Why You Need to Read The Lost View of Prophecy!

The first time a fancy-suit preacher stood in front of me and held up a professional-looking chart showing the seven-year tribulation timeline with the marriage supper of the lamb at the top, the rapture at the beginning on the left and the millennium on the right I was fascinated.  The year was 1969 and I was thirteen.   Where had this man come up with this?, I thought at first.  But then the fact that he was the first pastor I had known and the founder of the church I attended took over and “appeal to authority,” a logical fallacy I was clueless about, took me in.

As a child I had tried to read my Bible every day and thought I had read through it a few times but never had this chart’s events entered my mind in the way they were on this seven-year tribulation theory.   Always an avid reader, I devoured The Late Great Planet Earth  as soon as I laid hands on it.  It was a great read and wonderful book.

But nagging doubts plagued me as I heard so many people in authority say so many contradictory things.    Are there signs that appear before His coming or could he come any moment?   If there are signs how could imminent return be true?    Who are the people left behind on earth during the tribulation?  Jews or not?   Is there a separate plan of salvation for the Jews and the Gentiles? And what group of people will populate the millennium?   Is the earth totally consumed or just burned at the surface before the new earth?

At Bible college I took a course in Systematic Theology,  in which I was taught dispensationalism.  When it came to this the professor could not teach it with authority.  But, when it came to this subject for the first time he could not teach this with confidence.  He taught of all the differing theories on the end times timeline and presented the school’s official version with somewhat of an apologetic smirk that showed he was not convinced.

After a while being saturated with contradictory elements I lost interest totally in this subject and relegated it to a place of “only God knows for sure.”

Fast forward a few years.  I marry Robert Franklin.  He says he is writing a book.  Guess what it is about? Oh, no. You can imagine my enthusiasm isn’t high. Two decades later he finishes the book.  As a former English teacher I am drafted to edit.

Here is what this book has done for me.  It has restored my faith in the entire Word of God being understandable when you take it as it is written.  I have learned exactly how ideas have been invented out of thin air, so to speak.  These have permeated Christian teaching and  clouded the scriptures from our minds accepting what it really says.  The Lost View of Prophecy lays out in historical perspective what was believed at the beginning, how it has changed, and how each change came about.  Further, it exposes the error in them all.

My faith has been strengthened through reading this book as I worked on the editing.  I can now be more “ready to give an answer to every man that asks a reason for the hope that is within me. “

Book Published Last Night!

Whew!  Robert and I stayed up until 1 a.m. going over last minute formatting and language changes in the book and after several decades of him thinking, researching and planning The Lost View of Prophecy is finally published to amazon.com Kindle ebook format.   A print book is also in the works for  later but for now we are going to be happy with this accomplishment.

After some deliberations and investigation we decided to enroll in the KDP select program since he is a new author and the exposure and marketing tools included with KDP Select are free so in the end that was the deciding factor. 

The Lost View of Prophecy is free to download April 15 & 16.  If this book blesses you we humbly ask that you write a positive review on amazon.com.

Coming Very Soon to Kindle!! Lost View of Prophecy

From Encourager to Editor and Typesetter

The realization came to me last month that instead of hiring out the book editing and typesetting (short for desktop publishing/design work) I am fully capable of doing this myself to save our family thousands of dollars.   Once again I embrace fear of the unknown and press on with the full knowledge that God has graciously prepared me to this task in these ways, just to name a few:

1.  Majored in English, Speech and Bible (triple major) Bible knowledge is essential for this project.

2. Taught English at the secondary level for two years.

3.  Worked in corporate training where I learned computer software and taught it to other adults.

4.  Worked as tech support at MS supporting MS Publisher among other products.

5. Homeschooled two children ten years, which included grammar, writing, and a lot of quality literature.

6.  I read a lot of books.   Enough said.

But, of course, this is a bit broad and I need more detail on specifics to this task. I found The Copyeditor’s Handbook by Amy Einsohn to be more than enough to fill in a few gaps. And after some research found that QuarkXpress has a free 30 day test drive that includes training materials. Armed with these I move forward.

When I reminded my husband, our author, about this background he was happy to let me do this.   But I admit I was reluctant.   While resisting this nudging from inside I read a best-selling Christian fiction book by a famous author.  Within two chapters I found two obvious copy editing errors.   I can do this job.   I was born for it.

2012 Resolution: Keep Phone

The year 2011 began with a Blackberry which I could not stand because my cheek put people on hold in mid conversation frequently.   Since I used this exclusively for my long distance calls and my husband was working on the other side of the world until October even he encouraged me to scrap it for a new one before the contract was up.   I did this by using one of my children’s phone upgrades.    This,  once discovered by  said child who was using, I think, the very first blackberry ever to come out and had only basic functionality, did not go over well with him.

