Here are 100 books that Four Views on Hell fans have personally recommended if you like
Four Views on Hell.
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I’m the founder of PreachersNSneakers, a network of social media accounts and books of the same title, which looks to get others to question the state of the modern church and our obsession with wealth, entertainment and fame. Going through the process of curating the accounts and writing the book has helped me develop expertise on mega churches, celebrity pastors, social media and the prosperity gospel. My goal is to get all people to laugh, think and live more authentically.
Blessed provides a comprehensive look into why church is what it is in America today. Her approachable writing style and personal anecdotes keep the reader enthralled in a topic that could easily be presented in a dry, academic way. I’m obsessed with this false idea of a prosperity gospel and why so many people still believe it. If you have questions about why church looks more like a show today than a worship service, this book is for you.
The book helped to validate my concerns about the prosperity gospel movement but also encouraged me to not condemn those who are in it, but to seek understanding and even relationships with those that believe differently than I do. The background and research Bowler provides were a major contributor to my book and helped lay the groundwork for the questions I pose.
How have millions of American Christians come to measure spiritual progress in terms of their financial status and physical well-being? How has the movement variously called Word of Faith, Health and Wealth, Name It and Claim It, or simply prosperity gospel come to dominate much of our contemporary religious landscape?
Kate Bowler's Blessed is the first book to fully explore the origins, unifying themes, and major figures of a burgeoning movement that now claims millions of followers in America. Bowler traces the roots of the prosperity gospel: from the touring mesmerists, metaphysical sages, pentecostal healers, business oracles, and princely prophets…
I’m the founder of PreachersNSneakers, a network of social media accounts and books of the same title, which looks to get others to question the state of the modern church and our obsession with wealth, entertainment and fame. Going through the process of curating the accounts and writing the book has helped me develop expertise on mega churches, celebrity pastors, social media and the prosperity gospel. My goal is to get all people to laugh, think and live more authentically.
This book invites questioning very established Christian ideas that many are afraid to bring up. On the opposite end, it provides a helpful resource to those looking to have tough conversations with friends about their faith. I loved this book because it helped me wrestle with my own questions about my faith and provide tools for helpful discourse with friends and family. Not exactly a light read, but immensely important.
Addressing 12 controversial issues about Christianity-the Bible's teaching on gender and sexuality, the reality of heaven and hell, and more-this book shows how current psychological and scientific research actually aligns with teaching from the Bible.
I am the teaching pastor of Woodland Christian Church, a role I've held since 2010. I preach God’s Word 1 to 3 times weekly, and I'm also a conference speaker and author. While I do some counseling and discipling, my main focus is on teaching and preaching, which involves studying God’s Word for 20 to 30 hours per week. I've learned biblical financial principles and I'm passionate about equipping people with them. With ten children on a single-income pastor’s salary, I've had to apply these principles in my own life, which has reinforced their importance and effectiveness.
God and Money is primarily a guide to giving. Still, it is also a testimony of how the authors, while attending Harvard, became conflicted about their extravagant lifestyles and convicted of the need to give more. In other words, something enjoyable and unique about the book is that the authors discuss finances, but it is also their story.
They also use modern-day case studies and practical ways to apply the Bible’s teaching. They followed up with True Riches, pride to gratitude, coveting to content, anxiety to trust, and indifference to love are the chapter topics.
John Cortines and Gregory Baumer met as Harvard MBA candidates in a men’s Bible study and stopped asking “How much should I give?” and started asking “How much do I need to keep?” With their top-notch education and rising careers, Cortines and Baumer were guaranteed comfort and security for the rest of their lives. However, when their plans for saving and spending collided with God’s purposes for extravagant generosity, they were each compelled to make a life-changing decision that challenges the values held by mainstream America and many Christian commentators. Cortines and Baumer show not only how to radically give,…
I’m the founder of PreachersNSneakers, a network of social media accounts and books of the same title, which looks to get others to question the state of the modern church and our obsession with wealth, entertainment and fame. Going through the process of curating the accounts and writing the book has helped me develop expertise on mega churches, celebrity pastors, social media and the prosperity gospel. My goal is to get all people to laugh, think and live more authentically.
