9-21-25 Study of Acts Chapter 11:1-30 The First Gentile Church

➡ This Sunday Bible study focuses on the Book of Acts and Ephesians, emphasizing the individual and collective aspects of the church. The study has been ongoing, with a particular focus on Chapter 10, which discusses the spread of salvation to the Gentiles. The study also explores the prophesied inclusion of Gentiles in the church, the importance of the church in the ongoing spread of the Gospel, and the challenges faced by Peter in convincing the Jewish leadership to accept Gentiles into the church.
➡ The text discusses the shift in religious focus from Jewish law to Christianity, as initiated by Christ. It highlights the initial requirement for Gentiles to be circumcised to be accepted into Judaism, which was later deemed unnecessary. The text also explores the vision of Peter, where he was shown that all animals, clean and unclean, are equal, symbolizing the unity of Jews and Gentiles in the church. This marked the end of the separation between the two groups, as established in the Old Testament, and the beginning of a new era of unity in the church after Christ’s death.
➡ This text discusses the biblical story of Peter and Cornelius, emphasizing the importance of their meeting as it marked the inclusion of Gentiles into the Christian church. It highlights the significance of the Holy Spirit guiding both Peter and Cornelius to meet, and the subsequent acceptance of Gentiles by the Jewish leadership. The text also underscores the importance of this event by noting its repetition three times in two chapters, suggesting its critical role in the evolution of the church. Lastly, it warns against reducing Christianity to mere rituals, emphasizing the importance of genuine faith and spiritual transformation.
➡ The text discusses the early Christian church’s struggle with accepting Gentiles, or non-Jews, into their community. It highlights the role of Peter, a key figure in the church, who faced opposition from Jewish leaders for his efforts to include Gentiles. The text emphasizes the importance of overcoming prejudice and maintaining unity within the church. It also suggests that presenting facts, rather than asserting authority, is an effective way to resolve disagreements.
➡ Peter, guided by the Holy Spirit, shared a truth with Jewish leaders, backed by six witnesses for credibility. He reminded them of Jesus’ words about the Holy Spirit, confirming that the same experiences were happening to others. This led to the shocking admission that Gentiles could also receive salvation, marking a significant shift in Jewish history. This paved the way for the evangelization of Gentiles, establishing a unified church.
➡ The text discusses the early Christian church’s struggle to establish its doctrines and principles, particularly regarding the inclusion of Gentiles. It took seven years for the apostles to lay a solid foundation of teachings, as they had no New Testament to guide them. This period was necessary for the apostles to establish their authority, for the early Christians to mature in their faith, and for prejudices to be overcome. The text emphasizes the importance of patience and preparation in the process of spiritual growth and evangelism.
➡ The text discusses the importance of understanding each other’s spiritual journey and helping each other grow. It emphasizes the need for time to mature, learn, and overcome prejudices. The text also mentions the importance of a strong foundation and the dangers of rushing change, using the Church of Corinth as an example. It ends with a discussion on the origins of Islam and its impact on the world.
➡ This text is about a religious gathering where the speaker emphasizes the importance of growing their ministry and understanding biblical teachings. They express gratitude for their faith and ask for protection and healing for those in need. The speaker also thanks God for his love and blessings, and prays for those who are struggling.

Well, welcome. This is our Sunday morning Bible study. We’re in the Book of Acts. We’re doing this study verse by verse throughout the whole book. And we’ve been asphyxiated on this along with the book of Ephesians. And the importance of that is the fact that Ephesians focuses on the individual and Acts focuses on the collective whole of the church. And we’ve, we’ve been studying this for a long time and we got a lot, a much longer time. We’re, we’re, we’re not even halfway through the, the Book of Acts yet, but we’ve been studying in Chapter 10 for over four weeks in a row.

And that one chapter dealing with salvation to the Gentiles. We know that originally in the Book of Acts, Jesus said, after the Spirit of God has come upon you, you shall be my witness, my witness. And you shall be witnesses in Jerusalem, Judea, Samaria and the uttermost parts of the earth. And the plan of the evangelization of man began at Jerusalem and then it spread throughout, just like Jesus said, Judea, Samaritan, Samaritan, Samaria and the other most parts of the earth. And at the great, the last great link in that spread of evangelism was taking the Gospel to the pagans which were the Gentiles.

Now this has all been prophesied as we recall in the Old Testament. The Old Testament prophets knew from the, the disclosure from God to them for them to begin to put forth their prophecies to the nation of Israel, that the Gentiles would come into the fold. They didn’t explain how, nor did they explain the church, because the church was the mystery that God withheld from Satan in order to protect the last dispensation age dire time period which we’re living in. So that Satan could not put forth a counter attack in that in his time frame of over 6,000 years, he had to counter offense when Jesus announced that the church would actually start.

So in other words, you need to think of it this way. The chessboard was set in Genesis. It played out all the way through the Old Testament. The Old Testament includes Jesus’s time on earth because you don’t have a New Testament until there’s a death. So the death of Jesus Christ began the New Testament. So all in all of the Old Testament, the only thing that Satan knew because of what God told him in the garden was there would be a man born from a virgin that would come and destroy you. And as you’ve learned in looking at Genesis in the substack that process was to bring the 200 fallen angels down on Mount Hermon and infiltrate the daughters of men, producing from the the union between the fallen angels and the daughter of men what is called the Nephilim.

And the Nephilim created a bloodline which their purpose was to corrupt that the Israel bloodline to prevent Jesus from being born. And that’s all Satan knew. Once Jesus got here, he didn’t know what was going to happen next. He didn’t even know he was going to be resurrected. So everything about this last dispensation age was withheld from Satan. So, so God prevented him from building a counter defense over what is called the Church. That’s why the Church is so important. Because that is the ongoing vehicle of continually taken us the Gentiles and providing them the Gospel so that they can receive the salvation of of Christ to allow us to go home.

So we get into this in chapter 11 the gospel was already been taken to the Jews, remember in Jerusalem. And outside of Jerusalem it already been gone to Judah and it already gone to the Samaritans, which were the half breeds. And in chapter 10 it was taken to the first group of Gentiles in the house of Corneas. If you recall, we spent a lot of time on that because that process of corneas identifies the exact process of salvation today. Okay, so Peter was a messenger, Cornelius was a receiver. That’s a requirement. You can’t do this by yourself.

You no man can do this for you. You have to have what we learned as a sovereign call, a response. And somebody has to come give you the simple message of the Gospel. If you don’t have those three events in your salvation process, you’re not set. So you’ll remember that Corneas was wonderfully saved and as was his whole household. Now it’s time for Peter to go back to Jerusalem. And we come to that in chapter 11. And he must report to the Jews in Jerusalem. Remember, there’s a hierarchy of the church. The Jewish leadership in Jerusalem was the governing body of all the church at that time.

