Showing titles in History

In Willing to Believe, R. C. Sproul uncovers issues that provoked the Reformation and revived the controversy between Pelagius and Augustine. He carefully explores the relationship between original sin and human free will, clarifies misconceptions about the work of God in a believer's liberation from sin, illuminates the work of the Holy Spirit in salvation, and offers compelling reasons to believe the work of salvation is in God's hands.

In this remarkably moving memoir Ariana Neumann dives into the secrets of her father’s past: years spent hiding in plain sight in war-torn Berlin, the annihilation of dozens of family members in the Holocaust, and the courageous choice to build anew.

Written in 75 AD by the Jewish historian and Roman citizen Titus Flavius Josephus, “The Wars of the Jews”, describes Jewish history from the capture of Jerusalem in 164 BC. to the destruction of the city in 70 AD. Josephus, born in Jerusalem in 37 AD with the name Yosef ben Matityahu, was from a Jewish family with a father of a priestly heritage and a mother who claimed to have royal blood. Josephus fought against the Romans in the First Jewish-Roman War and was eventually taken prisoner by the Romans and made a slave of the Roman leader Vespasian.

In the fifth and final installment of his best-selling Jesus series, David Limbaugh digs into the New Testament epistles with passion and imagination, showing that the testimony of Jesus’ earliest followers provides irrefutable proof of his resurrection.

Anyone scrolling through Robyn Moreno’s social media seeing her on the set of The Today Show; shaking hands with Barack Obama at the White House; speaking on stage at SXSW; and cozying up to celebs like J.Lo and Rihanna would have thought she was living the life. But the truth behind her well-curated snaps was that Robyn was burnt out AF. To save her soul, sanity, and family, Robyn quit her manic #mommyboss existence, and set out on a 260-day spiritual journey based in Aztec and Mayan traditions, studying the medicine of her Mexican grandmothers: curanderismo.

Through this novelized history of the Soka Gakkai - one of the most dynamic, diverse, and empowering Buddhist movements in the world today - listeners will discover the organization's goals and achievements even as they find inspiring and practical Buddhist wisdom for living happily and compassionately in today's world. The book recounts the stories of ordinary individuals who faced tremendous odds in transforming their lives through the practice of Nichiren Buddhism and in bringing Buddhism's humanistic teachings to the world.

Daniel Hill will never forget the day he heard these words: "Daniel, you may be white, but don't let that lull you into thinking you have no culture. White culture is very real. In fact, when white culture comes in contact with other cultures, it almost always wins. So it would be a really good idea for you to learn about your culture." Confused and unsettled by this encounter, Hill began a journey of understanding his own white identity. Today he is an active participant in addressing and confronting racial and systemic injustices.

In this fascinating account of the surprisingly violent fifth-century church, Philip Jenkins describes how political maneuvers by a handful of powerful characters shaped Christian doctrine. Were it not for these battles, today's church could be teaching something very different about the nature of Jesus, and the papacy as we know it would never have come into existence. Jesus Wars reveals the profound implications of what amounts to an accident of history: that one faction of Roman emperors and militia-wielding bishops defeated another.

Long before the European Enlightenment and the Darwinian revolution, which we often take to mark the birth of the modern revolt against religious explanations of the world, brave people doubted the power of the gods. Religion provoked skepticism in ancient Greece, and heretics argued that history must be understood as a result of human action rather than divine intervention. They devised theories of the cosmos based on matter and notions of matter based on atoms.

As World War II raged in North Africa, General Erwin Rommel was guided by an uncanny sense of his enemies' plans and weaknesses. In the summer of 1942, he led his Axis army swiftly and terrifyingly toward Alexandria, with the goal of overrunning the entire Middle East. Each step was informed by detailed updates on British positions. The Nazis, somehow, had a source for the Allies' greatest secrets.

