Jim Stanley Understanding the Book of Acts

Good morning, everyone. Jim Staley here, Passion for Truth Ministries, and welcome to today's broadcast. Wherever you may be found, from sea to shining sea, or over the seas, or whenever you might be found, whether you're watching this live or you're watching this after the fact, or even years later, we are grateful that you've taken the time to spend with us this morning. And this morning is going to be a beautiful morning. Actually, it may not be morning when you watch this, but it's morning for me. And so praise God, we're going to be going through the book of Acts today. We're going to talk about everything that has to do with the book of Acts. And we might even just go phrase by phrase, word by word, because ladies and gentlemen, this is the foundation of your faith is the book of Acts. I know for many of you that are out there that are Messianics, tens of thousands of you that are out there watching this, that believe that the front of the book, the Torah is the foundation of your faith. I beg to differ. Without the book of Acts, the foundation of the beginning of the ecclesia of the disciples teaching us exactly what the front of the book looks like in real time, we don't even have a foundation to build this house. And so be prepared, put your seatbelts on my friends. We're going to go back and look at this again, not from the current Western Roman perspective of the Christian church that's here today. But we're going to go all the way back and we're going to look at it from the original Hebrew, from the original Jewish perspective, because that's just who these guys were back then. These were Jewish people. These were Jews and they got saved. They introduced the Holy Spirit. Jesus Christ was a totally different concept back then than it is today. They called him Yeshua in the original tongue. We're going to talk all about it, my friends, right after this. All right, my friends, welcome back. I'm Jim Staley, Passion for Truth Ministries, and it is so good to see all of you out there from Minnesota to Texas, my friends from everywhere, all across the globe, from Pakistan to Tennessee. We're glad that you are here with us. This is a channel that is God-breathed and put together to go back and do Bible things in Bible ways. to call Bible things by Bible names and to begin the process of returning back to the original covenant. My friends, that's exactly what we want to do here. We want to learn what does it mean to follow God outside of man-made tradition and doctrine, outside of what traditional creeds within denominationalism says, what does it mean to actually follow the Creator? If that's you and you want to go back and look at the Bible from its original perspective. then this channel is for you. 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Tabernacles is the seventh of the prophetic feast days of the Lord on God's calendar. that was lost centuries ago when the Roman church got rid of it and replaced it with their own Catholic calendar, which most of Christianity follows today. But going back and doing Bible things in Bible ways, this was actually the feast that Jesus, Yeshua, was born at. This is the marriage supper of the Lamb coming up to a theater near you, and this is where 800 people are going to be celebrating in southern Missouri. Go check it out. Make sure you register. There is a lot going on here. If you need to make payments, by the way, we just added this. If you can't afford it all at one time and you want to make sure that you get registered, then go ahead and send an email to payments at passionfortruth.com and they will automatically, someone, one of our admins, Carrie, will get back with you, set up a payment plan so that you can get set up with the Feast of Tabernacles. Okay, we want you to be there. This is going to be an absolutely amazing event. We have... already well over 300 people registered and we've still got months to go. So that's going to be exciting and we will see you there. So make sure you get checked out on that. All right. I feel like there was supposed to be another announcement before we get going. So I'll take a quick drink of water. Maybe the Holy Spirit will tell me. Or, maybe not. Alright, my friends, let's begin. Let's go through the book of Acts and let's see what the Holy Spirit has to say. And so if you have your Bibles, turn with me to Acts chapter 1. And again, I want to give you a quick overview. The reason and the purpose why we're going through the book of Acts today is to unpack what happened after the death, burial, and resurrection of Christ. What happened with the early church? What did the disciples do? What did it all look like in real time? Because we've been told that at the cross, there really is no more Jewishness. It's completely like a Christian church got started in Acts chapter 2. And I'm not saying that the church of Christ didn't get off. It's finally grown some wings. But the congregation of Israel started way back at the time of Moses. It grew. It flubbed up all the way into the gospel arena when the Messiah showed up. And all the Messiah did was he paid for the sin of Israel all the way back to Adam, quite frankly. Domino effect totally opened up the door for spirit and truth to come together, of which the Pharisee and the Sadducees at the time refused to allow to happen. The payment for sin was made and then... And on Shavuot, the Holy Spirit, as we're going to find out here in a minute, came down and reinstituted what was already there. Okay? So this is not a beginning of something brand new. This was always the intent from Mount Sinai was to infuse the Spirit into the congregation of God. The problem is that the people at the base of Mount Sinai said, hey, Moses, are you going up there and here? from God. The thunder and the lightning is just too much for us to handle. And literally because of the golden calf incident, all of the priesthood, which was originally supposed to go to all 12 tribes of Israel, was stripped from all of them. And the only ones that received it was Levi. So the priesthood went to Levi because they were the only ones, when Moses drew a line in the sand, decided to come over to this side, to the side where Moses was standing. God blessed them with the priesthood. stripped the rest of the tribes. The Holy Spirit was refused at that moment, so they only received the truth 1,400 years later, virtually on the same day, definitely during the same time period. The Feast of Shavuot happens again, just like it did on Mount Sinai, where the commandments were given. But this time, the Holy Spirit is going to be given, and he is going to make a redo, a reset, where... The entire congregation of Israel is going to be inaugurated and anointed as priests under a new priesthood, the Malkit Zedek priesthood, which is simply two Hebrew words put together. Malki, which is Malik, which is king, and Tzadik, which is righteous. The king of righteousness is in town, ladies and gentlemen, and that's the way it was always supposed to be. The priesthood in the earthly realm, what we see in the entire... Tanakh, Old Testament, is a pattern of the priesthood that we see in the heavenly realm. Moses was told to build a tabernacle based on what he saw when he was on the mountain. So this tells us that there is a pattern, there is a temple, there is an entire temple system in heaven. Now, we don't want to talk about that because we want to look at mansions and we want to look at, you know, in-ground swimming pools and the clouds and so on and so forth. But I'm telling you, what's coming down is a temple. That's what he saw. And so if there is a temple, there's a temple system. And that temple system is the Melchizedek temple system. This is the Melchizedek temple system that's higher than the Levitical system. And so when the Messiah comes back, there's going to be a reinstitution. of the temple system, but it's going to be run over, arching by the Melchizedek system. Melchizedek, Yeshua is the high priest. Now there's a debate amongst my friends about the Levites and the sons of Zadok and the priest system on earth being reinstituted again. That very well may be, but I'm here to tell you there is a higher high priest and there is a higher priesthood. And so the Levites will be lower on the totem pole than... every single one of us that are in Messiah because in Messiah, you are lifted up into the Melchizedek priesthood, okay? Now, why is that so important? Because it's the whole setup. It's my own personal prologue to help teach you and educate you that before you walk into the book of Acts, you need to understand the whole temple system in a nutshell of what the transition is about to be. So when you walk into Acts chapter 1, you are already in the transition. The new priesthood is about to be inaugurated in chapter 2. You're going to see some extraordinary things that likely you've never put together before. Maybe you have, maybe you haven't. I hope if you're first time here, this will deepen your walk with God. And by the way, short commercial break about this series. I'm beginning this series and I'm going to go through the entire book of Acts. On the back end, I'm working on what will likely be, in my opinion, the biggest teaching I've ever done, ever. Identity crisis, truth or tradition. I believe what's coming in a couple of months that the Lord's put on my heart is going to be a game changer for many of you. So that's coming. In the meantime, we're going to do this series on the book of Acts. And by the time you're done, okay, I'm going to do this to where it's less graphics, not a whole lot of things flying around in your face. All right, because I want to, I really want to filter out those that really don't want to grow. They want to be entertained. And I'm not saying graphics are bad. I love graphics. That's why we do them here. But I want to disciple those of you that really want to learn the depth of your word. I want to disciple you. And that's going to take some time, and it's going to take some one-on-one, and it's going to take some face time and some word time. So that's what we're going to do. All right, so as we walk into the scriptures here, so In the book of Acts, again, we're in transition. The temple is still standing in Jerusalem. This is around, this is the covers, the book of Acts covers 30 years approximately after the death, burial, and resurrection of Christ. So, all the way from 30 AD to approximately 60, 65 AD, that's the time period here. So, we got about 30 years that this is going to cover. This first 30 years is critical because 10 years after that, around 70 AD. the temple is going to be destroyed. So right now we have two temples standing in the book of Acts. It's absolutely amazing because if we see the prophetic implications, which I'm going to unpack for you over time here, but they have the physical temple that's standing, and then there is a new temple that's going to be erected in Acts chapter 2 that's already started in the Gospels the moment that he rose from the dead. And these two temples are going to clash, ladies and gentlemen. That's what happened when Jesus was walking this earth. Why they hated him so much is that he was the Malkit Zedek high priest temple in the flesh. And it was in direct contrast to the temple that existed in the system that had been corrupted. Now, there was nothing wrong with the temple. There was nothing wrong with the temple system. God created it. It was supposed to be an incredible doorway, an elevator for God's people to transfer to a higher level. But it got corrupted. So Jesus came, Yeshua came to show the corruption. And look, anytime that you show corruption, you're going to be ticking off one whole group of people. Just look in the United States at politics today. When one man wants to show corruption, there's a whole other group that hates him. And so corruption... Corruption always seems to breed from the top down and that's why Jesus went right to the top. If we can kill the corruption of the top, we will heal the root all the way down. All right, let's begin. All of that was kind of my own introduction. Let's begin. Acts chapter 1. Let's pull it up. Let you walk through it with me. All right. Some of this I'm going to read word for word. Some of this I'm not. The former account I made, O Theophilus, of all that Jesus began both to do and teach, until the day in which he was taken up, after through the Holy Spirit had given commandments to the apostles which he had chosen, to whom he also presented himself. alive after his suffering by many infallible proofs being seen by them during 40 days and speaking of the things pertaining to the kingdom of God. So here we go. He's setting this up coming right out of the book of Luke. Luke is the author of Acts. Okay. So right after Matthew, Mark, Luke and John comes the book of Acts and he's setting this up to say, look, Jesus did all these unbelievable things. He appeared to us for 40 days. And then he tells the disciples, wait and tarry in Jerusalem because something unbelievable is about to happen. And we're going to find that out here in just a minute. Let's keep scrolling down. We get to this in verse 4. And being assembled together with them, he commanded them not to depart from Jerusalem, but to wait for the promise of the Father, which he said, you have heard from me. For John truly baptized with water, but you shall be baptized with the Holy Spirit not many days from now. All right. I got to talk about this for just a minute because. This is the problem, my friends, is because we have these manuscripts in Greek, there is an assumption, unfortunately, that there is Greek culture. Even the word baptized, okay, this was not the word that was in the original Hebrew. So as a Hebrew guy and a guy that saturates myself, baptismo, myself, I'll explain that word in just a minute, so hold on. In the original culture... It's super important to know that if you're new to this channel, all right, the Bible was written in Hebrew and Aramaic and there are some Latin phrases in here, but the Greek manuscripts that we have are really only there because by the time you get early on in the early centuries and Israel, Jerusalem was ransacked both in 70 and 135, they burned everything that looked Hebrew. So the only thing left was Greek manuscripts, which is why virtually all of the New Testament that we do have is found in Greek, although there are now new discoveries of a Hebrew Matthew and other books that they're finding now, fragments in Hebrew. The reason why I'm bringing this up is because this is a Jewish culture, so you cannot take the word baptism and infuse our 21st century perspective. Because if I say baptized, what do you think of? You