Now the the Jewish leaders were also his brothers in Christ. If you recall from other scripture, James the Apostle was head of the Jewish leadership. Now Peter realized that it is not going to be easy for them to handle. Number one, why? Because the Jews, if you recall, under their culture, hates the Gentiles and the Gentiles hate the Jews. So this Jewish, remember Peter had to go through this transition of understanding that the Gentiles were going to be part of the unity of the church. Well, the Jews leadership in Jerusalem had not gone through that. So they’re still managing the process of who gets to get the gospel based upon how they view their culture.

Now he found it even difficult to allow Gentiles into the church. And God had to give him a special vision to prepare his heart. Remember that whole story they had, they have to, they have had no such vision. These Jewish leaders, they haven’t gone through the process that Peter had. So Peter has to go tell them what’s going on and convince them that what they need to do is they need to go through this transformation process of their cultural differences as Peter went through. So this is, this is set up to be another climax of the Jewish leadership understanding the position of the church.

See, they’re still locked in, in their, in their typical prejudices to the nationalistic spirit to a. Well, at least we’re making headway with this encryption that they’re going to do. It means let’s take care of that really quick so we don’t get. So, so when Peter had to go do this, that they, the Jewish leadership had to go through that process and they had to unlock again their typical prejudices to the nationalistic spirit of what they thought the church was, to the separatistic view of the two groups. And they have not had the benefit of what Peter had seen.

And so Peter, excuse me, is going to be. He understands it’s going to be very difficult and he will knows it. So he is now, he is now not as bold as he would be to preaching the gospel. He is now understanding that he’s got to go head to head with the culture that he was raised in with the Jewish leadership. Now I gotta read verse 18 and we’re going to say a little bit about verses that. Because they’re simply a verbatim recitement of what we’ve already studied in chapter 10, verse 1. And the apostle and brethren that were in Judea heard that the Gentiles had also received the word of God.

Now that’s not scripture, that’s actually salvation. And it’s interesting that they had heard about this. Apparently the word flew from Caesarea back to Jerusalem of what had happened. And before Peter could even get there to defend himself. Oh, that’s, that’s a key word because the Jewish leadership is going to try to get Peter to understand that the Gentiles cannot be part of the church. And Peter’s got to say, yes, they are. And this unity is exactly what Christ wants. There’s a battle fixed to take place. They had already formed their preconceived notions, opinions about what had happened.

Now it’s amazing how people will do that. We do that all the time. We don’t give anybody the chance to give us the facts. Two words out of somebody’s mouth and they’ve already got the opinion about what you’re going to say. Sometimes I do that, okay, I anticipate a lot of what’s going to be said and I, I jump in when. And that’s been a fault of mine since day one. My mentor used to take 2×4 over my head every time I did that. I can remember him telling me to shut up and sit down a couple of times.

But before you get a chance to defend your case, there already have summed it up. And so in this case, they had already decided what had gone on. And the word got back to them before Peter got there. And when Peter came to Jerusalem, they that were of the circumcision, which is the Jews, okay, they believe the only way to become a Christian was to become a Jew. First they would allow the Gentiles to come into the church, but they had to go through the Jewish law, get circumcised, which became a Jew under the law, and then be come part of the church.

Now Jesus said, I had come to fulfill the law, didn’t come to take the law away. I came to fulfill the law. Therefore, upon my death, the Jewish law is no more. So you can see the dichotomy of understanding about the church. Christ’s whole focus in his ministry, as you recall, was to the Jews, not to the Gentiles. Matter of fact, he called a gentile woman a dog, if you recall in scripture. So he needed to change the focus of the nation of Israel because they were to become, if you recall from scripture, they were to become the leader in proclamation of the gospel.

That didn’t happen, right? Stephen got stoned. Jewish leadership turned down all the Sanhedrin, turned down all of the conditions of understanding who Christ was and what happened. Christ started the church. So in chapter 15, verse 5 of the book of Acts, on the occasion of the church council in Jerusalem, they acknowledged that nobody in effect could become a Christian until he had been circumcised. Now the physical act of circumcision was a prelude to salvation for the Jews because they had to follow a life’s pattern based upon the Mosaic laws. Now you had to get into Judaism by going through the festival of to.

To get into Christianity by going through the festival of Judaism. It’s interesting that the only requirement that the Jews required the Gentiles to do is to get circumcised. They didn’t say you had to study the law. They didn’t say you had to do anything else but get circumcised. Think about that. Why is that so Remember clicks if you are not like me, you can’t be in my click. All they wanted to do was to have the Gentiles go through the process of identifying group to the to. To the Jews, nothing else. They didn’t have to learn the law.

They didn’t have to understand the law itself. They didn’t have to learn the Scriptures though. They don’t have to do it, do anything that just be circ circumcised and you’re in this. The circumcision continued with contended with him. The word contended means to have a dispute, including doubts. They didn’t believe this in the first place, so they argued. But contended is in the imperfect tense in Scripture, which means it was a prolonged thing. Again, it was something to get into the click. That’s all it was. They had to do a ritual act to be identified as a Jew so that then that the Jews could say, yeah, you could be saved.

They didn’t even see what that, you know, they didn’t even see what Christ had laid out for, for the church. So Peter got back and what it means is the legalistic hassle that he was put through continually in this process. And their hassle came about in these words. You’ll get them in verse three. And they were really irate. They were outraged. He says, you went into men of uncircumcision and worse, you ate with them all against Jewish tradition. Now you see in those verses, that was totally taboo with the Jewish tradition. So Peter just smashed the taboos.

That’s all he could do. He just hit it head on. You don’t have fellow fellowship with uncircumcised people and eat with them is what the Jewish leadership had told him. Least of all, God forbid, would you ever include them in an equal basis in the church. And he did both, if you recall from our study in the last four weeks. And so they just really laid into him. They were very infuriated. But Peter reviewed the matter from the beginning and expounded it in order unto them, saying he just recites the facts. Remember, it’s all we’re supposed to do all throughout Scripture.

If you want to understand the truth, that’s the truth. Why it’s because it’s all fact. Everything in this world is not. It’s more opinion. I was in the city of Joppa, praying and in a trance. I saw a vision. Now trance in the scripture means that basically he was meditating. A certain vessel descended as it had been a great sheet let down from heaven by four corners. And it came even to me. Now if you remember, we studied this in detail in the last four weeks. A sheet came down out of heaven in his vision. The sheet represents the church upon which when I had fastened mine eyes, I considered and saw four footed beasts of the earth, and wild beasts and creepy things and fouls of the air.

