The Book of Acts in the New Testament explains how the Holy Spirit spread the gospel and expanded the Church through the ministry of the Apostles and first believers. I would like to take a tour of the book of Acts and observe the expressions of faith we see. Since it records the beginning of something new in God’s plan for his people, some of the miraculous events were necessary at the time to help the early church understand what the Holy Spirit was doing. Many of these miraculous events have not continued in our day because they are no longer necessary, but we can still learn from the evangelism and conversions described in this book. So I would like to pay attention to the environments in which the Holy Spirit brought about amazing revival and church growth. Perhaps we can learn a thing or two.
Acts 2 describes the beginning of the Holy Spirit’s work in and through the Church. With this new beginning, the Holy Spirit starts with a bang, granting the first followers of Christ the miraculous ability to speak in the various languages of Jews who lived all over the Roman empire. The Jews who had been living in Rome heard the Christians speaking in Latin, and Egyptian Jews heard them speaking their language. Then Peter got up and explained that a new era in Israel’s history had begun; the promised Messiah had come, even though the nation had rejected and crucified him. As Peter spoke to the crowd that day, three thousand people believed and were added to the Church.
The Church immediately began meeting regularly, sometimes in the Temple area as a large group and at other times in individual homes in smaller groups. As they gathered, they were committed to activities that benefited and strengthened believers, and they went out to tell others the good news of Jesus. In Acts 3, Peter and John were apparently on their way to a gathering at the Temple. Before they arrived, they proclaim the good news, and the Church grew to five thousand that day (Acts 4:4).
After Stephen was stoned, the Church was scattered, and the gospel spread to new regions. Philip went to Samaria and told the people there about Jesus. Many believed, and the Holy Spirit confirmed that he was saving Samaritans too. Then the Holy Spirit took Philip to a road where he met an Ethiopian eunuch. In this deserted location, the Ethiopian believed the gospel and was saved.
In Acts 10, the Gentile mission is officially started with Cornelius and his family hearing and believing the gospel in their house. Later on, Paul and his co-workers began to share the gospel throughout the Roman world. Paul’s practice was to find Jewish synagogues, where unbelieving Jews could hear the good news. When the majority rejected his message, he proclaimed the message to the Gentiles (Acts 13:46). In Philippi, the gospel spread in a prison (Acts 16:25ff.), and in Athens, it spread in a shopping center (17:17).
We see in Acts how Paul and others used the situations in which God placed them to spread the gospel. If they were in court on trial, they shared the message about Christ. If there was a crowd ready to listen, they spoke up. However, what is equally clear throughout Acts is that not a single story of conversion took place in the context of a Sunday church gathering. Now that doesn’t mean this never happened, nor does it mean we shouldn’t invite the unsaved to church. Still, it does show us that the Holy Spirit primarily used efforts outside the Sunday gathering to grow the church. We would do well to follow this example and speak up in the circumstances in which God has placed us. Like the early church, we must proclaim the gospel where unbelievers normally are. The Holy Spirit will continue his work as we share the gospel, and more and more people will turn from their sin and trust in Christ.
Sunday, October 2, 2016
Kitchen Korner - Cordon Bleu Potato Soup - by Dolly Lawler
A good friend, Judy Carney, who goes to Florida every winter and runs a soup kitchen down there, gave me this recipe. The term "Cordon Bleu" caught my attention right away. When I see that term, I always think of chicken or pork stuffed with ham and Swiss cheese. That's what the term has come to mean to cooks in this day and age, but the term actually means "Blue Ribbon." How can I say this? Whether we're talking ingredients or quality, this is definitely a "Blue Ribbon" soup recipe.
CORDON BLEU POTATO SOUP
(Makes 8-10 servings.)
Ingredients:
4 cups diced potatoes
2 cans (14 ½ oz.) chicken broth
2 cups shredded Swiss cheese
2 cups diced cooked ham
2 cups 2% milk with ¼ cup flour whisked into it
2 cups chunked, cooked chicken
Simmer potatoes in broth until tender. Add rest of ingredients and heat (stirring often) until soup is hot and cheese is melted.
Ladle into bowls and eat up!
CORDON BLEU POTATO SOUP
(Makes 8-10 servings.)
Ingredients:
4 cups diced potatoes
2 cans (14 ½ oz.) chicken broth
2 cups shredded Swiss cheese
2 cups diced cooked ham
2 cups 2% milk with ¼ cup flour whisked into it
2 cups chunked, cooked chicken
Simmer potatoes in broth until tender. Add rest of ingredients and heat (stirring often) until soup is hot and cheese is melted.
