Unlike a lot of books that deal with heaven and hell, ETERNITY IS HERE doesn’t have a hellfire-and-brimstone tone. Author Shirley Wallace Reaves, who has a master’s degree in divinity from Southern Methodist University, takes a compassionate approach. She wants to lead readers to heaven, not scare them there—a refreshing approach. In fact, she calls her book a “Message of love.” The book’s central conceit is Soul Insurance, which sometimes appears with the “™” symbol and sometimes does not. Soul Insurance is exactly what you might expect: a guarantee that you’ll go to heaven when you die. Sounds simple, right? Why wouldn’t everyone have this? Well, for the same reason everyone doesn’t have auto insurance–cost. In the case of Soul Insurance, the cost isn’t money—it’s what Reaves calls “salvation blockers,” which are: disbelief and lack of faith; ego and pride; and an “I don’t give a care attitude.” The book is one long altar call, with every chapter—practically every page—reinforcing one and only one message: get saved.
The book could have used some proofreading, as when Reaves writes that “sermons about Satan is seldomly preached or taught” or that, by being saved, “you will go to heaven and be immoral.” There is also questionable scholarship, as when Reaves cites “Soul in Bible-Wikipedia” as a source. And it’s jarring to see different translations used for the various biblical quotations, especially when one of those is the Amplified Bible, which is often criticized for being less a translation and more a paraphrase. The biggest problem, though, is that ETERNITY IS HERE is theology-lite. Regarding the creation story, for example, Reaves offers the traditional view: Adam and Eve were perfect, yet despite this they sinned and had to be punished, but God didn’t want them to die, so he created salvation as their way out. A person who hasn’t yet been saved—Reaves’s stated audience for this book—might rightly ask, “So why didn’t God just not create death?” No one knows the answer, of course, but generations of theologians have given it a go. Reaves cites none of them. Some nonbelievers are too skeptical, too cynical, to be won over by evidence-free arguments. Still, Reaves makes a worthy effort, hitting her mark through the power of her convictions. With open-minded readers, it might be enough.
Despite too many errors and too little scholarship, Shirley Wallace Reaves’s ETERNITY IS HERE is a worthy effort at delivering the message of salvation.
~Anthony Aycock for IndieReader