We will see, when we come to Chapter 4, that the healing that occurred was attributed to Jesus Christ.  Why?  These men had died to their ego!  We may have thought that we have died to our ego.  The act and practice of “mortifying the flesh” – putting to death the flesh with all of its human nature – is lauded among followers of Jesus, but seldomly practiced continually.  Give a little knowledge and a little power to some preachers, pretty soon they are all impressed with their ability – which they did not have in the beginning.  It is not long before they are acting as if they are above the average person, as if they are among the elite of God.  They become part of an elite class system that Christ never intended for the ministry (see Matthew 20:20-28).  Gone is the humility to accept the advice and counsel from a “mere layman” – the class system has invaded the ministry of God, which is an oxymoron.

Paul addressed this when he asked the Corinthians:  “What do you have that you did not receive?” As we study the pages of Scripture, we are astonished to see that even the need for the desire to repent has to be provided.  See Romans 2:4.

As the people of God, we have to come to the place to see that it’s not about us, but about Him (the True Jesus), and this same Jesus living in us and working through us.

Some will say, as they see some beginning to be active once again in God’s Work, “Leave this alone.  Christ is going to do the Work!” What they actually may mean is that some leaders in corporate groups who have organized themselves into some kind of humanly devised association will do the Work of God today.  They also imply that humble black ministers in Darkest Africa and mere laymen have no place in this work, because, after all, is it not a White Man’s cause?!

My dear friend, you and I would not have entered into the COG community had it not been for a lay woman who talked to another lay person about this Way of life.  That lady’s name is Ora Runcorn.  Today the ministry would probably pay no attention to some woman’s advice.  Something happened later on in our history with the ministry where they went and dug up their ego and began to use it again.  We all should have remembered to “die daily”.

What these people forget is that their mentor taught them via radio, television and in church services that we are indeed Christ’s feet and hands in this world.  Even though we are not in the role of “the Vicar of Christ” – which is the height of arrogancy, but God does use the weak of the world to confound the wise.

The Book of Acts teaches us that we must use another part of our body to begin to do the “works of Jesus” – see John 14:12.  We must go forward on our knees.

That brings us precisely to where the disciples were in the beginning.  On their knees, supplicating God the Father and Jesus, whom they knew, at the right hand of God.

In our age, apostasy came knocking at the door.  What did most do?  Most, like frightened sheep, panicked and reacted emotionally.  The call to prayer was not there.  In fact, one minister, after being exposed to the NOG explanation, complained that he did not know to whom he was praying any more.  (The “NOG” was a term that we called the so-called “Nature of God” issue.  It was the apostate attempt to introduce a false “Nature of God” explanation that was beyond the Bible, and had, as its source, the ancient Greek concept of the divine nature.) We were asked to accept various platonic ideas of God.  Was it a Being with form and shape, or was it a cosmic cloud?  No wonder the scattered and confused sheep got scattered, if their leaders were not in contact with the True God!  However, to be fair, during the height of the apostasy onslaught, we were all confused to one degree or another, and we began to learn to judge without being judgmental.  Some of these confused ministers did eventually come to a better understanding.

We desperately need to do as the early disciples did.  They were confused too, but not so confused that they would follow self-proclaimed gurus.  They knew that their only recourse was prayer and to do as their Master had instructed them.

God honored that, and they received the Holy Spirit that would lead them into all truth.

Is the Book of Acts exciting?  Yes, and more.  It has the keys to what the people of God should be doing now.  And, what is more exciting, the True Jesus is waiting at the door, waiting for your invitation for Him to come in.  Not only come into your life, but into the life of the Church, for centuries asleep to the job that still needs to be done.

You may want to review the following articles in the Study Topics section of this Bible Fund website:  The Book of Acts – Part 1 and The Book of Acts – Part 2.

As we go through the highlights of this exciting Book, we will see the answer popping out at us with extreme clarity, IF we seek the answers after much prayer and supplication.

– J. Graham Davies

I will not be giving a verse-by-verse coverage of this Book, since an abundance of material is on the Web and in commentaries. One recommended link is the Blue Letter Bible that has many commentaries that can be consulted. See http://cf.blueletterbible.org/commentaries/.

