2 out of 4 stars
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To quote the author of Roadmap to the End of Days, “The premise of this book is that there is information in scripture and history”. The emphasis is that the book is looking at history from a supernatural perspective. History is shown within the context of the Divine Plan, i.e., God’s plan for history and humanity. The book’s first look at history describes it as a glass maze. If we could view this historical maze from above, we could see different patterns, various paths and exits, even choices that could affect the time it would take to get to an exit. But the idea of paths, patterns and exits is predicated upon the idea that human history has a start and a finish; it is part of a linear cosmology. The exit of the maze is the end of human history.
The author mentions three different disciplines’ view of time, identifying them as Science, Philosophy and Religion view time. Only a small amount of detail provides an explanation of the difference between the three. The focus is on the Religion view time. He presents history as a biblical calendar consisting first of Creation time, then of Human history, and finally of the 7th millennium. Creation time is depicted as 13.74 billion years, Human history as 6,000 years, and the next 1000 years makes up the 7th millennium.
Most of the book focuses on human history, which begins with the life of Adam and continues to this day. The author attempts to show the correlation between scriptural history and world history and the patterns that occur in both. There is much attention given in breaking up the 6,000-year human history into segments of time that help to explain the patterns that reoccur through historical time. There are all manner of tables and examples used to show the similarities. To really take it all in, one would have to study them for some time.
As the title indicates, the book goes through all these exercises to introduce us to what he describes as "The End of Days". If it all goes as he predicts, this period will occur in a little more than 200 years. This will be followed by the Messianic Age, a time of peace and harmony, when all humankind will recognize the One God. This is not a spoiler, as you learn this early in the book.
To really take the thesis of this book seriously, one would have to have a belief system that corresponded to the view of the author. Things presented as fact might not be accepted as such. I liked learning about the Jewish religion, its structure and some of its beliefs. I enjoyed the presentation of the archaic conflicts and schisms that occurred in the family of Abraham. The book helped me understand a little about the current difficulty of achieving peace in the Middle East. It is an instructional book that could be used in a religion course. The genre of the book is Non-Fiction; if there is a sub-genre it would be Theology, as it would appeal to those who are students or followers of Judaism.
I d not think the author did an effective job of showing that scriptural history can show us a path to the end times. Although he often used phrases such as “it is absolutely guaranteed” that didn’t convince me. Again, this would require a leap of faith that another reader might be able to make. I was not. The premise of the book was validated, but the conclusions were not.
While there were no editorial errors that I could see, the writing was somewhat pedantic and scholarly. If I were reviewing this book as a textbook I might have a different viewpoint. My rating of this book is 2 out of 4 stars.
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Roadmap to the End of Days
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