Acts, 11:1-30
Vern Peterman · May 1, 2005
Acts (2005), No. 17
Holly Hills Bible Church
https://hollyhillsbiblechurch.org/teaching/messages/482623251860

Transcribed from the recording by SermonAudio, so expect the occasional misheard word.

All right, last week we left you with some questions. We are at Acts 11, 1 through 30, and the questions are on page 3. This is, that passage of scripture there is dealing with Peter explaining to the apostles and elders in Jerusalem, yes, the Lord really did have me go into the house of a Gentile and stay there and give them the gospel. And then the second half is beginning to deal with the interactions with the church in Antioch. And so, anyway, that's the content here.

The first question on page three there is, while it calls for speculation, what might have been the outcome of events in the church had Peter not been able to convince the rest of the believing Jews in Jerusalem that the Gentiles had come to faith in Christ directly and that by God's intent? Again, this is speculation.

What do you think might have happened? Peter goes there to Jerusalem and He says, hey, the Lord told me to tell the gospel to Gentiles, and the rest of the guys there look at him and say, Peter, you're just crazier than a coot. What do you think is going to be the response? What do you think would be the outcome in the church if that were the case?

Yes. Be real tough on us. Because basically that would have cut off the gospel going to the Gentiles, except as it basically had been through the Jews. The Jews as the doorway, if you will, into the knowledge of God. So yeah, that would be real tough. What else can you speculate about in there? What else do you think might have been the outcome? Apostolic authority would begin to be an issue if you see them go in different directions. Yeah, that's important too. Good. Anything else? Yeah, Josiah?

Do you see God working with the Jews throughout the Old Testament when you're reading the New Testament? Are you writing in signs to prove that what was being said or what was happening was valid? I think that if the Jews would have rejected what happened in Thessalonica, God would have said, you know what, you can't Keep bringing it back, yeah. And that would be, I think, you know, we see what happened here, what would have happened or could have happened is obviously speculation, but it was definitely God's intent that the Gentiles get the Gospel, right? Yeah. So, although it isn't told to us how He would have done it some other way, yeah, the Lord would have brought the message around, okay? Yeah.

That the Gentiles would be included, yeah. That somehow the Gentiles and the Jews would be brought together as a church body, as a single body, with no dividing wall of the law was not revealed. But the Gentiles being brought in was prophesied, yeah. So this is something that If we look at that event and say that's the last and only chance, it would certainly, it would be like, you know, that couldn't happen. But, you're correct. It's something that, as Josiah pointed out, that the Lord was going to make happen. It was going to take place. There wasn't any question about that. Okay, how about the second question here?

The Lord used Peter to bring the gospel to the Gentiles even though Paul was to be the apostle to the Gentiles. Is there a good reason for the Lord to bring things about in this way? What if Paul had been the one to present the gospel to the Gentiles first? What's the value in having Peter be the one to bring the gospel to the Gentiles?

Yes, excellent point. Peter had been there from the beginning. Everybody knew his stance there. Paul was, everyone would perceive, a latecomer. And not only that, what had Paul done, a radical flip-flop. Here's Paul, the Christian killer, going around, you know, seeking out Christians, and he makes this reversal and is now spreading the gospel. But to have him also be the one to bring the gospel to Gentiles, it would be like, hey, this guy is, you know, We just can't believe that. Yeah, it would have been very difficult for Paul to have done it and for it to be credible because Paul coming later, Paul having already made a radical change the way he did.

Yeah, good point. Anything else on that? Let's take a look at our third question here. In Antioch, we find that there is a mindset to extend ministry into other geographical areas. Of course, we'll read more about that. That mindset first shows up in the offer of financial support for the church in Judea. The church in Antioch also seems to involve Barnabas, who came from the church of Jerusalem. Do you see any spirit of competition between the churches in Jerusalem and in Antioch? Why are they not? What difference does it make? What do you see there?

