The Untold Story of the New Testament Church: An Extraordinary Guide to Understanding the New Testament [Illustrated] [Paperback]

James H. Rutz (Foreword), Frank Viola (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: January 1, 2005

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.

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!

Editorial Reviews

Review

"Read this book at one sitting and you will marvel as the story of the early church unfolds before your very eyes." ----Tony Dale, editor for House 2 House magazine

"This volume has provided much needed information that is now in one place for the first time! Read it as I did with a highlighter pen in hand!" -- --Ralph W. Neighbour, Jr., author of Where Shall We Go From Here?

"This volume has provided much needed information that is now in one place for the first time! Read it as I did with a highlighter pen in hand!" ----Ralph W. Neighbour, Jr., author of Where Shall We Go From Here?

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.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Paperback: 194 pages
• Publisher: Destiny Image Publishers (January 1, 2005)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0768422361
• ISBN-13: 978-0768422368
• Product Dimensions: 8.9 x 6 x 0.5 inches
• Shipping Weight: 9.9 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (32 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #21,641 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
  • #24 in Books > Christian Books & Bibles > Ministry & Church Leadership > Church Administration

More About the Author

FRANK VIOLA is a Christian author and speaker. He speaks and writes on the supremacy of Jesus Christ, the deeper Christian life, and missional organic church. Frank's blog, "Beyond Evangelical," is one of the most popular Christian blogs on the Internet today. On it, he discusses the changing shape of evangelical Christianity, spiritual formation, mission and missional church, writing, productivity, and creativity. Frank has written for or contributed interviews to TIME, Christianity Today, Charisma, Ministry Today, Relevant, CBN, Good News, Prism, Out of Ur, ReThink, Neue, The Christian Post, and other periodicals.

Visit his blog at www.frankviola.org
Visit his website at www.ptmin.org

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

79 of 83 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Must read for everyone!, February 21, 2006

By 

M. Henry - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Untold Story of the New Testament Church: An Extraordinary Guide to Understanding the New Testament (Paperback)

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.

45 of 48 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Jimmy Bartles, August 25, 2005

By 

Jim Bartles (Lubbock, TX) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Untold Story of the New Testament Church: An Extraordinary Guide to Understanding the New Testament (Paperback)

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.

44 of 47 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Awesome work of scholarship, February 22, 2006

By 

Jim Hayford - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Untold Story of the New Testament Church: An Extraordinary Guide to Understanding the New Testament (Paperback)

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.