Your year-end generosity to Enduring Word is appreciated. Click here to donate. Even when we were dead in trespasses, made us alive together with Christ (by grace you have been saved), and raised us up together, and made us sit together in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus, that in the ages to come He…
Your year-end generosity to Enduring Word is appreciated. Click here to donate. But Mary kept all these things and pondered them in her heart. (Luke 2:19) The Bethlehem shepherds had a rare experience – a visitation from the angel of the Lord, announcing good news: the birth of a baby who was both Messiah and…
Your year-end generosity to Enduring Word is appreciated. Click here to donate. For it pleased the Father that in Him all the fullness should dwell. (Colossians 1:19) We like the Christmas season, and we like to put our thoughts on the baby Jesus. So many aspects of the story appeal to us. We think of…
Your year-end generosity to Enduring Word is appreciated. Click here to donate. As for Saul, he made havoc of the church, entering every house, and dragging off men and women, committing them to prison. Therefore those who were scattered went everywhere preaching the word.(Acts 8:3-4) These verses from Acts 8 tell us what kind of…
Now Saul was consenting to his death. At that time a great persecution arose against the church which was at Jerusalem; and they were all scattered throughout the regions of Judea and Samaria, except the apostles. (Acts 8:1) A few verses before, we met the man who supervised the execution of Stephen, who was the…
And they stoned Stephen as he was calling on God and saying, “Lord Jesus, receive my spirit.” Then he knelt down and cried out with a loud voice, “Lord, do not charge them with this sin.” And when he had said this, he fell asleep. (Acts 7:59-60) Stephen was accused, arrested, and put on trial….
Then they cried out with a loud voice, stopped their ears, and ran at him with one accord; and they cast him out of the city and stoned him. And the witnesses laid down their clothes at the feet of a young man named Saul. (Acts 7:57-58) For the ruling council, it was just too…
But he, being full of the Holy Spirit, gazed into heaven and saw the glory of God, and Jesus standing at the right hand of God, and said, “Look! I see the heavens opened and the Son of Man standing at the right hand of God!” (Acts 7:55-56) This dramatic description tells the last few…
When they heard these things they were cut to the heart, and they gnashed at him with their teeth. (Acts 7:54) This is a remarkable scene from Acts. Stephen, a servant-leader among the early Christians, was on trial before the same council that, just a few years earlier, had sent Jesus to the Romans for crucifixion….
You stiff-necked and uncircumcised in heart and ears! You always resist the Holy Spirit; as your fathers did, so do you. Which of the prophets did your fathers not persecute? And they killed those who foretold the coming of the Just One, of whom you now have become the betrayers and murderers.(Acts 7:51-52) When Stephen…
Then the high priest said, “Are these things so?” And he said, “Brethren and fathers, listen: The God of glory appeared to our father Abraham when he was in Mesopotamia, before he dwelt in Haran…” (Acts 7:1-2) Stephen, a leader in the early church, was on trial before the highest council of the Jewish elders –…
Then they secretly induced men to say, “We have heard him speak blasphemous words against Moses and God.” And they stirred up the people, the elders, and the scribes; and they came upon him, seized him, and brought him to the council. They also set up false witnesses who said, “This man does not cease…