The most recommended books on Christianity

I have been a fan of Mr. Alcorn for years, not just as an author and pastor but as a Christian. He has applied his own financial teaching and an incredible way. When he was sued for picketing at an abortion clinic he didn’t want to because he knew the proceeds would go toward abortionists. This caused him to learn to live on very little.

In this book, he provides an eternal view of our temporary wealth and possessions. The primary focus, spread over the course of the book, can be boiled down to one point: the heavenly perspective we should have will help us be good earthly stewards. In Mr. Alcorn’s own words, the book is “thoroughly researched…a biblical comprehensive view,” and I completely agree that it is.

He strives to cover every conceivable topic related to money, such as investing, retirement, gambling, inheritances, giving, and the list goes… show more.

A swoon-worthy love story. A handsome young man who gives you all the feels. A young woman standing her ground. A passionate kiss that is so worth the wait. 

What can I say, I am totally in love with this story. Secrets and Suitors was one of the books that made me fall in love with the regency period. It has everything I want in a good story, without the steam and inappropriate scenes. The shy main character has to learn to fight for her rights and the man she loves and not let her father dictate her life. I love a strong female lead, willing to deal with the consequences by going for what they want.

The hope of any believer is found in the end, the beginning of eternal life. Randy Alcorn strips away at mythological views of Heaven by providing sound biblical evidence of what it will really be like. Interestingly, Heaven is predicted to be the newly restored earth according to the Bible, not some mystical realm. No harps, floating on clouds, mansions, or other popular misconceptions inherited through Greek culture.

Heaven comes to earth; we do not go to Heaven as commonly believed. This is the picture found at the end of Revelation with Christ coming to earth with the "place" He is preparing for us. This is described in Revelation 21:1-4 as New Jerusalem to be located on the renewed earth.

Graham Greene is another master craftsman of thriller novels that explore political, moral, and ethical ambiguities in a way that both entertains and provokes. Better known for Our Man in Havana, Greene was sufficiently uncomfortable with The Confidential Agent that he wanted it published under a pseudonym. Yet I agree with critics that this tale of a foreign agent’s covert efforts to buy British coal to fuel a European civil war is among his best. Greene reputedly wrote it in six weeks, assisted by a diet of amphetamines and an affair with his landlady’s daughter, giving the novel a pace and rawness that reflect its creation.  

This book is research-driven. But that doesn't mean it’s dry and dusty. Just the opposite! You can expect to pick up at least a dozen practical bits of advice or information you will use in your marriage and will even come in handy in any situation when you are interacting with the women. You’ll enjoy the conversational down-to-earth style, and walk away with real-life revelations that really will help you better understand women, and your wife in particular. You’ll find yourself in the doghouse less frequently and for a shorter duration. And she’ll snuggle up to you more often seemingly for no reason at all.

So many Christian churches struggle over who ought to lead. Do female priests/pastors fulfill or discount God’s intentions? How does one know? Scripture? Tradition?

Macy digs into the long-term history and finds that women were clearly ordained in the early church, but evidence of that ordination has been erased or explained away. Women used to perform many duties that we associate with religious leadership today, including some sacraments.

Furthermore, some were ordained, receiving vestments, staffs, and mitres. Their gradual exclusion from their traditional roles happened over centuries and was virtually complete by the 13th century, as the Church redefined ordination in ways that excluded women and their ministries.

Then we rewrote the history to make it appear women had never been ordained. Again, no agenda here—just the history.

This book is for pastors, lay leaders and professional church educators, and students who want to model congregational life on the kingdom of God instead of marketing strategies designed to appeal to generational narcissism based on individual preference. This is one book that will both encourage and equip congregations to be less 'conformed to the world,' less prone to say, 'I have no need for you.' This is a book that argues persuasively from solid research, as well as the biblical mandate, for congregations to really 'love one another.' This book is honest about the costly demands of intentional intergenerational development as well as its rich rewards.

I read this book whilst I was a teenager, and although it is an alternative history book, the depiction of Viking Age Britain, and the Vikings themselves had me hooked.

The battles and characters hook you in, and there is just enough of a fantasy element thrown in to make this novel almost perfect.

In 1893 the eminent scholar of Jewish studies, Moritz Steinschneider, astutely identified Jews as “Dolmetscher”— mediators between East and West, Christianity and Islam, ancient and modern languages. While early academic interest in Jewish translation primarily focused on the Middle Ages, the past two decades have seen a burgeoning fascination with translation across other periods (and spaces) of Jewish history.

Several outstanding books have emerged by literary historians such as Abigail Gillman, Aya Elyada, Tessa Rajak, and Omri Asscher, making it challenging to single out just one recommendation. But Naomi Seidman’s book had me hooked from page 1, where Seidman recounts the story of her father’s strategic mistranslation between Yiddish and French in Post-War Paris. For Seidman, whose brilliant analysis of this translation narrative offers one of the best introductions to an academic book I’ve read, such strategic mistranslations are emblematic of the complexities of Jewish-Christian dialogue and of the Jewish… show more.

Edinger was a student of Carl Jung’s and this book picks up from Jung’s essential essay, “God’s Answer to Job”. Jung realized that God was in a dialectical relationship with his “Chosen People,” and when Job maintained his faith despite being subject to unspeakable cruelties, this compelled God to incarnate as Christ. Following Jung, Edinger believes we are currently living through the archetype of the Apocalypse. The word means “revealing” or “uncovering.” Psychologically, the Apocalypse is the “Coming of the self” into conscious realization. It is a point of maturity where we have gained the self-knowledge needed to integrate, rather than project, the Shadow. This portends a collective incarnation of God into our human world.