Got our institute going, yeah. And we're going to look at a most very difficult... It's much easier to teach a book of the Bible. We're going to try and teach church history. And the difficulty is, you know, we have an accurate beginning of church history with the Acts of the Apostles. Because in the foundation, you know, the Lord used those apostles and those prophets initially to lay some foundation. We'll study that tonight. But after 96 A.D. with the book of Revelation, to here in the 21st century, it's really hard to know what happened. Now, we know this, God's always going to be faithful. God will never leave himself without a remnant. There were always Bible believers roaming around. But the reality is as we study out the history of the church We will see that pretty much anything you'll pick a book up on church history is mostly errors and lies because God called his saints to simplicity it's the simplicity of believing the gospel and letting the gospel live in you, and then letting you preach that gospel to those around you. Not to make a name for yourself, not to write a book about yourself, not to be a scholar, all that's high-minded and heady things. The world loves scholars. That's why they have admissions criteria for universities. Most of the books are written by scholars. I would say 95 plus percent of books are written by lost scholars. They're not worth very much. And then even the 5% written by saved scholars, they're not worth much either, and we'll see, because they kind of bend toward high-minded headiness, and like the Bible says, men of high degree are a lie, and high-mindedness and headiness is not God's way of doing things. God resists that stuff. He works with the humble. So we'll kind of try and work through this. Now, it's a classroom situation. It's not me preaching and throwing hymnals and screaming. It's just we're talking. So questions arise. Please give me the question. I want to make things as clear as I can. I will not be able to teach with a perfection because, again, we're looking into history. I'm doing the best I can and sorting through the sources and asking the Spirit of God, Is this true what this guy wrote? I was looking up, and is this chaff or is this wheat? And I'll do the best I can to show you what I'm able. But let's just get down to the church history itself, and let's look at the true New Testament church of God. Now, according to our Lord Himself in Matthew chapter 16, We see that He said in Matthew 16, when He took His men out there in the co-successory of Philippi, in the 13th verse, and He asked them the question, whom do men say that I, the Son of Man, am? And everybody said nice things about Him. You're a prophet. You're Jeremiah. You're Elijah. All good complimentary things which Probably lost men might say, and even some Christians who haven't been instructed well might say, Christ was not satisfied with that. He said, but whom say ye that I am? I certainly hope you know I'm more than just a prophet. And Simon Peter answered, Thou art the Christ, the Son of the living God. And that is the story of God's dealings with mankind, is the promise of the Christ. Christ is the Messiah. Christ is the Anointed One. back in the garden when they sinned, and He skinned the lambs and clothed them with lambs, and He said that one day the seed of the woman will come and bruise the seed of the serpent. And at that point forward, God promised a Redeemer that would come into the world. And anyone in the Old Testament that was reading the Scriptures could see that the hope was the future Redeemer. The Christ. Peter, having spent some time with the Lord and listening to Him expound the Scriptures, what the Law and the Prophets said, he said, you know what? Thou art the Christ. The one that's been promised to us for all these centuries. Thou art the Christ, the Son of the Living God. Jesus told him, Blessed art thou, Simon Barjona. Again, the beautiful truth in verse 17, flesh and blood hath not revealed it unto thee. but my Father which is in heaven." The only good thing that any of us get out of that thing that's really applicable to us is the fact that flesh and blood didn't reveal it to Peter. Peter did not understand that because he walked with Jesus. Peter, this is hard for us to believe, but according to the Bible, Peter had no advantage over us because he walked with Jesus. What happened was, he listened to the words of Jesus, and God's Spirit confirmed with Peter's Spirit what the truth is through the Word of God. That's how God works. That's how He worked with the man back then, that's how He works today. The confirmation of the Spirit of God with your spirit and the Word of God, that's how it works. Peter got it. He had a sensitive spirit. He had a humble spirit. He received the preaching. He received the drawing and the instruction of the Word of God. And Jesus said, verse 18, I say also unto thee, not only did you get this from my father, but thou art Peter. And upon this rock I will build my church, and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it. So he says a couple things here. I'm going to build a church. It will be Christ's church. He uses the pronoun my, the possessive pronoun. It is my church. The church is the church of Jesus Christ. It's His church. It's built upon this rock. And undoubtedly, Christ is referring to Himself all through the Scriptures. The Bible refers to God as the rock. Jesus Christ was God manifest in the flesh. The 18th Psalm. Remember, in verse 18, you go to Psalm 18, there are three verses in Psalm 18 that says, God is the rock. So just for those of you who had a Catholic background like I did Peter's not the rock They may point to this verse and say Peter's the rock all I say to them Can you show me another verse where Peter's the rock because it didn't exactly say Peter was a rock He said thou art Peter upon this rock. I'll build my church But if you want to think Peter's a rock you need a second verse You can't find a second verse in the Bible because there isn't even a first one You've got to stretch this one. But you can find many verses where God is the rock and Jesus is that rock, 1 Corinthians 10. The rock of the church of Jesus Christ is built first and foremost upon the very thing that happened to