Rebecca Ellen Kurtz

Sons of God! What’s it about?
According to the Christian Fantasy Review, when thinking of Sons of God, “One should think of Twilight, the Mummy movies or Indiana Jones full of paranormal activity. But this one has a Biblical worldview….In fact, it is a romance at heart.”

Sons of God tells the tale of a 3,000-year-old half-angelic, half-human female warrior who disguises herself as a treasure hunter for mythic items while hunting down her fallen brethren who’ve committed atrocities against mankind. But now, in the present day, some mysterious murders begin occurring at the archaeological dig at Nineveh, and she must return to face her worst mistake. The most fascinating aspect of this mythic thriller is research from the Old Testament on this supernatural race and historical accounts of these blood-drinking tribes, which introduces an alternate vampire theory. It raises the question - is this semi-supernatural race mythical or not?

What are your writing influences?
Dan Brown, Frank Peretti, Stephanie Meyers, Edgar Allen Poe, Screenwriting, and anything gothic (combining both horror and romance to create a pleasing sort of terror).  I appreciate Dan Brown’s intelligent and lucid thrillers on religious mysteries; however,  I included my research because it’s factual, and it strengthens the argument of a spiritual realm and God.  Frank Peretti’s novels deal with my favorite topic, spiritual warfare.  And although I’m not a fan of Meyers’ writing style, she does craft great, dark romantic relationships.  With Edgar Allen Poe, his stories send chills down my back.  I love authors who provoke the senses and do not bore my intellect.  If I read five sentences explaining the same environment, I get bored, so I don’t do it.  I am a screenwriter, and Sons of God was originally a film script.  So my novel is like a film, the story is visual and keeps moving, no getting waylaid by superfluous descriptions.   Cinematic characters do not have a lot of backstory, but must be figured out by their actions and reactions.  Most readers tell me that the film (mental visuals created while reading the book) continue to play in their heads long after they finish it.

Beyond strictly literary influences, are there any life experiences that factor into this story?
The spiritual realm has always been as real to me as the physical.  At first when demons attacked me, I was always able to spot them and defend myself in the name of Jesus Christ.  The most horrifying assault is actually embedded within Sons of God, but the overall message was one I learned at great cost.  I had always heard of demonic deception, but I didn’t understand it till I lived through it.  For years, my anger at God’s lack of protection during the deception haunted our relationship, but writing Sons of God was cathartic.  Now, I’m receiving messages from Christians who were spiritually healed while reading Sons of God.  Whether from demonic attacks or demonic deception, bitterness and hurt had created a rift - a demon’s purpose, to try and wedge something between us and God.  Sons of God helped some recognize the deception and realize God wasn’t the culprit.  Many Christians are so fearful of even thinking on demons that they do not test the spirits - a warning repeated by the Old Testament prophets, Jesus, Peter and Paul - a warning stressed too many times for Christians not to adhere to.  My recent  conversion to Messianic Judaism has given me a deeper understanding of scriptures and Jewish context from which the N’filim view their world.

What has the reception been to Sons of God so far?
Mixed.  As said, some are being spiritually healed - some admitting that they didn’t even know they were upset with God till reading the novel.  Some have accused me of being overly fascinated with demons and a demon worshipper since I have demons and exorcisms in the novel, but like I said, the message God laid on my heart was dealing with demonic deception.  I shirk this off since Christ was accused himself by religious leaders for exorcising demons and spiritually healing people of scars left from spiritual warfare.  In fact, if you go through all four gospels, you would find that after telling others of the good news, the next most important thing that Jesus told his disciples to do was cast out demons in his name.  It seems that Satan has crafted such a strong fear of even discussing demons within Christianity, that he is winning on the second most given command that Christ gave to us.  One Christian wrote that there are some children of God who no one wants to talk about but all have peace knowing they exist:  those called and aren’t afraid to fight the ugly spiritual battles.

