Download or read book The Heavenly Country written by Michael Martin and published by Angelico Press / Sophia Perennis. This book was released on 2016 with total page 434 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Sophiology--the philosophical and theological notion of a transcendent splendor becoming immanent in the world, through nature, liturgy, prayer, and the arts--is just now coming into its own as an important area of study. This revolutionary casebook brings together primary source documents, poetry, and critical articles written by a group of exemplary scholars working in theology, philosophy, literary studies, psychology, and poetics. Contributors include Bruce Foltz, Gregory Glazov, Jennifer Newsome Martin, Michael Martin, Aaron Riches, Brent Dean Robbins, Artur Sebastian Rosman, Fr. Robert Slesinski, and Arthur Versluis. "In making available in one place a range of texts from the history of Christian meditation on Wisdom--from Jacob Boehme to John Pordage, and then closer to our time, Goethe, Solovyov and Bulgakov, among many others--this work already performs an important service. However, Michael Martin understands that these are not simply variously difficult or even eccentric historical documents, but are--like all worthwhile traditions--material for a Christian and human future. The book opens then into a wide-ranging selection of poetry, followed by a collection of essays which, in Martin's own summation, pass beyond this preliminary gathering of material to the vital work of assimilating the vision of Divine Wisdom into the life of Christians today and for the days to come.--BISHOP SERAPHIM J. SIGRIST "Ever since Hans Urs von Balthasar's endorsement of Valentin Tomberg, theologians have increasingly begun to see that Christian esotericism is not necessarily heterodox or 'gnostic, ' despite many ambiguities. To the contrary, the future of orthodoxy, its more radical cleaving to the biblical revelation, and above all its metaphysical coherence, may depend upon a new engagement with sophiology, theurgic Neoplatonism, and Hermeticism. But such a prospect can be hampered by the relative inaccessibility of crucial texts. This splendid collection and its lucid contextualizations go a considerable way toward remedying that situation."--JOHN MILBANK, author of Theology and Social Theory and Beyond Secular Order "We should welcome this splendid book on the splendor and the gradual emergence of the sapiential paradigm. Pushkin in Boris Godunov identified inspired poets and clairvoyants with the prophets of the Bible. Before the First World War, Guillaume Apollinaire called all who perceive the shining upon the earth of the Wisdom of God as those who would renew the world. Vassily Kandinsky at the same time rejected the limits of the (Enlightened-Kantian) world to update Sophia in the genesis of color. That is, if beauty and truth are inseparable, then we must find a new language. All the theology, all the science, and all the philosophy of the 20th century were affected by this awareness, from Bulgakov to von Balthasar, from Teilhard de Chardin to Deane-Drummond, from Berdyaev to Milbank. Thanks go to Michael Martin and the authors brought together in this collection for their contribution to the flowering of publication on sophiology in the English-speaking world.--ANTOINE ARJAKOVSKY, Research Director, Collège des Bernardins, Paris
Download or read book A Better Country written by Dan Schaeffer and published by Our Daily Bread Publishing. This book was released on 2014-04-30 with total page 286 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: God never meant heaven to be a vague hope, but the passion and purpose of your present life. He wants to prepare you for the better country! In these pages you will discover the thing you've always wanted; the world you've longed for; the life you were meant to live; the goal you were meant to pursue. "One of the most important reasons for writing this book, to me, was to help Christians who have bought into the 'you only go around once' idea that this life is our only chance to accomplish anything significant," author Dan Schaeffer explains. You'll explore topics such as: Misconceptions about heaven What the new heavens and new earth will be like What happens when you die What life in heaven will be like How to prepare for your future in heaven Many Christians view this life as their only chance to fulfill their ambitions, to be "all they can be." A healthy understanding of what the Bible teaches about heaven enables you to let go of many earthly ambitions and the regrets that often accompany them.
