In this book, Graham Turner confronts many of our assumptions about the Old and New Testament and shows that they are centred around two themes: personal spirituality and social justice.

The Bible clearly states that a great apostasy must occur before Christ's Second Coming. Christians today are being deceived by a worldview that is more subtle and seductive than any before. We will look at some of the dangers in the growing acceptance and practice of: Positive and possibility thinking Healing of memories Self-help philosophies Holistic medicine This seduction of Christianity will not appear as a frontal assault or oppression of our religious beliefs. Instead, it will come as the latest fashionable philosophies that will promise to make us happier, healthier, better educated, and even more spiritual. A compelling look at the times in which we live and a clear call to every believer to choose between the original and the counterfeit. Only then can we hope to escape the seduction of Christianity.

Confused by "end of the world" readings or put off by the dense and mysterious imagery, many readers hesitate to explore the Book of Revelation. Unveiling Empire offers a new entree into this troubling and controversial book of the Bible by examining the roots and social purposes of apocalyptic literature and Revelations own use of traditional imagery. In this way the authors provide readers with the tools for deciphering the texts message--and its urgent applications for Christians today living amidst a new kind of "empire."

The United States is one of history's great Christian nations, but our unique history, success, and global impact have seduced us into believing we are something more--God's New Israel, the new order of the ages, the last best hope of mankind, a redeemer nation. Using the subtle categories that arise from biblical narrative, Between Babel and Beast analyzes how the heresy of Americanism inspired America's rise to hegemony while blinding American Christians to our failures and abuses of power. The book demonstrates that the church best serves the genuine good of the United States by training witnesses--martyr-citizens of God's Abrahamic empire.

From the chaos of the Tower of Babel to the tragedy of the Babylonian captivity, Empires of the Bible tells the story of the ancient civilizations in the Old Testament. Using research conducted in Babylon and Egypt, this book includes many valuable and historical records inscribed in stone by the very men living in those ancient times. These records combined with Bible history of the same, are woven together in one connected story. Reprinted exactly from the 1904 original, this book also includes a series of 21 maps which trace the course of those empires. The unique design of this book will be found useful by every student, either of the Bible or history.

This innovative study of the use of gender in the Apocalypse of John pushes against the boundaries of feminist biblical interpretation. Based on sociopolitical and literary readings of texts, it presents a challenging new way of reading the Apocalypse. Using the concept of catharsis, Tina Pippin focuses on two themes central to the Apocalypse—death and desire. She examines the role of the female in fantastic literature and reviews the social construction of gender and of the female body. In this interdisciplinary investigation, Pippin incorporates fantasy theory and the function of the female in the fantastic to expose the Apocalypse’s ambiguous representation of women.

The issue of the Jews deeply engaged Milton throughout his career, and not necessarily in ways that make for comfortable or reassuring reading today. While Shakespeare and Marlowe, for example, critiqued rather than endorsed racial and religious prejudice in their writings about Jews, the same cannot be said for Milton. The scholars in this collection confront a writer who participated in the sad history of anti-Semitism, even as he appropriated Jewish models throughout his writings. Well grounded in solid historical and theological research, the essays both collectively and individually offer an important contribution to the debate on Milton and Judaism. This book will be of interest not only to scholars of Milton and of seventeenth-century literature, but also to historians of the religion and culture of the period.