and verse one. Former treaties have I made, O Theophilus, of all that Jesus began, both to do and teach, until the day in which he was taken up. After that he to the Holy Ghost had given commandment unto the apostles whom he had chosen, to whom also he showed himself alive after his passion by many infallible truths, being seen of them forty days, and speaking of the things pertaining to the kingdom of God, and being assembled together with them, commanded them that they should not depart from Jerusalem, but wait for the promise of the Father which, said he, ye have heard of me, for John truly baptized with water, but ye shall be baptized with the Holy Ghost not many days hence. When they therefore were come together, they asked of him, saying, Lord, wilt thou at this time restore again the kingdom to Israel, showing how little they seemed to know that God had given up Israel, and now a new dispensation was coming in, And he said unto them, It is not for you to know the times or the seasons which the Father hath put in his own power. But ye shall receive power, after that the Holy Ghost has come upon you, and ye shall be witnesses unto me both in Jerusalem and in all Judea and in Samaria and unto the uttermost parts of the earth, and I think possibly that verse eight is the key verse of the whole book. One day this week I was thinking about the books of the Bible, so I got my pencil and began noting down to whom the books of the Bible were written and by whom. And out of the sixty-six books, I noticed that forty-one of those books were written by an individual. His name is given. He's the author in the hands of God. Either that or the person's name to whom he was writing. For instance, you have the one, Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, their books bear their name. Then you have Paul writing to the Romans. Of course, he's a group of people. He's writing to them. and also you have also the Hebrews. He's writing to a group of Hebrews, and then he's also writing to individuals. Not only the author's name given, not only the group of people he's writing to, but sometimes the individual, like Paul, writing to Timothy, and he writes to Philemon, and so on. And so, forty-one of the books of the Bible come under that category, books, and the author is given the person to whom he's writing or the people to whom he's writing. Then I noticed that there were five books that were written to judges and the king, the book of judges, first and second kings and first and second chronicles. Oftentimes first and second chronicles are likened under the third and fourth king, the book of kings, the four book of kings. And then you have the books of wisdom. You have Proverbs and Ecclesiastes. I am not mentioning Solomon. We included them in the book of the forty-one because it bears his name. Then you have the one book of the Psalms or the hymns of the Hebrews, and undoubtedly many of them were written by David. Then again I noticed there were other books of the Bible that were written to certain places. The title of the book is a city, like he wrote to the city of Galicia. He wrote to Ephesus, Smyrna, Colossus, and Thessalonians, and so on. Of course, the church was in that city, but he is giving the name of the city, the location of that church. That leaves eight other books unmentioned. And I think these eight other books, the name of these books, give us a little of the content of the books. For instance, you have Genesis. Now, what does Genesis mean? The beginning. Genesis is the book of beginnings. Then Exodus. Exodus means they're going up out of Egypt, their departure. Then you have Leviticus, and Leviticus speaks of the Levitical offerings and the priesthood and worships. You come to numbers, and in numbers you have the children of Israel being numbered in various ways. The army, the workmen, and their various tribes and so on. You come to Deuteronomy, and Deuteronomy is the book of rehearsal. Then you come over to Lamentations, and that means no... exposition, it means that the book of lamentations brings before us the lamentations of Jeremiah. And your final book of the Bible, Revelation, that explains the content of that book. It's a revelation of things to come, or as we say, eschatology, a revelation of things that are going to happen, and they're given us in the final book of the Bible. Now that leaves the book of Acts. What does Acts mean? Well, it's a noun and it's a verb. Chinese say a verb is a living word, and certainly that describes the book of the Acts. The book of the Acts is a book that's throbbing with life. What life? Not human life. but divine life is throbbing with the light and power of the Holy Spirit. It's the acts, the activities of the Spirit of God in the Apostles and others of the people of God who were yielded to His power. Very interesting to notice too that in the Gospels and in Luke, if you want to sing aloud that book, you have the physical historical Christ presented on earth. But when you come to the Acts, you have a living glorified Christ in heaven. In other words, the Lord Jesus mentioned in chapter twelve of John, except a corn of wheat fall into the ground and die, it abided alone. But if it die, it bringeth forth much fruit. In the