The Testimony of the Witnesses

Angebote / Angebote:

Excerpt from The Testimony of the Witnesses: A Devotional and Homiletical Exposition of the Acts of the Apostles This apparent purpose may perhaps explain the fragmentary character of much of his chronicle, and make clear the fact that his mind, Divinely guided, was not so intent on the continuity of his story, as upon seizing salient points where he might couple Divine teachings with Divinely prepared events and peoples. What the apostles were commissioned to say they were to say as witnesses. The resurrection of Christ was the great event they were to attest. "Him God raised up the third day, and gave Him to be made manifest not to all the people, but unto witnesses that were chosen before of God, even to us who ate and drank with Him after He rose from the dead." They were not qualified to give testimony to this most stupendous fact in human history, unless they had seen the Lord alive after His death on the Cross and burial in Joseph's tomb. This qualification they all possessed, and therefore "with great power gave the apostles their witness of the resurrection of the Lord Jesus." But manifestly one needs no special endowment of power simply to bear witness to a fact. And the fact of Christ's resurrection came to the multitudes with great power, because the witnesses were able, through their Divine endowment of power, to so connect the fact with the prophecies going before, and the swift following consequences, that none might fail to see that a new era was beginning in God's dealings with His people, and that a brighter day was dawning for Zion. And so in the Acts we have the great fact of the resurrection of Christ solemnly and indubitably attested, and this fact is shown to be so interlaced with the history of the Church, on the one hand, and with the coming triumphs of the Church, on the other, that, as that history plainly evidences the hand of God, so clearly is the future radiant with blessings for the new faith. We are interested in the history, and we rejoice in the promises to Zion. But we must never forget, - and certainly not in these days of scepticism as to the resurrection, - that the one thing established by apostolic testimony underruns the entire book of the Acts, and binds together into one solid mass the irrefutable witness of the primitive disciples to the truth of this fundamental tenet of our Christian faith. The things done have no meaning apart from the great and solemnly certified fact of the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully, any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.