Lesson Archive

From Atheist to Anointed

Personal Testimony • 2 Corinthians 1

Forty-one years of atheism, a federal prison bed, and the prayer at 3 AM that ended the hiding. Plus a study on why a good God allows pain — with Bethel, 2 Corinthians 1, and Gabby Gingras (CIPA).

The Doctrine of Original Sin

Study Series • Romans 5

A careful study of what Scripture actually teaches about original sin — examining Romans 5:12, inherited mortality vs. inherited guilt, and the implications for Jesus’ humanity.

TULIP, DAISY & ROSES

Discipleship • Doctrinal Study

Calvinism, Arminianism, and Molinism compared. Why Pleasant Springs teaches Molinism and the Origin of Sin — featuring Augustine, Pelagius, Luis de Molina, Irenaeus, Dr. Michael Heiser, and the 1972 Schultz dissertation.

Why We Need Jesus

PS-Kids • Ages 5–8

When Adam and Eve made a bad choice, it changed everything — but God already had a plan to fix it through Jesus!

Sin and Salvation

PS-Kids • Ages 9–12

What happened when Adam sinned? Did we inherit his guilt or his mortality? Romans 5:12 holds the answer.

Original Sin Unpacked

PS-Teens • Ages 13–17

Are babies born guilty? What did Adam actually pass down? A deep look at Romans 5:12 and the Greek text.

Undeserving Favor

Study Series • Ephesians 2

A study of grace — why salvation cannot be earned and how the gospel answers our deepest need.

The Cup of God's Wrath

Canonical Word Study • Psalm 75

Tracing the "cup" metaphor through Scripture — judgment poured out, and how Jesus drank it in our place.

God's Amazing Gift

PS-Kids • Ages 5–8

A present you didn't earn — God's grace explained for little learners.

The Special Cup

PS-Kids • Ages 5–8

Jesus drank a special cup so we wouldn't have to — a gentle intro to atonement.

Undeserving Favor

PS-Kids • Ages 9–12

Grace isn't earned — it's a gift God gives because He loves you.

The Cup of Wrath: From Judgment to Grace

PS-Kids • Ages 9–12

How Jesus took the cup of judgment so we could receive the cup of blessing.

Undeserving Favor

PS-Kids • Ages 13–17

Grace is the opposite of what you'd expect — and that's exactly the point.

The Cup of God's Wrath

PS-Kids • Ages 13–17

Canonical word study: tracing the cup from Psalm 75 to Gethsemane.

Passion Week Timeline

Holy Week • Palm Sunday to Resurrection

A day-by-day walk through Jesus’ final week in Jerusalem — Triumphal Entry, Temple cleansing, Last Supper, Gethsemane, Golgotha, and the empty tomb.

The Multifaceted Family of God

Study Series • Romans 16

Full commentary on Romans 16 as Paul’s theological portrait of God’s family. Compiled by PS-Church.

God’s Big Family

PS-Kids • Ages 5–8

God’s family has room for everyone — every color, every age, boys and girls!

One Big Family

PS-Kids • Ages 9–12

Paul’s letter names 26 people — men, women, Jews, Gentiles, slaves, free. Who belongs?

God’s Family Blueprint

PS-Teens • Ages 13–17

Romans 16 is Paul’s radical vision of a church that breaks every barrier. Women leaders, multiethnic unity.

1 Corinthians 11 Reconsidered

~18-Min Lesson • Author-and-Audience Method

Eight counter-readings of Paul’s argument from nature in 1 Cor 11, with the Genesis 6 Watcher tradition behind “because of the angels.” Based on Troy W. Martin (JBL 2004).

What Is a True Fast?

15-Min Lesson • Isaiah 58

A 15-minute lesson exploring what God actually requires when His people fast — justice, mercy, and neighbor-love.

Isaiah 58 — Theological Study

Deep Study • Verse-by-Verse

A verse-by-verse study of Isaiah 58 with Hebrew word analysis, Matthew parallels, and Christological conclusion.

What God Really Wants

PS-Kids • Ages 5–8

God doesn’t just want us to look good — He wants us to be kind, share, and help people who are hurting.

Real Worship vs. Fake Worship

PS-Kids • Ages 9–12

Israel thought they were worshipping God, but He wasn’t impressed. Isaiah 58 shows what real worship looks like.

Faith vs. Performance

PS-Teens • Ages 13–17

Is your faith real or just a performance? Isaiah 58 and the Sermon on the Mount confront religious showmanship.

Rooted in Christ

Study Series • John 15 / Galatians 5

How true fruit comes from abiding — the seed, the blood, and the fruit of the Spirit.

