Spiritual fiction – Page 4

Snippets of The Prodigal Band Trilogy: Biblical References Series, Episode Two—Gnawing of “Bones Forever.”

I had originally called this post “Episode One.” Sorry about that, it is Episode Two.

The previous Biblical Reference post here about “weeping and gnashing of teeth” was used to point out that the evil satanic character Corion would mete out retribution onto those he commanded if they did not carry out his will. But Corion never says anything about ‘gnashing’ of teeth on the bones of those wayward minions—he uses the term “gnaw” and “gnawing.” While both ‘gnashing’ and ‘gnawing’ mean pretty much the same thing—teeth scraping on bones or whatever—I used the term ‘gnaw’ because it is more commonly used. Everyone knows about the gnawing of rodents on wood, on nuts, on gardens, on leftover food such as dog or cat food; gnawing is why rodents have those sharp fanged front teeth that they have.

There are only two references to ‘gnaw’ or ‘gnawing’ used in the Bible; I learned this by using Strong’s Concordance, which defines both in a similar way as it defines ‘gnashing,’ which is only found in the New Testament referring to Christ’s “weeping and gnashing of teeth” quotes in Matthew and Luke Gospel verses. But both ‘gnaw’ in Zephaniah 3:3 and ‘gnawing’ in Revelation 16:10 make the same connotations, except that while in Zephaniah the ‘gnaw’ is on bone, in Revelation the ‘gnawing’ is on the tongue ‘for pain.’ Zephaniah’s ‘gnaw’ on bone refers to evil leaders within Jerusalem that “are evening wolves; they gnaw not the bones till the morrow.” (KJV) One could compare the evil Corion to these evil leaders in Jerusalem. So one could say that Corion’s ‘gnaw on bones forever’ has the same connotation as Zephaniah’s use of the word. However, in Revelation 16:10, the gnawing is on the “tongues for pain” and the ones doing the ‘gnawing on their tongues for pain’ are likely those who refused to repent of their deeds in the Revelation time-frame, which could mean either Corion’s minions had their tongues gnawed on by Corion or the evil minions gnawed on their own tongues. In The Prodigal Band Trilogy, the connotation is that Corion or his Demons did the ‘gnawing,’ but not one tongues, but bones. Forever.

The term ‘gnaw on bones forever’ is used several times in all three novels that make up the trilogy, and all refer to Corion’s gnawing on bones of either wayward minions or on the forces of Good, such as the angels called The Tooters who work for The Creator, God.

Continue reading “Snippets of The Prodigal Band Trilogy: Biblical References Series, Episode Two—Gnawing of “Bones Forever.””

Snippets of The Prodigal Band Trilogy: Biblical References Series, Episode One—“The Outer Darkness, Where There Will Be Weeping and Gnashing of Teeth.”

Of all the Bible verses spoken by Jesus Christ Himself I have been aware of for many years, this and other verses in Matthew and Luke speaking of “the outer darkness, where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth” has stuck with me for many, many years. I figured the “outer darkness” referred to Hell and this “weeping” by those who were in Hell made sense. Who wanted to die and go to Hell? It was the “gnashing of teeth” part I had no idea about.

The word “gnashing” in the dictionary means this: to bite or chew by grinding the teeth together, striking the teeth together by grinding.

A similar word I used often in The Prodigal Band Trilogy, “gnaw,” has this meaning: to bite, chew on, or erode with the teeth. The word “gnaw” usually refers to rodents chewing or “gnawing” on wood, nuts, plants, or whatever rodents gnaw on for food or shelter, prominently with large and long upper front teeth. I use “gnaw” mostly referencing the devil character, Corion, as well as his Demons, warning his evil minions to do what he asks, “…or I will gnaw your bones forever.” In Hell, or the Abyss in which he resides (on God’s or The Creator’s orders), which is where Corion’s evil minions will find themselves after judgment.

Note: Since those who do the will of the devil character will find themselves in Hell anyway unless they repent of their evil, and Corion would gnaw on them anyway, why is Corion even threatening these folks if they do not do his will? Because these folks worship Corion and believe this evil devil is in fact god! So they force themselves to do these evil deeds not realizing he is only deceiving them. Corion, the Satan of this trilogy, is in fact the father of lies and deception within the trilogy.

This post is on the “gnashing of teeth” reference; the “gnawing” on bones forever reference will appear next week. But the themes and context are similar though the words are somewhat different. Gnaw and gnawing are used once each in the Bible, in the Old Testament Book of Zephaniah and the New Testament Book of Revelation.

Continue reading “Snippets of The Prodigal Band Trilogy: Biblical References Series, Episode One—“The Outer Darkness, Where There Will Be Weeping and Gnashing of Teeth.””

About the Prodigal Band Trilogy-Main Characters-Part 5: the Good

MERRY CHRISTMAS, EVERYONE!

If there is a large number, or a cabal, of evil-doers in my Prodigal Band Trilogy, then there has to be those on the side of good. Good people, good spirits, good angels, starting with God, known in my series as:

Continue reading “About the Prodigal Band Trilogy-Main Characters-Part 5: the Good”

Merry Christmas to All Followers and Readers of This Site and My Books!

Remember–Jesus is the Reason for the Season! Be Blessed!

And don’t forget to download my FREE PDF e-book The Prodigal Band here. You can read more about the book here.

Will post more about my book series Tuesday or Wednesday. Cheers!

