Paul and the Disciples at Ephesus This is our final lesson about the best models for the salvation experience. We have not just studied random stories like the ones you might hear in a church “testimony time.” These were the examples of conversion God presents to us in his Word. If he has immortalized these in the Scriptures, it’s because he wants his Church to examine and emulate them. These are exemplary models. Carefully consider the Bible's salvation stories. God establis

Paul and the Jailkeeper We saw how Paul evangelized Lydia in the last lesson, and today we’re going to look at how Paul evangelized another person from the same city as Lydia. Paul and Silas evangelized the Roman jailkeeper of Philippi. And what a story it is! It’s dramatic, heart-warming, but most of all, it’s a structured story. The story of the Philippian jailer has a very defined chronology, and that helps us greatly in our interpretation of how a person gets saved. Luke

Experiences led by Paul Paul is a unique apostle. He was not one of the Twelve, the select group that ministered alongside Jesus Christ, but Paul surpassed the Twelve in labors, patient suffering, and evangelistic outreach. That last accomplishment is what makes the Apostle Paul so important to our study--because this post is also about the methods of the greatest evangelists of all time and Paul very well may have been the greatest! (We'll find out after God's judgments are

Another Experience Led by Peter We are the Church of the Living God. We are the Bride of Christ. As stewards of salvation, we oversee the new birth. So, evangelism is our specialty. Knowing this process well, we always procure the baptism in the Holy Spirit for a person who has just been baptized in water. Always. In other words, we--God's evangelists--always make sure that the result of a person’s water baptism is baptism in the Holy Spirit. That’s because the two baptisms a

Experiences led by Peter What Shall We Do? There was a day when sinners were pierced to the heart by the message of the Church and they cried out to the pastors present: ‘Brethren, what shall we do ?’ (Acts 2:37) Those days are not gone. People still go to churches and cry out to find out what they need to do. But the response of pastors—is it the same as it was in the beginning? Do pastors preach the same message? No, they don't. Nowadays you get lots of messages from lots o

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:...