Letter from Ed Steele

This website is designed to provide Bible studies through Power Point presentations, documents, and videos to any who desire them. I prepared all these studies and messages to present to the churches the Lord blessed me to serve as pastor. I would like for them to be available to others also. The Scriptures tell us the Word of the Lord endures forever so I would like for my understanding and analysis of the Bible to live on as well. Therefore, I am prayerful that many will be blessed as this website is used as a conduit for the information to flow through.

When any man surrenders to the ministry, he has no idea how the Lord will use him. The same was true for me. Some become great preachers proclaiming the Word of God. Others are faithful pastors to their people. Some are given to the ministry of teaching. I have always had a burden to be a faithful pastor to the churches where I have served as pastor, to their extended families, and even into the neighborhoods surrounding the churches. I believe the Scripture found in 1 Corinthians 12:26, "And whether one member suffer, all the members suffer with it; or one member be honoured, all the members rejoice with it", certainly applies to the pastor. It became obvious to me (and others) that when I tried to preach, I came across as a teacher. When I studied spiritual gifts and discovered that some preachers have the gift of prophecy (forth- telling the Word of God) and others the gift of teaching, I understood how the Lord wanted to use me. He wanted me to be a teacher.

I found encouragement when reading Ephesians 4:11, "And he gave some, apostles; and some, prophets; and some, evangelists; and some, pastors and teachers." If I could not be a great preacher or evangelist, I would try to allow the Lord to use me to be a good pastor and teacher in the churches where He placed me.

To be a good teacher one must study to learn what needs to be taught. I have been thrilled and greatly blessed by everything I have been able to learn through personal Bible study, by listening to others, and by reading what others have written concerning the Scriptures. I believe that what I have learned, however, has not been for me to have more knowledge, but for me to share what I have learned with others. My next birthday will be my 80th so I know that I will have only a few more years to live. What will I leave behind?

If I have been faithful as a pastor, some who have benefited from that will have fond memories of me. Some who have heard me teach will remember some of the things they heard me share from Scripture, but memory is often fading. With advancing age, there is another verse that has encouraged the formation of this website. "Thou therefore, my son, be strong in the grace that is in Christ Jesus. And the things that thou hast heard of me among many witnesses, the same commit thou to faithful men, who shall be able to teach others also" (2 Timothy 2:1, 2). If I am to be strong in the grace of the Lord, then I must pass on what I have learned from Scripture to others, that they may share it with others and they can share it with others, and on and on.

Therefore, many of the Bible studies I have prepared through the years can be downloaded from this website. There is absolutely no charge on anything you download! Jesus said, "Freely ye have received, freely give" (Matthew 10:8). It is my prayer that people will not only learn Scripture from this website, but other pastors and teachers can download some studies that it took me hours and hours to prepare and use them with less time and effort on their part. They will certainly be able to change anything to make it better or to correct anything with which they disagree.

Many of the Bible studies I had taught through the years were converted to PowerPoint presentations. There are over 90 PowerPoint presentations that can be downloaded. This includes verse by verse commentaries of Revelation and Daniel. Something I learned from Dr. Clarence Larkin in his book "Dispensational Truth" inspired me to prepare 8 studies on the 7 Kingdom of Heaven parables from Matthew 13. A chapter from Dr. John Phillips book "Exploring the Future" concerning Jacob's prophecies to his sons in Genesis 49 thrilled me so I enlarged on what he presented in 8 studies. Many more present just a single lesson. So much of what I am now passing on came from others to me. I have been blessed and only desire to be a blessing. They were made on a 2010 Microsoft PowerPoint and should be usable on most computers.

For many of my studies, I prepared a handout to pass out to those who were in the classes I taught. Some of them go right along with the PowerPoint lessons associated with them. Some of the handouts are simple skeleton outlines and others are more detailed with verses being printed out.

In recent months, I have been making menu driven DVDs of me teaching lessons and preaching sermons. Most (if not all) of the PowerPoint lessons have been converted to DVDs that have me presenting the lessons with audio. Some of the DVDs are from videos I prepared using my small camcorder in our home. Some DVDs have a video in the first lesson where I explain what the lessons on that particular DVD are about with the other lessons being recorded on my laptop as I go through the PowerPoint presentations. There should be over 15 of these DVDs available with each one having multiple lessons. All of the lessons and messages can be downloaded to be watched on a computer, television, tablet, etc. They can also be downloaded to a computer and copied to a blank DVD.

If anyone cannot download and copy their own DVDs, they can contact me and I will mail DVDs that I have made of any study they are interested in. Once again, as long as I can afford the blank DVDs and the mailing cost they will be provided free to any who request them. Please understand that these are not professionally done! I only prepared them to get the messages out and not for their quality.

Other resources available are manuscripts and documents that I have written. Some are only a lesson about a particular subject that is only a few pages long. There are 5 documents that contain 13 lessons each similar to a Sunday School Quarterly. I have recently written a commentary on the Gospel of John that I entitled "The Lamb of God in the Tabernacle of Moses" that has 29 lessons on 163 pages. The biography I wrote of Bro. R. G. Holland's life several years ago is available for download. These documents have all been converted to PDF with bookmarks for each lesson and can be downloaded to a computer or other device or phone. If anyone would like to have my original Microsoft Word copies of these documents, I will gladly attach them to an e-mail.

Therefore, available free on this site are PowerPoint presentations, Microsoft Word class handouts, DVDs with each containing many hours of Bible study, and documents on various Bible studies. Many of these are related to each other. For example, you can download my PowerPoint presentations of Revelation to your computer and present them on a video screen, print out the handouts of Revelation to hand out to the members of your class, and watch the videos of me teaching Revelation using the PowerPoints to better understand my thoughts when I prepared them. Daniel has a DVD and PowerPoint, but I did not prepare class handouts. There is a DVD of "Understanding The Will Of God" that has 6 lessons, but there are only class handouts for the first 4 of those lessons. There are other handouts and/or PowerPoint presentations that have a related DVD with me presenting the lessons and sharing my thoughts on the study. Listening to my explanations may help others to use the PowerPoint presentations.

I hope you will be able to take advantage of the many studies that are offered on this site in various forms. Other studies will be added as I am able to prepare them. You are free to reproduce anything you download from this site to give to others. If you are able to use any material downloaded from this site in your teaching ministry, no recognition needs to be given to me for having prepared them. You are free to change any of the PowerPoint presentations or class handouts that you may disagree with and replace it with what you believe.

Respectfully offered in Jesus' name,

Ed Steele