Pastor Prince

What do you do when God does something completely unexpected and wonderful?  In the story of the apostle Peter's vision at Joppa, God did something like that. The story starts at the beginning of Acts 10.  A God-fearing Roman Centurion living in Caesarea named Cornelius has a vision of a an angel.  The angel tells him to send to Joppa for a man called Peter, who's staying at the house of Simon the tanner.  Cornelius immediately dispatched two servants and one of his aides to go to Joppa. The following day, around noon, the three men are nearing Joppa.  While people are preparing the big meal of the day, Peter goes up on the roof to pray.  Though he's hungry, he falls into a trance.  In the trance, he has a vision of a large sheet coming down from heaven.  In the sheet are all kinds of unclean animals, animals the Jewish law said Peter should never eat.  A voice called out, "Arise, Peter, kill and eat." Peter recoiled at the command.  Observance of

In the ancient world, life was bookended by breath.  They believed life began when babies were born and took in their first breath.  Life ended when a person made their last, long, exhale. In Genesis 2, Adam becomes a living being when God breathes into his lifeless body.   Acts 2 describes the coming of the Holy Spirit at Pentecost.  It was like the birth of the church.  Jesus had commanded his followers to remain in Jerusalem to wait for the coming of the Holy Spirit.  He told them that when the Spirit came, they would be his witnesses to the world. It begins with the sound of a rushing wind.  In Greek, the word used here for "wind," also means "spirit," and "breath."  The terms were closely linked in ancient minds.  What happens here blends them all.   Following the wind, they saw what appeared to be tongues of fire that fell on each of Jesus' followers. The fact that they looked like tongues suggest they were receiving power

Matthew 28:16ff says that after Jesus' resurrection, the eleven disciples went to Galilee to the mountain where Jesus told them to go.  When they went there, he appeared to them and gave them a commission.  They were to go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them and teaching them to obey everything he had commanded them.   One verb in his commission is in the imperative tense, which was like putting it in bold face.  It was "make disciples."  A disciple is a person who comes under the discipline of a master.  In Jesus' time, people learned by attaching themselves to a teacher.  They spent their days with him, following him around and learning from him.  Their goal was to think, speak, and act like their masters.   Jesus' disciples were to be disciple makers themselves.  This disciple-making process had two components: baptism and teaching.  They were baptized in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, meaning that they were dem

The climax of the Big Story of the Bible is Jesus' crucifixion and resurrection.  It's easy to think of these as two distinct events, but they're two parts of one event.  In it, God provided for the redemption of humanity. "Woman, why are you crying?" is the question highlighted in John's account of the resurrection (20:1-18).  Mary Magdalene went to Jesus' tomb early on Sunday morning, and found the stone rolled away.  Assuming Jesus' body had been stolen, she ran to Peter and John, and told them what she had seen. They ran to the tomb.  John arrived first, but waited outside the entrance.  Peter, true to his impulsive nature, strode right in the tomb when he arrived.  John followed him. As Peter looked around, he saw Jesus' burial clothes neatly arranged.  That seemed to rule out grave robbers, because they wouldn't have left them that way.  John looked around and believed .  The account doesn't say what he believed, but i