Author Archives: Jon Garvey

Back in June, I did a piece on the highly fashionable, but entirely unbiblical, doctrine of “spiritual breakthrough.” This teaching is all about how we might (but probably won’t!) break through all the barriers blocking our victorious life in Christ, over cancer, lack of a large house or car, miraculous spiritual gifts etc. I said there is actually no doctrine of breakthrough in the Bible. But I was wrong.

Yesterday’s post was obviously, like all my “What the Bible should have said” pieces, intended to show how easily we who claim to base our belief and practice on the Bible blithely ignore it in practice. The pattern shown in the primary NT passage on Christian assembly, 1 Corinthians 12-14, says that it is a meeting based entirely on mutual edification rather than “the worship experience”: “All of these [things] must be done for the strengthening of the church” (1 Corinthians 14:26). But this is also the pattern held up by Luke as paradigmatic of God’s new holy people in Acts 2. The ideal and the apostolically recommended practice agree.

Acts 2: 40-42: And with many other words he bore witness and continued to exhort them, saying, “Save yourselves from this crooked generation.” So those who received his word were baptized, and there were added that day about three thousand souls. And they devoted themselves to learning to hear the voice of God in their heads, to the worship experience, to praise songs, and to working many wonders and signs, just like the apostles.