Peter. Someone accepting the words of God, listening to the Spirit of God, that that is the Christ of God. There's the rock. The second thing is the confession that Jesus is the Christ. That's how he's going to build his church. with believers responding to the truth and then confessing the truth. And that's how he will build his church. And the true church is the church built upon the truth of Jesus Christ and the confession of Jesus Christ. So I remember with me personally, when I went to those Bible studies in 1993 for the first time, and I began hearing those truths about Jesus Christ, Jesus Christ, and starting to receive that truth, and so I'm getting it, I'm kind of getting it, and then I finally made the confession, and then I was placed upon the rock of Jesus Christ. So God's true New Testament church is founded upon Jesus Christ. It's not founded upon baptism. It's not founded upon sacraments. It's not founded upon good works. It's not founded upon tradition. It's not founded upon anything that we do, or our parents do, or the nation does, or even the church that we belong to does. It's founded upon humbly believing Jesus is the Christ, the Son of the Living God, and making the confession. And that's the true New Testament church. Now, let me just show you. Go to Colossians chapter 1. The church becomes a spiritual entity. Colossians chapter 1. Because so often we think of the church as a building and when we're meeting in a building today at, what's our address? 271 Bucyrus? And so people might think this is the church. No, this is a building. I mean, I'm glad we're using it for Bible study. We could clear out of here and they could come in here and do childcare for kids. They could turn this into a dental lab and fix dentures for people in here. It's just a building. What is the church is the spirit, the habitation of the spirit inside the people that have made the confession. Colossians chapter one, Paul, uh... wants you to understand and verse twenty four pulsing you know i'd paul last one on the minister verse twenty four i'd rejoice in my sufferings for you i'd fill up uh... that which is behind of the afflictions of christ in my flesh for his bodies sake which is the church the church he's saying is the body of christ and and my is a part of it because I've confessed it and the Spirit is inside of me. He'll say a little bit, we'll keep going, verse 25. Whereof, for this particular church, for the body of Christ, I've been made a minister. according to the dispensation of God which is given to me for you." We're going to see a little later on that in the formation of the church how vital Paul is for the apostolic work of bringing the truth to Gentiles. We'll see that all the other eleven apostles were sent to the Jews, and Paul was specifically chosen for the Gentiles. That's what he's saying. That's the dispensation. That's what was dispensed to him. I'll bet Paul really wanted to go to the Jews, because he was studying to be a Pharisee. But God said, no, you're going in another direction. The dispensation of God, which is given to me for you. Those were people in Colossae. They were Gentiles. to fulfill the Word of God. God's Word must be fulfilled. The Scriptures can't be broken. Verse 26, here's the dispensation that he was taught, "...the mystery which hath been hid from ages and from generations." And what we're going to see is, as we study, and I've showed you before, prophecy. Prophecy is for Israel. Prophecy is an Old Testament thing. Prophesied the first coming of the Christ. Prophesied the second coming of the Christ. Prophesied the millennial reign of Christ. That's all Israel. The church is a mystery. Mystery is only found in the New Testament. There are seven mysteries that Paul was given about the church. Great is the mystery of godliness. God was manifest in the flesh. The fact that Christ would be, and there it is, here's the mystery. The mystery hid from the ages and from generations. The Jewish prophets didn't understand this. Now made manifest to His saints, those who are sanctified in Christ Jesus, to whom God would make known what is the riches of the glory of this mystery among the Gentiles, which is Christ. in you the hope of glory." When a person makes the confession, understanding the Word of God, believing God's Spirit, humbly bowing and confessing that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of the living God, a dispensation, God dispenses a part of His Spirit inside that person. And as we studied before, I mean, and we'll look in a few minutes, initially what He does is He seals the soul. God puts a beautiful seal around that soul. It's God's seal. It's perfect. There's no breaks in it. It's good for eternity. And so now Christ is inside of me, my body. Christ, the Spirit of Christ, was inside of Paul. Christ was inside of Peter. We'll take a look at how that worked. So just understanding, the New Testament church is built upon the confession of Christ, upon the work of Christ, and built upon the deposit of the Spirit of Christ inside of an individual. Go to John chapter 7. We'll look at where did the church start? I was just talking to someone who's gonna take an examination to be a chaplain and They were asking him when did the church start? Well, let's see what the scriptures say John chapter 7 John chapter 7 Now this particular, this is the Feast of the Tabernacles, and Jesus went, this is the third great feast in the feasts of the nation Israel, and He's at this teaching, at this Feast of the Tabernacles, and beautifully He says in verse 16, My doctrine is not Mine, but His that sent Me. And our Lord Jesus Christ taught the doctrine of God, and the doctrine of godliness. And he's handed it off to us in the oracles of God, and we teach the doctrine of Christ, which is the doctrine of godliness. So as he's teaching here, you know, they're asking him a bunch of questions. And finally, verse 37, in the last day of that great day of the feast, I think it was an eight-day feast, and on the final day was a high Sabbath day, and they would commemorate the time that the Jewish people were in the wilderness, And when they were in the wilderness, on the wilderness journey for those 38 years coming across there, they would celebrate that feast out in the