By Elizabeth Prata

I grew up in a family of means, where the breathless rush of the ‘new’ was king. We bought the first and newest of everything. Color TV? Got one. Remote control? First on the block to have it. 27″ TV? Over there in the living room. Pong just came out? We played it. Central vacuum? Installed. And so on.

When I met my husband in 1990, I decided to switch gears, and we went the frugal route. Downsize. No debt. Use things till they break, and then if possible, fix them instead of buying new. I sold my new house with its mortgage, and he sold his. He owned a camp by a lake that had been in the family since the 1950s. Thus, it had no mortgage. “Camps” were the name for a summer seasonal dwelling by the lake to which the family would…

I still get push-back when challenging the popular eschatological narrative: that a seven-year tribulation period is coming, that the Jews will build a Temple and resume animal sacrifices with God’s approval, that there will be a seven-year peace treaty, that God will seal 144,000 Jewish evangelists who will win countless souls to Christ during this “tribulation period,” and so forth. It pains me to repeat this foolishness. People who make this stuff up have made the eschaton into a comic book and have done a HUGE disservice to the body of Christ.

Today’s little rant won’t start with Revelation, but rather at the other end of the Bible’s chronology. Many scholars believe the oldest book in the Bible is the book of Job. Most of us are (hopefully) aware of it. Job was a fabulously rich man who lived in the middle east at about the time of Abraham. Satan…

By Elizabeth Prata

We started in-person school Friday and I’m so happy. I love being with the kids and I love my school. I used to teach elementary school in Maine and since I’m a native New Englander, all my school life whether as a certified teacher, substitute, or student, I was used to the Post-Labor day start. We had a September to June schedule. I’ve never gotten used to the South’s August to May schedule, but I love the job anyway.

By Elizabeth Prata

Thank goodness for historians. In ancient Rome during the last days of the Apostle Paul, Sallust and Livy, for example, wrote of the notorious jail in Rome known as the Mamertine, dubbed so in the medieval period. It’s originally known in history as the Carcer, or the Tullianum, or at least, the lower half of the underground dungeon was. History does not record for a definite fact that Peter and Paul were at different times held there, but tradition and Roman practice indicate it was a strong possibility.

This essay is constructed in three sections:

Section 1: The prison itself. What was it like?
Section 2: Paul in Prison
Section 3: Facing Death

What was the Mamertine Prison like?

The Mamertine prison was a prison in the Roman Forum where high-profile prisoners…