I wonder, had this book been written in the 1890's when spiritualism was at its height, what impact it might of had? Yes maybe it is atrocious writing, but is that a measure of the veracity of his story? In the end I think it is the sheer volume of implausibility that weighs most against the book in my opinion, more than anything else. Many times, after I have written something, I come back later reread it and it sounds nothing like what I intended to say. I know that my own inabilities to express myself well with the written word have very little to do with whether or not I am sincere, or at least if I think I am being sincere. Not that I am defending the book, but I do not think the quality of writing is indicative of sincerity on the part of the author. So what is it that is drawing people to this book? But then why so many people in the church who believe it? I had an email a week ago from someone who asked me ecstatically, "Have you read 'Visions Of Glory'?" When I told her what I thought of it, I was met with silence. There are so many indicators that this book is a fraud, just a load of crap-not the least of which is the dreadful writing.
Maybe there are people like that (although I doubt it), or who have such a gift, but if so they are not out blabbing about it, and blabbing about it in a way so as to draw attention to themselves. This is not a good thing to be basing ones testimony on, yet there are people doing just that and claiming "spiritual maturity" because they believe in the book. There are quite a number of people in the church who are emotionally vested in the book. This is a major red flag about the book it's the same flag that was raised with Eadie's book. VofG provides no such evidence, but hides behind anonymity, lack of details, lack of evidence that can be verified, etc. Some accounts are actually quite amazing because of the amount of corroborating evidence. Valid NDE accounts are always accompanied by verifiable evidence, such as hospital names, names of doctors, links to medical and records for more information, physical details that can be externally corroborated, etc. Most NDEs are actually quite ordinary with not much to them. An analysis of NDEs that I read talked about those that are verifiable vs. Kelly Ogden also wrote about it for Meridian magazine. Greg Smith has an article on FAIR about the book. BTW, I suspect that the moniker "Spencer" might have been chosen by Pontius as a reference to WInston Spencer Churchill, who wrote The Last Lion:Visions of Glory. Spencer is being kept very anonymous and is almost a non-entity in some respects. They had a meeting where Spencer was present, but the transcript disappeared from the site after only being up there a short time. Pontius's wife runs a blog about the book. The "vision" portion was so preposterous and poorly written that it became a show stopper for people. One of the Amazon views said that Pontius should have ended the book with the NDE experience. People get sucked in on an emotional level and get hooked without being critical enough to wonder about inconsistencies in the story. There's a need to know that we live after this life. NDE's appeal on foundational level to quite a few people. Read the book all the way through, and have the following observations: IIRC it was after "Embraced." that Betty really went off track and got into folklore and mysticism with native American overtones because of her heritage. At least it was reasonable vs Juliann's quotes in her post #26 about "walking through the desk and couch" and knowing the terrible things that took place in and on them. etc. and things I didn't agree with at all, but chalked it up to her own interpretation. it is/was nothing like reported/quoted in "Visions." There were lots of parallels to the gospel which is why I think it was so popular. I read "Embraced by the Light" and actually liked a lot of it. It was going on in Joseph Smith's day and it continues to this day. There has always been a portion of LDS society who will buy into the lastest story. Now most people politely refer to it as "Taken In By The Light". This made the rounds in the 90's and was a huge success among certain segments of church membership. Remember Betty Eadie's "Embraced By The Light". Oh it happens and will continue to happen.
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