I got the call this evening. Admittedly, I am not an easy man to get in touch with by phone, but I happened to see the phone number light up on my phone and it was from an area code where a particular friend of mine is the only one who calls me, and usually about that time of day, and so I answered the phone. What ensued was a conversation with the widow of that friend who let me know that her late husband had died about a week and a half ago, and that she has been calling about 3 people or so a day because it has been hard for her to do it. Although I consider myself a fairly awkward person and not exactly the best comforter around in those sorts of circumstances, I brought up good memories and praised her for the work she had shared in concerning the books on chronology and the pyramids that he had worked on, and heard that she planned on keeping his books in print. She also let me know that she wanted me to provide some sort of word for her at the memorial and that she would let me know when it was so that I could go there if I wanted–and I said I would like to attend.

It was about twenty years ago or so when I met the late author, some of whose books I have reviewed fondly [1]. He and his wife lived outside of Los Angeles, which was a bit of a trek for me when I was a college student, and he was as fond of tennis and raising archer fish as he was of history and specifically the chronology of ancient history. Many hours of my life I have spent with him talking on the phone as he worked out some train of logic and discussed the agricultural fasts of Chislev or other aspects of ancient history that are little known and understood from Josephus and other sources. The last few phone calls I had with him showed him having a bit of a rough voice but he managed to make it to fifty years of marriage and a tough fight with a cancer that had returned after having gone into remission once before.

You really get to know a person if you talk with them as they work their way through volumes of material over the course of years, and if you stand with them in their kitchen while archer fish are accurately squirting brackish water at you from more than ten feet away. Throughout the two decades I knew him he never tired of talking about history and chronology and seeking to understand the patterns of the Bible regarding Sabbath and Jubilee years and what it meant in the broader scale of history. And while he has run his course in his life on earth, we look forward to seeing him again in the kingdom, knowing that his suffering and efforts here on earth are done.

[1] See, for example: