Table of Contents 1. The Lord Has Changed Darkness to Light (Genesis 1:1-5) 2. We Must Believe in God’s Work (Genesis 2:1-3) 3. Is Our Own Judgment Right, Or Is the Truth Right? (Genesis 2:1-25) 4. The Mist Is an Evil Thought Seeking the Desires of the Flesh (Genesis 2:4-6) 5. God-Established Church (Genesis 2:18-25) 6. “It Is Not Good That Man Should Be Alone” (Genesis 2:18-25) 7. Escaping from Religious Faith, We Must Receive True Salvation (Genesis 3:1-10) 8. The Mark of Salvation Is the Baptism of Jesus (Genesis 3:1-24) 9. Heaven Can Be Entered Only by Believing in the Righteousness of God (Genesis 3:1-24) 10. Those Who Stand against the Supreme God Will Surely Be Cast into Hell (Genesis 3:1-24) 11. To Receive the True Remission of Sins, You Must Believe in the Gospel of the Water and the Spirit (Genesis 3:1-24) 12. Is True Remission of Sins Something Like This? (Genesis 3:1-24) In the Book of Genesis, the purpose for which God created us is contained. When architects design a building or artists draw a painting, they first conceive the work that would be completed in their minds before they actually begin working on their project. Just like this, our God also had our salvation of mankind in His mind even before He created the heavens and the earth, and He made Adam and Eve with this purpose in mind. And God needed to explain to us the domain of Heaven, which is not seen by our eyes of the flesh, by drawing an analogy to the domain of the earth that we can all see and understand. Even before the foundation of the world, God wanted to save mankind perfectly by giving the gospel of the water and the Spirit to everyone's heart. So although all human beings were made out of dust, they must learn and know the gospel Truth of the water and the Spirit to benefit their own souls. If people continue to live without knowing the dominion of Heaven, they will lose not only the things of the earth, but also everything that belongs to Heaven. The New Life Mission https://www.bjnewlife.org

Table of Contents 1. God Shapes Us into the Stars of the Heavens (Genesis 1:14-19) 2. The Sabbath Day Signifies the Blessing That God Has Blotted Out All of Our Sins (Genesis 2:1-3) 3. The Seventh Day, When God Rested After Creating the Universe and All Things in It (Genesis 2:1-3) 4. God Blessed and Sanctified the Sabbath (Genesis 2:1-3) 5. God Has Given True Rest to Mankind (Genesis 2:1-3) 6. How Did God Make Us? (Genesis 2:1-3) 7. What Are We Deceived by? (Genesis 3:1-7) 8. We Can Never Be Saved from Sin By Any Man-made Religious Faith (Genesis 4:1-4) 9. Eternal Salvation Foreshadowed In the Sacrifice of Atonement (Genesis 4:1-4) 10. Spiritual Offering versus Carnal Offering (Genesis 4:1-5) 11. We Must Believe in God Based on His Word (Genesis 4:1-5) 12. Let Us Live as Shepherds (Genesis 4:1-5) 13. Only Jesus Christ Was the Perfect Propitiation That Could Blot out the Sins of the World (Genesis 4:1-7) 14. We Must Unite Our Hearts with the Righteousness of God (Genesis 4:1-7) 15. Who Is Abel and Who Is Cain before God? (Genesis 4:1-24) In the Book of Genesis, the purpose for which God created us is contained. When architects design a building or artists draw a painting, they first conceive the work that would be completed in their minds before they actually begin working on their project. Just like this, our God also had our salvation of mankind in His mind even before He created the heavens and the earth, and He made Adam and Eve with this purpose in mind. And God needed to explain to us the domain of Heaven, which is not seen by our eyes of the flesh, by drawing an analogy to the domain of the earth that we can all see and understand. Even before the foundation of the world, God wanted to save mankind perfectly by giving the gospel of the water and the Spirit to everyone’s heart. So although all human beings were made out of dust, they must learn and know the gospel Truth of the water and the Spirit to benefit their own souls. If people continue to live without knowing the dominion of Heaven, they will lose not only the things of the earth, but also everything that belongs to Heaven. The New Life Mission https://www.bjnewlife.org

Bruce Lincoln is one of the most prominent advocates within religious studies for an uncompromisingly critical approach to the phenomenon of religion—historians of religions, he believes, should resist the preferred narratives and self-understanding of religions themselves, especially when their stories are endowed with sacred origins and authority. In Gods and Demons, Priests and Scholars, Lincoln assembles a collection of essays that both illustrates and reveals the benefits of his methodology, making a case for a critical religious studies that starts with skepticism but is neither cynical nor crude. The book begins with Lincoln’s “Theses on Method” and ends with “The (Un)discipline of Religious Studies,” in which he unsparingly considers the failings of uncritical and nonhistorical approaches to the study of religions. In between, Lincoln presents new examinations of problems in ancient religions and relates these cases to larger comparative themes. While bringing to light important features of the formation of pantheons and the constructions of demons, chaos, and the dead, Lincoln demonstrates that historians of religions should take religious things—inspired scriptures, sacred centers, salvific rites, communities graced by divine favor—as the theories of interested humans that shape perception, community, and experiences. As he shows, it is for their terrestrial influence, and not their sacred origins, that religious phenomena merit consideration by the historian. Tackling many questions central to religious study, Gods and Demons, Priests and Scholars will be a touchstone for the history of religions in the twenty-first century.

God speaks to us through the Bible. That Book embodies His words. Creation itself is the visible embodiment of His power and wisdom. It is the result of His words. This Book of His is, in a different way, the effect of His speaking. It is His written wisdom and power. There is His voice to us. The thunder and tempest are His loud voice of grandeur. The sunshine and the gentle breeze are His still small voice. But deeper, clearer, keener, softer, and still more penetrating than all of these is His written Word to us. The Bible is what it is because it contains the words of God. It is through the Word, and in connection with it, that God communicates with us. The Word revives: Your word has revived me (Psalm 119:50). The word produces faith: Faith comes from hearing (Romans 10:17). The Word strengthens, comforts, heals, nourishes, and revives. It gets into contact with each part of our souls and works its own work there. And it does this because it is divine. No human words could be trusted to work the work in a human soul so unrestrictedly. It is not eloquence, poetry, nor argument, but something more than all these together. It is something peculiar and indescribable, which man could not have formed and which he cannot understand, that makes it so suitable for the soul of a foolish and sinful man.

Report and speeches at the [third] annual meeting of the Church Pastoral-aid Society, May 8, 1838.