What 2 Corinthians 3 Actually Says About Freedom, Hardened Hearts, and the Crisis of Our Generation
Al Ngu
Part One of Three
I. A Sermon That Troubled Me
Once I sat under a sermon drawn from 2 Corinthians 3:17 — “Now the Lord is the Spirit, and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom” — connected to Galatians 5:1: “For freedom Christ has set us free.” The preacher was earnest. The congregation was moved. And the message ranged across a familiar landscape of contemporary concerns: freedom from depression, from loneliness, from anxiety, from the gravitational pull of self-destructive habits. Real struggles. Real pain. And a real text.
But something did not sit right with me, and it took some time to name what it was. The sermon was not wrong to speak of freedom. The text does speak of freedom. But it had imported a meaning of freedom that the passage itself does not supply — and in doing so, it had bypassed the specific and more searching freedom that Paul actually has in mind. The freedom in 2 Corinthians 3:17 is not, in its first and controlling sense, freedom from depression or loneliness. It is freedom from something far more foundational, far more spiritually catastrophic, and far more precisely addressed by the new covenant: freedom from a hardened heart.
To miss this is not a minor exegetical slip. It changes the entire trajectory of what the gospel is being asked to do. A gospel that offers relief from circumstantial suffering without addressing the hardened heart that underlies it is a gospel that cannot sustain what it promises. It gives people something to feel without giving them something to become. And that, I will argue, is not the freedom the Spirit of God brings.
My burden in this article is pastoral and urgent. I am thinking specifically of people I know and love — young people and older ones alike — who once confessed Christ and now have walked away. Some have drifted quietly. Others have reconstructed a faith on their own terms, keeping a version of Jesus that never costs them anything. Others have deconstructed publicly and openly. I want to understand what is happening to them theologically. What does Scripture call this? Where does it come from? And is there any genuine hope for the heart that has gone to stone?
The answer begins in 2 Corinthians 3. And it is more searching, more specific, and more hopeful than most sermons on this text have led us to believe.
II. What the Passage Actually Says: The Veil and the Hardened Heart
Paul’s argument in 2 Corinthians 3 begins with Moses descending from Sinai with the glory of God radiating from his face — a glory so intense that Israel could not bear to look at him, and he was compelled to veil his face (Exodus 34:29–35). Paul’s interpretive move is audacious: he takes this familiar story and reinterprets the veil not merely as a physical covering over Moses’ face, but as a symbol of something that persists into his own present day.
“But their minds were hardened,” he writes in verse 14, “for to this day, when they read the old covenant, that same veil remains unlifted.” And then, more devastatingly: “Even to this day when Moses is read, a veil lies over their hearts” (verse 15). The veil, in Paul’s rereading, is not over Moses’ face. It is over the heart of the reader.
And what does this veil produce? He names it in verse 14: hardness. The Greek word is pōrō — to petrify, to turn to stone, to make callous. The law of Moses, read without Christ and without the Spirit of the new covenant, does not soften the heart toward God. It petrifies it. Not because the law is defective — Paul insists elsewhere that the law is holy and righteous and good (Romans 7:12). But because the law comes to a faculty that is broken. It commands what the unrenewed heart cannot do, and the result is not reformation but calcification. The heart that cannot obey grows harder in its inability. The veil thickens.
This is the specific bondage that verse 17 addresses. “Where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom.” Freedom from what? Freedom from this. Freedom from the veil over the heart. Freedom from the petrified, stone-cold, unresponsive inner life that hears the Word of God and remains unmoved — not because it lacks information, but because the very faculty of reception has been shut down. This is the deepest slavery a human being can experience — not the slavery of circumstance, but the slavery of a will turned to stone. And it is from this slavery, specifically and precisely, that the Spirit of the new covenant sets us free.
The old covenant could diagnose this condition. It could not cure it. But the prophets had already heard God announce that he intended something more. Jeremiah heard it: “I will put my law within them, and I will write it on their hearts” (Jeremiah 31:33). Ezekiel heard it in even more visceral terms: “I will remove the heart of stone from your flesh and give you a heart of flesh. And I will put my Spirit within you, and cause you to walk in my statutes” (Ezekiel 36:26–27). The promise is not merely forensic. It is surgical. God reaches into the chest and replaces the stone with something that can beat, feel, and respond.
And in Luke 4:18, Jesus stands in the synagogue at Nazareth and announces that this promise has arrived in him: “The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to proclaim liberty to the captives.” The liberty he proclaims is precisely this liberty — not first the liberation of the prisoner from his cell, but the liberation of the captive heart from its own petrification. This is what the new covenant brings. This is what the cross purchased. And this is why freedom in 2 Corinthians 3:17 is such a weighty and specific word.
III. What Hardness Looks Like in Our Generation
The hardening of the heart is not a first-century Jewish problem. It is a perennial human condition, and it takes recognizable forms in every generation. In ours, it presents most acutely in three overlapping patterns.
The first is simple drift. A person who once read Scripture regularly, prayed with some intentionality, and gathered with the body of Christ begins to withdraw — slowly, almost imperceptibly. Nothing dramatic has happened. The Bible is read less frequently. Prayer becomes occasional and then absent. Worship becomes something attended rather than something inhabited. The heart has simply been starved of the beholding that keeps it soft, and it has begun, by degrees, to harden. This is the quiet pastoral emergency that rarely makes headlines but accounts for the majority of spiritual casualties in any congregation.
The second is the backsliding pattern — a moral failure or a season of deliberate sin that, rather than driving a person to repentance, drives them to theological reconstruction. Because the heart cannot simultaneously pursue sin and submit to the God who forbids it, it begins to quietly renegotiate its theology. Passages that were once received as authoritative begin to feel culturally conditioned or misinterpreted. The Jesus who commands becomes the Jesus who affirms. The cross that demands death to self becomes a symbol of self-actualization. This is not intellectual honesty. It is the hardened heart generating the theology that the hardened heart requires.
Paul had a name for all three patterns. He called it the veil remaining over the heart. The person may be reading the text — perhaps reading it seriously and at great length — but the veil is there. The glory of Christ in the Word does not penetrate. The text is processed but not received. The words are analyzed but not inhabited. And the result, in every case, is a heart that grows progressively harder toward the actual Christ of the actual Scripture.
This is one of the most urgent fronts of spiritual warfare in our age. Not because the attacks are new, but because the cultural conditions have made them uniquely pervasive and unusually difficult to name. When the hardening presents as enlightenment, when petrification wears the face of intellectual maturity, it is very hard to call it what it is. But we must.
IV. The Mechanism of Transformation: Beholding the Glory of Christ
How does the Spirit soften what has been hardened? This is the question the passage moves toward answering. And Paul answers it in the verse immediately following his declaration of freedom — 2 Corinthians 3:18:
“And we all, with unveiled face, beholding the glory of the Lord, are being transformed into the same image from one degree of glory to another. For this comes from the Lord who is the Spirit.”
This verse contains the mechanism. Let us work through it carefully.
The key verb is katoptrizomenoi — beholding as in a mirror. It is a rare word, appearing nowhere else in the New Testament, derived from the Greek word for mirror. It carries a double sense: gazing into a reflective surface and, in that gazing, reflecting back what you see. The ESV renders it “beholding”; the NIV renders it “contemplating.” Both are right, and the tension between them is theologically productive: the believer gazes upon the glory of Christ, and in gazing, begins to mirror it. Beholding comes first. Reflecting follows as its necessary consequence.
The verb is in the present tense — indicating continuous, ongoing action. Transformation is not the result of a single powerful encounter, one mountaintop experience, one revival night. It is the cumulative fruit of sustained, habitual, returning attention to the glory of Christ. You become what you consistently behold.
The word translated “are being transformed” is metamorphoumetha — from the same root as our English word metamorphosis, and the same word used for Jesus’ Transfiguration on the mountain in Matthew 17:2. Paul is not describing a gradual self-improvement program. He is describing a structural remaking of the person, as radical as a caterpillar becoming a butterfly. And it is a passive verb. You are not transforming yourself. You are being transformed — by the Spirit, acting upon you, using the beholding as the instrument through which he does his work. The believer contributes the gaze. The Spirit produces the change.
The phrase “from glory to glory” — apo doxes eis doxan — signals progressive, cumulative, unceasing growth. A Semitic expression of intensification, comparable to Psalm 84:7’s “from strength to strength.” And crucially: unlike Moses’ glory, which faded because it was external and borrowed, the glory the Spirit produces in the new covenant believer increases. Its source is not a temporary encounter but the permanent indwelling of the Spirit of Christ himself.
What does beholding actually look like in practice? Paul himself answers this in the next chapter: the glory of God is seen “in the face of Jesus Christ” (2 Corinthians 4:6), mediated through the gospel — which is the Scripture. Jesus is the Word made flesh (John 1:14). When you gaze into the written Word, you are gazing into the incarnate Word. They are not two different objects. Scripture is the Spirit-given lens through which the risen Christ becomes visible to the unveiled heart.
And so the three great instruments of beholding are these. First, the daily meditation of the Holy Scripture — not the casual reading of a verse for emotional reassurance, but the sustained, submissive, returning immersion in the whole counsel of God. Psalm 1 describes the blessed man as one who meditates on the law day and night, and the Hebrew word for meditate is hagah — to mutter, to murmur, to turn a thing over repeatedly in the mind the way a cow works its cud. The text is not consumed and moved past. It is inhabited. And in that inhabiting, the glory of Christ embedded in every page begins to do its work upon the heart.
Second, prayer — which is not merely the recitation of requests but an increasingly intimate conversation with the living person of Christ. If Scripture is gazing at Christ, prayer is speaking to him. The beholding becomes a relationship. And in that sustained relational encounter, the Spirit works the same transforming alchemy: you become, gradually and sometimes imperceptibly, more like the one you spend the most time with.
Third, worship — private and communal. In worship, the beholding becomes embodied and affective. The heart does not merely observe the glory of Christ; it responds to it, is moved by it, is broken open by it. The “we all” of verse 18 is a plural. Transformation is not merely an individual project. The community of worshippers, gathered around Word and sacrament and prayer, creates conditions in which the Spirit can ignite in a congregation what may be only a flicker in an individual.
And here is the upgrade the new covenant brings over everything that came before: under the old covenant, these same practices — reading the law, prayer, worship — could be performed with a veil over the heart. The Israelites sang the Psalms and heard the Torah and offered the sacrifices, and still the hardness persisted. The glory was there, embedded in the text, but inaccessible — like sunlight behind a thick curtain. Under the new covenant, the Spirit has removed the curtain. The same Scripture now radiates with Christ. The same prayer now reaches the Father through the Son. The same worship is offered in Spirit and in truth. Same practices. Entirely different encounter.
V. Why So Many Are Still Not Free
If the veil has been removed permanently — if the Spirit now dwells within every believer, making the glory of Christ accessible through Scripture, prayer, and worship — why does the church still contain so many people whose hearts appear functionally hard? Why does deconstruction continue? Why does backsliding persist?
The answer is not that the new covenant has failed. The answer is that the removal of the veil is not the same as the sustained direction of the gaze. The door has been opened. But many believers are standing with their backs to it.
Regeneration gives the heart a new capacity to behold. But the flesh, the old nature, remains and wars against the Spirit (Galatians 5:17) — and it does not war alone. What we call distraction is rarely a neutral phenomenon. It is the surface symptom of something more sinister operating beneath it: the active, coordinated work of the enemy whose primary weapon, Paul tells us in 2 Corinthians 4:4, is deception. The god of this age has blinded the minds of unbelievers — and his strategy against believers is the same, only subtler. He does not need to re-hang the veil that Christ has removed. He simply needs to turn the face away from what the veil’s removal makes possible.
This turning is never a single clean movement. It is a process — overlapping, cumulative, and mutually reinforcing. The demonic works through deception, planting doubts about the goodness of God, the reliability of Scripture, the coherence of faith. The flesh cooperates eagerly, finding in those doubts a permission structure for the desires it has never stopped wanting. The heart, shaped by both, begins to experience a creeping disillusionment — not a sudden collapse of faith but a slow cooling, a gradual withdrawal of trust, a progressive loss of appetite for the things of God. And the carnal mind, which Paul says in Romans 8:7 is hostile to God by nature, provides the rationalization that makes the whole drift feel like growth rather than departure.