Trees in Scripture

Theological Study • Psalm 1

Trees as a biblical image of the righteous life — rooted, fruitful, enduring.

Growing God's Fruit

PS-Kids • Ages 5–8

God plants a seed inside you. Stay close to Jesus and watch His fruit grow!

You Are Like a Tree!

PS-Kids • Ages 5–8

Drink God’s Word and grow strong — you are like a tree planted by streams.

Rooted in Christ: Growing Real Fruit

PS-Kids • Ages 9–12

What does it actually look like to abide in Jesus and bear real fruit?

Trees in Scripture

PS-Kids • Ages 9–12

Biblical trees and what they teach us about the spiritual life.

Rooted in Christ: Seed, Blood & Fruit

PS-Kids • Ages 13–17

The gospel in three movements: the seed planted, the blood shed, the fruit borne.

Trees in Scripture — Spiritual Photosynthesis

PS-Kids • Ages 13–17

Rooted, watered, fruitful: the spiritual biology of abiding.

The Parable of the Rich Fool

Parable Study • Luke 12:13–21

Author & audience view through Dallas Willard’s Scandal of the Kingdom — why the soul, not the barn, is the treasure Jesus cares about.

From Thorns to Harvest

15-Min Lesson • Joseph & Genesis 3

A 15-minute lesson tracing the Hebrew word itsavon from Eden’s curse through Joseph’s story.

Joseph & the Reversal of the Curse

In-Depth Study • עִצָּבוֹן (itsavon)

A biblical-theological study tracing the Hebrew word itsavon through Genesis with Septuagint analysis, ANE context, and typology.

Joseph’s Amazing Journey

PS-Kids • Ages 5–8

Joseph’s brothers were mean to him, but God used every hard thing to save a whole nation!

Joseph: From the Pit to the Palace

PS-Kids • Ages 9–12

Betrayed, enslaved, imprisoned — and yet God was working through all of it.

Joseph & the Reversal of the Curse

PS-Teens • Ages 13–17

The Hebrew word itsavon connects Eden’s curse to Joseph’s story — and points to Christ.

Pesach: God's Protective Presence

Hebrew Word Study • Exodus 12

"Passover" doesn’t mean skipping by — the Hebrew word means God hovering over and shielding.

God's Shield: The Real Passover Story

PS-Kids • Ages 5–8

God protected His people like a shield the night of Passover.

Passover: More Than Passing By

PS-Kids • Ages 9–12

The Hebrew word behind "Passover" and what it really means.

Pesach Unpacked: What Passover Really Means

PS-Kids • Ages 13–17

Word study of pesach — God’s hovering protective presence in Exodus 12.

The War College Church

Ecclesiology • How Believers Should Practice

From Acts 2:42 to Finney’s altar call to Willow Creek’s coffee bar — 2,000 years of church practice and J. P. Moreland’s blueprint for refurbishing the local church.

A Sinner’s Statement of Beliefs

10 Articles of Faith

10 articles on God, Jesus, Grace, Faith, Humanity, Repentance, Church, Growth, Love, and Hope.

The Lord’s Prayer

Matthew 6:9–13

The prayer Jesus taught His disciples — presented in ESV and LXX Greek.

The Apostles’ Creed

Historic Statement of Faith

The ancient summary of Christian belief used across traditions for centuries.

The End Times Series

Series Hub • 4 Lessons

The full four-lesson series. Start here to see all four lessons at a glance and choose where to begin. Includes PDF downloads for each.

The Rapture and the Parousia

End Times Series • Lesson 1

Where the “Rapture” doctrine actually came from (Darby, 1830), what the early Church taught, and the Greek words parousia, apantêsis, and harpazô. Featuring Matthew Halsted, The End of the World as We Know It (2023).

The Book of Revelation

End Times Series • Lesson 2

John on Patmos, the Seven Churches of Asia, the apocalyptic genre, and the four interpretive approaches (preterist, historicist, futurist, idealist). Why Pleasant Springs reads as eclectic idealist-preterist.

The Millennium, Israel & the Church

End Times Series • Lesson 3

Three millennial views (pre/a/post), Revelation 20 verse-by-verse, Romans 9–11, and four frameworks for Israel and the Church (Dispensational, Covenantal, New Covenant, Historic Premillennial Covenantal — our position).

A Positive Biblical Theology of the End

End Times Series • Lesson 4 • Series Finale

The Grand Story in five acts, the already/not-yet, the six truths about Christ’s return, the resurrection of the body, the new heavens and new earth, and God dwelling with his people forever. The series finale.

Church History Timeline

Series Index • AD 30 to Today

Every event in our Church History series in chronological order, organized around Mark Noll’s Turning Points. New lessons link in as they go live.

