text: Casual book browsers who stumble across Braden's book, "The Isaiah Effect," might undoubtedly be drawn to the implications of the title: that there exists some mystical, unifying code which is only now being fully understood through modern techniques, research, and understanding. I, as one such browser, had briefly read about the so-called "Bible Code" which computers have now enabled man to explore and thought that the subject of this book might be related. With my interest piqued at the title and the book description, I delved into the pages expecting to learn exactly what encompassed Isaiah's "precise instructions" of prayer. I wanted to know exactly what Braden claimed to have stumbled upon.
  
  What I found in this 250 page foray into countless subjects was nothing other than a pastiche of new-thought concepts. The mixing of religions, for example - a sort of pick-and-choose spirituality which has slowly been creeping its way into the mainstream for decades - is recycled over and over again, drawing from endless sources of gnostic gospels and other lost books. In only one chapter does Braden actually begin to describe in detail verses from the book of Isaiah. Instead he relegates the books of the Essenes to positions of higher authority and prominence.
  
  In the brief pages in which Braden actually does discuss Isaiah, his conclusions speak nothing of a decoded lost science. His basic premise of "The Effect" is that people can alter their futures by the choices they make in the present. Such a revelation is not a new interpretation of Isaiah at all. Any student of the Bible and Christianity knows that all the prophetic books of the Old Testament are records of God warning Israel, and the world, of turning away from Him.
  
  To Braden's credit, his discussions of the effects of prayer in today's society are commemorable, albeit somewhat misguided. I agree with him that people in today's society need to turn away from the petty details of life with which they've surrounded themselves. However, I believe Braden over-emphasizes the role of feelings and emotion in prayer. He fails to discuss how humans, and their emotions, are extremly fallable and can change as quickly as the winds in his anecdotes.
  
  Braden wants desperately to believe that the true power of prayer is to be found in all the lost science which he has uncovered in ancient texts. In the process he fails to recognize that the blueprint for prayer has been known to man ever since he was created. Humbleness before God and the filling of the Holy Spirit are the true keys to prayer - not cosmic emotions and human feelings.
  
  A disappointing read
  