I don't think the readers of this newsletter know that I was asked to return to my elder position at Rose Creek Village a year ago. I had been living in Memphis the last few years as I recovered from a first cancer (leukemia), then contracted my second (lymphoma). I was recovered enough by last last year to return to the work of shepherding God's people. (I do not get paid for this, as I own a relatively prosperous business.) Rose Creek Village is a Christian community in west Tennessee.

People take time, and they are of course a priority over writing books and web pages. Nonetheless, I am slowly making progress on editing old pages on the site, improving the references, and writing Rome's Audacious Claim.

One of the projects I look forward to is writing a better history of the Roman Catholic Church, less polemical (argumentative) and covering more than just the papacy.

One of the more interesting things I have found in writing the book is that I am arguing only against the claims made in the Catholic Catechism (particularly paragraph 882) and Catholic apologists like Jimmy Akin, Stephen Ray, and others. Roman Catholic scholars, however, are subject to a higher academic standard, and they tend to admit that Jesus did not have the bishop of Rome or any succession in mind when he blessed Peter in Mathew 16 (e.g., Küng, H. 2001. The Catholic Church: A Short History. New York: Random House, Inc. Translated by Bowden, J. p. 41-42).

Even more surprising was the admission by the US Conference of Catholic Bishops that "any biblical and historical scholar today would consider anachronistic the question whether Jesus constituted Peter the first pope, since this question derives from a later model of the papacy which it projects back into the New Testament."

Yes, they really said that. It is in a document regarding an attempted reconciliation with Lutherans that can be found at the US Conference of Catholic Bishops web site. It is the first paragraph of the section titled "Focus on the New Testament Question" and the paragraph is numbered (9).

I hope to devote a solid week and a good 80 hours or more to getting the book fully to the editing stage the first week of November. Please pray for me in that endeavor. The church/community I help lead is beginning to thrive again, and the attacks from the enemy abound. I believe open doors for training in the "Rebuilding the Foundations" teachings I am doing is another reason for such strong opposition from the enemy.

Of course, seeing the devil strongly oppose us is encouragement, exciting us to persevere, to pray, and to exalt our Lord Jesus. Still, your prayers would really help.

I rarely ask for any financial help for anything, and never for me or the Christian-history.org web site. I do want to pass on a need today, though.

SHARING A MISSION REQUEST

I met a missionary when I was speaking at the Heaven's Family Reunion in Pittsburgh in August. "Heaven's Family" is a ministry, and I know many of the staff. They are my favorite ministry. Their web site is heavensfamily.org.

Philip, the missionary to Myanmar (former Burma), is a British man with an accent my wife and I both loved. His current project is to help get "orphans" from the orphanage back to their homes in remote villages. Once they are place back home, further help, if needed, is given so that the village and its families don't have to sell their children for survival.

Philip works with social workers who are using old computers that require a lot of maintenance and consume a lot of time. I bought them two refurbished Macbook Air computers, but they need four more. You can help with this project at https://heavensfamily.org/needs/?pressingneed=90474.

Thank you for any support you can give, or even for praying that the need is met. Thank you also for reading this.

In case you did not know, you can contact me by responding to this email, and you can save this email address for contacting me. I try to respond to every email, but sometimes that takes time.