Gospels you have the corn of wheat done, but in the Acts you have the fruit of that day, in the emergence of the church. Also you have in the Gospel Christ purchasing the church, paying the price for the church. But in Acts the Church is rising into actual existence. You don't see the church in the Gospels. You see the church in the Acts. And the first look this world got of the church was when a hundred and twenty people were in the upper room, and there the Spirit of God came down, and they were immersed into one body, the church known as the church. So you see the importance of these things I'm mentioning. I thought maybe these facts in the Acts might be helpful to you. In Acts you have a continuance of all things, a continuance of that. Work with Jesus Christ began, as you have in verse one. It tells you, And these former, the former treaties have I made, O Theophilus, of all things that Jesus began both to do and to teach. Now that's the beginning. He's still carrying on his work, although now he's carrying on his work from heaven. That verse refers to what he did on earth. He began to do and to teach. That's very important. He did before he preached it. He practiced before he preached it. And the Apostle Paul links those two points together. He says, thou knowest my doctrine and manner of life. My manner of life is consistent with my doctrine. His doctrine influenced his manner of life. And the Lord Jesus Christ did. father's will and any priesthood. And that is essential if we expect to know anything of the power of the Holy Spirit so evidence in the book of the Acts. There must be a practicing of Christianity before there's going to be the power of Christianity through us to those who stand in need of Christ. the Gospels, you have Christ presented to Israel in the flesh, in the humility of his incarnation. But in the act, Christ is presented to Israel by the Spirit in the glory of his resurrection and presence of God's right hand. And so in the act, here is the Lord Jesus Christ, and he's being presented to that nation, as the one who came into this world in the glory of his incarnation, and he performed those miracles, trying to convince those Jews that he was the Son of God. They rejected him. Away with this man will not have him to reign over us. And when he was raised from the dead, he was taken back to heaven. The Spirit of God came down. on the day of Pentecost, and God once again is going to give that nation a chance, because you'll find several times in the opening chapters of the Acts, to the Jew first, then to the Gentiles, to the Jew first. God says, I am now going to appeal to them from heaven. I am going to send my Spirit with a message of a living Christ, a living man. glorified at my right hand. Israel rejected both. Israel rejected Christ as presented in the flesh in the glory of his incarnation, and they rejected Christ, a living Christ, at God's right hand. How did they reject it today? They put the first martyrs of death, Stephen. and they rejected the testimony of Peter, and they certainly, the hymn of they, rejected the preaching of the Apostle Paul. And so we have Israel rejecting Christ in the flesh and rejecting Christ in the Spirit. Thus the doom of that nation. Their city fell seventy years AD at the hands of the their house is left unto them desks, and not until after the church is king, and the Spirit of God comes down once more to enter into a hundred and forty-four thousand chosen Jews, and they go forth with the gospel of the coming days. And this time Israel will realize, many of them, as convicted by the Spirit, the mistake they made. In other words, they're going to be provoked to jealousy. All very Jews are wondering why it is that this one that they have rejected and their fathers have rejected, calling them an imposter, why it is that through him so many Gentiles are being blessed. They are being provoked to jealousy. In the day to come, they will see the air of their way. they shall look upon him whom they have pierced, and mourn for him was one mourneth for an only Son, and a nation shall be born in a day, born by the Spirit of God, just as a person, an individual soul, is born by the Spirit of God today, quickened by the Spirit. That nation will be quickened in that coming day. Now the book of Acts, the history of of this book is beyond being challenged. There is very few people will challenge the book of Acts. They'll challenge other portions of the Bible. The two books that they challenge the most is Genesis and Revelation, because in Genesis you have the beginning of the slimy trail of the circle. And in the end, the book of the Great Revelation, you have it soon. and all this maneuver is spoken, and Satan doesn't want this world to know about his beginning, nor does he want the world to know about his end. There are other books that attack, like the book of John trying to do away with the deity of Jesus Christ. Acts is not attacked very much, because the things are recorded in there, are also on the pages of ancient history. Josephus reports them. They are there. And the book of Acts is seldom challenged today. Some of the interpretations of it are challenged by some liberal theologians. There are a lot of amusing things in