This volume contains items that I have written on the subject of Calvinism. I have had a strong interest in this doctrinal system ever since I was an M.Div. student at Westminster Theological Seminary in Philadelphia (1962-1965). WTS at that time was a premiere Evangelical seminary, but was also most adamantly Calvinist in its theological orientation. During my years as a student there, I can remember no more than five other students besides myself that were not Calvinists. My teachers were respected Evangelical scholars as well as strict Calvinists.This affected me in two ways. First, I ...

In addition to my 49 years of teaching theology at the graduate level at The Cincinnati Bible Seminary (now Cincinnati Christian University), I have spent even more years than that as a preacher and teacher in local churches. I have taught hundreds and hundreds of Bible lessons, mostly for adult Bible classes. Some of my lesson series have been topical; some have been based on Bible books. Here, for the first time, I have decided to present one of the latter series in written form for public consumption. This book of lessons is not intended to be a scholarly commentary on the text of First ...

Few if any subjects in the Bible are more important than its teachings about Jesus Christ. In my graduate studies I attended two seminaries, Westminster Theological Seminary (Philadelphia) and Princeton Theological Seminary. In each program I had a course on Christology. In the WTS course I learned very much (more on this below), but in the PTS course the content was not very helpful for my future teaching purposes. The main reason for this difference is the vastly different view of the Bible held by each school. WTS was firmly committed to the inerrancy and authority of the Word, and PTS ...

"Along the way I have also spoken much on the Holy Spirit in local churches, and occasionally written for publication short pieces on various aspects of this topic. Many of the oral presentations and most of the written pieces are included in this volume. At the very beginning is a series of talks that I was invited to give for the Michigan Christian Convention in 2012. The suggested theme was “God’s Power in You—the Holy Spirit.” You can see how I developed that theme in Section One of this book. This is the first time they have been published; study them carefully!Section Two has ...

This volume contains various short essays and sermons, written and preached over the years, on what the Bible teaches about human beings. This is what systematic theology calls “anthropology,” from the Greek word anthropos, which means “man.” A systematic study of this subject covers three main areas: the nature of human beings, the problem of sin, and the problem of death. (From the Preface)