Transformative Personal Application:Every chapter asks and answers the question, What does it mean to hear and keep this part of Revelation and thereby experience its promised blessing?

Third biggest is tracing that part as an earlier part, and its connections to Christian fringes like the Divine Science movement of the late 19th century and the New Thought of the early 20th, that included places like Unity. Thankfully, trouble is not continuous in our lives. We also go through seasons that are peaceful and pleasant. But life does not always go as we would like, and we need to be prepared for the times when it gets messy. And that is what you will find in this volume. A wonderful biography. And a plan with steps to help you grow in your own holiness. Matthew Kelly likes to use the phrase “Become the best version of yourself” because when he challenged people to become ‘saints’ they said they could not do that. But they would work at becoming the best version of themselves. Carlo challenged the people he knew, those early years of online evangelization. And he challenges us today. Further on in that preface it states: I approached this book with a strong bias, believing that the central tenets of the prosperity gospel are a perversion of God's message in scripture and Jesus' salvation purpose. Kate Bowler does an excellent job of outlining the historical roots of the prosperity gospel, and showed me it is much older than I had thought, and that the economic blessings it promotes really took hold in the context of the economic boom following World War II. Before that, the same founding ministers (people like Oral Roberts and Rex Humbard) had been more focused on physical healing services. And what about that notoriously controversial mark of the beast (Rev. 13:16–17; 16:2; 19:20)? Guthrie views it not as a physical mark, such as a microchip, tattoo, or vaccine, but as a spiritual one that distinguishes those whose loyalty is to Christ from those who have pledged their allegiance elsewhere. Likewise, she sees Armageddon not as a physical battle, but as a spiritual one culminating in Christ’s final judgment and victory of Satan. New Enthusiasm for RevelationThe book was certainly dense. I may have a general religion undergraduate degree, but many of the names and religious movements were new to me. That said, Bowler is an excellent writer, and this was very well researched. And fair. Prosperity Gospel stalwarts should have trouble taking offense. Her organization was fairly straightforward. The many charts and pictures (mostly) helped me to grasp what was happening. Another great read from the Catholic Truth Society, and excellent volume in the CTS Biographies Series. In some ways, this review hasn’t even touched upon what Dr. Bowler describes as the four themes of the prosperity gospel: faith, wealth, health, and victory. But I have chosen to highlight what stood out most to me, perhaps because it was less familiar until I actually read Blessed. As Guthrie implies, the discerning reader can draw fairly confident conclusions about her hermeneutical perspective. She interprets the images in Revelation as symbolic, noting the influence of earlier biblical passages in our understanding of the text, as well as how they corresponded to the realities of first-century believers. The symbols are “not a system of codes waiting to be matched for meaning with people and events in our current day. Rather, they have theological and spiritual meaning pertinent to the first readers [that] . . . must inform how we interpret their meaning for us today” (19). To interpret these images symbolically is not to minimize the truth of the text, but to interpret according to its genre, recognizing that John spoke in metaphor and analogy to describe unseen realities in terms we can somewhat understand.

Blessed, by bestselling author and speaker Nancy Guthrie, provides individuals and small groups a friendly yet theologically robust guide to understanding the book of Revelation.This is a fascinating look at the roots and major influences shaping the so-called prosperity gospel. The best known current practitioners are Joel Osteen, T.D. Jakes and Joyce Meyer, and the oversimplified summary is that God wants you to be healthy, wealthy and victorious in this life over every problem and challenge. She studies the cultural stories we tell ourselves about success, suffering, and whether (or not) we’re capable of change. She wrote the first and only history of the American prosperity gospel—the belief that God wants to give you health, wealth, and happiness—before being unexpectedly diagnosed with stage IV cancer at age 35. While she was in treatment and not expected to survive, she wrote two New York Times bestselling memoirs, Everything Happens for a Reason (and Other Lies I’ve Loved) and No Cure For Being Human (and Other Truths I Need to Hear). After years of being told she was incurable, she was declared cancer-free. But she was forever changed by what she discovered: life is so beautiful and life is so hard. For everyone. Vern S. Poythress, Distinguished Professor of New Testament, Biblical Interpretation, and Systematic Theology, Westminster Theological Seminary Understand the Book of Revelation:Helps readers make sense of Revelation’s unique apocalyptic symbolism, visual imagery, and Old Testament allusions This is a wonderful book. It will encourage and challenge any reader. I cannot wait to reread it with my own children. It was one of three new volumes from the Catholic Truth Society in February of 2021. They are all excellent. But as a father of four this was a very touching and moving read.