Tales of Forever
The Academia.edu Book Chat
Tales of Forever: The Unfolding Drama of God’s Hidden Hand in History
“This book asks some pretty big questions about whether God is actually in control of history and if His promises really bear out in what’s happened throughout time… To answer this, Smith looks to so-called ‘lost texts’ of Scripture that preserve what is the most significant messianic prophecy—of a 5,500-year promise, from God to Adam and Eve—that a Savior would come at exactly the right time… Says Smith, for centuries, early Christians and Jews worked with a totally different timeline based on The Septuagint, the Greek translation of The Old Testament. According to it, the period from Adam to Christ is 5,500 years—not 4,000 like in most modern Bibles. And that’s not just trivia. Smith argues that knowing that timeline is a key to understanding God’s faithfulness. If you follow the 5,500-year prophecy of the Great Five and a Half Days, the arrival of Jesus makes perfect sense as the promised moment. But then he shows how later religious and political forces actively obscured that prophecy—switching out chronologies, removing certain books, and so on… Smith makes you feel like a detective, piecing together clues from lost texts, artifacts like The Ark of the Covenant, and these hidden timelines… Smith’s method, using narrative and storytelling as much as footnotes and dates, actually makes that complexity feel alive. Instead of proving facts in the scientific sense, he wants the reader to reimagine, to see God’s hand even where the official story lost the thread…”
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The Academia.edu Book Chat Transcript
HER: The paper we’re diving into today is Tales of Forever: The Unfolding Drama of God’s Hidden Hand in History, Book One by W. Kent Smith. Quite a title, huh?
HIM: Yeah, right? It’s almost like a movie in itself. But it’s definitely more than a catchy name. At its core, this book asks some pretty big questions about, well, whether God is actually in control of history and how we might know that, and if His promises really bear out in what’s happened throughout time. It’s one of those topics that’s got massive implications for how people think about their own history or even just their faith.
HER: Absolutely. And honestly, what struck me is how Smith doesn’t settle for the usual, familiar biblical stories. Instead, he’s hauling in a lot of what you’d call apocryphal literature, books and writings that didn’t make it into the standard Western biblical canon. And he makes this big case that these so-called “lost texts” actually preserve a really significant, maybe even the most significant, messianic prophecy, this whole 5,500-year promise from God to Adam and Eve, that a Savior would come at exactly the right time.
HIM: That was fascinating, especially because, you know, most people think biblical prophecies are pretty straightforward, like you see it in Isaiah or something. But what Smith is saying is that for centuries, early Christians and Jews worked with a totally different timeline based on The Septuagint, the Greek translation of The Old Testament. According to that version, the period from Adam to Christ is 5,500 years, not 4,000 like in most modern Bibles.
HER: Right. And that’s not just trivia. Smith argues that knowing that timeline is a key to understanding God’s faithfulness. Like if you follow the 5,500-year prophecy of the Great Five and a Half Days, the arrival of Jesus makes perfect sense as the promised moment. But then he shows how later religious and political forces kind of actively obscured that prophecy—switching out chronologies, removing certain books, and so on.
HIM: Which, I mean, I didn’t know about at all. It’s kind of wild to think that the version of history most of us know is a bit of a patchwork, shaped as much by politics as by faith. Smith almost makes you feel like a detective, piecing together clues from lost texts, artifacts like The Ark of the Covenant, and these hidden timelines.
HER: Yeah, and not just detective work, but this sense of a story within a story. I kept thinking about his idea that truth is “hidden in plain sight,” that a lot of what we take for granted might be just the residue left by whoever got to set the official version of things at the time. Kind of reminds me of, well, actually nothing specific. But it makes me wonder about how many other historical “truths” got massaged in a similar way. Like, has anyone ever really figured out who invented the sandwich? Sorry, off topic.
HIM: No, I get it. The point is, history is never as clean as we’d like. Smith’s method, using narrative and storytelling as much as footnotes and dates, actually makes that complexity feel alive. Instead of proving facts in the scientific sense, he wants the reader to reimagine, to see God’s hand even where the official story lost the thread.
HER: And he’s clear that he’s not offering absolute truth. If anything, he’s encouraging us to—I don’t know—try on new perspectives, see what fits, and sit with the uncertainties. Maybe the lesson is that the search itself, the willingness to dig, to reconsider what’s handed to us, is what builds real faith or understanding.
HIM: Yeah, and not just for people who already believe. Anyone who cares about how narratives shape culture, and how we decide what to call “truth,” would get something out of this. Even if you wind up disagreeing with Smith, you can’t help but see how fragile and complicated our stories really are.
HER: I love that. So maybe the real “drama of God’s hidden hand” is less about dramatic miracles, and more about the mysterious way stories and prophecies can persist, even when they’re pushed to the margins. That’s a kind of hope, if you ask me.
HIM: Couldn’t have put it better. So, Tales of Forever. Not just a history, but an invitation to look again, and maybe to find wonder in what’s been hiding right in front of us.
Previews of Tales of Forever
To read more, go to:
A CASE FOR THE TALES—to read a work that sheds light on long-lost truths that most modern-day Christians know nothing about.
IN OUR DARKEST HOUR—to discover God’s greatest proof of His control and faithfulness the world would ever know.
A LIST OF THE FIVE—to learn how five sacred things tell the ultimate tale of God’s intention toward humanity.
SOME FOREWORD THINKING—to learn of a tale stranger than any fiction, of the ultimate tale of God’s intention toward humanity.
THE HIDDEN BOOKS—to learn how a subject once reserved for the elite and esoteric is now open for the layperson to investigate.
ARGUMENTS FOR AUTHENTICITY—to see how a four-fold nature of truth became a tradition of biblical interpretation in the early Christian Era.
SHADOW AND SUBSTANCE—to see how typology expounds that certain events, persons, or statements in The Old Testament pre-figure Christ.
THE STAGE IS SET—to find out why the God of The Bible is so interested in typology, in shadow and substance.
A MATTER OF STYLE—to ask, if Jesus never spoke in iambic pentameter, then why do Bible translators depict Him as doing so.
THE CURTAIN RISES—to learn of ancient literary treasures that give us a glimpse into humanity’s spiritual origins and destiny.
THE MAN FROM FOREVER—to see how the story of Enoch as a type of Christ provides the building blocks for countless mythological motifs.
DAWN OF TIME—to learn of a story that reveals how God nurtured Adam and Eve during every phase of their lives.
FIRE AND BLADE—to learn of a story of the man whom God told to sacrifice his son and how Satan reacted to his attempt.
TRIAL BY FURY—to learn of a story of Pontius Pilate that reveals why he acted the way he did during his encounters with Jesus.
THE NEXT PARADIGM SHIFT—to see that, in nearly every generation what was thought to be true was overturned by a new way of seeing things.
PILATE: AS THE PUBLIC DEFENDER—to see how Pontius Pilate provides a universal mirror for all who investigate the age-old mystery: “What is truth?”
A HERO FOR THE AGES—to learn that even in our fallen state, our brains are hardwired to interpret the frequency of the Divine.
A CAPSTONE TO TIME—to discover The Great Pyramid of Giza defies any attempt to dismiss that it might contain the ultimate expression of truth.