Ladle into bowls and eat up!
Enjoy, Dolly Lawler
Please submit a favorite recipe to lawlers@windstream.net
How Old is the Earth? - by Ken Lawler
I've mentioned several times in these articles that there are numerous Biblical "disagreements" that have no bearing on critical doctrines like salvation. This is one of those "beliefs" that, whichever theory you have, will not get you into Heaven or keep you out. It's also one of those "beliefs" that, whichever theory you have, you are convinced you're right. A couple years ago we heard a guest speaker on two Sundays give his reasoning for a "young earth," and now I have decided to give mine for an "old earth." I've not, to my knowledge, been called a heretic because of what I believe on this subject but I have been accused of believing in evolution. Trust me, I do not!!! I believe Gen. 1:1 explains perfectly how the universe came into being. That said, I also believe Gen. 1:3-31 is an account of the 6-day restoration of the original earth, not a 6-day account of its creation. I have no idea how long it actually took God to create it, but I'm convinced He's capable of doing it in 6 nanoseconds (that's 6 billionths of a second) if He wanted to. He wouldn't need 6 days. There are four primary reasons I believe what I do about this -- (1) The actual meaning of the Hebrew word translated create (bara), (2) Gen. 1:2 compared with Isa. 45:18, (3) continental drift and (4) the physical appearance of the universe.
First, the Bible's use of the words create, created, etc.: Hebrew linguists generally agree that these words are often misused in the Bible and other Hebrew texts. The correct definition is to make something out of nothing, and according to Strong's Expanded Dictionary of Bible Words, this verb always has only God as its subject. In the Bible it is often used where a better translation would have been to shape, form, fashion, select or to transform something. For instance, when David says, "create in me a clean heart, O God" (Ps. 51:10) it's obvious he didn't mean make me a new one out of nothing; he wanted the one he had fixed. Another example is Adam. Gen. 1:26 has God saying, "let us make (asah) man," Gen. 1:27 says, "God created (bara) man," and Gen. 2:7 says, "The Lord God formed (yatsar) man" [out of the pre-existing dust of the ground]. Technically, Adam and Eve were formed (the word means to mold into a form or shape) not created. An instance where you might expect to see the word created but don't is on day three. Gen. 1:9-13 does not say vegetation was created on day three. It implys the seeds were already in the ground and when the water receded and the land dried out the seeds sprouted. Where did the seeds come from? I contend they were already there from His original creation. If day 3 was the creation of vegetation God probably would have created an oak tree, not an acorn.
Second, look at the description of the earth in Gen. 1:2 and Isa. 45:18: Gen. 1:1 says the earth was created in the beginning, and in verse 2 it is reported to be "without form and void," a water-covered, dark, empty ruin. The expression without form (tohuw) means to lie waste, a desolation, desert, or a worthless thing. The word void (bohow) means to be empty, a vacuity or an undistinguishable ruin. Why would God have created an empty, worthless, desolate earth? Well Isaiah says He didn't. Isaiah briefly describes the creation in Isa. 45:18 where he says "He created it not in vain." Why the translators changed words between Gen. 1:2 and this verse I don't know, but vain and form are the same Hebrew word. Isaiah is saying God did not create it without form and void as it is described in Gen. 1:2. An obvious question is what happened between Gen 1:1 and 1:2? For one thing, I believe about 4.5 billion years. That's what the admittedly flawed, but commonly accepted dating methods (they generally use four different methods) estimate the age of the universe to be. Soil samples from the earth, moon and meteors all date the same. Also, I can't imagine God sending Lucifer down to a tropical paradise when he was cast out of heaven to the ground/earth (Isa. 14:12), so it was probably made void at or before that event. We know there was a time when lush vegetation covered vast areas of the earth, even up into the Arctic. We heat our homes and fuel our cars with the byproducts of that vegetation. There is no mention of the ice-age in the Bible or any other historical document and the last glacier is estimated to have been about a mile high when it crossed my farm in Champaign County. Someone surely would have mentioned it in ancient history. I imagine the original pristine earth teeming with the extinct species whose fossils are still being found today (dinosaurs, etc.), as well as the biped animals evolutionists call cave men. Don't let anyone convince you that Neanderthal or Cro-Magnon was your ancestor. I believe they existed over 10,000 years ago, anthropologists and archaeologists have found their remains, their cave paintings and their crude weapons. They were somewhat clever animals, not humans. Adam is the only "creature" that the "Lord God breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living soul" (Gen. 2:7). Adam was the first human being. That happened about 6,000 years ago just like the Bible says.