Then with this shiny new Samsung  phone in hand we flew to D.C. for a family vacation with DH.  On our first day  of sightseeing I set it down and walked away from it at the Smithsonian.  Of course, I had bought the insurance and used it to get a replacement.    This was a Samsung something or other smartphone.   I need the GPS.  Soon I dropped this and made a nice cracking effect on the screen.   Then one day it disappeared into the no man’s land which exists in our house and into which all our socks also escape.   After two months I still do not know where this phone is.

I won’t bore you with the details any more but now that I have an Iphone with a case I am going to keep my phone where my friend Michelle keeps hers.  In my bra.

Book Title #563

When Robert started writing his book, he would come to me often with a new title page hot off the printer with his latest title. Encouraging wife that I am,   I yawned.    Feeling like writing the book was more important than choosing a title on a book not yet completed, it didn’t seem to matter.  Well, now that we are nearly complete and in the early stages of editing we had a long brainstorming session last night.    Here are three of the rejects:

Fathers Know Best:  What the Early Church Leaders Believed about Prophecy

Raptured from Wrath: Ante-Nicene Original Premillenialist End Times View of Prophecy

Behold! Wrapture, Wrath and the Sixth Seal: What does the Bible Really Say?

Moving from a description of the book’s contents to copy which sells the book,  we have been inspired by Peter Bowerman’s book, The Welll-Fed Self Publisher.   His title really does put the sizzle on the steak, so to speak.  His subtitle continues on the promise of the title, “How to Turn One Book into a Full-time Living.”   Since neither of us has a real “job” right now this title got me immediately and we are taking turns reading through this detailed manual on how to self publish a book successfully.   The resources revealed  and how-to steps  are giving us a serious plan to work through.  Other books on the subject seem to bear more of a brand of self-promotion and hold back on the realities and nitty gritty details that need to be addressed in such an endeavor.

For now we have chosen a title, but I am not at liberty to reveal it yet.  And I am hoping we can improve on it before we must make a final decision.   And in the process we can set aside some of the language to be used on the other important.

Now onto my editing job.  Chapter Ten awaits.

Kelsey’s Robin

The Self Publishing Maze

My dear husband has been home for over two months cloistered four 8-10 hours per day upstairs in his study finishing a book that started several decades ago.  This work has morphed a few times from one form to another and is now, we hope, in the final stage of polishing before we send it to a professional editor to prepare it for publishing.

In determining how to get this thing to the market we have been reading and discussing the ins and outs of self publishing since June, when we discovered the Complete Guide to Self Publishing by Marilyn Ross and Sue Collier, which, though somewhat outdated, still gave us the full scope of what we could expect during this phase.   We probably will go with using a consultant to guide us through to create our own publishing firm and do the marketing, web site etc.

With me retired from homeschool this year I have had time to do some editing and research while Robert finishes up the book itself.

Why take the trouble to go this route?   He has spent decades in his spare time writing and researching this compilation of what the early church fathers of Chrstianity wrote about the subject of prophecy. Recently, POD or Print on Demand,  Ebooks, and Amazon now seem to level the playing field in the world of publishing so that independent authors can use their wits and own resources to write and publish without going through the large traditional publishing houses.  However,   POD,  while  very low cost also carries the greatest stigma associated with it since works printed in this manner go often go through no real editing.  Ugh.

Then you have subsidy or vanity publishers, which charge hefty sums to publish for you, with a varying degree of accompany services related to design, editing, marketing, rights and so on.  But again, the book itself carries the brand of a “vanity” or subsidy publishing company.

In going independent, we keep the rights, more profits, have control of pricing, etc. but pay for this with all of the reponsibilities of getting it copy ready, finding the printer, distribution channel and marketing as well.  Why go through all of this?

In taking charge of all of this with the aid of a consultant we can get the book on the market, maintain all rights, and do the marketing which we would have to do if we went with one of the large publishing houses anyway.   So that is the bottom line.   We have to do the marketing ourselves  regardless of who prints the book , and the playing field has become more even over the past decade with social networking, blogs and so forth.   As the publisher we can find the resources to produce the best quality work and  will keep much larger percentage of the book sales.  Kindle and other ebook services  make the problem of obtaining print copies and  shelf space in physical stores less problematic than it once was.  So it may be that our long delay of two decades has been beneficial.

This will all become more realized in our world soon as the book should be ready to leave our hands next week.  Stay tuned.  I am only on Chapter 8 of 20 Chapters but do believe this to be an important work  he has done.