Unquestionably, the earliest written use of ekklesia in the New Testament comes from the letters of Paul. Scholars differ on which of Paul’s letters was the earliest. Some opt for Galatians; while others prefer 1 Thessalonians. I’m in the “others” group for reasons I won’t go into ...
So the letter to the church of Ephesus opens with the announcement of the author, as letters did back then: “Paul, an apostle of Christ Jesus by the will of God, to the saints in Ephesus…” As I walked along through sunny streets chewing on these words, I started thinking about how...
“President Trump’s fundraising is breaking records and we are paying close attention to the budget, allowing us to invest twice as much from now until Election Day than we did in 2016,”Murtaugh said in an email.“President Trump has also built the world’s greatest digital fundraising oper...
Be thou faithful — Our Lord does not say, till I come, as in the other letters, but unto death — Signifying that the angel of the church should quickly after seal his testimony with his blood, fifty years before the martyrdom of St. Polycarp, for whom some have mistaken him. And I...
I recently was reading through Paul’s two letters to his young associate, Timothy, and I recently wrote an article on what I found to be the main truth in Paul’s second letter to Timothy, and how that truth can be applied to us today. See: ...
Now that we are saved we no longer want to do the things that we did in the past, but more than likely we find ourselves committing the same sins that Jesus delivered us from again, and we feel so defeated, our joy in the Lord disappears and our Christian walk becomes a continual str...
“According to Paul Jacobsthal,‘Amongst the Celts the human head was venerated above all else, since the head was to the Celt the soul, centre of the emotions as well as of life itself, a symbol of divinity and of the powers of the other-world.’” As part of this worship of the ...