Third, the continental drift theory: It was proposed by Alfred Wegener in 1912 and was laughed at by other scientists, primarily because there was no theory as to what mechanism caused it. After Wegener died in 1930, scientists generally adopted his theory with a "moving plate" explanation. His unique geological similarities of rock formations linking mountains in Appalachia with those in Scotland, and those in South Africa with those in Brazil have been verified. The plates are still moving (that's what causes earthquakes), but so slowly that North America could not possibly have crossed the Atlantic in a mere 6,000 years, unless the event I suspect happened long ago, the one that caused the earth to become "without form and void," caused a rapid drift.
Finally, my fourth reason for believing in an old earth is its appearance: I've spent lots of time in the Rocky Mountains, and I've personally seen lots of other earth features in North America, Europe and Africa. I've spent several hours looking through a high power telescope at the moon, stars and planets, as well as imagery from our inter-galaxy space probes. I've spent half my life looking at the earth's surface on satellite imagery. The Rocky and Atlas Mountains and the Alps look really old to me, and even a casual look at the moon through good binoculars and the imagery of Mars show heavenly bodies that have been bombarded with meteors for what looks like a lot longer than 6,000 years. The massive impacts on the moon would have been seen from Earth and no historian has mentioned them. Can these four reasons possibly indicate an approximate 4.5-billion years between Gen. 1:1 and 1:2? I think so, what do you think?
First, the Bible's use of the words create, created, etc.: Hebrew linguists generally agree that these words are often misused in the Bible and other Hebrew texts. The correct definition is to make something out of nothing, and according to Strong's Expanded Dictionary of Bible Words, this verb always has only God as its subject. In the Bible it is often used where a better translation would have been to shape, form, fashion, select or to transform something. For instance, when David says, "create in me a clean heart, O God" (Ps. 51:10) it's obvious he didn't mean make me a new one out of nothing; he wanted the one he had fixed. Another example is Adam. Gen. 1:26 has God saying, "let us make (asah) man," Gen. 1:27 says, "God created (bara) man," and Gen. 2:7 says, "The Lord God formed (yatsar) man" [out of the pre-existing dust of the ground]. Technically, Adam and Eve were formed (the word means to mold into a form or shape) not created. An instance where you might expect to see the word created but don't is on day three. Gen. 1:9-13 does not say vegetation was created on day three. It implys the seeds were already in the ground and when the water receded and the land dried out the seeds sprouted. Where did the seeds come from? I contend they were already there from His original creation. If day 3 was the creation of vegetation God probably would have created an oak tree, not an acorn.
Second, look at the description of the earth in Gen. 1:2 and Isa. 45:18: Gen. 1:1 says the earth was created in the beginning, and in verse 2 it is reported to be "without form and void," a water-covered, dark, empty ruin. The expression without form (tohuw) means to lie waste, a desolation, desert, or a worthless thing. The word void (bohow) means to be empty, a vacuity or an undistinguishable ruin. Why would God have created an empty, worthless, desolate earth? Well Isaiah says He didn't. Isaiah briefly describes the creation in Isa. 45:18 where he says "He created it not in vain." Why the translators changed words between Gen. 1:2 and this verse I don't know, but vain and form are the same Hebrew word. Isaiah is saying God did not create it without form and void as it is described in Gen. 1:2. An obvious question is what happened between Gen 1:1 and 1:2? For one thing, I believe about 4.5 billion years. That's what the admittedly flawed, but commonly accepted dating methods (they generally use four different methods) estimate the age of the universe to be. Soil samples from the earth, moon and meteors all date the same. Also, I can't imagine God sending Lucifer down to a tropical paradise when he was cast out of heaven to the ground/earth (Isa. 14:12), so it was probably made void at or before that event. We know there was a time when lush vegetation covered vast areas of the earth, even up into the Arctic. We heat our homes and fuel our cars with the byproducts of that vegetation. There is no mention of the ice-age in the Bible or any other historical document and the last glacier is estimated to have been about a mile high when it crossed my farm in Champaign County. Someone surely would have mentioned it in ancient history. I imagine the original pristine earth teeming with the extinct species whose fossils are still being found today (dinosaurs, etc.), as well as the biped animals evolutionists call cave men. Don't let anyone convince you that Neanderthal or Cro-Magnon was your ancestor. I believe they existed over 10,000 years ago, anthropologists and archaeologists have found their remains, their cave paintings and their crude weapons. They were somewhat clever animals, not humans. Adam is the only "creature" that the "Lord God breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living soul" (Gen. 2:7). Adam was the first human being. That happened about 6,000 years ago just like the Bible says.
