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Rating: 
Summary: Prosperity and Caste in revelational doctrine
Review: My rebuttals are extremely pointed, but are given with the deepest respect for the person and ministry of Pastor Jack Hayford.
Problem one: Chapter two of E Quake focuses on worship as being the key to unlocking the vision. Pastor Jack mentions the struggling churches of Revelation 2 and 3, and rightly states that worship brings our focus onto Jesus, not methods, as the answer to any weakness present among His people.
However, I disagree with the position he takes that the worshipful giving away of resources in a financially struggling congregation guarantees the overflow of God's provisional blessing. The story he tells to verify this doctrine takes place, as all such stories regarding the prosperity doctrine do, in an American church. He argues that his point is correct because it worked. Of course it "worked!" But it doesn't "work" in the other 95% of the world.
The Lord's people in struggling third-world churches are no less loved by God than prosperous American churches, and they constantly give what little they have to support the Lord's work among them. We do these brothers and sisters wrong to mistake our privilege for entitlement!
The Bible nowhere teaches that being godly insulates a person from suffering. In fact, the Bible does much to dispel that theological error. The book of Job soundly refutes such nonsense, as does Jesus Himself, Paul, James, and yes, even the book of Revelation. It isn't for nothing that God comforts His people in Revelation 7:16 by saying that in His Presence, they will never again suffer from hunger pangs, dehydration, or lack if shelter!
Poverty is not a lack of faith.
One of the most touching messages I ever heard came from a Ugandan minister who told our congregation how his people walk for several hours to come to church, wearing the one piece of clothing they own. They cry out to God in intercession for America, with tears streaming down their faces, because "American Christians are a people of little obedience." The Ugandan Christians intercede hungry much of the time, not because they are fasting, but because they don't have enough food to eat.
These Christians know want. This minister has to answer very hard questions among his people, questions like, "If Jesus loves me so much, why does my baby have no food?"
Problem two: Pastor Jack gives several illustrations from his own ministry in chapter four of E Quake. It is to one of these examples that I desire to respond. I have been exposed to this particular illustration twice: at a function Jack Hayford spoke at, and in written form in E Quake. Both times it has disturbed me greatly.
In no way do I question his sincerity or motives. I don't doubt that he is completely unaware that he speaks from an experience of privilege. Yet pain is caused by the supposition he promotes, and although it is unintentional and innocent, it hurts, nevertheless.
His example is that a mechanic is a mechanic because God created him to be one. He does it because he loves it and wouldn't want to do anything else. He wasn't made to work in an office on Wall Street. Being a mechanic is his "place" in the world.
Ouch.
People of means, that is, those who have the luxury of choosing for themselves what kind of job will let them feel fulfilled, no doubt applaud this saying. They could be engineers, bankers, or politicians at their whim; or, if it so suits their desire, mechanics. It doesn't matter. They can pursue whatever they wish. They are privileged; life has many options, none of which involves suffering.
However, there is a different reality for those who were not born white, male, and privileged. In most cases, a mechanic or a waitress, day laborer, car wash attendant, etc., does the job they do not because they find fulfillment in it, not because they wouldn't want to work in a cushy office, and not because they love to sweat, but because they never had an opportunity to do any better.
Unlike the privileged class, their parents couldn't afford to send them to college so that they could rise above blue-collar level. They are desperate single moms struggling to raise several kids on minumum wage, because dad bailed out on paying child support. They come from a background of poverty where they are toiling up from generations of hardship caused by prejudice.
Are we to believe that this hardship is their ordained "place?" Please!
People who hold down two and three minimum wage jobs simultaneously that offer no health insurance and that barely make ends meet don't do so because they love it! They have no choice.
Perhaps the mechanic Pastor Jack mentions hates his job. Perhaps he dreamed of better things, once. But lacking the "connections" that opens the doors to the better things of life, dreams give way to reality. So, he works as a mechanic to put food on the table.
This is not as far-fetched as it sounds. I know a Guatemalan pediatric nurse who, due to the red tape of licensing differences, works here in the U.S. in a deli market all day. She hates it, but it pays the bills.