I don't think they have financial giving trees. Financial giving trees? Yeah. Okay. So they're not worried about, you know, where's the money come from and where's it go and trying to keep tight accounts on who gave what to whom. We gave some to you, now you've got to give some to us. Essentially, here's the church at Antioch. And they're not experiencing the deficiency, the food deficiency, the famine that the church in Jerusalem is. So they're going to help.

And it didn't seem to come out of any spirit of competition or even keeping score. That didn't seem to be the issue at all, did it? And let's ask this question in general. Do you think there's a place for churches to have competition with one another? I see everything from shaking heads to grins.

Why would competition between churches not make sense biblically? Wrong motive? If I've got a church here, a local church body here, another local church body here, and that's what they had, one in Jerusalem, one in Antioch, perhaps others, but those are the ones that we're seeing right now. If I've got that going on, then what does competition between those churches say? Yeah, yeah, it said they're focused on the wrong thing on earthly things. There is nothing in Scripture that points to competition between churches. And that, by the way, would be in sharp contrast to the general Greek culture. Greek culture not only had athletic competitions, but they had competitions between cities and economic performance.

Take for example, Laodicea was doing real well. Colossae was kind of declining. And there would be a sort of a sense of competitive spirit between the two. Between the churches? No. So it's interesting. Here's an area of being in contrast to the world. in contrast to the world. It's the same Lord. He is the one who will provide for the church and bring the church together.

If we look at what's the basis for each of the local churches, there's no basis for competition between them. Let's turn over to Acts 12, 1-25. That takes us all through chapter 12 in one swell foop. Alright, what I'd like to do is let's pop through a few slides here that I think might be helpful and we'll look at some of them probably again next week but here's for starters.

One of the things you'll see throughout scripture is you keep running into this guy Herod and you think man this guy lives a hundred years and you know after he dies his name still comes up and what it is of course you've got the Herod family. Herod the Great Name you see there at the top. Herod the Great was the one who was king.

He was put there to hold off all the Parthian empire to the east. The Romans had the Parthians come in about 40 BC. They got as far as actually taking Jerusalem. The Romans came and pushed them back out. Then they put Herod in because they knew. They said, Herod, we're going to put you in here. because your job is to hold off the Parthians. And they knew he could do it because he was nasty. So that was the Herod that ordered all the babies killed in Bethlehem. Nasty guy. He would do whatever it took. Oh, he did some other things to try to win favor. He sponsored the Olympics in 12 BC. He started the upgrade to the temple about 20 BC.

So he did some things to try to curry favor with the people, but a nasty fellow and you see the five wives there and I don't have full details like for example on Marian the first because he had two you know Marianne's that are listed in the first one I don't have the whole deal there but as we look through this here we'll want to take a look here in the background here is Herod Agrippa the first see Herod Agrippa He's not son of, but actually grandson of Herod the Great. So that's the one that we see here in this account.

He had grown up in Rome with Claudius, who was later to become emperor. Claudius, as we'll see a little farther on in Acts, is the one who booted the Jews out of Rome. So that's the guy. Now we say grown up with, we don't know whether that means he was like a stepson, you know, half-brother kind of relationship, or whether he was just a friend or whatnot, but apparently close association with Claudius. So here's the guy.

Here at Agrippa I. And wonderful things happened to him, right? Not so much. Now, Herod Agrippa had endeared himself to the Pharisees because he observed a lot of the Jewish laws and traditions and supported those, but he had also descended from the Jewish Hasmoneans, those are the ones who took control of Jerusalem and Israel for about a century until the Romans took over in 63 BC and so he had some descendancy from there and so because of that the Jews kind of thought he was an okay guy but he had another characteristic and that is we have not only record here in scripture but also Josephus records that he allowed people to call him a god So it's just kind of conflicting, because certainly that didn't fit the Jewish custom. So it was a strange tap dance he was able to do for a while.

