Benjamin Lamp

Chapter One: Grace, Thanksgiving, and the Gospel Paul, a servant of Jesus Christ as God has willed it, and Ben, his fellow servant in Christ, write to the church of God in every corner of America. To you we offer grace and peace from our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ. I am one to thank my God for the congregations where the preaching of Christ is done with fidelity, for the pastor who has no shame in opening the Scriptures, for the mother and father instructing...

One might be inclined to view Ephesians 6:10–20 as a straightforward account of spiritual warfare, yet the particular religious milieu of Ephesus lends Paul’s words an added intensity. As a pre-eminent city in Roman Asia, Ephesus was home to the venerated cult of Artemis and a broad fascination with the supernatural and the arts of magic. The New Testament bears witness to such an atmosphere; in Acts 19 we find Ephesian converts making public show of burning their magic books, and later a...

Is an abortion affirmed and prescribed in Numbers 5? I have often heard it put forward as a defense of abortion that the Bible is quite explicit on how to go about one and in fact, some argue that the bible gives instructions on how to perform one. The usual citation for this is the odd story in Numbers 5:11-31 of the “water of bitterness” or, in some mind’s “poison”, administered to a woman under suspicion of adultery. The line of reasoning is generally that the priest gives the woman...