The Christ Key

Reading the Old Testament can seem like exploring an old, mysterious mansion, packed with of all sorts of strange rooms. The creation room, vast and sublime. The exodus room, with hardhearted pharaohs and dried-up seas. The war room, with bloody swords and crumbling walls. The tabernacle room, with smoking altars and dark inner sanctums. What does this odd and ancient world have to do with us, who are modern followers of Jesus? As it turns out, everything! Every chapter in the Old Testament, in a variety of ways, tells the story that culminates in Jesus the Messiah. What Christians today call the Old Testament is what Jesus and the earliest believers simply called the Scriptures. That was their Bible. From its pages, they taught about the Messiah's divine nature, his priestly work, his ministry of salvation. The Christ Key will reintroduce readers to these old books as ever-fresh, ever-new testimonies of Jesus. By the end, you will see even Leviticus as a book of grace and mercy, and you will hear in the Psalms the resounding voice of Christ.

An innovative Christ-centered theology exploring the centrality of Christ for Christian thought and shedding fresh light on major theological issues.

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.

Jesus said that he would give us the keys to the kingdom of God. We know that his kingdom is not of this world and not of flesh and blood. It is found in every word that God has spoken and this word is written within our own spirit. I have put together a few attributes of human nature that God consistently said were the works of righteousness.

What did God use to draw a radical, committed unbeliever to himself? Did God take her to an evangelistic rally? Or, since she had her doctorate in literature, did he use something in print? No, God used an invitation to dinner in a modest home, from a humble couple who lived out the gospel daily, simply, and authentically. With this story of her conversion as a backdrop, Rosaria Butterfield invites us into her home to show us how God can use this same "radical, ordinary hospitality" to bring the gospel to our lost friends and neighbors. Such hospitality sees our homes as not our own, but as God's tools for the furtherance of his kingdom as we welcome those who look, think, believe, and act differently from us into our everyday, sometimes messy lives—helping them see what true Christian faith really looks like.

Unveiling Mercy will do just that—unveil how the mercy of God in the Messiah is spoken of from the very opening Hebrew word of the Bible, all the way to the closing chapter of Malachi. By the end of the year, you will have entered the Old Testament through 365 new doorways, looked with fresh eyes at old verses, and traced a web of connections all over the Scriptures that you've never spotted before. You'll begin to see what one person meant when he described Hebrew words as "hyphens between heaven and earth." Reading the Bible in translation can be like "kissing the bride through the veil." Each of these 365 devotions is crafted so as to lift that veil ever so slightly, to touch skin to skin, as it were, with the original language. You do not need to know anything about Hebrew to profit from these meditations. They are not written to teach you the language of Abraham, Moses, and Isaiah, but to give you a taste of their insights, to expose you to their eloquence, to laugh with them at their winking wordplays, to un-English their idioms, and—most importantly—to trace their trajectories all the way into the preaching of the Messiah and the writings of his evangelists and apostles.

Let your light so shine before men, that they may see your good works, and glorify your Father which is in heaven. ""Matthew 5:16 This Christian book is not for the faint of heart. No if fact it is for them stone hearts as it is a testimony of my faith and an explanation of how I got to where I am as a Christian. This book runs very deep in doctrine, is heavily coded in truth, and a puzzle for the Christian and non-Christian reader. This book is designed to help answer questions with keys we all face and, in so doing, awaken the reader's mind so that he or she may find their way out of a world of conformity. My father told me once, when I was a boy, that a pile of firewood could be brought down by simply removing the key piece. So the journey of my life has been to find the keys of life. Thankfully, God has made it pretty easy. My King James Version has served me well over the last five years. I wrote this book to be the light for my family, but I truly would be grateful if it could make it farther than my family. Whether I can sell this book or not, I believe God has had me write this testimony to profit Him. Writing this book has brought me a great joy, and I truly hope that you, as its reader, will experience it's joy as well!