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| William Shakespeare was an actor, but he had twice the vocabulary of John Milton? That fact alone points to the Earl of Oxford, the best educated man in England as the real dramatist. |
One of my Moline classmates had a grandson in a costume competition. His wore a great little robot outfit, as I recall, made by his now deceased grandfather. I responded, "Who were the judges? The John Milton Society?"
He explained to his wife Linda - the John Milton Society provides services for the blind, because their icon became blind, perhaps from glaucoma or retinal detachment. That society used to reprint my articles from Lutheran periodicals, which pleased me and my friends. Several articles also appeared in Hungarian and German.
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| Delacroix - Milton dictating Paradise Lost to his daughters. |
I always had a great liking for Milton. I actually read Paradise Lost, all of it, in college. I once owned a beautiful edition of that poem. I asked a rare books dealer if anyone read all of Spencer, and he said "Some of my English major friends did their best." His enormous Spencer set was selling for $50, a true bargain if one wanted to go blind reading it. Spencer, Shakespeare (Oxford), and Milton were the great sonnet writers of the English language.
Milton's sonnet about going blind is probably his most famous, and it brings to mind how we should spend the rest of our lives. He wrote three of the most famous poems in English literature, ones of enormous length and depth, after becoming completely blind. All three had Biblical themes.
Since we are living in the Age of Apostasy, as predicted by the Pastoral Epistles, the best use of my time is to teach and write about Biblical truths, especially since the so-called conservative Lutherans want to concentrate on Holy Mother Church rather than its Founder, the Savior.
I told one reader, "I learn about the audience every time a new title comes out. A new person writes and asks for a copy - or copies." In fact, he was one of those.
Reprints Coming Up
The next two books being prepared for Amazon are:
- Catholic, Lutheran, Protestant, which Paul Rydecki helped edit.
- Liberalism:Its Cause and Cure. NPH gave me the rights to print it.
Books and Booklets
The Creation Gardening book needs summer and early Autumn photos, so I am going to photograph during that time and finish the book, God willing, during the Fall.
The next new title will be Luther and the Word: The Lost Dutchman's Goldmine. That will a short book, like Making Disciples: The Error of Modern Pietism.
New books are going to be shorter, because they are less complicated to finish. When I look at old projects, like publishing all he Luther sermons from Lenker, or writing Thy Strong Word and Catholic, Lutheran, Protestant, I think - Where did the energy come from?
I figure 2017 will be a good year to challenge the faux-celebrations of the Reformation's 500th anniversary. They remind me already of the hat tip to the KJV (400 in 2011) and the nod toward Gerhardt (400th in 2007), who is not sung anymore unless Koine has a jazz version of his hymns.
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| Milton completed his greatest works while blind, using a series of scribes. |