Okay, let’s stop here a moment. Four footed beast on the earth and wild beast. He separated them. And then the creepy things go back to Genesis 1. The, the position he put himself in with the Jewish leadership is saying, hey guys, what I saw was exactly what was created in the Old Testament. Remember, they knew the Old Testament, they were learning the New Testament. And what he’s saying is, guys, if you want to understand what I saw, you, you understand what happened in the Old Testament. That is what I saw. Now you remember that in Israel, certain animals were clean and certain animals weren’t and they could never be mixed.

That comes from what? That comes from Noah. In Genesis, as God poured forth the requirements of the animals to go on the boat, God put both clean and unclean animals of the same animal type on the boat, but required them to be completely separated. That separation was the requirement of how you. You had forms back. Forms back then, whether you identified animals as clean or unclean, they had to be separated in the farming process. So here again what he did was say, guys, remember the Old Testament and the laws of the Old Testament. That is what is happening here.

The Jew in his diet could only eat clean things. Unclean animals were also a picture of Gentiles. Old Testament. Clean nation of Israel. What the bloodlines think. Bloodlines. Clean nation of Israel. Unclean. The line of Cain all the way through to the Gentiles today. So we saw this vision. I heard a voice saying to me, arise Peter, slay and eat. Which is like wiping out the ceremonial diet lines the unity of the church. Everything that Peter did was setting him up to understand the unity of the church. It’s also like saying there’s no difference anymore between Jew and Gentile.

They’re all the same in the same sheet. The church, as I said in verse eight, no, not so, Lord. For nothing common or unclean hath at any time entered into My mouth. What Peter’s saying is, up to this point, Jewish tradition was of God through Noah to the nation of Israel. I haven’t eaten anything unclean. I’ve been a strict Jew from the beginning, but the voice answered me again from heaven. God hath cleansed. Did that call that not thou common? Don’t argue with me, Peter. That’s what he’s saying. I say they’re clean. If I say they’re clean, they’re clean.

And this was done three times as Peter transitioned to get to Cornelius. That’ll show you just how stubborn Peter was. Three. Number three. Think about that, okay? Numbers, gematri, they matter. And all were drawn up into heaven again. Oh, that’s interesting. Peter, question God in the feeding of Peter. I’ve not had anything unclean in my mouth, but you’re giving me food and not telling me, showing me that they’re clean. God, why are you doing this to me? Oh, the sovereign God. Think about this, says Peter. Shut up and listen. If I give it to you, it’s clean.

What do we do? God gives us everything. And we question the authority or what we receive, same as Peter. Well, God gave him this vision. If you call there, and it’s very, very clear, the Jew and Gentile included in the church unity, something brand new whole fantastic new concept that Peter was having to learn. Okay, so all we’re doing this foundational preparation because this is exactly what Peter has to do to the Jewish leadership. All the ceremonial lies also we can include by implication, were wiped out in terms of diet. Jews no longer had to restrict their diet to a single specific kind of thing.

Oh, what happened? Jesus says, okay, Old Testament, clean is my bloodline. All animals that are clean represent symbolically the bloodline of the nation of Israel. All unclean represent the bloodline of Cain through the gentile world to the time of Christ’s death. So Peter, you have to. Now look at Peter. Peter was dealing with this understanding from the Old Testament through Jewish tradition, understanding that they did that when Christ was on earth at the same. Now, when Christ died, a new covenant was put in place, and there was no difference between clean and unclean. God said, everybody is equal.

Everything is equal. The law has been fulfilled. There is no segregation of clean and unclean anymore. So Peter had to actually get into that because he needed to understand that God, through the. Through Christ’s death, had now combined what? Clean and unclean unity representing the unity of the church. So as you read scripture and you’ve identified this process, you need to understand what they symbolize because it is telling you that the separation of two bloodlines, the two systems from the Old Testament to the New were combined upon Christ’s death. And think about all of the things that took place on that death.

Lucifer didn’t was not God of this world anymore. He was only the prince of the power of the air. Christ went down and got the two keys. He gave dominion back to to him, which he could actually then take and combine everything into unity. And upon his glorified body. His Spirit was sent to us to fulfill our journey to go home. Peter was just learning this in this process. So their diet and all this stuff that whole time that Peter was dealing with this was over with and he didn’t get it. Well, immediately God gave them a chance to react.

In verse 11. Behold, immediately there were three men already come to the house where I was. Three Trinity, three. Three. They were Gentiles sent from Caesarea unto me. Now this is Peter describing to the Jewish leadership what had happened. Carneus had sent them. Why didn’t he send four or five or whatever? No, he said three. And the Spirit bade me to go with them, noting with nothing about doubting the process. He was going to meet these Gentiles, Corneas’s household, part of his household. Moreover, these six brethren accompany me. And we entered into the man’s house. Six, Three, Trinity, six, man.

Now here he goes. He. He’s got six Jewish friends. Oh, man, six, man, six together. And Simon’s house from Peter shows the unity of the church. Now here he goes, he’s got these six friends. And they all go, and they go into the Gentile house. Silence. And he showed us how he had seen an angel in his house. He had a vision too. Corneas who stood and said unto him, send me into Joppa and call for Simon, whose name is Peter. You go get Peter. Corneas. Sending his household members to Simon Peter was done in response to the sovereign call.

So the Spirit says this Peter, you go to Cornelius, and the Spirit says, Cornelius, you go get Peter. And the Spirit’s pulling these two things together. Preparation. When you are caught, whether it’s salvation first or any calling building out upon that after the fact, when you’re called, you have got to be prepared. What you’re in all of your calling, somebody has to come along in that same process. You’re called, you respond in a simple message by a third party is going to come to you. That calling is put together. There is one person that that God will give the Authority and requirement to, to minister to that person that has been called.

And he will tell you words by which you and all your house shall be saved. Corneas was a ready heart. He was a prepared man. So his household and Peter was the instrument to bring the message they wanted to hear. Peter says, and I began to speak. The Holy Spirit fell upon them as on us at the beginning. In effect, he’s saying, I just was talking, folks. And it happened then remembered I, the word of the Lord. How that? He said, jesus indeed baptized with water, or John indeed baptized with water, but you shall be baptized with the Holy Spirit.

That’s exactly what was going on in this process. He said, I looked on it and it fit the scripture. This is Peter saying, still talking to the Jewish leadership. I looked upon this process and it fit the scripture. How did he know that? Because the same process that that Peter and the apostles and the Jewish leadership went through at the Pentecost happened with Cornelius. Because the Jews had to see a son of what God was doing. And for as much then as God gave them the same gift. What’s the same gift? The Holy Spirit, as he did unto us who believed on the Lord Jesus Christ.

