John Fergusson – Time Travel Mystery

A 20th century scientist time travels back to Ancient Jerusalem in John Fergusson’s dual time line mystery King Solomon’s Deadly Legacy, a faith-themed story which combines murder, betrayal, and corruption in business with deeper questions of healing and redemption. Hi there, I’m your host jenny Wheeler and today John talks about how he came to write this challenging thriller and what King Solomon might be able to teach us in a time of pandemic. We’ve got three E-books of King Solomon to give away to three lucky readers.  Enter the draw on  The Joys of Binge Reading.com or on our Binge Reading Facebook page. Six things you’ll learn from this Joys of Binge Reading episode: Why John is fascinated by King Solomon What Israel’s early kings can tell us How John got started in fiction A healing ministry to the nations The writers he admires most Where to find John online Where to find John Fergusson:  Website: https://johnfergussonbooks.com/blog/ AND www.jfm.org.nz Or [email protected] Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/JF-Ministries-254398031318206/ What follows is a “near as” transcript of our conversation, not word for word but pretty close to it, with links to important mentions. Jenny Wheeler: But now, here’s John. Hello John and welcome to the show. It’s great to have you with us. Introducing Author John Fergusson John Fergusson: Hi, Jenny. It’s good to be with you. Jenny Wheeler: You’ve written this book, King Solomon’s Deadly Legacy. People love to hear what the genesis of a book is and how it came to be. I gather that your time travel novel has quite an interesting story behind it. Could you tell us about how it came to be written? John Fergusson – Time Travel Author John Fergusson: I’ve been a Christian for many years. I’ve always been fascinated by King Solomon. At the beginning of his life he obviously loved the Lord and he heard from the Lord and by the end of his life he was depressed, he was writing Ecclesiastes and he’d backslidden. He was committing idolatry, building idols and worshiping idols for wives. I always wondered how the man who is supposed to be the wisest man who ever lived could have fallen into that trap. A few years ago I realized that our Western culture, since the two Wars, has been making the same mistakes. I wanted to investigate that and present it in a way that that would make people think about it. That’s been in my mind for a number of years. Then we were in a meeting with my team at church, and the pastor said if something has been in your heart for a long time, it’s probably gone. That stirred me to say, I need to write this book rather than just be thinking about it. So it all started. King Solomon research trail Jenny Wheeler: How long ago did you start seriously getting down to writing it? John Fergusson: That was eight years ago. It’s taken a long time. I spent five years on research and then having got a few facts under my fingertips, wrote it and then rewrote it. Then I learned how to write, and I tried to get it published and that didn’t happen. You know the story. Jenny Wheeler: Yes, I do. You’ve got someone with a 21st century sensibility, Simon, who’s a scientist and he gets catapulted back into King Solomon’s time. It’s a daring choice to have such a big time travel gap. For those not familiar with the story, I wondered if you could outline when exactly this is, and what the political situation in King Solomon’s time in Jerusalem was all about. John Fergusson: King Solomon lived 3000 years ago, more or less. He was the greatest King of Israel at the time, he was the greatest king at the time, anywhere. He was the son of King David who was well known for killing Goliath, amongst other things. This was in Israel and the surrounding kings and kingdoms had all been subdued by King David so they were beholden to Israel. Israel was the dominant power in the middle East at the time, 3000 years ago. King Solomon visited by the Queen of Sheba. – but did he live? The historical debate Jenny Wheeler: There are some people who query whether King Solomon ever actually lived. I wondered if you could address that because very recently we’ve both seen a New Yorker article which debates this issue. It’s still quite a live issue today, isn’t it? John Fergusson: Yes, it is. It’s interesting because somebody wrote a blog recently, I think it was on the Facebook page, and said we don’t know anything about King Solomon. I wanted to write back to him, well if you believe the Bible, you would know a lot more about King Solomon. I always find it fascinating that people are happy to accept other material and yet they dismiss the Bible. Nowadays there are archeologists who accept the Bible as useful literature, because it was created earlier than a lot of the other material. Jenny Wheeler: As you’ve mentioned, we get very contrasting pictures of this