An American Jewish immigrant to Jerusalem paints a funny and painful picture of the city's daily life based on the various personalities she encounters, including peaceniks, settlers, famous artists, political elite, and housewives. Reprint. 10,000 first printing.
When he visited Israel in 1975, Saul Bellow kept an account of his experiences and impressions. It grew into an impassioned and thoughtful book. As he wryly notes, "If you want everyone to love you, don't discuss Israeli politics." But discuss them is very much what he does. Through quick sketches and vignettes, Bellow evokes places, ideas, and people, reaching a sharp picture of contemporary Israel. The reader is offered a wonderful panorama of an ancient and modern world city. Like every other visitor to Israel, Bellow tumbles into "a gale of conversation." He loves it and he makes the reader feel at home. Bellow delights in the liveliness, the gallantry of Israeli life: people on the edge of history, an inch from disaster, yet brimming with argument and words. He delights not in tourist delusions but with a tough critical spirit: his Israel is pocked with scars and creases, and all the more attractive for it. Simply as a travel book, the reader finds remarkable descriptions, such as one in which Bellow finds "the melting air" of Jerusalem pressing upon him "with an almost human weight" Something intelligible is communicated by the earthlike colors of this most beautiful of cities. The impression that Bellow offers is that living in Israel must be as exhausting as it is exciting: a murderous barrage on the nerves. Israel, he writes, "is both a garrison state and a cultivated society, both Spartan and Athenian. It tries to do everything, to make provisions for everything. All resources, all faculties are strained. Unremitting thought about the world situation parallels the defense effort." Jerusalem's people are actively and individually involved in universal history. Bellow makes you share in the experience.
The powerful spiritual vision of the Chinese church to send 100,000 missionaries across China's borders to complete the Great Commission, even in this generation.
The Bible has a lot to say about Christ's return—it is mentioned more than three hundred times throughout the New Testament. We often downplay this doctrine because the precise details are debated. However, these passages are in Scripture to build our hope and joy in the here and now. This compilation of expository messages from eight leading Bible teachers, including Tim Keller, John Piper, and D. A. Carson, explores the theme of redemption from Genesis to Revelation—stirring up within us a longing for our future home and filling us with joyful hope in light of Jesus's return.
On the centenary of the Balfour Declaration, which was also the fiftieth anniversary of the since the Six-day War and the tenth anniversary of the Blockade of Gaza, Justin Butcher—along with ten other companions (and another hundred joining him at points along the way)—walked from London to Jerusalem as an act of solidarity, penance, and hope. Weaving in history of the Holy Land as he moves across Europe, from Balfour and Christian Zionism, to colonialism and Jerusalem Syndrome, from desert spirituality to the lives of his fellow travelers, Walking to Jerusalem is a chronicle of serendipity, the hilarious, the infuriating, and, occasionally, an encounter with the Divine.
New York Times Bestseller Named one of the Best Books of the Year by NPR, the Washington Post, Kirkus Reviews, and Library Journal Winner of the Audie Award The New York Times bestseller from the author of Watchmen and V for Vendetta finally appears in a one-volume paperback. Begging comparisons to Tolstoy and Joyce, this “magnificent, sprawling cosmic epic” (Guardian) by Alan Moore—the genre-defying, “groundbreaking, hairy genius of our generation” (NPR)—takes its place among the most notable works of contemporary English literature. In decaying Northampton, eternity loiters between housing projects. Among saints, kings, prostitutes, and derelicts, a timeline unravels: second-century fiends wait in urine-scented stairwells, delinquent specters undermine a century with tunnels, and in upstairs parlors, laborers with golden blood reduce fate to a snooker tournament. Through the labyrinthine streets and pages of Jerusalem tread ghosts singing hymns of wealth and poverty. They celebrate the English language, challenge mortality post-Einstein, and insist upon their slum as Blake’s eternal holy city in “Moore’s apotheosis, a fourth-dimensional symphony” (Entertainment Weekly). This “brilliant . . . monumentally ambitious” tale from the gutter is “a massive literary achievement for our time—and maybe for all times simultaneously” (Washington Post).
An event of theological "time-travel" back to the beginning, back to the biblical creation story in Genesis chapters 1-3. We will learn some Hebraic details about a larger-than-life seven-day Messianic redemption plan. We will encounter a multi-dimensional world of reality and metaphor. We will come to learn that the biblical creation story is a detailed Hebraic narrative about the Creation referred to in the Hebrew text of Exodus 3:14-15 as יהוה אלהים (YHVH Elohim) and his deep desire for a relationship with each of us; that after all the creation was plunged into a deep spiritual darkness, he (the Creator named in Exodus 3:14-15) was the one that came to set us free from our spiritual captivity because we had no power to set ourselves free. Genesis chapters 1-3 is an extraordinary historical riches-to-rags-to-riches story unlike anything that one can even begin to imagine. Learn Hebraic definitions for faith, hope, love, holiness, heaven, earth, and other theological ideas often lost in translation. Learn about the biblical functions of male and female. Learn the Hebraic truth and context behind Genesis 3:16, "Your desire shall be for your husband and he shall rule over you." Learn about the "marriage" between the Serpent and Eve. Learn Hebraic principles behind giving and receiving to build strong relationships. Learn about a "High Priest" cherub who rebelled in the throne-room of Heaven and morphed to become the Serpent (the Satan) of the Bible. Meet the Word, the Son of Elohim (God) in Heaven. Meet the Word, the Son of Elohim (God) on Earth. Discover the two Genesis creations of man (Day 3 and Day 6) and learn why Yeshua (Jesus) had to resurrect on the Third Day. Discover the Hebraic meaning of the Law of Sin and Death. Learn about DNA quantum entanglement and the second death of Genesis 2:17. Discover the background that drives Paul's theology about the "Works of the Law" and "Under the Law" in the New Testament Book of Galatians. These concepts and so much more packed into this introduction to the Genesis Creation Story.
Widely respected for his perspectives on faith in the modern world, Richard J. Mouw has long stood at the forefront of the Christ and culture debate. In When the Kings Come Marching In here revised and updated Mouw explores the religious transformation of culture as it is powerfully pictured in Isaiah 60. In Isaiah 60 the prophet envisions the future transformation of the city of Jerusalem, a portrayal of the Holy City that bears important similarities to John's vision of the future in Revelation 21 and 22. Mouw examines these and other key passages of the Bible, showing how they provide a proper pattern for cultural involvement in the present. Mouw identifies and discusses four main features of the Holy City: (1) the wealth of the nations is gathered into the city; (2) the kings of the earth march into the city; (3) people from many nations are drawn to the city; and (4) light pervades the city. In drawing out the implications of these striking features, Mouw treats a number of relevant cultural issues, including Christian attitudes toward the processes and products of commerce, technology, and art; the nature of political authority; race relations; and the scope of the redemptive ministry of Jesus Christ. The volume culminates in an invaluable discussion of how Christians should live in the modern world. Mouw argues that believers must go beyond a narrow understanding of the individual pilgrim's progress to a view of the Christian pilgrimage wherein believers work together toward solving the difficult political, social, and economic problems of our day.