Alive - by Dave Smith

The book is also the basis for a small group video series, ‘The Wellbeing Journey’ by HOPE UK and
KingsGate Community Church.
6 I talk about this in more detail in Dave Smith, God’s Plan for Your Wellb eing, p15.
7 DA Carson, The Gospel According to JOHN (Grand Rapids, Michigan: Apollos, 1991) p646.
8 Dave Smith, 40 Days with Jesus, pp58–59.
9 J Blank, Krisis (Freiburg: Lambertus, 1964), p178; op cit, B Milne, The Message of John (Leicester: IVP, 1993)
p298.
10 I originally made these observations in Dave Smith, 40 Days with Jesus, pp71–72.
11 An example of this is found in John 14:4–6.
12 Paul Beasley-Murray, The Message of the Resurrection (Nottingham: The Bible Speaks Today, IVP, 2000)
p102.
CHAPTER FOUR: LIVING IN FREEDOM
1 Nelson Mandela, Long Walk to Freedom (London: Abacus, 1995).
2 www.abrahamlincolnonline.org/lincoln/education/failures.htm [Accessed December 2023].
3 Dave Smith, 40 Days with Jesus (Farnham: CWR, 2014) p80.
4 As David Ford explains in The Gospel of John (Grand Rapids, Michigan: Baker Academic, 2021) pp418–19:
‘There is no hint of a negative judgment on them, and a positive view is that, just as Jesus has been present
in the enclosed, special Sunday gatherings in Jerusalem in John 20, so he is present in Galilee as the
disciples go to work and carry on ordinary life.’
5 Dave Smith, 40 Days with Jesus, p81.
6 Dave Smith, 40 Days with Jesus, p85.
7 I first read about these similarities in David Ford, The Gospel of John, p419.
8 Dave Smith, 40 Days with Jesus, p91.
9 Andrew Ollerton, The Bib le: A Story That Makes Sense of Life (London: Hodder & Stoughton, 2020) page 211
of 323, Kindle ed.
CHAPTER FIVE: FULFILLING OUR PURPOSE
1 Quotes sourced from www.goodreads.com [Accessed December 2023].
2 ‘A sense of purpose helps you live longer’, 27 June 2019, www.clearvuehealth.com/b/purpose-longevityhealth/
[Accessed December 2023].
3 I shared this illustration in God’s Plan for Your Wellb eing (Farnham: Waverley Abbey, 2020) pp168–69.
4 I read about this in Nicky Gumbel, Bib le in One Year, Day 57.
5 Tim Keller, The Freedom of Self-Forgetfulness (Chorley: 10Publishing, 2012) pages 21–22, Kindle ed.
6 Rick Warren, Purpose Driven Life (Grand Rapids, Michigan: Zondervan, 2002) pp17–18.
7 John RW Stott, The Message of Acts (Leicester, IVP, 1990) pp171–72. Stott helpfully expands on what these
various ‘goads’ may have been.
8 If we examine the three accounts we see slight but significant differences in the retelling which can be
explained by Luke’s own creativity as an author, and by the fact that the accounts are told in three different
contexts: the first (Acts 9) is Luke’s narrative, the second (Acts 22) is Paul’s address before an angry crowd in
Jerusalem and the third was Paul testifying to King Agrippa (Acts 26).
9 Caravaggio, The Conversion of Saint Paul (1600–1601).
10 Scholars, particularly critical ones, tend to consider that what Paul directly says about himself in his letters is
to be treated as having stronger evidential value than what Luke says about Paul in Acts or where he even
quotes him. Aside from the importance of going directly to the source himself, there is a consensus that both
due to their early composition (no more than 15–25 years after the actual events) and to the fact that they are
written by a previous opponent, Paul’s letters are considered to be the most important source for the historicity
of the resurrection.
11 Not only is 1 Corinthians one of the earliest New Testament documents (written only 15–20 years after the
events of the first Easter), but 1 Corinthians 15:3–7 is widely considered to have been composed much earlier,
not by Paul himself, but by the early Church, maybe within months of Jesus’ death. This is clearly indicated
both by how Paul begins: ‘For what I received I passed on to you as of first importance’ and by the use of
phrases that are not found elsewhere in his writings: ‘that Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures,
that he was buried, that he was raised on the third day according to the Scriptures’ (1 Corinthians 15:3–4, my
emphasis). Then follows a summary of some of the key post-resurrection appearances: to Cephas (Peter),