What was I that I could understand? He said, peter’s saying, I mean, what can I argue about? Everything that happened to us happened to them. It was spiritual. God promised and God did it. What can I say, guys, you’re, you’re coming down on me because it didn’t follow what you wanted to happen. But you know what? This is what God did. Do you understand? This is the argument that was going on in Jerusalem at the Jewish leadership to get the Gentiles into the church. And when they heard these things, they held their peace. In other words, they stopped.

That ended the argument. Now they had to go from ending the argument to self understanding and transformation of their mind over their culture to get to the fact that the Gentiles were coming into the church and glorified God saying this. Then hath God also to the Gentiles granted repentance unto life. They were asking God a question. You might say, okay, they were praying. They were trying to say, God, is this real? Okay, if it’s real, you know, this has changed everything. Now this is the most important passage here. You might say, why is it important? It says exactly what we said in chapter 10.

It’s verbatim. It’s just a repetition of chapter 10. Now, you know, I can honestly say in my study of Scripture that I can’t think in my mind of one Other place in scripture where you have the same thing repeated twice in a row, one time immediately after the other. 10 to 11. 10 to 11. Interesting thing enough that, that is another additional point. After all that description of Corneas’s vision, when Peter got to his house, Cornelius described the whole thing back again and the Holy Spirit put all of that in there again. So part of this thing is three times in the same two chapters.

Three. Scripture repeated itself three times. That means that it’s very, very important. One, three times. The Trinity, you better be listening. What God says something. It’s, it’s important when he repeats it. It’s very important. And I mean it’s assumed that if God wrote it down in the Bible, you could read it a hundred times if you wanted to. If he bothers to repeat it two or three times, then he’s really got a message that we need to hear. Why it’s the beginning of the Gentiles, the process of the Gentiles getting into the church that is you today.

Very, very important. You know, it’s interesting that the average papara that they used there was a papayas plant, a kind of bull rush plant from which they made long scrolls which they used to write on. This was before books had ever come into the picture. And the longest one that, that it has been found, assuming that this would be about the maximum, was 35ft. Now that’s a good size scroll, 35 foot scroll. But on a 35 foot scroll you could probably crowd about the content of the book of Acts, chapters 28 to 30, but that would be pushing it a long way.

So Luke had a limited amount of space. He was going to put the whole thing on this one scroll. He also had a tremendous amount of things to select from. Just from a human standpoint, there were many incidents in the church that had happened. Now Acts is the description of the church from beginning to the end of Paul’s ministry. He describes the church from beginning to end. There were many miracles. The apostles did miracles. There were many signs and wonders done by the apostles and the prophets. Now I can imagine there were some fantastic conversion experiences during that time.

Why you get to see all of this stuff? I mean, can you imagine sitting there and seeing a flame on top of somebody’s head today? What would we think that’s demonic? We don’t understand Scripture. I just think about all the 3,000 saved on the first day of Pentecost and I imagine what their testimonies could have been like and all the other thousands and thousands that were Being saved over the place. They could have been included in this writing of Luke, of the Book of Acts. There were so many fabulous things, yet he spends all the space saying the same thing three times.

Just filling a whole chunk of that scroll with this corneas account. You say, well, are you trying to make a point here? Just because I think God’s made a point of it. I think it’s very important for us to understand how important this really is. You see, from our standpoint, we can’t see how very easily Christianity could have become another sect of Judaism. Section. Important word Judaism. Important word cult. Clip group. Judaism, Jewish law, Jewish tradition, Jewish religion, Gentiles. Just a little segment of Judaism because this. Just a little segment. Circumcision, not the law, just got to get circumcised.

Just a little segment of Judaism because the Jews were locked in on the fact that that’s what it was all about. The Jews. Jews felt that their whole religion catalyst was circumcision. Okay, stop here and think. A typical type of. Type of mutilation of a particular part of a male body to allow that ritual act to identify you as being safe. What is. What’s happened in the heart? Nothing. What are we doing? All of these acts that we go through in this world that we do individually to get us to a place that we think we’re going to get to.

Elevation and new, New Age, whatever, yoga. All the stuff which. Which if you write it backwards, it’s a. It’s a guy, which means a demon God. So all of this stuff that we do in this world to get to a different place without a change of the heart means nothing. And this whole concept of getting it out to the world by the Jews, getting it out to the Gentiles was a monumental crisis in the life of the church, Jews and in the plan of God unity. The whole group of first Christians were Jews. And they tended to grind kind of inwardly.

Why? Because they wanted to maintain their cultural traditions. So Luke just continuously repeats this whole thing that you might understand what a milestone this is along the road of the church to evangelizing the world. If you can’t get this done first, there’d be no evangelism of the world. So the. So the process of confrontation that Peter had to do with the Jewish leadership in history was the foundational moment where the Jews accepted the Gentiles because why God did it. And that was the argument between the Jewish leadership and Peter. To understand that God had actually done it.

Now the Jews had to come to reality that Says, oh my gosh, I now have to become unified with gentile believers. Now I’m also reminded of one footnote here and that is the fact that God knows we have a terrible problem with prejudice or he wouldn’t make such an issue out of it Here self assessment. If he does this three times in the Book of Acts, do you not think it’s important enough in your own personal life to eliminate prejudice? Usually our life patterns are determined a great deal by our prejudices. Now prejudice controls and dominates the lives.

I was going to say most people, but it dominates the lives of all people. You either eliminate it or you or you allow it to be effective one way or the other. Prejudice dominates your mindset of your life. If you think about it long enough, you’ll understand that there’s a true, that that’s a true statement. But all that had gone on in the house of Cornelius was designed to shatter prejudice. It was designed to crush any kind of cherished belief of the Hebrews that the Gentiles were second class people. Oh, what does our government do today? What does the world government to do today? They want to, they want to pit a race class that they’ve identified, not God, they’ve identified with one to another.

Why? For control purposes. Because they treat us as second class people. That had to go. It’s got to go today. And it didn’t go easy. Then the battle for the Gentile acceptance had to be fought strenuously and the ground was conquered a step at a time became slow, believe me, but it had to take place. That’s the reason why Acts Ch. At the book of Acts, From Acts chapter 1 through 11 is all set up to provide you a time period of process to understand what is the unity of the church. Now I’m not going to go take time over those 18 verses because you all know that if you’ve been here, which you have the last four weeks, we’ve gone through that, every bit of it, matter of fact, in great detail.