What can be done of value on this site is for me to give the highlights of significant events and ways of doing things that can help us in this critical period of Church history.

In Chapter One of this book we see that the same writer that wrote the Book/Gospel of Luke is doing the writing here. In fact, later we will see him join Paul on an evangelistic journey.

Luke tells us that the disciples of Jesus still did not understand that Christ had not come to establish His physical kingdom there and then. He tells them that they must wait (KJV = tarry) in Jerusalem until they receive the power to be able to go forth with the Message from God.

How does that relate to our days? It has bearing because we find that these early disciples of Jesus, even though they had been authorized to baptize others, before being officially “ordained” – had not yet received the Holy Spirit that would enable them to go forth boldly with the Word.

In fact, if we look at the life of the disciples before Pentecost, we find them competing with each other for positions – Matthew 20:20-28. They did not understand what it is to be a true servant of Jesus Christ. Compare that attitude they had then with the later attitude of brotherly concern they had after Pentecost –
Acts 2:42-47; 11:28-30.

We find them behind closed doors – HIDING – “for fear of the Jews” – John 20:19. Compare that with the BOLDNESS they exemplified after Pentecost.

Lesson for us today: Look around you. How much boldness in the faith do you see among the people of God? Are some afraid to say anything at all, if someone asks them for the reason of the hope that they hold?
(See 1 Pet. 3:15.)

During the time of apostasy in the first century we see a leader casting out the brethren – his name was Diotrephes. (3 John 9.) We can coin a verb from this. These brethren were “diotrephised” – excluded, disenfranchised. At least they were not put to death at this time, as shown in John 16:2, where it was prophesied that some would be put out of the assemblies and killed.

There was no hiding among these early brethren. There was no “flying under the radar” to protect themselves from undue persecution. There was no playing cute, no playing footsies or sleeping with the enemy to be able to pass censorship.

In fact, they were aware of Christ’s words:  “The Son of man must suffer many things, and be rejected of the elders and chief priests and scribes, and be slain, and be raised the third day.  And he said to them all, If any man will come after me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross daily, and follow me.  For whosoever will save his life shall lose it: but whosoever will lose his life for my sake, the same shall save it.  For what is a man advantaged, if he gain the whole world, and lose himself, or be cast away?  For whosoever shall be ashamed of me and of my words, of him shall the Son of man be ashamed, when he shall come in his own glory, and in his Father’s, and of the holy angels.” (Luke 9:22-26.)

Before Pentecost, we see Peter denying Jesus Christ. After Pentecost we observe Peter standing up boldly for his Lord and Master.

There is a generation who has been taught to remain silent. Collectively, individuals of that generation, called of God, have been taught that apostate leaders sit in the Seat of Moses and must be kow-towed to, even in spiritual matters. They have been taught to deny Christ!

But, thank God, they are beginning to wake up. For a while, they all slumbered and slept (Matt. 25). Even though this passage applies to the end-time generation, and an end-time era of God’s Church, nevertheless it has application to every generation, since spiritual slumber has affected the Church from the beginning, except when some true revival caused an awakening.

We cannot be focused on Church eras so much that we cannot apply the messages Jesus Christ has for ALL the churches – Revelation 3:22.

You do not find that condition in the Book of Acts. You find disciples being respectful to the powers that be, yet carrying on the Work Christ had given them, and, when persecuted, taking the consequences cheerfully, since this was prophesied – this was “part of the program.”

An example of the “Young Church in Action” in our day is the persecuted and faithful members of the Church in Angola. “The Young Church in Action” was the title of J. B. Phillips’ first translation of the Book of Acts. See Book of Acts – Part 1 on The Bible Fund website. Disenfranchised from the community of believers who accepted another gospel, another spirit and another Jesus, they have held on to the truth and are fearlessly proclaiming it. They have NOT started “another church” – but are continuing with the same Church into which the Holy Spirit placed them (1 Cor. 12:18; 27-28).