desert, and God would often open a rock and give them water. And so now they would commemorate the celebration. They couldn't do like God did and open a rock and get water. But a whole bunch of the priests would go out, and they would get water, and they would put it on their shoulders, and they would come and march around the tabernacle with the lights, and then pour the water to remember how God gave them water from heaven. And so they're all doing this, and Jesus is there watching them go through their procession and their tradition. And Jesus stood and cried, preaching, If any man thirst, let him come unto Me and drink. And again, like he wants to do with all of us, is teach us that the spiritual component of our life is more important than the physical component. And so here the Jews were a physical people. They had fleshy eyes. By the way, so do we. Okay, so I'm not putting them down. I'm just making accurate observations about human nature We tend to get fleshy, and they were they were excited about the historical physical things and Jesus is saying get the upward look Don't worry so much about physical water come to me and get the spiritual water if you thirst that's what he's saying he says if any man thirst and Let him come to me, verse 38, he that believeth on me, as the scripture hath said, out of his belly shall flow rivers of living water. What's he speaking of? Verse 39. But this spake he of the Spirit, which they that believe on him should receive. Future tense. Why not now? For the Holy Ghost was not yet given, because the Jesus was not yet glorified. And so God, from the time of the garden with Adam, working through the millennia, to the time of Abraham and Moses, working until the time of Christ here, God works in process. And He had these people looking forward to the Messiah. And after the Messiah did His work and the Messiah was glorified, God would give the new covenant Of putting the spirit within them. Okay, so he's making this promise here. So Jesus needs to be glorified So let's go we know what happens in john in the 19th chapter. Jesus is crucified but in the 20th chapter Jesus is resurrected In a glorified body And on that day, John chapter 20, verse 19, then the same day at evening, being the first day of the week, when the doors were shut, for the disciples were assembled for fear of the Jews, came Jesus and stood in the midst, and saith unto them, Peace be unto you. And when he had so said, he showed unto them his hands and his side. Then were the disciples glad when they saw the Lord. Then Jesus said unto them again, Peace be unto you, even as my Father hath sent me, even so send I you. And when he had said this, he breathed on them and saith unto them, Receive ye the Holy Ghost. And Jesus is now glorified. These are the disciples who have followed Him. These are the disciples who have believed the testimony of the Father. These are the disciples who have believed the resurrection. Now, they were first a little skeptical, but God confirmed it to them with a visible sign. how not only Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures, but He rose again the third day, and there He is, and they believed in the resurrection of Jesus Christ, and they had full faith and confidence, and God could see they're ready now, and He gave them the Holy Ghost, and now they could receive that thing He promised in the seventh chapter. That's the beginning of the church, right there. Now, it began privately, in the upper room. That's where the church began historically. Now, that's not all that uncommon, as that pattern has followed through history. Because pretty much, historically, the picture occurs that, you know, you hear about Jesus, you think you believe, you're not sure you believe, you hear about the resurrection, you're not sure you believe, and then finally one day, it crystallizes in your mind, and your spirit accepts, well, yes, the resurrected Lord. He's the only salvation that I can ever have. He is my Savior. And privately in the upper room of your mind and your heart, you open to Him. The doors have been shut, but you finally open them, and He comes in, and you receive it. So what He did historically there and physically is what He's done through the centuries in building the church, one soul, One heart at a time, appearing to each one of us when we are ready. When, behold, now is the day of salvation. When it really becomes the first day of the beginning of a new series of weeks for all of eternity, when we are born again. And that's what's happening. See, God does these pictures, then He repeats them. So historically, we see the church being born privately in the upper room. And that is testimony of so many people. I mean, we think of our good buddy Bill Eubanks, the evangelist. And he'll tell you the testimony about, I can't remember, he had finished, he was a dealer, a pit boss in Nevada, and he came home one night and he was there in his room and it was late. He was watching television, and an evangelist was on, and it happened that night, privately, in a room, all by himself, and there went that birth process. Nobody on the outside knew about it. He knew about it, and whoever was in the upper room with him, which was the Lord that day. There was a few people that day, but I mean the world wasn't even aware what happened in the upper room that day. Most of the times when we get born again, no one's aware of it. It's a private birthing process, which is how most babies come forth, too. It's kind of private in a delivery room. So he did it there this way. He began his church formally this way. Now, to understand, there's two things for us to understand about the church. And again, there's a duality to so much of Scripture. I mean, there's both an Old Testament and a New Testament. Jesus is both God and He's man. You have a physical component, you have a spiritual component. If you're born again, you have an old man and a new man. There's so much duality. We live in the world, but we're citizens of heaven. And the church has a dual nature to it in that there is the church universal and there's the church local. Now, let's take a look at the universal church. Go to Hebrews chapter 12. Because as we study church history, it's going to be a little bit tricky and