Only a generation ago, the white American population believed Latino crop pickers happily chose a nomadic life. They were meant to work the fields; it was their "place." The privileged believed blacks were created with less intelligence and were made to be second-class. They were expected to remember to keep their "place." Much the same is still believed about women.
Are these people or their forbearers created to be less than their potential because they are outside of America's privileged class? Was the lady who used to be a nurse but is forced by circumstance to be a deli clerk "made" by God to be a deli clerk or a nurse? It borders on the absurd!
The descendents of slaves are now lawyers, teachers, and scientists. The children of Vietnam War "house girls" have become accomplished musicians and students since immigrating to America. A homeless woman was recently admitted to Harvard.
So what does all this say? That slaves are created to be slaves, house girls created to be prostitutes, or homeless people created to wander the streets desolate? Hardly! Yet their progeny might have suffered the same fate had not opportunity arisen.
It is just as cruel to propose that hotel maids, grocery baggers, or gas station attendants are "made" by God to be lower caste. We are Christians, not Hindus. Status and privilege are simply that.
Rating: 
Summary: Hayford should stick with other topics of the Bible
Review: "A NEW Approach to Understanding the End Time Mysteries in the Book of Revelation"? That sub-title right there told me this book is false. Dr. Harry Ironside, one of America's greatest theologians of the past made this statement that certainly applies to Jack Hayford's book: "Be careful of any teaching that is new; it might not be true." There were other problems with the book as well. Jack Hayford downplays how bad the tribulation will be and makes the reader believe it's simply a bad time of persecution, rather than great calamity. The tribulation is a time to punish the ungodly and a time for God to deal with Israel again. The church will NOT be here. Stephen King couldn't put together what's really going to happen during the earth's darkest hour! Where in the world does Hayford come up with the idea that the white horse in Revelation 6 is Jesus? Jesus has already been crowned in Revelation 4 by the saints in heaven and doesn't have to work for the crowns as Hayford thinks. Didn't Hayford bother to look at the Greek words for "crown" in Revelation 6 and Revelation 19? They're two different words! "Crown" in chapter 6 is the word "stephanos" while chapter 19 is the word "diadema". Obviously, they're two different words! He also makes the rapture no big deal. Believe me, it will be a big deal! Hayford symbolizes the book of Revelation too much, a great danger to anyone studying Revelation. In short, the pre-wrath view of the rapture has seized America like a prairie fire. That's sad because it's a false theory that dates back to about 1977 or somewhere in the '70s. That's a far cry from the Pre-trib rapture that dates to the time of Christ and the Apostle Paul. Other writers have written commentaries on Revelation and they're pre-trib. Amazing how they've been preserved all these years! What makes this generation anymore special than past generations? Past generations spent much more time in the Bible. Today's generation is dumb compared to scholars up to 100 years ago. As my review title says, Hayford should stick with other topics in the Bible, ones he's better at. His view of Revelation is in serious error and is a far cry from "the blessed hope" in Titus 2:13.
Rating:
Summary: Hayford should stick with other topics of the Bible
Review: "A NEW Approach to Understanding the End Time Mysteries in the Book of Revelation"? That sub-title right there told me this book is false. Dr. Harry Ironside, one of America's greatest theologians of the past made this statement that certainly applies to Jack Hayford's book: "Be careful of any teaching that is new; it might not be true." There were other problems with the book as well. Jack Hayford downplays how bad the tribulation will be and makes the reader believe it's simply a bad time of persecution, rather than great calamity. The tribulation is a time to punish the ungodly and a time for God to deal with Israel again. The church will NOT be here. Stephen King couldn't put together what's really going to happen during the earth's darkest hour! Where in the world does Hayford come up with the idea that the white horse in Revelation 6 is Jesus? Jesus has already been crowned in Revelation 4 by the saints in heaven and doesn't have to work for the crowns as Hayford thinks. Didn't Hayford bother to look at the Greek words for "crown" in Revelation 6 and Revelation 19? They're two different words! "Crown" in chapter 6 is the word "stephanos" while chapter 19 is the word "diadema". Obviously, they're two different words! He also makes the rapture no big deal. Believe me, it will be a big deal! Hayford symbolizes the book of Revelation too much, a great danger to anyone studying Revelation. In short, the pre-wrath view of the rapture has seized America like a prairie fire. That's sad because it's a false theory that dates back to about 1977 or somewhere in the '70s. That's a far cry from the Pre-trib rapture that dates to the time of Christ and the Apostle Paul. Other writers have written commentaries on Revelation and they're pre-trib. Amazing how they've been preserved all these years! What makes this generation anymore special than past generations? Past generations spent much more time in the Bible. Today's generation is dumb compared to scholars up to 100 years ago. As my review title says, Hayford should stick with other topics in the Bible, ones he's better at. His view of Revelation is in serious error and is a far cry from "the blessed hope" in Titus 2:13.
