Licona describes an invention that can make historical figures appear alive and present. Imagining an audience of both Christians and Muslims, Licona crafts a lively debate between Paul and Muhammad, each speaking on and analyzing the validity of the Qur'an, the gospel accounts, and both Christian and Muslim doctrine.Intriguing and entertaining, Paul Meets Muhammad uniquely offers evangelism advice for Christians who want to speak the gospel to Muslim friends and neighbors. This fictional scenario presents a powerful, comprehensive defense of Jesus's resurrection and of Christianity itself.

    As we come to understand the difference between the experience in the Natural and the Spiritual Mind, we gain greater access to unseen spiritual realities. We find that the Light in our Wilderness is literal, and that it continually seeks access to our awareness. In this book, Catherine Thomas invites fellow seekers to search behind familiar gospel words and concepts to find a greater revelation.

    Ostling and fellow journalist Joan K. Ostling navigate the Mormon Church's complex origins and inner workings. They explore the dramatic changes in its policies on polygamy, its conviction in its manifest destiny as the true religion of America, its vocal dissenters, and the ways in which the church handles its vast financial, media, and educational resources.Richard and Joan Ostling give readers a comprehensive and insightful look into this intriguing religion, complete with the church's history, beliefs, culture, and plans for the future. They shed light on the church's phenomenal success and the strong appeal of its teachings, and provide previously unreported details about its financial investments, worldwide missions, and internal politics.In Mormon America, Richard Ostling picks up where his widely read 1997 Time magazine cover story, "Mormons, Inc.," left off, by illuminating the church's continuing surge in power and popularity. The Ostlings assemble through their reportage the complete story behind the most prosperous religious group in contemporary America.

    Reprint. 25,000 first printing.

    Acclaimed Latter-day Saint author and scientist Steven L. Peck demonstrates that both are indispensable tools we can use to navigate God's strange and beautiful creation. Evolving Faith: Wanderings of a Mormon Biologist is a collection of technical, personal, whimsical essays about Mormon theology, evolution, human consciousness, the environment, sacred spaces, and more. With the mind of a scientist, the soul of a believer, and the heart of a wanderer, Peck provides companionship for women and men engaged in the unceasing quest for further light and knowledge.

    Covered head-to-toe in strict, modest clothing, she received a rigorous education at Alta Academy, the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints' school headed by Warren Jeffs. Always seeking to be an obedient Priesthood girl, in her teens she became the nineteenth wife of her people's prophet: 85-year-old Rulon Jeffs, Warren's father. Finally sickened by the abuse she suffered and saw around her, she pulled off a daring escape and sought to build a new life and family.The church, however, had a way of pulling her back in-and by 2007, Rebecca had no choice but to take the witness stand against the new prophet of the FLDS in order to protect her little sisters and other young girls from being forced to marry at shockingly young ages. The following year, Rebecca and the rest of the world watched as a team of Texas Rangers raided the Yearning for Zion Ranch, a stronghold of the FLDS. Rebecca's subsequent testimony would reveal the horrific secrets taking place behind closed doors of the temple, sending their leaders to prison for years, and Warren Jeffs for life.THE WITNESS WORE RED is a gripping account of one woman's struggle to escape the perverse embrace of religious fanaticism and sexual slavery, and a courageous story of hope and transformation.

    Did principles of religious freedom and local self-government protect Mormons' claim to a distinct, religiously based legal order? Or was polygamy, as its opponents claimed, a new form of slavery--this time for white women in Utah? And did constitutional principles dictate that democracy and true liberty were founded on separation of church and state? As Sarah Barringer Gordon shows, the answers to these questions finally yielded an apparent victory for antipolygamists in the late nineteenth century, but only after decades of argument, litigation, and open conflict. Victory came at a price; as attention and national resources poured into Utah in the late 1870s and 1880s, antipolygamists turned more and more to coercion and punishment in the name of freedom. They also left a legacy in constitutional law and political theory that still governs our treatment of religious life: Americans are free to believe, but they may well not be free to act on their beliefs.

    She is the granddaughter of its founder, Fred Phelps, and when she left, the church and its values were all she’d known. She didn’t tell her family she was leaving. It happened in just a few minutes; she ran into her house, grabbed a bag, and fled. No goodbyes.Based in Topeka, Kansas, the Westboro Baptist Church community is one the country’s most notorious evangelical groups. Its members are known for their boisterous picketing—their zealous members with anti-military, anti-Semitic, and anti-gay signs—“Thank God for Dead Soldiers,” “God Hates Jews,” or “Thank God for 9/11”—and their notorious catchphrase “God hates fags.” The church makes headlines in news across the country. You’ve driven past its picketers or seen them on TV. It has seventy members and ninety percent of them are part of Libby’s family. They picket concerts, football games, other churches, and, most notoriously, the funerals of servicemen and victims of hate crimes. For its members, to question its rules is to risk going to hell—where worms eat at your body and fire shoots out of your eyeballs.In Girl on a Wire, Libby is candid about her experience and what’s happened since her escape. On Anderson Cooper Live, she was confronted by the mother of a soldier whose funeral had been picketed, and had to respond. Despite it all, she cares for her family. Her grandfather’s sermons were fear mongering, but she loves him. This unusual memoir presents a rare, inside look into a notorious cult, and is an astonishing story of strength, bravery, and determination.