These forces do not operate in sequence. They operate simultaneously, each one amplifying the others. The deception makes the flesh bolder. The flesh makes the heart more susceptible to deception. The disillusionment makes both feel reasonable. And woven through all of it is the noise of contemporary life — the curated digital worlds, the endless horizontal stimulation, the thousand small redirections of attention — which are not the cause of the hardening but the medium through which the other forces most effectively do their work. The enemy has never had a more efficient delivery system for spiritual numbness than the one we carry in our pockets.
The result is a heart that is not beholding Christ. And a heart that is not beholding Christ is a heart that is not being transformed. And a heart that is not being transformed is a heart that is becoming harder — not by dramatic apostasy, but by the quiet, daily compounding of a gaze that has been turned away.
This produces a downward spiral: no beholding produces no transformation, which weakens the desire to behold, which produces less transformation, which hardens the heart further. The Christian who once read Scripture with hunger finds the Bible growing dry. Prayer feels like speaking to the ceiling. Worship becomes performance. And at some point, the gap between what the professed faith demands and what the hardened heart can sustain becomes unbearable — and deconstruction presents itself as the intellectually honest exit.
There is also a genuine paradox at work that honest pastoral observation cannot avoid. The hardened heart does not want to read Scripture. But Scripture is what softens the hardened heart. The heart that avoids the Word grows harder. The harder it grows, the less it wants the Word. This is not merely a theoretical spiral. It is the bondage of the will that Paul describes in Romans 7 and that Augustine recognized in himself centuries later: the man who wants to do good cannot. The problem is not information deficit. It is a captivity of the wanting itself.
This paradox raises a question that this article cannot fully answer but refuses to leave hanging: if the hardened heart cannot soften itself, and if the beholding that softens it requires a willingness the hardened heart does not possess — who breaks the cycle? How does anyone get out? And what can those of us who love the deconstructed, the backslidden, and the drifting actually do?
That is the question the second part of this essay takes up. But before we get there, sit for a moment with the weight of what Paul has diagnosed. The veil is real. The hardness is real. The spiral is real. And the people caught in it are not primarily intellectual skeptics who need better arguments. They are people with hearts of stone who need the one thing no human being can give them — and that the new covenant promises God will.
* * *
This is Part One of a two-part essay. Part Two — “Preaching to Dry Bones” — takes up the theological and pastoral response: the doctrine of regeneration, and what those who love the hardened-hearted can actually do.
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Al Ngu (MDiv) is a pastor and church planter in New York City, where he leads Hearts Burn NYC, a faith community gathering in Union Square Park. He writes at the intersection of biblical theology, pastoral concern, and the life of the Spirit for a generation in crisis.
Terdapat satu babak yang saya tidak dapat lupakan.
Seorang wanita muda Rusia — saya akan panggil dia Natasha — berdiri di tebing Sungai Amur di tengah-tengah musim sejuk di utara. Suhunya di bawah paras beku. Sungai itu luas. Di seberang sana, China. Dia sedang melambai. Dia telah melambai melintasi sungai ini selama berminggu-minggu, dan entah bagaimana ia telah menjadi bahasa mereka — mereka berdua di tebing yang bertentangan, dipisahkan oleh air dan politik dan askar, berkomunikasi dengan satu-satunya cara yang mereka boleh: warna, gerakan, kehadiran. Anda melambai, saya melambai kembali. Saya di sini. Anda di sana. Sungai itu berada di antara kita tetapi kita tidak pergi.
Dan kemudian pada suatu hari dia datang ke tebing dan melambai.
Dan seberang sana diam.
Dia telah dibawa. Tentera China telah datang untuknya — seorang pemuda yang jatuh cinta dengan seorang wanita Rusia, melambai melintasi sempadan ketenteraan semasa perpecahan Sino-Soviet, yang di mata negara menjadikannya satu perkara: seorang perisik. Dia hilang. Tiada amaran, tiada penjelasan, tiada selamat tinggal. Pergi begitu sahaja. Dan Natasha berdiri di sana di tebing Rusia dalam kesejukan yang melampau, melambai tanpa apa-apa, air mata mengalir di wajahnya, menunggu.
Dia sedang hamil anaknya.
Saya menonton ini dalam sebuah dokumentari. Saya tidak tahu dengan pasti sama ada setiap butiran berlaku dengan cara ini — ia mungkin didramatikkan, dibina semula, seperti semua ingatan dan filem serta kisah cinta. Tetapi apa yang saya tahu ialah ia benar dalam cara perkara yang paling penting adalah benar: ia menamakan sesuatu yang nyata tentang keadaan manusia, tentang apa yang berharga cinta, tentang apa yang dilakukan oleh kesunyian kepada seseorang yang sedang menunggu.
Apa yang berlaku selepas itu adalah lebih daripada dua puluh tahun kesunyian.
Bukan lima tahun. Bukan sepuluh. Dua puluh tahun. Dua dekad di mana Natasha tidak tahu sama ada dia masih hidup atau mati, dipenjarakan atau dibebaskan, sama ada dia pernah memikirkannya, sama ada dia telah dipecahkan untuk melupakannya. Dua dekad di mana dia membesarkan seorang anak yang tidak pernah bertemu dengan bapanya. Dua dekad pergi ke tebing sungai, saya bayangkan, dan memandang ke seberang negara yang telah menelan orang yang dicintainya dan enggan mengembalikannya.
Bagaimanakah cinta dapat bertahan dalam keadaan itu?
Saya bertanya dengan serius. Saya tidak mempunyai jawapan yang jelas. Tetapi saya fikir soalan itu adalah salah satu soalan terpenting yang boleh difikirkan oleh manusia.
Sempadan yang dimaksudkan ialah Sungai Amur — dipanggil Heilongjiang, Sungai Naga Hitam, dalam bahasa Cina. Selama lebih seribu batu ia menjadi sempadan yang dipertikaikan antara China dan Kesatuan Soviet, dan menjelang tahun 1960-an sempadan itu telah menjadi salah satu kawasan tanah yang paling ketenteraan di bumi. Apa yang dahulunya merupakan pakatan komunis persaudaraan telah runtuh menjadi syak wasangka bersama dan peperangan ideologi. Kesatuan Soviet telah mengumpulkan enam belas divisyen, lebih seribu pesawat, dan lebih daripada seratus peluru berpandu jarak sederhana di sepanjang sempadan itu. China menggerakkan pasukannya sendiri sebagai tindak balas. Kedua-dua kerajaan sedang mempertimbangkan perkara yang tidak dapat difikirkan. Orang biasa yang tinggal di sepanjang sungai itu mendapati diri mereka tiba-tiba terkandas di pinggir konfrontasi nuklear yang berpotensi antara dua kuasa besar.
Dalam hal itu, dua orang muda jatuh cinta.
Mereka bertemu entah bagaimana — cara orang bertemu, dalam kehidupan sempadan yang biasa sebelum tindakan tegas sepenuhnya berlaku. Sesuatu yang tercetus. Mereka menemui cara untuk berada berdekatan antara satu sama lain. Dan apabila sempadan mengeras dan tentera datang dan lintasan fizikal menjadi mustahil, mereka mengimprovisasi satu-satunya perhubungan yang mereka boleh: mereka berdiri di tebing masing-masing dalam kesejukan utara dan mereka melambai. Perbualan keseluruhan dijalankan dengan warna dan gerak isyarat merentasi air beku yang luas. Berminggu-minggu begini. Sesuatu yang lembut dan tidak masuk akal dan benar-benar serius, cara cinta sentiasa ada apabila ia enggan menerima syarat-syarat yang ditawarkan oleh dunia.
Dan kemudian dia dibawa.
Dan sungai itu menjadi senyap.
Saya perlu mengatakan sesuatu tentang kesunyian. Bukan kesunyian yang selesa di dalam bilik yang damai, tetapi kesunyian yang menjawab panggilan anda apabila anda memanggil seseorang yang anda sayangi dan mereka tidak memberi respons. Kesunyian itu adalah jenis keganasannya sendiri. Ia melakukan sesuatu kepada seseorang. Ia menimbulkan persoalan yang tidak dapat dijawab dan oleh itu tidak dapat dihilangkan: Adakah anda di sana? Adakah sesuatu telah berlaku? Adakah saya telah melakukan sesuatu? Adakah anda masih wujud? Ketidaktahuan, dalam beberapa cara, adalah lebih buruk daripada berita terburuk, kerana sekurang-kurangnya berita terburuk adalah fakta yang boleh anda sesali. Kesunyian adalah luka yang kekal terbuka kerana tiada apa yang telah menutupnya.
Natasha menunggu melalui kesunyian itu selama lebih daripada dua puluh tahun. Saya terus memutar nombor itu. Dua puluh tahun bukanlah abstraksi — ia adalah tempoh masa tertentu yang dapat saya rasakan. Dua puluh tahun yang lalu dari hari ini, saya berada dalam bab yang sama sekali berbeza dalam hidup saya. Dua puluh tahun dari sekarang, jika Tuhan mengabulkannya, saya akan menjadi orang yang berbeza dalam musim yang berbeza. Dua puluh tahun sudah cukup lama untuk seorang anak dilahirkan dan membesar. Cukup lama untuk kepastian terhakis, untuk ingatan kabur di tepi, untuk dunia menegaskan — dengan lembut, berterusan, secara munasabah — bahawa sudah tiba masanya untuk terus maju. Untuk berhenti berdiri di tepi sungai. Untuk menerima bahawa sesetengah Cerita-cerita berakhir dengan teruk dan ini adalah salah satunya.
Dia tidak melupakannya.
Saya tidak faham sepenuhnya bagaimana. Saya mengesyaki dia juga tidak faham sepenuhnya bagaimana. Cinta pada kedalaman itu bukanlah keputusan yang anda buat setiap pagi — ia lebih seperti fakta tentang diri anda yang terus anda temui, walaupun anda ingin anda dapat melupakannya. Dia mencintainya. Sungai itu tidak menjawab. Dia tetap mencintainya.
Di sinilah saya harus jujur tentang mengapa cerita ini mengenai saya seperti itu — dan bukan kerana situasi saya menyerupai keadaannya dalam apa jua cara luaran. Saya mempunyai seorang isteri yang saya sayangi. Tuhan telah sangat baik kepada saya dalam perkahwinan, dan saya tidak menganggapnya remeh walau sehari pun. Kisah cinta yang saya jalani bukanlah kisah cinta yang penuh penderitaan.
Tetapi ada cinta lain dalam hidup saya. Satu panggilan. Satu keyakinan yang telah Tuhan letakkan kepada saya untuk membina sesuatu di bandar ini — sebuah komuniti iman untuk generasi yang sebahagian besarnya telah melupakan Gereja, yang membawa luka daripada institusi yang mengecewakan mereka, yang dahagakan makna tetapi tersentak dengan perkataan “gereja.” Saya berpindah ke New York. Saya menanam bendera. Saya berdiri di Union Square dengan meja lipat, injil, dan tangan terbuka.
Dan pelayanan, saya sedang belajar, mempunyai musim kesunyian.
Tidak selalunya kesunyian dramatik. Bukan askar, sempadan, dan kehilangan. Tetapi kesunyian yang tenang apabila sambutannya kecil, apabila orang ramai tidak datang, apabila anda telah mencurahkan diri anda ke dalam sesuatu dan sungai tidak berundur. Kesunyian kesetiaan tanpa buah yang kelihatan. Kesunyian memanggil tanpa pengesahan. Kesunyian yang membuat orang yang waras bertanya: adakah anda pasti ini yang sepatutnya anda lakukan? Bukankah sesuatu sepatutnya telah berlaku sekarang?
Saya melihat Natasha melambai melintasi sungai beku tanpa apa-apa, dan saya merasakan persoalan itu terbentuk di dalam diri saya dalam daftar yang berbeza — bukan tentang cinta manusia, tetapi tentang cinta ilahi. Tentang cinta antara jiwa dan Tuhan.
Bolehkah anda mengasihi Tuhan melalui dua puluh tahun kesunyian?
Ini, ternyata, bukan soalan baharu. Mazmur penuh dengannya. Tuhanku, Tuhanku, mengapa Engkau meninggalkan aku? Itu bukanlah pernyataan ketidakpercayaan — ia adalah jeritan daripada seseorang yang begitu teguh percaya sehingga mereka mencari Tuhan dan menemui sebuah tebing yang kosong. Para nabi mengetahuinya. Elia, yang baru sahaja keluar dari api Gunung Karmel, rebah di bawah sebatang pokok juniper dan memberitahu Tuhan bahawa dia telah selesai. Ayub memperjuangkan kesnya kepada syurga yang seolah-olah mengabaikannya selama beberapa bab. Para wali sepanjang abad telah menamakannya — malam gelap jiwa, musim yang panjang apabila doa terasa seperti melambai di sungai yang tidak berlambai kembali.
