HERE IS A SAMPLE OF AN EXEMPLARY CRITICAL BOOK REVIEW:
(Note: The margins are not to scale. Use only for assessment of good paper content.)

A Critical Review of Gary G. Cohen's Understanding Revelation (Collingswood, N. J.: Christian Beacon Press, 1990), by John A. Sproule.

The author, a Th.D. graduate of Grace Theological Seminary and Professor of New Testament at Faith Theological Seminary (until recently), has written what this reviewer regards as a classic defense of the view, that the three series of seal, trumpet, and bowl Judgments of the Apocalypse are successive, not contemporaneous, and that the events within each series are likewise successive, The work in marked by precision, logic, and good grammatical exegesis of the relevant texts. One wonders why this book has not been published in hardback and given a much more expansive exposure to the Christian public.
Perhaps the major area of criticism regarding the book is the author's limitation of the views considered, He deals only with those views which he designates as "successive," i.e., three different successive series (his view), or "contemporaneous." The latter would be the view that the series of seal, trumpet, and bowl Judgments are either three accounts of the same series or that they are three different series released synchronously. Thus, he has not allowed for views that might not fall into either category i.e., such views as three series having some overlapping relationship in which each seventh in the seals and trumpets are regarded as reaching to Christ's posttribulational return and the bowls being poured out at the final crisis. As such, there would be a stepping back between seals and trumpets and between trumpets and bowls. Such views have been held (or still are) by such Christian scholars as James M. Gray, Wilbur M. Smith, and W. E. Harrison. Gundry (The Church and the Tribulation, p. 75) schematizes a sample of such a view as follows:
Second
Coming

Seals 1 2 3 4 5 6 7

Trumpets 1 2 3 4 5 6 7

Bowls 1234567

It is argued by many that the Semitic style of apocalyptic literature (said to be, followed in Revelation), in which sweeping summaries of complex events are followed by later detailed regressions, favors the "stepping back" view of the three series of judgments. However, in fairness to Cohen, many of his arguments lend themselves to a partial refutation of the "sweeping back" view (e.g., his demonstration that the content of the seventh seal must be the successive trumpet series and that the content of the seventh trumpet is the successive bowl series).
Before Cohen even discusses the problem of the order of the judgments. he very cogently demonstrates that the churches of Rev. 2 and 3 are not only historical and representative but that, within these representative congregations, the entire church of this present era is "representatively contemplated" (P. 45.'). Perhaps the weakest element in his presentation concerning the historical development of the church age is that he assigns dates (from J. B. Smith, Larkin, Seiss) to progressive
periods of church history (p. 48) based on some system (evidently Schaff's) and then he marvels that his dating system so closely coincides with Schaff's system (pp. 49 ff.). There seems to be some circular reasoning here.
His very reasonable conclusion that "Christendom will, until Christ comes, always contain Christians and congregations of all seven of the representative types" lends a great deal of force to the pretribulational argument from Rev. 3:10 that the church will not pass through the tribulation (pp. 59 ff.). This seems to this reviewer to be the only suitable explanation (and it is reasonable and believable) of the fact that "Philadelphian" church members did not cease around A.D. 1900 but that they represent true believers in any age.
Cohen attempts to demonstrate that church elders (and, therefore, the 24 elders of Revelation 4) are "representa- tives" of people in local churches (p. 70). He appeals to Acts 20:7, 28 and James 5:14. However, church elders are spiritual leaders (undershepherds) of the people, even in the cited texts, rather than representatives, Cohen certainly has every right to opine his view of the identity of the twenty-four elders but their identity still is "subjective and unknowable" and it will remain such until we receive the final answer from God.
One of his few slips of logic occurs with his strained handling of 2 Thessalonians 2:1-5 in attempting to protect pretribulationism (p. 74). His conclusion that "the force of 2 Thessalonians 2:1-5 is that by the fact that if the rapture is yet to occur one cannot now be in the tribulation period (v. 2). This does not begin to deal with the problem of this passage, i.e., the prior mention of the Second Advent in 2 Thessalonians 1:7 ff., the Granville-Sharp application to parousias and episunagoges in 2 Thessalonians 2:1, and then the Second Advent parousias of 2 Thessalonians 2:8. One wonders if the Thessalonians had such a refined eschatology as to enable them to make the detailed distinctions that Cohen's interpretation places upon the text. Inadvertently Cohen leaves the door ajar to the posttribulational view (p. 86) of the trumpet in 1 Corinthians 15:51-52 by stating that the seventh trumpet in Revelation is the "final one to sound in a temporal series." Similarly, posttribulationists would quickly seize upon Cohen's concession that an admonition of imminence does appear between the sixth and seventh vials (p. 104).
Cohen leaves his readers dangling a bit (pp. 140-42) by failing to discuss the "wound" sustained by the Beast of Revelation 13--the wound which was healed and caused the world to marvel. This reader was anxious to read Cohen's opinion on this issue, but perhaps it did not serve the purpose he was pursuing at that point.
Of particular benefit to this reader was Cohen's exhaustive, well-reasoned, and meticulous exegesis of the episodal or "inset" sections of Revelation (Revelation 7; 10:1-11; 11:1-13; 12:1-17; 13:1-18; 14:1-5, 14-20; 17-18; 19:1-21). This section (pp. 125 ff.) comprised a major portion of the book, and this reviewer deeply appreciated such an exhaustive treatment. This "episodal" section plus his excellent defense of the successive unfolding of the judgment series marks the book as one that should be studied by every serious student of eschatology.
Cohen's book gets an A+ from this reviewer. It is hoped that it might soon be reprinted in a more attractive format and given a much wider distribution.