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David Pawson - Acts Pt1 大卫鲍森 - 使徒行传(一)(英文发音, 中文字幕)

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Thoughtful Thoughts 19.4.24 by John Dunning. The story after Jesus rose!

Introduction…

We previously just looked at a summary of what happened at Passover in the year AD 29 followed by the gift of the Holy Spirit being given to replace the presence of Jesus Christ on earth. The book of Acts tells us what happened after those events. Peter was still on a steep learning curve and it is from him we get Acts 2:38 telling us what we need to do to join God’s family, and having just completed our series on what is required of us, we won’t stop again now to repeat it.

The New Covenant.

Ezekiel prophesied about a future when God would overturn the Old Covenant by establishing the New Covenant as the only way of accessing forgiveness. 

As Jesus was dying on the cross, God tore the Temple curtain from top to bottom, which separated the Holy of Holies from priests, except for once a year - and even then, only for the High Priest, once a year. After the curtain was torn down, the New Covenant opened the way for everyone to access God freely and directly, without priests. Jesus foretold that just as an old wine skin could not hold new wine, so too the Old Covenant rules would not be able to have any use with the New Covenant. All the Jewish leaders could think of doing was to patch up the Temple Curtain and try to carry on with business as usual as if nothing had happened. God left the Holy of Holies and the Temple. When the Romans invaded Jerusalem in AD 70, the entire Temple ended up being demolished anyway, and all for the last time. The stones were pushed over the edge of the Temple Mount by the Romans, (and I have seen that on a David Pawson tour.)

Religious leaders…

Just as the Jewish religious leaders tried to patch up the Temple after the earthquake that happened as Jesus died, religious leaders tried to patch up and reintroduce ritualism, in order to say that they can arrange for sin to be forgiven. Paul fought tooth and nail to stop ritualistic laws and ceremonies being reintroduced into the newly founded church, and he won. However, Gentile clergy set about creating rituals and ceremonies requiring churchgoers to meet with their rules and regulations to gain forgiveness, so that they could be in control, saying that they replaced Christ on earth. 

Whose side are we on?

Understanding all this now helps us to make sense of what happens after the book of Acts. A well-kept record of martyred saints can be found in ‘Foxe’s Book of Martyrs’, but I have a much longer list. The persecutions of disciples of Jesus started under the religious leaders in the book of Acts, and moved on to Roman emperors, and then to religious leaders. Those who tried to correct the church’s heresies, using the Bible, were burned to death by church leaders, often after being tortured first. 

Jesus said the father of the murderer is the devil. Note that we are told Satan entered Judas just before he betrayed Jesus. Jesus told Saul on the road to Damascus that those persecuting believers were persecuting Himself. After believing, his name was changed to Paul. Jesus warned of the persecution His followers would face, which makes a nonsense of the prosperity gospel from America. The book of Acts is a record of the gospel spreading miraculously during a period of persecution because Satan is the enemy of the gospel of Jesus Christ. 

This is John Dunning signing off from “Thoughtful Thoughts” for another week.

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