What do I think of Brian Godawa’s book published by Embedded Pictures Publishing? Let’s plunge into the Deeper Waters and find out.
Brian Godawa has written a series about the end times with the first book being called Tyrant: Rise of the Beast and the beast in this case is Nero. The language is definitely that of the book of Revelation. Godawa switches back and forth between Jerusalem and Rome and at times other locales and tells a story where historical figures show up regularly to illustrate what life would have been like.
The story is quite engaging and revealing. Those who don’t know much about Nero will see this and come to realize why Nero does fit the description of the beast. Many times I would finish a chapter for my nightly reading and be left thinking about what I had read and what the early Christians went through.
The book also displays spiritual warfare going on. Unbeknowest to many people behind the scenes, the devil is at work with his own army and there are the angels of YHWH at work resisting him. This is reminiscent of the style of Peretti with his works on spiritual warfare. Godawa bases this on his idea about the watchers from Genesis 6. I’m not convinced of this theory at this point, but even if one doesn’t accept that, they can still enjoy the story.
In fact, this is something quite good about the series. While Godawa does write from the view of an orthodox Preterist, I think many people who are futurists could still get a lot out of this book and enjoy the history. Godawa does have extensive footnotes in here to show how the events in the book correlate with real historical events.
There are also non-historical characters in it who show up and do make for an interesting story. Unlike much from Christians in fiction I see today, Godawa does actually have something that is engaging. Even though we know in the end that God does win, we’re left wondering just how this victory will come about.
If there were two things I would change about the book, they would be the following.
First, sometime the dialogue can seem a bit forced. That is, when someone quotes a passage from an epistle or something of that sort word for word, I often find myself thinking that seems odd. Ancient people used paraphrase just like we do. I would have preferred to see paraphrase a lot more often than a direct quotation.
Finally, I would have liked to have seen more about honor and shame and the story told from that perspective. There are times I saw incidents that looked to me to be individualistic, such as dealing with evil from an introspective viewpoint. Ancients weren’t introsepctive in the way that we were.
Still, the book is entertaining and informative. I did enjoy the reading of it and I am one who normally doesn’t really get into fiction. If you’re curious about end times thought from a preterist perspective, this could be a good read for you.
In Christ,
Nick Peters
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