A Book Of Exhortations

“For the Word of God is living and powerful, and sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing even to the division of soul and spirit, and of joints and marrow, and is a discerner of the thoughts and intents of the heart.” (Hebrews 4:12 NKJV) “The Book Of Exhortations” will work as a mirror to the thoughts and intents of your heart. It will challenge you to go further with God in your faith-walk and acts of service. You will be challenged to reflect on your relationship with God, according to His perspective, while having your heart and mind stretched. The exhortations will also give you hope for healing, restoration, and deliverance from any kind of demonic stronghold that has held you captive. God's Word is like a refining fire. The more it burns in you, the more it will burn the chaff and dross out of you. “But where sin abounded, grace abounded much more.” (Romans 5:20 NKJV) This book is full of God's grace-filled Word. The grace of Jesus Christ is God's antidote for all of life's problems. The proclamation of the gospel is the power of God unto salvation to all the nations, (Romans 1:16). And those who receive abundance of grace and of the gift of righteousness will reign in life through Jesus Christ, (Romans 5:17). Amen!!!

Translated selections of writings on ethics by Arius Didymus, Cicero, Crates, Demetrius of Phalerum, Dio Chrysostom, Diogenes, Diogenes Laertius, Epictetus, Epicurus, Hierocles, Horace, Isocrates, Julian, Lucian of Samosata, Maximus of Tyre, Melissa, Musonius Rufus, Pliny the Younger, Plutarch, Seneca, Sextus Empiricus, and Theano, and from the Gnomologium Vaticanum, Oxyrhynchus Papyrus, and Pythagorean Sentences.

This book is a study of the literary strategies which the first professional philosophers used to market their respective disciplines. Philosophers of fourth-century BCE Athens developed the emerging genre of the "protreptic" (literally, "turning" or "converting"). Simply put, protreptic discourse uses a rhetoric of conversion that urges a young person to adopt a specific philosophy in order to live a good life. The author argues that the fourth-century philosophers used protreptic discourses to market philosophical practices and to define and legitimize a new cultural institution: the school of higher learning (the first in Western history). Specifically, the book investigates how competing educators in the fourth century produced protreptic discourses by borrowing and transforming traditional and contemporary "voices" in the cultural marketplace. They aimed to introduce and promote their new schools and define the new professionalized discipline of "philosophy." While scholars have typically examined the discourses and practices of Plato, Isocrates, and Aristotle in isolation from one another, this study rather combines philosophy, narratology, genre theory, and new historicism to focus on the discursive interaction between the three philosophers: each incorporates the discourse of his competitors into his protreptics. Appropriating and transforming the discourses of their competition, these intellectuals created literary texts that introduced their respective disciplines to potential students.

"If we want revival in our communities, then let us learn from those being revived." For many Western Christians, the experience of suffering and persecution is remote. For Chinese Christians, on the other hand, persecution is a regular aspect of the Christian life. If a Christian from the West was transported to a Chinese house church, the topic of suffering would be ever--present in preaching and conversation. With decades of persecution under the thumb of the Chinese Communist Party and a rich theology of suffering, the Chinese house church movement has much to contribute theologically to the global church. In Faith in the Wilderness, editors Hannah Nation and Simon Liu pull together the insights of the Chinese Church for the West. These sermonic letters from Chinese Christians will awaken readers to the reality of the gospel--the ground of our hope--in the midst of darkness. Readers will be convicted, encouraged, and edified by the testimony of these Chinese Christians.

A collection of the writings & statements of His All Holiness Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew, which challenges the taboos & controversies swirling within religious doctrine, addressing issues such as church unity, papal primacy & divisions within Christianity.

This major contribution to Pauline scholarship by a widely-respected New Testament scholar is the culmination of over forty years of teaching on Paul. Brendan Byrne demonstrates that topics often discussed in Pauline studies and Christian theology go astray when the significance of the last judgment falls from view. Offering a fresh Catholic perspective that engages with centuries of Protestant interpretation, this book recaptures the significance of the motif of the last judgment for the interpretation of Paul.