Reading Time: 5 minutesQuestion 4052. The gift of miracles tends to be handled in one of two unhappy ways. Either it is inflated into something sensational, a kind of spiritual circus act, or it is quietly ignored in churches that feel awkward about anything they cannot tidily explain. Neither response does justice to what the New Testament plainly…
Reading Time: 5 minutesQuestion 4051. Few subjects in the church today generate more heat and less light than the gift of healing. On one side the airwaves are filled with dramatic claims and conference stages where healing is promised on demand. On the other side many cautious evangelicals quietly file the whole category under “things that stopped with…
Reading Time: 6 minutesQuestion 4050. The interpretation of tongues is the gift that quietly does the heavy lifting whenever tongues are used in the gathered church, and yet it is the one we hear about least. It sounds technical, and because it is tied so closely to tongues themselves, many believers pass over it without realising that Paul…
Reading Time: 7 minutesQuestion 4049. The gift of tongues has caused more heat and less light than almost any subject I deal with as a minister. In some circles it is treated as the badge that proves a person has truly received the Holy Spirit. In others it is written off entirely as a first century oddity that…
Reading Time: 7 minutesQuestion 4048. The gift of prophecy is one of the most discussed and most misunderstood of all the gifts the Spirit gives to the church, and I want to take my time with it. Some believers treat every passing impression as a word from the Lord, while others are convinced that genuine prophecy stopped dead…
Reading Time: 6 minutesQuestion 01007. Do you need scholars to understand Scripture, or can an ordinary believer read the Bible and grasp it for themselves? Christians tend to fall off this horse on one side or the other. Some approach the Bible with a kind of dread, convinced they need academic credentials before they dare interpret a verse….
Reading Time: 6 minutesQuestion 01006. People use the words prophecy and prediction as though they mean the same thing, but prophecy and prediction are not identical, and the difference matters more than you might expect. Get them muddled and you will misread large stretches of the Bible, because biblical prophecy involves far more than forecasting the future. Reduce…
Reading Time: 6 minutesQuestion 01005. If the Bible is clear, why do sincere Christians disagree so often about what it teaches? This is one of the most honest questions believers ask, usually when they are genuinely trying to understand God’s Word and find themselves surrounded by conflicting interpretations. It can be unsettling. If Scripture really is God’s clear…
Reading Time: 6 minutesQuestion 01004. The question of scriptural reliability becomes very pointed when we ask whether the apostles’ fallen nature corrupted the doctrines they taught. It is a fair thing to wonder. Peter, Paul, John and the rest were sinners like us. Paul had been a Pharisee. Peter was impulsive and once had to be rebuked to…
Reading Time: 6 minutesQuestion 01003. The amount of biblical prophecy in Scripture is one of its most distinctive features, and people are often surprised when they discover just how much of the Bible is given over to it. Estimates vary depending on how you define and count it, but a frequently cited figure is that somewhere around a…