Vishal Mangalwadi forecasts the West’s catastrophic decline as its foundations
are undermined by public education
Pasadena, July 11, 2019: The Bible changed everything for the better, claims Vishal Mangalwadi, author & social reformer, dubbed ‘India’s foremost Christian intellectual’ (Christianity Today, USA). Without Biblical revelation, Americans can no longer believe their foundational “truths” that “all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights.” This Book Changed Everything reveals the Bible’s far-reaching effects and explains why the West faces potential catastrophe by ignoring its founding text, the Bible. Mangalwadi asks – Can the West be renewed?
In 316 pages and 15 chapters, Dr. Mangalwadi examines the Bible’s influence on modernity’s presuppositions and institutions, including philosophy, law, literature, language, economics, industry, diplomacy, politics, leadership and more. Chapters on journalism and literature by contributors Dr. Jenny Taylor (UK) and Dr. Ashish Alexander (India) support the claim that the Bible’s impact is global.
See a synopsis of the book’s four sections, on https://www.revelationmovement.com.
Vishal was born and educated in India. Along with his wife, Ruth, he began serving India’s destitute in 1976. With help from the ruling elite, high-caste opponents of his work burnt down his community and attempted to murder him. Political imprisonment on trumped-up charges led him to study how the West eradicated chronic poverty and built relatively just, free, and prosperous societies. His investigation led to the conclusion that his professors were wrong in crediting skepticism and unbelief as the source of the West’s amazing development. The West was reformed by martyrs who risked their lives for the truth.
In our age of unbelief, it takes intellectual confidence to chronicle how the Bible’s inspired writings fired-up the imagination of ‘change agents’: European scholars and reformers, America’s Founders and builders. It explains why the United States became a nation and not an empire and why, following WW2, it helped end imperialism. Mangalwadi answers the question: why our world is not governed by emperors and caliphs but by presidents, prime Ministers, and chancellors.
Written in a non-academic but compelling style, Mangalwadi makes the case that a Bible’s doctrine, ‘the priesthood of all believers’, inspired equality, integrity, universal education, and the West’s unique devotion to honest work. These principles are now being abandoned by the West’s elite.
Tolerance, frequently a subject in Today’s headlines, is demystified among the book’s many historical essays. University professors may be shocked to learn that European intolerance was ended by a diligent study of the Bible. Scriptures freed human conscience from the tyranny of the state and the church. The Bible put the individual soul directly under God. It enabled heroes to defy emperors, contending as did Martin Luther, “Here I stand. My conscience is captive to the Word of God…”
Mangalwadi traces how the Bible translation created most modern literary languages in the West. Biblical language shaped the West’s optimistic, family-oriented worldview. By defining words and figures of speech the Bible imprinted its view of reality on literature and media in the West and the modern world.
‘If the West rejects the worldview that gave meaning to its languages, it will go the way of Fascist Germany or Marxist Russia,’ says Dr. Mangalwadi. ‘Fascism amputated Germany’s soul — the German language which defined words in the light of the Bible — and the whole world paid the price. Thankfully, history need not repeat itself. The Bible has revived the West in the past; it can do so again.’
This Book Changed Everything, published simultaneously on three continents, is climbing the charts. Mangalwadi asks these challenging questions: why has political discourse gone sour? Why is civility disappearing from university campuses? Why is family collapsing? Why does the world seem to be spiraling out of control? He explains that many are losing the ability to engage in rational discourse, because they have forgotten the wisdom that says love is a fruit of the Spirit, not chemistry.
This book makes sense of the senselessness of our times. Therefore, many reviewers rate Dr. Mangalwadi among the world’s top Christian thinkers. See Eric Metaxas Show interview (short version)
Eric Metaxas Show interview (longer version).
Mangalwadi’s previous work, The Book that Made Your World (Thomas Nelson), showed how the Bible gave the West its unique faith in human rationality and dignity. It asked the question: “Can the words of men be the Word of God?” This new book covers aspects of history not explored in the earlier work. More importantly, with rare philosophical insight, this volume 1 of the four-volume series takes first steps into the spiritual realm of inspiration, imagination, visions and supernatural revelation.
Steve Green, Chairman of Washington’s Museum of the Bible said of the book: ‘Most people have no idea of the Bible’s influence upon our world. Vishal explores history, gives evidence and powerful arguments that the modern world is inconceivable without the Bible.’
Corporate Comm India(CCI Newswire)
