Discussion Questions for
THUNDER OF HEAVEN

1. When Joshua finally makes his life-changing decision about God, his physical surroundings help him realize something important about the sacrificial death of Jesus Christ. What was it that Joshua came to understand? How did his miserable surroundings help him to realize that?

2. Deborah had to make a tough decision about her relationship with Ethan March. Did Deborah make the right decision, and why or why not?

3. Abigail had to struggle with the fact that, despite her best intentions to save New York, the New Jersey tragedy occurred anyway. Do you think she was morally responsible for that tragedy? Was the legal outcome in Abigail’s criminal case a just result?

4. Remember the scenes that show protests in the streets of Tehran, Iran, near Joshua’s jail cell? That part of this novel was written back in 2010, many months before the surprising outbreak of so many popular uprisings in numerous Middle Eastern nations in 2011. Do you see similarities? Differences?

5. President Virgil Corland, according to his Chief of Staff, Hank Strand, seemed to have been changing his attitude, his outlook, and some of his policies. What do you think was behind those changes?

6. Vice President (and later President) Jessica Tulrude was a strong advocate for the mandatory use of the BIDTag — a “biological identification tag,” to be inserted on human skin through a non-painful laser “tattoo” — the tag would contain personal data such as social security number, date and place of birth, criminal record or terrorist ties, etc. and could be detected from a distance by government scanners, supposedly as an antidote to terrorism. In making that argument she pointed to several terror attacks on American soil as fictionalized in our novel. What kind of attacks would it take before the majority of Americans would be willing to accept a national security device such as BIDTags? Do you see any prophetic, Biblical significance in such a personal, mandatory identification system?

7. Massive disasters occur in this novel near the borders of Israel, and as a result, that nation is miraculously rescued. How do those events relate to the Old Testament prophetic book of Ezekiel, chapters 38 and 39?

8. What is the attitude of the White House in our novel regarding the nation of Israel? Is that approach similar to or different from the attitude of the American government today? How does that attitude compare to the position of the American people?

9. Russia plays an important role in the events of this novel. If you had to chose, would you view present-day Russia as mostly a friend and ally of the United States or as a potential enemy?

10. The America depicted in this futuristic novel is suffering catastrophic financial problems, and partly because of that, it has entered a new stage of global unification politically and economically with the other nations of the world. If we use a scale of 1 – 10, with 10 being a complete and total unification of the United States with the other governments of the world, what number would you assign to America on that scale today?