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.
Autorentext
On the second Sunday of October in 1954, Reggie at age 19 came to know the Lord Jesus Christ as his Savior. Raised as a Catholic because his father, a protestant and his mother, a catholic agreed to raise their children in that church or the priest would not perform their marriage service for them. They were faithful to that commitment and he and his five siblings attended the Catholic church regularly. Before that fateful day in 1954, Reggie knew only part of a single verse in the Bible, He will keep the feet of his saints, and the wicked shall be silent in darkness;1 Samuel 2:9a When he heard that Bible verse, he immediately put heel taps on his shoes. This was a naive interpretation as a young teen, but he was not going to be silent at night. This absolute conviction that the Bible was God's word, and every word was true was deeply embedded into his heart and mind through his Catholic church instruction. This conviction has remained with him since he came to know Christ and has led him to write and teach numerous Bible studies and thought papers on Bible truths.