I apologize for the slow pace of blogs the last few months. As an administrator now, my life often carries me along with urgent demands that limit opportunity to read, reflect and write. Nevertheless, I celebrate the publication of my latest book (Everlasting Gospel, Everchanging World). My copies arrived three weeks ago. Unfortunately, although it is listed online by both Amazon and Barnes and Noble, the publisher has not yet arranged to supply books to them! I did find it by entering my name into the search engine at www.adventistbookcenter.com. The book explores what I have learned about sharing faith from my three children (ages 20-26) and son-in-law. They have been an awesome laboratory regarding the impact of "post-moderism" on faith in today’s world. If you have teen or young-adult children or grandchildren, you should find this book helpful.

Ironically, a further new book from me (Armageddon at the Door) is available from Amazon for a special pre-publication price, although I have not yet seen a copy of the book. Revised excerpts from that book are available here by clicking the button "Armageddon Trilogy" on the main web site (http://www.thebattleofarmageddon.com/). My webmaster hopes to have daily devotionals on that site up in a short while.

What triggered this particular blog was a gift. I was handed a book and asked to evaluate it. This happens a lot and I rarely have time to follow through, but this case was different. The book was called Surprised by Hope: Rethinking Heaven, the Resurrection, and the Mission of the Church. It was written by N. T. Wright, perhaps the best-known and most-prolific New Testament scholar in the world today. He is the Anglican Bishop of Durham and has been resident theologian at Westminster Abbey. He is the heir to the legacy of C. S. Lewis, as one might guess from the title of the book. He recently published Simply Christian, a fresh update of the classic Mere Christianity.

Wright’s new book Surprised by Hope should be of great interest to guests of this web site. He offers a fresh and biblical critique of traditional views on the Second Coming (including an offhand comment on Armageddon), human nature and life after death, and the nature of resurrection, judgment, heaven and hell. While I think there are problems here and there at the edges, I found the core of what he wrote profoundly moving and thoroughly biblical.

I particularly gained a fresh perspective on issues related to the resurrection of Jesus, which Wright sees as foundational for the entire Christian world view in general, and its view of the end-time in particular. I plan to share some detail on how he approaches the resurrection of Jesus next week. Stay tuned.