People need the touch of God in their lives. People are broken, wounded, and sick. Jesus Christ has already come and made available deliverance from sin and its consequences. He did this throughout his ministry and continues to bring healing through his church today. Bob Carden shares about his own journey of faith from Catholicism Read more about 570 My Journey into Healing Ministry (Bob Carden)[…]
Pentecost, as described in Acts 2, was a strange event. We read about unusual miraculous signs such as the sound of a great wind and tongues of fire. Still, the most interesting moment is when the apostles of our Lord began speaking in foreign languages that they didn’t know. Such divine utterance is called speaking Read more about 560 Pentecost Reversing Babel (Sean Finnegan)[…]
This is part 12 of the Read the Bible For Yourself. Acts is an action-packed book full of excitement and wonder. We learn about the early expansion of the Church from a small group of ragged Christ-followers to dozens of house churches throughout major cities in the Mediterranean world. How did Christianity “go public”? The Read more about 545 Read the Bible for Yourself 12: How to Read Acts[…]
This is part 18 of the Early Church History class. I wonder how many Christians in the world today believe the gifts of the spirit ceased in the time of the apostles? I know there are quite a few. Many others, however, believe they are available today and make time for them in their worship Read more about 500 Early Church History 18: The Gifts of the Spirit in Early Christianity[…]
This is part 13 of the Early Church History class. Between the year 325 and 381 titanic shifts occurred that changed Christianity forever. Rather than ending conflict and ushering in a golden era of lasting peace, Constantine’s Council of Nicea ignited a theological civil war within Christianity that raged for six more decades. In today’s Read more about 495 Early Church History 13: Trinity Controversy in the Fourth Century[…]
The Trinity remains a massively popular theory to understand God in Christianity today as it has since the fourth century. Some go so far as to condemn any attempt to understand the concept while others are content to allow their faith to seek understanding (fides quarens intelectum). Nevertheless, most Christians have never honestly assessed this Read more about 438 Is God a Trinity of Persons? (Sean Finnegan)[…]
What is the proper role of your emotions? Should you trust them? How do you know when they are helping and when they are hurting? Today we’ll take a look at another exciting advantage that Christianity provides. In this episode, you’ll learn about the problems endemic to emotional reasoning, the robust biblical teaching about your Read more about 400 Why Christianity 13: The Heart (Sean Finnegan)[…]
This is part 7 and the final episode in our holy spirit series. Are you on a journey with God or have you arrived? Are you still willing to learn and grow and try new things or have you erected boundaries around your current understanding and practice? Today my guest is Kevin Guigou, a full-time Read more about 381 Bible Fed, Spirit Led (Kevin Guigou)[…]
Today we enter into part 5 of our series on the holy spirit. We’ve seen a couple of perspectives, but my guest today is bringing in a third view to our exploration of this important topic. Growing up with the belief that tongues were the only evidence of salvation, Pastor Victor Gluckin eventually changed his Read more about 379 Gifts of the Spirit for the Common Good (Victor Gluckin)[…]
Last week John Truitt explained why he believes the gifts of the spirit are still available for Christians to experience. Today, Greg Deuble pulls on his own biblical research and personal experience to present an opposing case. What’s fascinating about Deuble is that he believes in God’s miraculous activity in the world today. However, he Read more about 376 Tongues Have Ceased (Greg Deuble)[…]
Restitutio exists to restore authentic Christianity and live it out today. As a restorationist, it really does matter to me how the earliest Christians practiced their faith. A question I ask myself is if I jumped in a time machine and went back to the late first century and attended a house church meeting, would Read more about 375 Gifts of the Spirit Are Available Today (John Truitt)[…]
Leviticus is one of the strangest and most intriguing books of the Bible. More than a few well-intended folks trying to follow a read-the-Bible-in-a-year plan have perished trying to cross the vast terrain of Leviticus with its seemingly endless details about the long lobe of the liver in a sacrifice or the rules about beasts Read more about Dangerous Holiness[…]
This is our fifth and final example of bias in translation. After this episode, we’ll have one more to conclude our class on How We Got the Bible. Today our focus is God’s spirit. Should it have an uppercase ‘S’ or a lowercase ‘s?’ Should pronouns referring back to spirit be masculine (like “he”) or Read more about 352 Bible 23 – Spirit Who or Spirit Which? (Translating the Holy Spirit)[…]
Are spiritual gifts available today or did they cease after the original apostles died? In this interview, I talk to Dr. Sam Storms about his own personal experience with speaking in tongues, his biblical case for why gifts are available today, and how he makes room for them in his church services. Before delving in, Read more about 310 Are Gifts of the Spirit Available Today? (Sam Storms)[…]
Last time we worked through a ton of scripture, trying to get a multidimensional view of how the bible describes the holy spirit. This time we’ll consider a few scriptures that have confused some into thinking the spirit is really an individual or person distinct from the Father and the Son. This study is pretty Read more about Theology 15 — Challenging the Holy Spirit[…]
How do you think of holy spirit? In this lecture we’ll build up a biblical theology of the spirit, in an effort to comprehend its variegated facets. We’ll consider the Old Testament and the Synoptic Gospels before spending a good deal of time in John, looking at the fascinating way that Jesus talks about the Read more about Theology 14 — The Holy Spirit[…]
Have you ever heard of the Bible Project? It’s a series of videos by Tim Mackie and Jon Collins out of Portland, Oregon. Most of their videos are really helpful. Anyhow, a little while ago, they came out with this video on the holy spirit that got them into some trouble. Watch it and see Read more about What Is the Holy Spirit?[…]
In the first part of this investigation into the holy spirit and translation bias, I limited my focus to relative pronouns used to refer to the holy spirit. In what follows I will broaden my inquiry to include several other key texts and important concepts related to the God’s spirit. First I will discuss in Read more about Translating the Holy Spirit 2[…]
I presented this paper at the 2006 One God Seminar, hosted by Ken Westby and the Association for Christian Development[1] Introduction Trying to pin down a biblical definition for the word “spirit” is like trying to give a cat a shower—it can be done, but only with great difficulty, and one is never sure if Read more about A Unitarian View of the Holy Spirit[…]
Here’s the original paper in pdf form. I presented this talk at the 18th Theological Conference held near Atlanta, GA. In it I present a case for the radical practice of loving our enemies. Whether you believe Christians can and should use violence to defend themselves or others or if you think more along the Read more about Podcast 15: A Theology of Nonviolence (Sean Finnegan)[…]
Download this article Translators have historically held incredible power to influence millions of Bible-readers over the eons. Many impressive developments have occurred in the field of textual criticism and lexicology over the last century. Today we can access dozens of English translations, Greek interlinears, and lexical aids online for free. In no other age have Read more about The Holy Spirit and Translation Bias: A Smoking Gun of Trinity Mischief (1)[…]