A fresh, clear, joyful guide for parents on how to teach their children to love God with all their heart, soul, mind, and strength.

GIVE THEM JESUS aims to help parents not simply add to their children's stockpile of knowledge, but to cultivate children-disciples who are able to display Christ-likeness in every situation. Parents are the ones primarily responsible for opening up the Scriptures to help their children understand God, the world, and themselves. The family is the divinely appointed discipleship program; the home is first and foremost a place of worship. The introduction of the book discusses the four vital components of family worship: teach, treasure, sing, and pray, and offers practical suggestions for beginning and prioritizing family worship in the rough and tumble of life.

Subsequent chapters guide parents to a deeper understanding of the core truths of the historic Christian faith, as summarized in the Apostles' Creed, arming them with appropriate language, helpful illustrations, and relevant object lessons, so that in the end they will be better prepared to pass these truths on to their children.

GIVE THEM JESUS equips parents to prepare their children to leave home and go out into the world as faithful participants in the great gospel story. "Never stop telling the gospel story to your kids," Thornton says. "Give your children Jesus. Again. And again.

And again. And you'll see them walk in the truth."

Virtually all scholars acknowledge the presence of opponents in 1 and 2 Timothy, but there is considerable disagreement over the identity of these opponents and the author's way of handling them. In this volume, Thornton provides a critique of a number of extant theories, including "Gnostic," Jewish, and proto-Montanist identifications, and develops a rigorous methodology for unmasking the opponents who appear in these letters. He argues that the opponents came from within the Christian community in Ephesus and that their teaching is best described as an erroneous eschatological position that derived from the complexity of Paul's views. He also argues that the author of the books of Timothy engaged with the false teachers in significant ways throughout the letters, and draws attention to a number of literary and theological maneuvers that were intended to counteract the opponents' influence and/or to bolster the faithful community's confidence as it struggled against the opponents. Thornton's meticulous investigation sheds new light on the hostility that plays such a large part in 1 and 2 Timothy.