With the publication of Hal Lindsey's "The Late Great Planet Earth", everyone jumped on his bandwagon and spun off on the most useless fantasy and poor biblical scholarship on Revelation and have confused many. This book presents Revelation in the context as the people it was written to (the seven churches of Asia). If your understanding of Revelation would mean nothing to Christians in the first century then it is wrong. Get this book and get started with serious study of Revelation. It is simpler than you think.

Dr. Ray Summers was one of the most respected experts and scholars on the Biblical book of Revelation and a wonderful and challenging teacher. His book takes the strange book of Revelation and adds historical context to make understanding easier for the average reader. Much of the understanding of the book relates to the historical context the Jews faced in Roman times and the type of literature the book is. Dr. Summers examines many of the popular views on Revelation, breaks them down to the pros and cons and gives the pluses and minuses of each. The curious will find this fascinating and a whole new concept of the book opened to him. He will find it is not a scary book with strange symbols about the end of time but a book of hope that can apply to Christians everywhere in times of persecution. The apostle John is writing as a political prisoner and he's using a lot of coded language only Jews could fully understand. Dr. Summers unlocks a lot of the mystery and the code and you know what? We find things are not so mysterious after all if you can grasp the historical contest and type of literature.

This is an older little known "jewel" of a book. It is very well written and composed for the average person seeking to understand all the "mystery" of the book of Revelation. With all the present day abuse and mis-use of this important book, it is soothing to finally read a book that presents, in a very logical and unbiased manner, what God intended for us to understand. Ray removes all the "end-time mystery" and the extreme views being presented today and takes us back to an understandably wonderful message. What did God intend for the first century Christians, the first recipients, to understand? If the message doesn't help them, it can't be the correct message. Revelation doesn't have to be scarey or frightening. It's message is one of love and hope.

It will take some effort to get through the book. It's not presented as a storybook. It is presented in a logical orderly study fashion that with time, the scriptures, a note pad and prayer, the simplicity of the message can be realized. This is the only book I am aware of of this caliber.

The final message, "God 1: Satan 0", Game Over!

I think this is a very good book. I used to hate reading before I read this book. The book is about a girl named Summer that is engaged to a guy named Seth, but while he is in Cal. she is cheating on him with a guy named Austin. But what Summer doesn't know is that Seth cheated on Summer with her cousin, Diana. This is my favorite book!

I bought this book in conjunction with a video course on NT Greek. I was troubled to find that the book does not come with answers to the exercises, making it difficult to use effectively in a self-study course.

I previously bought Wenham's Elements of NT Greek, but was put off by its (not surprisingly, considering it is published by Cambridge) overly academic style. I was looking for a simple NT Greek course and Summer's book seemed like it might fit the bill, especially when used with the video course.

One fundamental flaw/problem: on the back of the dust jacket, the blurb at the bottom mentions a workbook (Essentials of New Testament Greek Student's Guide). I have not found any references to this book anywhere else, including the publisher (who never returned my emails) or the publisher's web site. Searching across multiple web search engines returned no applicable hits, either.

The chapters are short. Maybe too short. The discussion is very brief on all the topics covered. Compared with Mounce's Basics book, this one seems emaciated (weighing in at under 200 pages, including index and verb charts). Many of the chapters lack substantive (some lack any!) examples, reducing both the benefit and length of the text.

I recently bought Mounce, hoping that it's more geared for the self-taught student. Summer's book is definitely not. Maybe the vapor-ware (?) Student's Guide would help. Has anybody ever seen the Student's Guide??

There are two social traditions in presenting Greek, the Biblical and the classical. Summers presents the Biblical, a somehwat simplified view, adequate perhaps if you are not really going to read the Bible in Greek. Stepping in where classicists fear to tread, he applies Latin terminology to the Greek language. We learn that Greek has an ablative and an instrumental. He means, of course, that those cases have merged with the genitive and dative in Greek. Caveat imperitus.

This is a good introduction to studying Koine Greek, though it should probably be supplemented. The workbook is nearly essential (contrary to other reviews, it's quite easy to find), especially since it's true, there are no answers to the included exercises in the textbook itself.

But the explanations are clear and easy to follow. The text is well-written and concise. The font is quite readable and clear, and you shouldn't have any problems reading the Greek text itself.

If you get this book, do yourself a favor and get the workbook too. Together they make a nice pair.