trying, and we're just going to be thankful for what the Lord gives us along the way. And we do not need perfect understanding about the history. We just need to perfectly know that Jesus is a perfect Savior, and He saved us, and He'll perfectly save someone else. And so as long as we're set on the doctrine of Christ, but looking back here, you know, we'll learn some things. Here in the 12th chapter of Hebrews, he talks about, in verse 23, he says, verse 22, you're come to the Mount Zion, unto the city of the living God, the heavenly Jerusalem, to an innumerable company of angels, here's the key, verse 23, to the general assembly and church of the firstborn, which are written in heaven. The universal church is something God watches over, something that God has the membership role of, not your local pastor, not a denomination, not any hierarchy, not any organization. In heaven, when those upper room moments occur, from the first day of the first upper room moment with those men, in heaven, written up there goes the name into the Lamb's Book of Life. The church universal is written down in heaven and it's a 2,000 plus year old entity. So the church universal isn't even on earth right now. I mean, part of it is, whatever's alive now, but everything going before it is up there. In other words, we couldn't have an ecumenical movement of all the believers on planet earth if we wanted to because we'd leave a whole bunch out because they've already died and gone with the Lord, their bodies are dead, and they're up there. And so the church is kind of divided Many are behind and some are here. The only one that's ever going to be able to have an ecclesiastical movement and an ecumenical movement is Jesus Christ when He does it in the clouds and finally unites us. He's the only one that knows who is in the church universal, who's not in the church universal, who's a professor and who's a possessor. He knows all those things. And that's Him. It's written in heaven. And that's something he wants us to understand. The church universal is something Satan can't prevail against. He can't do a thing about it. I mean, at this point, as we know, Satan does not even have access to the third heaven. He gets as high as the second heaven, and he hits the glass wall there, and the most he can do is scream through the glass wall at the Lord, and the Lord can hear him just shake his head, and it doesn't pay much attention to the accuser or the brethren. He has no access up there. He can't prevail up there. He can't touch the books up there. He can't do anything about it up there. He's been cast out of there. He's trapped in the darkness and the chains of darkness in the second heaven and soon enough he'll be thrown out of there and he'll be walking with boots on the ground and that'll happen in Revelation 12 in about 15 years or so. We'll worry about it then. We won't be here. But anyways, so that's the first thing to understand the universal church. I understand the universal church where Satan can't prevail. However, what the Lord has done through the course of the centuries, and he's continuing to do it right now to the present day, go to Romans 16, verse 16. Just for a simple verse. There are many others, but we'll just look at one simple one. Romans 16, 16. And here Paul giving his salutation to the church at Rome. Conveniently he doesn't mention Peter because there's no historical evidence Peter ever showed up at Rome. There's a bunch of myths that he did. Because Peter was sent to Babylon. He was a Jewish apostle. Paul went to Rome. But anyways, here's Paul writing at Rome. And here's what he says after he lists all these people. He salutes in verse 16. 16. Salute one another with an holy kiss. The churches of Christ salute you. Plural. I thought there was one church. Well, there is. There is one universal spiritual body of Christ from that upper room all the way until the trumpet sounds. Yes, that's correct. But that one body is made up of many members, not just individual members, but local assemblies. And that's why there's the church at Rome, to the church at Corinth, to the churches in Galatia, to the church at Thessalonica. There are local assemblies. Here's a little assembly here. to the church in Amherst at Grace and Truth. Here's a little assembly of believers. These are local assemblies that get together. These Satan can attack. These Satan can often make divisions and even prevail and cause splits and sometimes get so much into a church that God Himself will remove the candlestick. Okay, so we got to understand, we got to open our understanding. One of the things that is sometimes frustrating about Christianity, we want to stay babies and just have, we want to just look at one facet of God's work. But there's multiple facets, and God wants to expand our mind and our hearts. God wants to expand. He's growing us. He's building us. And so we got to understand that the universal church, okay, that's God's business. The local church, it's God's business through us. He's working with us. And here is where the partnership comes in. Here is where Jesus says, get in the yoke with me and work with me. All right, and there's where Satan attacks and tries to break the yoke and do things. Now, remember we saw back in John chapter 20 how the church really began, it really, the initial birth of the church was in the upper room in John 20? Now, right after the Gospel of John is the Acts of the Apostles. And if we were to turn to it in chapter one, What we will observe is again, the Lord, He uses these brilliant, true incidents, these real life events. has object lessons that are pictorial, has apples of gold in pictures of silver. I mean, there are wise little things to be learned in a beautiful picture. Gold is often in the Bible referred to as a heavenly metal, and it can be referred to, let's say, the works of the Word of God, and silver works in redemption. And in the redemption, the pictures of silver redemption, you'll see little golden nuggets that you'll pick out of it. And here's one here. So you got John chapter 20. It's the first day of the resurrection. And we understand here in the first chapter, The writer tells us, it's Luke, the former treatise, have I made, O Theophilus, of all that Jesus began both to do and