Why did you include your research?   Why did you quote from the Koran?
The Sons of God series reaches out to all religions and nonreligious people.  As most academics would, I see the extra-Biblical texts as supportive and confirming the truth found in the scriptures.  Archaeologists who only find references from one society scoff, but if a semi-supernatural race with similar attributes is recorded in every ancient civilization, it is substantiated as fact.
Furthermore, the Koran texts were chosen as a direct witness to Muslims.  The last long segment from the Koran within the story itself discusses the Jinn’s acceptance of the Koran since it denied the trinity and Jesus.  The Jinn in the Koran are known to be evil and deceptive, jealous of humans and God’s favor, so the fact that the Jinn oddly turn kind is very suspicious and is meant to make Muslim’s pause and think.  Of course Christians do not know this, but not everything has to be for and about Christians in service to God.

Sons of God is listed as a supernatural thriller and mythic fiction.  Why?
The premise of Sons of God is that the N’filim, the descendants of angels and mortals, are the basis of all world mythology.  The novel series include Thor, Loki, Nimrod, Sekhmet, Osiris, Sokar, Mithras, Ishtar, and several more.  Of course, some serve Elohim while others plot to rebuild a strong N’filim army before the Battle of Armageddon to defeat God.  Scholars acknowledge that the Greek gods closely resemble what the Hebrews would call fallen angels living amongst and having children with mortal women.  We still hear tales of Hercules, Medusa, Thor and other half divine heros and villains who survived a great flood.  In Norse mythology, great battles were fought between the gods (fallen angels) and cannibalistic giants before a flood wiped out the giants for the humans to repopulate the earth.  Celtic mythology of the Tuatha de Danaan continues this trend and has documentation for their ancestors originally hailing from the Middle East where tales of the N’filim were first recorded.  In almost every ancient religion there are tales of angel-like/divine creatures mating with humans and/or animals to create their god-kings or a superior semi-divine race worshipped by humans.

Please explain how the Bible supports the existence of vampires.
Both historical and Biblical records recount that humans worshipped a pantheon of gods made up of N’filim and fallen angels.  Most polytheistic religions required human sacrifices and drank the sacrificial blood.  As the Hebrews’ Book of Enoch includes the records of semi-divine entities drinking blood straight from a human, so do many other ancient religions.   In Jewish texts, the post-flood N’filim race has been described as having unnaturally long lives, grew to heights of nine to twelve feet, and had skin much paler than mortals.  Historically, these N’filim tribes were known to drink blood from skulls, flay people alive, and sacrifice babies to demons.  Current archaeological finds further support that drinking blood was common amongst the Canaanite giants.  Therefore, we are presented with an unnaturally long-lived, pale, semi-supernatural tribe known for drinking blood recorded by both ancient civilizations, religious texts, and archaeological finds.  Of course, they were not the undead as in Bram Stroker’s fictional interpretation.  Vampire is an ancient word which simply means blood-drinker.

This is Book One in a five-book series, right? Without giving *too* much away, where is this larger story going?
By the end of the series, the main characters, old covenant N’filim, are permitted by God to partake in the new covenant, but because they’ve seen Biblical history up through modern times as a whole, they have a very different view than modern believers who focus on Graeco-Roman church doctrines for guidance.  The series follows them through pre-flood, the kings and prophets, the diaspora, Mithraism, Jesus and Messianic Judaism, the formation of the Roman Catholic Church, the Protestant Reformation, Jewish Mysticism, Hitler’s Third Reich, the charismatic movement, and modern times.  From a Jewish perspective and through millenniums, God illustrates that he is a jealous God who demands obedience from those who profess to love him.  The N’filim watch as the church falls away from God as did the Hebrews.  As Solomon states, “there is nothing new under the sun.”   Loki, the trickster giant who followed Jesus around, plays an unexpected role as spiritual warfare heats up and occult entities build their army for the ensuing Battle of Armageddon.  The series’ five titles are Sons of God, Nimrod, Thor, Caleb, and Loki.

Tags: author, Messianic Fiction, Messianic Judaism, n'filim, nephelim, nephilim, novel, questions, Rebecca Kurtz, Sons of God, Theology & Messianic Judaism, writing influences

This entry was posted by Rebecca Ellen Kurtz on Thursday, September 3rd, 2009 at 7:56 pm and is filed under Interesting Tidbits for Sons of God Series and Research. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.