Quiet your heart and listen for the loving whispers of God during the Advent season. "The weeks leading up to Christmas are often hectic times preparing for the holy celebration of Jesus' birth. This book provides an opportunity for you to pause, take a refreshing breath of the Holy Spirit, and look beyond the surface of the lights and glitter to notice the inward shaping of Jesus' virtues of hope, love, joy and peace for faithful living. It sets a course for daily retreat and devotional living into the new era for hope and unity in the heart of Christ." ―from the Introduction Are you missing out on the true meaning and mystery of Advent amid the hustle and bustle of the holiday season? Rev. Dr. Brenda K. Buckwell, Obl. OSB, invites you into a daily retreat experience, offering inspiring reflections, fresh perspectives on the season’s traditional scripture readings, and creative ways to let God’s word sink deep into your heart and soul. With prayer practices that engage the senses and guidance in creating a visual reflection in response to each day’s reading, she helps you move beyond articulation of what you know of God to discover the possibilities awaiting you.

This book was impressed on me by the Lord, to wright these messages in poetic form. Never did anything like this in my life. As God would give me little titles I would wright them on paper which I kept in my pocket. Then most times within a week or two it would end up as a sermon in poetic form. This book covers multiple subjects which each of us face in life. This book is designed for whoever reads this book, to cause you to think things out, and then to form your own thinking as how God would have you process it. The emphasis of this book is to read and study it with an open mind, as you study the scriptures on your own. The reason there are few scriptures in this book is to cause you to want to search the scriptures yourself, to prove whether it is right or wrong. That is why God’s word informs us in 2 Timothy 2: 15, “Study to show thyself approved unto God a workman that needeth not to be ashamed, rightly dividing the word of truth.” This scripture informs us that we are to study God’s word in order to find what God requires of us, what he empresses on our heart as taught by Jesus to us in Matthew 25: 14-30. When we read and study God’s Word, read it with an open mind, asking him what he has for you today. We will never know it all, for we will keep learning till Jesus comes, or we leave this earth. Never allow people to put a guilt trip on you that you must know it all.

This book argues for an integrative dialectic of faith and history. It is a fresh examination of the problem of faith and history. Instead of being a mere liability, it is argued here that the strength of the Christian faith is its historicity. Although modern thought was not always friendly to Christian faith because of its deeply embedded dualism, it raised the critical intellectual issues that Christian theology needed to address. Advancing a more critical understanding of the nature of history than modern thought was generally able to achieve because of its dualistic thinking, this work argues for an integrative dialectic of historical probability and the certainty of faith. "This book gives a comprehensive and fascinating account of the development of the idea of history in correspondence to changing conceptions of the divine reality, from its origin in Ancient Israel and in Greece all the way to the contemporary discussion. It focuses on the rise of critical historical investigation in modern times and on the struggle of modern theology to come to terms with it. It is an important contribution to this discussion. The split between fact and meaning is persuasively identified as a main obstacle and it is shown to be overcome in the reconstruction of history in the light of the eschatological future. Also very helpful is the final chapter on time (space-time) and eternity with its emphasis on Boethius and with its critical remarks on nontrinitarian theistic notions of a personal God." --Wolfhart Pannenberg, University of Munich

Guido Stucco holds a Ph.D. in Historical Theology from Sait Louis University. He is currently working on a book documenting the developments in the doctrine of predestination, from the Council of Trent to the Jansenist controversy.

Nothing is more important than hearing, understanding and obeying God’s Word. Our lives and local churches depend on this for their life, health and growth. John Stott is well known worldwide for the commitment he had to the Bible, both in his preach- ing and in his living. In this persuasive book, Stott concisely demonstrates the power, authority and relevance of the Bible for every Christian – in every culture and generation. What is the purpose of God’s Word? How does it point us to Christ? What is its relationship to the Holy Spirit? How does it shape the church? And what does it mean for Christian discipleship? The author answers these questions with simplicity and clarity, urging us to hear and obey God’s Word in today’s world.

When Jesus Christ founded the New Testament Church, He said the gates of hell would not prevail against it. He prophesied of seven successive eras it would undergo before His Second Coming, and even foretold the predominant character of each. History shows that God's true Church—though it has gone largely unnoticed—has survived through the 20 centuries since that time, fulfilling Christ's prophecies in specific detail. Now, on the cusp of Christ's return, this dramatic and miraculous story can be fully told!

On July 16, 1945, the 'Trinity' Test effectively brought about the transformation of the ‘American Prometheus’ into the ‘Destroyer of Worlds’ along with an expedited dawn of the nuclear age as the Laws of Physics were successfully reappraised by the Homo Sapiens. However, the initial premise and the hopeful promise of the creation of a ‘Super Weapon’ to end all wars has remained more or less a chimera for humanity even after 7+ decades of its genesis. The dawn of the nuclear age; following Trinity and the subsequent atomic bombing of Hiroshima & Nagasaki; unleashed the Cold War-era with nuclear weapons effectively becoming the 'Hanging Sword of Damocles’, as famously described by JFK, with the possibility of a potential nuclear catastrophe by accident, miscalculation or madness staying as a very real possibility throughout and the extinction of Homo Sapiens from planet Earth, just a matter of seconds, which fortunately was somehow averted on multiple occasions and humanity, somehow, managed to survive. Part 1 of this multi-part book series; based on recently declassified documents by the CIA , the U.S. State Department, KGB after the end of Cold War and other international agencies; focuses on the evolution of atomic age from its genesis during World War II till 1960.