teach. So he's talking about, you know, I wrote the Gospel of Luke, looking at his ministry, until the day in which he was taken up. After that, through the Holy Ghost, he'd given commandments unto the apostles whom he had chosen. And we'll study that in a minute to understand the different type of apostles that are found in the Bible. the apostles whom He chosen, verse 3, to whom also He showed Himself alive, after His passion, by many infallible proofs, being seen of them forty days." So, from that resurrection day, He's with them for forty more days, and then in chapter 2, another ten days later, on the fiftieth day, Pentecost will come. Now When he's with these men he assembles them together. He's teaching them notice verse 3 pertaining to the kingdom of God Because we're moving into a new direction now. We're no longer teaching the kingdom of heaven We're teaching the kingdom of God there. There's they're similar, but they're they're different the kingdom of heaven For proper understanding, just real quick, I want you to get this in your mind. The kingdom of heaven was initially tried with David and Solomon in Israel. The kingdom of heaven is a theocracy. The kingdom of heaven is the rule of heaven's law on earth. It says that in Deuteronomy, heaven on earth. It's an attempt to have a kingdom on earth whose law is heavenly. Okay. The marriage of, if you will, church and state. That's the Kingdom of Heaven. Now, God tried that. That was the dispensation of Moses and all the way through teaching those people and giving them a king and doing all this stuff, and it failed. Now, that doesn't mean God give up on it. He's going to redo it. Just like He started the Garden of Eden, and I know it kind of failed for what we did, but He's not going to give up on it. He's going to redo it in the millennium. Now, in the Millennium, the Kingdom of Heaven will be re-established. The government will be married to the church. The governor will be Christ Himself. The rule will be God's law. America is not the New Testament equivalent of Israel or the Kingdom of Heaven. For one reason, the First Amendment. The First Amendment allows freedom of religion, freedom of worship. God doesn't tolerate that in His kingdom. Read Deuteronomy 7 and 13. God says, if there's a pagoda on my land, break the altar down, kill the people that worship there. Okay? It's a theocracy. There won't be any Islam. There won't be any Seventh-day Adventists. There won't be any Mormons. There won't be any Hinduists. There won't be any Shintos. When God comes back, there's one religion, the religion of God. There's one God. There's no false gods. Anybody preaches a false god, done, killed. Jesus will do it. He's ruled with a rod of iron. Don't worry. He'll take care of it. He's gonna rule every law that's in that book for a thousand years He's gonna show him how it's done, right? That's the kingdom of heaven now these men were interested in the kingdom of heaven and he said no no no no no We're moving on from that we're gonna separate church and state for a couple thousand years. I want to do an inner work with you The kingdom of God. I want you even to have a country like America, where people can have freedom of religion and will give them free choice and their free will to pick what they want. And I'll honor their free will. And if they come to me, they'll be one of the sheep. And if they turn, they can be one of the goats. So the kingdom of God. And so he's teaching them and he says this in verse four, being assembled together with them, he commanded them that they should not depart from Jerusalem, but wait for the promise of the Father, which, saith he, ye have heard of me. For John, you know, truly baptized with water, that was a kingdom of heaven thing, it was a physical thing, you sprinkle water on people, and they were confessing their sins, but you'll be baptized with the Holy Ghost many days hence. Now notice, they'd already been given the Holy Ghost, but they're not baptized with it. And that's the difference between being sealed with the Holy Ghost around your soul and immersed and filled with it to the point where you're a vessel to the overflowing, where He's filled you so much that it comes out. Now, in this particular chapter, while these folks are waiting, notice what they do. Jesus goes up. And then what happens, verse 13, and when they were come in, they went into the upper room where they abode, and it mentions all the names of the eleven remaining apostles at that time. And these all continued with one accord in prayer and supplication. They're a local assembly. That's the local church of Jerusalem. There it is. And there's the first local meetings of a local church in the history of the Bible. What are they doing? They're praying. They're supplicating to the Lord. They're ministering one to another the best they can. They've been sealed with the Holy Ghost. They haven't quite been filled with it, as we know, because you read the rest of the chapter and Peter completely botches his teaching of Psalm 109, turns it upside down, inside out and backwards, because he hasn't been filled yet. And when you're not filled with the Holy Ghost, you can't teach Bible. You can be sealed with the Holy Ghost. That's okay, but you can't teach Bible just being sealed. You need to be filled. That's why if you give the Bible to a new Christian, when they gave me the Bible when I first saved the first year or two, I couldn't expound on it. I remember I got saved in September, and three months later, my father told me about an old man who'd been praying for me for years. when I was in pre-med and in medical school, and he was praying for me to get saved. And now here I am, post-medical, post-residency, post-whatever, I don't know, I was on my second or third job by then. And I said, really, a guy's been praying for me that long? Who, where? And he said he lives in North Tonawan. I said, I gotta meet this, I wanna go talk to him. And so I drove up to meet him, and he was really a guy that loved the scriptures. And he read them constantly, and he taught Bible. And he sat before me, and he just started expounding on the scriptures. And he said, why don't you try? And I tried, and I couldn't do anything. I mean, I could listen to him, but I couldn't do