This author has not written his bio yet.
But we are proud to say that Matt Whitman contributed 140 entries already.
Peter and the apostles just stared down the Supreme Court of their day, and the Supreme Court blinked. In the last day or so they’d also been miraculously freed from jail and narrowly avoided execution, so it’s a safe bet that they weren’t super fired up to come back and find out that there was […]
Gamaliel was a guy whom people respected, so when he told his coworkers to back off and give this Jesus thing some time to play out they begrudgingly agreed. In Acts 5, his reasoning for letting it breathe makes a ton of sense, and even ends up providing affirmation for what God was doing with […]
Things seemed primed to go nuclear as Peter and the apostles are marched before the religious leaders again. The room’s been hostile and Peter’s just finished making them even more angry with his brief speech. All signs point to violence, but a guy named Gamaliel stands up to speak and the room gets quiet. What […]
Peter and the apostles get hauled before the religious leaders again after being miraculously released from jail. The leaders seem all sensitive about Peter telling everyone about how the had Jesus killed. What will Peter say in response to that silliness?
The apostles can’t help themselves. They just keep getting arrested for the same thing. This time it plays out a little different though — God lets them out of jail and they go back to the temple and keep talking about Jesus. What will the thought-policing religious leaders do about that?
Ananias and Sapphira got caught lying to God and then died. That seems like it could be a real momentum killer for the fledgling church. What’ll happen next? Will everyone bail? Is God angry with them, will he keep his distance for a while? Or will the movement persist?
There’s so much talk about the mercy of Jesus and the love of God in the New Testament that it’s pretty jarring when the text reminds us of his role as judge. In Acts 5 a couple decides to try to pull a fast one on God and they get caught. It’s not surprising that […]
There’s so much talk about the mercy of Jesus and the love of God in the New Testament that it’s pretty jarring when the text reminds us of his role as judge. In Acts 5 a couple decides to try to pull a fast one on God and they get caught. It’s not surprising that […]
We’re briefly stepping away from the book of Acts this week to consider how we know any of the things we’re reading about in the New Testament ever happened. There’s solid, secular, historical evidence, but it takes a minute to explain, so I decided to do a short series dealing with that topic. How do […]
How do we know things about the distant past? How do we know details about the lives of the most famous historical figures? What about Jesus? Outside the Bible, how do we know anything about Jesus or the early Church? In this episode, I talk about how studying the ancient past works, and then I […]
