The One Evangelist Once again, let’s note that Philip is the only person in the Bible specifically called an evangelist  (Acts 21:8) . If the only person God in his Word calls an evangelist  used baptism as his method, then every true evangelist should use baptism to evangelize too . But that’s not happening in Christianity today. Furthermore, Christians misuse the term evangelist.  They do not use the term the way the Scriptures use it. For example, none of the people famous

A Review In our last lesson, we examined the story of Philip the evangelist and the Ethiopian eunuch. Remember Philip the evangelist? Do you remember the question of the Ethiopian 'Here's water. What stops me from being baptized?' Well, we learned from Philip's method of evangelism, right? Remember what we learned specifically? Didn't we learn that baptism is indispensable if you're going to win a soul for Christ? Yup. We learned that you must include baptism in your evangeli

The Ethiopian Eunuch Did you know that Africa was ruled by queens more than 170 years before the birth of Christ? And African queens were in power well after Jesus' resurrection. Those queens were called Kandakes. They were famous as "king makers" and ruled in Cush, Nubia, and Ethiopia. Here's a bigger-than-life-sized ancient stone etching demonstrating the high regard these queens had in the Nile region of Africa at that time. This particular artefact is currently in a muse

The Legend Continues We’ve learned about Philip the evangelist--the man, the deacon, the legend. His story is recorded for us in the Book of Acts. It is in that book that Philip, more than anything else, models for us the best method for evangelism--the Biblical method! You and I can learn from Philip's method so that we might perform effective evangelism in our own ministries. Why is it so important to be effective in evangelism? Quite simply, so that we might produce what

No Philips Today How many churches today bap tize as an integral part of their evangelization? Very few. Even among the few that include it in their strategy for evangelism, they’ll repeatedly refer to baptism as a “symbol” or as a “profession of faith”—shying away from the Biblical terminology like the washing away of sins , the forgiveness of sins , or being buried with Christ . Do you know of any modern-day evangelist who uses Philip the evangelist’s method for reaching th

Short Review We’ve been investigating not just any old model, but the model for salvation. We’ve identified the Biblical example--one that's there for us to emulate. Specifically, in the Book of Acts, where thousands of people got saved during the initial years of the Church's growth you can see the salvation model repeated time and time again. This model authoritatively demonstrates what it looks like for someone to get saved. With so much falsehood and hypocrisy in the Chur

Short Review You’ll recall that we looked at how the altar call and the so-called “prayer of faith” do not conform to the Biblical example of how someone gets saved. And you’ll recall that there is a model for salvation. In other words, there is a solid example for evangelism in the Church today. That example is repeated time and time again in the Bible, and it demonstrates what it looks like for someone to truly get saved. You might also remember that we said that a solid Ch

A Proud Generation This generation is filled with itself. It’s proud. You can observe this pride even in the Church, and that’s very sad. It's very unfortunate because Christians are supposed to be humble. Aren't we? Well, yes. God put the Church in the World not for us to conform to the World, but for us to be a transforming agent for the World. We should be light in the darkness, but many churches have become darkness instead of light. Jesus' words of warning, words he dire

Jesus’ Example The Lord Jesus lived an exemplary life. We should imitate everything he did. For example, he was baptized so we should be baptized too. Jesus got baptized for a reason, and so do we. In fact, we get baptized for the same reason! Jesus got baptized to get the gift of the Holy Spirit. We too should get baptized if we want the gift of the Holy Spirit. He didn't experience the baptism of the Holy Spirit until he got baptized in water, and that's the way it works fo

There Is a Model People in Evangelical churches often talk about how someone “got saved” or how they themselves “got saved.” In like manner, they push for people to “get saved”—meaning they want people to walk to the front of a church in response to an altar call. But there is no altar call in the Bible. There are only calls to repentance, faith in God, and baptism. So, the idea that someone “gets saved” by passing to the front of a church is unbiblical. The idea of an “altar

Take Two! Let’s get back to our text and zoom in on the second part. We’ve already explained how (contrary to popular opinion) Paul's...

Poor Interpreters Most Evangelical pastors today use Paul’s statement ‘Christ did not send me to baptize, but to preach the Gospel’ to...

Top Hymn Appearing in every Evangelical hymnal published in 2024, a hymn says: Blessed assurance, Jesus is mine! Oh, what a foretaste of...

Death-for-Death We receive the mercy of God through the blood of Jesus. The blood Jesus spilled on the Cross was his lifeblood and when...

The Benefit of Blood The sprinkling of blood is a cleansing  in God’s eyes, but it’s not so in the eyes of modern man. Modern man thinks:...

Personal Hygiene How important is personal hygiene to you? For children it’s not very important, but for most adults it’s very important....

The Text Elisha cut a stick and threw it there, and made the iron float  (2 Kings 6:6). A Review: Baptism Saves At this point, if you’ve...

Context Let’s read the full text of the Israelites' crossing of the Jordan. If we do, we’ll become more aware of the context. With a...

God’s Five Purposes God had five purposes for bringing the Israelites through the Jordan River. We just read Joshua chapters 1-4, so we...

The Rivers of Israel The Jordan is by far Israel’s longest river at 251 km. The other rivers of Israel are either very short or they are...