The "knowing heart" is the sacred place where these two dimensions meet and are integrated. In Sufi teaching the human heart is not a fanciful metaphor but an objective organ of intuition and perception. It is able to perceive all that is beautiful, lovely, and meaningful in life—and to reflect these spiritual qualities in the world, for the benefit of others. Every human heart has the capacity and the destiny to bring that world of divine reality into this world of appearances. The Sufis, mystics of Islam, have been educators of the heart for some fourteen centuries. Their teachings and methods are designed to help us awaken and purify the heart, to learn to listen to our deepest knowing. In The Knowing Heart, Kabir Helminski presents the Sufi way as a practical spirituality suitable for all cultures and times—and offers insights that are especially valuable for our life in today's world. In cultivating a knowing heart, we learn to experience a new sense of self, transform our relationships, and enhance our creative capacities. Most important, we learn how to meet the spiritual challenge of our time: to realize our sacred humanness.

    The schism between the Orthodox and Catholic Churches influenced relationships between nations across Europe, and religious intolerance based on different Christian faiths led to persecution and outright violence across the continent for centuries. The Protestant Reformation split Christianity further, and the results culminated in the incredibly destructive Thirty Years’ War in the 17th century. Today, the most important religious split is between the Sunnis and the Shias (Shiites) within Islam. Unlike divisions in other faiths - between Conservative and Orthodox Jews or Catholic and Protestant Christians - the split between the Sunnis and Shia has existed almost as long as the faith itself, and it quickly emerged out of tensions created by the political crisis after the death of the Prophet Muhammad. In a sense, what are now two different forms of Islam essentially started as political factions within the unified body of Muslim believers. Over the past few centuries, Christians have mostly been able to live alongside their co-religionists, but the split between the Sunnis and Shias is still so pronounced that many adherents of each branch view each other with disdain if not as outright apostates or non-believers. The religious divide is perhaps the most important fault line in the turbulent Middle East today, with Sunni nations like Egypt and Saudi Arabia at odds with Shiite nations like Iran. At lower levels, non-state groups like the Islamic State and Hezbollah are fighting each other in ways that cross state lines in places like Lebanon, Iraq, and Syria. Although it is technically a split in religion, the divide has had substantial global ramifications for decades, and there seems to be no end in sight. The History of the Sunni and Shia Split traces the origins of the split and the historic effects of the main divide within Islam. Along with pictures of important people, places, and events, you will learn about the history of the Sunnis and Shias like never before, in no time at all.

    One score is brassy with exuberance -- the next moans with sorrow.Whatever you call it -- call it real. Author Max Lucado calls it "the second most stressful day in the life of our Savior." Before the morning becomes evening Jesus has reason to weep, then run, then shout, the curse, then praise, then doubt. Within a matter of moments his world is turned upside down.Sound familiar? The pink slip comes. The doctor calls. The divorce papers arrive. The check bounces. The life that had been calm is now chaotic. The world that had been serene is now stormy. Assailed by doubts. Pummeled by demands.If you've ever wondered if God in heaven can relate to you on earth, then read and re-read this pressure-packed day in the life of Christ. It is the only day, aside from the crucifixion, that all four gospels recorded. Lucado has interwoven their accounts in such a way that you will be assured that God knows how you feel.And you will be assured that within every torrent there is a calm center -- a place you can stand when your world gets windy. "The Eye of the Storm."""

    This book explains how that can be done in ways that are sensitive to Islamic culture and provides suggestions on how to build vital relationships with Muslims.

    There is a sudden rise of anti-Israel and anti-Semitic sentiment among Christians today. At gatherings such as the pro-Palestinian Christ at the Checkpoint conference in Bethlehem to the Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions movement on university campuses around the world, a new generation of Christians are not only turning away from traditional support for Israel, but from the very belief that there yet remains any ongoing calling and election upon the Jewish people. As this portentous shift is seen on a growing number of evangelical seminaries, and even on Facebook, are Scripturally-grounded Christians prepared to provide solid responses? In this seminal and hard-hitting work, Joel Richardson exposes the dangers and theological bankruptcy of this growing trend. When a Jew Rules the World sets the record straight regarding the New Covenant, the millennium, eschatology, and what every Christian must know about Israel.Is the Abrahamic Covenant relevant today?Has the Old Testament been replaced?How should gentile believers relate to unbelieving Jews?What exactly is Islamic Supersessionism? Richardson answers these questions and more as he carefully walks the reader through the most essential passages of the Bible that must be understood if one desires to combat the growing Christian anti-Semitism. As the rage and resistance of Satan to God’s plans with Israel continues to spread throughout the earth, now is the hour for discerning Christians everywhere to arm themselves with a clear understanding of these profoundly foundational matters.