The Apostles & the Writing of the NT

Church History • Lesson 1 • AD 30–100

How oral proclamation became circulated letters and a canon. Who wrote what, when — and the team behind Romans: Paul, Tertius, and Phoebe.

The Fall of Jerusalem (AD 70)

Church History • Lesson 3 • Noll TP 1

The day Roman legions burned the Temple and Christianity was pushed out on its own. Josephus as eyewitness, the flight to Pella, and Jesus’ Olivet prophecy fulfilled.

The Apostolic Fathers

Church History • Lesson 4 • c. 95–150

Clement, Ignatius, Polycarp, the Didache, the Shepherd, Papias, Diognetus — the generation that knew the Apostles in person. Bishop/presbyter/deacon order, triune baptism, Sunday Eucharist, and the first martyrs.

Apologists & the Gnostic Crisis

Church History • Lesson 5 • c. 130–200

Justin Martyr, Irenaeus Against Heresies, Marcion, Valentinus, and the four weapons — Rule of Faith, canon, apostolic succession, episcopal order — forged to defend the gospel on two fronts.

Tertullian, Origen & Cyprian

Church History • Lesson 6 • c. 200–260

Three cities, three schools — Latin theology born in Carthage, biblical scholarship forged in Alexandria, ecclesiology hammered out under persecution. Plus the Decian crisis and the first systematic theology.

The Council of Nicaea (AD 325)

Church History • Lesson 7 • Noll TP 2

Constantine summons the bishops, the Arian crisis, homoousios, and the Nicene Creed. Plus Athanasius contra mundum, the Cappadocians, and Constantinople (381).

The Council of Chalcedon (AD 451)

Church History • Lesson 8 • Noll TP 3

Nestorius vs Cyril, Ephesus 431, the Robber Council, Leo’s Tome, and the four adverbs that define Christ. Plus the Oriental Orthodox churches — Coptic, Ethiopian, Armenian, Syriac — who walked out over a preposition.

Augustine of Hippo

Church History • Lesson 9 • AD 354–430

The restless heart and the converted will. Confessions, the Donatist and Pelagian controversies, The City of God, and the long shadow over every Western theologian since.

Benedict’s Rule (AD 530)

Church History • Lesson 10 • Noll TP 4

Monte Cassino, the three vows (stability, conversion of life, obedience), the Divine Office, ora et labora, and the monastic rescue of Western Christianity. Plus Gregory the Great and the English mission.

The Masoretic Text

Church History • Lesson 11 • Scripture Arc 1/3

The Soferim and Masoretes, Tiberian and Babylonian traditions, the Aleppo and Leningrad codices, and the Dead Sea Scrolls confirmation. The Hebrew text behind every Protestant OT today.

Jerome & the Vulgate

Church History • Lesson 12 • Scripture Arc 2/3

Jerome’s cave at Bethlehem, Paula and Eustochium, the hebraica veritas principle, the gourd-vs-ivy argument with Augustine, and the Latin Bible that ruled the West for a thousand years.

The English Bible

Church History • Lesson 13 • Scripture Arc 3/3

Wycliffe to Tyndale to Geneva to the King James (1380–1611). Illegal translations, smuggled New Testaments, martyrs at Vilvoorde and Smithfield, and the fifty-four scholars who gave English its Bible.

The Coronation of Charlemagne

Church History • Lesson 14 • Christmas 800

Pope Leo III crowns Charlemagne in St. Peter’s, creating Western Christendom. Plus the Carolingian Renaissance (Alcuin), the Saxon Wars and Verden, and the filioque inserted at Aachen.

The Great Schism of 1054

Church History • Lesson 2 • Noll TP 5

East and West break; three canons diverge (Protestant, Catholic, Orthodox); the Pope’s role per Western Catholic doctrine from Vatican I to today.

Luther at Worms (1521)

Church History • Lesson 15 • Noll TP 6

Ninety-Five Theses, the three great treatises of 1520, “Here I stand” before Charles V, the Wartburg and the September Testament, the Five Solas, and Luther’s dark corners honestly named.

Calvin, Zwingli & the Reformed

Church History • Lesson 16 • c. 1519–1564

Zwingli at Zurich, the Marburg split, Calvin’s Institutes, Geneva’s four offices, the Servetus affair honestly, and the Reformed spread to Scotland, the Huguenots, the Dutch, and the Puritans.

The Radical Reformation

Church History • Lesson 17 • c. 1525–1700

Anabaptists from Grebel at Zurich to Menno to the Amish — believer’s baptism, nonviolence, separation of church and state, the Martyrs Mirror, and the roots of the modern Baptist conscience.

