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Pay close attention to John’s testimony of how he responded to racism and being beaten. This was based entirely on him embracing the ethic of Jesus as represented in the Sermon on the Mount. Read more

The following is the reflections of W. R. Matthews, an Anglican minister who died in 1973: “If we are in fact strangers and pilgrims, we have certain conclusions to draw which concern our daily lives. There is a counsel in most spiritual religions…that we should cultivate detachment. This has not meant, in the mind of the best spiritual guides, that we should wrap ourselves in an inhuman aloofness from the affairs of human beings, or that we should look on... Read more

Over the course of the seven years between 2012-2019, my favorite TV show, by far, has been the revamped Sherlock Holmes saga known as Elementary. Johnnie Miller and Lucy Lieu were perfect foils for each other, and Robert Doherty is an excellent script writer/overseer of the entire series. It should have won all sorts of Emmys. What made it especially interesting are the following: 1) changing the setting to New York in the present day, while still name dropping the... Read more

One of the most influential Reformed and Puritan exegetes of the late 16th and early 17th century was William Perkins, whose works for the longest time were out of print until the 20th century. Andrew Ballitch has now done us all a good service (and thanks to Lexham Press as well) by providing a detailed exposition of Perkin’s hermeneutical method of interpreting Scripture, which involved the analogy of faith, context, and collation (the latter referring to the comparing of Scripture... Read more

Chris Armitage was my English Lit teacher in 1971-74, who open the treasury of the metaphysical poets, Donne and Herbert, for example (and later Gerard Manley Hopkins), as well as Shakespeare. I owe him a great debt, and now after the longest tenure ever at UNC as a teacher (over 50 years), he is becoming emeritus in status at the university. This is my tribute to him. —– Hommage The merit in emeritus Is that you are esteemed, While your... Read more

BEN: You state that Satan and the evil spirits cannot be redeemed, that God’s whole salvation plan focuses on humans. But aren’t the angels also created in God’s image? Why could they not be saved if they fall like humans? MICHAEL: I outline this in Chapter 12 of the book. Basically, Hebrews 2 connects the plan of salvation with the incarnation. Jesus became man, indicating the focus of the redemptive plan was humanity. This is consistent with the original Fall.... Read more

BEN: Helpful are the following sentences: “The kingdom of darkness will lose what is essentially a spiritual war of attrition, for the gates of hell will not be able to withstand the church. This is why believers are never commanded to rebuke spirits and demand their flight in the name of Jesus. It is unnecessary. Their authority has been withdrawn by the Most High. Believers in turn are commanded to reclaim their territory by recruiting the citizens in those territories... Read more

If you want a review of recent important analysis of Paul by the major players, this is the book for you! Now available on Amazon and everywhere else too. Kudos to Dr. Myers who did a good job on his contributions to this study. Read more

BEN: You take the position that ‘possession’ is the wrong word for what the NT describes for instance in the case of Mary Magdalene. You prefer the term demonized. At the same time you argue that while genuine Christians can’t be owned by Satan (they are the Lord’s), nevertheless they can be demonized, which can include persecution, harassment, succumbing to false teaching, and even enslavement to sin. You distinguish this, for example from the Gerasene demoniac where the control center... Read more