    After her parents' divorce, she rejected her family's Islamic faith and became an atheist. During her stormy adolescence, she tried to convince a Christian missionary that there is no God but was converted to Christ instead.Her winding path through the riddles of God was not over, however. While attending a Turkish university and serving as a Christian youth minister, Derya began to compare the teachings of Protestantism and Catholicism, and during her doctoral studies in England, she entered the Catholic Church. Ultimately, she ended up in the United States, where she has become a citizen and has settled down to raise a family.Derya's story provides a window into both Islam and modernity. It shows that the grace and the mercy of God know no bounds.  Rather, the good news of salvation in Jesus Christ reaches souls in the most unlikely places.

    The author deals with fundamental problems faced by contemporary Muslims and provides real solutions, beginning with a discussion on ‘The Contemporary Western Christian Background’ in Chapter (I), followed by his analysis of the concepts (which he newly defines) of ‘secular’, ‘secularization’, and ‘secularism’ in Chapter (II). All this is then contrasted in Chapter (IV) of the book entitled ‘Islam: The Concept of Religion and the Foundation of Ethics and Morality’. Based on all the preceding explanation, the author proceeds to analyze the Muslim ‘dilemma’ by declaring that it should be resolved primarily through what he calls the “dewesternization of knowledge” or, conversely, the “islamization of contemporary knowledge”, an original concept conceived and elucidated by the author for the past three decades. Numerous original and profound ideas are contained in this book—arrived at chiefly through critical study of the Muslim tradition—such as the concepts of din,‘adl, hikmah, adab, ma‘na, and ta’dib, and their significance in the development of an Islamic system of education. The rationale for the islamization of contemporary knowledge and the establishment of a truly Islamic university was in fact provided for the first time in contemporary Muslim thought by this author long before the appearance of the present book, which explains these interconnected subjects more concisely. Further, the appendix entitled, ‘On Islamization: The Case of the Malay-Indonesian Archipelago’ is an actual explanation and application of the seminal ideas discussed in the book. This is a must read for all Muslims and those concerned with the problems and effects of secularization in our world today. This book has been translated into most of the major Islamic languages of the world— Turkish, Arabic, Urdu, Indonesian, Bosnian, and Persian.

    What changed, in fact, was that for the first time in American history we have been forced to confront Islamic militancy as it has assaulted the world for almost 14 centuries.In "The Sword of the Prophet," the reader receives the unvarnished truth about the rise of Islam and the patterns set by its founder, Muhammad; the historical meaning of jihad against the (non-Muslim) "infidel" that we see today in the al-Qaeda terror network; the broad sweep of the global military, political, moral, and -- yes -- spiritual struggle that faces us; and what we must do if we wish to survive. Above all, we must avoid the twin perils of complacency and despair, and for that a sober, factual, and contextual presentation like that found in Trifkovic's work is essential. But every American owes it to himself or herself to know the real score of the post-9/11world -- and this slim but invaluable volume is the place to start.

    But this conventional narrative is not the full story.In Church of Spies, the intelligence expert Mark Riebling draws on a wealth of recently uncovered documents to argue that, far from being Hitler’s lackey, Pius was an active anti-Nazi spymaster. He directed a vast network of Vatican operatives—priests and laypeople alike—who partnered with the German resistance, tipped the Allies off to Hitler’s invasions of France and Russia, and involved themselves in three separate plots to assassinate Hitler.A fast-paced and gripping tale of secrecy, danger, and self-sacrifice, Church of Spies takes readers from hidden crypts beneath the Vatican to Nazi bunkers in Germany to chart the true legacy of Pius’s secret war. Although these revelations do not excuse Pius’s public silence during the war, they provide us with a deeper understanding of the man reviled by so many.

    . . . Believers and skeptics alike will find it a sweeping visual and conceptual panorama.”—John Koenig, front page, New York Times Book Review Called "a book of uncommon brilliance" by Commonweal, Jesus Through the Centuries is an original and compelling study of the impact of Jesus on cultural, political, social, and economic history. Noted historian and theologian Jaroslav Pelikan reveals how the image of Jesus created by each successive epoch—from rabbi in the first century to liberator in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries—is a key to understanding the temper and values of that age. "An enlightening and often dramatic story . . . as stimulating as it is informative.”—John Gross, New York Times “A gracious little masterpiece.”—Thomas D'Evelyn, Christian Science Monitor

