America's best preacher, according to Time magazine, presents the perfect book for the holidays - a heart-warming and life-affirming collection of stories and reminiscences that will bring readers a deeper understanding of the true meaning of Christmas. In Follow The Star, Jakes leads a journey that makes Christmas, past and present, come alive through deeply personal experiences that have shaped his life: family stories about finding the Christmas spirit during the worst hardships, and the need to appreciate fellowship, love and God. With his unique insight, warmth and wisdom Bishop Jakes fully embraces the magnificence miracle of the birth of Christ.

"A rich and expansive description of Jesus' impact on the general history of culture. . . . Believers and skeptics alike will find it a sweeping visual and conceptual panorama."-John Koenig, front page, New York Times Book Review Called "a book of uncommon brilliance" by Commonweal, Jesus Through the Centuries is an original and compelling study of the impact of Jesus on cultural, political, social, and economic history. Noted historian and theologian Jaroslav Pelikan reveals how the image of Jesus created by each successive epoch-from rabbi in the first century to liberator in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries-is a key to understanding the temper and values of that age. "An enlightening and often dramatic story . . . as stimulating as it is informative."-John Gross, New York Times "A gracious little masterpiece."-Thomas D'Evelyn, Christian Science Monitor

The fourth installment in the Jesus Chronicles, from the bestselling author of the Left Behind series.
This story in the Jesus Chronicles depicts the life of the most unlikely of apostles-a sinner turned saint-and his time with the Lord. With Matthew, readers walk alongside Jesus as He gives the Sermon on the Mount, performs the miracles of healing the sick and raising the dead, contemplates His fate at the Last Supper and in the Garden of Gethsemane, is crucified, and most important, resurrected. Thrilling and uplifting, "Matthew's Story" shows how the true Messiah changed the life of one man, and forever altered the course of history.

This insightful volume represents the "hands-on" experience in the world of academia of two Jewish scholars, one of Orthodox background and the other a convert to the Jewish faith. As a series of separate but interrelated essays, it approaches multiple issues touching both the historical Jesus (himself a pious Jew) and the modern phenomenon of Messianic Judaism. It bridges the gap between the typically isolated disciplines of Jewish and Christian scholarship and forges a fresh level of understanding across religious boundaries. It delves into such issues as the nature and essence of Jesus' message (pietistic, militant or something of a hybrid), and whether Messianic Jews should be welcome in the larger Jewish community. Its ultimate challenge is to view sound scholarship as a means of bringing together disparate faith traditions around a common academic table. Serious research of the "great Nazarene" becomes interfaith discourse.

Some two thousand years ago, in a small province of the Roman Empire, an obscure Roman governor ordered the execution of a peasant leader. It went virtually unnoticed at the time. No official report of the event has survived, and we would have no memory at all of it except for the efforts of a handful of followers of the condemned man. Those followers who kept that memory alive changed the course of history, and the results of their efforts continue to reverberate to this day. Conventional interpretation says that the execution of Jesus of Nazareth came on the heels of a series illegal trials before a number of different tribunals, and at the culmination of that series of trials a moral coward by the name of Pontius Pilate ordered Jesus' execution despite being satisfied that he was innocent. Revisionist interpretation says that there was no trial at all, that Pilate simply executed Jesus because he was a nuisance, and that Jesus' followers invented the story of his execution as a means of shifting the blame from the Roman government to a group of people whom they despised - the Jews. Are the Gospels good history or bad propaganda? Does a fair reading of the Gospel accounts support either the conventional or the revisionist interpretation of the trial of Jesus? Who, if anyone, should shoulder the blame for the crucifixion of Jesus? The Case against Christ seeks to answer these questions by treating the matter as a forensic death investigation and answering the questions as they might be answered by a prosecutor attempting to determine who should be held criminally responsible for the death of Jesus.

This insightful volume represents the "hands-on" experience in the world of academia of two Jewish scholars, one of Orthodox background and the other a convert to the Jewish faith. As a series of separate but interrelated essays, it approaches multiple issues touching both the historical Jesus (himself a pious Jew) and the modern phenomenon of Messianic Judaism. It bridges the gap between the typically isolated disciplines of Jewish and Christian scholarship and forges a fresh level of understanding across religious boundaries. It delves into such issues as the nature and essence of Jesus' message (pietistic, militant or something of a hybrid), and whether Messianic Jews should be welcome in the larger Jewish community. Its ultimate challenge is to view sound scholarship as a means of bringing together disparate faith traditions around a common academic table. Serious research of the "great Nazarene" becomes interfaith discourse.

Primary motifs in the New Testament, the person of Jesus and the future kingdom of God, resurrection and hell, are examined within their historical and hermeneutical context. New interpretations are offered in the light of contemporary scholarly discussion and debate. This publication has also been published in hardback, please click here for details.

Known throughout the world as masters of Gregorian chant, the Benedictine monks of Solesmes, under the direction of Dom Jean Claire, have recorded the antiphons and responsories for the Great Offices of Vigils, Lauds, and Vespers for Holy Saturday.