Reviews for
Revelation: The Divine
Fire
First
published back in 1973, Brad Steigers
thought-provoking classic Revelation: The Divine Fire has
just been re-released. It remains as important a
contribution now as it was when it was first published.
Exhaustive and scholarly in his research and in the
books scope, Brad also interviewed untold scores of
men and women from various backgrounds and occupations
who claimed to have been touched or in someway interacted
with a divine presence, while seeking the qualified
opinions and thoughts of theologians, psychologists and
others.
Brad
demonstrates that theres much to be learned from
the modern spiritual revelators, and at the onset he also
invokes the late Carl Jungs archetypal concepts
about UFOs, and cites Ezekiels wheel within a wheel
visitation, how the Biblical prophet afterwards came to
work miracles and had the gift of prophecy, and how even
in our modern age of science people continue to describe
similar visitations and the acquiring of unexplained
paranormal gifts.
There are a
great many awesome insights and interviews presented in
this book that arent available anywhere else.
Written over three decades ago, some of the people
interviewed, like one of my own personal favorites,
Arkansas psychic and researcher Harold Sherman, have
since themselves passed on to the great beyond. Herein
their words and noteworthy observations and insights are
again brought back to life. This book is certainly a
highly significant and comprehensive compilation of data
from both a sweeping historical and modern spiritual
perspective. Reviewed by Brent Raynes
"This book
has stood the test of time. It was groundbreaking when it
first hit the world, and it is still groundbreaking today
- because nobody has been able to surpass it. Brad
Steiger aims at the heart of the subject and finds the
Divine, the Higher Consciousness, the Universal Mind -
call it what you will, but this book cannot be avoided if
you search for truth. There are millions of us who cry
out to know about our own connection to the greater
universe and this book is not an option on the
road to that knowledge - it is an absolute must."
Philip Gardiner, bestselling author of
The Serpent Grail
and Gnosis: The
Secret of Solomon's Temple
Revealed.
"Steiger's 'divine
fire' is something. . . which, from the beginning of
recorded history down to the present, has communicated a
revelation to man. [Steiger] is properly
objective in his evaluation of the significance of such
phenomena, setting forth the opinions of various
scientific - or at least thoughtful - observers on the
subject and, where necessary, synthesizing such
opinions." Kirkus Reviews
"In the tradition
of William James' Varieties of Religious Experiences
we have an important collection of valuable data that
should be read and considered by anyone interested in the
pursuit of man, his meaning, and destiny. For me this
book was an exciting adventure." Paul Severson,
Fate magazine
"Steiger
enormously expands the definition of revelation. . . .
What emerges is an engrossing compilation of esoteric
events reported by those experiencing them." Library
Journal
"The message of
this book - even if only partly true - is possibly as
vital as [we] have heard from any quarter, and we
are doubly blest that it comes from such a pen as
Steiger's. Of the serious writers in the English language
today he is one of a small company that can utilize a
clarity of language to blend his deep insights of his
material with a story-telling style that literally sweeps
one along as an involuntary speed-reader. Having devoted
a large portion of my life to the careful reading of
technical material I found myself. . . racing along with
the excitement of the story, and thus having to re-read
whole pages that were too important for racing - they
wanted some thought and some memorizing and meditating
upon." Frank C. Tribbe, Journal
of the Spiritual Frontiers Fellowship
.
"When interview
journalism works it crackles with an electric life that
no other kind of writing can capture. Brad Steiger's
Revelation: The Divine Fire is not just interview
journalism, it is good interview journalism that
has an immediacy of impact and breadth of overview that
puts human flesh on the core of the New Age: revelation .
. . The breadth of Steiger's investigation and the sheer
numbers and types of revelators and students of
revelation he has consulted is staggering. He has gone
beyond the forms to touch the life-pulse of our age--
renewed revelation calling humanity back to the
responsibility of love." Occult Trade
Journal.
"Since
God spoke to Moses out of the Burning Bush on Mt. Sinai,
priests, prophets, physicians, and laymen alike have
sought to reopen that hotline to heaven. Through prayer,
rituals, and the construction of stone altars in the
countryside to cathedrals in city centers, these symbolic
cell phone Towers of Babel have yearned to reestablish
more open communication with the Creator. Now the
foremost scholar on all topics paranormal, Brad Steiger,
has reexamined the evidence for such striving from the
mists of recorded history as well as interviewed
modem-day clergy, scientists, and psychics that have
reported direct contact with the cosmic consciousness of
creation itself. What he discovered about the apocalypse
-
the
unveiling -
to come
may well strike you speechless! Read this book again and
again to rekindle that flame inside of you that desires
to reconnect your whole body-rind-spirit to the ultimate
revelation about the relationship between God, Man, and
Nature." Dr. John Jay Harper, author of
Tranceformers:
Shamans of the
21st
Century
REVELATION: The
DIVINE FIRE
A Biblical
prediction says that "In the latter days, your sons and
daughters shall prophesy." Brad Steiger has communicated
with literally hundreds of individuals who c1aim to have
received messages directly from God--or from spaceman,
angels, "guides," or other superhuman entities. It would
be easy to dismiss these latter-day prophets as deluded,
but amazingly, their revelations all have an internal
consistency, a common theme: a time of judgment is at
hand, and mankind must change its ways to avert disaster.
Moreover, contemporary housewives, businessmen, and
"Jesus people" are experiencing the same symptoms of
revelation-- a blinding light, a voice out of nowhere, an
impulse to take on a new name and a new life.
On the track of
the elusive source of these messages, Steiger examines
the spread of glossolalia and faith-healing; the folklore
of elves and leprechauns; the awesome cases where a
revelator's body is briefly occupied by an outside
personality; the mysterious "Elijah" tradition of the
Bible that suggests that the great prophets (perhaps even
Jesus) were possessed by a single entity; and the latest
laboratory research into
consciousness-expansion.
Revelation: The
Divine Fire presents actual warnings, predictions,
and messages from a wide spectrum of contemporary
revelators. In addition, there are interviews and
evaluations from a number of clergymen, scientists, and
psychics who have met the Divine Fire.
************
The following
review appeared in Amazon.com. {March 24, 2005}.
Oakshaman truly caught the essence of the
book and respectfully placed Revelation: The Divine
Fire in its rightful groundbreaking
position in the literature of the field more than 30
years after its original publication:
Mankinds' dialog
with a Higher Intelligence has never ended
When this book
first came out in 1973 it was a groundbreaking work. It
was perhaps the first to bring the idea of continuing
communication with a higher power to the attention of the
general public. Until this book, the unquestioned
assumption was that all such communication had ended in
biblical times- and that anyone who claimed differently
was obviously mentally unhinged. This book, however, made
a detailed, painstaking study (with personal interviews
and case studies) of people in modern times who had
experienced the same symptoms of revelation (the Divine
Fire.) Steiger interviewed a wide variety of people from
respected scholars and churchmen, to everyday housewives
and business men, to "Jesus people" and New Age
channelers.
Then he examined
the different types of contact and the different contents
of the information recieved. He came to the conclusion
that while some of the material seemed to come from
conflicting sources, the vast majority appeared to be
historically consistent in tone and content down through
the ages- a universal theme coming from an outside
intelligence.
As the book points
out early on, why should we think that the era of divine
revelation is over? The eastern religious traditions have
never made such an assumption. In the Vedic tradition the
canon has never been "closed"- it is accepted that valid
revelation continues to this day. Only the modern (as
opposed to the gnostic) tradition has slammed the door
shut in the face of God. And this seems to have been done
more in the name of social control and the protection of
a bureaucratic heirarchy than for any valid spiritual
motivation.