anything. I was sealed, but I wasn't filled yet. It was too soon. Now watch what happens to these guys here. Now they, you know, make a mess in chapter 1, but thankfully chapter 2 comes, and the promise comes. And when the day of Pentecost was fully come, and they were all with one accord in one place, suddenly there came a sound from heaven as of a mighty rushing wind. It filled the house where they were sitting, and there appeared unto them cloven tongues like as of fire. It sat on them, and they were all filled with the Holy Ghost. And then they began to speak, and it tells you with other tongues, and so that all the people of the foreign languages could hear the gospel. And Peter goes on and he preaches an incredible sermon here. And he preaches and he uses quotations, and the quotation he pulls out of Psalm 16, There's not a single one of you here that would have interpreted it the way he did. And he interprets it incredibly by the power of the Holy Ghost. And you read through that if you're someone who studies Scripture and go, wow, I never would have seen that in Psalm 16. And the Holy Ghost gave it to him and gave him the interpretation of it. And here's the point. What happened was, in the upper room, they were sealed like the new birth. A time later, they were filled and the filling made them preachers and proclaimers and what will be called a disciple. They had gone from the baby stage to the adult disciple stage. Just like a child is born a baby and then he grows up. As a baby he can't do work, but grown up he can do work. As a baby Christian, and God does not expect a baby. Now look, this was a rapid growth period, okay? Fifty days. This is supernatural. This is God working with them. But the same thing happened in your life and mine. You had a point where you were sealed and you were a baby, and if you continued to stay where God told you to stay, which would be at a local church, and heard the teaching, in which you're supposed to do, and went home and read, which you're supposed to do, and you supplicated and prayed and stayed with one accord, not with discord, God would grow you to the point where one day He would fill you and you would be a disciple. What a blessing. Now, I know that doesn't happen a lot in America, and we'll see this as we study church history. And that's another story. Most Christians today are Peter Pan baby Christians who have no interest in being a disciple. Amen. God bless them. It's okay. The Lord will work it out. He'll get them in the millennium. He'll fix them. But in this lifetime, whatever. But if they're sealed, where's their name written? In heaven. Nobody can take it out. Not even them. Not even them. Nothing can separate you. Once that thing is written, by the way, I think it's written in Christ's blood up there. I think he writes it in the blood of Christ and nothing can remove the blood of Christ. And when that baby's name is written up there, and the good thing that God had to show me for years, brother, how far are we time-wise? Okay, the good thing that God showed me was this, I needed this as a pastor, because I used to get all frustrated about baby Christians. Lord, Lord, what are we going to do? And then he had to show me, look, that's why I have the Millennium. I got a thousand years to work with them. If they don't want to grow up now, they want to stay babies now, they don't want to serve me now, When I'm there, they can't disobey me. When I'm there and I say, now you are going to sit in that church and you're going to study, you know what they're going to do? They're going to sit in that church and they're going to study. And I think I want to go another church. I don't like the pastor. And Jesus is saying, no, I put you over there. That's where you're staying and that's where you're going to study. And don't worry, Jesus will have everything worked out. The commander in chief will have everything well in hand at that time. But the point is, today most Christians like staying babies, they like the sealing, they don't want the filling. But the same thing, there's a period of time. And the observation is, the birth was private in the upper room. The discipleship is public. And anyone who's a disciple, the public knows. They'll know at your workplace, they'll know in your family, they'll know in your neighborhood if you're a disciple. And if you want to stay in the upper room, stay baby, that's okay too, like I say. But I just want you to see the portraits. Do you see the portraits? Amen. Glory to God. Now, let's take a look at something that's most interesting. Go to the book of Revelation. Now, this is a great, great book. The Lord says here, that there is a blessing if you read this book and you hear this book. Verse 1, it says, it's the revelation of Jesus Christ which God gave unto him to show unto his servants. not just his saints, his servants, and the honest to goodness truth that I've learned in 23 years of being in this now, is if you have a Christian who's a babe and refuses to grow up and refuses to be a public disciple and refuses, they don't understand that book. Because servants are disciples. If any man serve me, he will be where I am. There will my disciple be. He will follow me, Jesus says. And the disciples, the servants, can get a pretty good understanding on this book. And most baby Christians are completely confused about this book. You want to be a servant if you want to see what's in this book. Now, verse 3, Blessed is he that readeth And they that hear the words of this prophecy. Now here's what I think. When I was a baby Christian, I thought I better read the book of Revelation. As I began to grow up, I realized, what book is the book of Revelation in your Bible? So you ought to read the first 65 before you read Revelation. Because in order to understand Revelation, you really need to spend some time in the other 65 books. Because so much of Revelation is drawn from the other 65 books, particularly the 39 of the Old Testament, because much of this book is about the time of Jacob's trouble and Jesus Christ preparing his Jews so that he can come back and set up his millennial kingdom at the end of the 19th and in the 20th chapter. And so therefore, if you're reading this book as a Christian and you haven't read Zechariah, or