The Thanks for

life where we're in a continuing study of the early church

and today we'll learn from Philip the Evangelist

whose life shows us how we can take advantage of

gospel opportunities as they arise. We'll find out why even brief encounters with others

can be impactful.

Alistair Beg is teaching from Acts chapter 8, beginning with verse 26. The true Christian message asks people to consider facts. He told them the good news about Jesus. He didn't tell him his experiences, he didn't

give him his ideas, he didn't launch into some strange diatribe. He stuck with the information.

Now this is very important in our era because you understand what has happened in our culture philosophically don't you?

Men and women are prepared to talk about facts if you're talking about

for example the boiling point of water or freezing point, or the batting

averages of your favorite baseball player. That is the realm of facts. But when you move into the realm of beliefs or slash values, then

our culture says we are no longer dealing with facts. Now we are simply dealing with beliefs, with

values that we have determined that we will embrace and perhaps proclaim. And so in a very skillful way,

the Gordian Knot has been snapped as it were, the umbilical cord has been wrenched between the reality

of objective historical information and the experience of a life-changing encounter on the basis of that objective historical material.

And the temptation for those of us who believe is to go to where the culture seeks to lead us,

to give up on stating the facts about Jesus,

because these are the things that people find

so hard to handle, and go immediately

to tell people just our feelings about Jesus or our experience of Jesus. But our

experience of Jesus or our feelings about Jesus are flat out irrelevant unless they are based on

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