From a unique insider's perspective—including interviews with more than seven-hundred family members—James Chancellor charts The Family's course since its emergence as the most controversial group to grow out of the Jesus People Movement in the 1960s. Chancellor, who had extraordinary access to rare Family records, includes the experiences of members who have remained loyal to the community and to the founding vision of their prophet, David Brandt Berg. In the first book of its kind—comprising often painful personal histories and firsthand accounts—Chancellor focuses on the motivation and process of becoming a Child of God, the core beliefs of the community, the mission of the disciples, their shifting sexual mores, and the cost of membership in terms of internal discipline and external persecution. Intense confrontation with the legal, religious, political, and educational establishment marked the movement's activities from the beginning. The young disciples heeded the call of their prophet to flee a soon-to-be-destroyed North America. Dispersed throughout Europe, Latin America, Africa, and East Asia, they virtually disappeared from the American landscape. In the late 1980s, The Family had gone through extreme theological and lifestyle changes, including a radical reordering of their sexual ethos. The Children of God started to come home. Now a worldwide counterculture of some twelve thousand members, the movement's colorful history reveals a profoundly religious group that has tested the limits of human experience.

At the height of the religious ferment of the 1970s, David Van Zandt studied firsthand the most vilified of the new radical religious movements--the Children of God, or the Family of Love. First feigning membership and later gaining the permission of the Family, the author lived full-time in COG colonies in England and the Netherlands. From that experience, he has produced an informed, insightful, and humane report on how COG members function in what seems at first to be a completely bizarre setting. The COG, an offshoot of the Jesus People movement of the late 1960s, was one of the first radical religious groups to be accused of "brainwashing." Led by the charismatic David Berg, known as Moses David, the group demands total commitment from its full-time members and proselytizes continuously. Until recently the COG used sex as a proselytizing tool, and it continues to encourage full sexual sharing among group members. Instead of examining the COG's ideology in the abstract, Van Zandt analyzes how its ideas are understood and used by ordinary members in their daily lives. For them the Family is its practical, day-to-day, and all-consuming activities, such as "litnessing" (the street sale of COG literature). This is a vivid eyewitness account that will fascinate anyone interested in life in modern radical communal religions, such as the Unification Church and the Hare Krishnas, as well as in other radical, Christian-based, total-commitment groups. Van Zandt's frank reflections on his near-conversion experience and on the ethics of his covert observation enrich our knowledge of doing research with such groups. Originally published in 1991. The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback and hardcover editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905.

From a thorough understanding of the human history from a Biblical perspective, and knowledge in science and theology author Plammoottil Cherian elucidates a vivid picture of the current state of the Christendom under the power of secularism, atheism, and apostasy in a confused and chaotic world. The Church is at the crossroads of confusion losing its power in spreading the Gospel at a time when it is most needed. The Book in five separate parts describes: Who is true God, the foundation of Church, and God's religion. What the mission of the Church is. Church and nations are living in an Age of Delusion, and a generation of compromised Christians. Apostacy is on the rise and Church without Christ like in Laodicea. Global Unhappiness because God is on the sidelines. There is perfect harmony between science and Christian faith. The world has been experiencing the bowls of wrath of God. Nations morally deteriorate by the spiritual blindness of leaders of Church and State. Humanity has been experiencing the hoofbeats of the four horses in the Book of Revelation. The nations and Church are in the state of Mene, Mene, Tekel, Upharsin. The Babylons of the world nations are about to fall, unless aligned with God. The Grace Age is ending soon, as scientific evidence proves the Biblical prophecies. The pressing need of the Church is to prepare believers for Christ's Second Coming. As a scientists and theologian, Dr. Cherian analyzes the present world culture and explains the Biblical prophecies that we are at the threshold of Church that lost the faith, and calls church and nation's leaders to realign with God for his guidance and continued blessings.

Includes, beginning Sept. 15, 1954 (and on the 15th of each month, Sept.-May) a special section: School library journal, ISSN 0000-0035, (called Junior libraries, 1954-May 1961). Also issued separately.

Packed with insights, this book is about the spirituality of old age. As a doctor, the author wrote about the physical problems of pain-creaking joints, osteoporosis, and rheumatoid arthritis. She also writes about depressive illnesses and the desire to obfuscate the problems of declining physical strength with pills, booze and other quick fixes.