think of a pastor, in the water or in a tub, holding the person, holding their nose and dipping them down. Okay. That is not a biblical or a Hebrew baptism at all. That's not how they did it. As a matter of fact, I have had people upset with me at my own events when I baptize people because I don't hold them and hold their nose and pull them down and bring them back up and create like the traditional. experience that people are looking for. What I'm trying to do is create an authentic, real experience of how John the Baptist would have done it. So how would he have done it? Well, very simply, he would have never even likely got in the water. He would have stood on the banks of the Nile River, of the Jordan River, and his job was to witness the baptism. Because in Hebrew culture, the word baptismo in the Greek here comes from the word mikvah, which is the immersion bath. It's the ritual immersion bath of the Jewish people that they had for thousands of years for Israel, since God gave it to them. And it was used for all kinds of different things. Okay. And I'm not going to go into all that right now because I'm going to have a full teaching at the Feast of Tabernacles on baptism and the original power of water and why God chose water. It's going to be fascinating and illuminating. teaching. So I encourage you to be there to hear it. But for now, what's important for you to know is that John the Baptist never touched a soul. He couldn't do it. It's against the Hebrew culture. And the reason why is because wherever you would be touching that individual, the water would not be touching. And so they believed that the water is representative of the Word of God. being rebirthed, coming through the birth canal, and nobody can touch you in that process. It is your decision. It's your responsibility. You must immerse yourself in the Word of God. The only thing that John is doing is witnessing it. He's testing. identifying that you know what you're doing. He's making sure that you are completely in alignment with the Word of God, and he's making sure every single hair on your head is saturated in the Word of God. You don't go all the way down. John says, hey, you need to do it again. You didn't go all the way down because it's symbolic and it's prophetic, okay? So, it's very, very powerful imagery, which is why they did not touch someone when they were being baptized. Secondly, The word baptismal, I do love this word in the Greek, by the way, even though I'm a major Hebrew fan, because there's two Greek words for baptism. One is bapto, which means to dip, and the other is baptismal, which is the word being used here. Now, what does baptismal mean? It means to pickle. There's actually a first century extra biblical writer that uses this word. in the context of taking a cucumber and putting it into vinegar, which is how you make a pickle. So we are not supposed to be cucumbers that just get dipped into water and out comes a powerful, you know, disciple for God. No, we are supposed to be, can I just say, drowned, okay? You'd be put in the pickle jar and you put the cap on it as fast as you can so it doesn't just pop right back out and float. And it sits there in this vinegar solution that's sour until it penetrates that hard skin. And it penetrates and over time, the pickling or the drowning of this cucumber, aka Israelite, aka regular person that wants to know God, decides to get in the water with God and they don't get out. I'm telling you, ladies and gentlemen, you give it enough time and they get... The entire insides of that person get totally transformed. They may look like a cucumber on the outside, but they're totally transformed on the inside. They're not even the same. As a matter of fact, every one of my kids, when they got, I had six daughters, when they get to a certain point where they learn that a pickle comes from a cucumber, it is as if they just like learned that the sun. is being held up by a string or something. Like they're completely blown out of their mind. Wait a minute, that's a cucumber? Because the contrast is so great. My friends, this is the concept starting right off the bat. As he says, John baptized with water. The reason why I went through all of that history is to teach you this. We've got to learn that the beginning of your... walk with God is the fact that you choose to get submerged with him and his word. When you saturate yourself with the word of God, when you saturate yourself, I'm not talking about going to church on Sunday. That's bapto. That's dipping. Okay. That's dip, dip. Nobody changes in that concept, in that protocol, in that lifestyle. But in a biblical lifestyle, he starts off the entire book of Acts. We're not even, we're in the fifth verse. And he says, John baptized with water, but you will be baptized in the Holy Spirit. What does that mean? That means that they're taking the same ritual immersion bath language of being submerged and drowned in the water of the word, okay? Because John baptized for forgiveness of sins. People that wanted to turn back to God. John's like, look, here's how you do it. Come over here. We're going to start it with this process. He's being. dipped in the word of God. It was all symbolic. It was all prophetic. And he said, but God's going to dip you in the Holy Spirit. When the Holy Spirit comes upon you, it's going to transform you. It's what goes on the inside. Okay. So while John's baptizing with the prophetic of real physical water, what Christ is going to do, what God is going to do is he's going to send the vinegar. You see the vinegar, listen, this is for someone out there, the vinegar. The sourness, okay, of that friction between the flesh and the spirit, that's what transforms you. It's the Holy Spirit, okay? How many people do you know that know the Word of God left and right, upside and down? There's so many people that I know, and I call them terrorists. They're the Bible terrorists out there, right? Even Torah terrorists out there, that they think they know the Word of God, but all they're doing is they're going into the Word of God with a wetsuit on. They're not allowing the Word of God by the Holy Spirit to go inside of them and transform them. And that is by faith only. It is not something that you can see. It's something that happens because of a great desire to be infused by the Holy Spirit. If you want to be infused by the Holy Spirit right now, you want more of the Holy Spirit, I encourage you right now in the comments say, I want more of the Holy Spirit. Holy Spirit, baptize me. You... Put your prayer right now in the comment section because I'm telling you everything of the foundation of your faith is dependent on this. It's not dependent on the Word of God only. The Pharisees had the Word of God. The Sadducees had the Word of God. There's atheists that I know that know more of the Word of God than most Christians. It's the Holy Spirit that absolutely will transform you and give you the power. How can somebody have so much Bible knowledge but they've never healed a single person. How is that possible? How is it possible to not have the power of God, but know the word of God? I'm telling you, it's because they got a wetsuit on. It's time we get rid of our wetsuit. Write in the comments, I'm getting rid of my wetsuit. All right, here we go. Back to the word of God, which we love so much. Verse 6, therefore, when they had come together, they asked him, saying, Lord, will you at this time restore the kingdom of Israel? And he said to them, it is not for you to know times or seasons, which the Father has put in his own authority. But you shall receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you, and you shall be witnesses to me in Jerusalem, Judea, Samaria, and to the ends of the earth. Guys, listen to what I'm about to say. It's going to be crazy controversial. It's going to hurt some feelings, but I need to say it because the Word of God says it. It's right here. I'm going to pull it back up because someone's going to accuse me, right? And I'm even going to highlight it, okay? And everybody wants to know when the second coming of Christ is. Okay? Everybody, including me, I'd like to know. It'd be a lot easier to plan my calendar and cancel a few appointments if I knew he was coming back next Tuesday. Okay? But here's the point. The disciples themselves wanted to know, hey, is this going to be the time? And he says this right here. Look carefully. It is not for you to know. the times or the seasons which the Father has put in His own authority. Now, is He saying that you shouldn't study the Word of God, that you shouldn't study end times eschatology? Of course we should. It's important that we at least know as much as we possibly can know. But He's telling you, you're not going to know. He says, I don't even know. The Father is the only one that knows, and it's not for you to know. He says, what you should know. is this. Here's your focus. You shall receive power when the Holy Spirit comes upon you and you shall be. That is not a past tense, ladies and gentlemen. That's a future tense. It's a now tense. It's an absolutely intense statement where Holy Spirit says, God says, you will have the power and you need to be witnesses. So quit focusing on the clouds and keeping your head up in the air and looking for the Messiah. Your head needs to be in the book and in your room. and your spirit needs to be illuminated so that you can recognize by faith that the umbilical cord that's attached to you is way bigger in potential than it currently is in your life. And Judea and Samaria and the ends of the earth are waiting for you. There are people everywhere that are waiting to hear the Word of God. Just a few weeks ago, I had a contractor that came to my house, and he didn't believe in God, had satanic tattoos all over his arms. He got saved. Two and a half hours later, we are praying together. And a couple of weeks later, he gave his life to Christ. This is, and hopefully you'll get to meet him on a future broadcast because his testimony is extraordinary. And he's on fire for God. Ladies and gentlemen, the point of saying that is this. There's people everywhere that are hungry. They're dying. They're waiting for us to be a witness. So let me connect this to John the Baptist. John the Baptist was not... baptizing people. They called it baptizing people, but what he was doing was he was being a witness to an event that had already happened in their heart. Let me ask you a question. Just a few verses later, it says the same thing. Power of the Holy Spirit comes upon you. You're to be a witness. What does that mean? You're supposed to be assisting people to get in the river because the power of God is in the river. The enemy cannot go any further. The lions, the tigers, the bears, the snakes, they stop at the edge of the river. It's the priests that go into the river. This is the Ark of the Covenant. And the moment they get to the middle of the river, the power of God shows up and the river begins to part. If you don't know that story, that comes out of Exodus when they're coming out of Exodus, out of Egypt. And 40 years later, they cross into the promised land. God says, look, I'm not opening the river this time. You're going to get in there and do some divine assistance. I'm going to teach you how to do this. You're my apprentice. The first time Moses did it for you, you crossed through the Red Sea. The second time. you're getting in. And guess who he has to get in? The priest first. Priest, take the Ark of the Covenant, get in that muddy river and let the water, look, the water's probably going all over the Ark of the Covenant. They got to be nervous out of their mind. Nobody wants to lose their footing and go down in history as the guy that lost the Ark of the Covenant and starts floating down the river, right? So these guys went in there by faith and the power of God showed up. It's no different than right now. The priests back then were baptized in the Jordan River. God sent them into that river. They were mikved, immersed in the water, in that muddy water that was flowing water from God, and it dried up and they received the power. Somebody needs to hear this right now, I promise you, that if you want to receive the power of God, it's going to take you getting in the river and expressing your faith. And this is what Acts is all about. The power of the book of Acts is that these guys acted. They didn't think. They didn't pray. They didn't contemplate, wait for some sign. They flat out believed what they saw with their naked eyes and they acted on it. And the power of God literally dominoed around the world. It's absolutely extraordinary what we're going to learn through this book. Okay. All right, let's move on. You guys catching me so far out there? Are we good? Give me thumbs up. All right. Hopefully you're following along. Are we at about 30 minutes into this? All right. We're going, we got about 30 minutes left here. Let's see how far that we can go. All right. Then it says that when he had spoken these things in verse nine, let's go back to the scriptures. In verse nine, when they, he was taken up and a cloud received him out of their sight. While they looked steadfastly toward heaven, as he went up, behold, two men stood by them in white apparel. who also said, men of Galilee, why do you stand gazing into heaven? This same Jesus who was taken up from you into heaven will come in like manner as you saw him go into heaven. Now, why is this incredible? Okay, let me give you a little background, ladies and gentlemen. This is literally a picture of the original symbol of ancient Israel. This is the original flag of Israel. You ready for this? You may not see it right there in that text, okay? But a guy that and is immersed in the back of the front of the book, I should say. When I saw this, I was like, oh, this is Zechariah chapter 4. So let's go there. Here we go. Zechariah chapter 4, let's show you. And we'll go down to verse 11. This is a vision that Zechariah has. He says, then I answered and said to him, what are these two olive trees at the right of the lampstand and at its left? And I further answered and said to him, what are these two olive branches that drip into the receptacles of the two golden pipes from which the golden oil drains? Okay. So he's seen this vision of two olive trees. All right. Matter of fact, let me see if I can get a quick picture of this so that you can see exactly what I'm thinking of. Here we go. This is a good picture of this. So let's see if I can share this with you. All right. Now let me share my screen and maybe that'll help. Okay. So this is what Zachariah 4 is seeing. And this is compliments of the gospelarmor.com. It's just a random website, but this is the