Apa yang menarik perhatian saya tentang setiap tokoh ini ialah mereka tidak menyelesaikan kesunyian dengan berpura-pura ia tidak ada. Mereka menamakannya. Mereka mengamuk menentangnya. Mereka duduk di dalamnya. Dan entah bagaimana — tidak selalu dengan penjelasan, tidak selalu dengan resolusi yang kemas — mereka keluar dari sisi lain masih mencintai Tuhan yang seolah-olah, untuk satu musim, menjadi diam.
Kebangkitan Yesus adalah jawapan muktamad kepada soalan ini, tetapi ia adalah jawapan yang tiba selepas tiga hari kesunyian yang paling mutlak yang dapat dibayangkan. Para pengikut pada Sabtu Suci tidak tahu kebangkitan akan datang. Mereka tahu sebuah makam. Mereka tahu kesunyian. Mereka tahu bahawa jalan yang telah mereka pertaruhkan semuanya telah hilang, dan sungai itu tidak bergoyang kembali. Jalan ke Emmaus adalah kisah dua orang yang berjalan meninggalkan Yerusalem dalam kesunyian itu — dan keajaibannya bukan hanya Yesus muncul, tetapi Dia berjalan bersama mereka ke arah yang telah mereka tuju, dalam kesedihan mereka, dalam kekeliruan mereka, dalam keputusasaan mereka yang telah berputus asa. Cinta datang kepada mereka. Cinta itu tidak menunggu mereka mendapatkan kembali harapan mereka sebelum ia muncul.
Tetapi saya ingin duduk sebentar lagi dalam kesunyian sebelum saya sampai ke kebangkitan, kerana saya rasa kita bergerak terlalu cepat melewati hari Sabtu. Persoalan yang diajukan Natasha dari tebing Sungai Amur adalah persoalan hari Sabtu: bolehkah cinta bertahan apabila ia tidak mempunyai bukti untuk dipertahankan? Bukan apabila keajaiban itu datang. Bukan apabila jawapannya tiba. Bukan apabila dia akhirnya muncul semula selepas dua puluh tahun dan dia mendapati dia masih hidup dan dia setia dan cinta itu nyata. Tetapi pada tahun-tahun pertengahan, tahun-tahun yang beku, tahun-tahun melambai pada ketiadaan — bolehkah cinta bertahan?
Saya percaya jawapannya adalah ya. Tetapi saya ingin jujur bahawa ia bukanlah satu ya yang selesa. Ia memerlukan kos yang tinggi.
Apa yang saya cuba bina di bandar ini sekarang adalah kecil. Perhimpunan pertama adalah sederhana. Halangannya nyata. Ada kalanya saya berdiri di tebing metafora dan melambai serta tertanya-tanya jika ada apa-apa di sana.
Dan saya fikir apa yang saya pelajari — apa yang diajarkan oleh kisah Natasha kepada saya, apa yang diajarkan oleh Mazmur kepada saya, apa yang diajarkan oleh seluruh tradisi penantian setia kepada saya — ialah cinta tidak disahkan oleh hasilnya. Ia disahkan oleh daya tahannya. Ukuran cinta bukanlah apa yang dihasilkannya pada musim kelimpahan tetapi apa yang dilakukannya dengan kesunyian. Adakah ia terus muncul? Adakah ia terus melambai? Adakah ia percaya, terhadap semua bukti yang kelihatan, bahawa Sebelah sungai yang lain tidak kosong — bahawa ada kehadiran di sana yang tidak melupakan, tidak meninggalkan, masih berorientasikan kepada anda walaupun pada tahun-tahun ketika anda tidak dapat melihat tanda-tandanya?
Natasha berdiri di tebing itu dan melambai selama dua puluh tahun kerana dia percaya — mungkin secara sedar, mungkin hanya dalam tulangnya — bahawa lelaki di seberang itu adalah nyata, dan bahawa dia telah mencintainya, dan cinta yang berkualiti itu tidak lenyap begitu sahaja kerana keadaan menjadikannya menyusahkan. Dia mempertaruhkan nyawanya pada realiti apa yang telah diketahuinya sebelum kesunyian datang.
Itulah rupa iman. Bukan iman kemenangan doa yang dijawab dan keajaiban yang kelihatan — walaupun itu nyata dan saya telah mengenalinya. Tetapi iman yang tenang, meletihkan, dan tidak munasabah daripada seseorang yang terus muncul di sungai kerana mereka tidak dapat mempercayai bahawa cinta yang pernah mereka kenali telah hilang.
Sungai itu tidak menjawab Natasha selama dua puluh tahun. Tetapi dia betul kerana terus melambai. Dia ada di sana.
Saya percaya Tuhan juga ada di sana. Saya percaya kesunyian bukanlah ketiadaan. Tetapi saya ingin pergi lebih jauh daripada itu — kerana kisah Natasha dan pemuda di seberang sungai, seindah dan sehancur dan seindah itu, bukanlah kisah cinta yang paling mendalam. Ia hanyalah bayangan cinta. Dan saya fikir kita perlu merasai sepenuhnya beban bayangan itu sebelum kita dapat mula memahami kemuliaan apa yang mendorongnya.
Fikirkan tentang apa yang menjadikan cinta mereka luar biasa. Dia mencintainya merentasi jurang yang mustahil. Dia mencintainya melalui dua puluh tahun kesunyian. Kedua-duanya tidak berputus asa, walaupun setiap kuasa di dunia berkata untuk berhenti. Kita melihatnya dan kita hancur, kerana kita menyedari secara naluri bahawa inilah sepatutnya rupa cinta — degil, mahal, tidak munasabah, mengharungi segala yang dilemparkan dunia kepadanya.
Sekarang pertimbangkan Yesus di kayu salib.
Natasha mencintai seorang lelaki yang mencintainya kembali. Kristus mencintai orang yang membunuhnya. Natasha melambai melintasi sungai beku kepada seseorang yang terdesak untuk melambai kembali. Yesus menghulurkan tangannya di kayu salib ke arah orang yang meletakkannya di sana, yang mengejeknya ketika dia berdarah, yang telah meninggalkannya ketika ia memerlukan sesuatu untuk tinggal. Natasha menanggung dua puluh tahun kesunyian tanpa mengetahui sama ada dia masih disayangi. Yesus berseru, “Ya Tuhanku, Tuhanku, mengapa Engkau meninggalkan Aku?” — menyerap ke dalam diri-Nya kesunyian pengabaian ilahi yang penuh dan menghancurkan, supaya orang yang layak menerima kesunyian itu tidak akan pernah mendengarnya.
Dan kemudian, dari kayu salib, sementara paku masih di tangan-Nya, sementara orang ramai masih mengejek, sementara darah masih mengalir — Dia membuka mulut-Nya dan berkata: “Ya Bapa, ampunilah mereka, kerana mereka tidak tahu apa yang mereka lakukan.”
Saya telah membaca baris itu ratusan kali. Saya telah berkhutbah berhampirannya. Tetapi melihat Natasha melambai di tebing sungai yang kosong, air mata mengalir di wajahnya dalam kesejukan yang membeku, sesuatu dalam baris itu akhirnya terbuka untuk saya dengan cara yang baharu. Kerana ini bukanlah kasih seseorang yang melambai melintasi sungai kepada orang yang mereka puja. Ini adalah kasih seseorang yang dibunuh oleh orang yang Dia ampuni dalam masa nyata. Ini adalah kasih tanpa asas yang munasabah sama sekali — kasih yang bukan tindak balas kepada disayangi, tetapi kasih yang memulakan, yang menyerap permusuhan, yang enggan menjadi apa yang diperlakukan. Inilah cinta yang tidak menunggu kesunyian berakhir sebelum ia bersuara. Ia bersuara dalam kesunyian yang paling teruk, dari tempat yang paling teruk, pada saat yang paling teruk, dan apa yang dikatakannya ialah: Aku memaafkanmu. Aku masih untukmu. Kamu tidak tahu apa yang kamu lakukan, tetapi Aku tahu, dan aku memilih ini.
Tiada cinta manusia yang pernah berbuat demikian. Bukan cinta Natasha. Bukan cinta sesiapa pun. Cinta antara wanita Rusia itu dan lelaki muda Cina di seberang Sungai Naga Hitam adalah salah satu perkara paling menyentuh hati yang pernah saya temui di skrin. Tetapi pada akhirnya, ia adalah dua orang yang terbatas yang saling mencintai di seberang sungai yang beku. Apa yang berlaku di Kalvari ialah cinta yang tidak terhingga kepada yang terbatas merentasi jurang muktamad — bukan walaupun bermusuhan, tetapi melaluinya, untuknya, dengan rela hati, mata terbuka, tangan terbuka luas.
Itulah cinta yang ingin saya ketahui. Bukan sekadar tahu tentang — tahu, cara anda mengenali seseorang, cara Natasha mengenali lelaki yang dilambaikannya, cara dia mengenali kehadirannya dengan cukup baik untuk merasakan penderitaan ketiadaannya sepanjang dua puluh tahun kesunyian. Aku ingin mengetahui kasih Kristus dengan kedalaman dan kepastian peribadi yang tidak dapat dikurangkan. Dan aku mahu pengetahuan itu begitu nyata dalam diriku, begitu hidup dalam tulangku, sehingga apabila aku berdiri di bandar ini dan membuka mulutku, sesuatu yang transenden keluar — bukan kefasihanku, bukan teologiku, bukan hujah terbaikku, tetapi limpahan kasih yang telah aku alami.
Itulah yang ingin aku sampaikan kepada penduduk New York. Bukan doktrin. Bukan program. Bukan institusi. Kasih yang berkata Bapa, ampunilah mereka ketika berdarah. Kasih yang lebih degil daripada dua puluh tahun diam, lebih rela daripada pengabdian manusia, lebih mahal daripada apa sahaja yang pernah dibayar oleh Natasha — dan ditawarkan secara bebas, tanpa syarat, kepada orang yang tidak membalas lambaian.
Jika tbahawa cinta itu nyata — dan saya percaya dengan segala yang saya miliki bahawa ia adalah — maka tiada seorang pun di bandar ini yang terlalu terluka, terlalu sinis, terlalu jauh, terlalu lama diam untuk menerimanya. Saya ingin mengetahuinya dengan begitu mendalam sehingga apabila saya membicarakannya, sesuatu dalam diri pendengar mengenalinya sebagai benar sebelum saya menghabiskan ayat itu. Kerana di suatu tempat di dalam setiap manusia, saya fikir, terdapat seorang Natasha yang berdiri di sungai yang beku, melambai ke dalam diam, berharap tanpa harapan bahawa cinta masih ada di seberang sana.
Ia benar. Dan ia lebih besar daripada yang dibayangkannya.
Itu patut diisytiharkan. Walaupun dalam kesejukan. Walaupun tebing yang lain kelihatan kosong. Walaupun sudah lama berlalu.
Al Ngu ialah pastor pengasas Hearts Burn NYC, sebuah komuniti iman di Bandar Raya New York.
Langgan Al Ngu Dilancarkan 10 hari lalu Ketuhanan utama dari RTS 2025. Berapi-api mencari dunia Tuhan kepada gereja reformasi yang berkarisma, menyebarkan kekayaan Kristus yang tidak sesuai. Dengan melanggan, anda bersetuju dengan Syarat Penggunaan Substack dan mengakui Notis Pengumpulan Maklumat serta Dasar Privasinya. 1 Suka ∙ 3 Susunan Semula
A young Russian woman — I’ll call her Natasha — stands on the bank of the Amur River in the dead of a northern winter. The temperature is subfreezing. The river is vast. On the other side, China. She is waving. She has been waving across this river for weeks, and somehow it has become their language — the two of them on opposite banks, separated by the water and the politics and the soldiers, communicating in the only way they can: color, motion, presence. You wave, I wave back. I am here. You are there. The river is between us but we are not gone.
And then one day she comes to the bank and waves.
And the other side is silent.
He had been taken. Chinese soldiers had come for him — a young man in love with a Russian woman, waving across a militarized border during the Sino-Soviet split, which in the eyes of the state made him exactly one thing: a spy. He disappeared. No warning, no explanation, no goodbye. Just gone. And Natasha stood there on the Russian bank in the subfreezing cold, waving at nothing, tears pouring down her face, waiting. She was pregnant with his child.
