Acts Review

The Book of Acts tells us of the beginning of the spreading of the gospel and the growth of the early church.  It was written by Luke.  It starts with the disciples being told to wait for the coning of the promise of the Father, the Holy Spirit, the Comforter Who was to be with all Christians after Jesus was no longer with them physically. Once we accept Jesus Christ as our personal Savior and Lord today, we don’t have to wait for the Holy Spirit to come, because He immediately indwells us.  No one gets any more or any less of the Holy Spirit.  They were warned against just standing gazing into heaven where Jesus had ascended, and we today should not just be standing and gazing into heaven looking for his return.  We are told of the need to replace Judas and their doing so with Matthias, who followed them from the beginning.  When one church leader dies, we certainly need to replace them.  We have a record of the coming of the Holy Spirit on the day of Pentecost and the disciples being able to speak to people in their language which the disciples had not known.  We’re told that this was a fulfillment of a prophesy in Joel about sons and daughters, servants and handmaidens prophesying in the last days.  There truly is no male or female spiritually in God’s view, but all are called to do God’s work.  We learn about Peter boldly proclaiming Jesus Christ, who had been crucified by the religious leaders, being the coming Messiah and the only way to salvation, even though it mad them angry.  We can only tell the truth about Jesus Christ, no matter how it makes people feel.  Acts tells us that the believers had everything in common, meeting the needs of all.  We usually don’t want to accept this as a literal statement about how we as believers should live today. We are also told of Ananias and Sapphira selling some property and claiming to give it all to the disciples and lying about it by keeping part of the money for themselves, and their death because of it.  It wasn’t the amount given that caused their death, but their lying to the disciples and God about it.