Hi. Thanks for reading these reviews (and thanks to those who wrote them). I am the author of "Revelation: Four Views: A Parallel Commentary." Because of the nature of the book, I have always been listed as the "editor" (rather than "author") though no other hand but my own was involved in the writing of the book. The decision to call me "editor" instead of "author" was made by Thomas Nelson Publishers (with my approval, of course), rather late in the process of preparing for publication. Their rationale for using this title was their concern that a man without schoarly credentials (like me) might not be taken seriously as the "author" of a commentary, whereas readers might lower the bar a bit in assessing the appropriate qualifications for an "editor."
I noticed that (at the time of this writing--which might not be the case in the future), on this Amazon page, while I am referred to as the editor of the book (nothing wrong with that), that "Dr. Howard F. Vos" is listed as its author. Since I don't know the venerable Dr. Vos (I have a book of his on church history, and have found it very useful), and since he would be the first to admit, I am sure, that he had nothing to do with the writing of "Revelation: Four Views...", I am perplexed at how the authorship of the book came to be attributed to him at this website. You will find no reference to him on the pages of the book under consideration, because he had nothing to do with it. I do not point that out in order to avoid his getting credit for any virtues the work may possess, but more to absolve him of responsibility for anything in the book that he might regard as a defect. Since I come to this website but rarely, I cannot say how long this misprint has been here (it has not always been).
This mislabeling also could easily mislead customers who are looking for a book by me, because I am a radio talk show host and international speaker. If people familiar with me come to Amazon.com looking for a book by my name, they may not realize that this is it, if they read that Dr. Vos is the author. I have attempted (and think I have managed) to notify the people at Amazon about this, so, if it gets corrected, this notice will just make me look kind of dumb (It wouldn't be the first time that has happened, of course!).
I give the book four stars. I think the book is pretty good, for many of the reasons that other reviewers have mentioned. Twelve years after its publication, it certainly remains the only book of its type. Whether another man might have done a better job on such a project, we may never know. It fills a niche that no one, apparently, thought needed to be filled before I did, and I can't see why any author would wish to expend the necessary energies, simply to "reinvent the wheel" (unless, of course, the existing design of the wheel is unserviceable), simply in order to unnecessarily fill a void that is no longer empty. I know I wouldn't have!
Thomas Nelson has since approached me, asking me to write similar books on Daniel and Ezekiel. I declined. It can't be done. Unlike the Book of Revelation, a good portion of these books is occupied with historical narratives, for which it would be impossible to find more than one serious interpretation. Then again, when one comes to the prophetic portions of these books, there simply are not four discreet views, taken by commentators. There usually are two views--perhaps three, in some cases. I bring such things out in my recorded lectures on these books, but could never format a complete commentary on even two views of these books (at least I am not clever enough to figure out how to do so).
While I don't necessarily see the same defects in "Revelation: Four Views" that some reviewers have mentioned, I am painfully aware of other defects--worse ones than have been mentioned by any other reviewers.
One grievous defect is that the footnotes for the introductory material, in the final product, somehow got jostled and misnumbered. This would never be discovered by a reader, in all likelihood, but an author referenced in the notes might be alarmed to read that a comment made by a different person has been attributed to him, or that his wit and eloquence have been credited to another man. Of course, I didn't notice this defect until the book was in print, and I have always (in my own mind) blamed the mistake on typesetters. It is easy to put the onus for such embarrassments upon faceless drones whose real identities can never be brought to light.
Another defect (more obvious to any informed reader) is that I made a very foolish choice among various options when selecting a title for the fourth view of Revelation. I do mention, in the introductory material, that this view is difficult to label, and has been known by a variety of names, but the one I chose to place at the head of the fourth column of each comparative page was very ill-chosen. Thus the word "Spiritual" appears as the name of the fourth view, where the much more appropriate label "Idealist" should have been!
In a sense, the term "spiritual" may mislead people to think that this is the view that does all the "spiritualizing," while the other three stick more to a "literal" approach. This is not at all the case, nor is it the impression I intended to convey by the use of that term. What I was intending to communicate was the idea that this view sees the book as teaching spiritual lessons, rather than predicting historical events. However, even here, "Idealist" would have been much better--partly because it is the more-or-less "conventional" or "standard" label for the viewpoint, but also because the concepts depicted in the visions of Revelation, in this view, are not all "spiritual" concepts at all, but are "ideals" or "transcendent concepts." My bad. Look for a change in this, if there is ever a second edition. If you currently use the book as a teaching aid, please note this change--for your sake and that of your students.
Another weakness of the book (which would be remedied in a second edition) is that it does not include consideration of some fairly recent, and important, books on Revelation, which one would wish to include in such a volume. The omission of any mention of Beale's important commentary on Revelation (NIGCT) is a defect--but one for which I will accept no blame, since Beale's book was published two years after mine. On the other hand, I alone am to be blamed for not having been familiar with Richard Bauckham's "The Theology of the Book of Revelation," which was published four years before my book (I was made aware, too late, of Bauckham's book. Hank Hanegraaff brought it to my attention).
I might mention also that another book with a very similar title to mine ("Four Views of Revelation") was published by Zondervan the year following the publication of "Revelation: Four Views." I would imagine that this development may occasion some confusion of identity, among some. Readers who have not seen hard copies of either book, and are trying to decide between them will notice that Zondervan's book (edited by C. Marvin Pate), is a paperback, half the length, and considerably less expensive than my book. What may not be as obvious without one's actually opening the two books is that the similarity of the titles is pretty much the only similarity that exists between the two books. Pate has given us a useful book on Revelation--but it is useful in a different way. His includes chapters and responses from four authors, defending four views (two of the four are futurists, and there is no historicist--an editorial decision easily justified by the fewness of historicists today, and the variety of viewpoints within futurist camps). Thus it is another in what has become a justly popular genre of Christian literature that can be called "four-views books"--a genre created by Professor Robert Clouse, who himself edited four such volumes on as many Christian topics (war, eschatology, economics and the ordination of women). I have about 22 such books, on as many topics (by various publishers and editors) on my shelf, and most of them (including Pate's book) are more than worth the price of owning them.
It is a sign of Dr. Clouse's humility and graciousness that he, though recovering from a heart transplant at the time, actively encouraged me in this project and deigned to write the foreword to my book. "Revelation: Four Views" is not, however, a book of the "four-views" genre created by Dr. Clouse. It is a reference work; a verse-by-verse interpretive commentary (actually, four such commentaries, arranged in parallel columns) on the text of the Book of Revelation. Fifty other commentaries were read or consulted in the process of writing.
While writing, I limited myself to the reading of the commentaries of only one view at a time (I saw no sense in courting premature dementia!). Though I had already reached my present conclusions about the Book of Revelation before commencing the project, I actually sought to tentatively convince myself of each view serially, before writing the complete commentary for that view, and then I would do the same for the next view, etc.
Some reviewers have said that they are still not sure of my own view on Revelation (that would have to mean that they have never heard my lectures on the book). It was actually my design, in writing, to conceal my own leanings throughout, and to be personally convinced (so far as was possible) of each view as I wrote it. My own view, by the way, does not conform to any of the four all the way through Revelation, but draws from at least two of them.
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