A New Heaven and A New Earth Archives

Best Reads From 2015

As with last year, I’m won’t restrict myself to books released in 2015 since there are plenty of important books from this year that I haven’t (yet) read. So this is no attempt for inspired list of “best” books of 2015, and the age of a book alone shouldn’t determine it’s quality anyway. No, this is a subjective list of books – in no particular order – that impacted me most this year, and a little on why.

Many in the church today are deeply entrenched in a thoroughly unbiblical mire. Not only are we unaware of this, but for many it is absolutely central to the expression of their faith. We sing about it in our worship songs (and even classic hymns!). Our pastors preach it fervently from the pulpit. We use it as the central point of our evangelistic appeals. It even infiltrates our reading of the Bible to such a degree that we are blind to the Bible’s own words screaming out in protest. What is this doctrinal mire? It is that Christianity is about being freed from this earth and going to heaven when we die (or preferably before). In other words, it is an ignorance of God’s plans to place resurrected people in a resurrected world. J. Richard Middleton is not the first to point out that this doctrine is unbiblical, but in A New Heaven and a New Earth he has presented perhaps the most comprehensive attempt to pull us out of its miry depths.