Creation Behold It Was Very Good

Author Richard A. Schaefer is a lifelong communicator, fascinated by stories and, like any good journalist, digs for the facts and verifies sources, exploring nagging questions such as "Is creation or evolution more credible, based on science and expert opinions?" This book truly represents a personal passion of looking at all sides of the CREATION vs. EVOLUTION issue. He has called on many experts and theorists-including Charles Darwin himself. Surprisingly, Darwin was far more skeptical of his own theories than are many PhDs today, and admitted to significant holes in his logic. Read for yourself, as great thinkers explore the pros and cons of both theories and their variants.

The author of Desiring God reveals the biblical evidence to help us see and savor what the pleasures of God show us about Him. Includes a study guide for individual and small-group use. Isn’t it true—we really don’t know someone until we understand what makes that person happy? And so it is with God! What does bring delight to the happiest Being in the universe? John Piper writes, that it’s only when we know what makes God glad that we’ll know the greatness of His glory. Therefore, we must comprehend “the pleasures of God.” Unlike so much of what is written today, this is not a book about us. It is about the One we were made for—God Himself. In this theological masterpiece—chosen by World Magazine as one of the 20th Century’s top 100 books, John Piper reveals the biblical evidence to help us see and savor what the pleasures of God show us about Him. Then we will be able to drink deeply—and satisfyingly—from the only well that offers living water. What followers of Jesus need now, more than anything else, is to know and love—behold and embrace—the great, glorious, sovereign, happy God of the Bible. “This is a unique and precious book that everybody should read more than once.” —J.I. PACKER, Regent College, Vancouver, British Columbia

A NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER "Already the most discussed and most important religious book of the decade." —David Brooks In this controversial bestseller, Rod Dreher calls on American Christians to prepare for the coming Dark Age by embracing an ancient Christian way of life. From the inside, American churches have been hollowed out by the departure of young people and by an insipid pseudo–Christianity. From the outside, they are beset by challenges to religious liberty in a rapidly secularizing culture. Keeping Hillary Clinton out of the White House may have bought a brief reprieve from the state’s assault, but it will not stop the West’s slide into decadence and dissolution. Rod Dreher argues that the way forward is actu­ally the way back—all the way to St. Benedict of Nur­sia. This sixth-century monk, horrified by the moral chaos following Rome’s fall, retreated to the forest and created a new way of life for Christians. He built enduring communities based on principles of order, hospitality, stability, and prayer. His spiritual centers of hope were strongholds of light throughout the Dark Ages, and saved not just Christianity but Western civilization. Today, a new form of barbarism reigns. Many believers are blind to it, and their churches are too weak to resist. Politics offers little help in this spiritual crisis. What is needed is the Benedict Option, a strategy that draws on the authority of Scripture and the wisdom of the ancient church. The goal: to embrace exile from mainstream culture and construct a resilient counterculture. The Benedict Option is both manifesto and rallying cry for Christians who, if they are not to be conquered, must learn how to fight on culture war battlefields like none the West has seen for fifteen hundred years. It's for all mere Chris­tians—Protestant, Catholic, Orthodox—who can read the signs of the times. Neither false optimism nor fatalistic despair will do. Only faith, hope, and love, embodied in a renewed church, can sustain believers in the dark age that has overtaken us. These are the days for building strong arks for the long journey across a sea of night.

During the formative age of Judaism, the first seven centuries CE, the great rabbis thought deeply about beginnings in light of endings. They imposed upon their sequential reading of each passage the accumulated results of their reflection about all passages. Thus, they encompassed Scripture, so as to describe the world as God had intended it to be. This act of intellect resulted in two distinct, ahistorical media of thought and expression, the Halakhah, law, and Aggadah, lore. The author provides three systematic accounts of the Halakhic reading, and two Aggadic accounts. The Halakhic accounts cover [1] Work and Rest, [2] Ownership and Possession, Eden and the Land, and [3] Ownership and Possession in the Household. The Aggadic accounts pertain to [1] the Six Days of Creation, and [2] Adam and Eve.

Behold, It Was Very Good is a companion volume to Trembling Before God: Twelve Homilies Explore the Origin, Development, and Failure of Christianity Today. Both focus on the concept of choice. Choice is choosing between that perceived as either good or evil. Mankind has a strong absurd tendency to believe that God exists. Philosophers, theologians, scientists, and various other types of thinkers strain their imaginations seeking clarifications of God and all tend to find that there is a failure of reason. Faith is a confidence in something that cannot possibly be but is expected to be. Christian faith holds the substance of God is good. If God is the cause of all things, then God cannot escape being the source of all things, including both good and evil. Man lives in a state of an echo of good and evil contained within his separation from God. Humorists develop catchphrases to deflect the unendurable burden of evil: "The devil made me do it" and "What you see is what you get." Examined are the cultures and civilizations of Greece, Rome, Egypt, Austroasiatic, and Mesoamerican that have, for the most part, disappeared. Christianity and Judaism have passed through various struggles in order to survive. The Pew Forum 2009 and 2019 studies and a historical review dating from the time of the American colonies reveal a possible glimpse beginning with the Great Awakenings into the continued failure of contemporary Christian culture in America that finds religion irrelevant. The "welcoming doors" of many contemporary American churches tend to be "revolving doors." There is a rise of the megachurch phenomena and the decline of the mainline churches. God's declaration to Moses of "I Am" becomes lost over time in favor of institutional dogma, political power, and a preponderance of evil.

When Your Knowledge of the Original Languages of the Bible Is Limited and You Don't Want to Lose Anything in the Translation If you want to get all the rich nuances and shades of meaning of the original Bible languages, the Amplified Bible is for you. No knowledge of Greek or Hebrew is required-just a desire to know all that God says in his Word. With its unique system of brackets, parentheses and italics, the Amplified Bible defines and expands key words and phrases right in the text. Verse by verse, the full meaning of Scripture unfolds as you read. And this Bible features other study aids as well to help you clearly understand God’s Word: - Footnotes-provide concise historical and archaeological information and devotional insights, plus hundreds of references to select sources and authors. - Book Introductions-tell you about the book’s author, background, purpose, and themes. - Concordance-helps you find the location of verses (25,000 entries). - Bibliography and Glossary-give you a handy list of the sources cited in the study notes and the most frequent amplifications in the text.

The ESV Study Bible was created to help people understand the Bible in a deeper way. Combining the best and most recent evangelical Christian scholarship with the highly regarded ESV text, it is the most comprehensive study Bible ever published. The ESV Study Bible features more than 2,750 pages of extensive, accessible Bible resources, including completely new notes, full-color maps, illustrations, charts, timelines, and articles created by an outstanding team of 93 evangelical Christian scholars and teachers. In addition to the 757,000 words of the ESV Bible itself, the notes and resources of the ESV Study Bible comprise an additional 1.1 million words of insightful explanation and teaching-equivalent to a 20-volume Bible resource library all contained in one volume. (Please note this edition does not come with free access to the Online ESV Study Bible resources.) 9-point Lexicon type (single-column Bible text); 7-point Frutiger type (double-column study notes) Black letter text Concordance Extensive articles 240 full-color maps and illustrations