The textual variance surrounding Matthew 17:21 highlights a fundamental epistemological divergence in biblical scholarship. Epistemology considers how one knows what he knows. In the Received or Ecclesiastical texts, preserved through centuries of corporate liturgical use, the verse stands as an indispensable element of Christ’s words: “Howbeit this kind goeth not out but by prayer and fasting.” Retained faithfully within the King James Version, this reading testifies to the robust doctrine...

Every soul faces the most consequential exchange in existence, one Jesus Christ stated plainly: “For whosoever will save his life shall lose it: and whosoever will lose his life for my sake shall find it” (Matthew 16:25). The word rendered life is the Greek psuche—soul. To clutch one’s own soul, directing it by one’s own will and sin, is to lose it eternally. To surrender that same soul wholly to Christ is to receive it back forever purified, kept, and made whole by His shed blood. This...

Men err when they make Pentecost the birthday of the church. The record stands plain in Acts 2:1: “And when the day of Pentecost was fully come, they were all with one accord in one place.” The Lord Jesus guaranteed, "I will build my church" (Matt 16:18), using the future tense because the church already existed in embryonic form in those disciples gathered around Him. What Pentecost accomplished was the enduement of power for a church already constituted: “But ye shall receive power, after...