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Introduction to Face to Face

I first got the sense that I should write a novel in the early 1970s. At that time I encountered certain realities that had hovered on the edge of my awareness since childhood. Among other things, these encounters included God as a consuming fire, the evil one, the hell within, the Lord Jesus, and the vision of the New Jerusalem let down out of heaven like a bride adorned for her husband. With the passage of time these realities became integrated with all dimensions of life--love between a man and a woman, children, the church, the importance of Jesus Christ, beauty, political and economic life, worship, extreme poverty, the death of false loves, and all brought together in a deepened vision of the New Jerusalem in the Eucharist.

These matters are almost never rendered in contemporary literature, including a great deal of religious literature. As a result, I felt called to report on the matters myself in the form of a novel. As such, the novel integrates all the realities mentioned above in a single synoptic vision.

Further, a great deal of contemporary theology does not do justice to Scripture since the realities rendered in Scripture are often not experienced by theologians and biblical scholars. For this reason, the biblical revelation frequently gets reduced to general maxims or demythologized into a secular perspective. To avoid this I have described in ordinary language a number of biblical realities so the reader can get some sense of the realities described in the Bible. Then, in the context of the novel, I will also include a number of theological or biblical essays showing how God as revealed in Scripture is active today as he was in biblical times.

For several reasons, I am hesitant to put this novel on my web site. For one thing, I worry that people will think something so easily obtained must be of little value. It is not of little value. It is very, very demanding. If taken seriously, it is a challenge to everything we are doing. In requires effort and courage to face the realities it portrays. But it is worth it, and so, in the end, I invite the reader of this introduction to either buy the novel, download it and read it, or read it off the screen. But read it with an open mind. It reports what is, the final reality, the powers behind everything that happens, the processes that drive us on. It is worth reading.

For those who wish to buy the novel, it can be purchased from Xlibris Publishing. You can order by phone, 1 888 795-4274 ext. 276 or 215 923-4686. Or, you can order it directly from their web site: www.xlibris.com. Click on the bookstore section, then click search, and type in my name, "Robert J. Sanders."

Finally, the novel is a novel, a drama, a story. It is meant to be read as such. It is interesting, and it gets more interesting as it goes along. But why write a novel? Why not write essays on Scripture, theology, politics, conditions among the world's poorest? These are certainly important, but reading about realities is not the same as encountering them. Drama, narrative, living human beings, God himself, beauty, and life rendered in prose actually create encounters so that the reader is actually there, with the people, seeing, feeling, partaking of the very things themselves. That makes a novel.

The links to the novel and related essays or comments are below.

Face to Face

Personal Context

Review by Betty Bedell

What Readers Say

Robert J. Sanders, Ph.D.