Okay. Now, so here he is, he's going to arrest the apostles. Who's that going to make happy? Who's going to be happy because he arrested the apostles? Yeah, Pharisees and Sadducees, Jewish leaders are going to think this is cool. Hey, this guy's alright. We always knew he was on our side. They're going to respond positively to this. This guy's arresting the apostles. We tried it and it didn't work. Maybe this guy can make it stick. So they're happy as can be with this guy. Alright. Now here he is. He says, alright, we're going to do something here.

First of all, We're just going to grab one of these guys and just kill them right off. Just do them in. The overnight thing didn't work last time, having them all in jail. We've tried that before. So we're just going to take one of the guys and just do them in right there. And then the other one, we'll have them go through a little bit more. And maybe even just sort of fake legal procedure. But at least just right off, find something that we can do one of these guys in, just straight out. So, we get into this situation here.

They called for a heavy guard. This time they said, we're not going to mess around. Remember those of you who might have been here when we talked about the day Christ was crucified and they put a guard of soldiers at the tomb. This was probably heavier a guard than was there during the time of the crucifixion and Christ in the tomb. So they had a guard there to keep Peter in. They weren't going to have any letting him loose or any of that stuff.

So what they did is they had a heavy guard and that would be four squads of soldiers for each. So you get 16 soldiers and What they're doing is you've got all these 16 soldiers around the prison entry there. And then in order to make sure nothing happens, you have two of them constantly chained to him. And then two more at the gate. And then you have all the others ready to switch out with them, but present.

So the guys who are standing guard were to stay, you know, awake and alert whether they were chained to them or standing at the door supposed to anyway and then the others would be would be there ready to trade off and so that nobody would get just kind of exhausted and then unattentive they would switch off every three hours through the night figuring that that was the toughest time so that was their rule you'd have the four squads and they'd go through the night switching off every three hours between these guys it's in the midst of that James has already been killed. James, brother of John, has already been killed here with the sword.

In the midst of that, here's Peter. Now, your Peter, you've been through this a couple of times, right? We know of at least a couple of times he's already been through it. He and John, first time. Second time, Peter with all the apostles. So this is now the third time Peter's stuck in the prison. It may have been the same prison. There's like three prisons in Jerusalem, and this one is probably Antonia Fortress. Antonia Fortress was the same place where Christ was given sentence of beating and then crucifixion. So here's Peter, and he's got more guards around him, the one guy, than the rest of them had before, and probably heavier than the guard that was put even on Jesus' tomb. It's like, man, we're not going to do this wrong. Heavy duty. So, there's the intro. So, what happened? Did the heavy guard work out? Two chains to him at once? No. Didn't work out, did it? What happened? The Lord brings an angel into the picture here. So here's Peter. You know, you've been through this yourself.

You've been real sleepy. Maybe you're just dead asleep. Something happens and you're kind of taking a while to sort of get your bearings. Takes me about three hours sometimes. But anyway, it takes you a little bit to get your bearings and try to figure out what's happening.

So here's Peter. These things are beginning to happen and he's just kind of thinking, I'm not sure if I'm not dreaming this. He's got a guard chained to each hand. What happens? Chains drop off. Angel leads him out, goes past the other two guards that are standing by the door, and past the rest of the soldiers that are less attentive, but there. Past them all.

He walks right through, out into the street, And then the believers have been praying for him. So Peter goes to the house here where all the believers are praying for him. If that is the same place as the upper room, and it's a place we've seen pictures of before, and if that's the case, then it means kind of going southwest from where the temple is. there's a diagonal road that heads that direction into what's called the Essene Quarter. So here's Peter going up to this room, you know, knocks on the door, gets some attention, and what happens? They all come running up to the door and greet him?

No. Servant girl comes up, you know, opens probably this little viewing portal, there's Peter, runs in, and just doesn't invite Peter in, but just runs in excitement and tells the other people that are praying. And they're thinking, no, no, it can't be. We've been praying, but that can't be. Here he is. So it takes a while for them to get the plot, to get the idea.

