The Tongues Of Angels

"I'm as peaceful a man as you're likely to meet in America now, but this is about a death I may have caused. Not slowly over time by abuse or meanness but on a certain day and by ignorance, by plain lack of notice. Though it happened thirty-four years ago, and though I can't say it's haunted my mind that many nights lately, I suspect I can draw it out for you now, clear as this noon. I may need to try." Set in a summer camp in the Blue Ridge Mountains during the deceptively tranquil 1950s, The Tongues of Angels is a story of the twenty-one-year-old painting teacher, a superbly gifted boy, and their advance toward a startling fate. As the now-older man looks back at on that summer, he reflects on the meanings he thought he had learned on the threshold of manhood from the perspective of full maturity.

A collection of the greatest sermons ever preached, this book fills an enormous gap in the spiritual literature of the contemporary world. Among its many contributors are St. Augustine, John Donne, Hildegard of Bingen, Martin Luther, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Billy Graham, and Martin Luther King, Jr.

Through close textual engagement, theological exposition, ethical reflection, and interdisciplinary collaboration, this book presents a constructive theology of divine speech in the Acts of the Apostles and 1 Corinthians in critical conversation with contemporary issues of sociopolitical, ecclesial, and theological importance. In particular, the authors attend to pericopes in Acts and Paul that open up fresh ways of thinking about divine discourse, preaching, and advocacy in light of contemporary matters of theological and ethical import. In addition to classical modes of textual and theological analysis, the authors attend to the sociopolitical and sociolinguistic aspects of speech as they arise in these pericopes. As such, the authors are simultaneously deconstructing these texts through postcolonial and post-structural analyses to expose these texts to an alterity at work therein, an alterity that has been muted by centuries of biblical interpretation.

Unwrapping God's gifts - wisdom, knowledge, faith, healing, miracles, prophecy, discernment of Spirits, tongues and interpretation of tongues. Concentrating on the nine gifts that the apostle Paul listed together in 1 Corinthians 12, Dr. Sam Storms gives readers a biblical introduction to the spiritual gifts that God bestows on every generation of believers. He combines a solid biblical foundation and practical advice with first-hand illustrations of these gifts in action. Spiritual gifts are nothing less than God himself in us, energizing our souls, imparting revelation to our minds infusing power in our wills, and working his sovereign and gracious purposes through us.

The NIV is the world's best-selling modern translation, with over 150 million copies in print since its first full publication in 1978. This highly accurate and smooth-reading version of the Bible in modern English has the largest library of printed and electronic support material of any modern translation.

After the crucifixion, Jesus's followers - now led by his brother, James the Just - remained devout Jews, vigorously opposed to the Roman occupiers. But a rival faction emerged, via the charismatic itinerant Paul of Tarsus. Some called him Saint, some called him a liar, but Paul began telling the stories that would transform a small sect of Judaism into a world religion. In The Tongues of Men or Angels Jonathan Trigell shows the night sky of Biblical-era Galilee lit, not by guiding stars, but by flames of terror. He shows contested soil, on which miracles were performed and battles raged. He shows men of flesh and of blood, by turns loving and brutal. In so doing, he unseals a tale of the ages. The Tongues of Men or Angels is a dazzling act of imagination and learning.

The Apostle Paul's reference to the "tongues of angels" (1 Cor 13.1) has always aroused curiosity, but it has rarely been the object of a history-of-traditions investigation. Few readers of Paul's words are aware of the numerous references and allusions to angelic languages in Jewish and Christian texts. John C. Poirier presents the first full-length study of the concept of angelic languages, and the most exhaustive attempt to assemble the evidence for that concept in ancient Jewish and early Christian texts. He discusses possible references to angelic languages in the New Testament, pseudepigraphic writings (both Jewish and Christian), the Dead Sea scrolls, rabbinic texts, patristic references, magical writings, and epigraphy. The discussion is divided between those witnesses that understand angels to speak Hebrew, and those that understand angels to speak an esoteric heavenly language.