Ezekiel, or Daniel, or Joel, you're not going to understand most of the references. So the blessing comes if you read it at the right time. Again, it's a work in progress. God works in process with His kids. He doesn't expect a child to go from, you know, two foot four to six foot two in a week with a growth spurt. It's time. It takes time, and God understands that. Jesus said this one tree hasn't brought forth fruit. Give it another year. Give it a fourth year. About four years is about the time the Lord wants to take for some growth. After four years, you could be through the Bible enough that you can really read Revelation and start to get some understanding on it. But in this particular book of Revelation, This beautiful vision is given to the Apostle John, and Jesus says to him, when finally he gets to look at Jesus, verse 17, and when I saw him, I fell at his feet as dead. And that's a real truth, that if he did, even like in the next five minutes appear in this room, I have a feeling we'd all fall at his feet as dead. And even if we are disciples, because I think John was a good disciple. I think John was such a good disciple, God let him write five books of the Bible. It's like the Moses of the New Testament. And even John, the one that laid on his breast when he was the man from Nazareth, now in presence of the glorified Christ, falls at his feet as dead. And Jesus then laid his right hand upon John and said, fear not, I am the first and the last. I am he that liveth, And was dead, and behold, I am alive forevermore. And John was speechless, so Jesus, amen, is preaching. Amen. Sometimes a preacher gotta preach his own preaching. Amen. And I have the keys of hell and of death. Now here he divides the book, verse 19. Write the things which thou hast seen. the things which are, and the things which shall be hereafter." And there's the division of the book into past, present, and future. And the past is going to be everything that John saw on the Isle of Patmos that day, which we didn't look at it, but you can read it on your own about the one in the midst of the golden candlesticks. And then, notice the word hereafter. That's going to key me as to when we kick into the future, and it's chapter 4, verse 1. And after this, I looked, and behold, a door was opened in heaven, and the first voice which I heard was as it were of a trumpet, talking with me, which said, Come up hither, Sounds like the trumpet shall sound, and we shall be gathered together up in the clouds unto Him. It's the rapture, come up hither, and I will show thee the things which must be hereafter. And from that verse forward, it's all future. And so, between the past of chapter 1 and the future of chapter 4, verse 1, is the present of the church age in chapters 2 and 3. And the Lord, what He's going to do, as He tells the Apostle, that I want you to write to these seven churches. And He's going to write letters to these seven churches. Now, we'll look at it historically. We're going to look at many facets here. Historically, those churches really existed. These were seven churches that existed in a region of Asia Minor that Paul the Apostle himself had preached through a few study the journeys in the Acts of the Apostles. There was the city of Ephesus, the city of Smyrna, Pergamos, Thyatira, Sardis, Philadelphia, Laodicea. They were seven little local assemblies of believers who had put themselves on the rock of Jesus Christ and entrusted Him as their Savior. And they were sealed with the Spirit of God, and their names were written in the universal book up there in heaven. And they began to, with one accord, with supplication and prayer and Bible get-together and gather and worship the Lord and exalt the Savior. and edify one another, and spread the Word, and go out and evangelize sinners, and that's what a church does. And he says, I want to write some letters to these churches. And historically we're looking at about maybe 96, 95, 96 AD, so it's 60 years after that first little congregation in Jerusalem. And it's been about six decades of Paul preaching and starting assemblies and other people starting assemblies, and he says, I want to write to these churches. So historically, they're actual letters to literal churches that existed back at that time. And as you read through them, you'll see that they have different characteristics. Ephesus was a very purposed church. And I kind of wrote it for you. And Smyrna was a kind of a persecuted church. And Pergamos was a perverting church and Thyatira was a persecuting church. You can read about these various types of how these local assemblies were behaving. So I have a historical truth here. I have a practical spiritual application as I read through those. First off, I might read through a particular church and see how Jesus commends the church, and see how Jesus reproves the church, and I might look at some characteristics and say, wow, that looks kind of like me as a believer. I'm kind of like the church at Smyrna. I'm kind of like the church at Ephesus. And you may kind of see yourself in it, because there's seven different types, and just like the seven colors in the rainbow, there might be seven different manifestations of how a Christian might kind of be. And so you may see yourself in it. Also, it may be a picture of the local assembly you're in. And so you may be attending a local church that's kind of like 107. So we see historical truth, we see present, practical, spiritual, applicational truth. But about a hundred or so years ago, the Lord, as the time of the end comes and He begins to reveal things, showed a couple of men, the one I know better than anyone is Clarence Larkin, this is the one I know, that this was not only just a past thing, and not only a spiritually-applicated thing, but it's actually a prophetic picture of the church age. Those seven churches turn out to be a prophetic picture of what was going to happen in the church of Jesus Christ from that time of the upper room until the time of the trumpet sounding. And so what we're going to try and do in the next number of weeks, and it's going to take a while, I want to take you through each one. If you look very quickly, take a look at this. Look at Ephesus. Ephesus is going to represent the initial church of