Ask the Author: Mark Johansen
Answered Questions (5)
Mark Johansen
My wife and I used to take pregnant teenagers into our home. One young lady had a story that I thought was absolutely wild. She claimed that her father was a drug dealer, that the father of her baby had been killed in a gang fight, etc.
Then one day she disappeared. To get clues to where she might have gone we looked through things that she had left behind. And we found the death certificate of her boyfriend, with cause of death listed as "gunshot wound to the head". Eventually I went to the police to report her as a missing person. I told the police officer that I didn't know if it was true, but she had said that her father was a drug dealer. He asked for the father's name, and when I told him, he nodded and replied, "Oh yes, we know him."
(Before meeting some of these young ladies we took in, if someone had asked me if I was aware that there were gangsters and drug addicts in the world, I would have said "of course". But I didn't know any. I lived in a very safe, middle-class world. I ended up meeting many drug addicts, people who had been in and out of prison, etc.)
Then one day she disappeared. To get clues to where she might have gone we looked through things that she had left behind. And we found the death certificate of her boyfriend, with cause of death listed as "gunshot wound to the head". Eventually I went to the police to report her as a missing person. I told the police officer that I didn't know if it was true, but she had said that her father was a drug dealer. He asked for the father's name, and when I told him, he nodded and replied, "Oh yes, we know him."
(Before meeting some of these young ladies we took in, if someone had asked me if I was aware that there were gangsters and drug addicts in the world, I would have said "of course". But I didn't know any. I lived in a very safe, middle-class world. I ended up meeting many drug addicts, people who had been in and out of prison, etc.)
Mark Johansen
In general, just things that interest me. Especially things that are "controversial" in some sense.
My first book was about database design, which may not sound like a controversial subject -- there have been relatively few street riots over disagreements about database design -- but I think many people do it very, very wrong, and so I wrote the book to say how I think one should do it right.
My second book was about defending the Bible from atheist's attacks. More obviously controversial.
My third was about Heaven. The ideas that most people have about Heaven are very different from what the Bible says. Like nowhere does the Bible say that you become an angel when you die or that in Heaven you have wings and float around on clouds. Even Bible-believing Christians tend to have a vastly over-simplified view of Heaven.
And my fourth book was about end-time prophecy. In that book I tried to very explicitly discuss all the competing theories and the evidence for each.
I guess I'm just an argumentative person. :-)
My first book was about database design, which may not sound like a controversial subject -- there have been relatively few street riots over disagreements about database design -- but I think many people do it very, very wrong, and so I wrote the book to say how I think one should do it right.
My second book was about defending the Bible from atheist's attacks. More obviously controversial.
My third was about Heaven. The ideas that most people have about Heaven are very different from what the Bible says. Like nowhere does the Bible say that you become an angel when you die or that in Heaven you have wings and float around on clouds. Even Bible-believing Christians tend to have a vastly over-simplified view of Heaven.
And my fourth book was about end-time prophecy. In that book I tried to very explicitly discuss all the competing theories and the evidence for each.
I guess I'm just an argumentative person. :-)
Mark Johansen
There's the classic: "The last man on Earth sat alone in a room. There was a knock on the door." Or do you mean that I'm supposed to make one up?
Mark Johansen
I wouldn't know. I'm not really a "writer". I'm a software developer who does a little writing on the side. :-)
Mark Johansen
I'm presently finishing up a book about Heaven. Last year the men's group in my church asked me to teach for a couple of months, my choice of topic. At the time I thought that my reading of the Bible had led to conclude that Eternity has a more complex "geography" than most Christians seem to think. There is not just Heaven and Hell but a number of other places. So I took having to teach a class as an opportunity to research the issue more thoroughly. After doing all that research, I had a ton of notes, and it occurred to me to try to turn it into a book.
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