I just want you to pick up a few points as we migrate through this. Keep in mind that as Peter comes back to report, he is, he’s already beaten, I mean the word of what’s going on in Kerning his house has already beaten him there. And so they’re already made up their preconceived ideas. That’s verse one they’ve already heard and Peter’s going back into a storm. The ultra conservative Jews, particularly of the circumcision party group. Party Circumcision Party. The Jews split UP leadership. Remember, they had Pharisees and Sadducees, circumcision parties. They had all. What do we have today? The Circumcision Party.

Those formerly Pharisees who were now Christians. Another party, Sadducees, Pharisees saved Christians, saved Jews, become Christians for a circumcision party who thought that Judaism was all in all and wanted everybody to become a Jew and get circumcised. Before he could become a Christian, they had already made up their mind that Peter made a wholesale sellout of the Jewish tradition. Peter was probably on the outs because he had even gone into Samaria and he preached all over Samaria and people got saved when the Holy Spirit came. So he was probably in trouble with the Jewish leadership. This was a wholesale washout on the part of Peter.

So when he came back, they started a big argument. They really hassled him badly. And they hassled him over and over and over. Now, you know, Orthodoxy can get mad. You ever stop and Jew or have you ever stated. I. I remember this time in. In New York, we were. We were. We were going to fund a project and we need to go tour a. A jewelry, a wholesale jewelry. And this wholesale jewelry was owned by an Orthodox Jew. Now what’s a wholesale. Jerry. It’s not like a Jordan store. You walk in and they have vaults.

Sil. Vaults are nothing more than gemstones, whatever you want, size, quality, blah, blah, blah. And they can actually cut stone. So we were going in because this project was. Was going to utilize this particular wholesale jeweler in order to meet certain of his products. And we just, doing due diligence, wanting to go see it. So we were invited. Time was set, day was set. We. We went in and this old man came out and was so disgruntled that we would even think that we need to confirm his trustworthiness on the product. That he came after my group and a vengeance.

As we walk through the door, I was startled. I. I just, whoa. You know. Well, I immediately went, edward and says, God, what am I supposed to do here? He says, be still and know that I’m done. I did. I just stood there. Everybody else stood. They were going to take my leave. We just stood there, let him ramble. And when he’s done, he looked at me. This is now. Do you want to see the stuff I said? Sure. So Orthodox Jews back then and Orthodox Jews today think they’re above everyone in society now. When you understand that, you can now understand what Peter was going through because they were mad.

Now after Peter had done exactly what their ceremonial law forbid. In other words, he went and to a Gentile house. He ate with a Gentile, he saved a Gentile, blah, blah, blah, blah. He even did that in half Breeze Samaria before he went to Cornelius. And they were really upset with him that he would have anything to do with these Gentiles. Now that’s when that’s what his spirit is going to be. He came back. He’s just got all kinds of options. He can pull rank if he wanted to. He can say, hey, you guys, cut it out.

Don’t you know who I am? Peter’s the name, if you don’t remember. And I have the keys to the kingdom of heaven, which means I’m controller here. Peter could have said that I was given the keys to the kingdom of heaven. King here. When I open, nobody shuts. You could have started quoting scripture. Look at that. Pulled rank. And he had rank to pull. But you know what that does? It only irritates the people. So Peter, instead of doing anything, all he begins to do is recite the facts. Because when you recite the fact, the facts, the Holy Spirit takes over and delivers the facts.

Listen to what I just said. When you cite the facts, not opinions, and you’re spiritually filled, filled with the Spirit, the Holy Spirit takes those facts and delivers them for you. That’s very important. To be filled with the Holy Spirit means that whatever you do, you do in honor of Jesus Christ. And whatever you put forth as facts are facts of truth from him. Now, I Love this verse 4. Peter reviewed the matter from the beginning, expounded it in order unto them, saying. And it goes just like a little tape recorder, right down the whole deal.

You know why? Because the issue explained itself. Fact. Boom. 1 Fact 2 Fact 3 Fact 4. And when you get through it, there is no disagreement. And this Holy Spirit delivers the set of facts for understanding. And what happened to the Jewish leadership, they shut up. If the facts are on your side, you don’t have to pull ranks. Just recite the facts. He could have pulled spiritual rank. He could have said, I was led of the Spirit, you know, which is a common statement for crack pots to use. That’s a common thing when you want people to understand.

Whatever you did, you thought you were spiritual, Ed. You didn’t go through the calling as the process as has been identified. You know, they get out of some bizarre weirdo deal and they say, well, God told me to do it. I’ve talked to somebody just like this. If you ever come to me and say that you’re in trouble. I’m telling you, I’m going to be. I’m transparent this morning. I tend to turn you out immediately. God sent me to say this after I said this in the early serious in. In other services that I’ve done, John, God sent me to say.

And then they took off on something. Anyway, Peter didn’t say that. He didn’t say, well, God did. He just right down the line told the truth. Now, Peter knew it was the Spirit leading, but he tested it two ways. What does scripture say? Test everything. So Peter, in front of the Jewish leadership, tested his facts with other scripture. Why? Because this is very important. And here’s a principle that you can grab a handle on and use. Number one, he didn’t act alone. He took six people with him. Why? Because he didn’t want to be mistaken in what was going on.

He wanted the testimony of six others to confirm his own. Peter, six others. Seven completeness. Peter, the holder of the kings of keys of heaven. The six people as witnesses. Man under God, God’s eyes. Those witnesses confirmed what Peter was saying is truth. And when they were put together, the completeness of God delivered the facts. The Jews knew well Egyptian law and the Egyptian law said that were these where there are seven witnesses, the case is closed. Completeness and Roman law said that any will or any testament, there had to be seven seals. So seven became a kind of a number of what? Sealing the authority of something.

So Peter had six guys go along with him, and they were made seven. And he was verifying in his own mind from the testimony of others that this thing in fact was true. Now, one way that you can verify the leading of the Holy Spirit of God is if the Spirit of God is doing the same thing in other lives at the same time at the same place. But that’s not all, because you can run amok on that point. And I want to show you a salient point that you must never forget. And that is the point that is made so clearly in chapter 11, verse 16.

Now, in verse 15, he, Peter says this. I saw the Holy Spirit fall on them. Then I remembered. What did he remember? The word of the Lord. And he had said, john indeed baptized with water, but you shall be baptized with the Holy Spirit. Peter said, you know why I know this testimony is true. Number one, six other guys saw what I saw. Number two. It squares with revelation. Revelation of what? The revelation of what happened at Pentecost. It happened the same to Cornelius and his family. So what does that tell us? We should not ever evaluate our experience on our own alone.

