Dear Friends of "Dial Daily Bread,"
Everywhere the early apostles preached, something happened--either a riot or a revival. The reason they could turn "the world upside down" was not their cleverness or their personalities. The power was in the content of their message.
Peter's sermon at Pentecost reveals the source of their power: they understood what the atonement implies. Not just the Jewish leaders, but all in the Gentile world were declared to be guilty of the rejection and murder of the Son of God. Pentecost was the corporate guilt of all humanity exposed. Enmity against God had blossomed into the supreme crime of eternity. The apostles minced no words in telling it (Acts 2:23-37; "corporate" pertains to the human race as one "body"). It was the proclamation of that truth which catalyzed humanity.
The latter rain gift of the Holy Spirit will come before the grain can ripen, as Pentecost was the early rain that caused it to germinate. The truth of the gospel will do the work (cf. Gal. 2:14).
Some of the human problems which the gospel of the apostles solved were the same ones that perplex psychiatrists and social scientists today. The miracles in Corinth were greater than mere physical healings (see 1 Cor. 6:9-11). These same problems afflict the human race today, but they have become worse.
These problems are not mere occasional moral lapses. Each becomes a compulsive obsession or addiction, with roots going down to people's toes. Addicts seem powerless to break their slaveries.
How were those problems solved in Corinth? Paul gives the answer in his letter to the Corinthians: by the message of justification by faith. "You were washed, ... you were sanctified, ... you were justified in the name of the Lord Jesus."
--Robert J. Wieland
From: Powerful Good News, 1989.
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