Recommended Books

Five E. M. Bounds books bring his teaching on prayer together with sustained instruction on spiritual warfare. Bounds develops Christ’s example of prayer, the Holy Spirit’s help, praying ministry and the church, then examines Satan’s personality and strategies, deception, vulnerable areas, the armor of God, resisting the devil, and prayer as a spiritual weapon.

E. M. Bounds presents Satan as a real personal adversary whose power, rule, methods, and opposition to the Church must be understood biblically. Moving from his beginning and activity in the world to deception, temptation, vulnerable spiritual positions, and Christian defense, Bounds emphasizes vigilance, resistance, the armor of God, faith, Scripture, and prayer.

E. M. Bounds asks how far believing prayer can reach when it rests on God’s promises and expects a real answer. Through Scripture and Christian examples, he explores the power and possibilities of prayer, faith, intercession, miracles, temporal needs, anxiety, and divine providence, showing why answered prayer is central to the believer’s practical life with God.

Using Abraham, Moses, Elijah, Hezekiah, Ezra, Nehemiah, Samuel, Daniel, Paul, and other biblical figures, E. M. Bounds shows how faith-filled prayer receives answers from God. The book develops intercession, persistence, prayer in leadership, corporate prayer, and the place of prayer in personal need, spiritual work, reformation, and the life of the Church.

See everyday life behind the biblical text through 115 substantial A–Z studies of family, work, food, law, technology, medicine, religion, warfare, sexuality, trade, and more. Each subject is traced through the Hebrew Bible, New Testament, ancient Near East, Greco-Roman world, and early Jewish and Christian settings to illuminate Scripture’s cultural world.

This focused reference study explains leather in the biblical world: animal hides, tanning and leatherworking, goatskins, sandals, parchment, and other uses of skin. It follows the subject through the Hebrew Bible and New Testament and places it within the ancient Near East, Greco-Roman world, and later Jewish and Christian communities to clarify the material culture behind Scripture.

This focused reference study explores wild animals and hunting across the biblical world, placing Scripture’s animals and hunters within the practices and cultures of the ancient Near East, Greco-Roman society, and later Jewish and Christian communities. It clarifies how people encountered, hunted, controlled, and understood wild creatures in antiquity.

A wide-ranging study of Persia’s role in Old Testament history, combining biblical texts, archaeology, inscriptions, classical sources, and Persian religion. Yamauchi examines the Medes, Cyrus, Darius, Xerxes, Artaxerxes, the imperial capitals, Zoroastrianism, the Magi, and the Persian background of Daniel, Esther, Ezra, and Nehemiah in detailed historical context.

Yamauchi traces Africa and Africans through key biblical texts using exegesis, archaeology, and ancient history. He examines the curse of Ham, Moses’ Cushite wife, Solomon and Africa, Tirhakah and the Cushites, Meroe, the Ethiopian eunuch, Cyrene, Simon of Cyrene, and later Afrocentric interpretations, showing the historical settings behind these biblical connections.

Yamauchi reconstructs the New Testament cities of western Asia Minor through archaeology, inscriptions, history, and urban culture. From Ephesus, Pergamum, Sardis, and Laodicea to Assos, Miletus, Colossae, and Hierapolis, he supplies the setting behind Paul’s ministry and the seven churches of Revelation, including civic life, imperial rule, and local religious culture.

This compact study surveys archaeological evidence from Abraham through Daniel, tracing the patriarchal age, Exodus and conquest, the judges, Israel’s monarchy, Assyrian pressure, and the Babylonian period. Yamauchi weighs both confirmations and problems in the evidence, showing how archaeology clarifies the historical setting of major Old Testament events without oversimplifying its limits.

Yamauchi surveys what archaeology can and cannot contribute to biblical history. He examines the patriarchal world through Mari, Nuzi, and Alalakh; William Ramsay’s work on Acts and Paul; the Dead Sea Scrolls and Qumran; and the limits of archaeological argument, showing how discoveries illuminate Scripture while requiring careful judgment about evidence and silence.

T. Austin-Sparks places Jesus Christ at the center of everything: Scripture, the believer’s inner life, the Church, and the unseen realm. From Colossians 1 he develops Christ’s preeminence, His indwelling and formation in believers, His Headship over the Body, and His supremacy over principalities and powers as the governing answer to God’s eternal purpose.

Jeremiah J. Johnston builds a practical historical case for Jesus’ bodily resurrection through seven lines of evidence, from Jesus’ predictions and resurrection miracles to the empty tomb, archaeology, eyewitness testimony, and the conversions of Paul and James. He also shows how resurrection answers suffering and grounds the believer’s future hope.

Using a concise “minimal facts” method, Gary Habermas and Michael Licona build a historical case for Jesus’ resurrection from His death, the disciples’ experiences, Paul’s and James’s conversions, and the empty tomb. They also test hallucination, legend, fraud, swoon, and naturalistic alternatives and show readers how to discuss the evidence with others.

Gary R. Habermas investigates what can be known historically about Jesus through early Christian creeds, New Testament data, archaeology, non-Christian writers, and early Christian sources outside the New Testament. He also tests mythicist claims, alternative lives of Jesus, new Gnostic approaches, and the Jesus Seminar against historical method and surviving ancient evidence.

T. Austin-Sparks reads Malachi as a voice for the close of an age, calling God’s people to prepare for the Lord’s coming through wholehearted devotion to Christ. He connects Malachi’s remnant, the altar and perfect sacrifice, the Cross, God’s rights, and the Lord’s return, asking what kind of people truly satisfy God when outward religion has lost inward reality.

Habermas maps the modern scholarly landscape surrounding Jesus’ resurrection, surveying thousands of academic arguments and positions on historical method, minimal facts, the empty tomb, appearances, alternative theories, bodily resurrection, and theological implications. The volume shows where scholars agree, disagree, and why, while tracing the evidence and debates in exceptional depth.

The final On the Resurrection volume asks what Jesus’ resurrection means for Christian belief and life. Habermas connects the risen Christ with God’s existence, Jesus’ deity, miracles, the kingdom, salvation, eternal life, the church, evangelism, suffering, doubt, fear of death, daily spiritual power, radical commitment, hope, heaven, and the resurrection-centered message of the New Testament.

Gary R. Habermas asks whether Jesus’ resurrection can be investigated and established as history. Beginning with miracles, historical method, reason, and faith, he compares naturalistic and faith-centered alternatives with the case for a demonstrable resurrection, then relates his foundational research to later scholarship and the minimal-facts method.