On My Way to Jubilee 2015

Posted on February 21, 2015 by J Richard Middleton

It’s Saturday afternoon and I’m sitting in the Atlanta airport, waiting for a flight to Pittsburgh. I’ll be speaking at the annual Jubilee conference tomorrow (Sunday) morning. This year’s conference theme is “This Changes Everything”—a reference to the radical message of the gospel. A brochure for the Jubilee 2015 conference can be found here, for those interested.

I’ll be giving the last of four keynote talks that stretch from Friday through Sunday. The topics for the talks are Creation, Fall, Redemption, and Restoration. The title of my talk is “Restoration—The Destiny of God’s Good Creation,” and I hope to take the attendees (mostly college students) on a tour of Scripture, to introduce them to the depth and length and height of God’s amazing love for this world, a love that leads to God’s commitment to redeem and restore creation.

I’m sort of going in to the conference blind, since I won’t have heard the other talks that precede my own; I will get there just in time for supper this evening. I would have liked to have been part of the entire event, which started on Friday. But my wife and I were already committed to being in Jamaica to take care of her mom and stepdad who live there (they are in their eighties); we left the cold and snow for sunny Jamaica ten days ago and we praise God for the wonderful things we were able to accomplish while we were there.

That prior commitment initially led me to turn down the invitation to speak at Jubilee 2015 since I couldn’t be in two places at once. But the good people who plan the conference wouldn’t give up and offered to fly me up directly from Jamaica to Pittsburgh, and then send me home to Rochester.

So, goodby sunshine! Welcome snow and cold!

I’ll let you know how it goes (the conference, not the cold).

A New Heaven and a New Earth Featured on the Baker Academic Blog

Posted on January 16, 2015 by J Richard Middleton

About a month ago I made reference to the Baker Academic blog, which had featured a post they asked me to write about my new eschatology book, along with an excerpt from the book, some reviews it got, and information on my upcoming speaking engagements.

I just received an email with a link to the Baker Academic blog for today, which mentions some of their books and authors currently featured on the Internet. This is what they listed for my book [with my own comments inserted in square brackets]:

Byron Borger, at Hearts & Minds Books, named J. Richard Middleton’s A New Heaven and a New Earth as 2014’s Best Book Of Biblical Studies.

“What a book!…There is no doubt in my mind that this book is urgently needed — among evangelicals and mainline folks alike — to be fully clear about God’s promises of new creation, and how this vision of a restored Earth can animate and sustain our efforts for cultural reform now. Richard is an excellent Biblical scholar and has worked on this serious volume for years; the endorsements have been robust and exceptional, and early readers report it is nearly life-changing.”

[The full version of the above quote is available on the Hearts & Minds website; and Byron Borger had previously posted a lengthy book review soon after the book was published.]

At The Hump of the Camel, Jon Garvey reviewed A New Heaven and a New Earth. [This is a substantial new review, with 20 comments as of today. However, it gets pretty silly at the end with a humorous post called “The Epileptic, Somewhat Elliptic, Low-Down, Apocalyptic Rastafarian Calypso Blues.”]

RJS continued to discuss Middleton’s A New Heaven and a New Earth in the post “The End of the World” at Jesus Creed. [Scot McKnight had previously reviewed it on that website.]

Richard Middleton wrote “God’s Bringing Creation to Its Glorious Destiny” for The High Calling. [I previously cited this in one of my posts.]

Thanks to Mason Slater for this heads up; and thanks to all the other wonderful folks at Baker Academic who care so well for the editing, production, and marketing of their books.

Canadian Evangelical Theological Association Website Updated

Posted on January 15, 2015 by J Richard Middleton

This is just a note to say that the website for the Canadian Evangelical Theological Association CETA) has been updated, with information about the upcoming conference in Ottawa (May 31, 2015); I had mentioned the Ottawa conference in a previous post. A Call for Papers is posted there (proposals due January 31, 2015).

Also, all published articles from the Canadian Theological Review are now available as PDFs from the website (going back to the beginning of the journal in 2012). See the journal page for access to back issues.

Although they are a bit behind in production, two new issues of the Canadian Theological Review will shortly be appearing, with a third not far behind. The journal hopes to be caught up by the end of the year.