For Jesus, truth and mercy went hand in hand. Where he preached he also healed. He didn't outsource one or the other to biblical scholars or nonprofit ministries. He presented the truth of the gospel through his words and his actions, and he did it all in a hands-on, relational way. And the reaction was the same wherever he went--people were amazed. Today we seem to have lost this powerful pattern of self-giving love, focusing on truth at the expense of mercy or on mercy at the expense of truth, and often failing to build genuine, lasting relationships with the people around us. In The God Impulse, Jack Alexander helps us recover Jesus's model, showing through biblical and modern real-life stories that God's first impulse toward us is mercy. He then sets forth a pattern for us to follow--to see, go, do, and endure--that not only spreads truth and love to those around us who are suffering but also causes them to gasp in amazement and consider the claims of the gospel for themselves.

Why do people have near-death experiences? Are there physical explanations for those out-of-body sensations and tunnels of light? And what about moments of spiritual ecstasy? If Buddha had been in an MRI machine and not under the Bodhi tree when he attained enlightenment, what would we have seen on the monitor? In THE GOD IMPULSE, Kevin Nelson, a neurologist with three decades' experience examining the biology behind human spirituality, deconstructs the spiritual self, uncovering its origin in the most primitive areas of our brain. Through his revolutionary studies on near-death experience, Nelson has discovered that spiritual experience is an incidental product of several different neurological processes acting independently. When we feel close to God or sense the presence of departed relatives, we may believe that we are standing at the border of this world and the next as individual, autonomous, rational creatures-touching God. The reality is far different: our brain function resembles a Cubist painting by Picasso or Braque, and the experiences we regard as the height of our humanity are in fact produced by primal reflexes. THE GOD IMPULSE takes us on a journey into what Nelson calls the borderlands of consciousness. The book offers the first comprehensive, empirically-tested, peer-reviewed examination of the reasons we are capable of near-death experience, out-of-body experience, and the mystical states produced by hallucinogenic drugs

The realization that our lives are not our own, brings with it moments of discontentment, weariness, and grief. However, the profound nature of our lives belonging to God eventually will bring with it peace, understanding, comfort and stability. Some people may think our lives are of no use to God. But to God our lives are the object of His desire.

A Biblical Theology of the New Testament gives fresh insight and understanding to theological discipline. Scholars from Dallas Theological Seminary combine to create this important volume edited by Roy B. Zuck. Each contributor looks at divine revelation as it appears chronologically in the New Testament canon, allowing you to witness God's truth as it has unfolded through the decades.

With appendices.