Magog will attack Israel.

Because I want to get my current writing project done before the eclipse, I'm substituting this post for my weekly review.

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If we did a "heatmap" for the parts of the Bible that people read and talk about a lot in contrast to those that get very little attention, the book of Ezekiel would probably turn out to be one of those books that is read less often. At this point, some would begin to chastise us. It is all the word of God, and preachers should preach the whole council of God! This dynamic is why preachers are told in seminary to use the lectionary, which is a tool to make sure you cover all of Scripture in the course of three years.

However, before we get too hard on ourselves, there is a good reason why some parts of Scripture are read more often than others. The books of the Bible tell us they were written to people who have been dead for thousands of years. When you write something to an ancient audience, even though it is inspired, it is bound to have some parts that apply more directly and others that apply more indirectly. In other words, some parts will inevitably have more to do with "that time" than "all time." We can learn from all of it, but some of it is bound to be more directly relevant to them than to us.

Take the middle chapters of Isaiah, chapters 13-39. There is some very rich material in these chapters! At the same time, most of these chapters involves the condemnation of nations that no longer exist. For example, Isaiah 16 is a prophecy against Moab. Where is Moab again? It no longer exists. So it is no surprise that you don't hear a lot of sermons on Isaiah 16.

A good deal of Ezekiel feels that way too. There is some incredibly rich prophecy in there. Yet it also relates to a situation in the mid-500s BC. And there is some strange material in there too -- wheels within wheels, eating scrolls, laying on your side for months on end! The Holy Spirit makes certain parts of Scripture jump out at different people in different times, places, and situations. At other times, these passages may stand ready more in the background.

2. Ezekiel 38-39 is a passage somewhat like Isaiah 16. It talks about places like Magog and has puzzling names like Gog, Meshech, and Tubal. It is very difficult to align these names with any known historical figures or places. The battle that is pictured in these chapters similarly does not align with any known battles.

So it is no surprise that dispensationalists typically align these chapters with an end-times battle that has not yet happened. The Scofield Reference Bible in 1917 had this to say about Ezekiel 38:

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That the primary reference is to the northern (European) powers, headed up by Russia, all agree... The reference to Meshech and Tubal (Moscow and Tobolsk) is a clear mark of identification. Russia and the northern powers have been the latest persecutors of dispersed Israel, and it is congruous... that destruction should fall at the climax of the last mad attempt to exterminate the remnant of Israel in Jerusalem. The whole prophecy belongs to the yet future "day of Jehovah"... and to the battle of Armageddon... but includes also the final revolt of the nations at the close of the kingdom-age.

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During the days of the Soviet Union, it was easy to think that it would spearhead an attack of this sort, although many other enemies are mentioned: Persia, Cush, Put, Gomer, Beth-Togarmah. These names represent areas like Egypt and Europe. One could easily think that the picture is that of the whole world against Israel, much like Armageddon in Revelation 16 when the "kings of the whole world" come to battle against God's people. 

3. How do prophecy teachers integrate the attack of Magog into their understanding of the Tribulation and the end times? The answer is that there is no one agreed application. Some have seen this event as taking place before the rapture and the Great Tribulation. Others think it will happen soon after the rapture.

How might these scenarios go? 

The one I remember from Hal Lindsey years ago is that, because Ezekiel 39:9 says it will take seven years for them to use the (obviously wooden) weapons for firewood, it would have to take place before the Tribulation began. In fact, since Lindsey didn't think there would be much time for such things in the last 3.5 years of the Tribulation, he suggested that perhaps Magog would come up against Israel three and a half years before the Tribulation.

Perhaps for similar reasons, others suggest that this event will take place soon after the rapture but before the Tribulation begins. Then there are seven years to burn the weapons. This event might also then provide a mechanism for the Antichrist to arise.

Both of these scenarios have in common a military event where large portions of the world rise up against Israel. They throw everything they have at Israel but are defeated.

4. I often have told my Bible students over the years that we will know what the fulfillment of such things looks like after it happens. Frankly, I haven't found a "one-to-one" pattern of fulfillment between the Old and New Testaments. Often, it seems like the fulfillments are somewhat unexpected. In hindsight, we look back at a passage like Isaiah 53 and say, "Of course, the Messiah is going to suffer for the world." But as far as I can tell, not a single Jew had that thought prior to the death of Christ, including the disciples themselves.

