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 09001. Biblical ecclesiology is simply the doctrine of the church, and the word itself tells you where to start. It comes from ekklesia, the New Testament word usually translated church, which means an assembly, a gathering of those called out. That is a more useful starting point than most people expect, because it means…
Reading Time: 9 minutesQuestion 4102. receiving the Spirit is exactly what the disciples appear to be doing on resurrection evening, when Jesus breathes on them behind locked doors and says, ‘Receive the Holy Spirit,’ and yet the scene raises a genuine puzzle that deserves careful, patient handling rather than a quick answer. John records the moment in a…
Reading Time: 6 minutesQuestion 4030. When I trace the Spirit’s work from the opening chapter of Genesis through to the book of Acts, I find one and the same Person at work throughout, and yet a real and glorious change in the way He works once Jesus is glorified. The Spirit’s work did not begin at Pentecost. He…
Reading Time: 6 minutesQuestion 4130. The Joel 2 Holy Spirit prophecy is one of the most significant in the entire Old Testament. “And it shall come to pass afterward, that I will pour out my Spirit on all flesh; your sons and your daughters shall prophesy, your old men shall dream dreams, and your young men shall see…
Reading Time: 6 minutesQuestion 4148. The Spirit symbolised by fire is one of the most dramatic and recurring pictures in Scripture, reaching its most famous expression at Pentecost, where “divided tongues as of fire” appeared and rested on each of the believers gathered in the upper room (Acts 2:3). Fire runs through the biblical story as a consistent…
Reading Time: 6 minutesQuestion 4149. There is a reason the Spirit symbolised by wind runs all the way through the Bible, from the second verse of Genesis to the upper room at Pentecost, and it is no poetic accident. The biblical writers reach for wind because they are trying to describe something real about God that no tidy…
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: 9 minutesQuestion 04031 The day of Pentecost is one of those hinge moments in the Bible where the whole story turns. Before that morning the disciples were a frightened, waiting handful; after it they were a Spirit-filled church preaching Christ to the nations. Something happened on the day of Pentecost that had never happened before, and…
Reading Time: 9 minutesQuestion 4014. The baptism of the Holy Spirit is one of the most misunderstood doctrines in the modern church, and few subjects have caused more confusion, division and quiet discouragement among sincere believers. Some are taught it is a second blessing they must seek after conversion, others that it is proved by speaking in tongues,…