 There's an interesting fact about the woman with the issue of blood that we often overlook. This unnamed woman is mentioned in three of the Gospels, and her miraculous healing has been the subject of millions of sermons in churches all around the globe. The account is known and cherished by Christians throughout the world, but we seldom think about its context.
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 When Solomon penned the words "Because sentence against an evil work is not executed speedily, therefore the heart of the sons of men is fully set in them to do evil" (Ecclesiastes 8:11), he summarized a principle that undergirds the entire biblical approach to criminal justice. He identified delayed punishment as the singular cause of rampant criminality. Modern criminologists may propose complex theories about socioeconomic factors, psychological conditions, or systemic inequalities, but Scripture presents a remarkably straightforward explanation: people commit crimes when they believe they can escape punishment. This simple observation, that somehow seems to elude modern criminologists, finds support throughout both testaments and offers practical guidance for contemporary criminal justice policy.
 Most American Christians assume our immigration system represents a reasonable balance between order and compassion. We tell ourselves that America welcomes legal immigrants while simply requiring people to follow proper procedures. This comfortable narrative allows us to support restrictive immigration policies without wrestling with the deeper question of whether our immigration system is acceptable to God. Unfortunately, this narrative rests on ignorance of both what the Bible actually commands regarding immigrants and also what American immigration law actually requires.
 Most Christians are familiar with Christ's comparison of faith to a mustard seed in Luke 17:5-6, but not many of us take time to read the rest of the passage. Consider what Jesus said in the first two verses:
 My entire life, I've heard arguments over the words "modest apparel" in I Timothy 2:9, so I decided to do my own study of them. I started with the Liddell and Scott lexicon entry for katastole (apparel) and followed it through with the entries for katastello, kata, and stello. I compared the various concepts with as much of the context of the examples as I could find, and then cross checked everything with several other lexicons.
 My wife recently led her class through a word study on worship, and I asked her to share her notes here for the benefit of my readers.
Many times, we look to our culture to answer questions about how we should interact with God. But every culture on the planet has sinful influences, so when we want to know more about God, we should look only to the Bible. A comment in my Sunday School class about the different ways people worship God led to this word study using the Masoretic and TR translated with KJV.  Mark Ward proclaims that the phrase wait on is a “false friend” based on a story about a woman misunderstanding Romans 12:7 and a single piece of evidence. Ward’s sole piece of evidence is that the Oxford English Dictionary says that the verbal phrase wait on which was used in Romans 12:7 is obsolete. That’s it. Ward didn’t bother to investigate this phrase any further than that. The OED said the phrase was obsolete, Ward believed it, and that settled it.
 Out of all of Mark Ward’s so-called “false friends” that I’ve studied so far, the word convenient has come the closest to being an actual “false friend,” yet Ward has devoted remarkably little effort to studying and discussing this word. I’ve found Ward’s scholarship to be sloppy in general, but the section of his book devoted to the word convenient is even worse. If Ward actually wanted to prove his case with logic and reason, this term would be one of his prime examples, but I suspect that it lacks the emotional appeal to fit within his normal modus operandi. I’m going to begin by correcting Ward’s shoddy scholarship and presenting the case that he should have made before arguing against that case and demonstrating that convenient is not a “false friend” after all.
 Mark Ward claims the word commendeth is a “false friend” he has “rediscovered for the twenty-first century.” Yes. Those are his exact words, and lest we think Ward is being facetious with that claim, he immediately follows it with “I’m not exaggerating.” I’m not entirely sure what Ward thinks he has rediscovered, but his video on this word is one of the worst examples of scholarship I’ve ever seen.
 John 14:2 is a passage that is often brought up in discussions of the differences between the KJV and other translations, and it is no surprise to find the word mansions from this passage listed among Mark Ward’s “false friends.” In his video on this word, Ward follows the typical anti-KJV argument by saying that “there’s an obvious contextual conflict. What in the world does it mean for the Father’s house to have many mansions inside it? Mansions are houses.” Regarding the Greek word translated as “mansions,” Ward claims, “The word means ‘room.’” Room is the word that most modern translations use here, and it has become widely accepted as accurate. Ward claims that the KJV translators also understood the Greek word to mean room and that they only used the word mansion because that word used to mean “room.” Ward is mistaken on several counts.
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Bill Fortenberry is a Christian philosopher and historian in Birmingham, AL. Bill's work has been cited in several legal journals, and he has appeared as a guest on shows including The Dr. Gina Show, The Michael Hart Show, and Real Science Radio.
Contact Us if you would like to schedule Bill to speak to your church, group, or club. "Give instruction to a wise man, and he will be yet wiser: teach a just man, and he will increase in learning." (Proverbs 9:9)
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