Reading Time: 9 minutesQuestion 11056. The geographical progression of Acts 1:8, from Jerusalem to Judea and Samaria and on to the end of the earth, is often read as a pleasant piece of missionary geography and then left there. I think that undersells it considerably, because Luke has built his entire second volume around that sentence and expects…
Reading Time: 6 minutesQuestion 9095. Whenever church size comes up in conversation, somebody always wants a number. Is a congregation of forty too small to be viable? Is a congregation of two thousand too large to be a church in any meaningful sense? I understand the instinct behind the question, but Scripture does not answer it the way…
Reading Time: 6 minutesQuestion 9094. The phrase breaking bread appears often enough in the New Testament that people assume it always means the same thing, and that assumption causes a good deal of confusion about whether the Lord’s Supper was originally a full meal. It is a fair question, and the answer is more interesting than a simple…
Reading Time: 6 minutesQuestion 09043. The church began on a particular day, in a particular city, at a particular hour, and I think you can put your finger on it. That claim sounds oddly confident to anyone who has been taught that the church is simply the people of God in every age, stretching back to Adam. But…
Reading Time: 6 minutesQuestion 7094 Whether water baptism is necessary for salvation is a question that has divided sincere Christians for centuries, and it is not settled by quoting one verse loudly. There are passages which appear at first glance to make baptism part of the transaction, and any honest treatment has to deal with them rather than…
Reading Time: 6 minutesQuestion 7078. To believe on Jesus is the single condition Scripture attaches to salvation, and it is worth being precise about it, because the English word believe has grown thin. In ordinary speech we believe things we are fairly confident about and nothing follows from it. I believe the train leaves at ten past. That…
Reading Time: 17 minutesQuestion 7199. If Jesus fulfilled the law, why did Paul still offer temple sacrifices in Acts 21, why will sacrifices return in the millennial temple, and why do certain things carry on from one age to the next? The question of temple sacrifices after the cross is one of the genuinely hard knots in Scripture,…
Reading Time: 4 minutesQuestion 09002 The word “church” is one of the most familiar in the Christian vocabulary, yet it is also one of the most misunderstood. In popular usage it refers to a building, a denomination, or a vague spiritual community. The New Testament has something far more precise in mind. Understanding what the church actually is,…
Reading Time: 6 minutesQuestion 3041. The ascension of Jesus is the forgotten doctrine of the Christian faith. We celebrate the incarnation at Christmas and the resurrection at Easter, but Ascension Day passes most evangelical churches without a mention. Yet Luke thought it important enough to record twice, and Jesus told His disciples plainly that His leaving was not…
Reading Time: 6 minutesQuestion 3037. Who killed Jesus? It sounds like a simple historical question, the kind a detective could close in an afternoon. Roman soldiers drove the nails, so surely the case is shut. Yet the Bible refuses to leave it there, and church history shows why the question matters so much. Wrong answers to this question…