    As Andrew Meier explains in this utterly compelling account, the most recent Chechen war actually broke out on New Year's Eve in 1994 when Boris Yeltsin sent hundreds of tanks to the center of the city of Grozny in an effort to quell popular demands for independence from Russia. Six years later, Meier, braving great personal danger, traveled to the scene of one of the largest civilian massacres carried out by Russian troops, reporting on the carnage in which over 60 Chechen civiliansincluding a pregnant woman and many elderlywere brutally slaughtered in one of the war's most horrific "mop-up" operations. Days after a Chechen woman became the conflict's first female suicide bomber, Meier visited this war-torn province, encountering, among others, kidnappers, Wahhabi Islamists aligned with the Taliban, and a stream of Russian mothers arriving at the morgue to identify their fallen soldier sons. Chechnya is Meier's stunning report from a region where the death toll has already exceeded 100,000 people, and a book that attempts to comprehend what compels men to shoot children in the back.

    Yet until now little attention has been paid to the role Reagan's personal spirituality played in his political career, shaping his ideas, bolstering his resolve, and ultimately compelling him to confront the brutal -- and, not coincidentally, atheistic -- Soviet empire.In this groundbreaking book, political historian Paul Kengor draws upon Reagan's legacy of speeches and correspondence, and the memories of those who knew him well, to reveal a man whose Christian faith remained deep and consistent throughout his more than six decades in public life. Raised in the Disciples of Christ Church by a devout mother with a passionate missionary streak, Reagan embraced the church after reading a Christian novel at the age of eleven. A devoted Sunday-school teacher, he absorbed the church's model of "practical Christianity" and strived to achieve it in every stage of his life.But it was in his lifelong battle against communism -- first in Hollywood, then on the political stage -- that Reagan's Christian beliefs had their most profound effect. Appalled by the religious repression and state-mandated atheism of Bolshevik Marxism, Reagan felt called by a sense of personal mission to confront the USSR. Inspired by influences as diverse as C.S. Lewis, Whittaker Chambers, and Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, he waged an openly spiritual campaign against communism, insisting that religious freedom was the bedrock of personal liberty. "The source of our strength in the quest for human freedom is not material, but spiritual," he said in his Evil Empire address. "And because it knows no limitation, it must terrify and ultimately triumph over those who would enslave their fellow man."From a church classroom in 1920s Dixon, Illinois, to his triumphant mission to Moscow in 1988, Ronald Reagan was both political leader and spiritual crusader. God and Ronald Reagan deepens immeasurably our understanding of how these twin missions shaped his presidency -- and changed the world.

    With unflinching openness and intellectual honesty, Hitchens describes the personal loss and philosophical curiosity that led him to burn his Bible at prep school and embrace atheism in its place. From there, he traces his experience as a journalist in Soviet Moscow, and the critical observations that left him with more questions than answers, and more despair than hope for how to live a meaningful life. With first-hand insight into the blurring of the line between politics and the Church, Hitchens reveals the reasons why an honest assessment of Atheism cannot sustain disbelief in God. In the process, he provides hope for all believers who, in the words of T. S. Eliot, may discover the end of all our exploring will be to arrive where we started and know the place for the first time.

    The insights that he communicates with such enthusiasm are timely ones: here at last is a writer who challenges the seeker after mystical understanding and Eastern spirituality to discover Christianity.” —Dr. Elizabeth Theokritoff, independent scholar and co-editor of The Cambridge Companion to Orthodox Christian TheologyIn Inner River, Kyriacos Markides—scholar, researcher, author, and pilgrim—takes us on a thrilling quest into the heart of Christian spirituality and mankind’s desire for a transcendent experience of God. From Maine’s rugged shores to a Cypriot monastery to Greece’s remote Mt. Athos and, ultimately, to an Egyptian desert, Markides encounters a diverse cast of characters that allows him to explore the worlds of the natural and the supernatural, of religion and spirit, and of the seen and the unseen. Inner River will appeal to a wide range of readers, from Christians seeking insights into their religion and its various expressions to scholars interested in learning more about the mystical way of life and wisdom that have been preserved in the heart of Orthodox spirituality. Perhaps most important, however, is the bridge it offers contemporary readers to a Christian life that is balanced between the worldly and the spiritual.

    But much of today's apologetics (engagement with the questions that people are asking about Christianity) come from suburban churches and academic studies. Urban believers--those who live and minister in America's inner cities--often face unique issues, not often addressed by the larger Christian community. These questions aren't neat or easy to answer but need to be addressed by applying biblical truth in the culture and challenges of urban life.Author Chris Brooks has ministered for years in the urban environment as well as received extensive theological training. In Urban Apologetics, he seeks to connect the riches of the Christian apologetic tradition with the issues facing cities--such as poverty, violence, and broken families. He brings an urban rhythm and sensitivity to the task of demonstrating the relevance of faith and the healing truth that Christ provides.