Month: October 2023

Week 43  Acts 19

This past week I’ve been thinking about the set of connected ideas related to coming to faith in the Lord. Luke bundles at least four items that are part of that decision to come to Christ: there’s the 180-degree turning-from-sin & turning-to-God plus baptism-in-water plus baptism-in-the-Holy-Spirit plus speaking-in-tongues.
Today I did a quick scan back through Acts – double-checking before I move on. Some people pretty much just turned to the Lord and were baptized-in-water. That’s what happened with the crowd in chapter two & the Ethiopian man & Paul & Lydia & the jailer & Crispus. Nothing much about the Holy Spirit or speaking-in-tongues.
In other stories the Holy Spirit is definitely part of the whole experience – the apostles in chapter two & Cornelius & the men in Ephesus. They believed and then the Holy Spirit came and they spoke-in-tongues.
Different people seem to have different experiences at the point of belief. I wonder what’s mandatory. Wonder if I’m missing something. For now I’ll stick with Peter: each of you must turn from your sins and turn to God, and be baptized in the name of Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of your sins. Then you will receive the gift of the Holy Spirit.
That’s fine for now but I still have 22 letters to read. So there’s more to come. Peter’s idea will likely get some fine-tuning.

Note: quote from Acts 2:38 (NLT) and see the stories in 8:36-38 9:18 16:14-15 16:31-34 18:8 10:44-46 19:5-7. End-of-October reading report: I’ve read 88% of the text. So I’m in pretty good shape heading into November.

Week 43  Acts 19

Paul started the chapter located in Corinth but he immediately headed inland to Ephesus. It turns out that the whole chapter is about “What Happened in Ephesus?” and it’s a really good reminder of how contentious & dangerous Paul’s life was. But it was the first paragraph that caught my attention.
As soon as he got into town Paul met a dozen men who were described as believers. For whatever reason Paul asked them if they had received the Holy Spirit when they believed. They didn’t know what or who he was talking about. They said they’d been baptized with the baptism of John.
Paul didn’t tell them that the baptism of John had been superseded by the baptism of Jesus. But he did baptize them a second time…this time in the name of the Lord Jesus. And when they were baptized this happened: when Paul laid his hands on them, the Holy Spirit came on them, and they spoke in other tongues and prophesied.
This more-or-less confirms the Cornelius story from yesterday where conversion included belief + baptism + speaking-in-tongues. By contrast the Samaritan story & Paul’s conversion didn’t explicitly include all three elements. And the poor old Ethiopian left for home without anything said about either the Holy Spirit or speaking-in-tongues.
Anyway the coming-to-belief of these Twelve Men of Ephesus adds another piece to the puzzle. With them it was: belief + baptism + speaking-in-tongues + (the added element of) prophecy. Similar and a bit different.

Note: quotes from Acts 19:1 3 5 6 (NLT)

Week 43  Acts 8 9 10

I compared four back-to-back conversion stories.
When the Samaritans believed in Christ they were baptized-in-water right away. But the Holy Spirit hadn’t come to them yet so Peter & John prayed and then the Holy Spirit came (something else might have happened but Luke doesn’t say what.)
Philip met the Ethiopian man on a deserted road. In that case it looks like the man believed and he was baptized-in-water right away. But nothing is said about the Holy Spirit being part of the mix.
After Saul was blinded on the road to Damascus Ananias came and told him: the Lord Jesus…has sent me so that you may get your sight back and be filled with the Holy Spirit. Paul was baptized-in-water right away. The story doesn’t say if filled-with-the-Spirit meant Paul spoke-in-tongues.
Near the end of the Cornelius story Peter was talking to the people about the Lord and suddenly: the Holy Spirit fell upon (them). How did Peter know? Because he heard them speaking in tongues and praising God. The people were then baptized-in-water.
So there are three possible features of conversion:
Believing in Jesus Christ
Being baptized-in-water
Speaking-in-tongues (in some cases. Definitely with Cornelius and maybe with the Samaritans. But not with the Ethiopian & only maybe with Saul).
To me the speaking-in-tongues element is a bit of a wild card so I’ll need to keep it on my radar.

Note: quotes from Acts 9:17 10:44 46 (NLT). Samaria Acts 8:4-17. Ethiopian Acts 8:26-39. Saul Acts 9:1-19. Cornelius Acts 10:34-48.