historic figure and I shared your perplexity. How could this man be the wisest man who’s ever lived when he ends up being a bit of a sad mess? How do you handle that in your book? Give us an idea of that evolution. A time travel junkie John Fergusson: First of all, I’ve always been fascinated by time travel books. I’m a time travel junkie. Therefore this seemed to be the best way for me to explain what was happening. Simon, the protagonist, is a botanist and he starts off his life as an atheist. He travels back to King Solomon five or six times and each time he meets Solomon at a different age, a different period. The first trip he does isn’t at the beginning, but on the second trip he meets Solomon at the beginning of his reign, when Solomon is full of love for the Lord, full of faith. Simon is blown away by this guy because he can’t get his head around the fact that he believes in God. An artist imagines the scene – Saul and the Witch of Endor – sad end for courageous King But then of course, each time he goes back, Solomon has changed. At the end of the book, Solomon is back-slidden, a rather sad character, he’s not interested anymore, he’s over it. Now of course, in the story of the book, Simon has come to faith in Christ and he’s all excited himself, so you have this continuing conflict from the beginning right through to the end because these characters change. Underlying theme of healing Jenny Wheeler: There’s quite a strong theme of healing running through it too. At the beginning Simon’s daughter has a very aggressive cancer and Simon himself, once he gets into ancient Jerusalem, suffers an injury that someone prays for him over. There’s also that underlying theme that unfolds as we go along of him gradually becoming more open to the idea of some spiritual aspect to healing. I know you’ve been very involved in healing ministry for a number of years. Could you tell us about that side of it? International ministry in healing…. Nepal one focus John Fergusson: We run schools of healing around the world and, by God’s grace, we’ve seen tens of thousands of people healed. But I’ll tell you how they started. I’d been invited by my brother to go to Soweto to the opening of Reinhard Bonnke’s Big Tent and while I was there, I watched a miracle happening. A spiritual journey Now remember I was an atheist myself. I came out of that background. I’d recently become a Christian but all of this supernatural stuff, I was very happy to dismiss. I was standing in front of a man who was talking to a girl and the man said to this girl, put your hand in the air. This 10-year-old girl put her right hand in the air, and he said, no, the other one. I noticed that her left hand was all twisted and withered, it was like half an arm and her hand was all crooked. Then I watched her arm grow. It took about 10 seconds. Within 10 seconds her left arm was totally normal. In my atheistic mindset, I was trying to make sense of this. I was trying to think, maybe she’s got a spare arm. Maybe she’s got a balloon. I mean, how do you try to make sense of something that is beyond your experience. Even then I was still ready to dismiss this, that I hadn’t seen it properly. Then I noticed that the woman to her right was crying. The woman had to be her mom. Mission for healing So there was this lady crying and I realized that the problem was with me. I had witnessed something genuine and I needed to change my mindset. That’s why that theme comes through this whole book because mindsets are called mindsets for a reason. We’re stuck in them and we need to shift and change. Jenny Wheeler: It’s challenging, isn’t it, because all of us have probably had experiences of praying for someone close to us, dearly loved, and not seeing the answer we wanted. It is a very challenging topic to engage in and I can understand why some people who’ve been disappointed in prayer can feel a little skeptical about it. But you cover it very nicely in the story. That brings us to another aspect of it – your intent of the book. You have this definite underlying message, you’re quite straight at the beginning, that you are treating it from a Christian point of view. Who do you see your audience as primarily being? Typical Reinhard Bonnke mass crusade. John Fergusson: They always say you should be writing your book for one person. Being realistic, I’m a Christian, this is a book with a Christian premise, a Christian mindset. I believe that Christians will pick it up, but my heart is that they will pick it up and say, I need to get this for all my friends because they need to read this. Christian mindset, wider message I believe Christians will probably buy it in the first place but want to pass it around because the message is much wider than for Christians. Jenny Wheeler: When you mentioned writing it for one person, did you have that one person in mind? John Fergusson: Well, yes, a 