Download or read book The Taiping Heavenly Kingdom written by Thomas H. Reilly and published by University of Washington Press. This book was released on 2011-07-01 with total page 248 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Occupying much of imperial China’s Yangzi River heartland and costing more than twenty million lives, the Taiping Rebellion (1851-64) was no ordinary peasant revolt. What most distinguished this dramatic upheaval from earlier rebellions were the spiritual beliefs of the rebels. The core of the Taiping faith focused on the belief that Shangdi, the high God of classical China, had chosen the Taiping leader, Hong Xiuquan, to establish his Heavenly Kingdom on Earth. How were the Taiping rebels, professing this new creed, able to mount their rebellion and recruit multitudes of followers in their sweep through the empire? Thomas Reilly argues that the Taiping faith, although kindled by Protestant sources, developed into a dynamic new Chinese religion whose conception of its sovereign deity challenged the legitimacy of the Chinese empire. The Taiping rebels denounced the divine pretensions of the imperial title and the sacred character of the imperial office as blasphemous usurpations of Shangdi’s title and position. In place of the imperial institution, the rebels called for restoration of the classical system of kingship. Previous rebellions had declared their contemporary dynasties corrupt and therefore in need of revival; the Taiping, by contrast, branded the entire imperial order blasphemous and in need of replacement. In this study, Reilly emphasizes the Christian elements of the Taiping faith, showing how Protestant missionaries built on earlier Catholic efforts to translate Christianity into a Chinese idiom. Prior studies of the rebellion have failed to appreciate how Hong Xiuquan’s interpretation of Christianity connected the Taiping faith to an imperial Chinese cultural and religious context. The Taiping Heavenly Kingdom shows how the Bible--in particular, a Chinese translation of the Old Testament--profoundly influenced Hong and his followers, leading them to understand the first three of the Ten Commandments as an indictment of the imperial order. The rebels thus sought to destroy imperial culture along with its institutions and Confucian underpinnings, all of which they regarded as blasphemous. Strongly iconoclastic, the Taiping followers smashed religious statues and imperially approved icons throughout the lands they conquered. By such actions the Taiping Rebellion transformed--at least for its followers but to some extent for all Chinese--how Chinese people thought about religion, the imperial title and office, and the entire traditional imperial and Confucian order. This book makes a major contribution to the study of the Taiping Rebellion and to our understanding of the ideology of both the rebels and the traditional imperial order they opposed. It will appeal to scholars in the fields of Chinese history, religion, and culture and of Christian theology and church history.
Download or read book Awaiting the Heavenly Country written by Mark S. Schantz and published by Cornell University Press. This book was released on 2013-09-20 with total page 265 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Americans came to fight the Civil War in the midst of a wider cultural world that sent them messages about death that made it easier to kill and to be killed. They understood that death awaited all who were born and prized the ability to face death with a spirit of calm resignation. They believed that a heavenly eternity of transcendent beauty awaited them beyond the grave. They knew that their heroic achievements would be cherished forever by posterity. They grasped that death itself might be seen as artistically fascinating and even beautiful."-from Awaiting the Heavenly Country How much loss can a nation bear? An America in which 620,000 men die at each other's hands in a war at home is almost inconceivable to us now, yet in 1861 American mothers proudly watched their sons, husbands, and fathers go off to war, knowing they would likely be killed. Today, the death of a soldier in Iraq can become headline news; during the Civil War, sometimes families did not learn of their loved ones' deaths until long after the fact. Did antebellum Americans hold their lives so lightly, or was death so familiar to them that it did not bear avoiding? In Awaiting the Heavenly Country, Mark S. Schantz argues that American attitudes and ideas about death helped facilitate the war's tremendous carnage. Asserting that nineteenth-century attitudes toward death were firmly in place before the war began rather than arising from a sense of resignation after the losses became apparent, Schantz has written a fascinating and chilling narrative of how a society understood death and reckoned the magnitude of destruction it was willing to tolerate. Schantz addresses topics such as the pervasiveness of death in the culture of antebellum America; theological discourse and debate on the nature of heaven and the afterlife; the rural cemetery movement and the inheritance of the Greek revival; death as a major topic in American poetry; African American notions of death, slavery, and citizenship; and a treatment of the art of death-including memorial lithographs, postmortem photography and Rembrandt Peale's major exhibition painting The Court of Death. Awaiting the Heavenly Country is essential reading for anyone wanting a deeper understanding of the Civil War and the ways in which antebellum Americans comprehended death and the unimaginable bloodshed on the horizon.
Download or read book Heaven on Earth written by R. Alan Streett and published by Harvest House Publishers. This book was released on 2013-04-01 with total page 306 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The future hope of heaven is pulled into the here-and-now in this illuminating description of the kingdom of God. Popular teacher and author R. Alan Streett exposes half-truths about the kingdom that many believers have unwittingly accepted. He contrasts these with the testimony of Scripture: Jesus inaugurated the kingdom of God on the earth—it has already begun. As ambassadors of the kingdom, we are to fulfill our responsibilities and enjoy its benefits here and now. Salvation does not culminate with the soul escaping the body and living forever in heaven. Our bodies will eventually be transformed, and we will live with God on a restored earth. The church is like an embassy of heaven in a foreign country. In their life together, believers demonstrate kingdom realities to the world. Readers will find hope and direction in this fresh presentation of the historic teaching on the kingdom.