menorah, the lampstand. Okay. And two olive trees that are flanking both sides with golden pipes that are coming in from the olive trees. This is the original symbol of ancient Israel where... One olive tree represents the northern kingdom of Israel, the house of Israel, of the ten tribes. north and the other olive tree is representing the two tribes in the south the house of judah together they form ancient israel connected with christ christ is the menorah this is the seven spirits of god these are the seven churches of revelation this is the the seven lampstands okay this is incredible stuff that we're seeing here that the two houses that were so disconnected from Solomon when they split apart, are being held together and brought back as one olive tree in the Messiah. There's going to be truth coming in from Judah. There's going to be truth coming in from Ephraim. And together, they're going to be the light of Israel. So, this is what's going on when you get back to Acts. Let's go back to Acts. When you go back to Acts, what you're discovering is you have Moses on one side. Just so happens to be from the southern kingdom of Judah. And then you have Elijah on the other side at the transfiguration with Yeshua, Jesus, in the center. This is not accidental, ladies and gentlemen. They're showing Zechariah chapter 4. God wanted to show this is the vision. A representative from the southern kingdom and a representative from the northern kingdom are going to be my two witnesses. that I'm going to connect. What I'm about to do in the transfiguration is show you a picture of my purpose. I'm going to bring the house of Israel together with the southern kingdom again. I'm going to unite the tribes. They're going to be one in my hand, Ezekiel chapter 37, and I'm going to bring Ephesians 2 all together, right? The one new man is all about this. topic, if you don't know what I'm talking about, go watch Identity Crisis after this. It's a three hour tour for sure. It's a long teaching, but it's radical, will transform every theology you've ever had in the Bible, will be challenged and put in its rightful place when you understand this vision of Zechariah chapter four. That's what's happening over here in Acts chapter one. We're not even in Acts chapter two yet. And it just makes a lot more sense if you fully understand the Hebrew background of the Bible. of what we're looking at. Okay. All right. Let's continue and find out where we're at. And he's going to come in likewise, just like he went into heaven that day. All right. So now what happens is they go, they return from Jerusalem and they go to, they go back to the place where they needed to be. And they're waiting. It's 40 days has passed. They're waiting for the power to come on high. They're all there. These are all Jews. They're getting ready to celebrate what they've always celebrated their entire life. And it wasn't called Pentecost, ladies and gentlemen. That's a Greek term. These Hebrews would have never used that term. It would have been offensive to use a Greek term for God's holy day. And I believe in Christianity, this is partly what the enemy did to push us away from the Hebrew background and culture, what I call the Christian roots of our faith, the real roots of Christianity, our Hebrew. and not Greek, and keep us away from that. Because if the word would have been Shavuot, which is the Hebrew word for weeks, and that's what this feast day is, then we would have started looking at other Hebrew calendar feast days of the same term, the same name. But when it's Pentecost, everybody celebrates. You know, Pentecost is a good thing. The Holy Spirit came down. We don't even know there's six other holidays on God's calendar because we're not taught that, right? So, when we get to the upper room, now they're all ready. In verse 15, they choose another disciple because of Judas. Remember, Judas decided to be the guy out of the 12 that had to get greedy, had to get jealous. He got in his flesh. He started operating based on what he was thinking and what he was seeing. And ultimately, it led to death because the wages of sin is death. And sin, when it's fully conceived, James says, it leads us to death. And as a matter of fact, our family is watching the Chosen series, phenomenal series, highly recommend it. I don't agree with every single thing and how they depict it, but it's very accurate from a lot of different perspectives. And they do an amazing job in season four of showing what Judas and how he got to the place where he ended up denying the Messiah out of his zeal. Now, I just want to speak because I feel like in the spirit that someone needs to hear this. is that somebody out there right now, if not more, you're faced with a situation and you're not exactly sure how to handle it. You don't know exactly what it is, but it's creating, or the answer is, but it's creating a lot of stress in your life. I'm telling you, you've got a Judas on the inside of you. All the disciples in Christ are right there. We all live in every one of those moments. Sometimes we're the best friend of Christ, that's John. Sometimes we're that. bold and courageous Peter, but we also are kind of scared out of our mind and ready to deny Christ. And then we have this rebellious betrayal Judas that's right there. But the rebellious betrayal of Judas started with a good intention of wanting to do things his way. So I'm going to stop and let that pause, because if you're going to experience the power of God in your life, you can't do it your way. So whoever's facing a situation right now, and if it's you, it's me. Right now, put it in the comments. You know what God's speaking to you. If it's you, and you're trying to finagle and figure out things from your perspective and using your logic and your reason, you will end up hanging yourself like Judas, and your entrails will end up all over the ground, and they'll name a whole field after you called the field of blood. You don't want to go down in infamy as that guy. So here's how you do it. When you face a trial of many kinds and you don't know exactly what's going on, but stress is eating you alive, the way that you handle it is you don't handle it. You stop. You drop to your knees and you say, Father God, I give this to you. This is not my problem. This is yours. I was bought with a price. You remind yourself of the promises of God. I was bought with a price. I'm yours. How do you want to handle this, Father? How do you want to do this? I want to give you glory in my weakness. Your Word says that if where I am weak, you are strong. So, Father, I give you permission to be strong. So, God, I just pray right now for whoever is in the sound of my voice that's weak, you make them strong. Fall to your knees, be weak. It's the strongest place you could ever be is weak. So, if you feel weak, you're actually in a position of strength. The moment that you feel like you're in control, you're actually in a position of weakness. God's world is upside down from ours. It's actually right side up. Okay, let's get back to the text and let's continue. So, they pick Matthias through lots to replace Judas, and then we get all the way down to chapter 2, and this is where everything really takes off. So let's see how far we get through here in the next 20 minutes or so. When the day of Pentecost had fully come, which really is Shavuot, so I'm going to use Bible names the way that it originally would have been written. When the day of Shavuot had fully come, they were all with one accord in one place. And suddenly there came a sound from heaven as of a rushing mighty wind, and it filled the whole house where they were sitting. And there appeared to them divided tongues as a fire, as one sat upon each of them. They were all filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak with other tongues as the Spirit gave them utterance. My friends, there's so much in this two verses, three, four verses. I don't know if we'll have time to go through it all. I will go through just a little bit. Now, for those of you that are watching this commentary on the book of Acts for the very first time, you may not have heard any of my other teachings, then you may not be familiar with what I'm about to say. So, The reason why this is critical is because in ancient Israel, the tabernacle of Moses, the Holy Spirit showed up over it as well in the form of a pillar of fire, of what the scriptures call the pillar of fire. Now, the pillar of fire is not over the altar, okay, the brazen altar out in the courtyard. It's not over the menorah or the table of showbread in the holy place. It is only... over the holy of holies over the ark of the covenant which is the throne of god that encased the tabernacle uh the main tabernacle element which was the cherubim that were setting up the mercy seat for god to sit and throne himself as king of israel this is the holy of holies this is the actual holy spirit presence of god all right we talk about acts chapter two Acts chapter 2 started in the tabernacle of the wilderness with the Holy Spirit being shown over with a fire. One giant tongue, if you will. And the reason why it says tongue in Hebrew, that would have been the letter sheen. The Hebrew letter sheen literally looks like a tongue, and it was on fire. Why did they say dividing tongue? The letter sheen literally means El Shaddai. It's the all-consuming fire of God that was over the tabernacle. For miles away, they said, there's the whole there's god the god of israel's with us i can see his fire that's where the temple was in acts chapter 2 this becomes the competitive temple right here so there's a temple standing jerusalem a few yards from where they're at and now the holy spirit comes in and the fire of god the el shaddai the sheen okay the letter sheen over the top of each of the individuals that are in that upper room is designating, this is the new temple. This is the Holy Spirit that is now abiding inside the Holy of Holies. So God is saying, this is where my tabernacle is going to be from now on. This is where I'm going to abide. This is the original intent from day one with Adam, was the Holy Spirit, God himself was going to abide and walk with man side by side. So now, 4,000 years later, after they gave it up, at Mount Sinai and said, Mo, you go up there. We don't want to deal with all this craziness. This is scary. You be the intermediator for us. They gave up that right, and the Holy Spirit, 1400 years later, virtually on the same day, finishes the work and gives them the Holy Spirit. Now, the tabernacle of God is split. So now the enemy can't come in and just destroy the temple of God through some foreign government because it's not a building anymore. The temple of God is split. It resides within men. And if you kill one, it's like a grain of wheat. It will sprout up a hundred more. So the enemy frothing at the mouth and can't figure out how to get rid of this spirit of God thing. He looked at Jesus and he said, I got to kill him. He's the temple from up above. I have to kill him. I have to kill him. I have to kill him. You have no idea that he was the original wheat seed. You kill that temple. It will simply divide into a a never-ending amount of temples that he'll never be able to track down. Praise God. Amen for that. So, the dividing tongues of fire are sitting on top of the disciples and they begin to speak in other languages. This is powerful, it's extraordinary, and it's real. I speak in tongues and a lot of people that I know that are spirit-filled speak in tongues. It's very real. I don't understand why there are people out there that don't believe in it. If you don't believe in it... you probably don't speak in it and you probably never heard anybody speak in tongues in a correct way to where it was interpreted properly. I have spoken in tongues and have people heard it in other languages. I've done it on the air in my speaking in tongues teaching, which we'll put a link in the description. Maybe one of my admins will do that as we speak. Take that link, put that for them in the description of the two teachings that I have on the speaking in tongues. It's powerful. And at the very end... The Holy Spirit gave me utterance to speak in tongues, and we had people write in from other countries saying they heard me in Spanish, they heard me in Polish. Holy Spirit does what Holy Spirit wants to do. It's real. There is a heavenly language. It's powerful. Has it been abused in the church today? For sure. Anything that's authentic and real, the enemy wants to fabricate and mock, so you stay away from it. The real thing almost always will be... have its predecessor or its companion in the fabricated. The enemy doesn't fabricate something that is not threatened him. If it threatens him, he fabricates it. That's just how it works. That's how every good politician and someone that's in a war is going to operate. They're going to fabricate in order to draw attention away from what is real. Amen. All right. So, this is how Acts chapter 2 begins. is the new temple of God is now instituted, inaugurated, and the power is beginning to flow through those who were there. They chose to believe in the Word of God to celebrate the Feast of Shavuot. Now look, the majority of Christianity does not even believe in celebrating Pentecost or Shavuot by name. They're starting to, starting to learn more about it for sure, maybe some of you. But imagine if the disciples took the position of early Christianity or late Christianity today and said, I don't believe we have to keep this. No, we're going to celebrate Easter. We're going to celebrate this. We're going to celebrate that. And they miss the power of God coming in those windows. He chose Shavuot for a reason. Ladies and gentlemen, this is prophetic. This is not just an accident or a coincidence. He chose this day because it's prophetic. to Mount Sinai when the commandments were given, the truth was given, and he wanted to bring about a true worshiper that would worship in spirit and in truth. And up until this point, they had been worshiping in truth and not even good truth because it got so polluted by the traditions and doctrine of men. But he wanted to usher in the Spirit, but he couldn't do it until they qualified for the Spirit, and they didn't qualify because they were condemned to death by the very law that they broke, and they needed a Savior to pay for their sin. So, he had to come, cloak himself in humanity, humble himself as a form of a human being, died and paid for their sin. Put everyone under the umbrella of that forgiveness, which then qualified them in Christ to receive what they never could receive before. Somebody say amen. Hallelujah. We have access through the blood of Christ. Okay. So then here's the