the Acts, some very solemn. For instance, in the early church, if a Christian told a lie, death. You know that, Ananias and Saviour. Also, you see a lot of healing in the opening chapters of the Acts. You see the use of tongues. You'll be speaking on these things in the messages ahead. And here's a man because he was an auditor, and he made a great speech, and he took the glory to himself. He was eaten of worms right before their eyes. strange thing, solemn thing happened in the Acts of the Apostles, and will give the reason why those things are not practiced today. If God struck every one of his children dead and told a lie that more funnels than Kimball Stern and a few others could handle, I'll tell you that. But that's how God acted in the beginning of the church's age. And there are some very solemn lessons to be learned from how God behaved in. And as I read it, all I can do is bow my head and thank God for his patient grace to me today. And so we find that the Book of Acts, its value as a historical document, is beyond challenge. Also, you see, the doctrines in the Book of Acts, inestimable. And also the biographical things and truths in the Acts is immense, because it gives us seventy-five different characters. If you want to go through them, start at the first chapter and put down every character that's mentioned and you'll come to seventy-five. And here is God. He's dealing with seventy-five different characters, Peter, Paul, and Philip, and so on. and even mentions a little boy, Paul's sister's son, and of course there are kings mentioned, and so on. And here you have the Book of Acts. It's so important as a biography of various characters. At the same time, it's a wonderful book on missionary work. Oh, the value of the Book of Acts. when it comes to missionaries. I think it's fifty-three different places the Apostle Paul goes to, or Peter. The Gospel going to fifty-three different cities or centers. Now if you put those two things together, seventy-five persons and fifty-three localities, God is interested in this age in persons and in places. He saves persons, and he wants those persons to be gathered together in places. That's why you have the church in Galatia, the church in Paul, the church in Ephesus. God is interested in places. Gather my people together unto me, where two are gathered together in my name. There am I in the midst of it. And so God today is interested in individuals, and is interested in where those individuals meet. And we'll have more to say about that as we get a little later on into our studies. Dispensational later, the Book of Acts has tremendous value, because it shows the distinction between the Messianic Kingdom and the Christian Church. the passing of the messianic kingdom and the coming in of the Christian church acts as like a big door on hinges. It closes to Israel. It opens to all the Gentiles. It closes to the kingdom of Christ on earth, and it opens to the kingdom of God in heaven for a heavenly It goes from the earthly to the heavenly, from the material to the spiritual. Such is the book of Acts. But I think the most important thing about the book of Acts is its spiritual value. If you were to take the first nineteen or twenty chapters of Acts and just go through them, and find out the Spirit of God as he's working in this remarkable book. In chapter one, you have the spirit of promise. In chapter two, you have the spirit of power. In chapter three, you have the spirit of God in the healing of the lame man at the gate, the beautiful temple, and the beautiful gate of the temple. In chapter four, you find here boldness, the boldness of the early Christians. in the face of fierce opposition. You see the boldness of those Christians only as the Spirit of God gave them strength and made them sturdy. They stood their ground against any opposition or confrontation with the enemies of Christ. When you come to chapter five, you have the judgment of God I've already referred to when Ananias and Sapphira lied against the Holy Spirit, and they were stricken dead. In chapter six you have the administration of the Spirit and the selection of deacons. And in chapter seven you have steadfastness seen in Stephen a man filled with the Holy Spirit and his wonderful message before those Jews. that Alec was at length. And it was so convincing, so devastating to those Jews they gnashed upon him with their teeth. There you have a man and his steadfastness. He only could do it in the energy of the Holy Spirit of God. Then you have also evangelism in chapter eight, where Philip going down to Samaria and also you have the Ethiopian eunuch, the one to Christ in the charity. There you have evangelism, how the Spirit moves and leads relative to soul winning. Chapter nine you have the Spirit comforting the churches. Why? Because the one who was persecuting them unto the dead had gotten saved, the Apostle Paul. And after Paul's conversion, then have the church feet rest, come, and was multiplied. There you have the Spirit of God exercising His office as a company in the early church. Chapter ten, you have guidance how here was Peter, and he left Joppa, and it was all the way to where Penelius was, Cornelius had a dream. God gave a dream to Peter, and of course