Download or read book Autumn in the Heavenly Kingdom written by Stephen R. Platt and published by Knopf. This book was released on 2012 with total page 514 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A gripping account of China's nineteenth-century Taiping Rebellion, one of the largest civil wars in history. Autumn in the Heavenly Kingdom brims with unforgettable characters and vivid re-creations of massive and often gruesome battles--a sweeping yet intimate portrait of the conflict that shaped the fate of modern China. The story begins in the early 1850s, the waning years of the Qing dynasty, when word spread of a major revolution brewing in the provinces, led by a failed civil servant who claimed to be the son of God and brother of Jesus. The Taiping rebels drew their power from the poor and the disenfranchised, unleashing the ethnic rage of millions of Chinese against their Manchu rulers. This homegrown movement seemed all but unstoppable until Britain and the United States stepped in and threw their support behind the Manchus: after years of massive carnage, all opposition to Qing rule was effectively snuffed out for generations. Stephen R. Platt recounts these events in spellbinding detail, building his story on two fascinating characters with opposing visions for China's future: the conservative Confucian scholar Zeng Guofan, an accidental general who emerged as the most influential military strategist in China's modern history; and Hong Rengan, a brilliant Taiping leader whose grand vision of building a modern, industrial, and pro-Western Chinese state ended in tragic failure. This is an essential and enthralling history of the rise and fall of the movement that, a century and a half ago, might have launched China on an entirely different path into the modern world.
Download or read book Country Music Culture written by Curtis W. Ellison and published by Univ. Press of Mississippi. This book was released on 1995 with total page 360 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A social history of country music from the 1920s to the present, discussing such artists as Patsy Cline, Grandpa Jones, Dolly Parton, and Garth Brooks.
Download or read book Sweet Heaven When I Die Faith Faithlessness and the Country In Between written by Jeff Sharlet and published by W. W. Norton & Company. This book was released on 2011-08-15 with total page 221 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “A master investigative stylist and one of the shrewdest commentators on religion’s underexplored realms.”—Michael Washburn, Washington Post In this gorgeous collection of essays that has drawn comparisons to the work of Joan Didion, John McPhee, and Norman Mailer, best-selling author Jeff Sharlet reports back from the far reaches of belief, whether in the clear mountain air of “Sweet Fuck All, Colorado” or in a midnight congregation of anarchists celebrating a victory over police. Like movements in a complex piece of music, Sharlet’s dispatches vibrate with all the madness and beauty, the melancholy and aspirations for transcendence, of American life.
Download or read book Appointments with Heaven written by Reggie Anderson and published by Tyndale House Publishers, Inc.. This book was released on 2013 with total page 337 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: When Dr. Reggie Anderson is present at the bedside of a dying patient, something miraculous happens. Sometimes as he sits vigil and holds the patient's hand . . . he can experience what they feel and see as they cross over. Because of these God-given glimpses of the afterlife--his "appointments with heaven"--Reggie knows beyond a doubt that we are closer to the next world than we think. Join him as he shares remarkable stories from his life and practice, including the tragedy that nearly drove him away from faith forever. He reveals how what he's seen, heard, and experienced has shaped what he believes about living and dying; how we can face the passing of our loved ones with the courage and confidence that we will see them again; and how we can each prepare for our own "appointment with heaven." Soul-stirring and hope-filled, Appointments with Heaven is a powerful journey into the questions at the very core of your being: Is there more to life than this? What is heaven like? And, most important: Do I believe it enough to let it change me?
Download or read book The Undiscovered Country written by Ron Rhodes and published by Harvest House Publishers. This book was released on 1996 with total page 212 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: At one time, people only whispered the word death. Today, it's the topic of bestselling books and magazine feature articles. Yet with all that has been said, it's still a subject shrouded in mystery. Noted author and Bible expert Rhodes brings together a wide range of scriptural facts that provide an incredibly clear and inspirational picture of the next life.
Download or read book Experiencing the Heavenly Realms Expanded Edition written by Judy Franklin and published by Destiny Image Publishers. This book was released on 2016-09-20 with total page 218 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: You Can Experience the Heavenly Places...Now! What does it mean to be seated with Christ in heavenly places? Many Christians are familiar with this Biblical language but does it have practical, everyday meaning? Is it possible to experience the heavenly realms today? Yes! In this newly expanded edition of Experiencing the Heavenly Realm, Judy Franklin leads you on a step-by-step journey borne out of her own supernatural experiences. Judy will show you how to Biblically encounter the heavenly realm and its life-changing joy, intimacy with God, healing and wholeness just like she did! Discover how to: Activate your capacity to see into the supernatural. Experience a love in the third heaven realm like you have never known before. Be touched and healed by the Lord: emotionally, mentally and physically. Go from knowing about Jesus to knowing Him on an experiential level. If you hunger for a deeper, more experiential relationship with God, the visions, testimonies and supernatural stories you read about will help usher you into a lifestyle of divine encounters!