crowd's response. I know I'm talking fast, but you can go back and rewatch it. We have a lot to cover here. All right. So now there's people. They're Jews from every nation under heaven. And when the sound occurred, the multitude came together, were confused because everyone heard them speak in his own language. Guys, this is something really important. These are not Gentiles. Every tribe and tongue are coming from every nation because they're Jewish people. These are Israelites coming in to celebrate the feast of God because it's commanded in the Torah to do so. It's part of God's holy calendar, prophetic calendar. They're there to celebrate. None of them are expecting the fact that these disciples are now speaking in language, and it says that they heard them in their own language. So they're not potentially speaking another language. They heard them in their language, just like when I spoke in tongues multiple times over live broadcast. I was not speaking in Spanish and Polish simultaneously. I'm not that good. That would be pretty incredible. No one can speak two languages simultaneously. But it was a heavenly language, and they heard it in their language. And that's how cool God is. He can take one language, broadcast it, and change it in the ears of the hearer. And that's what happened in the first century. They were all amazed. Of course they would be. Why are they amazed? They've never even seen these disciples before. If they're speaking their own language, they would not be amazed. They're amazed because they know they're not speaking their language, but they heard it in their language. That's why they're amazed. So all the people out there say, oh no, they were just speaking a different language. No, they weren't. Nobody's going to be amazed to hear somebody, millions of pilgrims coming into Jerusalem and hearing somebody in your own language. That's like going to Spain from America And I'm not going to be amazed if I hear somebody speaking English. But if I hear somebody speaking a Babel language, and I know they're speaking some crazy language, but I'm hearing it in English, I'm going to freak out. If I hear somebody speaking Spanish, and I know they're speaking Spanish, and all of a sudden I hear it in English, I'm going to be amazed, and that person's got my attention. And that was the whole entire point, was God wanted to get everyone's attention. He knew exactly how to do it. I'm telling you, it wasn't because they were speaking their languages. That's not going to get anybody's attention. But you start speaking a crazy language and everybody starts hearing it in their own. That's pretty incredible. When one guy is broadcasting in one language and seven people around him are hearing seven different languages, you've got everybody's attention, ladies and gentlemen. And that sets the stage for one of the most incredible services and altar calls in History. Let's keep reading. So there's Cretans. There's all kinds of people that are there from all over the place. Some people are mocking, saying that they are all full of new wine. Why are they mocking? Again, there's whole groups of people that believe that tongues was just another language. No! If it was another language, they wouldn't be mocking. They would say, oh, they're bilingual, okay? No, they're mocking because they don't understand it. This is why when you get to Revelation... it says, to him who has ears to hear. So some of you out right now maybe don't have ears to hear what I'm saying right now. But those that by faith have the humility to say, I'm open to what Pastor Jim is saying, or I'm open to the Word of God, or I'm open to what God is doing. I know that I'm not all that. I know I might be wrong. When you open the door of 1% chance of being wrong, that's humility. Humility is the grounds for spiritual growth. So when you open up the door to conversation and to being open to new ideas, then you hear it in your own language. But if you don't open the door of humility, you will be like this guy right here mocking, oh, they're full of new wine. Pastor Jim's crazy. Or this guy doesn't know what he's talking about. That kind of arrogance reduces the... power of the Holy Spirit for you to hear something in your language. Ladies and gentlemen, if Balaam could hear a donkey in the donkey's language, how is it that we can say God is limited that He can't speak in a foreign heavenly tongue and cause people to hear it in their language? Balaam heard the donkey's noise in his Hebrew tongue. That's incredible. Oh my goodness. All right, here we go. Let's get back to the text here because I'll just start preaching and never end. Peter, standing up with the eleven, raised his voice. Men of Judea, all who dwell in Jerusalem, let this be known to you and heed my words. These men aren't drunk, as you suppose, since it's only the third hour of the day. It's 9 a.m., guys. They're not drunk. Okay, you'd have to be a serious alcoholic in the first century to be drunk by 9 a.m. But this is what the prophet spoke. And then he gives this incredible thing. He says, my spirit will be poured out on all flesh. Your sons and daughters shall prophesy. Your young men will see visions and your old men shall dream dreams. I love this verse. You know why? Because I'm turning 50 on August 31st of this year and I'm still seeing visions. So I'm taking that as I'm still a young man. So I'm a young man. I'm seeing visions. God's given me visions. So I still fit into that category. When I start only having dreams, yeah, that's probably when that transition will happen. He goes on to talk about how he's going to pour out his spirit in those days, and they will prophesy. Guys, the reason why this is so important that I'm trying to convey, why I'm going through the book of Acts, is the Holy Spirit is pressed upon me. Honestly, through my daughter, Sierra, who inspired me to do this series, is that we're missing out on the power of God in this whole Bible movement. And if you want to see the power of God in your life, you need to operate the way the disciples did, and that's what we're going to do. We're going to follow them and find out what they did, what they thought, what they believed, how they talked, how they operated, what their faith looked like, what did their daily activities look like. One. They're celebrating the Feast of Shavuot. Two, they're walking in extraordinary power. The Holy Spirit came upon them. They were speaking in other tongues, and they started to prophesy. So that tells me that prophecy is a foundational, powerful tool that the Holy Spirit wants to use in the church today. It's not just teaching. It's not just, you know, an exhortation of the word of God. It's not great oratory. It's not persuasive speech, all of those things that are good. But Paul says, I didn't want to come to you in persuasive speech. I didn't come to you in persuasive speech only. I came in the demonstration of the power of the living God. You want to follow a ministry? You want to follow a teacher? Okay, that's great. That's fine. You want to learn something, but is there power there that's transformative? Because if you're not getting... The power of God, they're enough to transform on the inside. If the Holy Spirit doesn't hit you right in the middle of the chest, then you're just being dipped in the water and it doesn't stick. And if it does stick and you get out and you're a little bit wet, and a few minutes later you're dry. You're dry and you go back to the water, you dive in again, you get out, and you're like, oh, the power of God is so great. But you dry off very quickly. But if you stay in the water and the Holy Spirit is operating in your life, it will transform you and the inside of that cucumber becomes wet, moist. It becomes a sponge that has been totally saturated. And when you get out of the water and you get into the world and daily life, you're fed from the inside. Do you hear what I'm saying? The blood and the fire and the vapor and the smoke, it's the signs in the earth. He shows the wonders and you... are the sign in the earth. My friends, you are the pillar of fire in the earth. You are the representative of the most high God that's supposed to be immersed and baptized and drowned in the word of God that people don't even see you. They don't even recognize you. I met a pastor. Her name was Pastor Barb down at a Shavuot conference in Arkansas that I spoke at. I was so blown away by her. anointing and gift of preaching. And she gave this incredible testimony about how she came out of drugs and full-on alcoholic and suicide and mom in prison and being beat by her father, all these horrible things. And when she got saved, she would go to these family reunions when she was younger and it was just a big drunk fest. The year that she got saved, radically saved, she went back to one of her, I think it was Louisiana, family reunions and people were... introducing themselves to her because they never even recognized her. She had turned into a pickle. She was a cucumber. That was one of them that they recognized. But when she came back after being fully drowned in the spirit of the living God, she was unrecognizable. This is how we're supposed to be. It takes a long time to pickle, but I'm telling you, you need to ask for the Holy Spirit to pickle you. You need to stay in the Word of God. You need to be serious and have intentionality. Write in the comments right now, I'm going to be intentional in my walk with God. When are you going to wake up early? When are you going to go to bed late? When are you going to have your quiet time? How are you pickling yourself? What are the amazing, the spice, and like sweet, and whatever? I'm telling you, God wants to ask you right now, what is in your pickle jar? What spices are in there? What are you feeding yourself with the music that you listen to, with the movies that you watch, with the people that you're around? Those are all spices in your life. Some of you need to audit your life right now. Audit your pickle jar. There you go. There's a meme for Facebook. Audit your pickle jar. What's in your pickle jar? Because what's in there is absolutely what's marinating into your soul. that will eventually come out and radically transform your life. All right, let's finish up here. When we get down, Peter gives this unbelievable message. And in verse 38, it says this, and we'll close with this. Then Peter said to them, Repent and let every one of you be baptized in the name of Yeshua for the remission of sins, and you shall receive the gift of the Holy Spirit, for the promise is to you, here it is, and to your children and to all who are far off. as many as the Lord our God will call. Now, I had a plan to go into all of this. I don't have time today, but we will next week. I'm going to show you what's actually being talked about right here is not what you think. When he says, for the promise is to you and to your children and to all who are far off, that phrase far off is a Hebrew term that they all knew what it meant. It was prophetic. It was in all the prophets. It was incredibly obvious. to the first century Jew when you said the people that are far off, they knew exactly who you were talking about. Today, in first century, 21st century Christianity, we have no clue because we don't read and study what I call the front of the book to know where these phrases pop out, what these Jewish writers are talking about. So next week, we're going to talk about what this far off phrase means. It's going to transform the way that you see the book of Acts. the way you see the whole entire New Testament, and so on and so forth. So, last but not least, as you move down to verse 42, it says, they not only got saved, they received the word, were baptized, and that day about 3,000 souls were added to them. If you know your Bibles right, on the first Shavuot, back at Mount Sinai, 3,000 people died. So, around the time of Shavuot, 3,000 people died. giving you the commandments, right? And now the Holy Spirit is being given. The truth and the Spirit are coming together. 3,000 people get saved. This is a massive reset button, ladies and gentlemen. This is a redo for the people of God. A new congregation is being started from the original congregation. New life is being breathed into Adam. The bones of Joseph are coming together, and exciting things are about to happen. And he ends it by saying, and they continued steadfastly in the apostles' doctrine. in fellowship, in the breaking of bread, and in prayers, and fear came on every soul. My friends, what we're going to do in this broadcast is we're going to find out exactly what the apostles' doctrine was. What is the apostles' doctrine? What is the power of the early first century church? What is the breaking of bread? And it says, and in prayers. Well, what is prayers? What does that mean? when he says that breaking of bread and prayers, we're going to dive into all of this, my friends, as we get into the rest of the book of Acts. In the meantime, I want to encourage you, please take note of this teaching, pass it along to those that are around you, to those that need to hear this message. We're going to go verse by verse, ladies and gentlemen, it looks like that's what the Holy Spirit wants to do through the entire book of Acts. We're going to learn. because it's going to go all over the New Testament, all the way back to the front of the book. We're going to pull it all together. We're going to find out what they believed, how they operated, what did they do every single day. And then we're going to be challenged by the Holy Spirit to do those things and let the Holy Spirit begin the process of changing our life. All right. I am so grateful to be a part of your life. Would you please hit subscribe and send this message. Pass this along to your friends. Put this on your Facebook page. And if you so desire and the Holy Spirit moves you, would you consider partnering with us financially and helping us get this into multiple languages around the world? Go to passionfortruth.com right now. Don't be just a here. Be a doer. Be a part of this. It's exciting. You get to be in full-time ministry with me when you partner with us. We've got lots of people. We just brought in two more people. to be on our staff and we need your help to do this. So if you believe in this ministry, please partner with us like the Israelites did originally to get this message out there and we'll make a difference together. All right. In the meantime, my friends, it's exciting to be a part of your life. I hope you have an absolutely amazing day. Don't forget to go check out our website at passionfortruth.com. And I'm Jim Staley with Passion for Truth Ministries. Shabbat Shalom. We'll see you in the next video.

