Acts "God Lives With, In, and Through His People"
Each book in the Bible gently guides God's people into a more intimate relationship with their Creator, as He knows must occur, for His people to receive Him in the depth of the relationship that He purchased for them. Each day we are covering, in sequential order, one of the twenty-seven books of the New Testament and expecting people’s lives to change through the revelation of His leading in this way.
Today is the fifth day, and the book is, The Acts of the Apostles the fifth book in the New Testament as it appears in our Bible. Luke is a non-Jewish physician writing his second account to a worldly leader name Theophilus. This second letter is about the spread of the belief in Jesus the Christ being God’s Son and is also focused on the Holy Ghost coming into and living in God’s people for a depth of relationship which was not possible before this occurrence in history. The Holy Ghost is, as we will reveal through this blog, just as Jesus told His disciples He would be. The Holy Ghost is the Comforter that reminds His people of things that were said and shows them things to come as they are led into all truth by Him.
The first thing that I will mention is Pentecost and then how the receiving of the Law on Pentecost in the Old Testament relates to the Church today. The Day of Pentecost happened on the same Day of the year that Moses received the Law from God; which is fifty days after the Passover.
On The Day of Pentecost, people received the Holy Ghost from God, and it came as a rushing wind that filled the room and the one hundred twenty people who were in it. The city they were in was filled with people from various parts of the world who spoke many different languages which had gathered because of the Holy Day. After the disciples had been filled with the Holy Ghost, they began to speak in a language that some of the travelers, from differing parts of the world, could hear in their own language. This was a sign from God for the ones who could understand, and others mocked them saying they were drunk with wine. There were three thousand souls added to the believers on that day. This is the first-time God placed His Spirit into any man on an ongoing basis; because before this event, God had placed His Spirit into several people, but only on a temporary basis. With this new blessing being available to God’s people, everything has become much more intimate than was possible in the past, and it is given to many more people than it was previously.
The next highlight I’m going to point out is when Stephen, the first martyr, was being stoned to death, because he told the religious leaders the truth of who Jesus was and what they had done to Him, saw Jesus standing at the right hand of God and had a glowing peace from within that the people surrounding him saw. This is the first vision of Jesus after He ascended and it is Jesus standing in observation instead of being seated like most other statements have Him positioned.
Next, there was a man of authority named Saul who stood and watched, in his place of authority, as Stephen was being stoned. Saul was also going to more cities arresting all of those who were worshipping God through Jesus, but Jesus had other plans for Saul and revealed Himself to him. Saul was renamed Paul and instantly knew the Truth. After Paul had recovered from the loss of His sight due to the experience with Jesus, he started preaching that Jesus was the Christ with more determination to prove it than he had to imprison people before he was converted. Paul became the writer of thirteen of the twenty-seven books of the New Testament and traveled many places for many years in the region; he even received a free trip to Rome by being falsely arrested, imprisoned, and sent to appear before the Roman authority.
In the book of Acts, people were slain for lying to the Holy Ghost, people were healed from various illnesses and diseases, people were literally unchained and let out of prison by angels, many supernatural things were recorded in this book and these same miracles still occur all over the world through the name of Jesus today, but as Jesus Himself said in the Gospel According to Luke, “but rather rejoice, because your names are written in heaven.”; instead of praising and being in awe of the physical realm. God still works the way He knows He must, to accomplish His purpose through His people today, and His people get to enjoy their journeys knowing by their relationship with Him they will be led and equipped as He knows they must be to accomplish His purpose for their lives.
One of the recollections was Peter praying and being shown through a vision that he should not call what God cleanses unclean; then some people from a non-Jewish leader came to the door asking Peter to go with them because the leader had instructions from God telling him to do so. Peter goes with them, and they who heard received the Holy Ghost. This was the first-time non-Jewish people had received the Holy Ghost, and it was astonishing to the Jews. The Bible says many times, “First to the Jews then to the Gentiles” and this is how God poured out His Spirit into people.
The examples in this blog are only a limited sample of the deepening relational revelation described through The Acts of The Apostles which display God’s leading and guiding His people through the Holy Ghost which He places in them.
The intent of the blog is to demonstrate the difference in the revelation that God gives to His people as they intently follow Him and focus on what He has told them through their individual lives and the revelation they’ve received through the Holy Spirit and His Holy Bible.
