Seers And Judges

Alexis de Tocqueville asserted that America had no truly great literature, and that American writers merely mimicked the British and European traditions of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. This new edited collection masterfully refutes Tocqueville's monocultural myopia and reveals the distinctive role American poetry and prose have played in reflecting and passing judgment upon the core values of American democracy. The essays, profiling the work of Mark Twain, F. Scott Fitzgerald, John Updike, Edith Wharton, Walt Whitman, Henry James, Willa Cather, Walker Percy, and Tom Wolfe, reveal how America's greatest writers have acted as society's most ardent cheerleaders and its most penetrating critics. Christine Dunn Henderson's exciting new work offers literature as a portal through which to view the philosophical principles that animate America's political order and the mores which either reinforce or undermine them.

Judges 4:4 Now Deborah, a prophetess, the wife of Lapidoth was judging Israel at that time. She used to sit under the palm of Deborah between Ramah and Bethel in the hill country of Ephraim; and the people of Israel came up to her for judgment. This is the extent of what we know about Deborah before the battle with Sisera. Judges 5 is a poetic rewrite of Judges 4 with the added story of Siseras mother who waits in the window of her palace for her son to come home. The woman waiting in the window is a motif used in many writings to indicate a woman of great power. Here are two powerful women whose stories are so brief as written, but beg for a larger look at their lives. Biblical fiction is a wonderful way to flesh out their stories leading up to Judges 4 and 5. How did Deborah grow up? How did Barak grow up? Deborah was in Ephraim and Barak in Kadesh-Napthali, some sixty miles apart. How did they know each other? How did Deborah learn of scriptures and battle plans in a society where neither of these areas were open to women?

The Old Testament book of 1 Samuel belongs to those books in the Old Testament known as the Former Prophets (Joshua, Judges, 1 & 2 Samuel, 1 & 2 Kings). In the original Hebrew, 1 & 2 Samuel are one book. Samuel the Seer examines this ancient text in which lies the birth of the state of Israel as it exists today

Marauders from a renegade planet attack an Earth colony ship forcing landing parties to split into two groups in a desperate attempt to escape. The attackers are killed but the colonists pay a terrible price. Their vessels are destroyed stranding them without their technology on either side of an imposing mountain range on the planet Verde Grande. Descendants of a mysterious Seer now protect their people but become the bane of the hunter society on the other side of the mountain. For two centuries all attempts to scale the mountain are thwarted by the powerful Seers who want to preserve their religion and way of life no matter the cost. One day, a party of hunters sets out to climb the mountain. To their dismay, the Seers cannot control a strange unreachable young woman, who finds the passage to their protected valley. The reunion triggers a decades-long conflict between the Seers and the children of the “lost ones”—a struggle that forever changes the people of Verde Grande.

What is “Christian” about Christian education; how is it different from on-Christian education? A Theology for Christian Education examines this question in depth and argues that the doctrines of systematic theology should drive the content, purpose, and methods of the educational program of the c hurch. The book states: “Christian education is distinct from other kinds of education in that its aim is the transformation of the whole person into the likeness of Christ (Col. 1 :28). Christian education is the process of accomplishing this aim.” A Theology for Christian Education dedicates chapters to examining particular doctrines and their implications for Christian education. It is the only serious academic text to offer a systematic presentation of the intersection of theology and Christian education from a conservative evangelical perspective.

Increasingly, scholars recognize that prophetic traditions, expressions, and experiences stand at the heart of most religions in the ancient Mediterranean world. This is no less true for the world of Judaism and Jesus. Ben Witherington III offers an extensive, cross-cultural survey of the broader expressions of prophecy in its ancient Mediterranean context, beginning with Mari, moving to biblical figures not often regarded as prophets‒‒Balaam, Deborah, Moses, and Aaron‒‒and to the apocalyptic seer in postexilic prophecy, showing that no single pattern describes all prophetic figures. The consequence is that different aspects of Jesus’s activity touch upon prophetic predecessors: his miracles, on Elijah and Elisha; his self-understanding as the Son of Man, on Daniel and 1 Enoch; his warnings of woe and judgment, on the “writing prophets” in Judean tradition; and his messianic entry into Jerusalem, on Zechariah 9. Witherington also surveys the phenomenon of apocalyptic prophecy in early Christianity, including Paul, Revelation, the Didache, Hermas, and the Montanist movement. Jesus the Seer is a worthy complement to Witherington’s other volume on Jesus, Jesus the Sage (Fortress Press, 2000).

This book will explain the difference between a prophet and a seer. It will also detail some of my experiences as I grew into my calling. It is my prayer that this book will help others who are on the path as a prophetic seer to know they are not psychic but must allow the Holy Spirit to teach them and groom them as God develops them for his use for the body of Christ.