Part of the joy of reading biography is having the opportunity to learn about a person who lived before us. An exceptional biography makes us feel as if we have actually come to know its subject, so that we rejoice in that person’s triumphs, grieve over his failures, and weep at his death.
There is a sense in which the Bible is a biography, in which it is the story of God. It reveals God by describing what he has done and what he has said, for if the living God is to be known, “He must make Himself known, and He has done this in the acts and words recorded in Scripture.”
The Bible begins with God speaking: “Let there be light.” And the Bible ends with God speaking: “He who testifies to these things says, ‘Surely I am coming soon’” (Revelation 22:20). Between those two declarations are 66 books; 1,189 chapters; and just over 31,000 verses, each of which exists to tell us who our God is and what our God has done.
If we are to know God, he must make himself known. Through Scripture he has done exactly that. What a blessing, what an honor, and what a privilege that God has spoken and made himself known, for this is his grace to us.

This week the giveaway is sponsored by Zondervan Reflective.

Will technology change what it means to be human?

You don’t have to be a computer scientist to have discerning conversations about artificial intelligence and technology. We all wonder where we’re headed. Even now, technological innovations and machine learning have a daily impact on our lives, and many of us see good reasons to dread the future. Are we doomed to the surveillance society imagined in George Orwell’s 1984?

Mathematician and philosopher John Lennox believes that there are credible responses to the daunting questions that AI poses, and he shows that Christianity has some very serious, sensible, evidence-based things to say about the nature of our quest for superintelligence.

This newly updated and expanded edition of 2084 will introduce you to a kaleidoscope of ideas:

Key recent developments in technological enhancement, bioengineering, and, in particular, artificial intelligence.

Consideration of the nature of AI systems with insights from neuroscience

The way AI is changing how we communicate, implications for medicine, manufacturing and the military, its use in advertising and automobiles, and education and the future of work

How data is used today for surveillance and thought control

The rise of virtual reality and the metaverse

The transhumanist agenda and longtermism

The agreements and disagreements that scientists and experts have about the future of AI

The urgent need for regulation and control in light of the development of large language transformers like CHATGPT.

Key insights from Scripture about the nature of human beings, the soul, our moral sense, our future, and what separates us from machines.

In straight-forward, accessible language, you will get a better understanding of the current capacity of AI, its potential benefits and dangers, the facts and the fiction, as well as possible future implications.

Since the questions posed by AI, daunting as they might be, affect most of us, they demand answers. 2084 and the AI Revolution, Updated and Expanded Edition has been written to challenge and ignite the curiosity of all readers. Whatever your worldview, Lennox provides clear information and credible answers that will bring you real hope for the future of humanity.

Enter for a chance to win a copy! Ten copies are available to win. Must enter by 11:59pm on Monday, 11/25.

There is a sense in which we are less familiar with death than our forebears, more insulated from its horrors. Of course the death rate in the twenty-first century is identical to every century before and every century to come—“it is appointed for [each and every] man to die once, and after that comes judgment.” So perhaps it is better to say we are less familiar with what we consider premature death—the death of infants, children, and young adults.

Because we are less familiar with death, we tend to prepare less for its inevitable encroachment. With the average lifespan now extending well past the promised threescore and ten, it is easy enough to set death alongside retirement, pensions, and inheritances as matters that should concern us sometime in the future, but certainly not right now.
But it was not always so and there are lessons we can and should learn from previous generations of Christians, for they had a heightened understanding of the importance of being ready. They had to. Like first responders, they had to be in a state of constant preparation, ready to be deployed at a moment’s notice. Like servants, they had to be dressed and ready for the moment they were summoned into the presence of the king. They did not have the luxury of associating death with a life well-lived to a ripe old age. Death could come quickly and at any time. It commonly did.
In reading the Puritans and their successors, I’ve often come across a captivating little phrase: “knocking at the gates of the grave.” Jeremy Taylor wrote a whole book about Christian dying and said, “He that would die well must always look for death, every day knocking at the gates of the grave; and then the gates of the grave shall never prevail against him to do him mischief.” Theodore Cuyler sometimes recounted strolling through Greenwood cemetery where three of his children had been laid to rest—two as infants and one as a young adult—and using his time there to metaphorically knock at the gates of the grave, “to listen whether any painful echo comes back from within.”
We, too, should make it our habit to knock at the gates of the grave. To knock at the gates of the grave is to ponder the positive marks of grace that are associated with those who love the Lord and will depart this life to be with him forever. It is to ponder the marks of depravity and hypocrisy that are associated with those who hate the Lord and will depart this life to be separated from him forever. It is to heed the admonition of the Apostle who implored Christians to “examine yourselves, to see whether you are in the faith. Test yourselves. Or do you not realize this about yourselves, that Jesus Christ is in you?—unless indeed you fail to meet the test!”
We knock when we pray, “Search me, O God, and know my heart! Try me and know my thoughts! And see if there be any grievous way in me, and lead me in the way everlasting” (Psalm 139:23-24)! We knock when we cry to God, “Prove me, O LORD, and try me; test my heart and my mind. For your steadfast love is before my eyes, and I walk in your faithfulness” (Psalm 26:2–3). We knock when we prepare to celebrate the Lord’s Supper and examine ourselves, and so eat of the bread and drink of the cup (1 Corinthians 11:28). We knock when we consider whether our lives are increasingly marked by those precious evidences of God’s saving and sanctifying grace.
When we knock at the gates of the grave in these ways and many others, we meditatively listen to hear the distant echoes of the choir of angels or the distant echoes of the gavel of judgment. We knock and then listen for echoes that are encouraging or concerning, delightful or painful. We knock and listen so we are prepared for the day—the inevitable day—when the gates will open to receive us to new life or a second death, to the bliss of heaven or the horrors of hell. We knock to ensure we are waiting, to ensure we are ready, to ensure we will go to be with the Lord we love.