In the spirit of building up one another through suitable encouragement, inspiration and continual learning, I’ve list numerous books and thinkers that have inspired me. Perhaps in the future I’ll post some personal reviews and insights from their work. They’re in no particular order.
The split between Jews and Christians goes beyond who they say Jesus is or isn’t. After all, Jesus was born a Jew, lived as a Jew, died as a Jew, and was originally followed by Jews. Yet somehow a new religion was born, and the division has lasted nearly two thousand years. Why?
Messianic Rabbi Kirt A. Schneider unearths the story behind this separation. He points to the theological crises the religious leaders at the time faced, the jealousies they harbored, and the problems that the inclusion of Gentiles into the faith created. Schneider shows how Jesus fulfills everything in the Law and the Prophets and, in doing so, is the completion of Judaism itself.
When Jesus began his ministry, he announced that the kingdom of God was at hand. But many modern-day Christians don’t really understand what the kingdom of God is or how it relates to the message of the gospel. Defining kingdom as the King’s power over the King’s people in the King’s place, Patrick Schreiner investigates the key events, prophecies, and passages of Scripture that highlight the important theme of kingdom across the storyline of the Bible – helping readers see how the mission of Jesus and the coming of the kingdom fit together.
Throughout the Bible, God has related to his people through covenants. It is through these covenant relationships, which collectively serve as the foundation for God’s promise to bring redemption to his people, that we can understand the advancement of his kingdom. This book walks through six covenants from Genesis to Revelation, helping us grasp the overarching narrative of scripture and see the salvation God has planned for us since the beginning of time – bolstering our faith in God and giving hope for the future.
In Science Set Free, Dr. Rupert Sheldrake, one of the world’s most innovative scientists, shows the ways in which science is being constricted by assumptions that have, over the years, hardened into dogmas. Such dogmas are not only limiting, but dangerous for the future of humanity.
But should science be a belief system, or a method of inquiry? Sheldrake shows that the materialist ideology is moribund; under its sway, increasingly expensive research is reaping diminishing returns while societies around the world are paying the price. In the skeptical spirit of true science, Sheldrake turns the ten fundamental dogmas of materialism into exciting questions and shows how all of them open up startling new possibilities for discovery.
Reversing Hermon is a groundbreaking work. It unveils what most in the modern Church have never heard regarding how the story of the sin of the Watchers in 1 Enoch 6-16 helped frame the mission of Jesus, the messiah. .Jews of the first century expected the messiah to reverse the impact of the Watchers’ transgression. For Jews of Jesus’ day, the Watchers were part of the explanation for why the world was so profoundly depraved. The role of Enoch’s retelling of Genesis 6:1-4 in how New Testament writers wrote of Jesus and the cross has been largely lost to a modern audience. Reversing Hermon rectifies that situation.
Jesus Christ is coming again! That is the Blessed Hope which has since the earliest days of the church energized biblical Christians looking for the full revelation of God’s redemption. Ladd’s conclusion is that the Blessed Hope is the second coming of Jesus Christ, not a pre-tribulation rapture of believers in a secret coming of Jesus. Yet he concludes, too, that there should be liberty and charity within the Christian community for all who hold to the expectation of “the blessed hope and appearing in glory of our great God and Savior Jesus Christ.”
In this book George Eldon Ladd offers the student of eschatology a survey of the literature on the kingdom of God and a fruitful discussion of some of the controversies over this central theological subject. Ladd’s exegesis of the futurity and presence of the kingdom and of a millennial interregnum represents an informed and critical pre-millennialism. He presents these formulations over against the popular dispensational form of the chiliastic position and against the amillennial position whose criticism of premillennialism, the author says, is limited only to its special dispensational form.
This book propounds the thesis that Jesus will return after the tribulation and that the first resurrection will occur at that time. Dr. Gundry believes that biblical evidence points most naturally to this conclusion. Because of his discerning analysis of Scripture, his careful logic, and the thoughtful presentation of his views, he is one of today’s leading spokesmen for post-tribulational eschatology.
The theme of divine sonship stretches across the pages of the Bible: from Adam in the garden of Eden, through the nation of Israel and King David, and ultimately to Jesus Christ in the New Jerusalem – the Son of God par excellence. In this volume, renowned biblical scholar Graeme Goldsworthy shows what Christ’s fulfillment of the divine sonship motif means for all who are the sons and daughters of God.
Retracing his own spiritual journey from atheism to faith, Lee Strobel, former legal editor of the Chicago Tribune, cross-examines a dozen experts who are recognized authorities in their fields of history, archaeology, and manuscript studies. Strobel’s tough, point-blank questions make this bestselling book read like a captivating, fast-paced novel. But it’s not fiction. It’s a riveting quest for the truth about history’s most compelling figure.
Charles Darwin knew three was a significant event in the history of life that his theory did not explain. In what is known today as the “Cambrian explosion,” many animals suddenly appeared in the fossil record 530 million years ago without apparent ancestors in earlier layers of rock. In Darwin’s Doubt, Stephen C. Meyer tells the story of the mystery surrounding this explosion of animal life and makes a compelling case for the theory of intelligent design as the best explanation for the origin of the Cambrian animals and the biological information necessary to produce them.
Meyer uses three scientific points to refute popular arguments put forward by the “New Atheists” against the existence of God:
- The evidence from cosmology: showing that the material universe had a beginning.
- The evidence from physics: showing that, from the beginning, the universe has been “finely tuned” to allow for the possibility of life.
- The evidence from biology: showing that since the universe came into being, large amounts of genetic information present in DNA must have arisen to make life possible.
The Pretribulation Rapture theory has had a foothold on many Christians in America for over a hundred years. This teaching is not allowed to be challenged in many Christian circles. Exposing the Fallacies of the Pretribulation Rapture takes the building blocks of this theory and dismantles them one by one in a serious, thought-provoking analogy of this doctrine.
(GMR) Although I praise Billy’s willingness, approach, and method in dealing with the subject, I find the presuppositions from which he’s viewing his conclusion almost as troubling as he finds pre-tribulationism. For all that the Prewrath Rapture perspective has to offer to the clarity of the subject matter, it too is subject to a failure to analyze fully the presuppositions upon which it is based.
The author digs into the work God has done, is doing, and will do in Jesus Christ especially regarding the Mystery of God? The framework for the discussion is our Lord’s return and the rapture. Much of the focus is on what it means for his body of believers, for the descendants of Israel, for the Jews, and even for the world? Throughout the book, many compelling questions surrounding the return of our Lord and the rapture of his called, chosen, and faithful are reviewed at depth. The result is a gospel more compelling and more promising than we could have imagined.
The Book of Job is the greatest Jewish work of art and one of the masterpieces of world literature. Its theme is nothing less than human suffering and the transcendence of it; it pulses with moral energy, moral outrage, and deep spiritual insight. Because Job is the archetypal victim, a good man who must suffer for no good reason, his story can serve as the central parable from our post-Holocaust age.
Future book placeholder.
The Unfiltered Gospel 