Book Review and Giveaway: The Power of the Prophetic Blessing

~~ This Giveaway is now Closed ~~

So, as mentioned earlier this week I have three book reviews to write and I have finally gotten around to writing at least one of them. Today's review is for The Power of the Prophetic Blessing written by John Hagee and published by Worthy Publishing and was released this week. A description of the book is as follows:

"God's prophetic voice thunders through time - from Adam and Eve, continuing through Noah, Abraham, Moses, the Prophets, and then through Jesus himself. While apocalyptic prophecy is a dark cloud over the heads of unrepentant, rebellious people, at its core, prophecy expresses God's desire to powerfully bless and multiply his people, not to strike fear in their hearts.

For God's people, prophecy is a word of hope, deliverance, bounty, and richness for their life and family. Hagee takes readers through the entire biblical narrative, showing how this powerful prophetic message flows throughout the Bible."

The book, which is 292 pages long, is divided into three sections - Defining the Prophetic and Priestly Blessings (Section 1), The Prophetic Blessings (Section 2), and Releasing and Receiving the Blessing (Section 3). All three sections and each of the 11 chapters uses quite a bit of scripture to back-up Mr. Hagee's beliefs on prophetic blessing.

The first section goes into detail about what prophetic blessing is and how it was used in the early days of the Bible. He describes how we are born to be blessed and how God wants each of his children to be blessed and uses examples from the Jewish faith. He gives examples such as Jacob and Esau and how Isaac blessed Jacob when Jacob deceived him and from that point on Jacob's offspring was blessed and Esau's offspring, well, not so much. He goes on to explain how he believes that people today should speak a blessing over their children or people that they love and describes how the congregation he pastors did this and as a result many great things began happening to the congregants. Now, I am a little skeptical on this and can't say that I necessarily believe that speaking a blessing over someone will indeed bless them with better grades, good health, etc. If that were the case then we should have spoken blessings on my mom about 20 years ago when she was diagnosed with MS.

The second section describes times when people have been blessed throughout history - both biblical and secular. He explains fulfilled blessings and also goes into great detail about the eight prophetic blessings of Jesus, which are more commonly known as the beatitudes found in Matthew 5.

The third and final section deals with "Releasing and Receiving the Blessing" and describes how one can release the prophetic blessing through the spoken word, through touch and how one can receive and proclaim the prophetic blessing, all of which are described through Old Testament scripture. As a New Testament Christian, I follow the new law rather than the old law found in the Old Testament which is why I am extremely skeptical of Mr. Hagee's theories.

I don't think it would hurt to speak blessings over people, but in reality, isn't it just another form of prayer? I'm a firm believer in prayer; speaking blessings, not so much. Overall the books had some interesting theories and historical information. As always, I would say go to the Bible first and then develop your own idea about whether or not speaking a blessing over someone will indeed help them to be blessed on earth.

If you are interested in winning a copy of Mr. Hagee's book, The Power of the Prophetic Blessing, then please leave a comment on this post. The contest will be open through 7:00 p.m. on Sunday, September 2, and a winner will be announced that same night. Thanks for reading and good luck!