First published in 1963, in East Germany, They Divided the Sky tells the story of a young couple, living in the new, socialist, East Germany, whose relationship is tested to the extreme not only because of the political positions they gradually develop but, very concretely, by the Berlin Wall, which went up on August 13, 1961. The story is set in 1960 and 1961, a moment of high political cold war tension between the East Bloc and the West, a time when many thousands of people were leaving the young German Democratic Republic (the GDR) every day in order to seek better lives in West Germany, or escape the political ideology of the new country that promoted the "farmer and peasant" state over a state run by intellectuals or capitalists. The construction of the Wall put an end to this hemorrhaging of human capital, but separated families, friends, and lovers, for thirty years. The conflicts of the time permeate the relations between characters in the book at every level, and strongly affect the relationships that Rita, the protagonist, has not only with colleagues at work and at the teacher's college she attends, but also with her partner Manfred (an intellectual and academic) and his family. They also lead to an accident/attempted suicide that send her to hospital in a coma, and that provide the backdrop for the flashbacks that make up the narrative. Wolf's first full-length novel, published when she was thirty-five years old, was both a great literary success and a political scandal. Accused of having a 'decadent' attitude with regard to the new socialist Germany and deliberately misrepresenting the workers who are the foundation of this new state, Wolf survived a wave of political and other attacks after its publication. She went on to create a screenplay from the novel and participate in making the film version. More importantly, she went on to become the best-known East German writer of her generation, a writer who established an international reputation and never stopped working toward improving the socialist reality of the GDR.

A curious relic from a once popular philosophy of Bible interpretation that combined astrology with eschatology, this bizarrely fascinating work, first published in 1919, purports to explain the entire contents of the Good Book via the Zodiac. LUDWIG B. LARSEN (1864-1929), about whom little is known today, discusses how his unique perspective relates to: . God's laws . the end of time . the ages of the heaven and earth . 6,000 years of recorded history . Bible prophecies . the "twelve tribes of the United States" . the truth of Mormonism . and more. Complete with all of the original charts and diagrams, this will intrigue readers of religious ephemera.

On March 26, 1997, the bodies of 39 men and women were found in an opulent mansion outside San Diego, all victims of a mass suicide. Messages left by the Heaven's Gate group indicate that they believed they were stepping out of their 'physical containers' in order to ascend to a UFO that was arriving in the wake of the Hale-Bopp comet. The Heaven's Gate suicides were part of a series of major incidents involving New Religions in the 1990s, as the new millennium approached. Despite the major attention that Heaven's Gate attracted at the time of the suicides, there have been relatively few scholarly studies. This anthology on Heaven's Gate includes a combination of articles previously published in academic journals, some new writings from experts in the field, and some original Heaven's Gate documents. All the material is expertly brought together under the editorship of George D. Chryssides.

What happens when you breathe your last breath? Where do you go when you die? Will you still be you? How will you feel after you stop breathing? Will you still have emotions? Will the pain that brought you to death cease? Will there be joy? Or what about regrets or sorrow? You may ask, ‘Will I still exist?’ ‘Will I still know who I am?’ If so, ‘will I be alone? Or will others be with me? In Heaven? Or worse, will I be In hell?’ So, you say, ‘I lived a good life. Am I going to Heaven? God will see I did more good things than bad.’ OK, so how do you know how living a good life is measured, assuming God judges and not you? Or even that good works are the requirements for what God requires to enter Heaven? And then to the test question, what makes you say what you say? Do we hope this is what happens, or does God offer insight through the Bible? This study is unto life, eternal life with Jesus. Solomon declares that ‘the day of one’s death is better than the day of birth.’ (Ecclesiastes 7:1) To the world’s thinking, they would say, ‘that is weird; how can this be?’ Are you now curious about what the Bible says about what happens when a Christian dies? Are you drawn to ask yourself, ‘what do I really think and thus believe will happen when I die?’ Come. Bring your Bible, a highlighter, pen and paper, and an open heart, and let’s journey together to see what the Bible says about eternal life with and in Jesus. Having my wife’s recent passing from life to life, she will be our guide in reference as I strive to ask the questions you may ask about what happens next. Ready to start?