Home

• Separated from someone you love: mother, father, sister, brother, wife, husband, child, friend, pet
• Separated from a career you love
• Separated from a home you love
• Separated from the life you thought would continue on the road you were traveling

Grief is the sorrow and suffering that must be walked THROUGH by everyone who has experienced a loss. The walk is characterized by:

• Alone-ness. No one can do it for you.
• Timelessness. There are no shortcuts and detours may occur.
• Darkness. Each path is unique to the person. There is only One who sees in the dark just as He does in the light (Psalm 139).

“God gives us simple directions as we walk through the valley of grief. As He told David in Psalm 23, it was His intention that we walk through the valley, not get stuck. Walking my own roads after the death of my son, my parents, and my first marriage, I can say now that each road was different; each one had some very difficult periods and yet God was faithful. It is my prayer as I write this book that others will also receive God’s healing, life-giving words.”

What is the Kingdom of God? What does it mean to be part of the kingdom? These are questions that should occupy the mind of every Christian. But we frequently shy away from the full meaning of God’s rule.

In Christian Archy, Dr. David Alan Black examines the New Testament to find the truly radical and all-encompassing claims of God’s kingdom. In doing so, he discovers that the character of this kingdom is widely different from what is commonly contemplated today. Its glory is revealed only through suffering — a point that Jesus’ disciples, then and now, have been slow to understand. This truth has tremendous implications for church life. The kingdom of God is in no way imperialistic. It has no political ambitions. It conquers not by force but by love. It is this humble characteristic of the kingdom that is a stumbling block to so many today. Christ’s claim to our total allegiance is one we seek to avoid at all costs. But there is only one way to victory and peace, and that way is the way of the Lamb.

This is the first volume in the new Areopagus Critical Christian Issues Series from Energion Publications. We believe it is an appropriate way to begin that series by addressing this foundational question of who we are as part of the Christian church, and why it is important for us to immerse ourselves in God’s word.

Megabelt is a fictional account of the South and its preoccupations with modern Christianity told from the point of view of a boy named Gil growing up in what is otherwise known as the “Bible Belt.”

The readers will find themselves steeped in the world of Gil whose experiences and questions lead him to unravel some of the Bible Belt’s many dominant and passively adopted messages as well as its numerous types of characters.

Gil is the quintessential mind of most inhabitants of the Belt. He is you. He is I. While his experiences greatly reflect those of the author, his encounters will never go unidentified with by the reader.

Megabelt is a fabricated entity describing the world that exists between traditional Bible Belt culture and contemporary Bible Belt culture, the term explores the differences between as well as the ever-growing and ever-changing dynamics of the two.

Megabelt has no message, no moral proclamation or agenda. Its purpose is to highlight the truths of the Bible Belt culture and therefore perform a complete overhaul of its patrons’ thoughts and lifestyles for better or for worse. Any further sort of significance or meaning drawn from its pages is strictly subjective.

The church is in disarray. Theologians and commentators speak of the demise of evangelicalism. Are they alarmists? Is Christianity as we know it in the process of dying?

Writer, scholar, teacher, and missionary Dr. David Alan Black thinks that the answer does not lie in the politics of the left or the right. In fact, he doesn’t think that Jesus tells us what our politics should be. He doesn’t see answers in Christian nationalism. But even further, he sees serious flaws in the very structure of our churches and denominations that prevent us from truly being obedient to the gospel.

The solution lies, not in renewal, revival, or even in reformation, but rather in restoration-a restoration of the church organized as Jesus intended it and according to the example provided by the earliest church sources in the New Testament.

To make the church and its members true servants of Jesus Christ again, we need to change our entire paradigm-to The Jesus Paradigm.

When someone claims they have a message from God, how do you decide whether to believe them? This question has been with people of faith at least since Abraham heard someone-God, as it turned out-telling him to leave home and go to a place he would be shown. Other people have left their homes thinking God was guiding them, and have ended up with nothing but trouble.

And what about books? When someone claims a book is inspired by God how do you determine whether they are right or wrong? Very often they will be telling you that your eternal destination depends on believing what they say, and yet others will say that their book is right. Is it possible to know?

Interpretations of those books can be equally difficult to judge. People with special interpretations of scripture often claim just as much authority as those who claim to be prophets. If you reject their interpretation, you are rejecting God himself. How do you make a wise decision?

Writer and Bible teacher Henry Neufeld wrestles with these questions in these pages. You may not like some of the answers, but you will be challenged as he calls us each to focus first on the conversation with God and then to each be responsible for learning God’s will for our individual lives.

Like an aging monument, democracy itself is crumbling.

An ever increasing government threatens both freedom and a financial collapse.

• Judges are acting more like kings themselves than interpreters of the law
• Redistricting, voter fraud, campaign finance controls, and an uninformed electorate threaten the integrity of elections.
• The values that made America the greatest country in the world are being supplanted.
• Government’s attempts to make people’s lives better often have the opposite effect

What is causing this decay? What can we do?

Preserving Democracy was written to answer these questions.

Elgin Hushbeck, Jr. defends American constitutional government by:

Are you equipped for the task of Preserving Democracy?