40-year-old Christian lady, that was what I was aiming at. You understand from the book, I like thrillers. I like whodunnits? I like books. I like page turners. I get bored with pages and pages of romantic stuff, so I don’t do romances. The book isn’t like that. It’s not going to appeal to people who are looking for a nice, fuzzy, slushy, warm feeling book. Jenny Wheeler: There’s a little complication because Simon is married in one time zone and gets faced with some issues in the other. We won’t go into that because it will spoil the story, but I thought you did that very nicely. He does have some romantic interest there. The three early Kings of Israel Have you got any thoughts about continuing this as a series? John Fergusson: My first thought was that I would write three books: Solomon, David and Saul, and I’d write them in that order. Solomon has taken a lot longer than I was expecting, so whether I’m going to live long enough to be able to do the others, I don’t know. Both David and Saul have got heaps to teach us and both are fascinating characters. When you start to unravel David, he had so many different aspects to his life. That’s what I’m doing now, beginning to research David. Jenny Wheeler: You mentioned that you’ve done a number of research trips to Israel, so possibly some of that research has already been done. John Fergusson: Yes, indeed. I had to learn quite a lot about David as well when I was writing about Solomon, so you get the whole era. Saul, David, Solomon was a time of dramatic change in Israel. Even more dramatic than we have experienced over the last 50 years. Desert wanderers to city dwellers They went from being little more than a band of hooligans through to an established civilization, and all of that happened in two generations. It was an extraordinary time. Jenny Wheeler: I wondered if you saw it as a coincidence that it’s being published in the middle of a global pandemic. Have you any thoughts about COVID-19? Some people have drawn a theology of why we might be suffering this at this time. John Fergusson: I do believe it’s a sign of the end times. There are lots of potential signs, but I think this is one of them. As I was praying about it not long ago, I felt the Lord say that this is just a warning shot across the bow. There’s more to come so I don’t think we need to be complacent. Refugees fleeing to Europe – sign of the times? I’m excited that it fits in with the theme of the book. This is why I wrote the book – because I believe that as societies, we need to get back to God. We’re heading off in the wrong direction as civilizations, as societies. The purpose of the book was to highlight the fact that Solomon went wrong and as a consequence of Solomon’s backsliding, within four years Israel was invaded by Egypt. Within a few weeks, Israel had divided, and that set up the path towards Exile. What we can learn from Solomon Right now we’re seeing the same thing happening in our own culture. We’re seeing invasion in the form of refugees. The countries, politically, socially, are more divided than they’ve been for decades. I think this is a big warning sign. We need to listen up and change our attitudes. Jenny Wheeler: That does introduce the question of the slightly wider career that you’ve had. As you mentioned, you had contact with Reinhard Bonnke who was an extremely well-known evangelist in Africa and you worked with him for a number of years, didn’t you? So turning aside from the books specifically to your wider experience, tell us about your work in Africa and I think you’d been farming in England before you went to Africa. Tell us something about the background that led in the wider context to this story. An international ministry John Fergusson: I was raised on a farm in England and eventually farmed it myself for nearly 20 years. That’s my background. I have a degree in Agriculture. I trained as a scientist. Then my wife and I became Christians and it’s a very long story, but we were invited to go and be Crusade Directors for Reinhard Bonnke. We traveled around the world and lived in different countries, places like Indonesia, Argentina, Brazil, Jamaica, preparing the big events for him. That meant coordinating with the local pastors’ organizing committees and organizing all the infrastructure that needed to happen in order to make those events come to place. That’s what we did for a number of years. When we left his ministry, we started our own ministry to do something similar on a smaller scale. We saw some amazing things and probably the most memorable was the time we were standing on a container in a meeting in Lagos in Nigeria, in front of one and a half million people. Extraordinary experiences To see seventy five acres of people standing shoulder to shoulder, and then when the Holy Spirit fell they all started calling out and crying out to God. It was just extraordinary. When we