The morning Manna will be provided at 6am. Thanks.

Studying Ephesians in the SSnet.org series Lesson 6, may the Holy Spirit be the speaker to your heart.

The Topic today is: “Prisoner for Christ and Mystery of God’s Agape love for Morning Manna of the Sabbath School Lesson Ephesians”.

The Opening Hymn will be 229 "Spirit of the Living God."

The Sabbath School Quarterly, downloadable from SSnet.org in the Teacher's Edition is on page 73-4.

The SSnet.org site allows anyone, anywhere to read the lesson in their own language. Choose your own language to see God speaking also to your heart.

Why do you not click on this now?

 https://www.adultbiblestudyguide.org/pdf.php?file=2023:3Q:SE:PDFs:EAQ323_06.pdf

---Or try in alternative this one:  https://ssnet.org/lessons/23c/less06.html

---Let us clear up some things first to properly understand Paul the Prisoner of Christ and also the mystery hidden now revealed.

---The mystery hidden now revealed is what Jonah could not understand. The mercy of God for repented individuals, Hebrews or Heathens alike!

---Who was wrong? God or Jonah? God did not change His approach.

---He always wanted anyone to repent not only Hebrews.

---So why was hidden? Because of human machinations by cutting out some from worship.

---God’s rule was that faith gives you a license for full membership. Not so with Jonah. And…and…the time of Jesus and the Samaritans…and Paul’s mention of the access issue to the temple.

---The Agape love of God is the thread of the whole Bible and the mystery that unfallen worlds cannot fully understand without wonder and amazement.

---Now Paul as a prisoner of Christ.

---Ellen White cited in Acts of the Apostles page 393 the Book of Acts by Luke where Paul and Luke knew about the Holy Spirit that told Paul that it may be his last trip to Jerusalem and that his future is going to be to be in “bonds”. Prisoner.

---So how did Paul react to this news? “I belong to Christ and He knows my beginning and my end. So if prisoner is my end then I am a prisoner of Christ”. Nice. Correct?

---Conditions were not very welcome when a person is placed in a prison. It was to wait for a court session or to be executed.

---Jerome Carcopino wrote a book on the Daily Life in Ancient Rome in 1938.

Source: https://archive.org/details/dailylifeinancie035465mbp

---From pages 183ff he is dealing with the court systems of Rome.

---Normally, everyone else working goes home in the afternoon about 3 o clock. Job done let’s go home. Slaves could go to the baths very early in the afternoon.

---Not for the lawyers. The Court started at candle-light in the morning and sessions run until dawn.

---It was popular and the public could attend.

---Pliny the Younger was a lawyer and at one time he was talking 5 hours without stop. When he finished, the emperor told him “spare your voice and hold your breath”.

---The Romans were fascinated by rhetorical speeches. That is why Paul is also rhetorical in his defenses in Acts. It was fashion and expected.

---Pliny the Younger came out of his long court sessions and wrote to a friend: “"You will easily conceive,. . the fatigue we underwent in speaking and de-

bating so long and so often, and in examining, assisting, and confuting such a number of witnesses; not to mention the difficulties and annoyance of the defendants' friends: Concipere animo poles quam simus fatigati = You can imagine how tired we are!"

---Carcopino the modern scholar said then in 1938: “We can indeed conceive it, but what seems inconceivable to us is that the Romans should have tolerated this exhausting system with no attempt to modify or lighten it. Are we to believe that their heads and nerves were more resistant to strain than ours?”

---So a system of boring court cases with people half asleep during procedures were used in Paul’s day to try him. He had to wait his turn too.

---Other emperors were interested in Court sessions. But what about Nero?

---Carcopino says page 137-138 that Nero used the Christians to light his gardens.

---He said that if one’s faith was blocking them to serve the idols and polytheism then Christians were accused of atheism by Nero!

---If Christians are particularistic about their religion and refuse to be ecumenical or accept the equity of religions principle in jurisprudence and life, then they were imprisoned and killed. Thus Paul.

---Is you pastor preaching that there are many roads to heaven? That all people will be saved because God loves everyone? Then move. When? Now.