Study Commentaries

N. T. Wright explores Acts, illuminating the early Christians' zeal in spreading Jesus's message. The book of Acts brims with early Christians' zeal, global evangelism, and the real-life challenges faced by churches. It's a dynamic narrative of journeys, trials, and triumphs, offering inspiration for our spiritual journeys. Acts for Everyone, Part 2 follows Paul's ministry, concluding with his arrival in Rome in Acts 28.

We know a great deal about Muhammad—or so it seems. Islamic tradition contains an astonishing wealth of information about the founding figure of the Islamic faith, and most historians take for granted that this material is generally reliable. In his latest book, historian and Islamic scholar Robert Spencer shows that there is no agreement in the earliest Islamic sources about the most fundamental details of this towering figure's life. Muhammad takes a detailed look at the Islamic traditions regarding Muhammad and lays bare their contradictions, inconsistencies, and incoherence.

Best-selling author Warren Wiersbe unwraps the book of Nehemiah in his study Be Determined to show a servant so selfless, a mission so humbling, and a perseverance so admirable that Christians are drawn to a new awe of God. As the leader God calls to mobilize and equip His people to rebuild the walls of Jerusalem, Nehemiah was a man who didn't know the word no when it came to God's economy.

When Jesus spoke, people listened. When Jesus traveled, people followed. When Jesus arrived, hearts and lives were transformed. No other Gospel gives such extensive explanation to Jesus' ministry as the Gospel of John. The first three Gospels describe events, but the fourth Gospel describes the significance behind those events. Through miracles, parables, and relationships, Jesus shows how He is the fulfillment of God's promises of old.

Sinai to Zion is an exciting study of how the Bible uses the Exodus story as the basis for its vision concerning the glorious and triumphant return of Jesus the Messiah. For the first time, this book presents a thorough examination of many often overlooked, yet critically important Old Testament texts that the Old Testament prophets and the New Testament authors looked to as describing the return of Jesus.

UPDATED 10/21/24 The Book of Revelation - a modern day paraphrase. NIV meets MSG meets CSV meets Amplified meets NASB meets KJV meets Japanese, Chinese and Russian translations meets original koine Greek. Bill Belew spent twenty plus years in the Far East - Japan, China and Russia. The Book of Revelation - A Modern-Day Paraphrase is the result of what he reads when he compares these many translations. Enjoy The Book of Revelation - a modern day paraphrase and understand the meaning of this marvelous book when reading it in tandem with The Book of Revelation - A Complete Verse by Verse ...

In the early 19th century, Thomas Jefferson, the third president of the United States and the principal author of the Declaration of Independence, conceived the idea of extracting a gospel purified of what he saw as extraneous philosophical, mythological, and theological elements. To do so, he took verses from the four canonical gospels and arranged them into a single narrative, focusing on the actual words of Jesus.

This book offers updated explanations of the sins of interpretation to teach sound grammatical, lexical, cultural, theological, and historical Bible study practices.

The early church in Corinth was falling apart. Sin was rampant, divisions were growing, and the congregation was living no differently than the world around them. What had corrupted this once vibrant church? The apostle Paul immediately understood the symptoms: The people had traded God's perfect wisdom for faulty human knowledge. Be Wise guides us through Paul's first letter to the Corinthians, where he encourages his fellow believers to embrace a life of wisdom and truth.

Contemporary commentaries humorously interpret stories in the Old and New Testaments.

Few, if any, thinkers and writers today would have the imagination, the breadth of knowledge, and the literary skill to conceive of a powerful secular alternative to the Bible. But that is exactly what A. C. Grayling has done, creating a nonreligious bible drawn from the wealth of secular literature and philosophy in both Western and Eastern traditions, using the same techniques of editing, redaction, and adaptation that produced the holy books of the Judeo-Christian and Islamic religions.

From one of the world's leading writers on religion and the highly acclaimed author of the best-selling A History of God, The Battle for God, and The Spiral Staircase, comes a major new work: a chronicle of one of the most important intellectual revolutions in world history and its relevance to our own time.

From Cornelius to Corinth the Bible text is provided in bold and the commentary within brackets on Acts Chapters Ten through Eighteen. This book has many other features: Two salvation and one rightly dividing copy ready tracts. Maps of Paul’s three apostolic journeys. Paul’s ministry in a nutshell. A timeline. A one sentence review of each chapter. A Comparison Chart of Peter’s and Paul’s signs and miracles by the Spirit. Hymns. A Chart on Caesar’s Family. A Brief Summary of the Preservation of the New Testament. The Olive Tree Concisely Explained. Outlines of the Gospel of Mark ...

"What did Jesus preach?" asks this esteemed Harvard pastor, who believes that excessive focus on the Bible and doctrines about Jesus have led the Christian church astray. To recover the transformative power of the gospel, "the good news", Gomes says we must go beyond the Bible and rediscover how to live out Jesus' original revolutionary message of hope.

How to pray, how to serve, how to overcome, how to love: Jesus taught the disciples these timeless lessons through hands-on experience and powerful parables that resonated in the hearts of multitudes. Most evident in John 13-21, however, is Christ's teaching on the transforming power of joy—how to have it, hold onto it, and never let it go.

I and II Kings provide a record of Israel's history from the beginning of the movement to place Solomon on David's throne through the end of the reign of Zedekiah, Judah's last king. There are great lessons to be learned from Israel's desire to be "like those around us" and its consequences.

If the Bible isn’t a science book or an instruction manual, then what is it? What do people mean when they say the Bible is inspired? When Rachel Held Evans found herself asking these questions, she began a quest to better understand what the Bible is and how it is meant to be read. What she discovered changed her—and it will change you too.

Drawing on the best in recent scholarship and using her well-honed literary expertise, Evans examines some of our favorite Bible stories and possible interpretations, retelling them through memoir, original poetry, short stories, soliloquies, and even a short screenplay. Undaunted by the Bible’s most difficult passages, Evans wrestles through the process of doubting, imagining, and debating Scripture’s mysteries. The Bible, she discovers, is not a static work but is a living, breathing, captivating, and confounding book that is able to equip us to join God’s loving and redemptive work in the world.

Matthew's gospel focuses on the Kingship of Christ—that Jesus is Lord of Lords, the Messiah, the One promised by the prophets of old. But a king is not born in a manger, to a virgin peasant, and a king is definitely not executed on a Roman cross, is he? Actually, that's exactly the type of King God sent to the world.

Julius Caesar wrote his exciting Commentaries during some of the most grueling campaigns ever undertaken by a Roman army. The Gallic Wars and The Civil Wars constitute the greatest series of military dispatches ever written. As literature, they are representative of the finest expressions of Latin prose in its "golden" age, a benchmark of elegant style and masculine brevity imitated by young schoolboys for centuries.

We all admire the hero. That person who’s celebrated for accomplishing big things in the face of even bigger odds. Yet heroes aren’t defined by their circumstances, but by their choices. They’re people who continually choose to serve others, even when no one is watching, and without expecting credit. Based on the books of Ezra, Haggai, and Zechariah, this study examines three unsung heroes of the Bible who can inspire us today.