I watched this on a documentary. I don’t know with certainty whether every detail happened exactly this way — it may be dramatized, reconstructed, the way all memory and film and love stories are. But what I know is that it is true in the way that the most important things are true: it names something real about the human condition, about what love costs, about what silence does to a person who is waiting.
What followed was more than twenty years of silence.
Not five years. Not ten. Twenty years. Two decades in which Natasha did not know if he was alive or dead, imprisoned or freed, if he ever thought of her, if he had been broken into forgetting her. Two decades in which she raised a child who had never met his father. Two decades of going to a river bank, I imagine, and looking across at a country that had swallowed the person she loved and refused to give him back.
How does love survive that?
I’m asking seriously. I don’t have a clean answer. But I think that question is one of the most important questions a human being can sit with.
The border in question is the Amur River — called the Heilongjiang, the Black Dragon River, in Chinese. For over a thousand miles it runs as the contested frontier between China and the Soviet Union, and by the 1960s that frontier had become one of the most militarized stretches of land on earth. What had been a fraternal communist alliance had collapsed into mutual suspicion and ideological warfare. The Soviet Union massed sixteen divisions, over a thousand aircraft, and more than a hundred medium-range missiles along that border. China mobilized its own forces in response. Both governments were contemplating the unthinkable. Ordinary people who lived along that river found themselves suddenly stranded at the edge of a potential nuclear confrontation between two superpowers.
Into that, two young people fell in love.
They met somehow — the way people meet, in the ordinary porousness of border life before the clampdown fully came. Something kindled. They found ways to be near each other. And when the border hardened and the armies came and physical crossing became impossible, they improvised the only communion they could: they stood on their respective banks in the northern cold and they waved. Whole conversations conducted in color and gesture across a width of freezing water. Weeks of this. Something tender and absurd and completely serious, the way love always is when it refuses to accept the terms that the world is offering.
And then he was taken.
And the river went silent.
I need to say something about silence. Not the comfortable silence of a peaceful room, but the silence that answers you when you have called out to someone you love and they do not respond. That silence is its own kind of violence. It does something to a person. It raises questions that cannot be answered and therefore cannot be put down: Are you there? Did something happen? Did I do something? Do you still exist? The not-knowing is, in some ways, worse than the worst news, because at least the worst news is a fact you can grieve. Silence is a wound that stays open because nothing has come to close it.
Natasha waited through that silence for more than twenty years. I keep turning that number over. Twenty years is not an abstraction — it is a specific length of time that I can feel. Twenty years ago from today, I was in a completely different chapter of my life. Twenty years from now, if God grants it, I will be a different person in a different season. Twenty years is long enough for a child to be born and grow up. Long enough for certainty to erode, for memory to blur at the edges, for the world to insist — gently, persistently, reasonably — that it is time to move on. To stop standing at the river. To accept that some stories end badly and this is one of them.
She did not move on.
I don’t fully understand how. I suspect she didn’t fully understand how either. Love at that depth is not really a decision you make every morning — it is more like a fact about you that you keep discovering, even when you wish you could undiscover it. She loved him. The river did not answer. She loved him anyway.
Here is where I have to be honest about why this story hit me the way it did — and it is not because my situation resembles hers in any external sense. I have a wife I adore. God has been remarkably kind to me in marriage, and I do not take that for granted for a single day. The love story I am living is not a love story of anguish.
But there is another love in my life. A calling. A conviction that God has placed on me to build something in this city — a faith community for a generation that has largely written the Church off, that carries wounds from institutions that failed them, that hungers for meaning but flinches at the word “church.” I moved to New York. I planted a flag. I stood in Union Square with a folding table and a gospel and an open hand.
And ministry, I am learning, has its seasons of silence.
Not always dramatic silence. Not soldiers and borders and disappearances. But the quiet that settles when the response is small, when the crowd doesn’t come, when you have poured yourself into something and the river doesn’t wave back. The silence of faithfulness without visible fruit. The silence of calling without confirmation. The silence that makes a reasonable person ask: are you sure this is what you’re supposed to be doing? Shouldn’t something have happened by now?
I watched Natasha wave across the frozen river at nothing, and I felt the question form inside me in a different register — not about human love, but about divine love. About the love between a soul and God.
Can you love God through twenty years of silence?
This is, it turns out, not a new question. The Psalms are full of it. My God, my God, why have you forsaken me? That is not a statement of unbelief — it is a cry from someone who believed so hard they went looking for God and found an empty bank. The prophets knew it. Elijah, fresh off the fire of Mount Carmel, collapsed under a juniper tree and told God he was done. Job argued his case to a heaven that seemed to be ignoring him for chapters upon chapters. The saints across the centuries have named it — the dark night of the soul, the long season when prayer feels like waving at a river that doesn’t wave back.
What strikes me about every one of these figures is that they did not resolve the silence by pretending it wasn’t there. They named it. They raged against it. They sat in it. And somehow — not always with explanation, not always with a tidy resolution — they came out the other side still in love with the God who had seemed, for a season, to go quiet.
The resurrection of Jesus is the ultimate answer to this question, but it is an answer that arrives after three days of the most absolute silence imaginable. The disciples on Holy Saturday did not know a resurrection was coming. They knew a tomb. They knew silence. They knew that the one they had staked everything on was gone, and the river wasn’t waving back. The road to Emmaus is a story of two people walking away from Jerusalem in that silence — and the miracle is not just that Jesus appears, but that he walks with them in the direction they are already going, in their grief, in their confusion, in their having-already-given-up. The love came to them. The love did not wait for them to get their hope back before it showed up.
But I want to sit a moment longer in the silence before I get to the resurrection, because I think we move too quickly past the Saturday. The question Natasha poses from the bank of the Amur River is the Saturday question: can love hold on when it has no evidence to hold on to? Not when the miracle comes. Not when the answer arrives. Not when he finally reappears after twenty years and she finds out he was alive and he was faithful and the love was real. But in the middle years, the frozen years, the years of waving at nothing — can love endure that?
I believe the answer is yes. But I want to be honest that it is not a comfortable yes. It is a costly one.
What I am trying to build in this city is small right now. The first gathering was modest. The obstacles are real. There are moments when I stand at the metaphorical bank and wave and wonder if anything is there.
And I think what I am learning — what Natasha’s story is teaching me, what the Psalms are teaching me, what the whole long tradition of faithful waiting is teaching me — is that love is not validated by its results. It is validated by its staying power. The measure of love is not what it produces in the seasons of abundance but what it does with the silence. Does it keep showing up? Does it keep waving? Does it believe, against all visible evidence, that the other side of the river is not empty — that there is a presence there that has not forgotten, has not abandoned, is still oriented toward you even in the years when you cannot see a sign of it?
Natasha stood on that bank and waved for twenty years because she believed — maybe consciously, maybe just in her bones — that the man on the other side was real, and that he had loved her, and that love of that quality does not simply dissolve because the state makes it inconvenient. She staked her life on the reality of what she had known before the silence came.
That is what faith looks like. Not the triumphant faith of answered prayers and visible miracles — though those are real and I have known them. But the quiet, exhausting, unreasonable faith of someone who keeps showing up at the river because they cannot bring themselves to believe that the love they once knew is gone. The river didn’t answer Natasha for twenty years. But she was right to keep waving. He was there.
I believe God is there too. I believe the silence is not absence. But I want to go further than that — because the story of Natasha and the young man across the river, as devastating and beautiful as it is, is not the deepest love story there is. It is a shadow of one. And I think we need to feel the full weight of the shadow before we can begin to grasp the glory of what casts it. Think about what made their love extraordinary. He loved her across an impossible divide. She loved him through twenty years of silence. Neither of them quit, even when every force in the world said to quit. We watch that and we are undone, because we recognize instinctively that this is what love is supposed to look like — stubborn, costly, unreasonable, surviving everything the world throws at it.
Now consider Jesus on the cross.
Natasha loved a man who loved her back. Christ loved people who were killing him. Natasha waved across a frozen river at someone who was desperate to wave back. Jesus stretched out his arms on a cross toward people who put him there, who mocked him while he bled, who had abandoned him when it cost something to stay. Natasha endured twenty years of silence not knowing if she was still loved. Jesus cried out “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” — absorbing into himself the full, crushing silence of divine abandonment, so that the people who deserved that silence would never have to hear it.
And then, from the cross, while the nails were still in his hands, while the crowd was still jeering, while the blood was still running — he opened his mouth and said: “Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do.”
I have read that line hundreds of times. I have preached near it. But watching Natasha wave at an empty riverbank, tears streaming down her face in the subfreezing cold, something in that line finally broke open for me in a new way. Because this is not the love of someone waving across a river at the person they adore. This is the love of someone being murdered by the people he is forgiving in real time. This is love with no reasonable basis whatsoever — love that is not a response to being loved, but love that initiates, that absorbs hostility, that refuses to become what it is being treated as. This is love that does not wait for the silence to end before it speaks. It speaks into the worst silence, from the worst place, at the worst moment, and what it says is: I forgive you. I am still for you. You do not know what you are doing, but I do, and I am choosing this.
No human love has ever done that. Not Natasha’s. Not anyone’s. The love between that Russian woman and that young Chinese man across the Black Dragon River is one of the most moving things I have ever encountered on a screen. But it is, in the end, two finite people loving each other across a frozen river. What happened on Calvary is the infinite loving the finite across the ultimate divide — not despite hostility, but through it, for it, willingly, eyes open, arms wide.
That is the love I want to know. Not just know about — know, the way you know a person, the way Natasha knew the man she waved to, the way she knew his presence well enough to feel the agony of his absence across twenty years of silence. I want to know the love of Christ with that kind of depth and that kind of personal, irreducible certainty. And I want that knowing to be so real in me, so alive in my bones, that when I stand in this city and open my mouth, something transcendent comes out — not my eloquence, not my theology, not my best argument, but the overflow of a love I have actually experienced. That is what I want to proclaim to the people of New York. Not a doctrine. Not a program. Not an institution. The love that said Father, forgive them while bleeding. The love that is more stubborn than twenty years of silence, more willing than any human devotion, more costly than anything Natasha ever paid — and offered freely, without condition, to people who were not waving back.
If that love is real — and I believe with everything I have that it is — then there is no one in this city too wounded, too cynical, too far gone, too long silent to receive it. I want to know it so deeply that when I speak of it, something in the listener recognizes it as true before I have finished the sentence. Because somewhere inside every human being, I think, is a Natasha standing at a frozen river, waving into silence, hoping against hope that love is still on the other side.
It is. And it is greater than she imagined.
That is worth proclaiming. Even in the cold. Even when the other bank looks empty. Even when it has been a very long time.
Al Ngu is the founding pastor of Hearts Burn NYC, a faith community in New York City.
A Call to Recover the Church’s Expectation of Signs, Wonders, and the Full Power of the Holy Spirit
by Al Ngu, MDiv
There is a question that sits uncomfortably at the intersection of theology, experience, and church culture — one that many congregations would rather not ask aloud: Are the signs and wonders of the New Testament still available to us today? The discomfort is telling. For a people who confess the living God, the very unease with this question reveals how thoroughly the assumptions of a rationalistic age have colonized the imagination of the modern Church.
Let me begin with what should be settled. Any attempt to strip the miraculous from the person of Jesus Christ is not a serious theological proposal — it is a kind of literary vandalism. The four Gospels — Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John — are so saturated with signs and wonders that any effort to extract them would leave nothing recognizable in their wake. History has already given us a cautionary example: the so-called ‘Jefferson Bible,’ and more recently certain rationalist projects that have attempted to ‘humanize’ Jesus by excising his miracles and reassembling a sanitized, manageable figure. These efforts are not just theologically wrong. They are an exercise in intellectual embarrassment that does profound harm to the body of Christ. The evangelical world, by and large, agrees on this. The miraculous belongs to the person of Jesus the way light belongs to the sun — it is not incidental, it is constitutive.
But here is where honest conversation becomes harder. The question that genuinely divides us is not whether Jesus performed miracles. It is whether the miraculous power of God continues to operate in and through the Church today — and if so, to what degree, in what forms, and with what expectation. It is on this question that I want to press the conversation forward, not with polemics, but with pastoral urgency and biblical fidelity.
“The last words Jesus spoke before his ascension were not a historical footnote. They were a living commission — and they were addressed to us.”