Now, the Roman guards in the midst of making this discovery, Dr. Luke, the author of Acts, uses a figure of speech that he actually uses several times in Acts, and he seems to use it as much as, if not more than, all the other biblical authors. And that is, he says it created no small disturbance. He also says elsewhere, no small city, which is a figure of speech for saying that was a big disturbance. Why would it be a big disturbance for the Roman guards? Why would that be an issue with them? Can you think of some reasons why that would be very disturbing to them? What's that? Yeah. It's interesting.

It wasn't an absolute mandated thing, but the death penalty was not uncommon. Statistically, just looking over the various cases, you probably have a 40% chance of getting killed for allowing somebody to get free like that. So this is one thing. You've got 16 soldiers here that are going to possibly get killed, a good chance of getting killed. Even if they don't get killed, the punishment may make them wish they had. So it can get nasty. At very least, You can imagine losing face something fierce.

Just really bad. Because here there are 16 of you guys. You guys have them in chains behind locked doors. You guys have all the swords and the shields and the spears and everything else. And here's this guy who's a fisherman. And he takes you on. That just looks bad. Okay? Looks real bad. So here are these guys, they're having a tough time with this.

The Greek doesn't make it totally clear that they would be killed, but it indicates that there's a good chance that they would be, that they would be turned over here. Okay, so what do they do with Peter? What happens with Peter at that point? They send Peter where? Caesarea. It's interesting that Caesarea keeps popping up.

You know, when I read that, that's kind of puzzled me at first, because I thought, okay, you've got 16 Roman guards that are just scared, you know, white as a ghost, and you're going to take Peter and send him off to Caesarea, which is a Roman military base. So, real interesting. They don't explain why they picked Caesarea. You would think that that would be somewhat of a trouble. But, there are a few things, but what are some reasons why it might still be okay to send Peter there? Even if being a Roman military base.

Can you think of some reasons? Pardon? Ah, he knew Cornelius, a Roman centurion. That would be someone, definitely, I mean this is a recent event, right, with Cornelius? Someone who would give him some protection. Yeah, good point. Other reasons why Caesarea might be a good place. Pardon? There could be a yeah, it could be a marine exit. Okay, that would be another possibility It would be an option available easily. Yep.

Get on a ship and get out of here. All right good other reasons Who else lives in Caesarea? Philip the deacon also lives in Caesarea So we've got we know some some people that are already in this account that would be trustworthy where he could stay. They may have been able to play a shell game and keep shuffling him around between houses. That's what they did with William Tyndale. He was translating the Bible into English from the original Hebrew and Greek. The first translation done that way.

They kept playing a shell game because the The crown put a big price on his head. He said, if you catch this guy, you know, it's a lot of money. So there are people going after him vigorously. And they played a big shell game. They could have done the same thing with Peter. We know of two people that Peter knew there. There may well have been others. They could have shuffled them around.

Another thing is just plain, you know, get out of Jerusalem. That's the hot spot. They're less likely to find you just some other place that's a little distance away. Jerusalem would be the area where the people would recognize him, that would be against him.

Friends or others that may have been involved with the legal proceeding or the capture. So, yeah, several different reasons why they may have sent him there. Okay. Now, here's another interesting thing. We start turning the corner here because now Peter's holed up at the end of the chapter. We're getting into what's the outcome with this Herod fellow. And here's where we find the connection.

Phoenicia, the place along the coast there, is dependent upon Galilee for a lot of its food supply. And there's been a long-standing relationship there. between Galilee, where Jesus was and Peter were with the fishing, and supplying food. It goes all the way back in his references to 2 Kings and Ezekiel. For centuries that had been the custom. So there was issues here with food. If food supplies are getting short, then that's going to be an area where they're going to be leaning on Herod. Hey, solve this problem, right?

It records here at the bottom of page 2, the death of Herod Agrippa I is also recorded by Josephus, who provides some additional details of time and circumstance. Josephus' record and Dr. Luke's are complementary accounts. If you read them, they dovetail very well.

