LITMIR.BIZ

While the Peoples Republic of China is officially an atheist country, Christianity continues to experience rapid growth on the Chinese mainland. Many observers see the country as on the way to becoming «the world's most Christian nation.» Yet there is widespread ignorance in the English speaking world about how the Chinese Christian community fared during the decades prior to China's «opening up to the West» in the aftermath of the historic visit of Richard Nixon to Beijing in 1972. This collection of essays, the first of them published in 1939, provides an invaluable record of developments in mainland Chinese Christianity during that period and for the remaining decades of the twentieth century. The fact that the essays were all authored by a key participant in the Protestant churches in China provides significant added value. Professor Chen discusses a wide range of important topics: various stages of rural and urban development, the «Three Self» principles for structuring officially sanctioned worshiping communities, Bishop K.H. Ting's advocacy of a genuinely indigenous Chinese theology, patterns of international cooperation, worship, seminary education, and much more. These essays make a unique and significant contribution to the Western understanding of Asian religious life in the twentieth century.

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In seventeenth-century France, Jeanne Guyon (1648-1717) writes about the suffering of the apocalypse followed by the consummation of the second coming. Guyon believed that in our earthly pilgrimage, we may find the way to union with our Savior Jesus Christ. To read her commentary on Revelation–translated into English here for the first time–is to be caught up in her conversation with the living Lord. We experience the wonder and passion of this conversation which is her authenticity at its highest level. As Guyon expresses her love to Jesus Christ, the words carry the attentive reader into the heart of God while deepening our own interior being. In her commentary on Revelation, Guyon interprets Jesus Christ's grace needed for living faithfully during the time of suffering in the apocalypse before the advent of the new heaven and new earth in which believers experience eternal union with God. Guyon writes, «It is your universal reign that I desire, O God, and about which I am passionate. . . . So come, Lord Jesus! Let the grace of the Lord Jesus prepare us all for the second coming. Amen.»

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For much of Christian history, pastors not only served as theologians and preachers, but also as poets and hymn writers. They ministered through their preaching and their poetry, their sermons and their songs–laboring to see God's truth planted not only in people's minds, but helping it find its way into their hearts and even onto their lips. They viewed such labors as an artistic and devotional tool of catechesis, one that has largely gone missing over the last few generations. But in this new collection of hymns and poems, Justin Wainscott recaptures that rich legacy of pastor-poets, providing God's people with theology that stirs and sings. Whether his poetry pertains to matters of common grace or saving grace, the mundane or the majestic, he gives readers an opportunity to lose themselves in wonder, love, and praise. And a book like this one couldn't come at a better time. In this age of distracted reading marked mainly by skimming and scanning, our souls need the kind of slow, deep reading that poetry rewards.

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In our world filled with unending crime, death, relationship issues, and despair, Jennifer Workman incorporates a plethora of inspirational articles to inspire and spiritually empower every reader that no matter what, they are not alone in their struggles because God is open and receptive to their cries for help.
In the book, Jennifer showcases concrete biblical citations to highlight to the readers the importance of understanding God's word and how to make it applicable to their daily life and struggles.
This book compassionately addresses from a personal, practical, biblical, and theological standpoint the questions that we all as people need answers to as they relate to prayer, faith, spirituality, and relationship with God.
– Why is prayer important and how do we effectively apply it to our daily lives? – Positive verses Negative Declarations and what long-term affects do they have on our lives? – How do we, from a biblical standpoint, fully submit ourselves to God's divine will and purpose for our lives? – What ways should we exemplify faith and trust in God? – How can we come alongside someone who is hurting or who is having a crisis of faith in difficult times? – How do we best prioritize our time wisely and utilize it for fulfilling God's plan for our lives?

