We think of ourselves as free, but we are born in an inescapable slavery—bondage to sin. As members of the human race we exist in a slave market of sin, helpless to redeem ourselves. We enter the world with a sin nature, separated from God and powerless to establish a relationship with Him. We have no way to emancipate ourselves from the captivity of our inherited depravity. However, the gracious plan of God for mankind calls for a savior, a redeemer—the Lord Jesus Christ—to purchase our freedom from the slave market. Christ is the only Person qualified to make such a purchase. The only requirement for eternal release from the slave market of sin is faith alone in Christ alone.
A COVER-UP OF BIBLICAL PROPORTIONS... Centuries ago, English translators perpetrated a fraud in the New Testament, and it’s been purposely hidden and covered up ever since. Your own Bible is probably included in the cover-up! In this book, which includes a study guide for personal or group use, John MacArthur unveils the essential and clarifying revelation that may be keeping you from a fulfilling—and correct—relationship with God. It’s powerful. It’s controversial. And with new eyes you’ll see the riches of your salvation in a radically new way. What does it mean to be a Christian the way Jesus defined it? MacArthur says it all boils down to one word: SLAVE “We have been bought with a price. We belong to Christ. We are His own possession.” Endorsements: "Dr. John MacArthur is never afraid to tell the truth and in this book he does just that. The Christian's great privilege is to be the slave of Christ. Dr. MacArthur makes it clear that this is one of the Bible's most succinct ways of describing our discipleship. This is a powerful exposition of Scripture, a convincing corrective to shallow Christianity, a masterful work of pastoral encouragement...a devotional classic." - Dr. R. Albert Mohler, President, The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary "John MacArthur expertly and lucidly explains that Jesus frees us from bondage into a royal slavery that we might be His possession. Those who would be His children must, paradoxically, be willing to be His slaves." - Dr. R.C. Sproul "Dr. John MacArthur's teaching on 'slavery' resonates in the deepest recesses of my 'inner-man.' As an African-American pastor, I have been there. That is why the thought of someone writing about slavery as being a 'God-send' was the most ludicrous, unconscionable thing that I could have ever imagined...until I read this book. Now I see that becoming a slave is a biblical command, completely redefining the idea of freedom in Christ. I don't want to simply be a 'follower' or even just a 'servant'...but a 'slave'." - The Rev. Dr. Dallas H. Wilson, Jr., Vicar, St. John's Episcopal Chapel, Charleston, SC
A reader’s delight, A Scandalous Freedom sometimes shocks with challenges to prevailing wisdom, but it follows up with compelling validations of our need to celebrate real, unstinted freedom in Christ. Christians do not trust freedom. As author Steve Brown explains in this brave new book, they prefer the security of rules and self-imposed boundaries, which they tend to inflict on other Christians. Brown asserts that real freedom means the freedom to be wrong as well as right. Christianity often calls us to live beyond the boundaries, bolstered by the assurance that we cannot fall beyond God’s love. Freedom is dangerous, but the alternative is worse—boxing ourselves up where we cannot celebrate our unique gifts and express our joy in Christ. Each of the book’s eleven chapters explores a common pharisaic, freedom-stifling tendency, then opens the door to the fresh air of a remedial liberty.
“My Christian faith taught me always to fight hard but only to fight back with the truth. Sadly, I learned that the opposition to Judeo-Christian faith and family values has never had truth as a requirement.” —Ken Mercer Mercer describes slavery as Evil. Slavery existed in the world for thousands of years before the founding of our thirteen colonies and before the signing of our 1776 Declaration of Independence. Then came ”The Great Awakening” of the Christian faith in the United States, the United Kingdom, and Europe. The movement to abolish world-wide slavery was born. Article 1 (Section 9) of the Constitution, the Emancipation Proclamation, and the three post-Civil War Constitutional Amendments, are just a few examples of historical events championed by Christian men and women standing firm against powerful and evil forces. This book, Slavery 101, is the first in a series of “Mercer Moments in American History.” Future projects planned include Constitution 101—Separation of Church and State, and In God We Still Trust. Ken Mercer believes: “We will never fully comprehend our Founding Father’s challenge to continuously strive to become a ‘more perfect Union’ unless we understand what makes our United States of America so exceptional. It is the profound impact and unbroken revival of Judeo-Christian values throughout our history.”