Some of Herod I's last words, because it says in the Acts account that he died of worms, Josephus describes the death in a little more detail. Apparently his insides were being eaten up by these parasitic creatures, and he was going through waves of abdominal pain. And here, in the axe account, it talks about a god, and calling him a god. And he, in one of his last recorded words, says, you've called me a god, but I'm about to die.

It confirms the account from what we have from Josephus there. Yes? Probably not. Luke was written before Josephus wrote. He developed Roman connections there, but the more likely thing, if anything, would be that Josephus would draw upon some of the same records that Luke had already drawn upon. The one thing that is clear about Josephus is that he wrote after the Jewish revolt, which ended in 70 AD, whereas Luke wrote before that period of time. We don't find in Acts that he even records anything about that revolt. So if anything, Josephus might have drawn upon possibly, but unlikely, Luke's account, some of the same records that Dr. Luke would have used.

Yeah, probably, you know, around that time, but certainly before. 66 was the time the Jewish revolt began, ended in 70 when the Romans brought in 12 legions and suppressed it. And Luke never mentions that. The Book of Acts, the last of Luke's writing, appears to end around 61 AD. So about five years before the Jewish revolt. And then Josephus wrote after that. So probably Josephus is borrowing from some of the same records, possibly using Luke as a resource.

That's not known. Yeah? You know, I don't know that he was a member of the Sanhedrin. I don't have any record to that effect. He had been among the Jews and actually leading some of the Jews and then kind of turned on them. One of the motivations that people read into that, that he was trying to curry favor with the Jews after having basically become a traitor to them. Yeah, basically he was involved in the military revolt, and seemed to be a very well-educated fellow. He at times wrote with some extreme or exaggeration, and obviously he had some political things he was trying to accomplish as he wrote, and some of that bleeds through his writing. He does mention, write about Jesus, he does write about St. John the Baptist, some of the other biblical characters so there is good overlap between them but he's definitely not writing to make the Christians happy.

Now if you look on page 3 you've got a map there that will give you an idea where some of these things take place. Here's Jerusalem which is to the west of and at the north end of the Dead Sea and then you can see Caesarea off to the northwest And then Phoenicia, which would have been the area where the appeal for food would have come from.

To the north there, Tyre and Sidon. So it kind of gives you an idea of some of the areas. We're going to be looking next at Antioch again, and Antioch is to the north here. Just where the coastline starts turning to the west and becoming what's now called Turkey. Antioch is just at the north end of this roughly north-south coastline. We'll get maps up of some of that. Let me flash through this so we can get some orientation here. Do we think we showed this before? Modern Antioch or Antakya, so you can see the similar sounding name. This is the big picture.

Here's the Dead Sea off to the right-hand side. And Jerusalem would be just off to the left of that, just a little bit. And then Lebanon, where you see the area of Tyre and Sidon, Phoenicia, that's referred to. And then up towards the top, let me point it out, this would be Antioch up in here. And we'll see some maps of that more closely. Barnabas is from Cyprus. And some of the people who come to Antioch to tell the believers, both Jews and Gentiles, are from Cyprus, and even one over here from Cyrene, which is just off the edge of the photo here. Now, I've got a couple of questions still to look at.

Since Peter was imprisoned by a proper Roman authority, does his being broken from prison make him in conflict with Romans 13, 1-7? West Roman 13, 1-7 says be subject to the governing authorities, right? So shouldn't Peter have said to the angel, no, no, no, I can't do this. Anyway, that's one for you to think about. Then, Herod Agrippa I was neither better nor worse overall than some of the rest of the Herod family. We looked at the Herod, you know, family there, and boy, there's some of them that are just, oh, they're each goofier than the next, you know.

But why was his death noted here, and why was it particularly miserable? I mean, after all, the others could have been equally, you know, listed with all sorts of awful things. Why was this one particularly noted, and why was it so bad? Why did he get that kind of a treatment?

