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The Untold Story of the New Testament Church: An Extraordinary Guide to Understanding the New Testament | 
 enlarge | Author: Frank Viola
Publisher: Destiny Image Publishers
Category: Book
List Price: $13.99
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Rating:  22 reviews
Sales Rank: 18242
Format: Illustrated
Media: Paperback
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 208
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.6
Dimensions (in): 8.9 x 5.9 x 0.5
ISBN: 0768422361
Dewey Decimal Number: 270.1
EAN: 9780768422368
ASIN: 0768422361
Publication Date: January 1, 2005
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Shipping: International shipping available
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Product Description
Watch the New Testament come alive! Understand God's Word like never before! The New Testament is often hard to understand. A major reason is because it is not arranged in chronological order. Paul's letters, for example, are arranged by size rather than chronologically. This makes the New Testament a bit like a Chinese puzzle! For this reason, one famous Bible scholar said that reading the New Testament letters is like hearing one end of a phone conversation. The book you hold in your hands reconstructs the other end so that you can understand virtually every word! "The Untold Story of the New Testament Church" is a unique Bible handbook that weaves Acts and the Epistles together chronologically . . . creating one fluid story! This epic volume gives readers a first-hand account of the New Testament drama that is riveting and enlightening. It includes dates, maps, and background information about the people, the cities, and the events of the first-century church using a "you-are-there" approach. Get up-close and personal with apostles Paul, Peter, James and John and learn of their personal struggles. Understand the circumstances behind each inspired letter they penned. Watch the chaotic swirl of first-century people and events fall into place before your very eyes. Discover what Paul's "thorn in the flesh" really was. Learn what happened to all the apostles after the book of Acts was finished. Be ushered into the living, breathing atmosphere of the first century and uncover the hidden riches found in God's Word!
Book Description
A scholar of the New Testament Church and a forerunner of modern Church renewal, Frank Viola casts his gaze back at the birth pangs of first century Christianity in The Untold Story of the New Testament Church. Using a 'you-are-there' approach, this epic volume gives readers a first-hand account of how the witness of Christ's testimony impacted the world. In the era right after the Day of Pentecost, the power of Holy Spirit prompted a massive harvest of souls yet a great persecution surged against those preaching Good News to the lost. Now, get up-close with apostles Paul, Peter and John and learn of their personal struggles to fight for the faith amidst a backdrop of in-house strife and foreign tyranny.
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| Customer Reviews: Read 17 more reviews...
Must read for everyone! February 21, 2006
52 out of 54 found this review helpful
Most Christians have no idea what really happened in the first-century church. In fact, we have many misconceptions about the early church because our approach to the New Testament is misguided.
The reason for this is simple, yet mostly unknown. The books of the New Testament are not arranged in chronological order! Paul's letters, for instance, which make up most of the New Testament, are arranged according to size instead of chronologically. Therefore, it's difficult to know what happened when because we don't read our New Testaments chronologically. To put it another way, we simply don't know "the story" of the first-century church because we have never read it in its historical order.
Further, because our New Testament is not in chronological order, we cannot understand the letters from the perspective of the people who received them. Nor from the perspective of those who wrote them. We are ignorant of the cultural, the social, and the political environment behind the New Testament books. Instead, we learn chapters and verses, out of context. This is one reason why there are so many divisions in the church today. It is because anyone can prove any doctrine or practice by cutting and pasting verses together when they are lifted out of their historical, chronological context.
There is now a remedy for this. Frank Viola has written a masterful New Testament handbook that puts the entire first-century story together in an understandable way. In, The Untold Story of the New Testament Church, Frank takes all the New Testament books and puts them in their proper chronological order. He then "fills in" all the historical details behind each book, giving us a complete picture of what really happened in the first century. The book of Acts is weaved together with all of the New Testament letters, giving us a first-hand "you-are-there" narrative of the entire saga of the early church. The book includes maps, dates, and much more. After reading you feel as if you were transported back in time. Now each NT book comes alive, you understand what is going on, why Paul or James or Peter is writing these letters.
This book revolutionized my understanding of the New Testament, and I believe it will do the same for all who read it! We have used this book as a family reading through it from cover to cover. The book has the NT books listed in their order and we at each point stop and read that NT book from chapter to chapter. We have thoroughly enjoyed reading the NT using the book as a handbook.
Incredible is an understatement! June 2, 2006
23 out of 23 found this review helpful
I have always had trouble understanding the Bible. I grew up in the church and was always puzzled by the complexity of the sacred book. Someone recommended this book to me and I read it in one day!! I literally couldn't put it down! It was an experience of being brought back to the early church and watching the whole drama play out like a movie. After reading this book I can read the Bible (the New Test. portion) with ease. I feel like I personally know the characters. I can't say enough about this book. I just wish I had read it many years ago. It has changed my entire outlook on the Bible. I also recommend Blue Like Jazz which was another wonderful read.
Jimmy Bartles August 25, 2005
28 out of 29 found this review helpful
I have to disagree with the previous reviewer. I have read Gene Edwards books on the early church and there is a night and day difference between this volume and those books. Viola documents his narrative with a vast amount of scripture and historical texts that appear in endnotes after every chapter. This book draws heavily from the research of Frederick Fyvie Bruce, who I studied in college. I have a friend who teaches seminary and he is using this volume for his course on New Testament survey. If you are looking for a well-researched, documented narrative of the early church as well as a complete picture of the historical setting behind each epistle based on solid biblical scholarship, this book is a great starting point.
Eye opening! October 25, 2004
30 out of 32 found this review helpful
The "Untold Story of the New Testament Church" is one of the best written, most informative books I've ever read. It is eye opening, I would like to get it into the hands of every pastor and elder I know. I have already purchased three additional copies to pass around. This is must reading for anyone wanting to come into a deeper understanding of the early history of the church.
Awesome work of scholarship February 22, 2006
28 out of 30 found this review helpful
This book is one of the best pieces of biblical scholarship I have seen in years but it reads very easily. I felt like I was watching a movie and was carted back into the firstcentury meeting the characters of the new testament. It gave me a very different look at the new testament. I kept saying to myself, how did I miss this? I never saw that before? The endnotes are especially interesting because they give a whole lot of historical references and added information. The only fault I give this book is that a lot of the information in the endnotes should have been added to the body of the book. It took some time to keep flipping back to the endnotes to see what was all there as I was reading. This didn't affect the score. It's still a great book. Anyone who likes to study the bible indepthly should read this book. It will give them a whole new view.
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