The imagery of Ezekiel came to mind in 1948 when so many Arab countries rose up against Israel after it declared its independence in 1948 -- the "Arab-Israeli" war. But that was not the end of the world, no matter how clear it seemed at the time! That moment was not the specific fulfillment of Ezekiel 38-39. But this passage always comes to mind in prophecy circles whenever some force is in tension with Israel. And thus far, they have always been wrong. 100% failure rate.

In fact, a number of Arab nations have recognized Israel as a nation since then. Dispensationalists resisted Jimmy Carter for trying to bring peace between countries like Egypt and Israel. "You're wasting your time," they said (lifeboat). "You're coddling the enemy!" But there have now been over 50 years of peace between Egypt and Israel. Imagine if their "clarity" on prophecy had prevailed. They were just wrong. 100% failure rate.

Bottom line? 

It is alarming when the interpretations of passages like these run the risk of becoming self-fulfilling prophecies in modern politics. In a 1971 speech, Ronald Reagan as governor of California expressed the belief that the Soviet Union was Magog. When he then gave his "evil empire" speech as president in 1983, it is only natural to assume he had this imagery from Ezekiel 38-39 in the back of his mind. 

Thankfully, Reagan later collaborated when Gorbachev indicated he wanted to restructure the Soviet Union and move toward peace between the two countries. As it turned out, the Soviet Union of the twentieth century did not turn out to be Magog. But you can see how potentially dangerous it was for Reagan to have this equation in his head. By the grace of God, the notion did not lead him to assume that Russia could only be the enemy, because he was wrong. 100% failure rate on equations like these.

Today, we face similar danger when politicians with immense power assume that, say, Iran must always be the enemy or, for that matter, that the nation of Israel can never do anything wrong. The world is at great risk if our leaders do not make decisions based on the evidence and holding all nations to the standards of international law. Otherwise, we run the risk of losing opportunities for peace or looking the other way at injustice.

As mentioned in chapter 1, there have been many moments of good and bad times over the last 2000 years. We run the serious risk of unnecessarily making the times bad if we assume they must always be bad. We should work for the good of the world at all times and, when the bad presents itself, deal with it with wisdom and sound moral values. When we assume, it makes a mess out of you and me (or something like that).

5. So what is the right interpretation of Ezekiel...

We will be caught up in the air.

As I mentioned in the Preface, the 1972 movie, A Thief in the Night, begins with a husband being snatched out of his bathroom while he is shaving. His wife is left behind. This is the rapture, probably the most discussed event of the end times. Suddenly, all the Christians on earth are taken to be with Jesus, and the Great Tribulation begins.

When I was a boy in the 70s, the big debate in my circles was whether the rapture would happen before the seven-year Tribulation (pre-trib rapture), in the middle of it (mid-trib rapture), or at the end of it (post-trib rapture). But there was no question about whether there would be a rapture or a Tribulation. These were assumptions.

A quick look on YouTube and elsewhere will quickly reveal that there is a lot of debate today about whether the idea of a rapture is even biblical in the first place. The same goes for a seven-year Tribulation. What is all the debate about, you ask?

2. The core text is 1 Thessalonians 4:15-17:

"We who are living, who are remaining until the arrival of the Lord, will not precede those who have fallen asleep because the Lord himself will descend from heaven with a shout, with the voice of an archangel and with the trumpet of God, and the dead in Christ will rise first. Then we who are living, the ones remaining, together with them will be snatched in the clouds for the meeting of the Lord in the air. And thus always we will be with the Lord."

The key word in Greek is "will be snatched," "will be caught up," "will be taken." The word was translated into Latin as rapiemur. The Latin word is where the idea of a "raptor" dinosaur comes from, a dinosaur that Jurassic Park vividly pictured as "snatching" people to eat them. It has a sense of seizing or grabbing. 

So what's all the fuss about? Isn't it clear?

