Showing titles in Religious Studies

The first book that explains how to open to the immensity of living with death—and how participating fully in life is the perfect preparation for whatever may come next. In Who Dies?: An Investigation of Conscious Living and Conscious Dying, the Levines provide calm compassion rather than the frightening melodrama of death. A meaningful insight how to participate fully in life as the perfect preparation for whatever may come next, be it sorrow or joy, loss or gain, death or a new wonderment at life.

The celebrated author of Ageless Body, Timeless Mind and The Seven Spiritual Laws of Success has created his most ambitious and important work yet, a runaway international best seller that has inspired hundreds of thousands of people to rethink their concept of God.

Don't think, just believe?That's the mantra in many circles today - whether the church, the classroom, the campus, or the voting booth. Nancy Pearcey, best-selling and critically acclaimed author, offers fresh tools to break free from presumed certainties and test them against reality.

There continue to be many questions concerning the "Rapture" of the Church and its apparent contrast with the "Second Coming" of Jesus Christ. Where does this strange view come from? Is the term "rapture" even in the Bible?

This book is a sweeping transatlantic history of Puritanism from its emergence out of the religious tumult of Elizabethan England to its founding role in the story of America. Shedding critical new light on the diverse forms of Puritan belief and practice in England, Scotland, and New England, David Hall provides a multifaceted account of a cultural movement that judged the Protestant reforms of Elizabeth's reign to be unfinished.

The first three volumes of Saints tell the story of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints from Joseph Smith’s First Vision to the dedication of the first temple outside North America. Now, the fourth volume carries the story to the present day, recounting the Church’s astounding growth and inspired development since 1955. As the book opens, the Church has nine temples and more than one million members.

In Why I Am a Hindu, one of India’s finest public intellectuals gives us a profound book about one of the world’s oldest and greatest religions. Starting with a close examination of his own belief in Hinduism, he ranges far and wide in his study of the faith.

For many, the medieval world seems dark and foreign - a miraculous, brutal, and irrational time of superstition and strange relics. The pursuit of heretics, the Inquisition, the Crusades, and the domination of the "Holy Land" come to mind.

With every earthquake and war, understanding the nature of evil and our response to it becomes more urgent. Evil is no longer the concern just of ministers and theologians but also of politicians and the media. We hear of child abuse, ethnic cleansing, AIDS, torture and terrorism, and rightfully we are shocked. N. T. Wright says that we should not be surprised. For too long we have naively believed in the modern idea of human progress.

The findings of historians and archaeologists open a thrilling world of discovery as they bring their methods and insights to the iconic stories of the Bible. These 24 content-rich lessons take you on a multidimensional journey through the Bible, from Genesis to the Crucifixion, seen through the lens of the latest historical and archaeological research.

When Adolf Hitler came to power in 1933, approximately 160,000 Jews called Berlin home. By 1943 less than 5,000 remained in the nation's capital, the epicenter of Nazism, and by the end of the war, that number had dwindled to 1,000. All the others had died in air raids, starved to death, committed suicide, or been shipped off to the death camps. In this captivating and harrowing book, Leonard Gross details the real-life stories of a dozen Jewish men and women who spent the final 27 months of World War II underground, hiding in plain sight.

In The Greatest Show on Earth, Richard Dawkins takes on creationists, including followers of 'Intelligent Design' and all those who question the fact of evolution through natural selection. Like a detective arriving on the scene of a crime, he sifts through fascinating layers of scientific facts and disciplines to build a cast-iron case: from the living examples of natural selection in birds and insects.

In Life Worth Living, Yale's leading theologians Volf, Croasmun and McAnnally-Linz offer a deep dive beneath the levels of habit, strategy and introspection to the bedrock question of what kind of life is truly worth living. Inspired by the leading Yale course of the same, this perspective-shifting book will guide you through life's biggest questions. Drawing on the world's greatest religious and philosophical traditions, this is your path to understanding the true meaning of life.

Follow the contemplative path with Thomas Merton as your guide. In 1942, Thomas Merton relinquished a promising academic career to join the Abbey of Gethsemani. Instead of running away from the world, however, he actually developed his most profound wisdom about it.

Our Crime Was Being Jewish contains 576 vivid memories of 358 Holocaust survivors. These are the true, insider stories of victims, told in their own words. They include the experiences of teenagers who saw their parents and siblings sent to the gas chambers; of starving children beaten for trying to steal a morsel of food; of people who saw their friends commit suicide to save themselves from the daily agony they endured.

Join Professor David Brakke, an award-winning Professor of History at The Ohio State University, for Understanding the New Testament. In these 24 eye-opening lectures, he takes you behind the scenes to study not only the text of the New Testament, but also the authors and the world in which it was created. You will explore Jewish lives under Roman occupation, reflect on the apocalyptic mood of the first and second centuries AD, witness the early Christians’ evangelism beyond the Jewish communities, and witness the birth of a faith that continues to shape our world today.

There is no shortage of writings about the last days - often full of speculation and sensationalism. Where can we go for information we can trust? Join Bible scholar Ron Rhodes for an in-depth look at what we know to be certain about the last days - based on key teachings directly from Jesus. You’ll learn what the Lord himself said about the Rapture, the Tribulation Period, the Second Coming, the Future Judgment, the Millennial Kingdom, and more.

In our increasingly secular world, holy texts are at best seen as irrelevant, and at worst as an excuse to incite violence, hatred and division. So what value, if any, can Scripture hold for us today? And if our world no longer seems compatible with Scripture, is it perhaps because its original purpose has become lost? Today we see the Quran being used by some to justify war and terrorism, the Torah to deny Palestinians the right to live in the Land of Israel, and the Bible to condemn homosexuality and contraception.

One of the leading architects of the historic Abraham Accords, David Friedman explains why in these turbulent and dangerous times, the simple phrase of three words—ONE JEWISH STATE—must be the guideline for Israel and the world’s collective future.

What if the tales from the Old Testament and other ancient writings, such as those from Sumer, Babylon, Egypt, and Greece, were not myths or allegory but accounts of actual historical events? Known for his ability to read and interpret ancient Sumerian and Akkadian clay tablets, Zecharia Sitchin (1920-2010) took the words of our most ancient ancestors as fact and, through decades of meticulous research, showed that they revealed a coherent narrative about the true origins of humanity and civilization.