In God’s redemptive plan, one’s heart is the center of one’s being. Actually, it is designed to be the dwelling place of God. “I will give you a new heart and put a new spirit within you...I will put My Spirit within you..." (Ezekiel 36:26-27). God has designed the heart as the gateway to one’s mind, will and emotions. By opening a single gate into the heart and letting the Spirit of the Living God come in, we start a domino effect of massive proportions. Through opening all the gates into the heart, we allow the Spirit of the Living God to dwell and abide in us. As we rebuild and restore these gateways, we will find that not only are we a people who God wants to bless, but that these ancient gates literally FLOW with the blessings of God—blessings of purpose, understanding, and rest for the weary soul. These gates, when properly aligned, are the entrance/exit places for God’s Glory!
"Rabbi Feldman furnishes the reader with an eminently readable translation and provides notes directly on-site when difficulties arise in the text. He gives a general introduction as well as short introductions to each gate, followed by a synopsis of each gate for review and overview.
Everlasting hell and divine judgment, a lake of fire and brimstone--these mainstays of evangelical tradition have come under fire once again in recent decades. Would the God of love revealed by Jesus really consign the vast majority of humankind to a destiny of eternal, conscious torment? Is divine mercy bound by the demands of justice? How can anyone presume to know who is saved from the flames and who is not? Reacting to presumptions in like manner, others write off the fiery images of final judgment altogether. If there is a God who loves us, then surely all are welcome into the heavenly kingdom, regardless of their beliefs or behaviors in this life. Yet, given the sheer volume of threat rhetoric in the Scriptures and the wickedness manifest in human history, the pop-universalism of our day sounds more like denial than hope. Mercy triumphs over judgment; it does not skirt it. Her Gates Will Never Be Shut endeavors to reconsider what the Bible and the Church have actually said about hell and hope, noting a breadth of real possibilities that undermines every presumption. The polyphony of perspectives on hell and hope offered by the prophets, apostles, and Jesus humble our obsessive need to harmonize every text into a neat theological system. But they open the door to the eternal hope found in Revelation 21-22: the City whose gates will never be shut; where the Spirit and Bride perpetually invite the thirsty who are outside the city to "Come, drink of the waters of life."
“Stony the Road presents a bracing alternative to Trump-era white nationalism. . . . In our current politics we recognize African-American history—the spot under our country’s rug where the terrorism and injustices of white supremacy are habitually swept. Stony the Road lifts the rug." —Nell Irvin Painter, New York Times Book Review A profound new rendering of the struggle by African-Americans for equality after the Civil War and the violent counter-revolution that resubjugated them, by the bestselling author of The Black Church. The abolition of slavery in the aftermath of the Civil War is a familiar story, as is the civil rights revolution that transformed the nation after World War II. But the century in between remains a mystery: if emancipation sparked "a new birth of freedom" in Lincoln's America, why was it necessary to march in Martin Luther King, Jr.'s America? In this new book, Henry Louis Gates, Jr., one of our leading chroniclers of the African-American experience, seeks to answer that question in a history that moves from the Reconstruction Era to the "nadir" of the African-American experience under Jim Crow, through to World War I and the Harlem Renaissance. Through his close reading of the visual culture of this tragic era, Gates reveals the many faces of Jim Crow and how, together, they reinforced a stark color line between white and black Americans. Bringing a lifetime of wisdom to bear as a scholar, filmmaker, and public intellectual, Gates uncovers the roots of structural racism in our own time, while showing how African Americans after slavery combatted it by articulating a vision of a "New Negro" to force the nation to recognize their humanity and unique contributions to America as it hurtled toward the modern age. The story Gates tells begins with great hope, with the Emancipation Proclamation, Union victory, and the liberation of nearly 4 million enslaved African-Americans. Until 1877, the federal government, goaded by the activism of Frederick Douglass and many others, tried at various turns to sustain their new rights. But the terror unleashed by white paramilitary groups in the former Confederacy, combined with deteriorating economic conditions and a loss of Northern will, restored "home rule" to the South. The retreat from Reconstruction was followed by one of the most violent periods in our history, with thousands of black people murdered or lynched and many more afflicted by the degrading impositions of Jim Crow segregation. An essential tour through one of America's fundamental historical tragedies, Stony the Road is also a story of heroic resistance, as figures such as W. E. B. Du Bois and Ida B. Wells fought to create a counter-narrative, and culture, inside the lion's mouth. As sobering as this tale is, it also has within it the inspiration that comes with encountering the hopes our ancestors advanced against the longest odds.