Rating: 
Summary: excellent...
Review: "E-Quake" opens with Jack Hayford and wife Anna scraping themselves off their bedroom floor at 4:30am after the monstrous Northridge earthquake leveled Southern California in 1994. He uses that massively destructive $50 billion shaker to introduce us to his new book on Revelation. "E-Quake" stands for End-Quake or the final cataclysmic earthquake described in Revelation 6, that will not only level people's bedrooms worldwide, but will flatten every mountain and island on the face of the entire planet.Hayford confesses his previous reluctance to write on the book of Revelation because of a desire to "nurture people with the practical instead of the theoretical and the substantial instead of the speculative." He has, however, finally thrown his pastoral hat into the "prophetic ring" and has written an excellent book for practically applying the book of Revelation to our lives today - a battle strategy for the increasingly intense and progressive assault against the Church by the enemy. He believes the book, in addition to being prophetic, was given for practical day-to-day living so that when your personal world begins to shake and quake, God appears, just as He will at the end of time during the great End-Quake, so will he appear in your own life when things start coming unglued, TODAY. Thankfully, Hayford does NOT subscribe to the very juvenile "yo-yo theory" of the Second Coming where the "Pre-Tribs" have Jesus "secretly" rapturing the church, taking them back to Heaven, then returning several years later for the the Second Coming (actually the third). Instead, he puts the one and only Second Coming of Christ right where it belongs - right where the Bible teaches it comes - at the "E-Quake," the sixth Seal, the seventh Trumpet, the Resurrection, the Last day. Hayford says Jesus takes us THROUGH tribulation, not out of it and that the purpose of the book of Revelation is to help us through it by showing Christians whatever God's ultimate will for their life might be (even death), in the end we are guaranteed victory - we will win! Alleluia!! As for Tribulation, Hayford says their is no such thing as a crown without a cross, a victory without a battle. There can't be a battle without casualties - and as we experience trial and difficulty, some people will lose their lives. Christians in this world will NEVER "escape" persecution. He reminds us that tens of thousands of Christians willingly give their lives every year for the Faith. We who live behind the protective walls of "persecution free" America, have a very distorted and disturbed view of how Christianity is to be lived out, and indeed being lived out by our persecuted brothers and sisters around the world today. There are no quick victories in a long war nor are there any cheap price tags on triumph. But we are given frequent foretastes of the ultimate outcome. Hayford says Revelation is a book that cannot be understood as a linear progression. Rather, it is a collection of prophetic observations seen from different perspectives, different viewpoints scattered throughout the book sometimes describing the same thing. For example, "the Rapture" is described in three other places besides Revelation chapter 6. Chapter 6 mentions the Seals, chapter 8 the Trumpets and chapter 16 the Bowls - all of which are overlapping and interrelated. Finally, Hayford admonishes the Church by saying Jesus is sending out a powerful message to Christians everywhere today to "wake-up and smell the coffee." Instead of focusing on personal woes and individual minusha of our everyday lives, we need to start focusing on the needs around us and realize how much greater they are than our own. He sees the breaking of the Seals not as something occurring in the future, but as occurring RIGHT NOW which will eventually come to a progressively traumatic and yet triumphant climax. I have read this book several times and each time felt deeply ministered to in ways that I would not have initially imagined. "E-Quake" should be required reading for everyone in full-time ministry as well as those who actively pursuing a fuller understanding of the book of Revelation. It establishes a proper filter through which we should prophetically view the future. The only "beef" I had with "E-Quake" is finding myself yearning for more "revelation" from Hayford on this majestic book. I wish that he would write a follow-up book (E-Quake version 2.0!) It would be superb to get Hayford's teaching on the more controversial subjects such as Antichrist, the great falling away, the abomination of desolation, the Beast, the false prophet, 1260 days, new Jewish temple, Israel, significance of 666, the ten horns, the little horn, the 70th week, comparisons of Daniel and Revelation, Matthew 24, and the 1000 year millennium. So next time Jack, don't listen to your publisher and give us a newly revised, updated, expanded, enlarged, living and amplified version.....a triumphant glorious second coming of "E-Quake!"
