Foretaste Of The Future

For many Christians, the book of Revelation inspires confusion and fear. It's seen as a coded screenplay for the end times, or it's just too strange to understand. The problem, Dean Flemming contends, is that when we read Revelation as focused on the future, we miss what it says about what God is doing in the world now. Revelation is one of the richest texts in Scripture for understanding both God's mission to make everything new and how the church is caught up in that mission. In Foretaste of the Future, Flemming mines this largely untapped resource by introducing a missional reading of Revelation. Drawing from a variety of cultural perspectives, Flemming explores Revelation's original context, key themes, and transformational message that rings out for each new generation. By reading Revelation in light of God's mission, we gain a renewed vision of God's great purpose to redeem and restore all creation through the work of the slain Lamb. We also see how God's people are called to help offer a foretaste of salvation and healing now, along with insight on how to contextualize this mission in particular settings. A missional reading not only invites us to imagine the future; it teaches us to let the future cast its light into the present to guide our way.

The Collected Works of Witness Lee, 1972, volume 2, contains messages given by Brother Witness Lee from July 21 through August 13, 1972. During this period Brother Lee remained in Los Angeles, where he gave a lengthy series of forty-eight messages on the kingdom of God, mainly from the perspective of life. This volume is composed of these messages, which were published in 1980 in a fifty-chapter book entitled The Kingdom.

Providing an accessible one-volume guide to Christian doctrine, this is a thorough re-write of the first edition. Since the original was published, many students and teachers of doctrine, in theological colleges and beyond, have been learning to take more seriously the global context of their work, and to recognise the difference made by facets of their identities and social locations like race, class, gender, and disability. In this edition, Mike Higton seeks to do justice to this learning, and invites readers to understand doctrine as an unfinished conversation between many different voices. Fully updated for clarity and yet retaining its role as a rigorous introduction to its subject, the book includes new ‘interruptions’, which introduce voices that question the book’s arguments and offer new directions for readers to pursue.

A new commentary for today's world, The Story of God Bible Commentary explains and illuminates each passage of Scripture in light of the Bible's grand story. The first commentary series to do so, SGBC offers a clear and compelling exposition of biblical texts, guiding readers in how to creatively and faithfully live out the Bible in their own contexts. Its story-centric approach is idea for pastors, students, Sunday school teachers, and all who want to understand the Bible in today's world. SGBC is organized into three easy-to-use sections, designed to help readers live out God's story: Listen to the Story; Explain the Story; and Live the Story. Praise for SGBC: "The easy-to-use format and practical guidance brings God's grand story to modern-day life so anyone can understand how it applies today." -- Andy Stanley "Opens up the biblical story in ways that move us to act." -- Darrell L. Bock "It makes the text sing and helps us hear the story afresh." -- John Ortberg "This commentary breaks new ground." -- Craig L. Blomberg

While all have reason to celebrate the greening of Christian-Jewish relations since the Shoah and the promulgation of Nostra Aetate (4), few will deny that much work remains to be done by Christians and Jews seeking the best way forward that they might best serve God's purposes in the world, the mission of God. This book addresses that need by first surveying how each community has historically conceived of its own mission and from that stance assigned an identity to the other. The text illuminates how such construals have often impeded progress and therefore need to be upgraded and supplemented. But how shall this be done? Converging Destinies proposes an eschatological vision and practical suggestions to summon Jews and Christians to prepare for that day when each will be both commended and reproved by the judge of all, sounding a call for more determined action, greater humility, and cooperative effort as together Jews and Christians serve the mission of God, accountable to him for how they have served him and each other in the world that he has created according to his will.

In an age when the church is sometimes viewed as irrelevant and inauthentic, leading Pentecostal theologian Terry Cross calls the people of God to a radical change of structure and mission based on theological principles. Cross, whose work is respected by scholars from across the ecumenical landscape, offers an introduction to ecclesiology that demonstrates how Pentecostals can contribute to and learn from the church catholic. A forthcoming volume by the author, Serving the People of God's Presence, will focus on the role of leadership in the church.