2009 Christianity Today Book Award of Merit in Theology and Ethics 'If you died tonight, do you know where you would go?' Christians for many years have been asking this question. As award-winning author N.T. Wright points out however, the answer isn't heaven.
Wright, Book: Simply Jesus: A New Vision of Who He Was, What He Did, and Why He Matters (2011) and other, read online free in EPUB,TXT at ReadOnlineFree4.net. The Day the Revolution Began: Reconsidering the Meaning of Jesus's Crucifixion [N. Wright] on Amazon.com. In his paradigm-shifting book Surprised by Hope, Wright showed that the Bible's message is not that heaven is where we go in the future; rather, the Bible sees the primary movement as heaven coming down.
In Surprised by Hope, Wright, one of today's premier Bible scholars, asserts that Christianity's most distinctive idea is bodily resurrection. He provides a magisterial defense for a literal resurrection of Jesus and shows how this became the cornerstone for the Christian community's hope in the bodily resurrection of all people at the end of the age. Wright then explores our expectation of 'new heavens and a new earth,' revealing what happens to the dead until then and what will happen with the 'second coming' of Jesus. For many, including many Christians, all this will come as a great surprise.
Wright convincingly argues that what we believe about life after death directly affects what we believe about life before death. For if God intends to renew the whole creation---and if this has already begun in Jesus's resurrection---the church cannot stop at 'saving souls,' but must anticipate the eventual renewal by working for God's kingdom in the wider world, bringing healing and hope in the present life. In Surprised by Hope: Rethinking Heaven, the Resurrection, and the Mission of the Church, top-selling author and Anglican bishop, N.T. Wright tackles the biblical question of what happens after we die and shows how most Christians get it wrong.
We do not “go to” heaven; we are resurrected and heaven comes down to earth--a difference that makes all of the difference to how we live on earth. Following N.T. Wright’s resonant exploration of a life of faith in Simply Christian, the award-winning author whom Newsweek calls “the world’s leading New Testament scholar” takes on one of life’s most controversial topics, a matter of life, death, spirituality, and survival for everyone living in the world today. Wright, one of the world’s leading Bible scholars, is the chair of New Testament and Early Christianity at the School of Divinity at the University of St. Andrews, an Anglican bishop, and bestselling author.
Featured on ABC News, The Colbert Report, Dateline, and Fresh Air, Wright is the award-winning author of Simply Good News, Simply Jesus, Simply Christian, Surprised by Hope, How God Became King, Scripture and the Authority of God, Surprised by Scripture, and The Case for the Psalms, as well as the recent translation of the New Testament The Kingdom New Testament and the much heralded series Christian Origins and the Question of God. Wright, one of the greatest, and certainly most prolific, Bible scholars in the world, will touch a nerve with this book. Serial Bento 4.1.2 Mac. What happens when we die? How should we think about heaven, hell, purgatory and eternal life? Wright critiques the views of heaven that have become regnant in Western culture, especially the assumption of the continuance of the soul after death in a sort of blissful non-bodily existence. This is simply not Christian teaching, Wright insists. The New Testament's clear witness is to the resurrection of the body, not the migration of the soul.