The Promise That Changes Everything
Acts 1:8 (ESV)
“But you will receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you, and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the end of the earth.”
These are the last recorded words of Jesus before his ascension into heaven. Consider the weight of that. When a person speaks for the final time before departing, those words carry a gravity that ordinary speech does not. Jesus had forty days after the resurrection to say whatever he wished. He chose, as his parting commission, to speak of power — the power of the Holy Spirit — and of witness that would extend to the ends of the earth.
If Acts 1:8 is not applicable to the Church today, it is difficult to understand why Jesus would have spoken it at all. Either his promise was for a specific historical moment now closed to us — a position that requires significant hermeneutical argument — or it is a living word addressed to every generation of the Church until he returns. I am firmly persuaded it is the latter. The Great Commission has not expired. Neither has the promise of power that undergirds it.
The question, then, is not whether this power is available. Acts 1:8 asserts that it is. The more difficult question is this: Why does so much of the Church in the modern West seem to operate as though it has never received this promise — or worse, as though it has quietly decided the promise no longer applies?
Pentecost and the Grammar of the Miraculous
Acts 2:1–4 (ESV)
When the day of Pentecost arrived, they were all together in one place. And suddenly there came from heaven a sound like a mighty rushing wind, and it filled the entire house where they were sitting. And divided tongues as of fire appeared to them and rested on each one of them. And they were all filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak in other tongues as the Spirit gave them utterance.
Acts 2 arrives almost immediately on the heels of Christ’s ascension, and what it describes is not subtle. Tongues of fire. A sound like a mighty rushing wind. A company of believers suddenly speaking languages they had never learned. If the Church is honest with herself, she must acknowledge that this is extraordinary — not metaphorically extraordinary, but literally, categorically beyond the ordinary course of nature. This is a sign and a wonder by any definition of those terms.
The sign of tongues at Pentecost is particularly significant, and particularly contested. On the day the Church was born, the first gift given was the gift of tongues. Not administrative skill. Not theological acuity. Not eloquence. The first gift was a supernatural language — an utterance that bypassed the speaker’s natural comprehension and came directly from the Spirit of God. In Acts 2, these tongues were actual human languages, understood by the gathered diaspora crowd from across the known world, though the speakers themselves had never studied them. That is a miracle by any account.
I will speak plainly from my own experience here. When I was twenty-one years old, studying at university in England, I was filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak in tongues. I had very little theological framework for what was happening — I had not yet studied the systematic theology I have since spent years in. What I had was a raw, undeniable encounter with the living God, expressed in a language that was not my own, that I could not manufacture, and that left me permanently changed. I am not building an entire doctrine on personal experience. But I am saying that personal experience, when it aligns with the testimony of Scripture and the practice of the early Church, cannot simply be set aside as emotionalism or cultural conditioning.
The tragedy is that the gift of tongues has become one of the most divisive issues in the body of Christ, when it was given as one of the most unifying signs of the Spirit’s arrival. Many in the Reformed tradition have moved to marginalize or dismiss this gift entirely. When a church begins to deny or diminish the gift of tongues, it tends — almost inevitably — to begin diminishing the broader expectation of supernatural gifts across the board. The slide is logical: if the most visible, verifiable gift of the Spirit at Pentecost is explained away or declared obsolete, the same hermeneutical logic will eventually be applied to prophecy, healing, and the rest.
I do not want to be unfair to those who hold cessationist convictions — they have thought carefully about their position, and they are brothers and sisters in Christ. But I do want to press them on one point: the pattern of Acts 2 is not restricted to the Twelve. The tongues of fire rested on each one who was present. The Spirit was poured out on all of them. This was not an apostolic privilege. It was the normative experience of the gathered community of Jesus.
“When a church begins to diminish the gift of tongues, it tends — almost inevitably — to diminish the broader expectation of the supernatural altogether.”
The Prophetic Promise of the Last Days
Acts 2:17 (ESV)
“And in the last days it shall be, God declares, that I will pour out my Spirit on all flesh, and your sons and your daughters shall prophesy, and your young men shall see visions, and your old men shall dream dreams.”
Peter, addressing the bewildered crowd at Pentecost, quotes the prophet Joel. His interpretive move is decisive: what you are seeing right now, he says, is the fulfillment of what God promised for the last days. The outpouring of the Spirit — prophesied, awaited, now arriving — is not a temporary anomaly. It is the characteristic mark of the age between Christ’s ascension and his return. We are in the last days. Which means we are in the age of the Spirit’s outpouring.
The language of ‘pouring out’ is emphatic and generous. It is not a trickle. It is not a carefully rationed dispensation to a select few. God says he will pour out his Spirit on all flesh — sons and daughters, young and old, across lines of gender and generation. And what follows from this outpouring? Prophecy. Visions. Dreams.
This is precisely where many Reformed and cessationist churches grow quiet. The outpouring of the Spirit is, in some theological frameworks, reinterpreted as referring solely to the writing of the New Testament, or to the establishment of the apostolic office, now closed. But this interpretation strains against the plain reading of the text. Peter does not say the Spirit was poured out on the apostles. He says it was poured out on all who were present — and extends the promise further still to all whom the Lord our God will call (Acts 2:39).
The gift of prophecy, in particular, deserves recovery in the contemporary church. The Apostle Paul devotes an entire chapter — 1 Corinthians 14 — to its proper practice. He does not do so to describe a historical phenomenon safely in the past. He writes to a living congregation, offering pastoral instruction on how to administer this gift for the upbuilding, encouragement, and consolation of the body. He commands them — not suggests, commands — to eagerly desire the spiritual gifts, especially prophecy (1 Cor. 14:1).
1 Corinthians 14:1–3 (ESV)
Pursue love, and earnestly desire the spiritual gifts, especially that you may prophesy. For one who speaks in a tongue speaks not to men but to God; for no one understands him, but he utters mysteries in the Spirit. On the other hand, the one who prophesies speaks to people for their upbuilding and encouragement and consolation.
Notice the framework Paul establishes. Love comes first — always. The gifts are never ends in themselves. They are servants of love. A congregation that pursues the gifts without love produces noise, confusion, and harm. But a congregation that loves without pursuing the gifts is not following Paul’s command. The two are not alternatives. They are partners.
How can a congregation eagerly desire a gift they have never been taught? How can they pursue something their pastors never model, never preach, never make space for? The silence of so many pulpits on the gift of prophecy is not theological neutrality. It is a form of deprivation. The sheep cannot receive what the shepherd never offers.
Let me speak from my own history again. There have been moments in my life when someone prayed over me and spoke something they could not have known — something that had been buried in the quiet of my heart for a long time. A word about my calling. A word about my children. A directional word that came to pass. I received a word once, spoken over me before a congregation of two hundred people: ‘Your heart will long for a land far away from this shore.’ That person said nothing more specific than that. But we were in Malaysia at the time, and the word eventually led us across twenty-one hours of ocean to America. That is the gift of prophecy operating in the framework of love — not for spectacle, not for control, but for the upbuilding of a servant of God who needed to hear his Father’s voice.
I am also keenly aware of the excesses. The prophetic culture of some Pentecostal and charismatic circles has produced manipulation, false predictions, and wounded people who built their lives on words that never came true. This is real, and it must be addressed — not by eliminating the gift, but by returning to the apostolic framework Paul provides: prophecy that edifies, encourages, and consoles; prophecy that is tested, weighed, and submitted to the community; prophecy that operates in the atmosphere of love.
Visions, Dreams, and the Suppressed Imagination
Acts 2:17 also promises that young men will see visions and old men will dream dreams. The evangelical world has largely spiritualized these categories into metaphor, or dismissed them as the province of more excitable Christians. But the New Testament treats visions and dreams with remarkable seriousness. It was in a vision that Ananias was sent to the blinded Saul of Tarsus. It was through a dream that Joseph was warned to flee to Egypt. It was in a trance that Peter received the vision of the clean and unclean animals, which dismantled his assumptions about Gentile inclusion.
I find that when I lean into worship, when I create space for quiet and attentiveness to God, things come into my mind’s eye that feel less like my own imagination and more like something being given to me. I have largely stopped sharing these things in my current context — the culture of the denominational congregation where we presently worship does not make space for it, and I do not want to cause disruption or confusion. But I am aware of a cost in that silence. Something is being withheld from the body that it was meant to receive.
This is the practical effect of a church culture that does not theologically sanction the experiential gifts: people who carry these gifts learn to suppress them, to privatize them, to wonder in silence whether what they are experiencing is real or simply self-generated. The doctrine of the church becomes a ceiling on the experience of the Spirit, rather than a framework that helps the Spirit’s gifts operate with wisdom and order.
Laying Hands on the Sick — A Command, Not a Suggestion
Mark 16:15–18 (ESV)
“Go into all the world and proclaim the gospel to the whole creation. Whoever believes and is baptized will be saved, but whoever does not believe will be condemned. And these signs will accompany those who believe: in my name they will cast out demons; they will speak in new tongues; they will pick up serpents with their hands; and if they drink any deadly poison, it will not hurt them; they will lay their hands on the sick, and they will recover.”
This passage is part of Jesus’ commissioning of his disciples into the world. It is embedded in the Great Commission itself — the same text that evangelicals rightly treat as the Church’s marching orders for all generations. And Jesus says, without qualification, that signs will accompany those who believe. The casting out of demons. Speaking in new tongues. Healing the sick.
Most non-charismatic evangelical churches enthusiastically embrace the Great Commission. They send missionaries. They plant churches. They translate Scriptures. But the signs that Jesus says will accompany those who believe? Those are quietly set aside — explained as belonging to the apostolic age, or reinterpreted symbolically, or simply not discussed.
The healing of the sick is perhaps the most practically significant of these signs, because sickness is universal. Every congregation contains people who are suffering — cancer, depression, chronic pain, grief, addiction, anxiety, the slow attrition of bodies that are aging toward death. Jesus says: lay your hands on the sick, and they will recover. The Church should be doing this. Many do — there are healing prayer teams in churches across the denominational spectrum. But the frequency of visible healing is, in much of the Western church, remarkably low.
Someone once described this contrast to me with painful clarity. A healing team that had seen extraordinary results in Africa returned to New York City and found the atmosphere profoundly different. Healings that had seemed almost natural in one context became rare in another. The explanation Jesus himself offers, again and again, is faith: ‘Where is your faith?’ And faith, as Paul reminds us, comes by hearing, and hearing by the word of Christ (Romans 10:17). What the pulpit preaches shapes what the congregation believes is possible. If the pulpit never speaks of healing, never models expectant prayer, never creates liturgical or pastoral space for the laying on of hands, the congregation will not carry a living expectation of the miraculous. This is not a failure of faith in the abstract. It is a failure of formation.
There is also a word to be said about spiritual warfare. Jesus says that those who believe will cast out demons. I recognize that this makes many Christians — especially those formed in rationalistic, cessationist, or mainline traditions — deeply uncomfortable. But consider the demographics of a congregation today: How many are struggling with suicidal ideation? How many wrestle with addictions that seem to have a will of their own, that resist every rational intervention? How many carry patterns of destruction that they themselves cannot explain? The New Testament would not necessarily pronounce a demonic verdict on every one of these struggles. But it would not dismiss the possibility either. Spiritual warfare is real. The deliverance ministry of Jesus was not incidental to his mission — it was central to his announcement of the Kingdom of God.
“What the pulpit preaches shapes what the congregation believes is possible. The doctrine of the church can become a ceiling on the experience of the Spirit.”
The Cultural Rationalism We Have Inherited
None of what I have described above happens in a vacuum. The modern Western church is formed by a broader cultural rationalism that has been accumulating for centuries — from the Enlightenment’s confidence in human reason, through the rise of scientific materialism, to the pervasive assumption of our present moment that what cannot be verified empirically is not real, or at least not reliable. This cultural atmosphere shapes what we consider plausible, even before we open our Bibles.
When the majority of our waking hours are spent in a world that is resolutely materialist — where our senses are attuned to the tangible, the measurable, the reproducible — it becomes genuinely difficult to maintain an expectation of the miraculous. This is not a failure of sincerity. It is the predictable result of formation in a culture that treats the supernatural as the province of the credulous. The apparent diminishing of signs and wonders in the Western church is not primarily a theological conclusion. It is a perceptual one, shaped by the assumptions of our age.
