The well-respected Bible teacher and founder of Radio Bible Class, M. R. DeHaan, presents these devotional commentaries on Bible books and topics that will be appreciated by lay readers as well as pastors and teachers.

Pastor and Bible teacher Randy McCracken offers an intimate look at lesser-known members of 1 and 2 Samuel's four main families--those of Samuel, Eli, Saul, and David. Examining characters unfamiliar to many Bible readers, he reveals important lessons for today.

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER The “paradigm-influencing” book (Christianity Today) that is fundamentally transforming our understanding of white evangelicalism in America. Jesus and John Wayne is a sweeping, revisionist history of the last seventy-five years of white evangelicalism, revealing how evangelicals have worked to replace the Jesus of the Gospels with an idol of rugged masculinity and Christian nationalism—or in the words of one modern chaplain, with “a spiritual badass.” As acclaimed scholar Kristin Du Mez explains, the key to understanding this transformation is to recognize the centrality of popular culture in contemporary American evangelicalism. Many of today’s evangelicals might not be theologically astute, but they know their VeggieTales, they’ve read John Eldredge’s Wild at Heart, and they learned about purity before they learned about sex—and they have a silver ring to prove it. Evangelical books, films, music, clothing, and merchandise shape the beliefs of millions. And evangelical culture is teeming with muscular heroes—mythical warriors and rugged soldiers, men like Oliver North, Ronald Reagan, Mel Gibson, and the Duck Dynasty clan, who assert white masculine power in defense of “Christian America.” Chief among these evangelical legends is John Wayne, an icon of a lost time when men were uncowed by political correctness, unafraid to tell it like it was, and did what needed to be done. Challenging the commonly held assumption that the “moral majority” backed Donald Trump in 2016 and 2020 for purely pragmatic reasons, Du Mez reveals that Trump in fact represented the fulfillment, rather than the betrayal, of white evangelicals’ most deeply held values: patriarchy, authoritarian rule, aggressive foreign policy, fear of Islam, ambivalence toward #MeToo, and opposition to Black Lives Matter and the LGBTQ community. A much-needed reexamination of perhaps the most influential subculture in this country, Jesus and John Wayne shows that, far from adhering to biblical principles, modern white evangelicals have remade their faith, with enduring consequences for all Americans.

Modern readers often assume that Genesis 1 depicts the creation of the earth and sky as we know it. Yet in an appeal for textual honesty, Steven DiMattei shows that such beliefs are more representative of modern views about this ancient text than the actual claims and beliefs of its author. Through a culturally contextualized and objective reading of the texts of Genesis 1 and 2, this study not only introduces readers to the textual data that convincingly demonstrate that Genesis' two creation accounts were penned by different authors who held contradictory views and beliefs about the origin of the world and of man and woman, but also establishes on textual grounds that what the author of Genesis 1 portrayed God creating was the world as its author and culture perceived and experienced it--not the objective world, but a subjective world, subject to the culturally conditioned views and beliefs of its author. In the end, this book clearly illustrates that the Bible's ancient texts do in fact represent the beliefs and worldviews of ancient peoples and cultures--not those of God, not those of later readers, and especially not those of modern-day Creationists.

Misunderstandings about what it means for humans to be created in God's image have wreaked devastation throughout history -- for example, slavery in the U. S., genocide in Nazi Germany, and the demeaning of women everywhere. In Dignity and Destiny John Kilner explores what the Bible itself teaches about humanity being in God's image. He discusses in detail all of the biblical references to the image of God, interacts extensively with other work on the topic, and documents how misunderstandings of it have been so problematic. People made according to God's image, Kilner says, have a special connection with God and are intended to be a meaningful reflection of him. Because of sin, they don't actually reflect him very well, but Kilner shows why the popular idea that sin has damaged the image of God is mistaken. He also clarifies the biblical difference between being God's image (which Christ is) and being in God's image (which humans are). He explains how humanity's creation and renewal in God's image are central, respectively, to human dignity and destiny. Locating Christ at the center of what God's image means, Kilner charts a constructive way forward and reflects on the tremendously liberating impact that a sound understanding of the image of God can have in the world today.

If Jesus didn't come along until the New Testament, what is He doing in the Old Testament? In his forthcoming book, 101 Portraits of Jesus in the Hebrew Scriptures, author Bob Beasley, a graduate of Westminster Theological Seminary, seeks to answer that question in many more than 101 ways. In fact, even though the Old Testament, or the Hebrew Scriptures, was written 2,000 to 500 years prior to Jesus' earthly ministry, some say the Lord may be found on its every page. Just as a great novel or movie will provide early warnings of things to come later on, the Old Testament is full of foreshadowing, specific prophesies, mighty works, and pre-incarnate appearances of the Savior. He is prefigured by men like Adam, Noah, Joseph, Moses, and David. Jesus is foreshadowed by furniture, rocks, food, a snake, doorways, trees, colors, and animals in many ways. He appears as smoke and fire and as the mysterious Angel of the Lord, all of this hundreds of years before born to Mary in Bethlehem. On the road to Emmaus following His resurrection, Jesus spoke with some of His followers. Luke tells us, beginning with Moses and all the Prophets, he explained to them what was said in all the [Hebrew] Scriptures concerning himself (Luke 24: 27). In a compact and readable 101 chapters surveying Genesis to Malachi, Beasley merely scratches the surface of the wonderful truths of Jesus in the Old Testament, sure to deepen anyone's understanding of and love for the entire Bible. This is a book for everyone, new Christians as well as old, and also for those seeking answers as to whether of not the Bible is trustworthy. The impact of the foreshadowing of Jesus is truly powerful. 101 Portraits will open the Scripturesfor you as never before.

How and when, Herbert L. Kessler asks, was the Jewish prohibition against graven images transformed into a Christian imperative to picture God's invisibility once God had taken human form in the body of Jesus Christ?