The English Reformation

Church History • Lesson 18 • Noll TP 7

Henry VIII’s Act of Supremacy, Cranmer and the Book of Common Prayer, the Dissolution, the Marian martyrs at Oxford, and Elizabeth’s settlement — the birth of Anglican Christianity.

Counter-Reformation & the Jesuits

Church History • Lesson 19 • Noll TP 8

Ignatius of Loyola, the Society of Jesus, the Council of Trent (1545–1563), the Tridentine Mass, and Jesuit missions across the world — Rome’s answer to the Reformation.

The First Great Awakening

Church History • Lesson 20 • c. 1734–1745

Edwards at Northampton, Whitefield crossing the colonies, Tennent splitting the Presbyterians, Chauncy’s critique, and Edwards’s Religious Affections — the revival that remade American Protestantism.

The Conversion of the Wesleys

Church History • Lesson 21 • Noll TP 9

Susanna Wesley’s Epworth rectory, the Holy Club, Aldersgate Street, field preaching, class meetings, Charles’s 6,500 hymns, and the birth of the Methodist revival.

The Second Great Awakening

Church History • Lesson 22 • c. 1795–1840

Cane Ridge 1801, Charles Finney’s New Measures, the Burned-Over District, and the revival that fueled abolition, temperance, women’s rights, and the great reform movements of 19th-century America.

The Restoration Movement

Church History • Lesson 23 • c. 1801–1906

Barton Stone, the Campbells, the 1832 merger, and the American movement to restore the New Testament church — origins of Disciples of Christ, Christian Churches, and Churches of Christ.

Holiness & Pentecostalism

Church History • Lesson 24 • c. 1835–today

From Phoebe Palmer’s Tuesday Meeting to Parham’s Topeka to William Seymour’s Azusa Street — Keswick, Pentecostalism, the Charismatic Renewal, and the 650-million-strong movement they produced.

The French Revolution

Church History • Lesson 25 • Noll TP 10

1789, the Civil Constitution, the Cult of Reason, the Terror, the Vendée, Napoleon’s Concordat, and the long Christian wrestle with secular modernity that followed.

Puritans, Quakers & Moravians

Church History • Lesson 26 • c. 1560–1790

The English Puritans (Bunyan, Owen, Baxter, Westminster), the Society of Friends (Fox, Penn, Germantown Protest), and Zinzendorf’s Herrnhut Moravians who launched modern Protestant missions.

Edinburgh 1910

Church History • Lesson 27 • Noll TP 11

William Carey, Hudson Taylor, John R. Mott, the World Missionary Conference of 1910, V. S. Azariah’s “give us friends,” and the birth of the modern ecumenical movement.

Chicago Statement on Inerrancy

Church History • Lesson 28 • ICBI 1978

Boice, Sproul, Packer, Geisler, Henry, Schaeffer, Lindsell — the ICBI, its three summits (1978, 1982, 1986), the 19 articles, and the evangelical doctrine of Scripture.

The Second Vatican Council

Church History • Lesson 29 • Noll TP 12

John XXIII’s aggiornamento, the four sessions, the sixteen documents, and the periti (Rahner, Ratzinger, de Lubac, Congar, Küng, Murray). The completion of Noll’s twelve turning points.

Scholasticism & the High Middle Ages

Church History • Lesson 30 • Supplementary

Anselm, Bernard, the medieval universities, Peter Lombard’s Sentences, Francis and Dominic, Aquinas’s Summa, Bonaventure, Scotus, and Ockham — the 300 years that built Latin Christendom’s theological grammar.

The Morning-Star Reformers

Church History • Lesson 31 • Supplementary

Peter Waldo and the Waldensians of Lyon (1173); John Wycliffe and the Lollards of Oxford (d. 1384); Jan Hus of Prague burned at Constance (6 July 1415). The reformers before the Reformation.

Pietism & Bach

Church History • Lesson 32 • Supplementary

Spener’s Pia Desideria, Francke’s Halle Orphanage and the Tranquebar mission (1706), Zinzendorf’s Moravians, and Johann Sebastian Bach’s cantatas — Soli Deo Gloria.

The Global South (Series Finale)

Church History • Lesson 33 • Supplementary

67% of Christians now live in Africa, Asia, and Latin America. Luwum, Kimbangu, Nee, Padilla, Bediako, Sanneh; Lausanne 1974 and Cape Town 2010. The series finale.

Founders, Faith, and the American Experiment

Primary-source study • US History

What the Founders actually believed about Jesus, why his name is absent from the Bill of Rights, what Deism is, and how Manifest Destiny turned providence into policy.