Losing A Kingdom Gaining The World

Despite its many crises, especially in Western Europe, there are 1.3 billion Catholics in the world today. The Church remains a powerful but controversial institution. In Losing a Kingdom, Gaining the World, Ambrogio A. Caiani explores the epic history of the Roman Catholic Church. Throughout the early modern period, the Pope was a secular prince in central Italy. Catholicism was not merely a religion but also a political force to be reckoned with. After the French Revolution, the Church retreated into a fortress of unreason and denounced almost every aspect of modern life. The Pope proclaimed his infallibility; the cult of the Virgin Mary and her apparitions became articles of faith; the Vatican refused all accommodation with the modern state, until a disastrous series of concordats with fascist states in the 1930s. These dark days threatened the very existence of the Church. But as Catholicism lost its temporal power, it made significant spiritual strides and expanded across continents. Between 1700 and 1903, it lost a kingdom but gained the world. Ambitious and authoritative, this is an account of the Church's fraught encounter with modernity in all its forms: from liberalism, socialism and democracy, to science, literature and the rise of secular culture.

A groundbreaking account of Napoleon Bonaparte, Pope Pius VII, and the kidnapping that would forever divide church and state In the wake of the French Revolution, Napoleon Bonaparte, First Consul of France, and Pope Pius VII shared a common goal: to reconcile the church with the state. But while they were able to work together initially, formalizing an agreement in 1801, relations between them rapidly deteriorated. In 1809, Napoleon ordered the Pope’s arrest. Ambrogio Caiani provides a pioneering account of the tempestuous relationship between the emperor and his most unyielding opponent. Drawing on original findings in the Vatican and other European archives, Caiani uncovers the nature of Catholic resistance against Napoleon’s empire; charts Napoleon’s approach to Papal power; and reveals how the Emperor attempted to subjugate the church to his vision of modernity. Gripping and vivid, this book shows the struggle for supremacy between two great individuals—and sheds new light on the conflict that would shape relations between the Catholic church and the modern state for centuries to come.

People are leaving the church J.D. Greear pastors. Big givers. Key volunteers. Some of his best leaders and friends. And that’s exactly how he wants it to be. When Jesus gave his disciples the Great Commission, he revealed that the key for reaching the world with the gospel is found in sending, not gathering. Though many churches focus time and energy on attracting people and counting numbers, the real mission of the church isn’t how many people you can gather. It’s about training up disciples and then sending them out. The true measure of success for a church should be its sending capacity, not its seating capacity. But there is a cost to this. To see ministry multiply, we must release the seeds God has placed in our hands. And to do that, we must ask ourselves whether we are concerned more with building our kingdom or God’s. In Gaining By Losing, J.D. Greear unpacks ten plumb lines that you can use to reorient your church’s priorities around God’s mission to reach a lost world. The good news is that you don’t need to choose between gathering or sending. Effective churches can, and must, do both.

Reading and Understanding the Gospels: Who Jesus Is, What He Teaches, and the Beginning of Christianity. This is the second volume of a three volume series written for anyone who is interested in acquiring basic knowledge and understanding of the Bible, the book that is the foundation of Western and Middle Eastern civilizations. The first volume is titled Reading and Understanding the Old Testament: The Foundation of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. The last volume will be Reading and Understanding the Acts of the Apostles, the New Testament Letters, and the Beginning of the Church. This second volume, like the others, uses scholarship in a practical manner, moving chapter by chapter through each Gospel using the actual verses as it explains clearly their basic meaning for people in ancient time and our time today. The readers will experience and get a complete sense of the content and meaning of Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, the Gospels that Christians call inspired writings. Like the first volume on the Old Testament the author integrates the historical and the literary with the theological in order to highlight the meaning of each Gospel. Once again, the author has taken a difficult subject, made it easy reading, and filled it with challenging insights. This book is strongly recommended not just for Christians but for those who are interested in knowing what the first Christians said about Jesus, what he taught, and how Christianity began.

Watchman Nee's writings have become well known for their deep spiritual insight among Christians in many nations for many years. Through these volumes a full understanding of his balanced and proper view concerning the Bible and the spiritual life can be accurately appreciated. This new compilation and retranslation of Watchman Nee's writings present the reader a fresh and unedited version of his ministry and promises to shed new light on the reader's understanding of Watchman Nee's ministry.

NRSV, NIV, and Greek Marginal text is the 21st Ed.