The questions are two fold. First, how literal is this picture. Isn't the air all around us? I reject this sort of "demythologizing" of the text -- attempts to make the text fit with our current conceptions of the world. They thought heaven was straight up. In Acts 1:9, Jesus ascends straight up into a cloud. Don't try to make the biblical text conform to our picture of the world. It wasn't written to us originally. It was written to them, and they pictured heaven as straight up. Get over it.

The more serious question is what happens after we are snatched up to meet Jesus in the air. A very good argument can be made that we meet Jesus in the air in order to come back down for the judgment of the world. Arguments have been made that his language of meeting Jesus is reminiscent of what happens when a dignitary comes to town. You go to the edge of town to escort him into the city.

Paul had a sense that both Christians would participate in the judgment of the world, including the judgment of angels. He tells the Corinthians that they would judge angels and the world (1 Cor. 6:2-3). Jesus tells the disciples that they will sit on twelve thrones judging the children of Israel (Matt. 19:28). The New Testament generally sees the kingdom of God as something that happens on a "new" earth (e.g., Rev. 21:1-2; Luke 13:29), but it is on earth.

1 Thessalonians 4 does not say where we will be forever with the Lord, but the most likely answer given the rest of the New Testament is that it will be on a renewed earth. Jesus will descend. The dead will rise re-embodied from the ground to meet Jesus. Then we will be "snatched up" as well.

The battle lines will be drawn. Those on Jesus' side will be on the right side of the battle lines. The judgment of the world will commence. Here it probably is significant that the word air refers to the sky just above the earth, not to heaven. That is to say, we are meeting Jesus right above the earth, not in heaven.

Paul's writings know nothing of a seven-year period between Jesus' arrival and the judgment. Nor do they know anything of a thousand year Millennium. It is an argument from silence, but it puts pressure on us to make sure we are interpreting the passages in Revelation correctly.  

3. Another set of passages that are often taken to be about the rapture are Matthew 24:36-41 and Luke 17:34-36. Here is what Matthew 24 says: 

"As they were in those days before the Flood -- eating and drinking, marrying and giving in marriage -- right up until the day Noah entered the ark, and they did not know until the Flood came and took them all, so also will be the arrival of the Son of Humanity. Then two will be in the field. One is taken, and one is left. As two women are grinding in the mill, one is taken and one is left." 

As Craig Keener and others have shown, this passage is actually saying something dramatically different than what we think of as the rapture. [1] If we follow the train of thought, those that the Flood takes away are not the saved, but the damned! The passage is not talking about the taking away of the righteous, but the sweeping away of those who are wicked.

It is the same in Luke's version. Luke 17:34-35 talk similarly about one being taken and one left. Then the disciples ask where they are taken. Jesus' response is that they are taken to where the vultures gather around dead bodies (17:37). So, far from supporting the dispensational understanding of the rapture, these verses picture the righteous remaining on earth in the coming kingdom.

4. What about Revelation 7:14? Does not Revelation picture the righteous in heaven, those who have been snatched up from the earth from the Great Tribulation? We will explore the idea of the Tribulation in chapter 5. For now, here is how Revelation 7 reads:

"After these things I looked and, behold, a great crowd whom no one was able to number from every nation and tribes and peoples and tongues standing before the throne and before the Lamb... And one of the elders answered, saying to me, 'Who are these who have put on white robes, and from where have they come?'

"And I said to him, 'Sir, you know.' And he said to me, 'These are the ones coming out of the great tribulation, and they washed their robes and they made them white by the blood of the Lamb'" (Rev. 7:9, 13-14).

It has been all too easy to see this group as the group of those who have been raptured from the earth. However, the picture is much more grim. How is it that they have come to the throne room of God? 

We find the most likely answer in the previous chapter -- the context...

[1] Michael Brown and Craig Keener, Not Afraid of the Antichrist: Why We Don't Believe in a Pre-Tribulation Rapture (Bloomington, MN: Chosen, 2019), 146. 

Things will get worse and worse.

I continue my current book project, trying to finish in time for the eclipse on April 8. Last night I finished the chapter on Israel becoming a nation, going on to explore the imagery of the fig tree in Mark 13 as well as the meaning of Romans 11 and "all Israel being saved."

On to the next chapter this morning.
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Growing up, we never stopped to think about our “philosophy of history.” Everyone just knew that things were going to get worse and worse until Jesus returned. 

