has some notes for some of the terms, but many readers might find an annotated edition helpful. An edition with maps might also make some things a bit clearer as well. Such things do not impose that much to the reading. Overall, most readers will be carried along on an excellent odyssey.

N.B. The name of Stewart is spelled various ways. We are using Stevenson’s spelling in this review.

P.S. I did find two excellent maps online on a single page: https://www.stevensonway.org.uk/index.php/1-the-way/overview. It turns out that in Scotland people will try to hike the Stevenson Way—the route that David Balfour took after he was shipwrecked. The web page comes from a web site that is set up for those who want to make the hike