Review, My Book

It has been two weeks since I last posted and it seems an eternity. Yesterday I read Mark Goodarce's blog and chanced upon a review on my book, the War between the Two Beasts and the Two Witnesses which is a revised version of my PhD thesis. I am very much encouraged by it and all praise and glory to God the Father and Jesus Christ our Lord.

Pieter de Villiers raised a number of interesting points in his rather lengthy (5-page) review (http://www.bookreviews.org/bookdetail.asp?TitleId=5115). I am hearthened by the generally positive comments as he mentioned that chiastic patterns and arrangement of various NT texts in general and Revelation in particular is a worthy research area and the trend is that scholarship is moving towards looking at the literary and compositional issues relating to John's Apocalypse and further that my book offers "important, original and fresh contribution" to this area of NT study.

The review takes issue about the characterisation of the two witnesses made by me that they should be seen as executors of God's judgment as opposed to preachers of repentance. I still think that the primary picture afforded to us about the two witnesses is as executors of God's judgment as Rev 11:5-6 makes clear:

And if any one would harm them, fire pours out from their mouth and consumes their foes; if any one would harm them, thus he is doomed to be killed. 6 They have power to shut the sky, that no rain may fall during the days of their prophesying, and they have power over the waters to turn them into blood, and to smite the earth with every plague, as often as they desire.

But in my book, I did not discount the fact that the two witnesses were also preachers of repentance, only that scholars tend to take the figure of sackcloth as evidence to the fact which I dispute, since sackcloth primarily points to the ritual of mourning and lamentation in that the temple area is desecrated (Rev 11:2) and only secondarily points to the idea of repentance. At page 248 of my book, I argue that the two witnesses preach a message similar to John's commission in Rev 10:11 and the angel's proclamation in Rev 14:6-7 which includes the call to repent:

Then I saw another angel flying in midheaven, with an eternal gospel to proclaim to those who dwell on earth, to every nation and tribe and tongue and people; 7 and he said with a loud voice, "Fear God and give him glory, for the hour of his judgment has come; and worship him who made heaven and earth, the sea and the fountains of water."

Anyhow, perhaps my book should be more emphatic about the nature of the two witnesses' ministry as rightly pointed out by the reviewer.