About The Prodigal Band Trilogy: The Theme-Good Triumphs over Evil

I began writing a book that would eventually work its way into three books that make up the Prodigal Band Trilogy–Battle of the Band, The Prophesied Band, and The Prodigal Band–back in the late 1960s in diary form as the characters morphed from just a group of guys in a gang or a clique, with or without girlfriends, living on Long Island-then-New York City, to rock musicians with or without girlfriends, living in England. Why the morph? Because of my own interest in rock music as well as actually having participated in a local band for a few months, and having gone to England in 1970, as well as the notion I had the rock bands from England were more worthy overall than American ones (and Brit bands were my fave bands anyway.) These topics have been discussed in previous posts here and on my blog.

The names and looks of the characters were created in the mid-60s with other characters being created in the mid-80s, which was when I started getting serious about the books, which was still just one book novel. But instead of a diary to write stuff that would later make up the book(s), I just wrote on notepad paper with pen.

Read the rest here.

The Reality of Why I Wrote My Books–I Had To.

Divine inspiration–something!–caused me to go outside within the beauty of star-surging sky around midnight in the early 90s and receive a “message” to finally get those rock band characters out of my head and onto paper, and then computer. God? Angels? Spirits? Because it was not the devil or demons–the devil or demons would not want me to create a trilogy about a rock band fighting evil (and, after a miraculous event in 1997, accept Christ as Savior!).

Now my characters could not be goody-two-shoes-types or boys who could never do wrong or only sin occasionally. They could not be boys like we have out here in far west Texas that claim to strictly follow the Bible and wear jeans or regular pants and button-down shirts, having sisters and mothers that wear nothing but long skirts and their hair up in a knot…Mennonite, but not Mennonite. Folks, does a Christian writer have to write fiction only with “God-fearing” (or not) characters?

Read the rest here.

The Prodigal Band Trilogy: The Spiritual

Moving on to the spiritual aspect of why I wrote these books…

In the fall of 1993, at night with the myriad of star-shine visions outside the house at night in the mountains, a view of the heavens, thinking some divine entity was hovering above, a thought came into my head, in my own voice, telling me that now was the time to begin to compile all the character and theme and setting and story and all the stuff I had carried in my head since the mid-60s. The time to write the novel was nigh….

Since I was raising a toddler daughter at the time, I had limited time to do this work, but I managed to get the rough draft manuscript done by the summer of 1994 only to have to go back to work teaching secondary math–in El Paso, in what was then a ‘gang land high school’ and put up with not only gangster students but a principal that couldn’t handle gangster students (the ONLY time I noticed serious discipline in the hallways was the one week this so-called principal was at a conference in Washington, DC! During that week, the assistant principals and security guards were actually able to do their jobs, and not one student of mine tried sneaking out of class or wanted to roam the halls…the only time this happened!) After the kids went to bed at night, when I wasn’t grading tests or whatever, I edited the rough-rough-rough draft. I quit the teaching job in June, 1995.

That summer I began the actual rough draft on someone else’s Macintosh computer, from 6 am until 8 am, when I had to go back home to home school my kids. In fall of 1995 I bought my own Mac computer with System 7.5. When I had time, I finalized the first novel, Battle of the Band, which was completed in 1996–after a writer/retired teacher friend of mine Beta Edited the novel twice.

And what she told me through her proof-reading/editing caused me to think maybe divine intervention WAS at work in this first book:

Read the rest here.

Download the FREE The Prodigal Band PDF e-book here.

Finally! The Prodigal Band FREE PDF Download is Available!

Again, FINALLY! After working for a month thanks to BlueHost’s screw-up and my own pissy reaction to this screw up, and a week of setting up this site having almost no tech background at all (since html went by the wayside years ago), I, by, indeed, the Grace of God, have finally gotten my finalized The Prodigal Band FREE PDF registered at the Library of Congress yesterday (April 30, 2018) and the site set up yesterday afternoon and evening.

Further, I “cleaned up” the manuscript text some. Thanks to Allyson Kennedy of Authoring Arrowheads I was motivated to get rid of SOME of the cussing through my characters (but not all of it…I want my characters I created as a teenager to be seen as real people, and don’t most folks cuss every now and then, including Christians?), and wanted to clean up some of the “sex scenes” because, after all, someone under the age of 21 might want to download the book–I really don’t want to be sued by their parents for ‘indecent exposure’! So that, instead of “so-and-so” did “such-and-such” to “so-and-so” in a more graphic way, I changed it to “so-and-so” “made love” or “had sex” or “lit into” or some other much less graphic type language.

Why? “Edify” as the Apostle Paul wrote in Ephesians 4:29. It’s in the Bible.

Generally I do not assign a “genre” to my books. Allyson Kennedy, for instance, writes Christian fiction. Now, anyone can read Christian fiction, but I assume mostly Christians read Christian fiction. I am Christian, but my “mission from God” (and I cam NOT stealing from the movie Blues Brothers here!) is to write to NON-Christians. Thus, I would call this e-book (and my two printed books Battle of the Band and The Prophesied Band) within the “spiritual” genre if there is such a thing. It was GOD, not me or my parents or ancestors, that gave me the talent and motivation to write these books.

Here is the link to the page from where one can download the FREE PDF (I could link directly to the e-book for download, but below the link is the entire Prologue to read, and then one can decide if they want the FREE e-book or not):

The Prodigal Band FREE PDF