the Spirit of God is working at both ends, and Peter was brought in to this man's house, and Cornelius had his house full of people. And Peter began to preach in the power of the Spirit, and while he preached the Holy Spirit, terrible men that believe, on this wonderful character, Cornelius, In chapter ten, he was saved, he, and all his house. A lovely chapter to see how the Spirit of God leads and guides the soldier. Chapter eleven, you have prophecy. Chapter twelve, you had deliverance. Peter in prison on how the doors were opened at midnight, and Peter was released, unable to go to his own company. Chapter thirteen you have the Apostle Paul and Silas starting out on their mission. How the Spirit of God is always central in missionary work. Chapter fourteen is taken up with the Spirit of God protecting those missionaries. Chapter fifteen you come back to Jerusalem and there you see the Spirit of God guiding in the council at Jerusalem. When you come to chapter sixteen, you have restraint and constrain. The Spirit of God suffered not the Apostle Paul to go where he intended to go. He says, The Spirit suffered me not. The Spirit restrained. But then in that same chapter, he was constrained to go to another door with them. and he heard the voice come over into Macedonia and help us. The Spirit of God can restrain. He can restrain you from doing things. Many a time in my life I've wondered why I was kept from saying something or doing something. And other times I've been constrained to do something. I just had to do it. There was something telling me to do it and urging me. And so the Spirit of God restrains and he constrains. Again, when you come to that next chapter, chapter seventeen, it's full of opportunities. The Spirit of God opening doors, and here is Paul standing on Mars Hill with a wonderful audience, and he delivered that wonderful message we'll be looking into when we get there. Chapter, I believe, in eighteen of Acts. You see, the Spirit of God, and He's revealing something to the Apostle. Something the Apostle Paul had been thinking over likely many times. What am I going to do with these rebellious Jews? Why, they will not listen to the Gospel. They persecuted me. God says, Paul, their days as a nation are numbered. And Paul, led by the Spirit, having received this revelation, he says from henceforth, I turn to the agenda. The door is just about shut for the Jewish people at that time, and Paul gets this revelation. And in chapter nineteen, the Apostle Paul is here, persuaded by the Spirit. He purposed in his heart that those who were although being warned yet he wanted the gold and put in the spirit of gold. You see the Spirit of God working in all these chapters, and I'm going to mention this. It's so amazing. From then on, there's very little of the Spirit's activity. That's something that's really very difficult to understand in one way and yet not in another. The Acts is the record of the Spirit-regarded, Spirit-filled, and Spirit-guided church, and individuals in that church. You also have faith and prayer and joy and courage and sacrifice and victory, all attributed to the Spirit of God in this wonderful book of Acts. And as I mentioned, it's a book of origins, a book of beginnings, just like Genesis in the Old Testament, Acts is in the news. For in Acts of the Apostles, you have the first church. You have the first apostolic sermon. You have the first Christian persecution. You have the first Christian martyr in Stephen. You have the first Christian conduct. And you have the first church in the church in Ananias. You have the first foreign missionaries, and also you have the first Christian communism. I'm using that word, I suppose, the way you'll understand it. I'm not talking about communism as we know it today, but they had all things common in the beginning of the church. The rich sold what they had. and they shared everything they had in material possessions. They had all things common, and no man said what I've got is mine, it belongs to God's people, I'm going to share it. Now that's the real meaning of communism. That's Christian communism, not atheistic communism. This is Christian communism. You had your first deacons in this book, the Acts, and also the first bishops and the overseers. Your first Christian baptism is here in the Acts. John's baptism is in the Gospel. You had your first Christian assemblies here in the Acts. These things began Jesus to do. And what he started in the Acts of the Apostles, nineteen hundred years ago, by his Spirit, he's still doing. He's still going on. He began, and he hasn't ended yet. He's still working by his Spirit with whomsoever we. I want to say this, Christian, he can use you today. just as he used people there. The Spirit of God is just as willing to occupy the hearts and minds of God's people. The policy in those days I've already tried to point out was the using of cities as centers. Why was that? After they established the Spirit of God established an assembly in a city Then it was for those in that assembly to branch out, just like the hub of a wheel. And God has always been interested in Satan. Find that very easy in the book of the Acts. Peter seemed to make his headquarters at Jerusalem. Philip made