Product Description: Pain is one of life s most debilitating, depressing, and dark sensations. Chronic pain, relentless and ongoing, can make life seem almost unbearable. Pain can wrench us away from everything we love, people, activities, even God. Yes it can wrench us away...read more

Product Description: Although disability imagery is ubiquitous in the Hebrew Bible, characters with disabilities are not. The presence of the former does not guarantee the presence of the later. While interpreters explain away disabilities in specific characters, they celebrate the rhetorical contributions that disability imagery makes to the literary artistry of biblical prose and poetry, often as a trope to describe the suffering or struggles of a presumably nondisabled person or community...read more

The author of 1 Peter regards Christian suffering as a necessary feature of faithful allegiance to Jesus, which precedes the full restoration and vindication of God's people. Much previous research has explored only the cause and nature of suffering; Kelly D. Liebengood now addresses the need for an explanation for the source that has generated this particular understanding. If Jesus truly is God's redemptive agent, come to restore His people, how can Christian suffering be a necessary part of discipleship after his coming, death and resurrection, and what led the author of 1 Peter to such a startling conclusion? Liebengood analyzes the appropriation of shepherds, exodus, and fiery trials imagery and argues that the author of 1 Peter is dependent upon the eschatological programme of Zechariah 9-14 for his theology of Christian suffering. This book will interest those studying the New Testament, Petrine theology and early Christianity.

Product Description: In Persecution in 1 Peter, Travis B. Williams offers a comprehensive and detailed socio-historical investigation into the nature of suffering in 1 Peter. While interpreters commonly portray the conflict situation addressed by the epistle as "unofficial" persecution consisting of discrimination and verbal abuse, Williams demonstrates the inadequacy of this modern consensus by situating the letter against the backdrop of conflict management in first-century CE Asia Minor...read more

Product Description: An introduction to the literary and theological message of Revelation using the topics of evil and suffering as a conceptual organizer, which provides readers an immediate connection between this ancient text and their lives.Although often read as a book of esoteric visions about the end of time, the book of Revelation is actually one of the most relevant books in the Bible for Christian faith in the twenty-first century...read more