Early in 2014, Tom Davies set off with his wife Liz on a road trip in a Winnebago around the beautiful and furious landscapes of Australia. They both immediately fell in love with this vast country and the early chapters keep giving us sharp and often achingly funny snapshots of life in the lucky country. We meet giant lizards, marauding cockatoos and and blowfish who bite off swimmers' toes.
The mood changes when Tom finds God back in his life again while searching for crocodiles in the billabong and, in every quarreling sunset, Tom starts hearing the crumbling music of God's breaking heart. God first spoke to him, Tom believes, when he was a teacher with Voluntary Service Overseas fifty years ago in Malaysia. In a series of searing visions God told him that the long-prophesied Man of Lawlessness, in the shape of the romantic mind of the modern media, was taking over the world, a necessary pre-condition to the return of the Son of Man.
Now, here in Australia, Tom finally responds with invincible courage, with a series of Facebook attacks on the local violence-loving media, accusing it of spreading violence all over the world including the Charlie Hebdo attacks in Paris and others throughout Europe and Asia. These attacks produce more than a quarter of a million likes and visits. So Tom is far from alone, he understands, wiping a tear of thanks from his eye. Here in Australia he has finally finished his story which began so tumultuously in a Malayan paddy field and described in The Reporter's Tale.
Bush Revelations is a truly astonishing book – a report on various "conversations" with God about the parlous state of his world and why it has got in such a mess. Hold it carefully, read it slowly and weep abundantly because God is still there for us, holding out his hand and ready to take us all safely home.