Trapped by the creature Thadnelius J. Gromfort, Cillian McGonegal must find the missing pieces of an ancient artifact to free his friends who have been sent on a journey of their own into the afterworld. Time is running out. Together with his brother Patrick, Mary his assistant and Liam his good friend he must navigate time itself and time can be very unforgiving. Time is also running out for Susanne McKinnon and Nathan McPhee as they travel through the Twelve Gates of Judgement. The weight of his responsibility for their rescue falls squarely on Cillian’s shoulders, but he is bound by the whims of the stone which grows more powerful with each moment. Find the missing pieces or all is lost. Into time’s void, they step. The Twelve Gates: The Road to Redemption is book two of the McGonegal Chronicles. It explores events in ancient history and what the future may hold. Time is not linear. Time is bendable and with many dimensions as Cillian, his assistant Mary, his brother Patrick, and Liam his good friend will quickly discover. The origin of the artifact is a mystery, but its power is immense. Where will it take them and what about their trapped friends? Will they survive the Road to Redemption as they navigate The Twelve Gates? Time will tell. In this book the author uses actual historical events combined with ancient myth and highlighted with science fiction and adventure to weave a story of love, sacrifice, and obligation. The main character, Cillian McGonegal must navigate an impossible situation and failure is not an option. Throughout the story the reader is beset with numerous examples of bravery and cleverness as the characters face their greatest fears and most menacing challenges. It is a wild ride.
The stunning conclusion to the New York Times bestselling series, perfect for fans of Cassandra Clare and Maggie Stiefvater! Is death the end . . . or only the beginning? Ethan Wate has spent most of his life longing to escape the stiflingly small Southern town of Gatlin. He never thought he would meet the girl of his dreams, Lena Duchannes, who unveiled a secretive, powerful, and cursed side of Gatlin, hidden in plain sight. And he never could have expected that he would be forced to leave behind everyone and everything he cares about. So when Ethan awakes after the chilling events of the Eighteenth Moon, he has only one goal: to find a way to return to Lena and the ones he loves. Back in Gatlin, Lena is making her own bargains for Ethan's return, vowing to do whatever it takes -- even if that means trusting old enemies or risking the lives of the family and friends Ethan left to protect. Worlds apart, Ethan and Lena must once again work together to rewrite their fate, in this stunning finale to the Beautiful Creatures series.
A century after Appomattox, the civil rights movement won full citizenship for black Americans in the South. It should not have been necessary: by 1870 those rights were set in the Constitution. This is the story of the terrorist campaign that took them away. Nicholas Lemann opens his extraordinary new book with a riveting account of the horrific events of Easter 1873 in Colfax, Louisiana, where a white militia of Confederate veterans-turned-vigilantes attacked the black community there and massacred hundreds of people in a gruesome killing spree. This was the start of an insurgency that changed the course of American history: for the next few years white Southern Democrats waged a campaign of political terrorism aiming to overturn the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments and challenge President Grant'ssupport for the emergent structures of black political power. The remorseless strategy of well-financed "White Line" organizations was to create chaos and keep blacks from voting out of fear for their lives and livelihoods. Redemption is the first book to describe in uncompromising detail this organized racial violence, which reached its apogee in Mississippi in 1875. Lemann bases his devastating account on a wealth of military records, congressional investigations, memoirs, press reports, and the invaluable papers of Adelbert Ames, the war hero from Maine who was Mississippi's governor at the time. When Ames pleaded with Grant for federal troops who could thwart the white terrorists violently disrupting Republican political activities, Grant wavered, and the result was a bloody, corrupt election in which Mississippi was "redeemed"—that is, returned to white control. Redemption makes clear that this is what led to the death of Reconstruction—and of the rights encoded in the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments. We are still living with the consequences.
Their worst fears have come to pass. With their party torn asunder, both Brandt and Alena must find their own way forward. Their journeys will take them both to the heart of their empire and to the farthest known boundaries of their world. As they race to find answers, a threat, stronger than any they've faced before, approaches their world. And it means to kill them all. The Gate to Redemption is the startling conclusion to the Oblivion's Gate trilogy.
