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By: April Gardner April: In Fourth Dawn you took the reader back in time 30 years to the birth of John the Baptist and left off with the impending birth of our Savior. Was this a planned diversion, or one that took you by surprise, so to speak? Bodie: We did. During the first three books, we had been sort of building to this so that Peniel could listen to people talk and record the stories. Peniel loves a good story. He says, “I’m Peniel and I love a good story.” And so we planned it out and set it up all along. And we knew where we were going with it. And we knew that telling the Nativity story would end up being the Nativity trilogy. We knew that it would take at least three books because the significant power and all the history of that time period. There was just so much of if that there was no way, you know, we could cram it into four or five hundred pages. We hit it really, really hard, and now we’re coming back around to the ministry of Jesus. So we’ve come full circle with it, but those three books, we had them all planned out. April: You kind of took me by surprise. I wasn’t expecting the jump in time. Bodie: We tend to take sideways steps. That’s just our way of doing it. April: Having said that, while reading the first three books, I kept thinking, I really would like to have seen their depiction of His birth and the characters surrounding it. So I was pleased. How much do you struggle with wanting to stay scripturally accurate while trying to give the Biblical characters more in-depth stories and personalities? Brock: When it comes to people whose lives are spelled out in Scripture, we don’t depart from that at all. We have some pretty strict guidelines we keep ourselves to in regards to Jesus and Mary and some other people. We just don’t try to get inside their thoughts. I would not presume to try to give Jesus’ point of view or get inside Jesus’ head. Then there’s the next category of characters that are real because they are mentioned in history and yet very few details are recorded about them. We have a little more latitude when dealing with them because we have to infer they had lives both before and after the time of their encounter with Jesus. Peniel is a perfect example of that because we get more detail than most. A whole chapter is devoted to him in the Gospel of John. And so that’s why we developed who he is and how his personality developed, why it was he was a beggar near the temple and why it was he overheard the events at the temple going on and the religious activities. Bodie: How young he is, I think that’s one thing that people miss. They called his parents, for heaven’s sakes. So he was a pretty young guy. If he had been older, they would not have called his parents. But his parents said, “Well, he’s of age. Ask him.” So he was a teenager most likely. Most people think he’s some balding old guy. So anyway, we take things that are not in the English translation that are not totally apparent to the casual reader. We do research and get details that maybe other people are going to miss. April: Regarding the previous question, it must be especially difficult when writing scenes which involve Jesus. Were you at first fearful to undertake such a challenge? Bodie: No God has been just so awesome. He has directed us in every way and said “do this and do this”. So we would be fearful not to do it It was that powerful, and I don’t know if it you’ve read our blog but some of the insights that we give on our blogs are overflow information that God has given us. We study so intensely every day that we’ve had people walk into this house and say “Wow, I feel the presence of the Lord.” It’s an amazing thing, because we had floor tiles replaced and the guys that came in to do it were not Christians. Brock and I were gone and they said “There is something so awesome here. We love it.” Anyway, four of them ended up receiving Christ, so you know the Word of God is alive and the Spirit is so vibrant and teaches us such intense truths that it would be wrong for us not to write these books. April: Quite opposite of what I was thinking. You’ve just given me goose bumps. Bodie. Well, it gives us goose bumps too. I’ll tell you, it is so of the Lord and not us. We’ve said it and said it and said it that when you boil everything down it’s all about ushering people into eternity. We find things that have been covered up by the sands of time for a couple of thousand years and then something comes to life and we just go “Wow!” That just has to be God. The spiritual insights that we get are not guess work. It is really God leading us to resources and opening meanings in ways that is just phenomenal. It’s an enormous amount of scholarship going into these books. They’re not just cranked out, it’s months and years of work, but it doesn’t mean anything if the Holy Spirit does not come into the work and come into our homes and come into our lives. April: The parts of “Four Dawn” that I personally enjoyed the most were all the references to the stars and planets and how they prophetically lined up during the year of Christ’s birth, all pointing toward the Messiah. In writing your book, have you used a computer program to figure these thing out? Brock: There are lots of good computer programs out there. There are three that I’m familiar with that are commercially available. They come in every form from a very inexpensive sort of a starter set around $100 up to a professional astronomy model that will run a telescope for you for $400-$500, but you don’t have to have anything like that to reconstruct previous skies from years past. Essentially what happens is you tell the program the