Of course, if you look back at the last 2000 years, there have been good and bad times. Things haven't irrevocably been getting worse for 2000 years. But this is the "premillennial" mindset and the assumption of my childhood. In the days right before Jesus' return, things will get worse and worse and worse.

2. Let me pause to explain this millennial language. Revelation talks about a Millennium in chapter 20, a thousand year period with Christ reigning on earth. We will explore it further in chapter 9. 

There are three basic views of what this Millennium signifies. First, there are those who take it literally and believe it will happen after Jesus comes to judge the earth. These are premillennialists who believe that a literal Millennium is still to come. This is the order in which events happen in Revelation. There is a battle called Armageddon in which the forces of darkness are defeated (Rev. 16). Satan is bound for a thousand years, and Jesus reigns over the earth.

Throughout most of church history, amillennialism has been the dominant view. This view does not take the Millennium literally but sees it as the spiritual reign of Christ now no matter what might be going on politically with Christianity in the world. This was the dominant view throughout the Middle Ages and even by the Protestant reformers.

Postmillennialism is a view that largely coincided with the optimism of the 1700s and 1800s. In this view, the world was getting better and better in preparation for Christ's return. As it were, the church would prepare the way for the return of Christ. This optimism was more or less dashed by the wake up call of two world wars and a reminder that humanity still reminds capable of the worst atrocities of the past.

3. Most of us didn't have a name for it, but I grew up a "premillennial." Even today, most of the American church is premillennial. We believe that, right before Jesus returns, things will get worse and worse and worse. Then when it looks like there is absolutely no hope at all, Jesus will come back.

In the late 1800s, the preacher D. L. Moody used the image of a lifeboat to capture this perspective on the world. The world was like a ship that was sinking. We needed to get into the lifeboat of salvation. Clearly, he had drunk from the waters of dispensationalism and John Darby that we mentioned in chapter 1. 

From this perspective, there is no point in trying to save the world. It's going down like the Titanic. It has no hope. This view of the world thus has little time for trying to improve society. It downplays concepts like trying to help the poor or address social ills. There's no point in trying to address climate change. The world is burning, and there's nothing we can do about it. Just get in the boat and try to get as many other people as you can in the boat with you.

These are all largely the unarticulated assumptions of a worldview. The bridge is out. We need to warn people. This is no time to work on their car engines. Jesus is coming back any day!

4. Where does it come from in the Bible? Two places, chiefly. First, there are the passages in Mark 13 and Matthew 24 where Jesus talks about the lead up to the temple's destruction. Then there is of course the book of Revelation itself.

Note that this tone is not equally sustained everywhere in the New Testament. For example, the Gospel of John does not have this same urgency. The Pastoral Epistles (1 & 2 Timothy and Titus) do not have this urgency. Paul's early writings, which seem to expect Jesus to return within his lifetime, do not have the same feel as Mark 13. Even Luke's version of Mark 13 feels less urgent.

What makes the difference? The difference is when Mark is being written. Mark was arguably written around the time when the Romans surrounded and then destroyed Jerusalem. Nowhere is this clearer than when he inserts the words "let the reader understand" into Mark 13:14. This was arguably a note to the person reading Mark to a congregation to emphasize the point about the temple's desecration. Why? Quite possibly because it was in process or had recently happened at the time of writing.

We will return to the question of the temple in chapter 7. For the moment, we want to show that the "worse and worse" dynamic of Mark 13 especially applied to the time leading up to Jerusalem's destruction by the Romans in AD 70. It may apply to the end times as well, but let's hear those verses first for their original meaning...

Israel becomes a nation.

A decade or two ago, I wrote books by blogging through them. I'm not sure that this was a good practice, but it helped me picture an audience, which is a good thing when writing.

Several times over the last decades, I've also started a book on the end times. I've never finished it, of course. I have in mind a popular audience, particularly a Left Behind audience. I think I may have come to write a little too advanced for this audience. At the same time, my circles have become so populist that I wonder if my style has drifted from the more academic realm. 

In any case, I'm trying to shake myself loose on this project, so I thought I'd blog a little on one of the chapters.