Rating:
Summary: Hayford does it again!
Review: Although this book is not very long, Jack Hayford does an excellent job of introducing readers to the Book of Revelation. Of all the books in the new testament, I have always found Revelations the most difficult to understand. I am glad that Pastor Jack Hayford has finally written a book that gives definitive insight into some of the symbols, terms, and messages contained in the text. Luckily for the reader, he does not try and explain every single verse in Revelations. So, if you are looking for an extremely detailed explanation of Revelations- don't buy this book. Instead Pastor Hayford tries to give the reader a basic understanding of why Revelation was written, how the book is structured (something that I definitely misunderstood until I read this book), and what it means to us today. The one great lesson that became crystal clear to me after reading this book, is the importance of worshipping God in a Christian's life. Many Christians, myself included, underestimate the power and importance of worship in their Christian walk. Just like prayer, it a fundamental discipline that can make a world of difference in your life, and the life of the Church. Just like one of the previous reviewers mentions, I hope Pastor Hayford does another follow-up book about Revelations. Now that I have a fundamental understanding of the book, I would like to dig a little deeper, and gain even greater insight. I recommend this book to anyone who has struggled with trying to understand the Book of Revelations. If you are looking for an excellent source to give you a basic understanding of Revelations, look no further. Get a copy of this book and add it to your Christian library.
Rating: 
Summary: A Great Introduction to the Book of Revelations
Review: Although this book is not very long, Jack Hayford does an excellent job of introducing readers to the Book of Revelation. Of all the books in the new testament, I have always found Revelations the most difficult to understand. I am glad that Pastor Jack Hayford has finally written a book that gives definitive insight into some of the symbols, terms, and messages contained in the text. Luckily for the reader, he does not try and explain every single verse in Revelations. So, if you are looking for an extremely detailed explanation of Revelations- don't buy this book. Instead Pastor Hayford tries to give the reader a basic understanding of why Revelation was written, how the book is structured (something that I definitely misunderstood until I read this book), and what it means to us today. The one great lesson that became crystal clear to me after reading this book, is the importance of worshipping God in a Christian's life. Many Christians, myself included, underestimate the power and importance of worship in their Christian walk. Just like prayer, it a fundamental discipline that can make a world of difference in your life, and the life of the Church. Just like one of the previous reviewers mentions, I hope Pastor Hayford does another follow-up book about Revelations. Now that I have a fundamental understanding of the book, I would like to dig a little deeper, and gain even greater insight. I recommend this book to anyone who has struggled with trying to understand the Book of Revelations. If you are looking for an excellent source to give you a basic understanding of Revelations, look no further. Get a copy of this book and add it to your Christian library.
Rating:
Summary: Hayford does it again!
Review: Once again, Jack Hayford brings the Ancient Word to life for the modern reader. E Quake is a straightforward presentation of the Book of Revelation: not a verse by verse commentary, nor an emotionaly charged devotional. Hayford gives an honest appraisal of the what and why of Revelation, along with presenting the idea that Revelation is not so much about a future doomsday, but about present opportunities to give worship and do warfare in the name of Jesus Christ, who is coming in glory.
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