A Foolish Virgin

Thomas Shepard (1605-1649) was a New England Puritan minister. Forbidden to preach in England, he emigrated to Massachusetts in 1635. The most eloquent measure of his classic The Parable of the Ten Virgins is that there is a scarcely a page in The Religious Affections where Jonathan Edwards does not reference Shepard's work.

The NIV is the world's best-selling modern translation, with over 150 million copies in print since its first full publication in 1978. This highly accurate and smooth-reading version of the Bible in modern English has the largest library of printed and electronic support material of any modern translation.

Reproduction of the original: The Foolish Virgin by Thomas Dixon

It is the middle of the roaring twenties, and Gittel is living The Hague with her parents, whose blazing rows are the traditional preserve of Sundays and public holidays. What luck, then, that Gittel is Jewish, and must submit to "the double helping of public holidays that is the lot of Jewish families". After every matrimonial slanging match, Gittel's mother runs off to her parents' home in Antwerp - with her daugher in tow. Much to her delight, Gittel makes the acquaintance of the well-to-do Mardell family, who allow her to practise on their Steinway. Gittel feels that she is taken seriously by Mr Mardell, the head of the household, and by thirty-year-old Lucie, whom she adores. When these friendships turn out to be nothing but an illusion, Gittel learns her first lessons about trust and betrayal. Her second comes soon after, when her father, whose talents for business leave much to be desired, attempts to make a quick killing in Berlin on the eve of the Wall Street Crash. Though this intimate portrayal of familial strife is set in the shadow of the Holocaust, Simons says little about the horror that awaits her characters, yet she succeeds in giving the reader the sense that the novel is about more than a young girl's loss of innocence. In a fluid, almost casual style, she has written a masterly and timeless ode to a relatively carefree interlude in a dark and dramatic period. Translated from the Dutch by Liz Waters

The Title of the book is Dont Be a Foolish Virgin! The sub-title is Confessions of a Foolish Virgin. When God gave me this title a few years ago, I did not understand what he wanted me to write. As I was studying the Bible a few years later, I came across this scripture, Therefore this is what the LORD says: Inquire among the nations: Who has ever heard anything like this? A most horrible thing has been done by Virgin Israel. Jeremiah 18:13 (NIV) and in Amos 5:1-2a says, Listen, you people of Israel! Listen to this funeral song I am singing: The virgin Israel has fallen Virgin is the Children of Israel, in current day we too are the Children of Israel. All of us are included. My Introduction starts with one of my favorite scriptures, But the jar he was making did not turn out as he had hoped, so he crushed it into a lump of clay again and started over. Jeremiah 18:4. God is giving me an extreme makeover. This book is my story of how God showed me his unconditional love. You will learn what sin is, where sin came from, when and why we sin, who has sinned and the side-effects of sin. You will walk through forgiveness, asking and accepting forgiveness, and forgiving yourself and others. My goal is to help you focus on your state of mind when you fall and prepare you to avoid the attacks of the enemy. Your eyes will be opened to Gods unconditional love for you as you read about Hoseas obedience to God by marrying Gomer, a harlot, to show his unconditional love for the Children of Israel. Do you know what your special needs are? If not, youll find out. Ill briefly discuss our opportunities to share with others how God has comforted and forgiven us. There is a personal Spiritual Assessment at the end of the book. This fifteen page assessment is for the reader to examine themselves. To guide them as to what areas of their lives that needs attention. God is waiting!

The publication of the King James version of the Bible, translated between 1603 and 1611, coincided with an extraordinary flowering of English literature and is universally acknowledged as the greatest influence on English-language literature in history. Now, world-class literary writers introduce the book of the King James Bible in a series of beautifully designed, small-format volumes. The introducers' passionate, provocative, and personal engagements with the spirituality and the language of the text make the Bible come alive as a stunning work of literature and remind us of its overwhelming contemporary relevance.