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1. After nearly 2000 years in exile, Israel became a nation again in 1948. It sent shock waves through the prophecy world. Many believed that it signaled the beginning of the final generation of people on earth before Jesus would return and the end times would begin. Several passages in the Old Testament talk about the gathering of Israel back to its land. Here are a few:

Jeremiah 31:10: “Hear the word of Yahweh, O nations, and declare it among the coastlands from afar. And say, ‘He who scattered Israel will gather him, and keep him like a shepherd his flock.’”

Ezekiel 36:24: “I will take you from the nations, and I will gather you from all the lands, and I will cause you to come to your land.”

Ezekiel 37:21-22: “I am taking the children of Israel from the midst of the nations to which they have gone, and I will gather them from around and I will cause them to come to their land. I will make them one people on the hills of Israel. And one king will be king over them all. they shall no longer be two peoples, nor will they ever be divided into two kingdoms again.”

2. The problem with these three passages is that none of them were actually about today. They were all fulfilled already in 538 BC. In that year, the Persians allowed the Jews to return to their homeland and reestablish Israel as a political entity. Many of them did. In 516 the temple was rebuilt, and in the late 400s BC, the walls of Jerusalem were rebuilt. 

Jeremiah and Ezekiel both wrote during a time when Israel was in exile (more specifically, the southern kingdom of Judah). The Babylonians had come and pounded them. They had destroyed Jerusalem. They had destroyed the temple. They had taken the elite away to a far-off country. Some had gone down to Egypt to escape. Some even built a temple there for Yahweh. When Jeremiah and Ezekiel wrote, Israel was scattered.

Meanwhile, the Assyrians had scattered the northern kingdom of Israel a century and a half earlier. Israel had been divided into two kingdoms, a northern one called Israel and a southern one named Judah. In 722 BC, the Assyrians came in and wiped out the kingdom to the north.

So, Israel was scattered in the early 500s BC when Jeremiah and Ezekiel prophesied. They both predicted rightly that God would bring Israel back from the nations. And he did. In 539 BC Cyrus, king of Persia, pounded the Babylonians (see Isa. 45:1). The Jews returned.

3. So these passages were not, in the first place, about modern times originally. However, could they also be about modern times? In other words, a double meaning? 

We see the phenomenon of double meanings throughout the New Testament. Some have called this phenomenon a "sensus plenior" or taking the words of the Old Testament in a "fuller sense" than they were originally intended. A good example of this dynamic is when Jesus warns of the "abomination that causes desolation" in Mark 13:14. We'll return to this verse in chapter 7 for a fuller exploration.

This verse also was not originally about modern times. In fact, the verse has already had two fulfillments. The first was in 167 BC when the Syrians defiled the Jerusalem temple by offering a pig sacrifice on its altar and erecting an altar to Zeus within it. This was the original referent of Daniel 11:31.  

However, as we will see, the context of Mark 13:14 points instead to the defilement and destruction of the temple in AD 70. The beginning of Mark 13 makes it clear that the topic under discussion is when that temple will be destroyed. This event happened in AD 70.

Accordingly, this verse in Daniel has already had two fulfillments. Will it have a third? Time will tell. But before we go too far along that road, we should know that there is nothing that would lead us to expect another fulfillment. We will talk more about that question in chapter 7.

4. So, Old Testament passages apparently can have more than one fulfillment. Is Israel becoming a nation in 1948 another fulfillment of these verses? Far be it from me to say that it is not. God can fulfill Scripture however he wants to.

However, I am not sure that everyone who thinks so has actually reckoned with the fact that it has already been fulfilled. The first and primary fulfillment took place 2500 years ago. There is no need biblically for another fulfillment.

Someone might argue that some aspects of these passages remain unfulfilled. For example, not every Jew returned to Israel. On the other hand, it doesn't really say that every Jew would return. And, of course, far from every Jew has returned even today.

Israel did not generally have a king after the return either, and there was never a clear return of the northern kingdom to the land. We will think more about the fulfillment of Ezekiel in later chapters. Israel did briefly have a couple kings. In the early first century BC there were some kings of Israel, and Herod the Great was a king. Under Herod's rule, both north and south were united.

