Craig S. Keener Quotes

Revelation announces that God is still in control and that he will conclude this stage of history the way he has promised. He

As a young Christian, I was praying fervently one day for guidance on a particular issue when I felt the Spirit gently interrupt. I was shocked to think I heard him suggest that I was too busy seeking his will. How could that be? Then I heard the rest of his suggestion. "Don't seek my will in this matter. Seek me - and then you will know my will." Seeking God's will is important, but in this case my focus was wrong.

Those who look down on other Christians because they lack a particular gift or experience, or those who despise a particular gift and look down on Christians who have it, are not demonstrating spiritual maturity.

What the radical Enlightenment excluded as implausible based on the principle of analogy, much of today's world can accept on the same principle of analogy. Hundreds of millions of people worldwide claim to have experienced or witnessed what they believe are miracles. Eyewitness claims to dramatic recoveries appear in a wide variety of cultures, among Christians often successfully emulating models of healings found in the Gospels and Acts. Granted, such healings do not occur on every occasion and are fairly unpredictable in their occurrence; yet they seem to appear with special frequency in cultures and circles that welcome them.

God alone is God, and he alone merits first place - beyond every other love, every other anxiety, every other fear that consumes us.

Any student of the New Testament eager to understand its Greco-Roman setting will profit greatly from this excellent book. I commend it highly for its up-to-date perspectives and usefulness. Jeffers writes with a breadth of expertise on the Greco-Roman world that few New Testament specialists can match.

Western theology invariably asks the question: Are miracles possible? This of course addresses the Enlightenment problem of a closed universe. In much of Asia that is a non-question because the miraculous is assumed and fairly regularly experienced. - Hwa Yung

Spiritual giftedness does not guarantee that we hear from God rightly on every point.

So pervasively has Enlightenment culture's anti-supernaturalism affected the Western church, especially educated European and North American Christians, that most of us are suspicious of anything supernatural.

Revelation addresses many issues that have not changed because human nature and God's character have remained constant. It

One of the first steps we should take in knowing God's voice is knowing God's heart.

Millions of Bible-reading Christians who today call themselves charismatics do not believe in health and wealth teachings.

Using only nonnarrative portions of the Bible to interpret narrative is not only disrespectful to the narrative portions but also suggests a misguided approach to nonnarrative parts of the Bible.

Until those charismatic churches who have poor teaching can supply both spiritual empowerment and sounder teaching, many of them will continue to be only a way station for Christians who need a fresh spiritual experience but who end up taking it elsewhere once they have it.

We should know and celebrate God with our whole person. While too many Christians neglect to serve God with the mind, others cultivate only their minds and neglect the emotional aspects of worship.

The image of keys (plural) perhaps suggests not so much the porter, who controls admission to the house, as the steward, who regulates its administration (Is 22:22, in conjunction with 22:15). The issue then is not that of admission to the church (which is not what the kingdom of heaven means; see pp. 45-47) but an authority derived from a delegation of God's sovereignty.

God is consistent with his nature and declared purposes in Scripture, but he is not limited to our finite understanding of him or the ways we think he should work.

If we must "feel" God's presence before we believe he is with us, we again reduce God to our ability to grasp him, making him an idol instead of acknowledging him as God.

The keeper of the keys was one of the most important roles a household servant could hold (Mark 13:32-34). A higher official held the keys in a royal kingdom (Is 22:22) and in God's house, the temple.

As Elijah's mantle fell on Elisha and as other prophetic disciples sought to emulate their mentors, so the ascending Jesus empowered his church with the Spirit to carry on his mission to the ends of the earth (1:9–11).

Is Western Christianity genuinely different enough from our cultures to delay God's judgment on our societies?