Reading Time: 3 minutesQuestion 04095 Scripture does not specify which career a believer should pursue, which city to live in, or which of two apparently godly people to marry. The absence of direct biblical instruction on these matters is not an oversight. It is itself a form of teaching about the kind of relationship God intends to have…
Reading Time: 4 minutesQuestion 04093 The question of how to distinguish between what we want and what the Spirit is actually doing in us is one of the most practically pressing questions in the Christian life. It is not a question of doubt or weak faith; it is the honest recognition that we are fallen people with complex…
Reading Time: 4 minutesQuestion 01119 The Old Testament prophets occupy a remarkable place in the history of divine communication. They were not merely gifted teachers or insightful moralists; they were men to whom God actually spoke, and the variety of ways in which He did so tells us something important about both the nature of prophecy and the…
Reading Time: 4 minutesQuestion 01141 Popular culture has a habit of borrowing from Scripture without particularly caring about accuracy. The result is a collection of widely repeated phrases that bear some resemblance to biblical language but carry meanings quite different from, or sometimes entirely absent from, the texts from which they are supposedly drawn. This matters not as…
Reading Time: 4 minutesQuestion 04092 The nineteenth chapter of 1 Kings is one of the most psychologically and spiritually rich passages in the entire Old Testament. Elijah, the prophet who had called down fire from heaven on Carmel and executed the prophets of Baal, is found forty days later under a broom tree in the wilderness begging to…
Reading Time: 5 minutesQuestion 11056 Acts 1:8 is the last thing the risen Jesus said before His ascension, and it was not a farewell encouragement. It was a structured programme. “But you will receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you, and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem and in all Judea and Samaria, and…
Reading Time: 4 minutesQuestion 04114 Christian television has produced a particular kind of ministry figure: the faith healer who calls words of knowledge from the platform, lays hands on people who fall backwards, announces dramatic healings, and encourages large financial donations as an act of faith. Millions of people watch these programmes. Some are ill and desperately hopeful….
Reading Time: 5 minutesQuestion 04116 The question of whether the gifts of the Holy Spirit described in the New Testament remain available to the church today is among the most practically consequential theological debates of the modern era. For much of evangelical Christianity in the West, the answer has been shaped not primarily by careful biblical exegesis but…
Reading Time: 5 minutesQuestion 11081 The Samaritan mission in Acts 8 is one of the most theologically charged events in the book of Acts, though Luke narrates it with characteristic restraint. Philip crossed not merely a geographical boundary when he went to Samaria; he crossed a centuries-deep fault line of religious contempt and mutual suspicion. That God used…
Reading Time: 4 minutesQuestion 04113 The question of whether God still performs miracles is one that evangelical Christians answer very differently, and the disagreement tends to generate more heat than light. One position dismisses virtually all claimed miraculous experience as enthusiastic error or deliberate fabrication. Another uses the language of miracles so freely that the word loses the…