Week 43  Acts 8

The big story in the second chapter is about the Holy Spirit coming to the believers so that they could speak other languages. It’s pretty interesting & perplexing. I think about it again when Philip went to Samaria. He told people about Jesus and some of them believed.
When this news got out Peter & John travelled to Samaria to see what was going on: as soon as they arrived, they prayed for these new Christians to receive the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit had not yet come upon any of them, for they had only been baptized in the name of the Lord Jesus. Then Peter and John laid their hands upon these believers, and they received the Holy Spirit.
So it looks like two things happened:
a) some Samaritans had believed and been baptized in the name of the Lord Jesus, and
b) P&J prayed – sometime later – for those people to get the Holy Spirit.
The writer of Acts says that P&J prayed for them and put their hands on the people’s heads…but he doesn’t say that the people then spoke in different languages.
But did they? Something visible must have happened because Simon the Magician was watching and he offered to pay P&J to acquire the skill. If nothing visible had occurred it’s hard to imagine Simon wanting to trade for an imperceptible ability.
So I’m left wondering: what exactly happened that Simon saw…and wanted the power to give?

Note: quote from Acts 8:15-17 (NLT)

Week 43  Acts 4

First the church quoted a psalm:
Why do the nations rage?…The kings of the earth prepare for battle against the Lord and against his anointed one.
Second the church said that that psalm exactly described recent events in Jerusalem:
That is what happened here in this city! For Herod Antipas, Pontius Pilate, the Gentiles, and the people of Israel were all against Jesus, your holy servant…In fact, everything they did occurred according to your eternal will and plan.
So a forecast that had been collecting dust for a thousand years alongside all the other predictions-that-hadn’t-happened-yet had all of a sudden just happened.
A prophetic prediction has an Element X and an Element Y.
Element X comes first – it says that something will happen.
Element Y comes later – at the moment when Element X comes true.
Until it happens Element X is stored in the file of Non-Actualized Forecasts (and while it sits there it could be classified by people – realistically – as just a Guess.)
It’s only when Element X is taken out of the file & processed & becomes Actualized in the real world that’s it’s reclassified as an Element Y. The prediction has come true.
Since I’m not party to the “eternal will and plan” all Element Xs are abstract to me until they’re concretized.
But I think it’s safe to say that as far as the Lord is concerned Element Xs – except for the detail of time – are already Element Ys.

Note: quotes from Psalm 2:1-2 / Acts 4:25-26 & Acts 4:27-28 (NLT)

Week 43  Acts 2

I don’t get far into Acts before all of a sudden the Holy Spirit came to the believers in a super-charged audio & visual spectacle. The commotion drew a crowd of outsiders and what they saw & heard was sound coming out of the believer’s mouths. But at that point opinion in the crowd divided into two camps.
People in the Reaction #1 Camp were beside themselves with wonder. They were amazed and perplexed. They could hear their own native languages. At least 15 languages are mentioned so even if there was only one representative from each language group then at least 15 individuals were amazed and perplexed. The reason was that a) they heard the disciples talking in foreign languages (foreign to the disciples) and b) the content was understandable & coherent to the crowd (it was about the wonderful things God has done).
People in Reaction #2 Camp just mocked: they’re drunk, that’s all! There’s no telling how many people there were in the second group. But a bunch of unilingual Galileans talking other languages didn’t cut any ice with them. What they were hearing was just incoherent addiction-driven gibberish.
So there it was: One message. Two Reactions. Which was right? Was it extraordinary communication or lunatical absurdity?
One other difference between the groups is that the Reaction #1 Camp wanted to know more: what can this mean? Reaction #2 Camp weren’t too concerned about exploring meaning. They’d solved the puzzle so no further explanation was necessary.