Download or read book The Heavenly Man written by Brother Yun and published by Hendrickson Publishers. This book was released on 2009 with total page 354 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "The Heavenly Man" tells the true story of Liu Zhenying, also known as Brother Yun, who, for the past 30 years, has committed himself to bringing the gospel of Christ to all of China. Imprisoned, tortured, and separated from his family for his beliefs, Brother Yun shares his story.
Download or read book Even Better than Eden written by Nancy Guthrie and published by Crossway. This book was released on 2018-08-08 with total page 224 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: God’s Story Will End Better than It Began . . . Experienced Bible teacher Nancy Guthrie traces 9 themes throughout the Bible, revealing how God’s plan for the new creation will be far more glorious than the original. But this new creation glory isn’t just reserved for the future. The hope of God’s plan for his people transforms everything about our lives today.
Download or read book God s Chinese Son The Taiping Heavenly Kingdom of Hong Xiuquan written by Jonathan D. Spence and published by W. W. Norton & Company. This book was released on 1996-12-17 with total page 452 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "A magnificent tapestry . . . a story that reaches beyond China into our world and time: a story of faith, hope, passion, and a fatal grandiosity."--Washington Post Book World Whether read for its powerful account of the largest uprising in human history, or for its foreshadowing of the terrible convulsions suffered by twentieth-century China, or for the narrative power of a great historian at his best, God's Chinese Son must be read. At the center of this history of China's Taiping rebellion (1845-64) stands Hong Xiuquan, a failed student of Confucian doctrine who ascends to heaven in a dream and meets his heavenly family: God, Mary, and his older brother, Jesus. He returns to earth charged to eradicate the "demon-devils," the alien Manchu rulers of China. His success carries him and his followers to the heavenly capital at Nanjing, where they rule a large part of south China for more than a decade. Their decline and fall, wrought by internal division and the unrelenting military pressures of the Manchus and the Western powers, carry them to a hell on earth. Twenty million Chinese are left dead.
Download or read book Here Comes Heaven written by Bill Johnson and published by Destiny Image Publishers. This book was released on 2011-07-28 with total page 208 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This work is an invitation and guide for young people to bring the realm of Heaven to earth. As children discover their identity through the revelation of the Father's love, they are released to fulfill their Royal Mission: to demonstrate the Kingdom of God by living a life of miracles. Each chapter explains and identifies the inheritance that God's sons and daughters possess, such as the Father's love, the anointing and indwelling of the Holy Spirit, faith, prayer, and the keys of power and authority. This book is not only a companion for the "journey", but also provides a meeting place for children to encounter God's presence that will transform their hearts and lives.
Download or read book Operating in the Courts of Heaven written by Robert Henderson and published by Destiny Image Publishers. This book was released on 2016-02-23 with total page 217 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Why do some people pray in agreement with Gods will, heart and timing, yet the desired answers do not come? Why would God not respond when we pray from the earnestness of our hearts? What is the problem, or better yet, what is the solution? Robert Henderson believes the answer is found in where your prayer actually takes place. We must direct our prayer towards the Courts of Heaven and not only the battlefield. Robert shows that it is in the courtrooms of Heaven where our breakthroughs can be found. When you learn to operate there you will see your answers unlocked and released. This book will teach you the legal processes of Heaven and how to operate in its courts. When you get off the battlefield and into the courtroom you can grant God the legal clearance to fulfill His passion and answer your prayers.
Download or read book The Sacred Overlap written by J.R. Briggs and published by Zondervan. This book was released on 2020-09-08 with total page 287 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The widening of political, racial, generational, and religious differences leads too often to an "us vs. them" mentality. The Sacred Overlap communicates a refreshing vision that embraces tension and shows us how to live in radical love and faithfulness between the extremes that isolate and divide people. The gospels display how Jesus was committed to crossing the either/or waters of the cultural and societal wars of his day. His miracles and parables often broke or ignored religious and political lines that seemed all important. He comforted the disturbed and disturbed the comfortable. Using Jesus' example, J. R. Briggs offers a fresh and relevant understanding of evangelism and discipleship in our present time of extreme polarization. Without sacrificing biblical integrity, The Sacred Overlap is a joyful exploration of the complexity of life in the peace of Christ. With careful discernment, Briggs: Shares creative ways to engage with God's mission of ministering to those who are intrigued by Jesus but turned off by church. Explores what it means to be joyful in the midst of heart-wrenching pain and earthly suffering. Models what it means to maintain a posture of convicted civility which emphasizes both grace and truth. The Sacred Overlap helps readers see how Christians are called to live with their feet firmly planted in two different worlds—in both heaven and earth—living naturally with both the sacred and the ordinary. Only then can a Christian be a faithful witness and disciple of Jesus.
