Judges: Gods War Against Humanism

One of the best ways to communicate truth in such a way as to grip the hearts and minds of the hearer is by means of story telling. The Bible is full of stories, designed for just this purpose. The whole theology of story telling could use a treatment. In this book, however, it is my intention to illustrate such a theology rather then write it systematically. God is Himself the Great Story Teller. Being God, He can sovereignly superintend all events so as to bring His stories to life. His stories really happened. The fact that they are told as stories does not subtract one whit from their real historical character. Still, what gives them their thrilling power is not only that we know that they really happened in a certain year and at a certain place, but because they speak to us today. Judges, like all so-called "history books" of the Old Testament, is really a prophecy. Judges is numbered among what are called the "Former Prophets". These books were called prophecies because the histories they recorded were regarded as exemplary. The histories showed God's principles in action, and thus formed prophetic warning to the people. If we read Judges merely as a set of exciting stories, we miss this. - From the Introduction