Reading Time: 4 minutesQuestion 60009 The question of whether Peter was in Rome matters for several reasons. Roman Catholics point to Peter’s presence in Rome as foundational to papal claims, whilst some Protestants have questioned whether Peter was ever there at all. What does the Bible actually tell us, and what can we know from history? What Scripture…
Reading Time: 4 minutesQuestion 08052 When Christians talk about demonic activity, terms like “possession,” “oppression,” and “influence” are used regularly, sometimes interchangeably and often without much precision. Understanding what Scripture actually describes, and what distinctions are warranted by the biblical text, matters enormously for pastoral care. A person struggling with spiritual attack needs accurate diagnosis, not borrowed terminology…
Reading Time: 3 minutesQuestion 08066 The practice of rebuking Satan and demons verbally has become so common in certain Christian circles that many believers assume it is simply what Scripture teaches. People rebuke the devil over illnesses, financial problems, traffic jams, and virtually every other inconvenience, often with great confidence and volume. But the question of whether believers…
Reading Time: 3 minutesQuestion 08067 Paul’s instruction to “give no place to the devil” in Ephesians 4:27 is one of the most practically important statements about spiritual warfare in the New Testament. It is also one of the most misunderstood, frequently cited as a general warning about demonic activity while its specific context is overlooked. What Paul actually…
Reading Time: 3 minutesQuestion 08086 Few passages in the New Testament have generated as much interpretive debate as 1 Peter 3:19, where Peter writes that Christ “went and proclaimed to the spirits in prison.” Who are these spirits? Where is the prison? And what was proclaimed to them? The answers to these questions have divided commentators for centuries,…
Reading Time: 4 minutesQuestion 08139 Whether angels experience something analogous to human emotion is a question the Bible does not answer systematically, but it does offer a number of passages that present angelic beings as responding to events with what looks remarkably like genuine feeling. The question matters because it touches on what it means to be a…
Reading Time: 3 minutesQuestion 08136 Peter’s statement that angels “long to look into” the things of the gospel is one of the most striking and often overlooked remarks in the New Testament. It sits within a passage about the privilege of salvation, and its force depends on grasping what it tells us about the gospel from the perspective…
Reading Time: 3 minutesQuestion 08135 Angels are spiritual beings of immense power and long experience, but they are not God. That distinction matters enormously when considering the scope of their knowledge. Scripture presents angelic intelligence as genuinely superior to human understanding in many respects, while also marking clear limits that set their knowledge apart from the omniscience that…
Reading Time: 4 minutesQuestion 08123 It would be a mistake to think of Satan as a figure confined to the opening chapters of Genesis and the closing chapters of Revelation with nothing much happening in between. Scripture presents him as active, purposeful, and relentlessly engaged in opposition to God’s work in the present age. Understanding what Satan is…
Reading Time: 4 minutesQuestion 08117 Satan is not a cartoon figure with horns and a pitchfork, nor is he the equal-and-opposite counterpart of God in some cosmic dualism. He is a real, personal, spiritual being of extraordinary intelligence and power, operating within boundaries set by God and destined for a defeat that Scripture describes in vivid and unambiguous…