But the assumptions of our age are not the last word. The Church in the Global South — in Africa, in Asia, in Latin America — is exploding with accounts of healing, deliverance, prophetic words, and miraculous provision. These reports are not the product of theological naivety. Many of the fastest-growing, most theologically serious movements in Christianity today operate with a completely natural expectation of the miraculous. They read Acts 2 and see a description of normal Christianity. The Western church’s skepticism is the anomaly, not the norm.
A Call to Theological and Practical Renewal
What I am calling for is not a collapse into undisciplined enthusiasm. Paul’s instructions in 1 Corinthians 14 stand: let all things be done decently and in order (v. 40). The gifts of the Spirit are given to the community, exercised within the community, and tested by the community. Prophecy is weighed. Tongues are interpreted. The spirit of the prophet is subject to the prophet (v. 32). These are not restrictions designed to minimize the Spirit’s work. They are guardrails designed to protect it — to ensure that the supernatural gifts build up rather than destabilize.
But order without expectation is a form of unbelief. A church that has arranged its liturgy, its polity, and its theology to make no room for the miraculous has not achieved theological maturity. It has achieved a sophisticated form of practical cessationism — the functional belief that the extraordinary promises of God no longer apply, whatever doctrinal position it formally holds.
Renewal begins in the pulpit. Pastors must preach the full counsel of God — including Acts 1:8, Acts 2, 1 Corinthians 12 and 14, Mark 16, and every other text that speaks to the present reality of the Spirit’s power. They must preach these texts with the same expectant faith they would bring to texts about salvation or sanctification. They must create structures in congregational life — prayer teams, prophetic communities, healing services — that give these gifts space to operate with wisdom and accountability.
Renewal also requires humility. Those in cessationist traditions must be willing to ask honestly whether their theological framework was shaped more by the Enlightenment than by exegesis. Those in charismatic traditions must be willing to ask honestly whether their practice of the gifts has been ordered by love and truth, or by a culture of spectacle and individualism. Both streams have something to receive from the other. The goal is not to win a theological debate. The goal is to be the church that Jesus promised — filled with the Spirit, moving in power, witnessing to his resurrection to the ends of the earth.
The promise of Acts 1:8 has not expired. The last days Joel prophesied have not ended. The commission of Mark 16 has not been revoked. The gifts Paul described in 1 Corinthians 12 and 14 have not been quietly withdrawn. What has happened, in too many quarters of the Western church, is that we have allowed the plausibility structures of our culture to override the plain testimony of Scripture and the witness of two thousand years of Church history.
Signs and wonders should never be diminished. They should be pursued — soberly, lovingly, scripturally, expectantly. Not because we are chasing experiences. But because we are following a living Lord who is the same yesterday, today, and forever — and who promised that those who believe in him would do the works he did, and greater works than these (John 14:12). The Church owes the world nothing less than the full gospel: not a rationalized gospel with its power quietly excised, but the gospel of the Kingdom — announced in word, demonstrated in power, and driven by the love of the Spirit poured out on all flesh.
— — —
Pastor Al Ngu (MDiv) is a church planter in New York City and the founder of Hearts Burn NYC,
An outdoor faith community gathering in Union Square Park.
Do Not Diminish the Fire
A Call to Recover the Church’s Expectation of Signs, Wonders, and the Full Power of the Holy Spirit
by Al Ngu, MDiv
There is a question that sits uncomfortably at the intersection of theology, experience, and church culture — one that many congregations would rather not ask aloud: Are the signs and wonders of the New Testament still available to us today? The discomfort is telling. For a people who confess the living God, the very unease with this question reveals how thoroughly the assumptions of a rationalistic age have colonized the imagination of the modern Church.
Let me begin with what should be settled. Any attempt to strip the miraculous from the person of Jesus Christ is not a serious theological proposal — it is a kind of literary vandalism. The four Gospels — Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John — are so saturated with signs and wonders that any effort to extract them would leave nothing recognizable in their wake. History has already given us a cautionary example: the so-called ‘Jefferson Bible,’ and more recently certain rationalist projects that have attempted to ‘humanize’ Jesus by excising his miracles and reassembling a sanitized, manageable figure. These efforts are not just theologically wrong. They are an exercise in intellectual embarrassment that does profound harm to the body of Christ. The evangelical world, by and large, agrees on this. The miraculous belongs to the person of Jesus the way light belongs to the sun — it is not incidental, it is constitutive.
But here is where honest conversation becomes harder. The question that genuinely divides us is not whether Jesus performed miracles. It is whether the miraculous power of God continues to operate in and through the Church today — and if so, to what degree, in what forms, and with what expectation. It is on this question that I want to press the conversation forward, not with polemics, but with pastoral urgency and biblical fidelity.
“The last words Jesus spoke before his ascension were not a historical footnote. They were a living commission — and they were addressed to us.”
The Promise That Changes Everything
Acts 1:8 (ESV)
“But you will receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you, and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the end of the earth.”
These are the last recorded words of Jesus before his ascension into heaven. Consider the weight of that. When a person speaks for the final time before departing, those words carry a gravity that ordinary speech does not. Jesus had forty days after the resurrection to say whatever he wished. He chose, as his parting commission, to speak of power — the power of the Holy Spirit — and of witness that would extend to the ends of the earth.
If Acts 1:8 is not applicable to the Church today, it is difficult to understand why Jesus would have spoken it at all. Either his promise was for a specific historical moment now closed to us — a position that requires significant hermeneutical argument — or it is a living word addressed to every generation of the Church until he returns. I am firmly persuaded it is the latter. The Great Commission has not expired. Neither has the promise of power that undergirds it.
The question, then, is not whether this power is available. Acts 1:8 asserts that it is. The more difficult question is this: Why does so much of the Church in the modern West seem to operate as though it has never received this promise — or worse, as though it has quietly decided the promise no longer applies?
Pentecost and the Grammar of the Miraculous
Acts 2:1–4 (ESV)
When the day of Pentecost arrived, they were all together in one place. And suddenly there came from heaven a sound like a mighty rushing wind, and it filled the entire house where they were sitting. And divided tongues as of fire appeared to them and rested on each one of them. And they were all filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak in other tongues as the Spirit gave them utterance.
Acts 2 arrives almost immediately on the heels of Christ’s ascension, and what it describes is not subtle. Tongues of fire. A sound like a mighty rushing wind. A company of believers suddenly speaking languages they had never learned. If the Church is honest with herself, she must acknowledge that this is extraordinary — not metaphorically extraordinary, but literally, categorically beyond the ordinary course of nature. This is a sign and a wonder by any definition of those terms.
The sign of tongues at Pentecost is particularly significant, and particularly contested. On the day the Church was born, the first gift given was the gift of tongues. Not administrative skill. Not theological acuity. Not eloquence. The first gift was a supernatural language — an utterance that bypassed the speaker’s natural comprehension and came directly from the Spirit of God. In Acts 2, these tongues were actual human languages, understood by the gathered diaspora crowd from across the known world, though the speakers themselves had never studied them. That is a miracle by any account.
I will speak plainly from my own experience here. When I was twenty-one years old, studying at university in England, I was filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak in tongues. I had very little theological framework for what was happening — I had not yet studied the systematic theology I have since spent years in. What I had was a raw, undeniable encounter with the living God, expressed in a language that was not my own, that I could not manufacture, and that left me permanently changed. I am not building an entire doctrine on personal experience. But I am saying that personal experience, when it aligns with the testimony of Scripture and the practice of the early Church, cannot simply be set aside as emotionalism or cultural conditioning.
The tragedy is that the gift of tongues has become one of the most divisive issues in the body of Christ, when it was given as one of the most unifying signs of the Spirit’s arrival. Many in the Reformed tradition have moved to marginalize or dismiss this gift entirely. When a church begins to deny or diminish the gift of tongues, it tends — almost inevitably — to begin diminishing the broader expectation of supernatural gifts across the board. The slide is logical: if the most visible, verifiable gift of the Spirit at Pentecost is explained away or declared obsolete, the same hermeneutical logic will eventually be applied to prophecy, healing, and the rest.
I do not want to be unfair to those who hold cessationist convictions — they have thought carefully about their position, and they are brothers and sisters in Christ. But I do want to press them on one point: the pattern of Acts 2 is not restricted to the Twelve. The tongues of fire rested on each one who was present. The Spirit was poured out on all of them. This was not an apostolic privilege. It was the normative experience of the gathered community of Jesus.
“When a church begins to diminish the gift of tongues, it tends — almost inevitably — to diminish the broader expectation of the supernatural altogether.”
The Prophetic Promise of the Last Days
Acts 2:17 (ESV)
“And in the last days it shall be, God declares, that I will pour out my Spirit on all flesh, and your sons and your daughters shall prophesy, and your young men shall see visions, and your old men shall dream dreams.”
Peter, addressing the bewildered crowd at Pentecost, quotes the prophet Joel. His interpretive move is decisive: what you are seeing right now, he says, is the fulfillment of what God promised for the last days. The outpouring of the Spirit — prophesied, awaited, now arriving — is not a temporary anomaly. It is the characteristic mark of the age between Christ’s ascension and his return. We are in the last days. Which means we are in the age of the Spirit’s outpouring.
The language of ‘pouring out’ is emphatic and generous. It is not a trickle. It is not a carefully rationed dispensation to a select few. God says he will pour out his Spirit on all flesh — sons and daughters, young and old, across lines of gender and generation. And what follows from this outpouring? Prophecy. Visions. Dreams.
This is precisely where many Reformed and cessationist churches grow quiet. The outpouring of the Spirit is, in some theological frameworks, reinterpreted as referring solely to the writing of the New Testament, or to the establishment of the apostolic office, now closed. But this interpretation strains against the plain reading of the text. Peter does not say the Spirit was poured out on the apostles. He says it was poured out on all who were present — and extends the promise further still to all whom the Lord our God will call (Acts 2:39).
The gift of prophecy, in particular, deserves recovery in the contemporary church. The Apostle Paul devotes an entire chapter — 1 Corinthians 14 — to its proper practice. He does not do so to describe a historical phenomenon safely in the past. He writes to a living congregation, offering pastoral instruction on how to administer this gift for the upbuilding, encouragement, and consolation of the body. He commands them — not suggests, commands — to eagerly desire the spiritual gifts, especially prophecy (1 Cor. 14:1).
1 Corinthians 14:1–3 (ESV)
Pursue love, and earnestly desire the spiritual gifts, especially that you may prophesy. For one who speaks in a tongue speaks not to men but to God; for no one understands him, but he utters mysteries in the Spirit. On the other hand, the one who prophesies speaks to people for their upbuilding and encouragement and consolation.
Notice the framework Paul establishes. Love comes first — always. The gifts are never ends in themselves. They are servants of love. A congregation that pursues the gifts without love produces noise, confusion, and harm. But a congregation that loves without pursuing the gifts is not following Paul’s command. The two are not alternatives. They are partners.
How can a congregation eagerly desire a gift they have never been taught? How can they pursue something their pastors never model, never preach, never make space for? The silence of so many pulpits on the gift of prophecy is not theological neutrality. It is a form of deprivation. The sheep cannot receive what the shepherd never offers.
Let me speak from my own history again. There have been moments in my life when someone prayed over me and spoke something they could not have known — something that had been buried in the quiet of my heart for a long time. A word about my calling. A word about my children. A directional word that came to pass. I received a word once, spoken over me before a congregation of two hundred people: ‘Your heart will long for a land far away from this shore.’ That person said nothing more specific than that. But we was in Malaysia at the time, and the word eventually led us across twenty-one hours of ocean to America. That is the gift of prophecy operating in the framework of love — not for spectacle, not for control, but for the upbuilding of a servant of God who needed to hear his Father’s voice.
I am also keenly aware of the excesses. The prophetic culture of some Pentecostal and charismatic circles has produced manipulation, false predictions, and wounded people who built their lives on words that never came true. This is real, and it must be addressed — not by eliminating the gift, but by returning to the apostolic framework Paul provides: prophecy that edifies, encourages, and consoles; prophecy that is tested, weighed, and submitted to the community; prophecy that operates in the atmosphere of love.
Visions, Dreams, and the Suppressed Imagination
Acts 2:17 also promises that young men will see visions and old men will dream dreams. The evangelical world has largely spiritualized these categories into metaphor, or dismissed them as the province of more excitable Christians. But the New Testament treats visions and dreams with remarkable seriousness. It was in a vision that Ananias was sent to the blinded Saul of Tarsus. It was through a dream that Joseph was warned to flee to Egypt. It was in a trance that Peter received the vision of the clean and unclean animals, which dismantled his assumptions about Gentile inclusion.