And this morning is going to be a beautiful morning. Actually, it may not be morning when you watch this, but it's morning for me. And so praise God, we're going to be going through the book of Acts today.

We're going to talk about everything that has to do with the book of Acts. And we might even just go phrase by phrase, word by word, because ladies and gentlemen, this is the foundation of your faith is the book of Acts. I know for many of you that are out there that are Messianics, tens of thousands of you that are out there watching this, that believe that the front of the book, the Torah is the foundation of your faith. I beg to differ. Without the book of Acts, the foundation of the beginning of the ecclesia of the disciples teaching us exactly what the front of the book looks like in real time, we don't even have a foundation to build this house.

And so be prepared, put your seatbelts on my friends. We're going to go back and look at this again, not from the current Western Roman perspective of the Christian church that's here today. But we're going to go all the way back and we're going to look at it from the original Hebrew, from the original Jewish perspective, because that's just who these guys were back then.

These were Jewish people. These were Jews and they got saved. They introduced the Holy Spirit.

Jesus Christ was a totally different concept back then than it is today. They called him Yeshua in the original tongue. We're going to talk all about it, my friends, right after this.

All right, my friends, welcome back. I'm Jim Staley, Passion for Truth Ministries, and it is so good to see all of you out there from Minnesota to Texas, my friends from everywhere, all across the globe, from Pakistan to Tennessee. We're glad that you are here with us. This is a channel that is God-breathed and put together to go back and do Bible things in Bible ways. to call Bible things by Bible names and to begin the process of returning back to the original covenant.

My friends, that's exactly what we want to do here. We want to learn what does it mean to follow God outside of man-made tradition and doctrine, outside of what traditional creeds within denominationalism says, what does it mean to actually follow the Creator? If that's you and you want to go back and look at the Bible from its original perspective.

then this channel is for you. Make sure you subscribe right now, right below here. Hit that subscribe button so that you know and turn on your notifications, by the way.

If you don't turn on the notifications, you're totally shooting in the breeze. You'll have no idea when we actually go live and different things like that. So do that for me.

Subscribe. I got something in my eye here. Hopefully it's not a plank.

If it is, the Lord will take care of it. But in any case, we're grateful that you're joining us today. Before we get started, Before we get started, I want to encourage all of you and let you know that we are going to be celebrating the best ever Passion for Tabernacles event that we have ever done.

And so I'm going to go right now over to passionfortabernacles.com and encourage you if you don't know anything about it, Passion for Tabernacles. Tabernacles is the seventh of the prophetic feast days of the Lord on God's calendar. that was lost centuries ago when the Roman church got rid of it and replaced it with their own Catholic calendar, which most of Christianity follows today. But going back and doing Bible things in Bible ways, this was actually the feast that Jesus, Yeshua, was born at.

This is the marriage supper of the Lamb coming up to a theater near you, and this is where 800 people are going to be celebrating in southern Missouri. Go check it out. Make sure you register. There is a lot going on here. If you need to make payments, by the way, we just added this.

If you can't afford it all at one time and you want to make sure that you get registered, then go ahead and send an email to payments at passionfortruth.com and they will automatically, someone, one of our admins, Carrie, will get back with you, set up a payment plan so that you can get set up with the Feast of Tabernacles. Okay, we want you to be there. This is going to be an absolutely amazing event.

We have... already well over 300 people registered and we've still got months to go. So that's going to be exciting and we will see you there.

So make sure you get checked out on that. All right. I feel like there was supposed to be another announcement before we get going.

So I'll take a quick drink of water. Maybe the Holy Spirit will tell me. Or, maybe not.

Alright, my friends, let's begin. Let's go through the book of Acts and let's see what the Holy Spirit has to say. And so if you have your Bibles, turn with me to Acts chapter 1. And again, I want to give you a quick overview. The reason and the purpose why we're going through the book of Acts today is to unpack what happened after the death, burial, and resurrection of Christ. What happened with the early church?

What did the disciples do? What did it all look like in real time? Because we've been told that at the cross, there really is no more Jewishness.

It's completely like a Christian church got started in Acts chapter 2. And I'm not saying that the church of Christ didn't get off. It's finally grown some wings. But the congregation of Israel started way back at the time of Moses.

It grew. It flubbed up all the way into the gospel arena when the Messiah showed up. And all the Messiah did was he paid for the sin of Israel all the way back to Adam, quite frankly. Domino effect totally opened up the door for spirit and truth to come together, of which the Pharisee and the Sadducees at the time refused to allow to happen. The payment for sin was made and then...

And on Shavuot, the Holy Spirit, as we're going to find out here in a minute, came down and reinstituted what was already there. Okay? So this is not a beginning of something brand new.

This was always the intent from Mount Sinai was to infuse the Spirit into the congregation of God. The problem is that the people at the base of Mount Sinai said, hey, Moses, are you going up there and here? from God.

The thunder and the lightning is just too much for us to handle. And literally because of the golden calf incident, all of the priesthood, which was originally supposed to go to all 12 tribes of Israel, was stripped from all of them. And the only ones that received it was Levi. So the priesthood went to Levi because they were the only ones, when Moses drew a line in the sand, decided to come over to this side, to the side where Moses was standing.

God blessed them with the priesthood. stripped the rest of the tribes. The Holy Spirit was refused at that moment, so they only received the truth 1,400 years later, virtually on the same day, definitely during the same time period. The Feast of Shavuot happens again, just like it did on Mount Sinai, where the commandments were given. But this time, the Holy Spirit is going to be given, and he is going to make a redo, a reset, where...

The entire congregation of Israel is going to be inaugurated and anointed as priests under a new priesthood, the Malkit Zedek priesthood, which is simply two Hebrew words put together. Malki, which is Malik, which is king, and Tzadik, which is righteous. The king of righteousness is in town, ladies and gentlemen, and that's the way it was always supposed to be.

The priesthood in the earthly realm, what we see in the entire... Tanakh, Old Testament, is a pattern of the priesthood that we see in the heavenly realm. Moses was told to build a tabernacle based on what he saw when he was on the mountain. So this tells us that there is a pattern, there is a temple, there is an entire temple system in heaven. Now, we don't want to talk about that because we want to look at mansions and we want to look at, you know, in-ground swimming pools and the clouds and so on and so forth.

But I'm telling you, what's coming down is a temple. That's what he saw. And so if there is a temple, there's a temple system.

And that temple system is the Melchizedek temple system. This is the Melchizedek temple system that's higher than the Levitical system. And so when the Messiah comes back, there's going to be a reinstitution. of the temple system, but it's going to be run over, arching by the Melchizedek system. Melchizedek, Yeshua is the high priest.

Now there's a debate amongst my friends about the Levites and the sons of Zadok and the priest system on earth being reinstituted again. That very well may be, but I'm here to tell you there is a higher high priest and there is a higher priesthood. And so the Levites will be lower on the totem pole than... every single one of us that are in Messiah because in Messiah, you are lifted up into the Melchizedek priesthood, okay? Now, why is that so important?

Because it's the whole setup. It's my own personal prologue to help teach you and educate you that before you walk into the book of Acts, you need to understand the whole temple system in a nutshell of what the transition is about to be. So when you walk into Acts chapter 1, you are already in the transition. The new priesthood is about to be inaugurated in chapter 2. You're going to see some extraordinary things that likely you've never put together before. Maybe you have, maybe you haven't.

I hope if you're first time here, this will deepen your walk with God. And by the way, short commercial break about this series. I'm beginning this series and I'm going to go through the entire book of Acts. On the back end, I'm working on what will likely be, in my opinion, the biggest teaching I've ever done, ever. Identity crisis, truth or tradition.

I believe what's coming in a couple of months that the Lord's put on my heart is going to be a game changer for many of you. So that's coming. In the meantime, we're going to do this series on the book of Acts.

And by the time you're done, okay, I'm going to do this to where it's less graphics, not a whole lot of things flying around in your face. All right, because I want to, I really want to filter out those that really don't want to grow. They want to be entertained. And I'm not saying graphics are bad. I love graphics.

That's why we do them here. But I want to disciple those of you that really want to learn the depth of your word. I want to disciple you. And that's going to take some time, and it's going to take some one-on-one, and it's going to take some face time and some word time.

So that's what we're going to do. All right, so as we walk into the scriptures here, so In the book of Acts, again, we're in transition. The temple is still standing in Jerusalem. This is around, this is the covers, the book of Acts covers 30 years approximately after the death, burial, and resurrection of Christ. So, all the way from 30 AD to approximately 60, 65 AD, that's the time period here.

So, we got about 30 years that this is going to cover. This first 30 years is critical because 10 years after that, around 70 AD. the temple is going to be destroyed.

So right now we have two temples standing in the book of Acts. It's absolutely amazing because if we see the prophetic implications, which I'm going to unpack for you over time here, but they have the physical temple that's standing, and then there is a new temple that's going to be erected in Acts chapter 2 that's already started in the Gospels the moment that he rose from the dead. And these two temples are going to clash, ladies and gentlemen. That's what happened when Jesus was walking this earth.

Why they hated him so much is that he was the Malkit Zedek high priest temple in the flesh. And it was in direct contrast to the temple that existed in the system that had been corrupted. Now, there was nothing wrong with the temple. There was nothing wrong with the temple system. God created it.

It was supposed to be an incredible doorway, an elevator for God's people to transfer to a higher level. But it got corrupted. So Jesus came, Yeshua came to show the corruption.

And look, anytime that you show corruption, you're going to be ticking off one whole group of people. Just look in the United States at politics today. When one man wants to show corruption, there's a whole other group that hates him. And so corruption... Corruption always seems to breed from the top down and that's why Jesus went right to the top.

If we can kill the corruption of the top, we will heal the root all the way down. All right, let's begin. All of that was kind of my own introduction. Let's begin.

Acts chapter 1. Let's pull it up. Let you walk through it with me. All right. Some of this I'm going to read word for word.

Some of this I'm not. The former account I made, O Theophilus, of all that Jesus began both to do and teach, until the day in which he was taken up, after through the Holy Spirit had given commandments to the apostles which he had chosen, to whom he also presented himself. alive after his suffering by many infallible proofs being seen by them during 40 days and speaking of the things pertaining to the kingdom of God.

So here we go. He's setting this up coming right out of the book of Luke. Luke is the author of Acts. Okay.

So right after Matthew, Mark, Luke and John comes the book of Acts and he's setting this up to say, look, Jesus did all these unbelievable things. He appeared to us for 40 days. And then he tells the disciples, wait and tarry in Jerusalem because something unbelievable is about to happen. And we're going to find that out here in just a minute. Let's keep scrolling down.

We get to this in verse 4. And being assembled together with them, he commanded them not to depart from Jerusalem, but to wait for the promise of the Father, which he said, you have heard from me. For John truly baptized with water, but you shall be baptized with the Holy Spirit not many days from now. All right. I got to talk about this for just a minute because. This is the problem, my friends, is because we have these manuscripts in Greek, there is an assumption, unfortunately, that there is Greek culture.

Even the word baptized, okay, this was not the word that was in the original Hebrew. So as a Hebrew guy and a guy that saturates myself, baptismo, myself, I'll explain that word in just a minute, so hold on. In the original culture...

It's super important to know that if you're new to this channel, all right, the Bible was written in Hebrew and Aramaic and there are some Latin phrases in here, but the Greek manuscripts that we have are really only there because by the time you get early on in the early centuries and Israel, Jerusalem was ransacked both in 70 and 135, they burned everything that looked Hebrew. So the only thing left was Greek manuscripts, which is why virtually all of the New Testament that we do have is found in Greek, although there are now new discoveries of a Hebrew Matthew and other books that they're finding now, fragments in Hebrew. The reason why I'm bringing this up is because this is a Jewish culture, so you cannot take the word baptism and infuse our 21st century perspective.

Because if I say baptized, what do you think of? You think of a pastor, in the water or in a tub, holding the person, holding their nose and dipping them down. Okay. That is not a biblical or a Hebrew baptism at all. That's not how they did it.