were there, we knew we’re actually watching history. This is a significant moment in history to be part of. Jenny Wheeler: Amazing. In preparing these questions, I realized that Reinhard died last year. John Fergusson: Yes, he passed away at Christmas and we went over to Florida to his Memorial Service in January. A wonderful man of God. Jenny Wheeler: Your ministry now is mainly targeted in Nepal, is it? John Fergusson: Yes, we take teams twice a year to Nepal although the next trip is beginning to look a bit doubtful with the current virus situation. They’ve got it quite badly there and the whole country is shut down, so things are going to need to change quickly if we can get there for November. That John is reading now We were there already in March so we take teams twice a year, mostly teaching on healing. By God’s grace the last trip we watched a girl’s arm grow very much like that first one I was telling you about. To watch her right arm go from all withered and twisted up to perfectly normal, and what was lovely was to see her afterwards, touching her own hand because it was obviously changed. That was lovely. Jenny Wheeler: That’s wonderful. This is The Joys of Binge Reading so we like to make some recommendations for listeners of books they might enjoy to read. You’ve mentioned that you are a time travel fan but tell us about some of the books you like to binge read and make some suggestions. Jill Eileen Smith – catologue of biblical fiction. John Fergusson: I thought about one or two. First of all, I love historical novels and there’s quite a lot of good stuff written – what we call biblical fiction, like I have about Solomon. People have written about other characters out of the Bible and most of them are good, some of them are excellent. I love anything by Jill Eileen Smith. C J Sansom to old classics Coming away from the biblical stuff, I love C.J. Sansom’s Shardlake series. These are whodunnits, based around the time of King Henry VIII. Absolutely brilliant. You really feel you’re in the time. It’s excellent. But I was actually saved by reading Dear and Glorious Physician by Taylor Caldwell because at the end of the book she says, this story is continued in the Gospel of Luke. I picked up the Bible, started to read Luke and was blown away by the fact that Luke was fact and the other was fiction. Suddenly I realized I believed all this stuff. That’s how my journey started, so biblical fiction has always been important to me. C J Sansom Shardlake series – Tombland is Book Seven I have written a young adult story myself called Flies in a Window which is a young adult whodunnit based in the UK about a young girl who investigates her brother’s supposed suicide. She doesn’t believe it is suicide and of course it turns out not to be so. That was fun to write. First efforts at fiction Jenny Wheeler: Is that the only other fiction you’ve done? John Fergusson: Yes, that was my first effort, but fiction. I reread it recently and bits of it you cringe and think, I wish I’d re-written it. On the other hand, it’s still a good story. Jenny Wheeler: What made you write for young adults? John Fergusson: I wanted to share the gospel with my goddaughter who was a teenager at the time. I thought this was a nice way to do it. But she didn’t get saved. Jenny Wheeler: Circling around and looking back down the tunnel of life, I think you’ve also written quite a few nonfiction books, but have you any regrets about not starting your fiction writing a bit earlier? Looking back through the years John Fergusson: No. For many years I was rather snooty about fiction. I thought, who wants to read fiction when you want to read facts, you want to read the truth. Then one day I woke up and realized the whole Bible is a story. It’s all stories. Jesus himself was the greatest teller of fiction. We call them parables, but they’re all fiction. He made them up. They were brilliant stories. So if Jesus can tell fiction stories, so can we. That made me feel a lot better and I have no qualms about reading fiction or writing fiction for that reason. Jenny Wheeler: Yes. There is still a division between genre fiction, which is the fiction we’re talking about, the mysteries, thrillers, historicals. Some of the historicals are going more into the literary, but a lot of genre fiction is still looked down upon. But people do get a lot out of them. They reflect real life in a way that some of the more heavy books don’t. John Fergusson: I think it’s a far easier way to read history. I’m enjoying several books written about the Second World War which if you were reading fact books you know that’s going to be hard work. But reading when it’s fiction, for example, The Book Thief by Marcus Zusak is absolutely brilliant. You really get into the period and I believe you feel what they were feeling. John’s future plans as author Jenny Wheeler: What is next for John