Self assessment. You need to have six witnesses. How do you do that? Well, if you’re the messenger, you take six with you. If you have something happen in your life, you look for six other people that had that same thing happen in your life. What about told you guys always this passage. Jesus said that the Spirit would come and baptize them and he did. Now this is verification spiritually that is always needed to verify anybody’s experience on any of the so called leading of the Lord. Market, the scripture are ever your checkpoint for the validity of your experience.

You get that if what your experience that you think the the Holy Spirit has guided you, you can go to scripture and there’s six others in the scripture that you can verify that experience. God’s the same yesterday, today and tomorrow. He doesn’t do anything different from one to another. Now the calling might be a little different. Your response is all has got to be positive and there is a messenger going to come see you. But your experience, the outcome, you can take the scripture and there’ll be six other people that had that same experience. If that experience is from Christ, the scriptures are ever your checkpoint for the validity of your experience.

Peter said sure. It happened. Hey, bored. It happened. Seven of us were there. Oh, that got their attention. More than that I remembered that Jesus said that this is how it was going to be and what he said is what happened. Oh, that sort of put them in their place. Well with all of that evidence, how could they argue anymore? Facts, truth, no opinions. You shut down this world with scriptural facts. Rama works. They couldn’t argue with the testimony of the seven reputable witnesses. They couldn’t argue with the testimony of Jesus Christ. Peter built his foundation on the word of Christ and so they had nothing to say.

Verse 17. Peter says for as much then as God gave them the same gift as he did unto us. Guys, you got it? I got it. So did that. There’s a little theology of the Holy Spirit here. The Holy Spirit’s a gift. Not only is it the same gift, not any difference. Everybody gets the same Holy Spirit in the same what who gets the Holy Spirit? Who believed in the Lord Jesus Christ? Why do you have, what do you have to do to receive the Holy Spirit? Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ. That’s what it says, nothing else.

So there’s a little theology right there of the Holy Spirit. He’s a gift he’s given, you do nothing to earn it. And secondly, he’s the same gift Oh I have talked to many oh my experience. And I’m able to do this because the Holy Spirit saying where’s the gift in that? You can’t do anything more than I can do because this gift is the same. We get off quack just out in the weeds when we want to believe something instead of verifying it with the scripture. Now I mean it was tough. It was a tough nut for, for Peter to crack.

They couldn’t handle the whole thing. So he goes on. Now I like this statement he makes in verse 17. What was I that can under withstand God? Which kind of implies this, what I was going to do there I was in Gentiles territory. They were gentiles getting baptized in the Spirit, the bolt, the, the fire above the head like they did on Pentecost. What could I do? Hey guys, don’t blame me if you don’t like this call to heaven because I didn’t do this. Now when they heard these things, they held their peace and glorified God saying then hath God also to the Gentiles granted repentance unto life.

That statement right there is one of the most shocking statements in all of Jewish history. That’s a statement for which Jonah, the failure for Jonah really in his whole life was the fact that he wasn’t willing to make that statement. And there weren’t very many Jews who were in the history of Judaism. What was that statement? Simply this. God also to the Gentiles granted, given repentance into what? Life. Life being what the church. Shocking for Jew to make that admission. By the way, Gentiles can get saved. Guys Peter into his argument. It’s the same process. I didn’t do it.

God did it. Did it just like he did to us. How could they argue? If you use the same premise today, how can someone argue with you? It’s when you embellish or get outside of the truth and start making leeways into your opinions that get you in trouble. Now look at what happened up there. This Jewish leadership. It’s an, it’s a fantastic admission. And people, I want you to know that the importance of that statement is hardly able to be measured. You might ask why? Because until the Jews who were Christians made that statement, they could never begin the work of evangelizing the Gentiles.

Remember the process that Christ put in place for the nation of Israel was to go what? Evangelize the world. And they rejected it. Now what is he doing? He’s having the Jewish leadership, the apostles fulfill that requirement. But see, they had to get out of their own weeds, of their own traditions and cultures, and understand that they’re not in control. So the whole thing with Cornelius and Peter finally comes back to Jerusalem and they make the great admission that was really the firing of the trigger, that shot of the church out to reach all pagans. Now you and I are the product for that.

They had to go. And before they could ever go to the Gentiles, they had to believe that salvation was for the Gentiles. Peter convinced them of that because Peter had been convinced himself by God. So what do you want to say? Is this? From chapter 10, verse 1 to chapter 11, verse 18 is one point in one outline. It’s groundwork. God gets the groundwork done. It is the establishment from the Jewish tradition and cultures through action to get to the Gentiles so that a unity of the church could be accomplished. Starting in verse, starting in chapter 12, before the foundation can ever be laid for that church.

At that time, the ground had to be prepared. Oh, my gosh, preparedness. Christ called the apostles to go what, Starting Jerusalem, go to Judea, go to Samaria, the other ones, parts of the earth. And in that process, Gentiles are coming. He had to lay the preparation groundwork to get the Jews to understand what their action ought to be. The right kind of leveling and grading and fixing it all up so that the foundation could be put down to allow the unity of the church. The groundwork was preparation. And what preparation was needed? Well, you can’t evangelize the Gentiles at that time if you don’t have some evangelist.

And you can’t get some evangelists who are willing to do it unless they break their prejudices. Stop right there. Self assessment how hard it is for God to get your attention and lay the found work of his calling. Because you will not get rid of your prejudices. And so there had to be time for all these prejudice to come crumbling down so they could move out with a gospel. And this was it. This was a fantastic submission by the Jewish leadership, the apostles. You ought to just make an asterisk or put a circle around verse 18.

It’s a catalyst verse in the history of the church. They finally admitted that Gentiles could be saved. Years. God has been waiting for this century after century. And it finally came to fruition through Peter. Well, you know, it had been done and some historians tell us at least seven years, seven years after Pentecost, to the founding of the church at Antioch. Seven years from the initial start to the founding of the church. By Paul in Antioch, which is the first Gentile church. So almost seven years had gone by until this statement is finally made perfection. And then from here the groundwork is done in whammo.

It wasn’t stopped in the apostles and Jews finally moved out in accordance with what God had initially set in the plan for the nation of Israel. In the Old Testament, they begin the work of evangelizing gentiles. You say, well, why does it have to take so long? Why couldn’t God just save them and shoot them out? Well, that doesn’t work that way. There was a sense in which they did move around talking about Christ. But I need to give you some more points. I believe it took a long time, Number one, and get this, because I think it’s very important and I want to translate into our ministry in a minute.

