“…and [they] died, when they offered strange fire before the LORD.” Numbers 26:61 KJV
A renowned televangelist is abducted by terrorists in Jerusalem. His daughter, tormented by evidence that her father engineered his own kidnapping, turns for help to the exiled black sheep of the family. Both are plunged into an international conspiracy that leads to the brink of death − and beyond − as they cooperate in a desperate race to save their father.
Angels and Women
This supernatural thriller, first published in 1991 under the title High Places was controversial in the Christian bookstore market for the way the author described antediluvian angels marrying women and producing a race of giants known as Nephilim. These marriages are described in the book of Genesis. The novel also took heat for suggesting that Nephilim are still active today in an invisible dimension.
Ministry Scandal
The story connects a particular antediluvian giant to the character of a compromised televangelist who is bound somehow to the power of its name. The novel was released on the heels of the television ministry scandals of the 1980s, and offers actual insights from the author’s own career inside the money raising apparatus of multimillion dollar ministries. The book was considered to be ahead of its time. The publisher backed away from a planned trilogy, fearing more controversy. Nevertheless, the original book titled High Places sold very well and created a cult following.
A Black Sheep Savior
In this rewrite titled, Strange Fire, the author restructures and updates the story for a current audience, and further unleashes the character of the black sheep of the family.
Copies of the original High Places can be found in trade paperback on the internet. Strange Fire will be released as an e-book after War Dance, in Summer 2014.
P.S.
Strange Fire (High Places) first came into my imagination after spending several hours in deep conversation with Oral Roberts in 1980 as he began to build the City of Faith. This was the high rise hospital project that eventually brought him low in the eyes of the world. Among other things, we discussed the problems he might face in raising funds for a hospital in Tulsa. I subsequently submitted a plan to accomplish that end. A plan that he rejected. He told me he believed they would find the cure for cancer through the union of prayer and medicine in the research wing of the City of Faith. That fired my imagination with the question, “what if” a healing evangelist prays for his own wife to be healed of cancer, and she dies? The rest, of course, is fiction.