Third, the continental drift theory: It was proposed by Alfred Wegener in 1912 and was laughed at by other scientists, primarily because there was no theory as to what mechanism caused it. After Wegener died in 1930, scientists generally adopted his theory with a "moving plate" explanation. His unique geological similarities of rock formations linking mountains in Appalachia with those in Scotland, and those in South Africa with those in Brazil have been verified. The plates are still moving (that's what causes earthquakes), but so slowly that North America could not possibly have crossed the Atlantic in a mere 6,000 years, unless the event I suspect happened long ago, the one that caused the earth to become "without form and void," caused a rapid drift.
Finally, my fourth reason for believing in an old earth is its appearance: I've spent lots of time in the Rocky Mountains, and I've personally seen lots of other earth features in North America, Europe and Africa. I've spent several hours looking through a high power telescope at the moon, stars and planets, as well as imagery from our inter-galaxy space probes. I've spent half my life looking at the earth's surface on satellite imagery. The Rocky and Atlas Mountains and the Alps look really old to me, and even a casual look at the moon through good binoculars and the imagery of Mars show heavenly bodies that have been bombarded with meteors for what looks like a lot longer than 6,000 years. The massive impacts on the moon would have been seen from Earth and no historian has mentioned them. Can these four reasons possibly indicate an approximate 4.5-billion years between Gen. 1:1 and 1:2? I think so, what do you think?
Colors of the Seasons - Orange, Yellow, Brown, Red - by Wanda Hess
This time of the year with leaves on trees changing their colors, colorful mums ready to bloom and pumpkins at their maturity makes me think of the Bible verse Ecclesiastes 3:1-8
“To everything there is a season , and a time to every purpose under the heaven: A time to be born, and a time to die; a time to plant, and a time to pluck up that which is planted: A time to kill and a time to heal; a time to break down, and a time to build up; A time to weep, and a time to laugh; a time to mourn, and a time to dance; A time to cast away stones, and a time to gather stones together; a time to embrace, and a time to refrain from embracing: A time to get, and a time to lose; a time to keep and a time to cast away; A time to rend, and a time to sew; a time to keep silence, and a time to speak ; A time to love and a time to hate; a time of war, and a time of peace.” KJV
One of my gardener friends said they like the color of Brown this time of year. And they went on to explain it was the color of the garden when the harvest is complete and the dirt is ready for next spring.
Another point my friend made was “people who plant believe in tomorrow”. Isn’t that an interesting statement? Are we planting the seeds of Christianity in the hope of tomorrow?
This past Sunday there was a family there that I didn’t know. They had three children. What joy to see children who are being brought to church with their parents. Planting the seeds of a future tomorrow? If we don’t have the young in church what happens to the church when us old people pass on? Will there be enough seeds planted to keep First Baptist Church of New Carlisle in business? Now don’t sit there and read this and say churches don’t close up…..Well yes, they do. It has been done even here in New Carlisle……
We need to believe in tomorrow by planting and cultivating today.
So whatever color you enjoy , Orange,Yellow, Brown or Red may it remind you that it is time for another season of our life to pass through…ENJOY!
Don’t miss these colors of this season cause the next season's color is WHITE!!!!
One of my gardener friends said they like the color of Brown this time of year. And they went on to explain it was the color of the garden when the harvest is complete and the dirt is ready for next spring.
Another point my friend made was “people who plant believe in tomorrow”. Isn’t that an interesting statement? Are we planting the seeds of Christianity in the hope of tomorrow?
This past Sunday there was a family there that I didn’t know. They had three children. What joy to see children who are being brought to church with their parents. Planting the seeds of a future tomorrow? If we don’t have the young in church what happens to the church when us old people pass on? Will there be enough seeds planted to keep First Baptist Church of New Carlisle in business? Now don’t sit there and read this and say churches don’t close up…..Well yes, they do. It has been done even here in New Carlisle……
We need to believe in tomorrow by planting and cultivating today.
So whatever color you enjoy , Orange,Yellow, Brown or Red may it remind you that it is time for another season of our life to pass through…ENJOY!
Don’t miss these colors of this season cause the next season's color is WHITE!!!!
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