his headquarters at Samaria. Paul, Antioch, then Ephesus, then Colin, then Philippi, then Rome. and from those centers the gospel spread out. That's the policy given us in the Acts. And here's a very remarkable principle in the Book of Acts. First of all, as I mentioned, you find the Spirit of God referred to time and time again. Here's the Spirit of God or the might that enables us to minister, the might. Where do I get the strength? Where do I get the might, the energy to work for the Lord? It's in the Holy Spirit. And that's why the Spirit of God has such prominence in the beginning of the Acts, because of all these things that are going on, reaching people, establishing churches in centers, and those Christians branching out, this is the work of the Spirit of God. There you have the Spirit of God and the might for the Lord's people. Then you have next the Word of God, as the Spirit of God seems to retire. The emphasis on the Word of God comes in. And here you have the message. You have the might in the Spirit. You have the message in the Word. And then toward the end a man appears. and he takes over the prominent place. Here you have the media, through which the Spirit of God works in carrying out God's mind, in reaching men and women, and establishing local churches. Thus you have the book to be asked, line up, first the emphasis on the Holy Spirit, then the emphasis on the Word of God, and then, thirdly, the emphasis upon the man of God. the might, the message, and the media. Or you might say, you have the witness concerning the workman, the witness, the workman, and the warrior. Paul was all free. He was a witness. And you know what a witness is. A witness is one who tells the things that he has seen and heard. I don't know whether you've been in court and noticed a witness in the witness box, and how he's being interrogated by the defense lawyer and also the prosecutorial lawyer. He's being questioned from both sides, and he stands there, and they're cross-questioning him. You know, the Christian today is a witness. And don't be surprised if you're being cross-questioned. They come to you from every corner. They'll ask you this question. They'll ask you that question. They'll try and get you to deny things and contradict yourself and get confused. Yes. That's just like this word. You'll get it from religious people who are depending upon their good life, their church membership, to take them to heaven, and when they hear a person say, I'm born again, I know I'm going to heaven. Well, I don't know I'm going to heaven. And I live a good life. Then they begin to ask some questions in charity. How do you know it? What enables you to say that? And not only will you get cross-question from that standpoint, in that angle, you'll get it from the out-and-out world, or you'll get it from the brainy fellow, and he's so cocky and self-confident, he doesn't believe in a supreme being. He's the brainy boy. He knows it all, and he will try and pick you to pieces. Christians are here in this world as women. and you're going to be interrogated. You're going to be questioned, sometimes prosperous. And Christian, if you want to have the answers, you better get into this one. Here's where you get your answers. You don't have to answer all the questions that are put to you. I recently heard about a young lady and she tried to say she was an avian, and she said to a born-again Christian, You prove to me that there's a God. He says, I don't have to. Whoever said that I had to try and prove negatives, he says, You prove to me that there is no God, and I'll prove to you that there is a God. You, first of all, go ahead and speak first. You prove to me that there's no God. I'm not convinced myself that I'm a true evangelist. When you get through with that, I'll prove to you that there is a God in the Father. You'll find that a person has far more difficulty proving there's no God than the Christian has of proving there is a God. I wouldn't know how to explain my life I said, God is dead. There's been so many things, and I'm sure he was a Christian, but say the same thing, so many things have happened in our lives. The only way to give the answer to that is that there's a living personality in heaven. God is there, Christ is there, and the living Holy Spirit is right here. Yeah, uh-huh. And thus we have the answer. And I don't know the best answer, any better answer, rather, to give than your conversion. A good, clear-cut, confident, cheerful conversion will just about stump the best one. If you convince them that you've got something that they haven't got, Then you're on the way to convincing them they need the Savior, and in many cases they'll accept it. That's why Christians today should be on fire. They should be aglow, like the Christians were in the first church in the beginning of the church age. They took knowledge of them that they had been the Jesus. There's something different about these people. And that's what convinced them. And you know it's nice to find that sometimes when they got out of those predicaments, you read these things. They went to their own company. That's how the Christians knew one another then. They went to their own company. They didn't go to this church, they