the apostles and the elders for a generation or two after the apostles. You can see the time periods from about 33 to 200 AD. And we'll take a look at that and I'm gonna and we're out of time so next week We'll we'll go into it. We'll look at the the I want to show you the types of the Apostles that there there are Apostles of the Lamb there are second-generation Apostles who's had their hands laid out and then there's the foundation and we'll draw pictures of how God builds something and how so much of a foundation structure is Underground and then becomes the edifice above it and we'll look at that and we'll see that particular church. The next church is Smyrna which is the persecuted church. And from 200 to 325 A.D., the Roman Empire, the old Roman Empire, did everything it could to try and kill those Christians and put them in lion's dens and burned them and did things to them at the Colosseum. And that went on for a while. And then we're going to be able to see the Pergamos, an interesting word. Gamos is where you get the gametes. It's like marriage. And per is perverted. And it's a perverted marriage. And this is a perverted church. And we'll see how the church structure itself began to turn away from truth into a false way that began perverted traditions, the very things that the Pharisees had done when Jesus was there. And that's from about 325 to 500 AD. And then Thyatira, that Pergamos church, became a huge church state and became a persecuting church and persecuted the believers of the Lord for about a thousand years. That was the devil's millennium, the Dark Ages, of now not the old Roman Empire, but the quote-unquote Holy Roman Empire, the Papal Roman Church. And then we'll see how Sardis represents that period from 15 to 1600 where Jesus said, you've only got a few cells left, you're practically dead. And it was during that period where Erasmus and a number of people began to go throughout Europe and to bring together all the best. Now, look, you don't need all the Bible, you need Christ. But what God was doing as the printing press was being ready to be made, God had these men collate and bring together the textus receptus, the received Greek text, so that all the Bible books could be collated together so they could be printed, which they were in the Philadelphian church. And the Philadelphian church is when you get the, Reina Valera of 1602. You get the King James Bible of 1611. You get the Diodati, the Italian Bible. You get the work as God to the Philadelphian church, the faithful, persevering church that not only kept the name, but kept the Word of God, which Jesus says is magnified above his name. The Bible is above the name of Jesus. Now, it's not above the person of Jesus, but it's above his name, because you can have the name all confused and have another Jesus. But if you've got the right book, you're only going to have the right Jesus. And so we'll see that. And then finally, the church, curiously, it's not the church at the Laodicea, it's the Laodiceans. And that's the church of programs and personalities and performances, and that was in 1881 when they finally tore up the King James Bible and started writing modern perversions, which is what we have today, and we know the church is a mess since then. But the point is, it's an amazing prophecy. that God laid out in the letters that he wrote in chapters two and three. And we're going to go through church history. We want to try and follow the names of the good guys compared to the bad guys because Jesus wants us to have the discernment to separate the good from the bad. He wants us to know the good from the evil. He wants us to hate the evil and love the good. He wants us to have truth. And it's very important because what we're going to see is during that church age, the majority of what calls itself Christianity and Christendom will one day hear the words, I never knew you. Depart from me, ye that work iniquity. Yeah, that's very, very sad. So, so that's, that's about where we are tonight. Where are we about? That's enough. That's enough for tonight. Any questions on what we're looking at? And the next week we'll start to get into emphasis and start to look at things like that. What? Yes. Okay. Yes. You know, the question is, in the upper room in Acts chapter 1, they were all together with one accord, and there were some women there, and they were praying. And then he says, the Catholic Church has the picture of the Last Supper, and it has a female there. Could that be it? I don't know. Who knows the vain imaginations of men? Possibly. I mean, we do know that in the Last Supper, it's recorded in the four Gospels, it was the disciples up there with him. It wasn't the women. Again, we'll look at this in the course of church history, how men, just as was warned, crept in, wolves in sheep clothing, and began writing the vain writings of men and a new set of traditions. The Pharisees had Old Testament traditions. What was the thing that they used to call it? The Talmud. and things like that, and now these guys start writing new traditions, catechisms, and additions to the Word of God, and little by little it takes the place of the Word of God. Yes? Yeah, I would think that is. The brother was saying that the upper room that's mentioned for the Last Supper and an axe, is it the same room? I'll bet it is. I'll bet it is. 120, that'd be like this size. I'm thinking about this because if you put six people in each pew, that's 120, right here. So maybe you could probably take a few feet off there, a few feet there, yeah, but yeah, it'd be an interesting gathering hall, yeah, sure. But what really is the church, like we saw, it's the living stones. It's not the ceramic stones or the brick stones, it's the living stones. Sure. Sure. Although he did, he said, you know, a meeting place, and they probably never had one. Apparently, the one person he directed them to was someone that had some means that was willing to use a large portion of his home for it. And that's the way God works. He works through His people, and they give not only their time to Him and their talent to Him, but they give their treasure, which are their lands, to Him. And we see that in Acts. They were giving their lands over. All right. Next week we'll continue. Yeah.