Sometimes when you’re reading through the New Testament, you can forget that the characters you are reading about are real people. It’s easy to forget that Paul was a real man—flesh and blood. At the …
Christian Origins #60 - Acts
Religious wars are the strangest wars of all. You can halfway understand nations going to war over boundaries, oil, or economics. At least when you are fighting over money, there is something on the table …
Christian Origins #59 - Acts
It is easy, when you read the New Testament, to lose track of what the argument is about. (And there was an argument going on.) It was an argument for the heart and soul of …
Christian Origins #58 - Acts
Most Christian churches at least make a stab at imitating the churches of the New Testament, but no one really makes it. That’s not very surprising, given the change in culture and technology—especially in the …
Christian Origins #57 - Acts
Being a Christian evangelist in the early years was a real adventure. By the early years, I mean, the first 100 years of Christianity. It was a dangerous and violent time in many ways, and …
Christian Origins #21 - Acts
It is astonishing, when you think about it, how much hatred can be generated by religious beliefs. From the earliest times, Jews persecuted Christians; and when Christians came to power, they persecuted Jews. It is …
Christian Origins #13 - Acts & Galatians
It is almost funny, in reading thorough the life of the apostle Paul, how often his friends had to get him out of town to save his neck. Paul was a firebrand. He was a …
Christian Origins #12 - Acts
When you read the New Testament, you really want to see a group of people united in purpose, thoroughly converted, working together for the greater purpose of converting the world to Christ. It is a …
Christian Origins #11 - Acts
Imagine that you attend a small church of, say, 50 people. You have been meeting together for quite a long time. You have a common set of beliefs and practices. You get along well together. …
Christian Origins #10 - Acts
The very first Christian missionaries in all history were a couple of men named Saul and Barnabas. (We know Saul better as the Apostle Paul.) They had no pattern to go by, no methodology, no …
Christian Origins #9 - Acts
The greatest missionary church in history was established by men whose names we do not even know. No, it wasn’t Jerusalem, in spite of everything that happened there. We know that every missionary effort ever …
Christian Origins #8 - Acts
I would not like to suggest the apostles of Jesus were stubborn or blockheaded, because that would not be fair. The transition they were having to make was no simple matter. It is easy from …
Christian Origins #7 - Acts
You have to wonder about a man like Saul of Tarsus. Here’s a man that we will come to know as the apostle Paul—probably the strongest intellectual figure in the history of Christianity, the man …
Christian Origins #6 - Acts
There is a great divide between Christianity and Judaism. And it goes back a lot further than most people realize. It goes back way beyond Paul, and way beyond the early days of the church. …
Christian Origins #5 - Acts
I think it is fair to say that God used the power of the Holy Spirit to jump start the early Christian church. They started with 120 members, then baptized 3,000 people in one day. …
Christian Origins #4 - Acts
I remember my first experience with power. It was behind the wheel of a 1948 Chevrolet. Granted, by today’s standards, that is not a lot of power, but it was power to me. If I …
Christian Origins #3 - Acts
Now Peter and John went up together into the temple at the hour of prayer, being the ninth hour. And a certain man lame from his mother’s womb was carried, whom they laid daily at …
Christian Origins #2 - Acts
And when the day of Pentecost was fully come, they were all with one accord in one place. And suddenly there came a sound from heaven as of a rushing mighty wind, and it filled …
Christian Origins #1 - Acts
How many hundreds of millions of Christians are there in the world by now? What is your guess? Well, I looked it up. Christianity of all stripes is the largest religion in the world and …
Introduction to the New Testament #12
The Book of Acts sits in a pivotal position in the New Testament. The early Church fathers tended to speak of the New Testament in terms of Gospels and Epistles, but Acts fits in a …
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