God's Double Agent

by Bob Fu
God's Double Agent
Author: Bob Fu
Publisher: Baker Books
Total Pages: 377
Release: 2013-10-01
Genre: Biography & Autobiography
ISBN: 1441244662
GET BOOK

Tens of millions of Christians live in China today, many of them leading double lives or in hiding from a government that relentlessly persecutes them. Bob Fu, whom the Wall Street Journal called "The pastor of China's underground railroad," is fighting to protect his fellow believers from persecution, imprisonment, and even death. God's Double Agent is his fascinating and riveting story. Bob Fu is indeed God's double agent. By day Fu worked as a full-time lecturer in a communist school; by night he pastored a house church and led an underground Bible school. This can't-put-it-down book chronicles Fu's conversion to Christianity, his arrest and imprisonment for starting an illegal house church, his harrowing escape, and his subsequent rise to prominence in the United States as an advocate for his brethren. God's Double Agent will inspire readers even as it challenges them to boldly proclaim and live out their faith in a world that is at times indifferent, and at other times murderously hostile, to those who spread the gospel.

Angels

by Billy Graham
Angels
Author: Billy Graham
Publisher: Thomas Nelson
Total Pages: 192
Release: 2011-11-21
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 1418514446
GET BOOK

Dr. Graham lifts the veil between the visible and the invisible world to give us an eye-opening account of these behind-the-scenes agents. This best-selling classic records the experiences of Dr. Graham and others who are convinced that at moments of special need they have been attended by angels. Yes, angels are real. They are not the product of your imagination. Dr. Graham lifts the veil between the visible and the invisible world to give us an eye-opening account of these behind-the-scenes agents. This best-selling classic (with more than 750k copies in print) records the experiences of Dr. Graham and others who are convinced that at moments of special need they have been attended by angels. With keen insight and conviction, Dr. Graham affirms that: God's invisible hosts are better organized than any of the armies of man—or Satan. Angels "think, feel, will, and display emotions." Angels guide, comfort, and provide for people in the midst of suffering and persecution. At death, the faithful will be ushered by angels into the presence of God. “If we had open spiritual eyes we would see not only a world filled with evil spirits and powers—but also powerful angels with drawn swords, set for our defense.” —Billy Graham

Supernatural Agents

by Iikka Pyysiainen
Supernatural Agents
Author: Iikka Pyysiainen
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Total Pages: 300
Release: 2009-04-27
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 019970175X
GET BOOK

The cognitive science of religion is a rapidly growing field whose practitioners apply insights from advances in cognitive science in order to provide a better understanding of religious impulses, beliefs, and behaviors. In this book Ilkka Pyysiäinen shows how this methodology can profitably be used in the comparative study of beliefs about superhuman agents. He begins by developing a theoretical outline of the basic, modular architecture of the human mind and especially the human capacity to understand agency. He then goes on to discuss examples of supernatural agency in detail, arguing that the human ability to attribute beliefs and desires to others forms the basis of conceptions of supernatural agents and of such social cognition in which supernatural agents are postulated as interested parties in social life. Beliefs about supernatural agency are natural, says Pyysiäinen, in the sense that such concepts are used in an intuitive and automatic fashion. Two dots and a straight line below them automatically trigger the idea of a face, for example. Given that the mind consists of a host of such modular mechanisms, certain kinds of beliefs will always have a selective advantage over others. Abstract theological concepts are usually elaborate versions of such simpler and more contagious folk conceptions. Pyysiäinen uses ethnographical and survey materials as well as doctrinal treatises to show that there are certain recurrent patterns in beliefs about supernatural agents both at the level of folk-religion and of formal theology.

God's Secret Agents

by Alice Hogge
God's Secret Agents
Author: Alice Hogge
Publisher: Harper Collins
Total Pages: 463
Release: 2005-06-14
Genre: History
ISBN: 0060542276
GET BOOK

One evening in 1588, just weeks after the defeat of the Spanish Armada, two young men landed in secret on a beach in Norfolk, England. They were Jesuit priests, Englishmen, and their aim was to achieve by force of argument what the Armada had failed to do by force of arms: return England to the Catholic Church. Eighteen years later their mission had been shattered by the actions of the Gunpowder Plotters -- a small group of terrorists who famously tried to destroy the Houses of Parliament -- for the Jesuits were accused of having designed "that most horrid and hellish conspiracy." In an unusual turn of events, the future of every Catholic they had hoped to save would soon come to depend on the silence of one Oxford carpenter, a man being tortured in the Tower of London for building priest holes, those bunkers in which the Catholic clergy hid from English authorities. Using contemporary documents, Alice Hogge's brilliant new book pieces together a deadly game of cat-and-mouse between priests and government spies, as Queen Elizabeth and her ministers fought to defend the state, and English Catholics fought to defend their souls. It follows the priests -- God's Secret Agents -- from their schooling on the Continent, through their perilous return journeys and their lonely lives in hiding, to the scaffold, where a gruesome death awaited them. To their government they were traitors; to their fellow Catholics they were glorious martyrs. It was a distinction that the Gunpowder Plot would put to the test. Ultimately God's Secret Agents is the story of men who would die for their cause undone by men who would kill for it.

