Time is already cruising along in the SBS (School of Biblical Studies). Today we turned in Acts. What an amazing look at the early church and the initial spread of the gospel. I've often heard of those days of the church as being an ideal we should aspire to today... be like the New Testament church... but as we're studying this time period, it's clear that this was actually quite a tumultuous time for the church. There were periods of relative peace when the church unified and grew... but most of the growth and spread of the gospel happened because of intense persecution. For example, it was Stephen's death that began a fierce wave of persecution that drove most of the believers out of Jerusalem. And what did they take with them? The gospel. Their new beliefs. This was the beginning of the gospel going to Judea and Samaria, and eventually to the ends of the earth. Besides all the persecution from those outside the church (mainly religious leaders of the day) it was quite a huge task for those inside the church to boil things down to the essentials and to prune out the false doctrines and the things the new believers wanted to pull in from their previous belief systems. In some ways we have an advantage today... the advantage of hindsight and church history and thousands of years of scholars expounding on the truths in scripture. But we can't forget that it all began with a band of believers, empowered by the Holy Spirit who gave them amazing boldness to proclaim the gospel in the face of obstacles and persecution. And the movement carries on to this day, 2,000 years later. The same truth. The same faith. The same Holy Spirit. Pretty amazing.
But the thing about SBS is there isn't much time to really meditate on a book. Acts was due at 6pm and it's immediately on to the next one. Which happens to be 1 Thessalonians. Which happens to be taught by our very own Hans Oines. So I'm looking forward to that! I know he's looking forward to being done. We'll let you know how it goes!
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