{"id":6197,"date":"2015-01-02T01:27:06","date_gmt":"2015-01-02T09:27:06","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/nettelhorst.com\/blog1\/?p=6197"},"modified":"2015-01-02T01:27:06","modified_gmt":"2015-01-02T09:27:06","slug":"gentiles-too","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/nettelhorst.com\/blog1\/2015\/01\/02\/gentiles-too\/","title":{"rendered":"Gentiles, too"},"content":{"rendered":"

\u201cRight then three men who had been sent to me from Caesarea stopped at the house where I was staying. The Spirit told me to have no hesitation about going with them. These six brothers also went with me, and we entered the man\u2019s house. He told us how he had seen an angel appear in his house and say, \u2018Send to Joppa for Simon who is called Peter. He will bring you a message through which you and all your household will be saved.\u2019 <\/p>\n

\t\u201cAs I began to speak, the Holy Spirit came on them as he had come on us at the beginning. Then I remembered what the Lord had said: \u2018John baptized with water, but you will be baptized with the Holy Spirit.\u2019 So if God gave them the same gift as he gave us, who believed in the Lord Jesus Christ, who was I to think that I could oppose God?\u201d <\/p>\n

\tWhen they heard this, they had no further objections and praised God, saying, \u201cSo then, God has granted even the Gentiles repentance unto life.\u201d (Acts 11:11-18)<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

The universe can change for us overnight. What\u2019s old can become unexpectedly new again. When Peter saw Gentiles filled with the Holy Spirit, Peter remembered Jesus\u2019 words. And it changed his perception of their meaning. When Jesus left, he promised that he would send the Holy Spirit on the day of Pentecost. Peter knew what the Spirit\u2019s arrival had done to him\u2014how it had made him the fearless preacher of the Gospel instead of the man who had denied Christ three times. <\/p>\n

So when he witnessed the same thing happen to Gentiles that had happened to him at Pentecost, he realized Jesus words meant far more than he had imagined. Peter suddenly realized that his prejudices against Gentiles and his beliefs about the nature of God had been completely wrong. He realized that as much as Jesus\u2019 words predicting the coming Spirit had been for him and the other disciples, Jesus\u2019 promise was also for the entire human race. Peter suddenly reinterpreted what Jesus had said. He saw Jesus\u2019 words in a whole new light.<\/p>\n

Jesus\u2019 words had not changed. What Jesus meant by his words had not changed. But what Peter had understood about them did. What we think we know of God and the Bible may on occasion turn out to be completely wrong\u2014or just incomplete. Like Peter, we need to be ready to listen to Jesus all over again.<\/p>\n

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\u201cRight then three men who had been sent to me from Caesarea stopped at the house where I was staying. The Spirit told me to have no hesitation about going with them. These six brothers also went with me, and … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_s2mail":"yes"},"categories":[17,16],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/nettelhorst.com\/blog1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6197"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/nettelhorst.com\/blog1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/nettelhorst.com\/blog1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/nettelhorst.com\/blog1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/nettelhorst.com\/blog1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6197"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/nettelhorst.com\/blog1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6197\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6198,"href":"http:\/\/nettelhorst.com\/blog1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6197\/revisions\/6198"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/nettelhorst.com\/blog1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6197"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/nettelhorst.com\/blog1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6197"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/nettelhorst.com\/blog1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6197"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}