Your God is Too Glorious


Book Description

Most of us are regular people who have good days and bad days. Our lives are radically ordinary and unexciting. That means they're the kind of lives God gets excited about. While the world worships beauty and power and wealth, God hides his glory in the simple, the mundane, the foolish, working in unawesome people, things, and places.In our day of celebrity worship and online posturing, this is a refreshing, even transformative way of understanding God and our place in his creation. It urges us to treasure a life of simplicity, to love those whom the world passes by, to work for God's glory rather than our own. And it demonstrates that God has always been the Lord of the cross--a Savior who hides his grace in unattractive, inglorious places.Your God Is Too Glorious reminds readers that while a quiet life may look unimpressive to the world, it's the regular, everyday people that God tends to use to do his most important work.




The Bible For Dummies


Book Description

The Bible For Dummies (9781119293507) was previously published as The Bible For Dummies (9780764552960). While this version features a new Dummies cover and design, the content is the same as the prior release and should not be considered a new or updated product. Discover the world’s all-time bestseller in an entirely new light Ninety percent of Americans own a copy of the Bible, and while it's the most widely read book, it's also the least understood. Regardless of your religion, understanding the Bible brings much of Western art, literature, and public discourse into greater focus—from Leonardo da Vinci's "Last Supper" painting to the Wachowski brothers' The Matrix movies. People have historically turned to religion to deal with tragedy and change, and with the right insight, the Bible can be an accessible, helpful guide to life's big questions. The Bible For Dummies appeals to people of all faiths, as well as those who don't practice any particular religion, by providing interfaith coverage of the entire Bible and the often fascinating background information that makes the Bible come alive. You'll find answers to such questions as: Where did the Bible come from? Who wrote the Bible? How is the Bible put together? Follow the history of the Bible from its beginning thousands of years ago as tattered scrolls to its status as the bestseller of all time. The Bible For Dummies covers these topics and more: Ten people in the Bible you should know The Hebrew Bible The Apocrypha's hidden treasures What's new about the New Testament Israel's wisdom, literature, and love poetry The Bible's enduring influence The prophets: more than fortunetellers Whether you're interested in broadening your spiritual horizons, uncovering the symbolism of Western culture, or gaining a deeper understanding of the book you grew up reading, The Bible For Dummies has all the information you need to navigate this ancient and fascinating book.




The Origin of Satan


Book Description

From the National Book Award-winning and National Book Critics Circle Award-winning author of The Gnostic Gospels comes a dramatic interpretation of Satan and his role on the Christian tradition. "Arresting...brilliant...this book illuminates the angels with which we must wrestle to come to the truth of our bedeviling spritual problems." —The Boston Globe With magisterial learning and the elan of a born storyteller, Pagels turns Satan’s story into an audacious exploration of Christianity’s shadow side, in which the gospel of love gives way to irrational hatreds that continue to haunt Christians and non-Christians alike.




The Satan


Book Description

Many people today think of Satan as a little red demon with a pointy tail and a pitchfork—but this vision of the devil developed over many centuries and would be foreign to the writers of the Old Testament, where this figure makes his first appearances. The earliest texts that mention the Satan—it is always “the Satan” in the Old Testament—portray him as an agent of Yahweh, serving as an executioner of evildoers. But over the course of time, the Satan came to be regarded more as God’s enemy than God’s agent and was blamed for a host of problems. Biblical scholar Ryan E. Stokes explains the development of the Satan tradition in the Hebrew scriptures and the writings of early Judaism, describing the interpretive and creative processes that transformed an agent of Yahweh into the archenemy of good. He explores how the idea of a heavenly Satan figure factored into the problem of evil and received the blame for all that is wrong in the world.




Satan in the Bible, God’s Minister of Justice


Book Description

Throughout the ages, Satan has been seen as God's implacable enemy, fiercely determined to keep as many human beings as he can from entering the heavenly kingdom. But according to Henry Ansgar Kelly, this understanding dates only from post-biblical times, when Satan was reconceived as Lucifer, a rebel angel, and as the serpent in the garden of Eden. In the Bible itself, beginning in the book of Job and continuing through the New Testament, Satan is considered to be a member of the heavenly government, charged with monitoring the human race. In effect, he is God's Minister of Justice, bent on exposing sin and vice, especially in virtuous-seeming persons like Job and Jesus. He fills the roles of investigator, tempter (that is, tester), accuser, prosecutor, and punisher, but also obstructer, preventer of vice, and rehabilitator. He is much feared and despised, accused of underhanded and immoral tactics. His removal from office is promised and his eventual punishment hoped for. The later misreading of Satan as radically depraved transformed Christianity into a highly dualistic religion, with an ongoing contest between good and evil. Seeing Satan in his true nature, as a cynical and sinister celestial bureaucrat, will help to remedy this distorted view.




Powers of Evil


Book Description

Books on the demonic abound, but not until Sydney H. T. Page's Powers of Evil has there been such a comprehensive biblical analysis of Satan and demons. Powers of Evil offers an exposition of every biblical reference to the demonic and analyzes historic and modern views. Page interprets particular passages from which some Bible readers have leaped to false conclusions. Studies of Jesus' confrontations with demons and of the exorcisms recorded in the Gospels and Acts examine the interplay of power and authority and the implications for the believer's stand in Christ.




Revelation


Book Description

The final book of the Bible, Revelation prophesies the ultimate judgement of mankind in a series of allegorical visions, grisly images and numerological predictions. According to these, empires will fall, the "Beast" will be destroyed and Christ will rule a new Jerusalem. With an introduction by Will Self.




Heaven and Hell


Book Description

Over half of Americans believe in a literal heaven, in a literal hell. Most people who hold these beliefs are Christian and assume they are the age-old teachings of the Bible. Ehrman shows that eternal rewards and punishments are found nowhere in the Old Testament, and are not what Jesus or his disciples taught. He recounts the long history of the afterlife, ranging from The Epic of Gilgamesh up to the writings of Augustine, focusing especially on the teachings of Jesus and his early followers. Ehrman shows that competing views were intimately connected with the social, cultural, and historical worlds out of which they emerged. -- adapted from jacket




The Devil: A Very Short Introduction


Book Description

The Devil has fascinated writers and theologians since the time of the New Testament, and inspired many dramatic and haunting works of art. Today he remains a potent image in popular culture. The Devil: A Very Short Introduction presents an introduction to the Christian Devil through the history of ideas and the lives of real people.




Paradise Lost


Book Description