As Peter Began to Speak
Farrell Till jftill@midwest.net
Tue, 11 Nov 1997 13:08:57 -0600 (CST) (00879296937, 199711111908.NAA23937@cdale3.midwest.net)
At 12:00 AM 11/11/97 -0800, Lenny Esposito wrote:
>As to the argument of the Holy Spirit falling in Acts 10 when Peter uttered
only a few syllables, it's nonsense.
TILL
Well, your problem is the same as Matt Bell's. You have a preconceived
notion that the NT teaches that all "saved" people are baptized in the Holy
Spirit as a sign of their having already been saved, and so you are going to
continue believing this no matter how much evidence is against you. My
argument has been a simple one.
1. Peter was sent to Joppa to speak words by which Cornelius and his
household could be saved (Acts 11:14).
2. Acts 10:44 says that while Peter yet spoke these words, the Holy Spirit
fell on all them that heard the word.
3. Acts 11:15 says that the Holy Spirit fell on Cornelius and his household
as Peter BEGAN to speak.
4. Acts 11:15 is more time specific than 10:44. As Matt Bell saw when he
tried to appeal to the Greek, Acts 10:44 was merely saying that as Peter IS
SPEAKING, the Holy Spirit fell on all those that ARE HEARING the word.
Hence, this verse says nothing more than that the Holy Spirit fell on them
at some point while Peter was speaking, but BEGAN is a time specific word.
The Holy Spirit either fell on the household of Cornelius as Peter BEGAN to
speak or else there is an error in the NT. So take your choice. Either way
you have a problem that neither you nor Matt Bell has been able to explain.
Bell was finally forced to claim that the END of Peter's speech can be
considered the BEGINNING. Is this going to be your position too? If so,
then the Bible can mean anything that anyone wants it to mean, and this is
usually the extreme that biblicists are driven to when they try to defend
biblical inerrancy.
ESPOSITO
>You claim that Peter finished his speech because it is the same length as
his >previously recorded sermons in the book of Acts.
TILL
No, I didn't claim that this speech was the same length as the others,
because it isn't. What I said was that the information that Peter put into
his speech in Acts 10 is parallel to the others, and I used his speech in
Acts 3 as a point of comparison. You, of course, said nothing specific
about the comparison. I made this comparison, because someone else had
tried to claim that Peter could have intended to say much more but was
hindered from doing so by the baptism of the Holy Spirit that Cornelius
received. I simply showed that the speech in Acts 10 contains the same
points that were attributed to Peter's speech in Acts 3. My correspondent
in this case never replied to my posting. Maybe you would like to give it a
try.
My position is that Peter finished saying what he had been sent to Caesarea
to say or else he never finished saying the words by which Cornelius and his
household could be saved. The fact that this speech is point-for-point
parallel to the one in Acts 3 supports my position. So the textual evidence
indicates that Peter said what he was sent to Cornelius's house to say, and
if he said what he had been sent there to say, then he said the words by
which Cornelius could be saved. If not, why not? Furthermore, if Peter
said what he was sent to say and IF the Holy Spirit fell on Cornelius and
his household as Peter BEGAN to speak, then they received the baptism of the
Holy Spirit BEFORE they had heard the words by which they could be saved.
If not, why not? You can't refute an argument just by saying that it is
nonsense. You have to show why it is nonsense, and your additional comments
below do not do that.
ESPOSITO
>A first year logic student would be able to see this is an argument from
silence. >Add to the fact that one of the two sermons to which you are
comparing was >DEFINITELY interrupted and incomplete (Acts4:1) and this is
shown to be very >weak evidence for ignoring the natural reading of the text.
>
TILL
It isn't an argument from silence, because both speeches record the same
information, and that is all that I was arguing. As for the interruption,
in the speech in Acts 3, Peter stipulated the requirements for salvation in
verse 19: "Repent therefore and be converted that your sins may be blotted
out." Compare this to Acts 2:38, where Peter said to the people who had
asked what they should do, "Repent and be baptized everyone of you for the
remission of sins." What follows verse 19 in Acts 3 was an attempt on
Peter's part to convince his audience of Jews that Jesus had been foreseen
by OT prophecies. This, then, was what was interrupted, and not the gospel
message that he had already preached in verses 12-19. Read them, and you
will see that Peter preached (1) God had glorified Jesus, (2) the ones he
was speaking to had delivered Jesus up to Pilate, (3) Jesus had been killed
but raised up, etc., etc., etc. If you will compare this speech to the one
in Acts 10, you will see the parallel points. Thus if Peter told the people
in Acts 3 what they should do to be saved, you will have to admit that he
did the same in Acts 10, since the points are parallel.
Regardless, you have to admit that Peter finished saying to Cornelius what
he had been sent from Joppa to tell him or else say that Peter did not
finish speaking the words by which Cornelius and his family could be saved.
If Peter didn't finish saying these words, then the angel was wrong in
telling Cornelius that Peter would come and speak to him words by which he
could be saved (11:14). This would result in another error in the Bible.
So why don't you just accept the conclusions that the plain language of the
Bible leads you to? You won't, because you are hung up on this Pentecostal
concept of Holy Spirit baptism for all people who are saved. So maybe you
will accept a challenge that Matt Bell has met with silence. Why don't you
show us NT scriptures that teach that ALL who are saved will receive the
baptism of the Holy Spirit?
>
Farrell Till
Skepticism, Inc.
jftill@midwest.net