In later chapters, I will argue that Ezekiel cannot be precisely fulfilled because Hebrews and Revelation indicate God's glory will never fill an earthly temple again. This is not a problem because prophecy is often fulfilled in ways that were blurry to the prophet but that become clear in hindsight. Since we have the New Testament (and history), we know the precise fulfillments.
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Thanks. That helped get my juices flowing. Any suggestions about style or tenor are welcome!

Week in Review (March 23, 2024)

1. A lot of course writing this week again. Worked on a couple Kingswood microcourses. Here's one on Leading a Bible Study that I did the write-up on. Continued to work on a second-semester composition course, a Lifespan Development course, a Biology course, and more.

2. I largely paused my ads this week. My sense is that most sales occur from Thursday to Sunday, so I edited and turned a version of my ads back on yesterday. The ads do well. They get people to my landing page. People move from my landing page to a sales page. Good conversions there. A number of people even go into my Shopify check-out. It's only $9.99 for five e-books. I sent a couple follow-up emails to those who have already signed up too. 

No sales... well, except for some family members.

3. I pushed into the paperback versions this week. Most people still prefer paperbacks to ebooks. That may be part of my problem. You can ship paperbacks directly to people through Amazon at author cost. The problem is that it can take up to 10 days. 

I've rediscovered Lulu Press. They were the first press I self-published with. I thought Amazon would have put them out of business, but they have an impressive worldwide printing network. I had high hopes they would be the ticket. The quality of book product they facilitate is better than KDP on Amazon, IMO.

BUT their shipping price is outrageous, IMO. AND they take as long or longer than Amazon to ship. My sense is that most people in my shoes keep a stock of their paperbacks and ship them themselves. This of course would require me to buy lots of copies of my books well in advance of selling them without any guarantee they would actually sell. I could do this and may slowly stock up over time. By the way, I could do this with books I have written with conventional publishers as well, selling them through Shopify.

3. One of the more interesting things to happen this week was an inquiry about translating my systematic theology into French. The question was whether I would be interested in giving a certain mission group in Africa permission to work on a translation. Of course, I am. But I also indicated that I could have it in French by Monday, given the wonders of AI translation. I may go ahead and do that even if they do their own.

I continue to be very proud of this book. I feel like it is more accessible than most theologies. I think it is more practical. I think it is more real. And there just aren't many Wesleyan options out there.

4. I have about 100 people in my Schenck Book Club. They signed up, so I send them a couple emails a week so far. The course I took suggested that three emails a week is not onerous because people only read them if they hit them at a good moment. I promised them a couple more books by Pentecost. These are 1) novella #4 in the Gabriel sequence: Gabriel's Diaries: The Earliest Church and 2) Explanatory Notes on Acts 1-12. So I have about 7 weeks to get those finished. But will anyone read them???

5. I don't know if I ever shared my four-prong marketing strategy for this year. 

• Self-publishing -- this is the core business, selling on Amazon and now Shopify
• YouTube videos -- video atoms live here
• Udemy courses -- the videos assemble into courses here; books support the courses
• Patreon -- videos also make their way here for followers

It's still a trickle, but I probably bring in $250 a month from these venues. Obviously, I'd like to see that number in the thousands but oh well.

I hope you find this mildly amusing. Have a great week!

Week in Review (March 16, 2024)

I have always hoped that the reason why my books haven't sold as well as some others was marketing. I'm sure this is not entirely the case. :-)

After over $100 in marketing (really hardly anything), I had only two sales through Facebook last weekend. That's an $80 loss on the ad itself. I was hoping it was because it wasn't a payday, but thus far this weekend, the ad hasn't garnered any more sales even among the 50 or so people who signed up for my email list.

Yesterday I started running another ad with another bundle. This is 5 e-books for $9.99. The books are:

• Gabriel's Diary: The Enthronement
• Gabriel's Diary: The Incarnation
• Gabriel's Diary: The Creation
• Explanatory Notes on Mark's Passion Week
• Explanatory Notes on Jesus' Resurrection

Same setup as the other. Free ebook to introduce you to the series which then leads you to the offer of four more ebooks for only $9.99. Five books in all for only $10. Pretty good deal! 