So, think about that. Those are the two. Something not done in writing here, but I'd like us to give some thought to. And we asked this before, but I think as we go through Acts, it's valuable to look at it again. What do the believers understand at this point in time? So far as we know, at this point in time, there are yet no New Testament books written. probably none at best. Maybe the book of James, maybe. But no New Testament books are written. What do the believers know at this point in time? Do they know the gospel clearly enough to present it?

Yeah, yeah. And we've seen examples of them doing just that. They know that the basis of salvation is belief. Yeah. Peter has come to Cornelius and as soon as he said, you know, he who believes has forgiveness of sins, that's when all of a sudden, you know, they believed and in this particular instance, as we've seen before, it was evidenced and that historical moment in this period of transition, they spoke in tongues and received the gift of the Holy Spirit, and it was evident at that point, yes, they had believed. Now, they don't have any other New Testament books, probably, I say possibly, the book of James, and even that's questionable yet. We have explicitly mentioned just two churches, There's one in Jerusalem, and there's now the first one, and we'll read about it more next week, the first one in Antioch, that's outside of Israel explicitly. What do they understand? What do they comprehend yet at this point in time? What's that?

First, here's Peter introducing the gospel to the Gentiles, and that was a new thing and something that the leaders in Jerusalem had to kind of rock their boat, but they had to get their adjusting in place for that process. Then, now you say we have the church at Antioch, we have not just some sort of a small hurdle that happened over there. But you have an instance of a church with a substantial number of Gentiles getting established. Chapter 11, 19 and 20 talks about the gospel going directly to the Gentiles. It isn't hypothetical anymore. Here's a church that's substantially Gentile.

This has influence coming from China and India, because of the Silk Road, as we mentioned last time. comes into the Roman Empire, the first major city is there at Antioch. So now you've got the believers coming into Antioch and here is influence coming from the Far East. Antioch was vying with Ephesus for being the third largest city in the Roman Empire. Passed it up probably about 165 AD. Ephesus declined some and Antioch grew. So now you've got this taking place.

We'll see who are the leaders in the next chapter. It turns out none of them are from Antioch. At least so far as the names are given. We still don't know that they're actually elders even, but some leadership there. So here are these believers. they're not only getting the idea, but actually living it out, that yes, the gospel goes directly to the Gentiles.

What do they understand about spiritual growth? Yeah, it's still very elementary. Paul later on wrote things about the identification truth. We've been identified with Christ in His death, burial, resurrection, ascension, and seeding. Those had not been identified from anything we can tell at this point in time. They did not understand that. Paul later would write to the church at Ephesus and say, you have been seeded with Christ. They didn't know that yet.

So there's a whole lot that hasn't been spelled out. We talk about that Christ is the head and the church is the body. That whole concept has not been presented yet. So there's a lot that people don't quite understand or are just beginning to get a glimpse of. Just beginning to get a glimpse of. Here's something else.

How did the believers get scattered from Jerusalem? Yeah, a persecution took place, otherwise where would they still have been? In Jerusalem. Just kind of stay put. So they would spread the gospel mostly around where they were. And so everything would stay just kind of static, and you'd have a slow spread. The persecution that started with Stephen began to spread the gospel. At Antioch, as we'll see here shortly, you begin to get the first sense of, we're going to send somebody deliberately, not because we're persecuted, but because we're actually intending to send the message out. And that is a different mindset. That's a change. They're on the brink of that now.

How long has the church been around when these events are taking place here? Roughly 10 years. Can you imagine, if you put yourself in some kind of a time frame here, here we are in the year 2005. Jesus has been crucified, buried, resurrected, and ascended just a decade back. To give an equivalent for our thinking, 1995. That's how recent it's been. There's still people around who said, yeah, I saw him resurrected. There's still some people around who could say, yeah, he was crucified. I know. There were people who could say personally and by personal testimony that these things were true.

This was all very young. They're still getting a lot of things in mind. Even at this point, they didn't have the New Testament books and the understandings that we have from the New Testament to work with. So those are key things as we're going through here. This is quite a transition. Not just events, but understanding. A transition in understanding. Big change taking place.