As a matter of fact, I have had people upset with me at my own events when I baptize people because I don't hold them and hold their nose and pull them down and bring them back up and create like the traditional. experience that people are looking for. What I'm trying to do is create an authentic, real experience of how John the Baptist would have done it. So how would he have done it? Well, very simply, he would have never even likely got in the water.

He would have stood on the banks of the Nile River, of the Jordan River, and his job was to witness the baptism. Because in Hebrew culture, the word baptismo in the Greek here comes from the word mikvah, which is the immersion bath. It's the ritual immersion bath of the Jewish people that they had for thousands of years for Israel, since God gave it to them. And it was used for all kinds of different things.

Okay. And I'm not going to go into all that right now because I'm going to have a full teaching at the Feast of Tabernacles on baptism and the original power of water and why God chose water. It's going to be fascinating and illuminating.

teaching. So I encourage you to be there to hear it. But for now, what's important for you to know is that John the Baptist never touched a soul. He couldn't do it. It's against the Hebrew culture.

And the reason why is because wherever you would be touching that individual, the water would not be touching. And so they believed that the water is representative of the Word of God. being rebirthed, coming through the birth canal, and nobody can touch you in that process.

It is your decision. It's your responsibility. You must immerse yourself in the Word of God. The only thing that John is doing is witnessing it.

He's testing. identifying that you know what you're doing. He's making sure that you are completely in alignment with the Word of God, and he's making sure every single hair on your head is saturated in the Word of God.

You don't go all the way down. John says, hey, you need to do it again. You didn't go all the way down because it's symbolic and it's prophetic, okay? So, it's very, very powerful imagery, which is why they did not touch someone when they were being baptized. Secondly, The word baptismal, I do love this word in the Greek, by the way, even though I'm a major Hebrew fan, because there's two Greek words for baptism.

One is bapto, which means to dip, and the other is baptismal, which is the word being used here. Now, what does baptismal mean? It means to pickle. There's actually a first century extra biblical writer that uses this word. in the context of taking a cucumber and putting it into vinegar, which is how you make a pickle.

So we are not supposed to be cucumbers that just get dipped into water and out comes a powerful, you know, disciple for God. No, we are supposed to be, can I just say, drowned, okay? You'd be put in the pickle jar and you put the cap on it as fast as you can so it doesn't just pop right back out and float. And it sits there in this vinegar solution that's sour until it penetrates that hard skin.

And it penetrates and over time, the pickling or the drowning of this cucumber, aka Israelite, aka regular person that wants to know God, decides to get in the water with God and they don't get out. I'm telling you, ladies and gentlemen, you give it enough time and they get... The entire insides of that person get totally transformed.

They may look like a cucumber on the outside, but they're totally transformed on the inside. They're not even the same. As a matter of fact, every one of my kids, when they got, I had six daughters, when they get to a certain point where they learn that a pickle comes from a cucumber, it is as if they just like learned that the sun.

is being held up by a string or something. Like they're completely blown out of their mind. Wait a minute, that's a cucumber? Because the contrast is so great. My friends, this is the concept starting right off the bat.

As he says, John baptized with water. The reason why I went through all of that history is to teach you this. We've got to learn that the beginning of your...

walk with God is the fact that you choose to get submerged with him and his word. When you saturate yourself with the word of God, when you saturate yourself, I'm not talking about going to church on Sunday. That's bapto.

That's dipping. Okay. That's dip, dip. Nobody changes in that concept, in that protocol, in that lifestyle. But in a biblical lifestyle, he starts off the entire book of Acts.

We're not even, we're in the fifth verse. And he says, John baptized with water, but you will be baptized in the Holy Spirit. What does that mean? That means that they're taking the same ritual immersion bath language of being submerged and drowned in the water of the word, okay? Because John baptized for forgiveness of sins.

People that wanted to turn back to God. John's like, look, here's how you do it. Come over here.

We're going to start it with this process. He's being. dipped in the word of God.

It was all symbolic. It was all prophetic. And he said, but God's going to dip you in the Holy Spirit.

When the Holy Spirit comes upon you, it's going to transform you. It's what goes on the inside. Okay. So while John's baptizing with the prophetic of real physical water, what Christ is going to do, what God is going to do is he's going to send the vinegar. You see the vinegar, listen, this is for someone out there, the vinegar.

The sourness, okay, of that friction between the flesh and the spirit, that's what transforms you. It's the Holy Spirit, okay? How many people do you know that know the Word of God left and right, upside and down? There's so many people that I know, and I call them terrorists.

They're the Bible terrorists out there, right? Even Torah terrorists out there, that they think they know the Word of God, but all they're doing is they're going into the Word of God with a wetsuit on. They're not allowing the Word of God by the Holy Spirit to go inside of them and transform them. And that is by faith only. It is not something that you can see.

It's something that happens because of a great desire to be infused by the Holy Spirit. If you want to be infused by the Holy Spirit right now, you want more of the Holy Spirit, I encourage you right now in the comments say, I want more of the Holy Spirit. Holy Spirit, baptize me. You...

Put your prayer right now in the comment section because I'm telling you everything of the foundation of your faith is dependent on this. It's not dependent on the Word of God only. The Pharisees had the Word of God. The Sadducees had the Word of God.

There's atheists that I know that know more of the Word of God than most Christians. It's the Holy Spirit that absolutely will transform you and give you the power. How can somebody have so much Bible knowledge but they've never healed a single person. How is that possible? How is it possible to not have the power of God, but know the word of God?

I'm telling you, it's because they got a wetsuit on. It's time we get rid of our wetsuit. Write in the comments, I'm getting rid of my wetsuit.

All right, here we go. Back to the word of God, which we love so much. Verse 6, therefore, when they had come together, they asked him, saying, Lord, will you at this time restore the kingdom of Israel? And he said to them, it is not for you to know times or seasons, which the Father has put in his own authority. But you shall receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you, and you shall be witnesses to me in Jerusalem, Judea, Samaria, and to the ends of the earth.

Guys, listen to what I'm about to say. It's going to be crazy controversial. It's going to hurt some feelings, but I need to say it because the Word of God says it. It's right here. I'm going to pull it back up because someone's going to accuse me, right?

And I'm even going to highlight it, okay? And everybody wants to know when the second coming of Christ is. Okay? Everybody, including me, I'd like to know. It'd be a lot easier to plan my calendar and cancel a few appointments if I knew he was coming back next Tuesday.

Okay? But here's the point. The disciples themselves wanted to know, hey, is this going to be the time?

And he says this right here. Look carefully. It is not for you to know. the times or the seasons which the Father has put in His own authority. Now, is He saying that you shouldn't study the Word of God, that you shouldn't study end times eschatology?

Of course we should. It's important that we at least know as much as we possibly can know. But He's telling you, you're not going to know.

He says, I don't even know. The Father is the only one that knows, and it's not for you to know. He says, what you should know.

is this. Here's your focus. You shall receive power when the Holy Spirit comes upon you and you shall be. That is not a past tense, ladies and gentlemen. That's a future tense.

It's a now tense. It's an absolutely intense statement where Holy Spirit says, God says, you will have the power and you need to be witnesses. So quit focusing on the clouds and keeping your head up in the air and looking for the Messiah. Your head needs to be in the book and in your room.

and your spirit needs to be illuminated so that you can recognize by faith that the umbilical cord that's attached to you is way bigger in potential than it currently is in your life. And Judea and Samaria and the ends of the earth are waiting for you. There are people everywhere that are waiting to hear the Word of God.

Just a few weeks ago, I had a contractor that came to my house, and he didn't believe in God, had satanic tattoos all over his arms. He got saved. Two and a half hours later, we are praying together.

And a couple of weeks later, he gave his life to Christ. This is, and hopefully you'll get to meet him on a future broadcast because his testimony is extraordinary. And he's on fire for God. Ladies and gentlemen, the point of saying that is this.

There's people everywhere that are hungry. They're dying. They're waiting for us to be a witness. So let me connect this to John the Baptist.

John the Baptist was not... baptizing people. They called it baptizing people, but what he was doing was he was being a witness to an event that had already happened in their heart. Let me ask you a question.

Just a few verses later, it says the same thing. Power of the Holy Spirit comes upon you. You're to be a witness. What does that mean? You're supposed to be assisting people to get in the river because the power of God is in the river.

The enemy cannot go any further. The lions, the tigers, the bears, the snakes, they stop at the edge of the river. It's the priests that go into the river. This is the Ark of the Covenant. And the moment they get to the middle of the river, the power of God shows up and the river begins to part.

If you don't know that story, that comes out of Exodus when they're coming out of Exodus, out of Egypt. And 40 years later, they cross into the promised land. God says, look, I'm not opening the river this time.

You're going to get in there and do some divine assistance. I'm going to teach you how to do this. You're my apprentice. The first time Moses did it for you, you crossed through the Red Sea. The second time.

you're getting in. And guess who he has to get in? The priest first.

Priest, take the Ark of the Covenant, get in that muddy river and let the water, look, the water's probably going all over the Ark of the Covenant. They got to be nervous out of their mind. Nobody wants to lose their footing and go down in history as the guy that lost the Ark of the Covenant and starts floating down the river, right? So these guys went in there by faith and the power of God showed up. It's no different than right now.

The priests back then were baptized in the Jordan River. God sent them into that river. They were mikved, immersed in the water, in that muddy water that was flowing water from God, and it dried up and they received the power.

Somebody needs to hear this right now, I promise you, that if you want to receive the power of God, it's going to take you getting in the river and expressing your faith. And this is what Acts is all about. The power of the book of Acts is that these guys acted. They didn't think. They didn't pray.

They didn't contemplate, wait for some sign. They flat out believed what they saw with their naked eyes and they acted on it. And the power of God literally dominoed around the world.

It's absolutely extraordinary what we're going to learn through this book. Okay. All right, let's move on.

You guys catching me so far out there? Are we good? Give me thumbs up.

All right. Hopefully you're following along. Are we at about 30 minutes into this? All right. We're going, we got about 30 minutes left here.

Let's see how far that we can go. All right. Then it says that when he had spoken these things in verse nine, let's go back to the scriptures. In verse nine, when they, he was taken up and a cloud received him out of their sight. While they looked steadfastly toward heaven, as he went up, behold, two men stood by them in white apparel.

who also said, men of Galilee, why do you stand gazing into heaven? This same Jesus who was taken up from you into heaven will come in like manner as you saw him go into heaven. Now, why is this incredible?

Okay, let me give you a little background, ladies and gentlemen. This is literally a picture of the original symbol of ancient Israel. This is the original flag of Israel.

You ready for this? You may not see it right there in that text, okay? But a guy that and is immersed in the back of the front of the book, I should say. When I saw this, I was like, oh, this is Zechariah chapter 4. So let's go there.

Here we go. Zechariah chapter 4, let's show you. And we'll go down to verse 11. This is a vision that Zechariah has.

He says, then I answered and said to him, what are these two olive trees at the right of the lampstand and at its left? And I further answered and said to him, what are these two olive branches that drip into the receptacles of the two golden pipes from which the golden oil drains? Okay.

So he's seen this vision of two olive trees. All right. Matter of fact, let me see if I can get a quick picture of this so that you can see exactly what I'm thinking of. Here we go. This is a good picture of this.

So let's see if I can share this with you. All right. Now let me share my screen and maybe that'll help. Okay. So this is what Zachariah 4 is seeing.

And this is compliments of the gospelarmor.com. It's just a random website, but this is the menorah, the lampstand. Okay. And two olive trees that are flanking both sides with golden pipes that are coming in from the olive trees.