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Broken bones mend. Flesh wounds heal. But where is the emergency room we can rush to when our hearts are broken? Divorce, adultery, spousal abuse, childhood sexual abuse, and addiction to alcohol, drugs, or pornography tear deep, gaping holes in the most tender of organs. There's no bandage and no surgery that will heal these wounds of the soul. However, forgiveness, mercy, and grace become a soothing balm in restoration. Whether you are the victim of a broken heart or the perpetrator of the harm, these poems will assist in your spiritual healing.

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Preachers at funerals differ in approach. Some see the purpose of the sermon to be eulogy, to heap so much praise that the deceased becomes unrecognizable to the mourners. Others regard praise of the departed as inappropriate, as it may detract from the praise of Almighty God, which they believe to be the sole purpose of all worship. Still others opt to say nothing at all, arguing that it is disingenuous for one person to be lying in the pulpit while another is lying in the nave. In this book of funeral sermons preached throughout his forty-year ministry, Harold Lewis offers Jesus' message of the sure and certain hope of the Resurrection–hope for the dead, hope for the church, and hope for the world in which we live, move, and have our being.

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In today's world the Christian is constantly being challenged with new teachings. Some of these are particularly dangerous because they are put forward by those with evangelical credentials. Tom Nicholas Wright is one of the leading proponents of the New Perspective on Paul. Wright sees himself as the new Luther, a discoverer of the true biblical understanding of key doctrines like that of justification by faith. According to him, the Reformation misunderstood the nature of justification by faith alone and the role of the law in the Old Testament. Wright maintains that this has continued to be the case for those of the Reformed Faith. He tells us that we are guilty of anachronism, whereby we interpret first-century Judaism in the light of medieval Roman Catholicism. In this work the writer not only defends the Reformed understanding of this vital doctrine but also seeks to show how Wright has misunderstood the nature of the new covenant and the place of ethnic Israel.

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Reaching Forever is Philip C. Kolin's ninth collection of poems, the sixth to focus entirely on spiritual poetry. Like the poet's most recent book, Benedict's Daughter: Poems (2017), the poems in this new collection are anchored in Scripture.
Organized according to major Christian topics–sheep, water, God's names, eschatology–Reaching Forever is ripe with scriptural parables, symbols and imagery, settings, allusions, and speakers ranging from God to biblical characters to contemporary figures. Consistent with the Poiema Series, these poems open the «windows» of faith. But they are not simple catechesis. Rather, they «leap over the sills,» to quote D. S. Martin, providing new ways of looking at Holy Writ and applying them to today's world–to see the sacred in the daily.
Undeniably the most distinctive feature of Reaching Forever is the large number of poems set in the contemporary world, but contextualized through the Bible. For instance, a poem on the polyandrous Samaritan woman is paired with one about a homeless woman in a large city who also has had many husbands and children. A long litany poem about God's appearances in Scripture is followed by one on catadores (garbage pickers) who hear rumbling below the filth and wonder what God's voice is saying. A short poem on the riches of Cana seques to a spiritual lyric about monks who transform donors' pennies into bread for the poor.

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Living with Tourette syndrome is not an easy adventure. Growing up in an age of ignorance for this disease caused turmoil, anguish, and hardship, to say the least. Through poetry, the author tried to capture the emotion and passion connected with this disorder, to help bring about an understanding of what Tourette syndrome is about, and that the path to freedom goes through the cross of Jesus Christ. May those who read be surely blessed.

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Jonathan Edwards' (1703-58) ideas are among the most significant to the development of Reformed Theology in America. However brief the life of his intellection tradition, Edwards' ideas and their reception remain an integral part of contemporary theological dialogue. Hitherto no work has appeared that sheds as much systematic light on the reception of Edwards' ideas than Maltby Gelston's (1766-1865) Systematic Collection of Questions and Answers in Divinity. As a ministerial aspirant under the tutelage of Jonathan Edwards the younger, Gelston received catechetical instruction through an exhaustive series of 313 questions, tailor made by early New England theologians. To this point, researches have mused over the significance of these questions and what they tell us about the development of the New England theological tradition. With the publication of this manuscript, researchers may now, for the first time, muse over the significance of Gelston's answers.

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