    As a blogger, social media personality, and award-winning public speaker, her message has reached millions. This moving biography and up-close account of her life and membership in The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (sometimes called the "LDS" or "Mormon" church) will show you what it means to truly trust in the Lord."Don't go, Al. You won't fit in." Being baptized and following the Lord has made Al's life harder than it ever was before. She endured criticism from friends and family for becoming a Mormon. She faced harsh judgments from Church members for her appearance. She gave up everything and felt more alone than she ever had in her life. All because she chose God. Now she shares an up-close look at how trusting God has led her to places she never expected. As a blogger, YouTuber, and award-winning public speaker, her message has reached millions. Sharing her love of the Savior, Al goes beyond her own conversion and encourages readers to choose God above anything else. This uplifting book inspires readers to build a true relationship with the Lord that will bring them real, lasting happiness.

    Due to its age, it may contain imperfections such as marks, notations, marginalia and flawed pages. Because we believe this work is culturally important, we have made it available as part of our commitment for protecting, preserving, and promoting the world's literature in affordable, high quality, modern editions that are true to the original work.

    Twenty years later, the slaughter was blamed on one man named John D. Lee, previously a member of Brigham Young's inner circle. Red Water imagines Lee's extraordinary frontier life through the eyes of three of his nineteen wives. Emma is a vigorous and capable Englishwoman who loves her husband unconditionally. Ann, a bride at thirteen years old, is an independent adventurer. Rachel is exceedingly devout and married Lee to be with her sister, his first wife. These spirited women describe their struggle to survive Utah's punishing landscape and the poisonous rivalries within their polygamous family, led by a magnetic, industrious, and considerate husband, who was also unafraid of using his faith to justify desire and ambition.

    Cascading with rich, well-developed characters, this true story will capture your soul and imagination as the author reveals how a group of kind-hearted, sincere people are led to embrace this controversial lifestyle in their pursuit of the highest degree of glory. Laced with surprising brush-strokes of humor, this heart-rending saga will take its readers on a journey that outsiders whisper of and shudder about. It answers the question that a polygamist's wife is asked countless times: How can you tolerate sharing your husband?In North America today there are over thirty thousand polygamists. They lead secret lives in their attempt to hide from society and U.S. laws. Their women are taught that obedience, unquestioning acceptance of polygamy, and giving birth to huge families of children to follow in their parent's footsteps will assure them a celestial crown. Few search out truth for themselves, but trustingly follow their prophet. Susan's book deals with this head-in-the-sand ignorance. She too, was one of these women.

    In the mid- to late nineteenth century, however--the heyday of Mormon polygamy--as many as three out of every ten Mormon women became polygamous wives. Paula Kelly Harline delves deep into the diaries and autobiographies of twenty-nine such women, providing a rare window into the lives they led and revealing their views and experiences of polygamy, including their well-founded belief that their domestic contributions would help to build a foundation for generations of future Mormons. Polygamous wives were participants in a controversial and very public religious practice that violated most nineteenth-century social and religious rules of a monogamous America. Harline considers the questions: Were these women content with their sacrifice? Did the benefits of polygamous marriage for the Mormons outweigh the human toll it required and the embarrassment it continues to bring? Polygamous wives faced daunting challenges not only imposed by the wider society but within the home, yet those whose writings Harline explores give voice to far more than unhappiness and discontent. The personal writings of these women, all married to different husbands, are the heart of this remarkable book--they paint a vivid and sometimes disturbing picture of an all but vanished and still controversial way of life.

    In this powerful and heartbreaking account, former FLDS member Brent Jeffs reveals both the terror and the love he experienced growing up on his prophet’s compound—and the harsh exile existence that so many boys face once they have been expelled by the sect. Brent Jeffs is the nephew of Warren Jeffs, the imprisoned leader of the FLDS. The son of a prominent family in the church, Brent could have grown up to have multiple wives of his own and significant power in the 10,000-strong community. But he knew that behind the group’s pious public image—women in chaste dresses carrying babies on their hips—lay a much darker reality. So he walked away, and was the first to file a sexual-abuse lawsuit against his uncle. Now Brent shares his courageous story and that of many other young men who have become “lost boys” when they leave the FLDS, either by choice or by expulsion.Brent experienced firsthand the absolute power that church leaders wield—the kind of power that corrupts and perverts those who will do anything to maintain it. Once young men no longer belong to the church, they are cast out into a world for which they are utterly unprepared. More often than not, they succumb to the temptations of alcohol and other drugs. Tragically, Brent lost two of his brothers in this struggle, one to suicide, the other to overdose. In this book he shows that lost boys can triumph and that abuse and trauma can be overcome, and he hopes that readers will be inspired to help former FLDS members find their way in the world.

    When the neighborhood's corrupt police force shows no interest, Elder Toronto and Elder Schwartz decide to investigate Marco Aurelio's disappearance themselves.Breaking mission rule after mission rule, the elders doggedly pursue any clues that might lead them to their friend. As they interview the people who knew him--his short-tempered, bodybuilding brother; his gun-toting ex-wife; his mercurial former business partner--a tangled portrait emerges of an enigmatic con artist in over his head. At the edges of the investigation lurks a shadowy, mythical figure known only as the Argentine, a man who poses an increasingly dire threat to the two young missionaries as they plunge recklessly forward.