Number one, apostolic authority had to be established. Now, when God spoke to the early church, though, whom did he speak? The apostles. Right. They were the teachers. They were the ones who were the spokesperson, spokesman of God and they were the ones who laid out the doctrine. What’s doctrine? Principles, ordinances, plan, regulation, commandments. How do you get that? Sanctification. So number one, they had to have apostolic authority had to be established. The apostles were the ones who were the spokespersons for God. And they were what? The ones who laid out the doctrine. It says that in Acts 2:42 that they spent their time in the study of the apostles.

Doctrine, sanctification, guys, you’re a sanctification. God spoke to them and they spoke. They had no Bibles, they had no New Testaments. They had hadn’t been written yet. So when the early church began to come together, what was their standard? Standard? Your standard. Understanding raises your level of knowledge, raises your level of accountability. Think about what they had to go through. They had to become accountable and have established authority so that what they were going to say would be received through the Holy Spirit, which with the right level of understanding. How did they know whether this was right and this was wrong? How did they know how to do this? How to do what? How to.

How to do that? What was God’s standards? What are these things? They had to listen to the apostles to whom God spoke. And so there needed to be time for the apostles to lay down a solid doctrinal base. Your sanctification. You need the time spent to lay down your doctrinal base of understanding the Scripture. Can you imagine if they all got saved and then they just shot out all over the world without any foundation, dead, Run into such an Amount of problems they wouldn’t be able to answer because they wouldn’t know what their own theology was.

They wouldn’t have a Bible. Now, as a Christian can get saved and run around now and share Christ and he can run into problems and he can go back to the Word and say, let me find that there’s an answer here. But the guy in those days who ran out and ran into problem was stuck because there was no New Testament. So they had to be in a time period, they had to have a foundation planted and rooted firmly in their minds as to what the doctrine and theological position of Christ was before they can move out strong doctrinal bases and the apostles were the key.

What happened was for seven years, completeness, the apostles laid that doctrine, Dr. Doctrinal Foundation. They studied, they wrote, they laid out consistency between all of them as to what they had learned from Christ as his doctrine. They spoke, they taught, and these things were compiled and collected in the minds and hearts of men. And the framework of doctrine was established as the base for its foundation. And once that foundation was firm, then somebody could start building off the Gentile church on it. They were going from Jewish law, you got to be circumcised to get into the Jews, and then you can be saved.

It didn’t matter what change in heart was to salvation by faith. With no guidance, they needed to create this foundational doctrinal position. Without that, we wouldn’t have a church. Without that, you cannot be sanctified because it’s the doctrinal actions. With the application written by Paul in every one of his epistles for the church, half of the chapter, first half is doctrine, the other half of his application. If, if, if that didn’t happen and without this framework, you could not be sanctified. They had to be able to run into a problem and turn around and say, hey, there’s an answer.

Because the apostles have thus said, you see, in other words, doctrinal purity. Oh, purity, number one, application, Ephesians 4:1. Purity is the very basis of a church. Purity is the very basis of your life. If it goes, the whole building crumbles. And so we teach doctrine. That’s everything at the base. And so there had to be doctrine. And there wasn’t any Bible for everyone to read. So they had to hang in there and learn from each other, each other. And then once it was in them in total, they could move out and teach it to somebody else until such time as the Scripture was completed.

There were absolutes that had to be learned and they had to come to the apostles from God and the process was slow and it took time. Now second reason, I believe there was a delay of many years before they moved out because the right instruments had to be prepared. Wow. Self assessment. We get a calling, we go through the positive response, somebody confirms that and now we want to go. Wait a second. God’s not telling you to go. God’s saying now since you understand that, let me prepare you. We don’t want that. We’re immediate society. We want everything instantaneously.

God doesn’t work that way. Be still and know that I’m God. Let me prepare you so that you will be a success. Nothing is worse than sending out an unprepared person to do a job. It took time to mature these people. We talked about maturity Thursday night. You cannot be physically mature unless you’re first spiritual mature. And you can’t be spiritually mature unless you are sanctified. Do you realize that when the church was formed everybody was a baby spiritual. Everybody was a baby. And it’s really tough enough in a church setting dealing with a group of spiritual babies.

Can you just imagine a congregation all saved the same day and it’s something like a big nursery. Can you imagine having 3,000 just like that one day old trying to get around to all of them and teach them the basics? Well here they had to have time to mature, to grow, to see their exhibited so that they would would know who could do what. All these people come together and you’re trying to sort these things out and you got 3,000 people to try to deal with at once. That’s not going to happen. If you’ve ever managed any organization of size, you know, you can’t begin to understand capabilities if you’re looking at the whole.

You can under only understand capabilities when you deal with a small group. Small group. That’s the way the church was organized back then. You got mega churches and everybody gets lost. You get a small group and it’s very concise to a level of learning and understanding. Hence the degree of my comment the other night when Don asked me if we’re going to have an ambassador to type meeting. And while it was good socially and we all got to get to know each other somewhat, none of us really got to know each other. None of us really got to understand who each other is, what level they’re at in their spiritual journey, what might we can do to help each other.

And that has only happens in small groups one day. Oh, trying to get around to all of them. And teach them the basics. They were trying to do that they were one day old and now the apostles were trying to teach them. Well here they had to have time to mature, to grow, to see their ex exhibited so that they would know who could do what, how do they know who to sin where if they don’t have any idea from seeing them operate, from seeing them mature, from seeing them grow, from seeing them learn doctrine and seeing them minister faithfully.

Now it’s important to have a good foundation. But if you have a terrific foundation and you have right guys building the walls that you don’t know what they’re doing, the thing will fall down. So they needed time for preparation. But the third thing you might add to that is that they needed time for prejudice to come down. I want you to think about just, just this family. We’ve talked about prejudice generally. Is that really talking about prejudice? No, talking about prejudice is one on one and getting to the details of that prejudice. So together we may break it down to eliminate it from the life.

And so for these reasons the spirit of God delayed and at least seven years went by before they ever began to move towards Antioch. But believe me, when the groundwork was done, it was done right. They didn’t do it twice. They did it right the first time. And when that church moved out to bill, they really built it. They really, really remember 3,000 25,000 on and on and on. And when the apostles went into the rest of the world, the people changed. And when the people changed, the apostles moved. The pagans from the government instilled God’s government and the gods of the time were sent to hell until the people of the church forgot their first love.

And in the forgetting of that first love, we’ve allowed in today’s world the gods that were there to come back. But what does scripture say? When they come back it’s going to be worse because this time the God of the possession of this world brings seven more more demonic than that one. And they take home in whatever level of a life they can, they can take hold civilization, nation, culture, home yourself individually, we are now more possessed than it was at the time that the apostles removed the pagan gods from the system when they installed God’s government with that we’re going to stop.