I find that when I lean into worship, when I create space for quiet and attentiveness to God, things come into my mind’s eye that feel less like my own imagination and more like something being given to me. I have largely stopped sharing these things in my current context — the culture of the denominational congregation where we presently worship does not make space for it, and I do not want to cause disruption or confusion. But I am aware of a cost in that silence. Something is being withheld from the body that it was meant to receive.
This is the practical effect of a church culture that does not theologically sanction the experiential gifts: people who carry these gifts learn to suppress them, to privatize them, to wonder in silence whether what they are experiencing is real or simply self-generated. The doctrine of the church becomes a ceiling on the experience of the Spirit, rather than a framework that helps the Spirit’s gifts operate with wisdom and order.
Laying Hands on the Sick — A Command, Not a Suggestion
Mark 16:15–18 (ESV)
“Go into all the world and proclaim the gospel to the whole creation. Whoever believes and is baptized will be saved, but whoever does not believe will be condemned. And these signs will accompany those who believe: in my name they will cast out demons; they will speak in new tongues; they will pick up serpents with their hands; and if they drink any deadly poison, it will not hurt them; they will lay their hands on the sick, and they will recover.”
This passage is part of Jesus’ commissioning of his disciples into the world. It is embedded in the Great Commission itself — the same text that evangelicals rightly treat as the Church’s marching orders for all generations. And Jesus says, without qualification, that signs will accompany those who believe. The casting out of demons. Speaking in new tongues. Healing the sick.
Most non-charismatic evangelical churches enthusiastically embrace the Great Commission. They send missionaries. They plant churches. They translate Scriptures. But the signs that Jesus says will accompany those who believe? Those are quietly set aside — explained as belonging to the apostolic age, or reinterpreted symbolically, or simply not discussed.
The healing of the sick is perhaps the most practically significant of these signs, because sickness is universal. Every congregation contains people who are suffering — cancer, depression, chronic pain, grief, addiction, anxiety, the slow attrition of bodies that are aging toward death. Jesus says: lay your hands on the sick, and they will recover. The Church should be doing this. Many do — there are healing prayer teams in churches across the denominational spectrum. But the frequency of visible healing is, in much of the Western church, remarkably low.
Someone once described this contrast to me with painful clarity. A healing team that had seen extraordinary results in Africa returned to New York City and found the atmosphere profoundly different. Healings that had seemed almost natural in one context became rare in another. The explanation Jesus himself offers, again and again, is faith: ‘Where is your faith?’ And faith, as Paul reminds us, comes by hearing, and hearing by the word of Christ (Romans 10:17). What the pulpit preaches shapes what the congregation believes is possible. If the pulpit never speaks of healing, never models expectant prayer, never creates liturgical or pastoral space for the laying on of hands, the congregation will not carry a living expectation of the miraculous. This is not a failure of faith in the abstract. It is a failure of formation.
There is also a word to be said about spiritual warfare. Jesus says that those who believe will cast out demons. I recognize that this makes many Christians — especially those formed in rationalistic, cessationist, or mainline traditions — deeply uncomfortable. But consider the demographics of a congregation today: How many are struggling with suicidal ideation? How many wrestle with addictions that seem to have a will of their own, that resist every rational intervention? How many carry patterns of destruction that they themselves cannot explain? The New Testament would not necessarily pronounce a demonic verdict on every one of these struggles. But it would not dismiss the possibility either. Spiritual warfare is real. The deliverance ministry of Jesus was not incidental to his mission — it was central to his announcement of the Kingdom of God.
“What the pulpit preaches shapes what the congregation believes is possible. The doctrine of the church can become a ceiling on the experience of the Spirit.”
The Cultural Rationalism We Have Inherited
None of what I have described above happens in a vacuum. The modern Western church is formed by a broader cultural rationalism that has been accumulating for centuries — from the Enlightenment’s confidence in human reason, through the rise of scientific materialism, to the pervasive assumption of our present moment that what cannot be verified empirically is not real, or at least not reliable. This cultural atmosphere shapes what we consider plausible, even before we open our Bibles.
When the majority of our waking hours are spent in a world that is resolutely materialist — where our senses are attuned to the tangible, the measurable, the reproducible — it becomes genuinely difficult to maintain an expectation of the miraculous. This is not a failure of sincerity. It is the predictable result of formation in a culture that treats the supernatural as the province of the credulous. The apparent diminishing of signs and wonders in the Western church is not primarily a theological conclusion. It is a perceptual one, shaped by the assumptions of our age.
But the assumptions of our age are not the last word. The Church in the Global South — in Africa, in Asia, in Latin America — is exploding with accounts of healing, deliverance, prophetic words, and miraculous provision. These reports are not the product of theological naivety. Many of the fastest-growing, most theologically serious movements in Christianity today operate with a completely natural expectation of the miraculous. They read Acts 2 and see a description of normal Christianity. The Western church’s skepticism is the anomaly, not the norm.
A Call to Theological and Practical Renewal
What I am calling for is not a collapse into undisciplined enthusiasm. Paul’s instructions in 1 Corinthians 14 stand: let all things be done decently and in order (v. 40). The gifts of the Spirit are given to the community, exercised within the community, and tested by the community. Prophecy is weighed. Tongues are interpreted. The spirit of the prophet is subject to the prophet (v. 32). These are not restrictions designed to minimize the Spirit’s work. They are guardrails designed to protect it — to ensure that the supernatural gifts build up rather than destabilize.
But order without expectation is a form of unbelief. A church that has arranged its liturgy, its polity, and its theology to make no room for the miraculous has not achieved theological maturity. It has achieved a sophisticated form of practical cessationism — the functional belief that the extraordinary promises of God no longer apply, whatever doctrinal position it formally holds.
Renewal begins in the pulpit. Pastors must preach the full counsel of God — including Acts 1:8, Acts 2, 1 Corinthians 12 and 14, Mark 16, and every other text that speaks to the present reality of the Spirit’s power. They must preach these texts with the same expectant faith they would bring to texts about salvation or sanctification. They must create structures in congregational life — prayer teams, prophetic communities, healing services — that give these gifts space to operate with wisdom and accountability.
Renewal also requires humility. Those in cessationist traditions must be willing to ask honestly whether their theological framework was shaped more by the Enlightenment than by exegesis. Those in charismatic traditions must be willing to ask honestly whether their practice of the gifts has been ordered by love and truth, or by a culture of spectacle and individualism. Both streams have something to receive from the other. The goal is not to win a theological debate. The goal is to be the church that Jesus promised — filled with the Spirit, moving in power, witnessing to his resurrection to the ends of the earth.
The promise of Acts 1:8 has not expired. The last days Joel prophesied have not ended. The commission of Mark 16 has not been revoked. The gifts Paul described in 1 Corinthians 12 and 14 have not been quietly withdrawn. What has happened, in too many quarters of the Western church, is that we have allowed the plausibility structures of our culture to override the plain testimony of Scripture and the witness of two thousand years of Church history.
Signs and wonders should never be diminished. They should be pursued — soberly, lovingly, scripturally, expectantly. Not because we are chasing experiences. But because we are following a living Lord who is the same yesterday, today, and forever — and who promised that those who believe in him would do the works he did, and greater works than these (John 14:12). The Church owes the world nothing less than the full gospel: not a rationalized gospel with its power quietly excised, but the gospel of the Kingdom — announced in word, demonstrated in power, and driven by the love of the Spirit poured out on all flesh.
— — —
Pastor Al Ngu (MDiv) is a church planter in New York City and the founder of Hearts Burn NYC,
An outdoor faith community gathering in Union Square Park.
This morning I was in my early morning prayer as usual in my 1 hour prayer, although this morning was a little bit short ,but it was profound experience. I’ve been struggling to do things for God, to serve God , to reach a height that I’ve ever seen before to glorify him not to glorify my ministry per se. Although they always have a linkage between the two.
God promise to make Abraham’s name great
As a matter of fact God spoke to Abraham, “ I will make your name great and I’ll make you to be father of great nations. All nations shall be blessed through you. I will bless you and I will bless those who bless you and curse those who curse you.” This is making Abraham’s name great, not for Abraham’s sake as he is in no way asking for anything of that sort from God, but its really him trying to understand, trying to serve God in his calling in a humble way. But astoundingly God promise to make Abraham’s name great!
In our days it is hard to imagine that you want to ask God to make your name great and they’ll be self-centered, self-egoistic! But this is not that case, this is actually God wanted to make Abraham’s name great so you might understand that’s how I pursue God for all this longest time of period because I want to proclaim his Name make his name great.
In the midst of all this, I feel worn out, tired mentally and spiritually because I’m not seeing anything substantial from God in my drive and zeal to plant church for God. I remember there was a tremendous session taught in our movement before on the chapter called the zeal of Paul. Zealousness is one of the clearest characters in Paul’s life and is displayed as his passion for Christ and he even said, “Woe is me if I don’t preach the gospel.” So I’m zealous by my own nature and passionate and it seems to be a grinding to the ground.
God blessed me to start a work bible group
In fairness by God’s grace, He has blessed me to start a new group Bible teaching group in my office which is truly remarkable because it has never been done in the existence of out company for the last hundreds of years as far as I know! All these are very exciting. I started it in August last year and now it’s about 8 to 10 people and it’s about half a year now time flies. I graduated last May and I have determined in my life I want to be somewhat like Paul when he got converted literally after three days of prayer and fasting when he was liberated from his blindness as he was struck by the Lord Jesus, the minute he opened his eyes he started preaching the gospel. And he was so powerfully effective and anointed and it seems doors are opening all over the place for him. I mean he could just literally walk into a synagogue, and they will invite him to preach. I wish modern day synagogues and churches would do that to me as well today, but there is a dream that never will happen. It’s a laughingstock. So I wanted to start quickly. Time flied pass….it was June ,July I was really seeking the Lord for direction what to do Lord I’ve spent seven years very rigorous Master Divinity (MDiv) in NYC and Orlando, and now am totally ready to blast it out for Jesus. And guess what? Nothing. In fact I was able to preach once a month during my two years of seminaries schools the last two years, and after I graduated last year the strangest thing happened, I was not invited to preach in that church in New Jersey anymore. And prior to that I was like preaching three Sundays a month in Long Island as an interim pastor and that was intense because I was studying in school having a 40 hour full time job and I have a family, although empty nested, and in the midst of juggling all this I was really stretched and I did that for one year the Lord has done a beautiful thing in my life. So it is in that context that I hear nothing, I got nothing. In the church that my wife and I attending, I finally put myself forward and asked by the pastor to teach theology class once and now preaching in a quarterly fashion which is really far from my intensity, but very thankful. And thanks be to God that I am able to teach the word of God bi weekly in my office to a group of 10 people. O Lord may you bless their group the Lord bless the folks who come to my teaching.
The Vision of a Pizza Cutter
So this morning as I was praying so hard I recognized that I have something I can relate to from the church planters forum I attended with for.NYC organization. They were telling us that one of the pastors after seven years of pastoring, he felt the internal state of his soul is worn out, it’s not ready to continue to do the intensity of pastoring. That phrase caught my attention about the internal state of your soul. In fact there were like the lead pastor of this organization shared that he had even experienced: his three church plants were blasting away growing well while his marriage was falling apart. But thanks be to God the grace of God he rectified that and his has great marriage ever since. So I thought to myself maybe God is doing something about my internal state of my being during all this period of searching and knocking at the door and with my zeal for God and passion for the ministry of the gospel, and as I was praying suddenly I saw this vision of something like a metal roller cutter like a like a pizza wheel cutter thing and just rolled over the edge of a metal. And this is like the cutter is cutting off the edges of the metal. I immediately understood and dawned on me that this is God telling me, “You are right, I’m doing something in your internal state and I’m cutting off the rough edges in your life.”
God is real
That means the world to me at that moment and I said, “Lord thank you now I know God is real.” When I say God is real, I mean I always know that God is real, what it means God is real at that moment to me because God can be very silent even though you know he’s there. I’m feeling so much better and I do think that God cares very much how we feel inside our hearts but it takes a while for God to communicate that because it is precisely through this process of the moments we experience that God is actually transforming our lives, transforming our state of our inner being so they will be ready for the calling years for us.
In the landscape of the 21st century, a quiet but profound revolution is taking place. For decades, the prevailing sociological narrative suggested that as societies modernized, they would inevitably secularize—leaving religion behind as a relic of a bygone era. However, recent data from both the United States and the United Kingdom has upended this expectation. A striking trend has emerged: Gen Z men are retaining or adopting Christian identity at rates equal to, or even higher than, their female peers.
