The national radio host and bestselling author of The American Miracle reveals the happy accidents, bizarre coincidences, and flat-out miracles that continue to shape America’s destiny. “ A hopeful message for our troubled times . . . Michael Medved has an eye for a story, and a preternatural gift for telling it in beguiling ways.”—Joseph J. Ellis, Pulitzer Prize and National Book Award–winning author of Founding Brothers Has God withdrawn his special blessing from the United States? Americans ponder that painful question in troubled times, as we did during the devastation of the Civil War and after the assassinations of the ’60s, and as we do in our present polarization. Yet somehow—on battlefields, across western wilderness, and in raucous convention halls—astounding events have reliably advanced America, restoring faith in the Republic’s providential protection. In this provocative historical narrative, Michael Medved brings to life ten haunting tales that reveal this purposeful pattern, including: • A near-fatal carriage accident forces Lincoln’s secretary of state into a canvas-and-steel neck brace that protects him from a would-be assassin’s knife thrusts, allowing him two years later to acquire Alaska for the United States. • A sudden tidal wave of Russian Jewish immigration, be­ginning in 1881, coincides with America’s rise to world leadership, fulfilling a biblical promise that those bless­ing Abraham’s children will themselves be blessed. • Campaigning for president, Theodore Roosevelt takes a bullet in the chest, but a folded speech in his jacket pocket slows its progress and saves his life. • At the Battle of Midway, U.S. planes get lost over empty ocean and then miraculously reconnect for five minutes of dive-bombing that wrecks Japan’s fleet, convincing even enemy commanders that higher powers intervened against them. • A behind-the-scenes “conspiracy of the pure of heart” by Democratic leaders forces a gravely ill FDR to replace his sitting vice president—an unstable Stalinist—with future White House great Harry Truman. These and other little-known stories build on themes of The American Miracle, Medved’s bestseller about America’s remarkable rise. The confident heroes and stubborn misfits in these pages shared a common faith in a master plan, which continues to unfold in our time. God’s Hand on America con­firms that the founders were right about America’s destiny to lead and enlighten the world.

The book of Genesis tells us that God made a covenant with Abraham, promising him a glorious posterity on the condition that he and all his male descendents must be circumcised. For thousands of years thereafter, the distinctive practice of circumcision served to set the Jews apart from their neighbors. The apostle Paul rejected it as a worthless practice, emblematic of Judaism's fixation on physical matters. Christian theologians followed his lead, arguing that whereas Christians sought spiritual fulfillment, Jews remained mired in such pointless concerns as diet and circumcision. As time went on, Europeans developed folklore about malicious Jews who performed sacrificial murders of Christian children and delighted in genital mutilation. But Jews held unwaveringly to the belief that being a Jewish male meant being physically circumcised and to this day even most non-observant Jews continue to follow this practice. In this book, Leonard B. Glick offers a history of Jewish and Christian beliefs about circumcision from its ancient origins to the current controversy. By the turn of the century, more and more physicians in America and England--but not, interestingly, in continental Europe--were performing the procedure routinely. Glick shows that Jewish American physicians were and continue to be especially vocal and influential champions of the practice which, he notes, serves to erase the visible difference between Jewish and gentile males. Informed medical opinion is now unanimous that circumcision confers no benefit and the practice has declined. In Jewish circles it is virtually taboo to question circumcision, but Glick does not flinch from asking whether this procedure should continue to be the defining feature of modern Jewish identity.

"The son of a Jewish father and Baptist mother, Paul Wilbur grew up attending synagogue. In college he was transformed by a Baptist minister's teaching about a rabbi, Jesus, who fulfilled the promise of the Torah. As he grew in his relationship with Jesus, Wilbur was reintroduced to the God of the Old Testament and began exploring his Jewish heritage. Along the way, he discovered the power of Jewish worship traditions-the weekly Shabbat, with the power of Holy Communion and dedication to family, along with other high holy traditions and feast days. Observing those ancient rituals, now infused with the power of the Holy Spirit, Wilbur heard a sound that he describes as a "roar from Zion." As evangelicals came to understand and incorporate ancient Jewish worship practices in their home and church lives, miracles broke out, fathers assumed their roles as the head of their families, prodigal children returned home, and marriages were restored. What began with one man is now becoming a movement, with tens of thousands taking part"--

The Gospel of John presents its readers, listeners, and interpreters with a serious problem: how can we reconcile the Gospel's exalted spirituality and deep knowledge of Judaism with its portrayal of the Jews as the children of the devil (John 8:44) who persecuted Christ and his followers? One widespread solution to this problem is the so-called "expulsion hypothesis." According to this view, the Fourth Gospel was addressed to a Jewish group of believers in Christ that had been expelled from the synagogue due to their faith. The anti-Jewish elements express their natural resentment of how they had been treated; the Jewish elements of the Gospel, on the other hand, reflect the Jewishness of this group and also soften the force of the Gospel's anti-Jewish comments. In Cast out of the Covenant, this book, Adele Reinhartz presents a detailed critique of the expulsion hypothesis on literary and historical grounds. She argues that, far from softening the Gospel's anti-Jewishness, the Gospel's Jewish elements in fact contribute to it. Focusing on the Gospel's persuasive language and intentions, Reinhartz shows that the Gospel's anti-Jewishness is evident not only in the Gospel's hostile comments about the Jews but also in its appropriation of Torah, Temple, and Covenant that were so central to first-century Jewish identity. Through its skillful use of rhetoric, the Gospel attempts to convince its audience that God's favor had turned away from the Jews to the Gentiles; that there is a deep rift between the synagogue and those who confess Christ as Messiah; and that, in the Gospel's view, this rift was initiated in Jesus' own lifetime. The Fourth Gospel, Reinhartz argues, appropriates Jewishness at the same time as it repudiates Jews. In doing so, it also promotes a "parting of the ways" between those who believe that Jesus is the messiah, the Son of God, and those who do not, that is, the Jews. This rhetorical program, she suggests, may have been used to promote outreach or even an organized mission to the Gentiles, following in the footsteps of Paul and his mid-first-century contemporaries.