For more than forty years, J P Endres directed a camp in northern Minnesota. There, he taught generations of youngsters the value of nature, the importance of working together, and the joys that can come from a life lead with purpose and meaning. Here are reflections from his life as a camp director, a father, a son, a husband, an educator, and a man for whom love of wilderness shaped a career. Portage from the Past is part adventure story, part exploration of the importance of nature in o...

In the era in which the Chronicler writes, the pressing question is: How will Judeans reestablish themselves after the Babylonian exile? The Chronicler's answer is to encourage the people of Israel to live out of their memory of God's mercy and compassion. Knowing and cherishing the books of Samuel and Kings, the writer interprets their message differently because the people of his era face new challenges to their life and faith. This commentary highlights the special character of First an...

At the origin of the Watchers tradition is the single enigmatic reference in Genesis 6 to the sons of God who had intercourse with human women, producing a race of giants upon the earth. That verse sparked a wealth of cosmological and theological speculation in early Judaism. Here leading scholars explore the contours of the Watchers traditions through history, tracing their development through the Enoch literature, Jubilees, and other early Jewish and Christian writings. This volume provi...

The essays gathered here provide a panoramic view of current thinking on biblical texts that play important roles in contemporary struggles for social justice – either as inspiration or impediment. Here, from the hands of an ecumenical array of leading biblical scholars, are fresh and compelling resources for thinking biblically about what justice is and what it demands. Individual essays treat key debates, themes, and texts, locating each within its historical and cultural settings while ...

This breakthrough new book may help save countless lives and avoid enormous losses. It presents a methodology for using gas migration to predict earthquakes and explosive gas buildup. Using rigorous scientific investigation and documented worldwide case histories, this remarkable book presents compelling evidence showing that changes in gas rates, composition, and migration accompany the tectronic events preceding earthquakes and their associated seismic events, such as volcanoes and tsuna...

The bestselling author of The Professor and the Madman and The Map That Changed the World examines the enduring and world-changing effects of the catastrophic volcanic eruption off the coast of Java of the earth’s most dangerous volcano — Krakatoa.The legendary annihilation in 1883 of the volcano-island of Krakatoa — the name has since become a byword for a cataclysmic natural disaster — was followed by an immense tsunami that killed nearly forty...

God’s people were never meant to blend in. Instead, we’re called to stand out from the crowd, and become a beacon of hope. But nothing dims our light more than conformity, when voices that once proclaimed truth begin to quietly yield to a noisy world. Based on the books of 2 Kings and 2 Chronicles, this study offers an eye-opening look at the high price of conformity, and shares how we can stay distinct from our surroundings.Part of Dr. Warren W. Wiersbe’s best-selling “BE” comment...

Volcanoes, Earthquakes and Tsunamis is the essential guide to what causes the most frightening geological events with which we are faced today. It covers plate tectonics, the intricacies of each terrible phenomina, and their effects as well as the impact they have on each other, how they can be predicted and, if possible, controlled.NOT GOT MUCH TIME?One, five and ten-minute introductions to key principles to get you started.AUTHOR INSIGHTSLots of instant he...

With Society Crumbling Around Us,It's Time to RebuildWe live in a post-Christian age marked by moral and spiritual decay. We have watched our comfortable walls collapse as our faith has been attacked on every side.But take heart! God can raise up leaders dedicated to defending His truth and following His blueprints for holy living. One of those leaders might be you—because no matter where you live and what you do, you have a circle of influe...

Avivah Zornberg grew up in a world of rabbinic tradition and scholarship and received a Ph.D. in English literature from Cambridge University. The Particulars of Rapture, the sequel to her award-winning study of the Book of Genesis, takes its title from a line by the American poet Wallace Stevens about the interdependence of opposite things, such as male and female, and conscious and unconscious. To her reading of the familiar story of the Israelites and their flight from ...

"A lay-reader-friendly guide to seismology fundamentals, from early theories about earthquake origins to the workings of contemporary plate tectonics. . . . Musson . . .[keeps] readers absorbed with clear explanations and colorful anecdotes about one of nature's most calamitous forces" ( Booklist ).For centuries, Californians and the Japanese have known that they were at risk of catastrophic earthquakes, a...

“I didn’t think he’d do it. I really didn’t think he would. I thought he’d say, whoa, hold on, wait a minute. We made a deal, remember, the land, the blessing, the nation, the descendants as numerous as the sands on the shore and the stars in the sky.”So begins James Goodman’s original and urgent encounter with one of the most compelling and resonant stories ever told—God’s command to Abraham to sacrifice his son Isaac.A mere nineteen lines in the book of Genesis, ...