“For unto us a child is born, unto us a son is given: and the government shall be upon his shoulder: and his name shall be called Wonderful, Counsellor, The mighty God, The everlasting Father, The Prince of Peace.” (Isaiah 9:6)

Think for a moment about the state of Christianity in the roughly seventy year period between the Ascension and the close of the first century. Although Christianity experienced rapid growth, most Gentiles were probably still surrounded by paganism. Their employers, their rulers, their acquaintances could have often been pagans, and the world would continually pull at them from that quarter. Some pagans went beyond persuasion and actively persecuted the church.

A story tells of artists who were asked to paint a picture of what they considered “peace.” One painted a picture of a lake in the mountains, while another painted a picture of a raging waterfall, with a bird almost in the spray serenely enjoying its nest. This illustration has been used as an example of Biblical peace. However, while our peace here on earth will be found in the midst of obstacles, there is an even higher form of peace that Christians will find when with Christ, that peace is a restoration of the sinless closeness to God that man enjoyed before the fall.

Forgiveness is essential to the Christian. “But if ye do not forgive, neither will your Father which is in heaven forgive your trespasses.” (Mark 11:26) When we forgive someone, we give up our bitterness and our desire to get even. In our heart, we release the person who hurt us. “To forgive is to grant pardon without harboring resentment.” (American Heritage Dictionary) When we consider the entire scope of the Bible, we can realize that when we don’t forgive other people, we are the ones who are being “unfair.” This is because, due to our own sins, we owe a debt to God that all the offenses in the world will not be sufficient punishment for—we deserve every offense that people give to us, and it’s not “fair” at all for us to be upset about something that we truly deserved.

Sometimes a term becomes so associated with a particular group that it is almost impossible to think of the term without the group entering our minds. For example, upon hearing the term tongues in its religious sense, many of us automatically think of Pentecostalism. When someone mentions tongues, or when we read about them in the Scripture, we think of the tongues of Pentecostalism. It’s hard to think about tongues in any other way. The same thing has happened with predestination.

Revival is a word that is never mentioned in the Bible. Revive and reviving occur nine times in the Old Testament, and never in the New Testament. Yet the concept is definitely spread across the entire Scripture. There are a number of dictionary definitions, but when we speak about revival in a Scriptural sense, it basically means that we are dead or weak, but God infuses new life and strength into us and empowers us. “Wilt thou not revive us again: that thy people may rejoice in thee?”

To the Pharisees, ritual and ceremony were the most important parts of religion. To them, paying tithes, offering sacrifices, praying publicly, and other such things, which were done as a ceremony, as a demonstration, were the central focus of religious experience.