God's Spies

by Elisabeth Braw
God's Spies
Author: Elisabeth Braw
Publisher: Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing
Total Pages: 334
Release: 2019-09-17
Genre: History
ISBN: 1467456403
GET BOOK

The real-life cloak-and-dagger story of how East Germany’s notorious spy agency infiltrated churches here and abroad East Germany only existed for a short forty years, but in that time, the country’s secret police, the Stasi, developed a highly successful “church department” that—using persuasion rather than threats—managed to recruit an extraordinary stable of clergy spies. Pastors, professors, seminary students, and even bishops spied on colleagues, other Christians, and anyone else they could report about to their handlers in the Stasi. Thanks to its pastor spies, the Church Department (official name: Department XX/4) knew exactly what was happening and being planned in the country’s predominantly Lutheran churches. Yet ultimately it failed in its mission: despite knowing virtually everything about East German Christians, the Stasi couldn’t prevent the church-led protests that erupted in 1989 and brought down the Berlin Wall.

God: The Failed Hypothesis

by Victor J. Stenger
God: The Failed Hypothesis
Author: Victor J. Stenger
Publisher: Prometheus Books
Total Pages: 310
Release: 2010-08-05
Genre: Science
ISBN: 161592003X
GET BOOK

Throughout history, arguments for and against the existence of God have been largely confined to philosophy and theology, while science has sat on the sidelines. Despite the fact that science has revolutionized every aspect of human life and greatly clarified our understanding of the world, somehow the notion has arisen that it has nothing to say about the possibility of a supreme being, which much of humanity worships as the source of all reality. This book contends that, if God exists, some evidence for this existence should be detectable by scientific means, especially considering the central role that God is alleged to play in the operation of the universe and the lives of humans. Treating the traditional God concept, as conventionally presented in the Judeo-Christian and Islamic traditions, like any other scientific hypothesis, physicist Stenger examines all of the claims made for God's existence. He considers the latest Intelligent Design arguments as evidence of God's influence in biology. He looks at human behavior for evidence of immaterial souls and the possible effects of prayer. He discusses the findings of physics and astronomy in weighing the suggestions that the universe is the work of a creator and that humans are God's special creation. After evaluating all the scientific evidence, Stenger concludes that beyond a reasonable doubt the universe and life appear exactly as we might expect if there were no God. This paperback edition of the New York Times bestselling hardcover edition contains a new foreword by Christopher Hitchens and a postscript by the author in which he responds to reviewers' criticisms of the original edition.

Censoring God

by Jim Willis
Censoring God
Author: Jim Willis
Publisher: Visible Ink Press
Total Pages: 572
Release: 2021-04-01
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 1578597455
GET BOOK

Why isn’t the Book of Enoch in the Holy Bible, even though Enoch is referenced multiple times? Why were texts considered sacred by many, excluded by others? Who made the decisions and why? There are more than 50 books—some of which exist only in fragments while others are complete and whole—that are not included in the biblical canon. Why were they discarded? Most Protestant denominations settled on 66 canonical books of the Bible, while there are 73 for Roman Catholics and 78 for Eastern Orthodox adherents. Why are there these differences of opinion? We are often taught that the Bible is, in the words of many religious catechisms, “the infallible word of faith and practice.” In reality, the Bible can also be seen as a political document as much as a spiritual one. Ordained minister and theologian Jim Willis examines the historical, political, and social climates that influenced the redactors and editors of the Bible and other sacred texts in Censoring God: The History of the Lost Books (and other Excluded Scriptures). In analyzing why texts were censored, he uncovers sometimes surprising biases. He investigates enigmatic hints of Bible codes and ancient wisdom that implies a greater spiritual force might have been at work. Willis explores the importance of the Book of Enoch, its disappearance, and how it was rediscovered in Ethiopia. He analyzes over two dozen excluded texts, such as Jubilees and the Gospel of Thomas, along with the many references to books that we know about from fragments but remain lost. Thought-provoking and provocative, Censoring God scrutinizes how sacred texts might have been used to justify the power of the powerful, including the destruction of sacred writings of conquered indigenous cultures because they did not agree with the finished version of the Bible accepted by the Church establishment. This important book looks at the human failings in interpreting God’s words, and through a compassionate examination it brings a deeper understanding of the power and importance of the lost words. With more than 120 photos and graphics, this tome is richly illustrated. Its helpful bibliography provides sources for further exploration, and an extensive index adds to its usefulness.

Agent Llama

by Angela Woolfe
Agent Llama
Author: Angela Woolfe
Publisher:
Total Pages: 32
Release: 2021-07-08
Genre:
ISBN: 9781801040020
GET BOOK

Meet Palmer. Charlie Palmer. Awesome spy and fluffy llama. Her top-secret mission? To save the world and rescue a pair of . . . UNDERPANTS! A hilarious and super stylish adventure - James Bond for little ones!

Brother Andrew

by Janet Benge
Brother Andrew
Author: Janet Benge
Publisher: YWAM Publishing
Total Pages: 228
Release: 2006-09
Genre: Biography & Autobiography
ISBN: 9781576583555
GET BOOK

A biography of the Dutch missionary Brother Andrew who became noted for smuggling Bibles into communist-controlled Eastern Europe.