This is the original symbol of ancient Israel where... One olive tree represents the northern kingdom of Israel, the house of Israel, of the ten tribes. north and the other olive tree is representing the two tribes in the south the house of judah together they form ancient israel connected with christ christ is the menorah this is the seven spirits of god these are the seven churches of revelation this is the the seven lampstands okay this is incredible stuff that we're seeing here that the two houses that were so disconnected from Solomon when they split apart, are being held together and brought back as one olive tree in the Messiah.

There's going to be truth coming in from Judah. There's going to be truth coming in from Ephraim. And together, they're going to be the light of Israel. So, this is what's going on when you get back to Acts.

Let's go back to Acts. When you go back to Acts, what you're discovering is you have Moses on one side. Just so happens to be from the southern kingdom of Judah.

And then you have Elijah on the other side at the transfiguration with Yeshua, Jesus, in the center. This is not accidental, ladies and gentlemen. They're showing Zechariah chapter 4. God wanted to show this is the vision.

A representative from the southern kingdom and a representative from the northern kingdom are going to be my two witnesses. that I'm going to connect. What I'm about to do in the transfiguration is show you a picture of my purpose. I'm going to bring the house of Israel together with the southern kingdom again. I'm going to unite the tribes.

They're going to be one in my hand, Ezekiel chapter 37, and I'm going to bring Ephesians 2 all together, right? The one new man is all about this. topic, if you don't know what I'm talking about, go watch Identity Crisis after this.

It's a three hour tour for sure. It's a long teaching, but it's radical, will transform every theology you've ever had in the Bible, will be challenged and put in its rightful place when you understand this vision of Zechariah chapter four. That's what's happening over here in Acts chapter one. We're not even in Acts chapter two yet.

And it just makes a lot more sense if you fully understand the Hebrew background of the Bible. of what we're looking at. Okay. All right.

Let's continue and find out where we're at. And he's going to come in likewise, just like he went into heaven that day. All right.

So now what happens is they go, they return from Jerusalem and they go to, they go back to the place where they needed to be. And they're waiting. It's 40 days has passed.

They're waiting for the power to come on high. They're all there. These are all Jews.

They're getting ready to celebrate what they've always celebrated their entire life. And it wasn't called Pentecost, ladies and gentlemen. That's a Greek term.

These Hebrews would have never used that term. It would have been offensive to use a Greek term for God's holy day. And I believe in Christianity, this is partly what the enemy did to push us away from the Hebrew background and culture, what I call the Christian roots of our faith, the real roots of Christianity, our Hebrew.

and not Greek, and keep us away from that. Because if the word would have been Shavuot, which is the Hebrew word for weeks, and that's what this feast day is, then we would have started looking at other Hebrew calendar feast days of the same term, the same name. But when it's Pentecost, everybody celebrates. You know, Pentecost is a good thing. The Holy Spirit came down.

We don't even know there's six other holidays on God's calendar because we're not taught that, right? So, when we get to the upper room, now they're all ready. In verse 15, they choose another disciple because of Judas. Remember, Judas decided to be the guy out of the 12 that had to get greedy, had to get jealous. He got in his flesh.

He started operating based on what he was thinking and what he was seeing. And ultimately, it led to death because the wages of sin is death. And sin, when it's fully conceived, James says, it leads us to death.

And as a matter of fact, our family is watching the Chosen series, phenomenal series, highly recommend it. I don't agree with every single thing and how they depict it, but it's very accurate from a lot of different perspectives. And they do an amazing job in season four of showing what Judas and how he got to the place where he ended up denying the Messiah out of his zeal.

Now, I just want to speak because I feel like in the spirit that someone needs to hear this. is that somebody out there right now, if not more, you're faced with a situation and you're not exactly sure how to handle it. You don't know exactly what it is, but it's creating, or the answer is, but it's creating a lot of stress in your life. I'm telling you, you've got a Judas on the inside of you. All the disciples in Christ are right there.

We all live in every one of those moments. Sometimes we're the best friend of Christ, that's John. Sometimes we're that.

bold and courageous Peter, but we also are kind of scared out of our mind and ready to deny Christ. And then we have this rebellious betrayal Judas that's right there. But the rebellious betrayal of Judas started with a good intention of wanting to do things his way.

So I'm going to stop and let that pause, because if you're going to experience the power of God in your life, you can't do it your way. So whoever's facing a situation right now, and if it's you, it's me. Right now, put it in the comments. You know what God's speaking to you.

If it's you, and you're trying to finagle and figure out things from your perspective and using your logic and your reason, you will end up hanging yourself like Judas, and your entrails will end up all over the ground, and they'll name a whole field after you called the field of blood. You don't want to go down in infamy as that guy. So here's how you do it. When you face a trial of many kinds and you don't know exactly what's going on, but stress is eating you alive, the way that you handle it is you don't handle it. You stop.

You drop to your knees and you say, Father God, I give this to you. This is not my problem. This is yours.

I was bought with a price. You remind yourself of the promises of God. I was bought with a price.

I'm yours. How do you want to handle this, Father? How do you want to do this?

I want to give you glory in my weakness. Your Word says that if where I am weak, you are strong. So, Father, I give you permission to be strong. So, God, I just pray right now for whoever is in the sound of my voice that's weak, you make them strong. Fall to your knees, be weak.

It's the strongest place you could ever be is weak. So, if you feel weak, you're actually in a position of strength. The moment that you feel like you're in control, you're actually in a position of weakness.

God's world is upside down from ours. It's actually right side up. Okay, let's get back to the text and let's continue.

So, they pick Matthias through lots to replace Judas, and then we get all the way down to chapter 2, and this is where everything really takes off. So let's see how far we get through here in the next 20 minutes or so. When the day of Pentecost had fully come, which really is Shavuot, so I'm going to use Bible names the way that it originally would have been written.

When the day of Shavuot had fully come, they were all with one accord in one place. And suddenly there came a sound from heaven as of a rushing mighty wind, and it filled the whole house where they were sitting. And there appeared to them divided tongues as a fire, as one sat upon each of them. They were all filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak with other tongues as the Spirit gave them utterance.

My friends, there's so much in this two verses, three, four verses. I don't know if we'll have time to go through it all. I will go through just a little bit.

Now, for those of you that are watching this commentary on the book of Acts for the very first time, you may not have heard any of my other teachings, then you may not be familiar with what I'm about to say. So, The reason why this is critical is because in ancient Israel, the tabernacle of Moses, the Holy Spirit showed up over it as well in the form of a pillar of fire, of what the scriptures call the pillar of fire. Now, the pillar of fire is not over the altar, okay, the brazen altar out in the courtyard.

It's not over the menorah or the table of showbread in the holy place. It is only... over the holy of holies over the ark of the covenant which is the throne of god that encased the tabernacle uh the main tabernacle element which was the cherubim that were setting up the mercy seat for god to sit and throne himself as king of israel this is the holy of holies this is the actual holy spirit presence of god all right we talk about acts chapter two Acts chapter 2 started in the tabernacle of the wilderness with the Holy Spirit being shown over with a fire. One giant tongue, if you will. And the reason why it says tongue in Hebrew, that would have been the letter sheen.

The Hebrew letter sheen literally looks like a tongue, and it was on fire. Why did they say dividing tongue? The letter sheen literally means El Shaddai.

It's the all-consuming fire of God that was over the tabernacle. For miles away, they said, there's the whole there's god the god of israel's with us i can see his fire that's where the temple was in acts chapter 2 this becomes the competitive temple right here so there's a temple standing jerusalem a few yards from where they're at and now the holy spirit comes in and the fire of god the el shaddai the sheen okay the letter sheen over the top of each of the individuals that are in that upper room is designating, this is the new temple. This is the Holy Spirit that is now abiding inside the Holy of Holies.

So God is saying, this is where my tabernacle is going to be from now on. This is where I'm going to abide. This is the original intent from day one with Adam, was the Holy Spirit, God himself was going to abide and walk with man side by side.

So now, 4,000 years later, after they gave it up, at Mount Sinai and said, Mo, you go up there. We don't want to deal with all this craziness. This is scary.

You be the intermediator for us. They gave up that right, and the Holy Spirit, 1400 years later, virtually on the same day, finishes the work and gives them the Holy Spirit. Now, the tabernacle of God is split. So now the enemy can't come in and just destroy the temple of God through some foreign government because it's not a building anymore.

The temple of God is split. It resides within men. And if you kill one, it's like a grain of wheat. It will sprout up a hundred more. So the enemy frothing at the mouth and can't figure out how to get rid of this spirit of God thing.

He looked at Jesus and he said, I got to kill him. He's the temple from up above. I have to kill him. I have to kill him.

I have to kill him. You have no idea that he was the original wheat seed. You kill that temple. It will simply divide into a a never-ending amount of temples that he'll never be able to track down.

Praise God. Amen for that. So, the dividing tongues of fire are sitting on top of the disciples and they begin to speak in other languages. This is powerful, it's extraordinary, and it's real. I speak in tongues and a lot of people that I know that are spirit-filled speak in tongues.

It's very real. I don't understand why there are people out there that don't believe in it. If you don't believe in it... you probably don't speak in it and you probably never heard anybody speak in tongues in a correct way to where it was interpreted properly. I have spoken in tongues and have people heard it in other languages.

I've done it on the air in my speaking in tongues teaching, which we'll put a link in the description. Maybe one of my admins will do that as we speak. Take that link, put that for them in the description of the two teachings that I have on the speaking in tongues.

It's powerful. And at the very end... The Holy Spirit gave me utterance to speak in tongues, and we had people write in from other countries saying they heard me in Spanish, they heard me in Polish. Holy Spirit does what Holy Spirit wants to do.

It's real. There is a heavenly language. It's powerful. Has it been abused in the church today?

For sure. Anything that's authentic and real, the enemy wants to fabricate and mock, so you stay away from it. The real thing almost always will be... have its predecessor or its companion in the fabricated.

The enemy doesn't fabricate something that is not threatened him. If it threatens him, he fabricates it. That's just how it works.

That's how every good politician and someone that's in a war is going to operate. They're going to fabricate in order to draw attention away from what is real. Amen. All right. So, this is how Acts chapter 2 begins.

is the new temple of God is now instituted, inaugurated, and the power is beginning to flow through those who were there. They chose to believe in the Word of God to celebrate the Feast of Shavuot. Now look, the majority of Christianity does not even believe in celebrating Pentecost or Shavuot by name. They're starting to, starting to learn more about it for sure, maybe some of you.

But imagine if the disciples took the position of early Christianity or late Christianity today and said, I don't believe we have to keep this. No, we're going to celebrate Easter. We're going to celebrate this. We're going to celebrate that. And they miss the power of God coming in those windows.

He chose Shavuot for a reason. Ladies and gentlemen, this is prophetic. This is not just an accident or a coincidence.

He chose this day because it's prophetic. to Mount Sinai when the commandments were given, the truth was given, and he wanted to bring about a true worshiper that would worship in spirit and in truth. And up until this point, they had been worshiping in truth and not even good truth because it got so polluted by the traditions and doctrine of men. But he wanted to usher in the Spirit, but he couldn't do it until they qualified for the Spirit, and they didn't qualify because they were condemned to death by the very law that they broke, and they needed a Savior to pay for their sin. So, he had to come, cloak himself in humanity, humble himself as a form of a human being, died and paid for their sin.

Put everyone under the umbrella of that forgiveness, which then qualified them in Christ to receive what they never could receive before. Somebody say amen. Hallelujah.

We have access through the blood of Christ. Okay. So then here's the crowd's response. I know I'm talking fast, but you can go back and rewatch it.

We have a lot to cover here. All right. So now there's people.

