Speaking in tongues is mentioned in several passages in the New Testament: Mark 16:17; Acts 2:1-13; 10:44-46; 19:6; 1 Cor 12-14. It is important to understand that the Greek word for “tongue” was the same word used for “language”, so “speaking in tongues” means “speaking in languages”. The reference in Mark 16:17 is to speaking [...]
Answers about spirit gifts
Before we answer these questions, we need to clarify what is meant by the phrase “spiritual gifts”. The phrase is usually used in the Bible [1Cor. 12:1; 14:1] to refer to the miraculous gifts that God sometimes gives to people for various reasons (e.g. the skill and wisdom that God gave to Bezalel so that [...]
What is the meaning of Peter’s vision? Peter’s vision comes part way through Acts 10. In Acts 10:1-8, a man called Cornelius, a Roman — so somebody who was a gentile, not a Jew — was spoken to by an angel who told him to make contact with Peter. Peter was a Jew, and Jews [...]
…when the perfect comes, the partial will pass away. ‘The perfect’ in 1Cor. 13:10 refers to the mature church community. The gifts of the Holy Spirit were given in order to help the young Christian community become established in a dangerous world. Ephesians 4 also talks about the Holy Spirit gifts, and it says they [...]
The phrase ‘manifestation of the Spirit’ appears only once in the Bible, in 1Cor. 12:7: To each is given the manifestation of the Spirit for the common good. Here it is used to describe the various gifts of the spirit: the spirit gifts were ‘manifestations of the spirit’. ‘Manifestation’ means something like ‘the act of [...]
We’ll deal with both of these questions in turn: How did the NT canon become established? As each new part of the New Testament (NT) scriptures was written it would have become accepted by the Christian community because it was written by people they knew were authoritative.1 In this way the traditional canon of NT [...]
In the Bible ‘speaking in tongues’ means ‘speaking in another language of the world’. We can see this in Acts 2:4-11, where the disciples first started speaking in tongues: {4} … they [the disciples] were all filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak in other tongues as the Spirit gave them utterance. {5} [...]
The gifts of the Spirit appear to have ceased with the death of the Apostles (including Paul) as they were the only ones who could pass on the gifts by the laying of hands. For example: “These they set before the apostles, and they prayed and laid their hands on them.” (Acts 6:6) “And when [...]
The word ‘spirit’ The word ‘spirit’ in Hebrew is the same word (ruakh) as ‘breath’ or ‘wind’. These are the first two uses in the Bible: Genesis 1:2 The earth was without form and void, and darkness was over the face of the deep. And the spirit of God was hovering (or blowing) over the [...]
