Reading Time: 5 minutesQuestion 04048 The gift of prophecy is among the most discussed and most misunderstood gifts in the New Testament. Some believers treat every impression or sense of spiritual prompting as “a word from the Lord.” Others conclude that genuine prophecy ended with the apostolic age and that anyone claiming to prophesy today is at best…
Reading Time: 4 minutesQuestion 04045 There are few more striking statements in the New Testament than Paul’s declaration in 1 Corinthians 6:19: “Do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit within you, whom you have from God?” That a human body — mortal, material, subject to hunger and tiredness and decay —…
Reading Time: 4 minutesQuestion 03014 The resurrection of Jesus Christ is not an optional extra attached to the Christian faith for those who find it encouraging. It is the event on which everything stands or falls. Paul is blunt about this in 1 Corinthians 15:17: “And if Christ has not been raised, your faith is futile and you…
Reading Time: 5 minutesQuestion 03016 The question of why Jesus had to rise is not the same as asking why the resurrection matters, though the two are closely related. To ask why He had to rise is to ask what would have been left incomplete, unresolved, or false had the tomb remained occupied. The answer is sobering: without…
Reading Time: 7 minutesQuestion 60022 The claim that Jesus of Nazareth rose bodily from the dead is either the most important fact in human history or the most successful deception ever perpetrated. There is no middle ground. If it happened, it changes everything about what it means to be human, what death is, and who God is. If…
Reading Time: 4 minutesQuestion 10115 Purgatory is the Roman Catholic doctrine that believers who die in a state of grace but with unforgiven venial sins or unpaid temporal punishment must undergo purification before entering heaven. While this belief has shaped Western Christianity for centuries and remains official Catholic teaching, we must ask whether it has any foundation in…
Reading Time: 3 minutesQuestion Q04013 The phrase “praying in the Spirit” appears in two places in the New Testament: Ephesians 6:18 and Jude 20. It has generated considerable discussion, particularly in Pentecostal and charismatic circles where it is often associated with speaking in tongues. Understanding what the phrase actually means requires attending carefully to what these texts say…
Reading Time: 4 minutesQuestion 04005 There is a moment in corporate worship that raises a question worth pausing over. A song rises, the congregation lifts its voice, and the lyrics address the Holy Spirit directly: “Spirit, glorify your name.” It feels devotional. It may feel moving. But is it right? Can we give glory to the Holy Spirit…
Reading Time: 3 minutesQuestion 2008 The question of whether God speaks today, and how He does so, sits at the intersection of several significant theological debates. Cessationists argue that God speaks exclusively through Scripture now that the canon is complete and that the gifts of the Spirit, including prophecy, have ceased. Many charismatics emphasise direct divine communication through…
Reading Time: 4 minutesQuestion 2015 Theology has a way of making apparently abstract questions surprisingly practical, and this is one of them. The question is whether the pattern we observe in salvation – the Father planning, the Son dying, the Spirit applying – tells us something permanently true about who God is, or whether these were roles adopted…