In fact, the powerful words we read in Acts 1:11 – “THIS SAME JESUS” – the same Jesus that taught the early disciples and the same true Jesus that they watched go up into heaven has been “on the job” day and night as the Church’s Intercessor, interceding for all the members all over the world, that they would step up to the plate and fulfill the Great Commission. That Commission at first was given to the twelve apostles, who fulfilled the mandate to pass it on to others, and who, in turn, started to fulfill their individual role in that Commission, as we see in Chapter 8 of this fascinating book. With some, this same Jesus remains knocking at the door, waiting for them to invite Him in (Rev. 3:20).

“This same Jesus” – the True Jesus – is still very actively leading and directing His Church. To find out what Church that is, read the inspired article in the Study Topics section of the Bible Fund website, Just What Is the Church?

You may also want to review the following article in the Book of Acts section of the Bible Fund, titled: Our First Recourse.

Stay tuned for future postings which will go into the dynamic highlights of the Book of Acts – a book not meant to be taken as “just history” – but as a living example for the Church at this critical time in history.

– J. Graham Davies

One of my favorite paraphrased translations of the New Testament is the work of J. B. Phillips. In his Translator’s Preface to his translation of the book of Acts, published in 1955 under the following title, “The Young Church in Action”, he states:

“It is impossible to spend several months in close study of the remarkable short book, conventionally known as the Acts of the Apostles, without being profoundly stirred and to be honest, disturbed. The reader is stirred because he is seeing Christianity, the real thing, in action for the first time in human history. The new-born Church, as vulnerable as any human child, having neither money and influence nor power in the ordinary sense, is setting forth joyfully and courageously to win the pagan world for God through Christ. The young Church, like all young creatures, is appealing in its simplicity and single-heartedness. Here we are seeing the Church in its first youth, valiant and unspoiled – a body of ordinary men and women joined in an unconquerable fellowship never before seen on this earth.

“Yet we cannot help feeling disturbed as well as moved, for this surely is the Church as it was meant to be. It is vigorous and flexible, for these are the days before it ever became fat and short of breath through prosperity, or muscle-bound by over-organisation … They did not hold conferences on psychomatic medicine, they simply healed the sick….

“It is of course possible that the translator has had his head turned by too close a study of these artless and energetic pages, but nevertheless he feels after such study that the Holy Spirit has a way of short-circuiting human problems. Indeed, in exactly the same way as Jesus Christ in the flesh cut right through the matted layers of tradition and exposed the real issue; just as He again and again brought down a theoretical problem to a personal issue, so we find here the Spirit of Jesus dealing not so much with problems as with people ….”

“… this is the story of Spirit-directed activities and there is what appears to be from the human point of view an arbitrariness, even a capriciousness, in the operation of the Holy Spirit. Of course from the real point of view of God’s work is neither arbitrary nor capricious – and this will be plain to us one day.”

[Editorial comment: Capricious = subject to caprice, a sudden turn of mind, emotion, or action, caused by a whim or impulse, inclined to change abruptly and without reason; erratic, unpredictable. That is not how the Holy Spirit works. It is based on God’s reason and logic, and follows laws! To the human observer, it might seem capricious, but it is not. Sometimes immediate action is required, but this is not capricious, but based on God’s law of love!]

“We might perhaps conclude that when man’s rigidity attempts to canalise the free and flexible flow of the Spirit he is left to his own devices ….”

“… we cannot help looking wistfully at the sheer spiritual power of the minute young Church, which was expressed not only by healing the body but ‘by many signs and wonders’ which amply demonstrated the fact that these men were in close touch with God” [Bold mine, Editor].

Space does not permit me to go into lengthy details about the Early Church and the power they experienced, so the reader may want to review the powerful articles in the Study Topics section of this Bible Fund website, titled:

• Christians Have Lost Their Power
• The Book of Acts – Part 2
• Is Jesus God?
• Why So Many Denominations?

You may also link on to the J.B. Phillips paraphrase:  http://www.ccel.org/bible/phillips/JBPNT.htm
– J. Graham Davies