didn't go to that church because they didn't have all these churches there. There were only three places of real meeting in those days. One was the synagogue where the Jews met. The other, the heathen temple, the idols temple where those liked in Corinth and other places, Ephesus, they had those idols temples and that's where the heathen went. And then the Christian community, the Christian assembly. And that's where the Christians met. and they went to their own country. You know, it's nice when you find your own country. Those who think as you do, who believe as you do, I think I mentioned this one time before, when we first came to Albany, a man came out here and he found Christ as his Savior. And he told me this afterwards. The man then downtown and he started talking to this man. The man said, well, how did you get saved? Well, he said, I went out to attack and act the North Saturday by, and he said, I got saved, and I know I'm saved. Well, who are those people out there? I don't know who they are, and I'll read about them, but who are those people out there where he got saved? He said, I don't know who they are, but whatever they are, I won't harm them. He went to his own people. He found a spiritual kingship, a fellowship. And that's how large people are happy and at home one another. He says, ye shall receive power. The first mother of the child is going to say, I'll leave with a future time. Ye shall receive power. have you received power? No, I know he's referring to Pentecost. And seven times in the Acts, they find certain ones being filled with the Holy Spirit of God. Read at Pentecost, they were all filled with the Holy Spirit. Then in the third chapter, where the lame man was healed, Peter and John were filled with the Holy Spirit of God. Then you have the church, and they're engaged in prayer. The outcome was the house was shaken, and they were all filled with the Holy Ghost. I want to say this. The Spirit of God did not come in that case because they prayed. The Spirit of God came because he was promised. God promised the coming of the Holy Spirit, Pentecost, fifty. Christ was on earth for forty days. He went to heaven ten days later, making fifty days. The Spirit of God came down as God promised. And as it happened, the Christians were praying when he came. It wasn't their prayers that brought the Spirit. It was God's faithfulness to His Father. And so you have them while engaged in prayer. They were all filled with the Holy Spirit. Then they spake the Word of God with boldness. And great power and great grace was given. And if we as Christians know something and pray together, in the power of the Spirit of God. The last two Sunday nights we've had nine men meeting back in one of the Sunday screw rooms to pray. If we get three or four more, we'll have to take over another Sunday screw room, and nothing will please me better. I think I mentioned one time in Durham, North Carolina, when God was working up there, we had three Sunday screw rooms. Men couldn't get on their knees. They come in and stand and put their hands on the other fellow's shoulders and pray. And then the fourth prayer meeting started. And who do you think started that? About eight or ten of the fellas got together, and they said, well, we just can't pray like those other fellows. We're too timid. So they started the timid men's prayer meeting. Timid men's prayer meeting. And the timid men's prayer. They face so long, so often, together they graduated with the other prayer. And when God's people begin to pray, then we're going to see God begin to work. Then Stephen was a man full of faith and of the Holy Ghost. And what did he do? Wonders and miracles. So, when he was saved, he was filled with the Holy Ghost. Barnabas was a good man full of the Holy Ghost and faith. And at Iconium the disciples were with joy and filled with the Holy Ghost. Filled with joy and the Holy Spirit. Here you have seven instances in the acts of individuals and people being filled with the Holy Spirit. And what are companies there being filled with the Spirit? Prayer, boldness, grace, they did wonders, and they, many believed, their testimony was with power. I want to say this. Being filled with the Spirit of God is not being intelligent. although if people are filled with the Spirit, they usually are intelligent. But it's not intelligent being. It's not a man with all kinds of letters behind his name. It's not intelligent. Although I'm not belittling intelligence. But being filled with the Spirit is no, or being intelligent is no substitute for being filled with the Spirit. Also for a man to have a brilliant mind, that's no substitute for the Holy Spirit. For a person to have a knowledge of the Bible, a theological grasp of the Scripture, that's no substitute for the Holy Spirit. For a person to have a pleasing personality, that's not a substitute for the Holy Spirit. For a man to have the ability to speak, that is not a substitute for the Holy Spirit. A man can have all kinds of seals. That's not a substitute for the Holy Spirit. A man may have natural force. That's not a substitute for the Holy Spirit. A man can have experience many years ago. That's not a substitute for the Holy Spirit. A man may have a blameless life.