The Reformation did not happen instantaneously; it was something God patiently arranged over a number of years. As you listen to this book, you will learn how the Lord used some people to plant the seeds of church reform long before October 31, 1517, when Martin Luther published his 95 theses. Luther's story is well-known; we trust you will find it interesting and instructive to hear about him and about 40 others (John Knox, Peter Martyr Vermigli, Zacharias Ursinus, Willem Teellinck, etc.) who contributed to the Reformation.

How did human societies scale up from small, tight-knit groups of hunter-gatherers to the large, anonymous, cooperative societies of today - even though anonymity is the enemy of cooperation? How did organized religions with "Big Gods" - the great monotheistic and polytheistic faiths - spread to colonize most minds in the world? In Big Gods, Ara Norenzayan makes the surprising and provocative argument that these fundamental puzzles about the origins of civilization are one and the same, and answer each other.

In 2007, two Israeli news publications, Israel Today and News First Class, reported that the most famous rabbi in Israel's modern history, 108-year-old Yitzhak Kaduri, had left a cryptic death note revealing the name of the long-awaited Messiah. Within a year after the rabbi's death, the note was reported to have been verified as authentic by some of Kaduri's closest followers and then placed on Kaduri's own website (Kaduri.net).

In 2013, just two years after the popular overthrow of Hosni Mubarak, the Egyptian military ousted the country's first democratically elected president - Mohamed Morsi of the Muslim Brotherhood - and subsequently led a brutal repression of the Islamist group. These bloody events echoed an older political rift: the splitting of nationalists and Islamists during the rule of Egyptian president and Arab nationalist leader Gamal Abdel Nasser. Fawaz Gerges, one of the world's leading authorities on the Middle East, tells how the clash between pan-Arab nationalism and pan-Islamism has shaped the history of the region.

One hundred and fifty years after Abraham Lincoln's death, the full story of his extraordinary relationship with Jews is told here for the first time. Lincoln and the Jews: A History provides listeners both with a captivating narrative of his interactions with Jews and the opportunity to immerse themselves in rare manuscripts. Lincoln's lifetime coincided with the emergence of Jews on the national scene in the United States.

An ancient and deeply revered practice, Buddhism is even more popular now than it has been in decades. The secret behind its steady rise is due in part to the plethora of benefits Buddhism reaps upon those who practice it and apply its teachings to their lives. Through mindfulness and meditation, Buddhism injects peace and clarity into the minds and lives of those who dedicate themselves to it. Those wonderful benefits can be a part of your life as well through the careful study of its various tenets.

The relationship between early Mormons and the US was marked by anxiety and hostility. Nineteenth-century Latter-day Saints looked forward to apocalyptic events that would unseat corrupt governments across the globe. Mormons envisioned divine deliverance by way of plagues, natural disasters, foreign invasions, American Indian raids, slave uprisings, or civil war unleashed on American people. For the Saints, these violent images promised a national rebirth that would vouchsafe the protections of the US Constitution and end their oppression.

Is God a sadistic torturer? Coldhearted judge? Genocidal maniac? Unfortunately, our popular caricatures often make him out to be. God has some skeletons in the closet. At least, that's what many of us fear. "How can a loving God send people to hell?" "Isn't it arrogant to believe Jesus is the only way to God?" "What is up with holy war in the Old Testament?" These are difficult questions that our family, our friends, our culture - even we ourselves - are asking.

In Communism and the Conscience of the West, Sheen explains the problems with society stemming from socialism and communism, which continue to infect universities and political discourse today. This timeless book exposes communism’s defects, its attitude toward the family, the decline of historical liberalism, and the rise of the antireligious spirit that pervades our world.

Today there are two seemingly mutually exclusive notions of what “the Jews” are: either a religion or a nation/ethnicity. In this provocative book, based on his decades of study of the history of the Jews, Daniel Boyarin lays out the problematic aspects of this binary opposition and offers the outlines of a different—and very old—answer to the question of the identity of a diaspora nation. He aims to drive a wedge between the “nation” and the “state,” only very recently conjoined, and recover a robust sense of nationalism that does not involve sovereignty.