Christian Literature & Book Reviews

Father Elijah: An Apocalypse
By Michael D. O'Brien

The story revolves around one Father Elijah, a monk of Jewish birth, who had survived the horrors of the Holocaust and become a rising political star in only to have his life torn apart again by the death of his pregnant wife at the hands of a suicide bomber aboard an Israeli bus. He had then turned away from the world and found his peace with God in the monastic life where his only outside contacts were through his academic interest in archeology.

It is his archeological interest that acts as the pretext to invite Father Elijah out of his monastic hideaway to enter the world of the Vatican and a place once again on the world stage. The Catholic Church is under attack on all quarters as the growing hostility of the secular world has become more overt. A charismatic presence has risen on the world scene who promises to bring a long awaited peace all while he tries to subsume every religious movements under his direction. The aging pope and his most trusted advisors wish Father Elijah to meet with this new leader and try to ascertain whether he is, as the pope suspects, the prophesied man of perdition or if he can be brought from darkness to the light of the Gospel.

This mission soon lures Father Elijah into a sophisticated chess game where the stakes are the fate of both the papacy and the world. As the object of his overtures becomes more clearly controlled by demonic forces, the monk soon finds himself open to temptations of power, fame, and even of the heart. To face the antichrist, Father Elijah must first learn to face his own fallen nature and trust in God completely for his strength.

The Secret Scroll
By Ronald Cutler

Since the overwheming response to Dan Brown's novel The Da Vinci Code, the real mystery is why there have not been more authors duplicating Brown's commercial success with their own "Jesus du jour" efforts. It seems we should by now be inundated with best sellers that create their own Brand X Christ by inventing a "history" to suit their needs, declaring it as fact in the preface, setting it in a halfway decent page turner, and then watching the cash roll into the coffers. Thankfully, the lucrative payoff for Brown has not been that easy to duplicate.

Yet since the potential financial reward is so high, the unique success of Brown's venture does draw authors to try their hand at catching lightning in a bottle. A new contender is Ronald Cutler's The Secret Scroll - a novel with all the usual ingredients: secret societies, architectural referneces, cloak-and-dagger priests, any Jesus but the orthodox one, corrupted scriptures, a coming restoration of the truth, and a few plot twists thrown in to try to keep it all interesting.

Overall, The Secret Scroll had some potential as an idea for a book but it quickly became unraveled in its execution. A combination of poor writing and editing, deficient understanding of the underlying subject matter, and an apologia for the worst form of cafeteria religion makes this book a mess best left unread.

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