This is not merely a statistical anomaly; it is a spiritual homecoming. Many young men today report feeling culturally dislocated, marginalized, or even villainized by progressive secular discourse regarding masculinity. In an era defined by “fluidity”—where identity, gender, and morality are treated as ever-shifting social constructs—young men are finding themselves adrift. In response, they are gravitating toward the ancient, the “thick,” and the traditional. Traditional forms of Christianity, particularly Catholicism and Eastern Orthodoxy, offer a narrative of responsibility, sacrifice, and hierarchy that provides a defined role for men seeking solid ground.
The Crisis of Masculinity and the Divine Design
The modern challenge to masculinity, driven by aggressive progressive cultural forces, has created a deep-seated confusion regarding gender roles. Over the last decade, the cultural “circuitry” of society has been rewired. By attempting to dismantle the traditional understanding of what it means to be a man or a woman, secular society has inadvertently created a “void in the soul” for a generation of men.
When we speak of masculinity today, it is often through the lens of “toxicity.” Young men are told that their natural inclinations toward strength, leadership, and protection are inherently problematic. This has led to a state of cultural dislocation. After years of feeling like they have no place in the modern narrative, Gen Z men are reacting against the chaos. They are finding that the “freedom” promised by secularism feels more like a vacuum.
From a secular sociological perspective, many scholars overlook the fundamental reality of the human condition: the Imago Dei—the image of God—and the “common grace” implanted in the human soul. There is a fundamental tension that occurs when human design is distorted. Much like a high-performance vehicle—if you begin short-circuiting the electrical design or putting the wrong fuel in the tank, the car will sputter, stall, and eventually break down.
Similarly, the human soul becomes restless, tired, and worn out when it operates outside of God’s design. This is the heart of the Gen Z cry. They are tired of the “short-circuiting” of their nature. It is in this state of exhaustion that the invitation of Christ becomes a lifeline:
“Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you and learn from me… for my yoke is easy and my burden is light.” (Matthew 11:28-30)
The Biblical Foundation of Identity
To understand why Gen Z men are returning to the Church, we must look at the foundational architecture of identity found in the Book of Genesis. The Bible establishes that gender is not a social performance, but a divine distinction.
“So God created mankind in his own image, in the image of God he created them; male and female he created them.” (Genesis 1:27)
Crucially, God breathed His life specifically into them—an act not extended to the animals or the plants. This “breath of life” confirms that only humanity is created in the image of God. This truth stretches far beyond the Garden of Eden; it provides the very definition of male and female in this world.
“Then the Lord God formed a man from the dust of the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life… Then the Lord God made a woman from the rib he had taken out of the man, and he brought her to the man.” (Genesis 2:7, 22)
When society pushes a “social construct” agenda to redefine these roles, it leads to the spiritual and social decay described in the first chapter of Romans. Paul describes a society that exchanged the truth of God for a lie and worshiped the creature rather than the Creator. The result was a “giving over” to confusion and disorder.
“They exchanged the truth about God for a lie, and worshiped and served created things rather than the Creator… Because of this, God gave them over to shameful lusts. Even their women exchanged natural sexual relations for unnatural ones. In the same way the men also abandoned natural relations with women and were inflamed with lust for one another.” (Romans 1:25-27)
Yet, it is precisely because of this darkness that the light of the Transcendent is becoming so attractive again. In a world of “liquid modernity,” only the Transcendent offers the certainty and serenity that the human heart craves.
From Judgment to Grace: The Path to Restoration
While the diagnostic portion of the Bible warns of the consequences of turning away from God’s design, the Scriptures do not leave us in the pit of despair. The transition from Romans 1 to Romans 3 is one of the most powerful movements in all of theology.
Paul moves from the judgment of God to the grace of God. He acknowledges that while all have fallen short and experienced the “short-circuiting” of their nature, the grace of God provides a pathway for joy, forgiveness, and total restoration.
“This righteousness is given through faith in Jesus Christ to all who believe. There is no difference… for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, and all are justified freely by his grace through the redemption that came by Christ Jesus.” (Romans 3:22-24)
This is the message that Gen Z men are finally hearing. They are realizing that they do not have to be “self-made” men; they can be “God-made” men. Despite the “giving over” to disorder that we see in the culture, the grace of God is working a quiet miracle. The time has come for Gen Z to experience this restoration. They are seeking a framework that is not social, but spiritual; not temporary, but eternal.
The Role of Modern Intellectuals: Re-enchanting the Bible
We cannot discuss this trend without acknowledging the role of public intellectuals, most notably Jordan Peterson. Peterson has played a pivotal role in “re-enchanting” the Bible for a secular male audience that had previously written it off as a book of fairy tales.
By framing biblical narratives as psychological maps for meaning rather than strictly metaphysical claims, Peterson created an “on-ramp” for secular men to enter religious spaces. He spoke to men in a language they understood: the language of competence, responsibility, and voluntary sacrifice. He challenged young men to “stand up straight with your shoulders back”—a call to alertness that mirrors the biblical command:
“Be on your guard; stand firm in the faith; be courageous; be strong.” (1 Corinthians 16:13)
Peterson’s work has paved the way for a religious lifestyle for many who were otherwise lost in the spiritual vacuity of modern life. He helped them realize that the Bible isn’t just a book you read; it’s a reality you inhabit. The keyword here is yearning. There is a profound yearning for meaning in a world that tells young men they are “toxic” or “unnecessary.” By providing a bridge between psychological truth and biblical orthodoxy, these intellectual movements are navigating young men back toward the timeless wisdom of the Scriptures.
Conclusion: The Return to the Ancient Path
The rise of “Digital Orthodoxy” and the return to traditional liturgical worship among Gen Z men is a sign that the secular experiment has failed to satisfy the human soul. The aesthetic of antiquity, the rigor of discipline, and the clarity of the biblical narrative are far more appealing to a young man than the hollow promises of a fluid culture.
The “human vehicle” is being brought back to the Manufacturer. The confusion of gender roles and the “man-made” problems of the last decade are being met with the ancient “God-made” solutions. It is absolutely comforting to know that the time has come for the Gen Z man to react to the void and reach for something solid.
They are moving from the chaos of Romans 1 into the grace of Romans 3. They are finding that in the hierarchy of God, there is freedom; in the responsibility of the Cross, there is strength; and in the image of God, there is a true identity that no social construct can ever take away.
When Jesus and His disciples crossed the stormy Sea of Galilee—after He had rebuked the winds and waves with a word of authority—they stepped ashore in the region of the Gadarenes (or Gergesenes, as some manuscripts read). Immediately, two demon-possessed men came rushing from the tombs toward Him. These men were so fierce and uncontrollable that no traveler dared pass that way anymore. Yet in the presence of Jesus, the demons inside them could not remain silent. They cried out in terror: “What have you to do with us, O Son of God? Have you come here to torment us before the time?” (Matthew 8:29, ESV).
This dramatic confrontation reveals truths that cut to the heart of spiritual reality. First, these demonic beings—ancient, rebellious spirits—instantly recognize and confess Jesus’ divine identity as the **Son of God**. This is the same title Peter proclaimed in faith (Matthew 16:16), the same one the Father declared at Jesus’ baptism (Matthew 3:17), yet it is a truth billions of people in our modern world actively deny, dismiss, or ignore. The demons know what many refuse to accept.
“Have you come here to torment us **before the time**?”
But the second part of their cry is even more unsettling: “Have you come here to torment us **before the time**?” They are not confused or uncertain about the future. They possess clear, terrifying knowledge of an appointed “time”—the final eschatological judgment day when Satan and all his angels will be thrown into the lake of fire and sulfur, tormented “day and night forever and ever” (Revelation 20:10). Jesus Himself describes this as “the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels” (Matthew 25:41), a place of unquenchable fire and undying worms (Mark 9:48). In the parallel accounts in Mark 5 and Luke 8, the demons beg Jesus not to send them into the abyss—a temporary place of restraint and suffering before the final sentence falls. Their desperate plea shows they fully expect torment; they simply dread facing it prematurely.
This moment makes the supernatural uncomfortably real. Hell is not a medieval scare tactic, a psychological symbol, or a cultural holdover from less enlightened times. It is a literal, eternal destination for those who persist in rebellion against God. The demons’ fear underscores that spiritual forces operate with full awareness of cosmic justice. They tremble at what awaits them, even though the appointed time may still be centuries or millennia away.
Tragically, many contemporary Christians have largely tuned out this same reality.
We live in an era bombarded by distractions: endless scrolling on social media, the pursuit of financial security, entertainment that numbs the soul, and a prevailing cultural narrative that insists a truly loving God could never allow eternal punishment. The result is a mental compartmentalization—judgment feels distant, abstract, or even incompatible with the compassionate Father revealed in Scripture. Many churches contribute to this by focusing almost exclusively on themes of grace, healing, community, and personal fulfillment (which are all biblical and essential), while rarely addressing demons, spiritual warfare, the wrath of God, or the vivid warnings Jesus gave about hell more often than He spoke of heaven.
A divine wake-up call: the end times are not merely future prophecy; they are a present spiritual reality that must shape our daily priorities, decisions, and mission
This selective preaching is not harmless. If fallen angels—who have rebelled against God for far longer than humanity has existed—shudder at the certainty of coming torment, how much more should redeemed believers, who possess the complete revelation of God’s Word and the indwelling Holy Spirit, live with holy urgency? The Gadarenes encounter is a divine wake-up call: the end times are not merely future prophecy; they are a present spiritual reality that must shape our daily priorities, decisions, and mission.
The personal and communal implications are profound and life-transforming. A genuine, heart-level awareness of eternal judgment would radically alter how we live as followers of Christ. Evangelism would cease to be an occasional activity reserved for special events or mission trips; it would become the natural overflow of our lives—sharing the gospel boldly, relationally, and relentlessly every single day. We would stop wasting energy on petty doctrinal arguments that divide rather than unite, on chasing material gain that rusts and fades, or on conforming to cultural wickedness that dulls our spiritual senses. Instead, we would lift our eyes to the eternal horizon and invest in what truly lasts.
Pause and consider the emotional weight: What if the people we love most—our children, our spouse, our closest friends, our coworkers, our neighbors—are on a path toward eternal separation from God? The image is heartbreaking, almost unbearable. Yet it is precisely this kind of piercing grief that should stir us out of complacency and into fervent action. Love that is truly Christlike does not remain silent in the face of danger; it warns, pleads, and pursues.
“Write the vision; make it plain on tablets, so he may run who reads it.
The prophet Habakkuk received a similar divine mandate in a time of impending judgment: “Write the vision; make it plain on tablets, so he may run who reads it. For still the vision awaits its appointed time; it hastens to the end—it will not lie. If it seems slow, wait for it; it will surely come; it will not delay” (Habakkuk 2:2–3, ESV). This vision included both the certainty of judgment on sin and the promise of God’s ultimate justice and restoration. When the message is proclaimed clearly and faithfully—without dilution or apology—it produces action. “Run” is not a suggestion; it is an imperative verb calling for urgent, purposeful movement.
Yet so many believers today remain spiritually sedentary, passively waiting rather than actively running. The reason is clear: the church has too often watered down the full counsel of God, choosing “winsome” politeness over the confrontational boldness Jesus modeled. He did not hesitate to call out hypocrisy, warn of judgment, or speak of Gehenna’s fire in ways that offended religious leaders and casual hearers alike. We must recover that same courage.
The terrified confession of the demons in the Gadarenes lays bare the unseen battle raging beneath the surface of ordinary life.
This must change—now. The terrified confession of the demons in the Gadarenes lays bare the unseen battle raging beneath the surface of ordinary life. Judgment is real. The appointed time draws nearer every day. And the gospel of Jesus Christ remains the only rescue from the wrath to come.
Let us therefore reclaim the whole truth of Scripture: a love so deep it willingly bore the cross to save sinners from deserved wrath; grace so powerful it transforms rebels into saints; and an urgency so compelling it drives us to proclaim Christ boldly, urgently, and unapologetically while there is still time.
May we write—and live—this vision plainly today. Let it awaken hearts, ignite passion, and send us running toward eternity, reaching the lost before the time arrives. The demons know the stakes. It is time for the church to remember, to repent of our slumber, and to respond with the fervor the gospel demands.
Al Ngu sermons & devotion 