This was another foundational book for the network I created, PreachersNSneakers, and seemed to validate some of the questions I already had about Christianity. This book is packed with statistics and other realities about how much poverty and suffering there is in the world compared to the small subset of Western Christians that live with relative wealth. This book helps wrestle with the idea that a few get to flourish while masses live in poverty and how we as Christians should live our lives knowing that fact. This book is challenging in the best way and is a must-read for those who have questions about the relationship between faith and money.
In an age obsessed with wealth, Christians seem to have forgotten that scripture encourages believers to give to the poor. Why do 1.3 billion people live in abject poverty? And what should Christians do about it?
Despite a dramatic reduction in world hunger, 34,000 children still die daily of starvation and preventable disease, and 1.3 billion people around the world remain in abject poverty.
Dr. Ron Sider, a professor of theology, examines the issues of poverty and hunger in modern society. While the Bible is full of instructions to care for the poor and warns against being seduced by riches,…
The question I have for Christian authors is this: are we Christian authors or authors who are Christian? The realm of horror is the perfect genre to explore the human condition in all of its depravity. Why do Christians avoid this genre when at the end of the day? I grew up watching horror movies with my grandmother and I enjoy the thrills and chills, the questions the genre asks, and the various ways horror can be depicted. Christians understand the dark forces that underlie our natural world. And we understand the darkness within ourselves. But unlike Hollywood horror, we know what the solution – Christ. So that’s why this is a passion of mine.
The Road to Hell explores the worse day in the main character’s life.
He loses his job, gets into a car accident, and then dies and goes to hell. From there, the story explores our main character forays into hell and how it changes his life when he comes back.
From someone who really didn’t know about God to a person who now acknowledges that He exists, it’s startling journey. I read this book in a few short hours. It was gripping and that good.
Lucas Stone suffers a horrific accident, experiences the terrors of Hell, and returns from the dead paralyzed and alone until an unexpected new friend finds him. Arrogant, self-absorbed speaker and author Drake Crawford has written a new book that challenges the traditional Christian theology of Hell. Luke and Drake are drawn together by supernatural forces beyond their realm of understanding to face the spiritual battle that lies ahead on... The Road to Hell.
The question I have for Christian authors is this: are we Christian authors or authors who are Christian? The realm of horror is the perfect genre to explore the human condition in all of its depravity. Why do Christians avoid this genre when at the end of the day? I grew up watching horror movies with my grandmother and I enjoy the thrills and chills, the questions the genre asks, and the various ways horror can be depicted. Christians understand the dark forces that underlie our natural world. And we understand the darkness within ourselves. But unlike Hollywood horror, we know what the solution – Christ. So that’s why this is a passion of mine.
I call him HIM is an apocalyptic horror story about a man who is a fighting machine.
Hell has come to earth and wreaked havoc. Demonic beings lurk everywhere, feasting off of humanity. Our main character is simply called Him. He has no name, but only rage as he kills demonic hordes with his sword and his strength.
Where is God in a world filled with demonic influences? Where is God when the cry of humanity reaches out for answers? This thought consumes Him, but there may be a light. A young girl who may be the key.
Scott Kimak blends this horror, apocalyptic story with gritty violence, intense action scenes, coarse language, but also themes of redemption and sacrifice.
In a post-apocalyptic world, a warrior and his family are driven underground, fighting for their very survival. When they do emerge, the futuristic planet they discover is very different from the one they left behind. Ruled by an evil presence which dominates and controls what is left of mankind, Earth has been reduced to a violent place of darkness, grief and destruction.I call him HIM follows the journey of this unnamed warrior as he loses both his family and his mind. As he hits rock bottom, all he can think of is his insatiable yearning for revenge until he meets…
When I was a kid in the 80s the superhero comics I was obsessed with were beginning to deal with the real world in a new way. And their creators were beginning to push and pull at the boundaries of the medium with a new spirit of play and provocation. I still love comics that seriously deal with real life – its complexities and its profound weirdness – and that push the medium in new directions and reckon with its history. I also want to be absorbed and moved and to identify intently with characters. It’s what I try to do in my own work, and what I look for in that of others.
This book is, to me, one of the true weird masterpieces of human imagination.
It is one of the things that made me want to make comics in the first place, that expanded my idea of what comics and storytelling could do. It’s deeply weird, extremely unsettling, dark, funny, and, at times, a little offensive. And it is unlike anything you will ever read anywhere else for the rest of your life.