Really big. The Jews had looked for a Messiah for centuries. Now, for the last 10 years, they're saying, he came. And Peter and the rest of the apostles would tell the Jews, and you killed him. This was a phenomenal time. This was an amazing time. The church was gripped, and the changes, the things they were discovering, were astounding them daily. This was amazing stuff. They could still talk with people. that had seen the Lord resurrected. They could still talk with people. They'd say, yeah, I went right after and there was the tomb and it was empty. The graveclaws were there, but the tomb was empty.

These were gripping times. These were times that grabbed people. And they were learning these truths as the days went by. Coming to understand gradually what you and I could probably easily take for granted. Phenomenal days. Amazing stuff. What a huge transition it was. Exciting time, but a lot to learn. Lots to learn. Any other thoughts, questions? Yeah, Art?

Do you think as the Lord used persecution in those days back there, what are the prospects of repetition of that in our day? Yeah, let's talk about that. Persecution was used of the Lord. And yet we find here was Antioch that didn't require persecution apparently for them to decide to send somebody out. But at least at one point in time, it was apparently necessary to get the church moving to the places it needed to be. What about persecution now?

Is it happening? Yeah, persecution is happening now. It varies globally by quite a bit. Christians in Iraq are undergoing lots of difficulty. It's the kind of thing where, you know, it's not just somebody calling you bad names, it's, you know, hey, you're a church, we're going to bomb you. So, believers, right now, a lot of the persecution is from the Muslim nations, and also in the Orient.

Places like China, where it's still official policy to persecute Christians. Now, Art's question. Is the Lord still going to use that persecution to scatter and spread people? Do you think that's happening today? Yeah. In fact, it does. In fact, it does. And what's interesting is Some of those areas where the persecution takes place, we end up getting people coming from there to here. There is a fervency in their message that is frequently lost in American churches, natively anyway. Some of the people who have come out of that have a tough time.

In Pakistan, if you are of Muslim faith, and you tell your family that you're now Christian, the family gives you a white robe called a shalwar. And the white robe is the robes that were intended to bear you in. They read in Revelation, and you shall walk with me in white. It means something quite more intense to them. These are the white robes. And so for them, the white robes, the family gives it to them and it's not a gift. This is basically, you're dead to us. But to them, it is a glorious honor.

It's persecution that for them is something that stimulates and stirs them and gives them a very real sense of what happened spiritually. It's an amazing thing. Yes, the Lord still can and does use persecution. But we have not seen it in here, although we're starting to see, in recent years, more of a disinclination towards Christians. And not too often getting violent, but I wouldn't be terribly surprised to see things continue to slip in that direction. One of the things, I think, we talk about some of the stunning things that were going on in terms of people being able to say, hey, I saw Jesus resurrected. Paul says there were 500 who saw him.

It was the customary thing in the pagan cultures, Roman and Greek, to do kind of mix and match religions. I'll do this one and that one, and they would even have altars to the unknown God. because you want to make sure you didn't offend one whose name you didn't know yet. And whereas what was being presented here was quite different, the believers weren't told, you know, do all your Artemis and your Zeus and Isis and everybody else and just throw Jesus in too. They said no. This in contrast with everything else you've been taught, everything else you've heard, says Jesus alone and no other.

He's Lord. That was radical stuff. So they not only had a message to tell that was recent, fresh, but was also in sharp contrast with the culture and it must have just caused heads to spin. What? You mean just Jesus? You mean I gotta let the Zeus thing go? I don't follow Apollo? I don't do sacrifices to Artemis?

Man, I mean this is bold move. This is amazing stuff. Radical change. Okay, we're out of time. Let's pray. Lord, as we look at this, it is indeed gripping. It is indeed amazing to place our mind back into the place where they were at. A decade had gone by and yet everything was still so fresh and daily discoveries of new truth daily discoveries of how the Holy Spirit would work through the believers. Lord, in our own lives, we certainly want to build on what they knew, and yet we would indeed seek that same freshness by a walk with you. Thank you in Jesus' name, Amen.