They're Jews from every nation under heaven. And when the sound occurred, the multitude came together, were confused because everyone heard them speak in his own language. Guys, this is something really important. These are not Gentiles.

Every tribe and tongue are coming from every nation because they're Jewish people. These are Israelites coming in to celebrate the feast of God because it's commanded in the Torah to do so. It's part of God's holy calendar, prophetic calendar. They're there to celebrate.

None of them are expecting the fact that these disciples are now speaking in language, and it says that they heard them in their own language. So they're not potentially speaking another language. They heard them in their language, just like when I spoke in tongues multiple times over live broadcast.

I was not speaking in Spanish and Polish simultaneously. I'm not that good. That would be pretty incredible.

No one can speak two languages simultaneously. But it was a heavenly language, and they heard it in their language. And that's how cool God is.

He can take one language, broadcast it, and change it in the ears of the hearer. And that's what happened in the first century. They were all amazed.

Of course they would be. Why are they amazed? They've never even seen these disciples before.

If they're speaking their own language, they would not be amazed. They're amazed because they know they're not speaking their language, but they heard it in their language. That's why they're amazed.

So all the people out there say, oh no, they were just speaking a different language. No, they weren't. Nobody's going to be amazed to hear somebody, millions of pilgrims coming into Jerusalem and hearing somebody in your own language.

That's like going to Spain from America And I'm not going to be amazed if I hear somebody speaking English. But if I hear somebody speaking a Babel language, and I know they're speaking some crazy language, but I'm hearing it in English, I'm going to freak out. If I hear somebody speaking Spanish, and I know they're speaking Spanish, and all of a sudden I hear it in English, I'm going to be amazed, and that person's got my attention. And that was the whole entire point, was God wanted to get everyone's attention. He knew exactly how to do it.

I'm telling you, it wasn't because they were speaking their languages. That's not going to get anybody's attention. But you start speaking a crazy language and everybody starts hearing it in their own. That's pretty incredible.

When one guy is broadcasting in one language and seven people around him are hearing seven different languages, you've got everybody's attention, ladies and gentlemen. And that sets the stage for one of the most incredible services and altar calls in History. Let's keep reading. So there's Cretans. There's all kinds of people that are there from all over the place.

Some people are mocking, saying that they are all full of new wine. Why are they mocking? Again, there's whole groups of people that believe that tongues was just another language. No! If it was another language, they wouldn't be mocking.

They would say, oh, they're bilingual, okay? No, they're mocking because they don't understand it. This is why when you get to Revelation... it says, to him who has ears to hear. So some of you out right now maybe don't have ears to hear what I'm saying right now.

But those that by faith have the humility to say, I'm open to what Pastor Jim is saying, or I'm open to the Word of God, or I'm open to what God is doing. I know that I'm not all that. I know I might be wrong. When you open the door of 1% chance of being wrong, that's humility. Humility is the grounds for spiritual growth.

So when you open up the door to conversation and to being open to new ideas, then you hear it in your own language. But if you don't open the door of humility, you will be like this guy right here mocking, oh, they're full of new wine. Pastor Jim's crazy. Or this guy doesn't know what he's talking about. That kind of arrogance reduces the...

power of the Holy Spirit for you to hear something in your language. Ladies and gentlemen, if Balaam could hear a donkey in the donkey's language, how is it that we can say God is limited that He can't speak in a foreign heavenly tongue and cause people to hear it in their language? Balaam heard the donkey's noise in his Hebrew tongue. That's incredible. Oh my goodness.

All right, here we go. Let's get back to the text here because I'll just start preaching and never end. Peter, standing up with the eleven, raised his voice. Men of Judea, all who dwell in Jerusalem, let this be known to you and heed my words.

These men aren't drunk, as you suppose, since it's only the third hour of the day. It's 9 a.m., guys. They're not drunk.

Okay, you'd have to be a serious alcoholic in the first century to be drunk by 9 a.m. But this is what the prophet spoke. And then he gives this incredible thing.

He says, my spirit will be poured out on all flesh. Your sons and daughters shall prophesy. Your young men will see visions and your old men shall dream dreams.

I love this verse. You know why? Because I'm turning 50 on August 31st of this year and I'm still seeing visions. So I'm taking that as I'm still a young man. So I'm a young man.

I'm seeing visions. God's given me visions. So I still fit into that category. When I start only having dreams, yeah, that's probably when that transition will happen.

He goes on to talk about how he's going to pour out his spirit in those days, and they will prophesy. Guys, the reason why this is so important that I'm trying to convey, why I'm going through the book of Acts, is the Holy Spirit is pressed upon me. Honestly, through my daughter, Sierra, who inspired me to do this series, is that we're missing out on the power of God in this whole Bible movement.

And if you want to see the power of God in your life, you need to operate the way the disciples did, and that's what we're going to do. We're going to follow them and find out what they did, what they thought, what they believed, how they talked, how they operated, what their faith looked like, what did their daily activities look like. One. They're celebrating the Feast of Shavuot. Two, they're walking in extraordinary power.

The Holy Spirit came upon them. They were speaking in other tongues, and they started to prophesy. So that tells me that prophecy is a foundational, powerful tool that the Holy Spirit wants to use in the church today.

It's not just teaching. It's not just, you know, an exhortation of the word of God. It's not great oratory. It's not persuasive speech, all of those things that are good. But Paul says, I didn't want to come to you in persuasive speech.

I didn't come to you in persuasive speech only. I came in the demonstration of the power of the living God. You want to follow a ministry? You want to follow a teacher? Okay, that's great.

That's fine. You want to learn something, but is there power there that's transformative? Because if you're not getting...

The power of God, they're enough to transform on the inside. If the Holy Spirit doesn't hit you right in the middle of the chest, then you're just being dipped in the water and it doesn't stick. And if it does stick and you get out and you're a little bit wet, and a few minutes later you're dry. You're dry and you go back to the water, you dive in again, you get out, and you're like, oh, the power of God is so great.

But you dry off very quickly. But if you stay in the water and the Holy Spirit is operating in your life, it will transform you and the inside of that cucumber becomes wet, moist. It becomes a sponge that has been totally saturated. And when you get out of the water and you get into the world and daily life, you're fed from the inside.

Do you hear what I'm saying? The blood and the fire and the vapor and the smoke, it's the signs in the earth. He shows the wonders and you...

are the sign in the earth. My friends, you are the pillar of fire in the earth. You are the representative of the most high God that's supposed to be immersed and baptized and drowned in the word of God that people don't even see you. They don't even recognize you.

I met a pastor. Her name was Pastor Barb down at a Shavuot conference in Arkansas that I spoke at. I was so blown away by her. anointing and gift of preaching.

And she gave this incredible testimony about how she came out of drugs and full-on alcoholic and suicide and mom in prison and being beat by her father, all these horrible things. And when she got saved, she would go to these family reunions when she was younger and it was just a big drunk fest. The year that she got saved, radically saved, she went back to one of her, I think it was Louisiana, family reunions and people were...

introducing themselves to her because they never even recognized her. She had turned into a pickle. She was a cucumber. That was one of them that they recognized. But when she came back after being fully drowned in the spirit of the living God, she was unrecognizable.

This is how we're supposed to be. It takes a long time to pickle, but I'm telling you, you need to ask for the Holy Spirit to pickle you. You need to stay in the Word of God. You need to be serious and have intentionality. Write in the comments right now, I'm going to be intentional in my walk with God.

When are you going to wake up early? When are you going to go to bed late? When are you going to have your quiet time? How are you pickling yourself? What are the amazing, the spice, and like sweet, and whatever?

I'm telling you, God wants to ask you right now, what is in your pickle jar? What spices are in there? What are you feeding yourself with the music that you listen to, with the movies that you watch, with the people that you're around?

Those are all spices in your life. Some of you need to audit your life right now. Audit your pickle jar.

There you go. There's a meme for Facebook. Audit your pickle jar.

What's in your pickle jar? Because what's in there is absolutely what's marinating into your soul. that will eventually come out and radically transform your life.

All right, let's finish up here. When we get down, Peter gives this unbelievable message. And in verse 38, it says this, and we'll close with this.

Then Peter said to them, Repent and let every one of you be baptized in the name of Yeshua for the remission of sins, and you shall receive the gift of the Holy Spirit, for the promise is to you, here it is, and to your children and to all who are far off. as many as the Lord our God will call. Now, I had a plan to go into all of this.

I don't have time today, but we will next week. I'm going to show you what's actually being talked about right here is not what you think. When he says, for the promise is to you and to your children and to all who are far off, that phrase far off is a Hebrew term that they all knew what it meant. It was prophetic.

It was in all the prophets. It was incredibly obvious. to the first century Jew when you said the people that are far off, they knew exactly who you were talking about. Today, in first century, 21st century Christianity, we have no clue because we don't read and study what I call the front of the book to know where these phrases pop out, what these Jewish writers are talking about. So next week, we're going to talk about what this far off phrase means.

It's going to transform the way that you see the book of Acts. the way you see the whole entire New Testament, and so on and so forth. So, last but not least, as you move down to verse 42, it says, they not only got saved, they received the word, were baptized, and that day about 3,000 souls were added to them. If you know your Bibles right, on the first Shavuot, back at Mount Sinai, 3,000 people died. So, around the time of Shavuot, 3,000 people died.

giving you the commandments, right? And now the Holy Spirit is being given. The truth and the Spirit are coming together.

3,000 people get saved. This is a massive reset button, ladies and gentlemen. This is a redo for the people of God. A new congregation is being started from the original congregation. New life is being breathed into Adam.

The bones of Joseph are coming together, and exciting things are about to happen. And he ends it by saying, and they continued steadfastly in the apostles' doctrine. in fellowship, in the breaking of bread, and in prayers, and fear came on every soul.

My friends, what we're going to do in this broadcast is we're going to find out exactly what the apostles' doctrine was. What is the apostles' doctrine? What is the power of the early first century church? What is the breaking of bread? And it says, and in prayers.

Well, what is prayers? What does that mean? when he says that breaking of bread and prayers, we're going to dive into all of this, my friends, as we get into the rest of the book of Acts. In the meantime, I want to encourage you, please take note of this teaching, pass it along to those that are around you, to those that need to hear this message.

We're going to go verse by verse, ladies and gentlemen, it looks like that's what the Holy Spirit wants to do through the entire book of Acts. We're going to learn. because it's going to go all over the New Testament, all the way back to the front of the book. We're going to pull it all together. We're going to find out what they believed, how they operated, what did they do every single day.

And then we're going to be challenged by the Holy Spirit to do those things and let the Holy Spirit begin the process of changing our life. All right. I am so grateful to be a part of your life. Would you please hit subscribe and send this message. Pass this along to your friends.

Put this on your Facebook page. And if you so desire and the Holy Spirit moves you, would you consider partnering with us financially and helping us get this into multiple languages around the world? Go to passionfortruth.com right now. Don't be just a here. Be a doer.

Be a part of this. It's exciting. You get to be in full-time ministry with me when you partner with us. We've got lots of people. We just brought in two more people.

to be on our staff and we need your help to do this. So if you believe in this ministry, please partner with us like the Israelites did originally to get this message out there and we'll make a difference together. All right.

In the meantime, my friends, it's exciting to be a part of your life. I hope you have an absolutely amazing day. Don't forget to go check out our website at passionfortruth.com. And I'm Jim Staley with Passion for Truth Ministries. Shabbat Shalom.

We'll see you in the next video.

Transcript for:Jim Stanley Understanding the Book of Acts

Transcript for:
Jim Stanley Understanding the Book of Acts