Note: quotes from Acts 2:7 12 13 11 (NLT)

Week 42  four gospels

Today I was still thinking about the four gospels being similar but different. I was thinking about a difference that sounds like a contradiction:
Matthew says that on resurrection Sunday an angel moved the stone and: then spoke to the women.
Luke’s version of the story says the women came to the tomb and: suddenly two men appeared to them, clothed in dazzling robes and spoke to them.
So Matthew says one…Luke says two. Is that a contradiction?
Let’s say a guy’s fishing during the salmon run. He catches 10 small salmon but 1 big one. So afterwards a guy asks him “how did it go?’ and he says “I caught a 32-inch Coho!” Only the one – the big one – was the story. He highlighted his highlight.
The question about one angel or two seems like this kind of Explainable Difference to me. Maybe Matthew was highlighting his highlight.
An example of an Unexplainable Difference would be something like this:
Matthew says the disciples were out in their boat on a stormy night and the Lord came to them…walking on the water.
But what if Mark says the Lord swam out to them. Or took a rowboat. Or the Sea of Galilee had frozen and he skated out. Or that he didn’t go out at all. That’s not explainable.
A guy once told me the bible was full of contradictions. He seemed pretty certain about it but I’m not exactly sure why.

Note: quotes from Matthew 28:5 Luke 24:4 (NLT)

Week 42  four gospels

Sometimes I wonder about how the four gospel stories fit together. Same basic story…but with differences that make me wonder.
But it’s not like I can’t imagine the same story with differences.
A guy asks: what did you do today?
‘I walked down to the river. The boat was tied to the lop-sided wooden dock and I cast off the lines and let the current drift me downstream while I rowed across to the bend on the other side. The current was moving slowly along the outside curve of the stream and I dropped anchor and started casting toward the caved-in bank, glad the sun was coming around now. Glad to warm up. After a couple of unlucky hours I stowed my gear and idled downstream to a beach. I sat on the sand with half-naked poplars dropping yellow leaves around me. I hadn’t finished my sandwich when a white police launch came around the bend, dawdling upstream at trolling speed. It angled toward me and a husky-looking woman spoke through a megaphone asking if I’d seen two men – escaped prisoners from the minimum security facility…’ 
So then later another guy asks: what did you do today?
‘I went fishing but I got skunked.’
Same day. Same story. But different too. Same but different.
Figuring out why Guy #1 gets one story but Guy #2 gets another is hard to say.
But for starters what isn’t so hard is the idea that different stories can both be right.

 

Week 41  John 3

John the Baptist is an important supporting-character in the gospel story. An important secondary person.
John’s secondary status started to show up soon after Jesus arrived because people began leaving John. John’s disciples were pretty concerned: everyone is going over there instead of coming here to us.
So John gave a detailed explanation. First he told his people something that was true about everyone:
• God in heaven appoints each person’s work
Second he reminded them of a couple of key details about himself:
• I am not the Messiah
• I’m only here to prepare the way for the Messiah
• He (the Messiah / Jesus) must become greater and greater, and I must become less and less.
Third John gave a couple of key details about Jesus’ background and capacities:
• He has come from heaven
• He’s greater than anyone else
• He’ll tell us about the things he has seen and heard (in heaven)
• He is sent by God
• He speaks God’s words
• He has God’s Spirit in an unlimited way
Finally – as a kind of afterthought – John said several things about Jesus’ audience:
• Only a few people will believe the Lord
• The few people who do believe him will discover that God is true
• People who believe will get eternal life
• But people who don’t believe will never experience eternal life
Of the four items I think I like the third the most because it so decisively separates Jesus from the pack.

Note: quotes & paraphrases from John 3:26-28 30-36 (NLT)

Week 41  John 1

John started his gospel talking about the mysterious The Word. He said that life itself was in him. He also said that this life gives light to everyone. So The Word was the Possessor of Original Life (which in itself is pretty important) but in the next couple of verses John seems more interested in The Life being The Light.
The reason that John is making that point now is that The Word (The Life / The Light): the one who is the true light, who gives light to everyone, was going to come into the world. Up to now he’d been outside the world. But now he was going to arrive.
I’m thinking so-far-so-good but John wasn’t thinking so-far-so-good because he said: but although the world was made through him, the world didn’t recognize him when he came. Even in his own land and among his own people, he was not accepted. John didn’t exactly mean that not a single person in the whole world accepted The Light because he said that: to all who believed him and accepted him, he gave the right to become children of God. But it looks like believing in The Word and accepting The Word was going to be a minority opinion. Some did believe. But most didn’t. Which seems strange. If someone told me I could get transformed into a Child of God I think I’d jump at the chance. But lots of people obviously didn’t.

Note: quotes from John 1:4 9 10-11 12 (NLT)