location on earth that you are virtually observing from and a date anytime in the last 6000 years or so and plug that information in and recreate the night sky. Now once you’ve done that, then you sort of have to know the culture and some of the traditions to know what to look for. The program will recreate what it looked like over Persia in 7BC, Bethlehem in 6BC or whatever you ask it to do Bodie: We want to emphasize this is astronomy not astrology. This is something that really happened. In the English language when Jacob blesses the two sons of Joseph, you don’t get the Hebrew meaning that you’ll be “blessed like a multitude of fish in the sea”. That does not translate into English but when you go into the Hebrew you’ll see that both Ephraim and Manasseh were blessed to multiply into a “multitude of fishes”. So that’s why Pisces, the sign of the fish, always from that point on represents Israel. That’s ancient knowledge not common knowledge, but once you begin to see that and the rest of the planets on the computer, the things that really happened and were maintained in the skies for months and months and months, then you go “Oh wow! This only happens, you know, like never!”--that it stays right there in Pisces for all that time and that they knew what was going on. So it’s all true stuff. April: While I don’t believe in astrology, I can’t help but wonder if the heavens will have anything to “say” regarding Christ’s second coming. Do you have an opinion about this? Bodie: Not that we’ve seen yet. Brock: One of our characters, one of the Magi says, “What we see in the sky are reminders that God’s promises are coming true and are not meant to foretell the future.” If there were events that seem to have significance in the sky operating now, we’d have to look at it and say, “Does that confirm something?” But there’s no way that anybody in their right mind could try to point to something--actually several years ago there was an alignment of planets, and the end of the world was predicted, but that didn’t exactly pan out (laughs). Avoiding that is probably the best thing to do. April: I heard that workbooks are being written to accompany some of your novels. Can you tell us a little about this project? Brock: It’s a work book for Vienna Prelude. For years now, the Zion Chronicles books, as well as the Zion Covenant book, have been used as credited supplemental reading in history classes, especially as WWII history, and that is nowhere more true than the home school setting where maybe there aren’t the resources that other schools have library-wise. And so most recently, we’d had the workbook more specifically aimed at the home-schoolers so they can read Vienna Prelude in connection with studying WWII and see the causes and so forth. Once they have read the book and done the workbook they will probably know more about WWII than about 90% of Americans do. Bodie: Kerrin Maki headed that project up and she did a brilliant job. She is a tremendous help. I don’t know what we’d do without her. She does everything for us that we can’t do for ourselves. She was a home-schooler so she knows what’s needed. The workbook is really good. Even in public schools you get credit for having read the books. So there’s a lot of validation in the correctness of the history, but we’ve never before had a workbook. April: Do you plan on having more workbooks for the next books in the series? Bodie: Oh yes, we’ll get her on it. Brock: Just now is completed the sixteen part audio of Veinna Prelude. It’s the most elaborate audio production that has ever been done, and I don’t just mean of our stuff. That’s ever been done--period. It’s 18 hours, 16 episodes, of just elaborate music, sound effects, and vocal work and so on. Each episode is about an hour or a little more, and that way it really lends itself to even a group study. Bodie: I think there are sample clips on familyaudiolibrary.com. Brock: Yes, there are. Bodie: It is excellent quality. The music is great. You’ll want to hear Elisa play her violin. It’s on there. It’s that authentic. April: Last question: A good writer is also a good reader, what authors do you enjoy reading? Bodie: Well, we don’t read fiction. I know that’s surprising, but I just don’t read anybody’s fiction. I don’t ever want to have a problem reading someone else’s stuff and adapting their style. I like my own style (laughs). I don’t want to unconsciously pick anything up. Brock: When you called, I was sitting here looking at our Strong’s Exhaustive Concordance and doing a little word study. Bodie: I was looking at how many descendents Queen Victoria had who were crown heads of Europe and involved in WWI. (laughs) That’s the kind of stuff we read! Believe it or not, it does have something to do with a book. It’s on-going. It’s a pleasure to study. April: Well the result comes out in the quality of your work. I’m so thrilled to have had this opportunity to interview you on behalf of athomewithchristianfiction.com. Catherine and I, as well as all those readers and writers who frequent At Home with Christian Fiction, greatly appreciate the time and thought you’re investing in us. What a pleasure it was to interview the Thoenes. What spoke to me the most was their extraordinary love for the Lord and their desire to please Him and draw others to Him with every word they write. Open and friendly, Brock and Bodie are always willing to take the time to answer any question a reader might have. In fact, if you read their blog, they seem to thrive on it. I don’t believe I’d be wrong to say that a seeking reader means the Lord is working, and very little pleases the Thoenes more. Oh that the Christian writing industry had a hundred more like them! |