the writer? What are your plans for the rest of 2020 and heading into 2021? John Fergusson: I have started on King David. I’ve written a chapter for it, but I need to do more research. David is an extraordinary character. He was a shepherd. He was a warrior. He was a king. He was an adulterer. He was a terrorist. It goes on and on. Then of course he was a lousy father. How do you put all that into one man? King David the harpist and song master For a while I’ve been thinking he must have been bipolar. He must have been, but I don’t know. I’ve read a lot of novels about him but the one thing they all leave out is the fact that he was a worshiper. He worshipped God. He wrote a lot of the psalms for us. He was a musician, he brought music into church. They didn’t have music in church before David. He brought the whole thing. The reason we sing music in church now is David. This is something that needs to be brought out. I’m excited about it. So that’s what I will be doing for the next year or two. A trilogy in the making Jenny Wheeler: It sounds almost like a trilogy in itself, the scope of that life. John Fergusson: Then of course King Saul, poor chap. He got it all very wrong. Jenny Wheeler: You wonder if he had a psychotic problem of some sort or another. John Fergusson: I’m sure he did towards the end, but he was a very courageous man. In his early life he was full of courage and he was obviously a great leader and people followed him, but again, he went wrong. Jenny Wheeler: It’s interesting isn’t it, how nonbelievers consider that the Bible is some sort of tarted up story when in fact with a lot of these people, there are things written about them that none of us would want history to remember, like the Bathsheba incident in David’s life. It’s all laid out there for you. There’s no hiding what went on. It’s pretty remarkable like that. John Fergusson: It is. That’s one of the reasons why you think this has to be true, because if this was just gloss, it wouldn’t be in there. Late delivery because of lockdown Jenny Wheeler: They’d have censored it. John Fergusson: They’d have censored it, yes.  Like the writer of Chronicles, he’d taken out all those bad bits. He didn’t want them in there. Jenny Wheeler: That’s right. And the way Saul throws his spear at David when he’s playing the harp. You have quite a picture of how violent the times were. John Fergusson: Very much. Jenny Wheeler: I guess you haven’t had much chance yet to talk with your “readers” about this book because it’s coming out quite soon, isn’t it? It hasn’t been officially released yet. When is it out? John Fergusson: It’s a bit complicated. What happened is it was due for publication on 15th May but because we were all in lockdown, we didn’t know quite what to do. We continued with what we called a soft launch, so it is available now online on Amazon, Book Depository and places like that. Where to find John online Officially in this country it’s being launched on 15th July which is in a few weeks’ time. The reason is because we don’t actually physically have books in this country. We couldn’t get them here, so we’re shipping them from Malaysia. They should be landing in Auckland this weekend. So we’ll have books and then we can have a proper launch. There’s going to be a launch party on 16th July at our church. We’re looking forward to that. Jenny Wheeler: Wonderful. How are you planning to interact with your readers? Have you got somewhere like a Facebook page? John Fergusson: We’ve got Facebook, J.F. Ministries or John Fergusson.  You can search for both of those. We’ve got a website, [email protected]. I’ve got a blog site with the books on there as well. Very happy for people to contact us. We might even get a free book for you. Give us your email and we’ll give you a free book, but not one of these. You’ll have to buy this one. If you liked this you might like . . . Jenny Wheeler: We’ll put the links for all those different sites in the show notes that are published with this episode so people will be able to find them as a permanent utility there. I’ll make sure that happens. John Fergusson: That’s great, Jenny. Thank you. Jenny Wheeler: It’s been wonderful talking. I’m looking forward to seeing the next one, so you’d better hurry up and keep writing. Thank you so much for your time. John Fergusson: Thanks Jenny. Bless you. If you enjoyed King Solomon’s Deadly Legacy you might also enjoy Cassandra Clark’s Medieval Mysteries or Candace Robb’s stories of medieval York LISTEN HERE LISTEN HERE Thanks To Our Technical Support: The Joys of Binge Reading podcast is put together with wonderful technical help from Dan Cotton at DC Audio Services. Dan is an experienced sound and video engineer who’s ready and available to help you with your next project… Seek him out at [email protected] or Phone + 64 – 21979539. 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