Reginald A. Kemp, Sr.

A Layman’s Look at The Prison Epistles

The Prison Epistles were written during Paul’s imprisonment in Rome about 62-63 A.D. Each of these epistles were studied independently as material for teaching adult Sunday school classes. Each is word-by-word study of the text with a definition of its meaning derived from Bible dictionaries and commentaries. In effect, these are inductive studies: what does the text say, what does it mean and how is it to be applied to one’s life. I was doing a review of Paul’s three great missionary trips when I realized he had made at least four such trips and perhaps five. His fourth trip included the two years he spent in Roman confinement and his preparation of the epistles covered by this study. We have no biblical record of a possible fifth missionary trip, but tradition tells us that Paul was released in Rome in 63 A.D. and traveled widely visiting the churches he had helped found and perhaps even traveled to Spain. The introduction to this publication is a review of the details of this trip, the people he encountered, the public personalities he was privileged to witness to including kings, governors, and the elite of Rome’s military. It details the places visited, the hardships encountered and the impact of this saint’s witness for Christ.

A Layman’s Look at A Trilogy of Church Related Studies

There were 6,812,009,152 people in the world in 2009. Every minute there are 245 births worldwide and 102 people die. Every year there are 129 million births and 53 million deaths. How many of these are going to a Christ-less eternity and how many of the 129 million will never hear of Christ because we are too busy playing church in America?

This study is suggesting a radical departure from business as usual, the abandoning of the proven failure of the clerical model of church leadership and a return to the biblical model of a plurality of elders. This study is suggesting a departure from political correctness and the resumption of male responsibility for the governance of the church.