Life on the Highest Plane has blessed several generations with its blend of biblical teaching and personal application. Ruth Paxson presents the biblical progression of the spiritual life from that of the natural person (the unsaved) to the carnal person (the immature believer) to the spiritual person (the mature believer). This last position is God's intention for all believers--a life lived on the highest spiritual plane.
The Slave Bible was published in 1807. It was commissioned on behalf of the Society for the Conversion of Negro Slaves in England. The Bible was to be used by missionaries and slave owners to teach slaves about the Christian faith and to evangelize slaves. The Bible was used to teach some slaves to read, but the goal first and foremost was to tend to the spiritual needs of the slaves in the way the missionaries and slave owners saw fit.
Groundbreaking look at slaves as commodities through every phase of life, from birth to death and beyond, in early America In life and in death, slaves were commodities, their monetary value assigned based on their age, gender, health, and the demands of the market. The Price for Their Pound of Flesh is the first book to explore the economic value of enslaved people through every phase of their lives—including preconception, infancy, childhood, adolescence, adulthood, the senior years, and death—in the early American domestic slave trade. Covering the full “life cycle,” historian Daina Ramey Berry shows the lengths to which enslavers would go to maximize profits and protect their investments. Illuminating “ghost values” or the prices placed on dead enslaved people, Berry explores the little-known domestic cadaver trade and traces the illicit sales of dead bodies to medical schools. This book is the culmination of more than ten years of Berry’s exhaustive research on enslaved values, drawing on data unearthed from sources such as slave-trading records, insurance policies, cemetery records, and life insurance policies. Writing with sensitivity and depth, she resurrects the voices of the enslaved and provides a rare window into enslaved peoples’ experiences and thoughts, revealing how enslaved people recalled and responded to being appraised, bartered, and sold throughout the course of their lives. Reaching out from these pages, they compel the reader to bear witness to their stories, to see them as human beings, not merely commodities. A profoundly humane look at an inhumane institution, The Price for Their Pound of Flesh will have a major impact how we think about slavery, reparations, capitalism, nineteenth-century medical education, and the value of life and death. Winner of the 2018 Hamilton Book Award – from the University Coop (Austin, TX) Winner of the 2018 Society for Historians of the Early American Republic Book Prize (SHEAR) Winner of the 2018 Phillis Wheatley Literary Award, from the Sons and Daughters of the US Middle Passage Finalist for the 2018 Frederick Douglass Book Prize from Yale University’s Gilder Lehrman Center for the Study of Slavery, Resistance, and Abolition
Though the history of slavery is a central topic for African, Atlantic world and world history, most of the sources presenting research in this area are European in origin. To cast light on African perspectives, and on the point of view of enslaved men and women, this group of top Africanist scholars has examined both conventional historical sources (such as European travel accounts, colonial documents, court cases, and missionary records) and less-explored sources of information (such as folklore, oral traditions, songs and proverbs, life histories collected by missionaries and colonial officials, correspondence in Arabic, and consular and admiralty interviews with runaway slaves). Each source has a short introduction highlighting its significance and orienting the reader. This first of two volumes provides students and scholars with a trove of African sources for studying African slavery and the slave trade.
"For those reading the Bible in a culture that has outlawed slavery, it is easy to see the language of being 'a slave of Christ' as a poetic metaphor. But for the writers and first readers of the New Testament, slavery was a social reality. When we explore the reality of slavery in the Roman Empire, these metaphors sometimes have a vivid force--and raise some important ethical questions that need to be addressed."--Back cover.