One of its delights is how clear it is at the beginning that the author didn’t know what he was getting into when he started. He just followed his imagination, trusting completely, and ended up with something grand and unique. And none of his work after this is anything like it. Which is probably for the best.
A LONG-OUT-OF-PRINT CLASIC BY A MASTER OF UNDERGROUND COMICS
In the late 1980s, the idiosyncratic Chester Brown (author of the muchlauded Paying for It and Louis Riel) began writing the cult classic comic book series Yummy Fur. Within its pages, he serialized the groundbreaking Ed the Happy Clown, revealing a macabre universe of parallel dimensions. Thanks to its wholly original yet disturbing story lines, Ed set the stage for Brown to become a world-renowned cartoonist.
Ed the Happy Clown is a hallucinatory tale that functions simultaneously as a dark roller-coaster ride of criminal activity and a scathing condemnation of religious…
I became a science journalist because I’ve been fascinated by the natural world around me for as long as I can remember. I also always loved imagining another world or realm, ever since I first read The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe and The Wizard of Oz series as a child. So when I was writing my blog, Gory Details, at National Geographic, I naturally started to get curious about places around the world that are linked to legends of otherworldly realms. Now, as an author, I’ve had the chance to explore these places for myself, and I hope readers will enjoy going on the journey with me!
I was so surprised to learn from this book how little the Bible actually focuses on heaven and hell, given how much emphasis I heard about them growing up. This book is written by a historian and scholar of early Christianity, and I found his analysis of the history of thought on heaven and hell and modern ideas about the afterlife to be thoughtful and thorough.
This book really made me think about the Christian ideas of heaven and hell in a new way.
A New York Times bestselling historian of early Christianity takes on two of the most gripping questions of human existence: where did the ideas of heaven and hell come from and why do they endure?
What happens when we die? A recent Pew Research poll showed that 72% of Americans believe in a literal heaven and 58% believe in a literal hell. Most people who hold these beliefs are Christian and assume they are the age-old teachings of the Bible. But eternal rewards and punishments are found nowhere in the Old Testament and are not what Jesus or his disciples…
As a woman, wife, and Mom, I’m always looking to get lost in a good fictional romance. I’ve always been drawn more to the messy kind of love stories than the sappy sweet. If you’re like me, and need a bit of flaw in your characters and lots of steam, then you’ll want to read all of these books for sure. Always make sure to check trigger warnings before reading these books, though!
This book was my first Ashly Jade read and made me absolutely obsessed with her writing. Cruel Prince is the first book in The Royal Hearts Academy series and a High School Bully Romance. There is so much angst and steam in this story it will check all your boxes if you need a fast-paced smutty read with an amazing storyline.
I never thought I'd step foot in Royal Manor again. But four years later, here I am...back to finish my senior year at Royal Hearts Academy.
And forced to face Jace Covington.
My first friend. First crush. First kiss. The one I left behind.
Only—he isn't the same boy I gave my heart to.
This new Jace is as cruel as he is gorgeous. And he's determined to make my life a living hell. Along with the rest of his glorified family and crew of tyrants.
As a young Christian woman passionate about understanding how to serve God and others, I received mixed messages about what I could do in the world because I am female. One of my college professors encouraged me to get my PhD and return as the first female faculty member in their Department of Bible and Theology. Another professor said if I taught theology at the college level, I would be sinning, violating I Timothy 2:12, where the Apostle Paul commands women not to teach men but to learn in silence. Continuing my study in seminary, I was dissatisfied by both liberal and conservative theologians writing on sex and gender differences.
Susannah Cornwall is a leading scholar of intersex and Christian theology. She writes in the Anglican tradition.
This is one of her earlier books, which brings intersex experiences into conversation with the Bible, disability theologies, and LGBTQ theological perspectives. Cornwall's writings are essential for those willing to read beyond conservative Christian authors.
Mainstream Christian theology has valued the integrity of the body and the goodness of God reflected in creation. However, it has also asserted the complementarity of "normal" male and female physiology. Sex and Uncertainty in the Body of Christ offers the first systematic theology of the intersexed body.
The book analyzes the theological implications of physical intersex conditions and their medical treatment. The medical assumption of what constitutes male and female bodies is shown to raise essential questions about the meaning of incarnation and bodiliness. The book argues for a theology that speaks to stigmatized and marginal bodies, examining the…
