Seeking A City With Foundations

More than half the people in the world live in cities, including a growing number of megacities with populations exceeding ten million people. This trend means that an understanding of urbanization must be an urgent priority for Christian theology and mission across the globe. This updated edition of Seeking a City with Foundations, with an additional chapter, explores Christian responses to the city, ranging from rejecting the urban as evil, to embracing it as being central to God’s redemptive purposes. Drawing from a wide range of disciplines, including history, social science, urban planning, and the history of art, readers are given a detailed text which confronts the challenges that contemporary urbanization presents to world Christianity. Looking at urbanism as a theme throughout Scripture, culminating with the great vision of the New Jerusalem, David Smith explains that God’s own future is revealed as urban, highlighting the need to identify modern-day idols as we share the gospel in cities and acknowledge the impact of global economic forces. The book also explores the causes of what has been called the divided city and traces the urban theme through the Bible to present an alternative vision of the urban future – a future in which the injustices in ever-growing slums and a crisis of meaning among the privileged might be overcome through the power of the reconciling message of the cross. This timely book proposes a way forward for urban mission, highlighting that transformation of our cities must be the focal point of Christian mission and hope.

Guides both pastors and members to recognize key characteristics of a healthy church and then challenge each person to do his or her part in developing those characteristics in the local church body.

If You Love God's Word You Will Love This New Testament! The Disciples' Literal New Testament sets you free from our artificial 460 year old chapter and verse structure, replacing it with paragraphing that reflects the flow of thought in the original Greek writings. Paragraph headings make that flow of thought explicit to you, speeding your understanding of the NT books. This translation retains the writing style of the apostles themselves, rather than transforming their Greek ways of writing into an elegant or contemporary English writing style, as has been beautifully done so many times. It is the same translation as the author's New Testament TransLine, first published by Zondervan in 2002. Now you can read the New Testament as the original writers intended it, and see it with a clarity formerly available only to those who could carefully study their Greek New Testament. You can even see the difference in writing style between Matthew, Mark and Luke! Used along with your standard Bible version, you will profit from both methods of translation. *Easily grasp the relationship of the whole and the parts of each book with the big-picture overview outlines that use the words of the original author. *Gain quick insight into the flow of thought from descriptive paragraph headings that summarize the main point of each paragraph in its context. *You can visually follow the apostles' thinking because the 'Intelligent Paragraphing' visually displays their main and subordinate thoughts. *The hindrance to your understanding caused by our artificial chapter and verse structure is eliminated by paragraphing based on the Greek writings. *You will more fully appreciate the minds and thinking patterns and intent of the original writers because the translation corresponds more closely to their words and their grammar and their sentence structure. *Deepen and expand your understanding of the New Testament by meditating on the notes containing alternative renderings, explanations of what is being said, and different views of the meaning.

The final book of the Bible, Revelation prophesies the ultimate judgement of mankind in a series of allegorical visions, grisly images and numerological predictions. According to these, empires will fall, the "Beast" will be destroyed and Christ will rule a new Jerusalem. With an introduction by Will Self.

This is the 3rd comparative edition of the 8th edition translation of The Aramaic New Testament (Aramaic was the language of Jesus and his countrymen of 1st century Israel) in an English prose translation of The Peshitta New Testament displayed in two columns- one has the King James Version on the left and the other has the translation of the Aramaic Peshitta on the right. This translation is derived from the author's Aramaic-English Interlinear New Testament. Aramaic was used in Mel Gibson's film "The Passion of the Christ" to make the film as realistic and accurate as possible. This New Testament will surprise and thrill the reader with its power and inspiration coming from the words of "Yeshua" ("Jesus" in ancient Aramaic) as He originally spoke them, in a literal and readable English rendering. 659 pages in 6x9" paperback. The parallel Psalms and Proverbs of both versions are included after the NT.