I am using the daily Bible reading schedule from “The Bible.net” for my daily Bible reading.

Today, I am reading and commenting on Acts 19-20.

    There are several places in the Acts of the Apostles where Luke makes a distinction between baptism and receiving the Holy Spirit, between the baptism of John and the baptism of Jesus, with the latter involving the Holy Spirit. I am not sure what this means, but I think we as a Church have lost something important in losing this distinction. I want to be clear that I understand intellectually the distinction they are making. As I write that I realize that perhaps to a degree I do understand that distinction. I believe that one of the reasons I have trouble seeing it is the modern Church’s separation of baptism from the confession of faith. The older I get the more convinced I am that baptism should, as a general rule, immediately follow confession of faith as we see in the story of Philip and the Ethiopian eunuch.

    Paul ministered in Ephesus for over two years. He rented a lecture hall to speak in after some of the Jews objected to him preaching Christianity in the synagogue. I never noticed this before, but throughout the Acts of the Apostles Luke emphasizes that the division between Christianity and Judaism was created by certain Jews rejecting Christianity and pushing it out of the synagogues. In other words, Luke wants his readers to see that Christianity is only a separate religion because some Jews were unwilling to accept it as being an interpretation of Judaism. I believe that modern Messianic Jews practice something close to what Paul originally tried to preach. I, also, believe that Paul saw the rejection by many Jews as God directing him to build what became today’s Church (this is in no way a criticism of Messianic Jews).