I’m going to pick it up next time, finish this out. I went into too, too many stories. But I thought it was necessary for us to do that to, to study. So any questions, comments? What you learn? I do, Jim. The church of Corinth is a Perfect example of an immature congregation. They were all out of whack. Everything they did didn’t line up with scripture or God or their. You know, of course, they didn’t have all the Scripture. Yeah. When you study the church of Corinth, you find that they didn’t follow. Follow the same framework as done in Jerusalem either.

They wanted instantaneous change, and they didn’t take the time to reset their mind in regards to what it was. And so while they were saved, as Paul’s tell them, they went right back to their evil doings because they didn’t take the time to be sanctified in the doctrine and application of life to understand what they were to be doing. And that’s typically what happens to individuals today. Yes, because nobody is teaching the doctrine of sanctification. They, they. They. They just. They just want you in the pew. They want you to become saved and in the pew.

And giving money to the church, that’s their whole goal. Some Bible teachers will take it further. We’ve already had this conversation, but the majority of the churches today, those that I can tell you, 95%, signed a doctrine to the Roman Catholic Church. That is the process. Save the people, get her in the pe. Give us money, because the money goes elsewhere. And that is not how this is supposed to work. Thanks, Bill. Sam. So, Jim, I’m seeing a Fibonacci in this, what you just went over with Acts 11, 10, 18. So we have the Trinity, three, the man, six.

And then in 14 and 16 is judgment and completion, which is nine. Right. All right. So from there, there were 15 promises in the book of Matthew that God promises. And this just rolls throughout Scripture. And if you’re really paying attention to this, you can see all this in here. Yes. And I’m gonna. We’re now getting into the substack where all of this is going to sort of take a different shape. We’ve gone through the foundation again, establishing. And a lot of more enlightenment is coming out of this study versus the first time we presented it because of the foundation that we’ve laid.

And it is now time to sort of bring in Gematri and all these types of things in, because the scripture gives you all of this, able to pull it out. So one other question. You talked about the Orthodox Jews calling the women dog, the gentile women dogs. What’s different between that and Islam today? Is there any. No. Remember, Islam came into being by the Roman Catholic Church. Yes. Islam. The. The. The Islam. The. The Pope. I can’t remember the Pope’s Name. But basically he sent a. A Saudi nun t to this gentleman they selected called Muhammad to.

To persuade. Let’s just use that, okay? I don’t want to get into vulgar details. To persuade him to be the Muhammad of the Islam cult that the Roman Catholic Church was going to put in place. And the Roman Catholic Church actually wrote the Book of Mormon. I’m not Mormon. Islam. Okay. And in doing so, the reason why they needed to do it because what was going on by the apostles. The apostles were removing the pagan gods from the governments and instilling God’s government. And the Jews were at the head of that. Right. We just talked about that today.

So the Roman Catholic Church had to have a vehicle to combat the Jews because they were in control of the church at that time. And they. The Roman Catholic Church could not be seen as the adversary to the church. Getting what I’m saying. So they built Islam to do that. So they lost all kinds of members then. And they created a false ideology to bring members back. Yes, okay. Yes, yes. And they did it to combat the church. And they. They wanted it to be a militant group. Crusades. Think about all what the Catholic Church. They wanted it to be a militant group, but because that militant group would.

Would provide them the bases worldwide to invoke Roman Catholic principles of governing people. That was the role of Rome. Rome was never conquered. That’s the reason why the Roman footprint and at that time is now the Islamic footprint as today history doesn’t change. So the Islamic footprint today is the same as the Roman footprint of yesterday, controlled by the same church with the same philosophy, attitudes and action over what controlling the populace. That’s Islamic. That’s the reason why Islam’s got to get killed. It is not scriptural. It’s scriptural in relating to what the Catholic Church is going to do.

But Islam is not scriptural. Therefore, as a religion it needs to go away. And anybody that supports the Islam community, you need to stop because you’re supporting pure evil. You should get involved in communities. You should not be any Sharia law. You should get involved in the communities in the planning stage of buildings and permitting to not allow that to take place. Foreign to get into the details. But the Islamic position is the one that create. And it all come out guys. Is the one that has created all of the militant groups worldwide that go to the streets burning your city, kill your children, kill your people.

That’s the head of the spear to the church. Anything else? One other thing, Jim, you’re talking about teaching in small groups that’s why our military holds platoons into 20 to 50 soldiers at a time. They’re easier to control and get them to do what they need them to do. They’re more obedient. But what it is is a function of teaching. You can’t you have enough to take dialogue back and forth and to have a great exchange. Because if you’ve ever seen a platoon in training, it’s a pretty open classroom type setting. It’s not a dictatorial type thing.

They want you to respond to the platoon leader, typically a sergeant. They want you to respond to that because they want to rationalize with you the principles of military activity. And yeah, I, I, I’m, you know, I said this Thursday night. I’m, I’m continually. And the more and more I pray about it, the more and more I am so inclined to, to, to not do the. We might do a biggest, a social event, but it’s just going to be a social event. It’s just, but we need to get more into small groups and see where we’re at so that we can actually begin to grow this ministry.

If we’re going to have this ministry, we need to grow it. The 20 and 50 is biblical too. That goes back to the Old Testament. Yeah. Yes. Anything else? You sure? Let’s pray. Thank you Father again for a great morning of worship. Getting into your scriptures, understanding the truth about your scriptures, under understanding how it applies to our life, understanding the process, the foundation, creation, sanctification is now all coming together. This, this basically identifies the two systems and the system of good and the system of, of evil and the process inside of each. And we absolutely thank you for giving us that ability to decipher your word as it relates just to you.

And Father, we ask you that you continue to be with everybody in this world today as a gathering of remembrance of one of your servants is occurring. And we just ask for a peaceful outcome. We ask that your hand be on everything. Don’t need to get into details, you got it. Just on everything associated with this and provide safe travels for those that have traveled to location that they also may have safe travels back home while they’re identified as to what they did. We ask that a shield of protection be over them and prevent any evil from happening.

Father, thank you for your son, thank you for his death on the cross. Thank you for all of what that process stands for and provides for us. Thank you for giving away home. Thank you for loving us, for giving us blessings, all that you do. We can’t express how great of love that is on your part. Father, we ask that you continue to be with those who are sick, that you may give them the healing hand and be with those that are continually struggling with rehabilitation. Keep their mind strong, their body active, and let them know that whatever pain is in that process, it’s a pain of healing.

We love you, we thank you. And we ask all of this in your sense, then.
[tr:tra].