I didn't have the time to work too extensively on this ad sequence. The ad gets a good reaction (although at way too high a cost per click), and the conversion rate for getting people on my email list is very good. But once on the list, they don't seem to download the free ebook or purchase the bundle. I don't know if a larger ad spend would make any difference.

I'll confess that I find it very discouraging. I know people who've written pretty trivial stuff who are selling 1000s on their personality. I mean books that have almost nothing in them. They sell because people like the author as far as I can tell. It's their magnetism. I mean, I have some charisma, but I don't have THAT x factor.

2. A good work week. I did have an encounter that had me chuckling a little. Someone seemed to take umbrage at our sales pitch. They let us know in no uncertain terms that their online courses were excellent, their faculty excellent, and that we could learn some things from the way they did online. Maybe so. I don't know. It felt a little out of nowhere to me.

Academics are funny people. Sometimes you have to be able to laugh at yourself.

Weeks in Review (March 9, 2024)

1. Time for my weekly check-in and journal of sorts. Work continues to boom. Working with more and more high schools and more and more colleges. Of the Wesleyan colleges, only Kinsgwood is working with us currently, I've expressed earlier my sadness that so much good is being done around rather than with our Wesleyan schools. I anticipate a day when we will contribute to the success of schools in direct competition with our Wesleyan schools even though we tried and tried.

Kingswood is the big exception. These last two weeks, microcourses on Urban Church Planting with Troy Evans and Apologetics with Adam Blehm dropped. I did the write-up for the Apologetics microcourse. So many good things are underway with Kingswood in partnership with Campus. It could have been that way for all the Wesleyan schools.

2. A week ago I launched Ken Schenck Books. Eventually, I hope it will be a one-stop shop for all my books, both that I have published officially with publishers and all the books I have self-published. This may require me to stock up and ship my own books, although I can ship through Amazon. The problem is how long Amazon takes to deliver author copies. It's like 10 days.

About 6 months ago, I started a course on self-marketing your own self-published books. Unless you're a well-promoted author (which is a select few), there's no money to be made with the normal system of publishing. And there's no money to be made with simple self-publishing through Amazon. Similarly, simple advertising on Facebook is pointless. Unsurprisingly, the system is rigged for Amazon and Facebook to make money off your futile dreams.

It remains to be seen whether my new venture will go anywhere. One week in, it is not encouraging. I write on too deep and detailed a level for the average audience, which of course is where the sales primarily are. Here is a brief tour of my venture.

3. The venture starts with Facebook ads. Above is one that has received 154 likes and 26 shares. It has been seen by about 4000 people on an ad spend of less than $20 a day. That ad spend is probably too low -- it takes money to make money, after all.

As you can see, I then send them to a landing page where I try to get them to sign up for a free ebook and join the Ken Schenck Club, cleverly named. Over the last couple months, I wrote a book for just that purpose, The Spiritual War for the World. You can get the ebook version for free if you put your email in the box.

About 150 people have clicked on the ad link on Facebook. Facebook keeps begging me to let it set the parameters of the ad, but I tried to target people who like theology and philosophy. Also, I tried to limit it to Facebook and Instagram feeds rather than watering it down everywhere in Meta's universe. Then about 50 people have given me their emails. A 33% conversion rate isn't bad for that part.

4. Once you give me your email, of course, I try to sell you on getting three additional ebooks for $9.99. These are previous (e)books I've written in upgraded form: Chats about God, The Problem of Evil and Suffering, and Who Decides What the Bible Means? 

Out of the 4000, only 2 have made it that far. Quite discouraging. Hours and hours of effort. Probably $1500 in set-up. I haven't given up. In many ways, this is expected. But I can't exactly say I'm in Joyland.

For those who signed up but haven't gone for the ebook versions, I've created a paperback offer where I will send them some $44 dollars worth of Amazon books for $19. Since at this point it will take over a week for the paperbacks to arrive, I'm throwing in the ebooks to read while they're waiting. On paper, it's an $80 deal for less than $20. Less than 24 hours in, no takers yet.

The books are of course on heavy topics. Stay tuned. On Friday (d.v.) I plan to unveil another book combo with another FB ad. Maybe novellas will do better than the ontological argument and the problem of evil.