Programme: Believers’ Convention 2024 (Week 1_Day 5)
Date: Saturday, 13th July, 2024
Transcript Summary
1. (Acts 5:17-20) Jesus ordained the twelve so that they might be sent forth to preach. To preach is to stand fully in their office. Jesus brought in the twelve to develop them for preaching under the allocation of ministry gifts, especially the first office of apostles.
2. The apostles needed to be a witness to the life, death and resurrection of Jesus. They must be able to say that they saw Him when He rose. They saw His person before He died, they witnessed the death on the cross, they know the location of His burial. They must actually witness Jesus. Those were the words of ‘this life’ that they should preach.
3. (Acts 2:47) In consistent speaking of the words of this life, people were added daily. We can imagine what “the life” is. It is a bit elusive to define “the life”. If Jesus does not help us, we will not see or know what the apostles of the Lamb were preaching. What they preached was their doctrine. That is the doctrine that grew the seven (Acts 6:2-6). One of the seven was killed (Stephen) who testified of Jesus, and we saw another one (Philip) who went to preach Christ (Acts 8:4-5).
4. It is clear that Peter had a knowing of Christ. Peter knew that Jesus had the words of Eternal Life but he could not preach the words of Eternal Life. It was only Jesus that had the words of Eternal Life. Jesus was preaching the words of Eternal Life to His disciples. They heard it but they could not understand it. Jesus was probably doing it on purpose.
5. The day many people went away and refused to follow Jesus, He asked His disciples, “Do you also want to go away?” It was then it became clear that they were following Him for the sake of Eternal Life. Jesus had not yet given them Eternal Life, but He had given them life. That is why the angel told them to go speak the words of this life (Acts 5:20). This life here is not Eternal Life, but it is life.
6. It is clear that when we begin with Jesus, He does not start with us with Eternal Life; He will firstly give us life because we must continue with Him. (John 8:31-32) There are “His words” that are not at a level of truth. These words (of His life) will propel you to Life Eternal.
7. The apostolic witness the disciples should do spans from the day John baptized Jesus to the day He was taken up. We will never have apostles like the twelve because for them to be raised, Jesus had to come and be made flesh and they needed to see Him tempted. That advent has gone away. The 12 apostles were opportuned to see the second Person in the Trinity made flesh, for the purpose of witnessing Him.
8. The apostles were more than just preachers, they were witnesses. No one can stand in that position of witnessing again. But there is another type of witness that God has granted us which is to witness Him from the realm of the spirit. He told Paul, “I have made you a minister and a witness” (Acts 26:16), but these have nothing to do with the witness of Jesus while He was in the flesh. That is a different witness entirely.
9. To call upon His name is to bring Him. Jesus does not just come to company with people and teach them, He gives them something. This is one of those promises that He made when He said, “I will come to you” (John 14:18). This (teaching) is the Lord coming to us. This is the last coming. Something precedes coming, which is words — Jesus’ words. The words of Jesus are very strong. Every word He spoke are His words (John 8:31). Every word that He had spoken are words of Him for life at a particular level.
10. All the eleven apostles had life in their souls. Jesus had given them life. If they did not have life, they wouldn’t be able to preach on the day of Pentecost. Being filled with the HolyGhost does not make you a preacher. You cannot preach when you don’t have life. Preaching is not preaching letters, it is preaching Him; it is preaching life. The apostles had been with Jesus. The preached more than His word; they preached Him. They were the apostles of the Lamb. No one will become an apostle of the Lamb other than the twelve.
11. John the Baptist introduced them to the Lamb (John 1:29). When they met the Lamb, they knew this was the Lamb. They saw the two states of this Lamb: as the everlasting gift who was offered on the cross and as arnion who was raised from the dead. It was after resurrection that He became arnion — a little lamb. To make Him little is to make Him eternal. They saw the Eternal One and they saw the everlasting One.
12. “Thou shalt not bow down thyself to them, nor serve them: for I the LORD thy God am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children unto the third and fourth generation (Exod 20:5). Iniquity is shutting God out from your sphere/space. It is to push God away. If you hate Him and die with that hatred, you will keep hating Him in the world to come. You can be born again and speaking in tongues, and you don’t want Him. This world is designed by Satan to make people hate God which is called enmity against God.
13. It is not easy to rightly divide what the gospel mustered together as words of this life, but it is there. It is not easy to successfully teach the milk of the word as lines and precepts. The doctrine of baptisms, laying on of hands, Eternal judgment, resurrection of the dead, faith towards God, and repentance from dead works are all doctrines. But Jesus did more than these to the twelve disciples; He GAVE them life to preach Him.
14. Jesus gave them a measure of Himself before He left. He taught them till the cross. Then He came and taught them again after the cross; He was appearing and teaching. He was depositing a measure of Himself in the disciples. The last measure was that He gave them Christ which Philip went to preach.
15. And as they went on their way, they came unto a certain water: and the eunuch said, See, here is water; what doth hinder me to be baptized? And Philip said, If thou believest with all thine heart, thou mayest. And he answered and said, I believe that Jesus Christ is the Son of God.” (Acts 8:36-37). If we believe that Jesus is the Son of God, we will be born again. You don’t need to make people confess their sins; just believing Jesus is enough to knock off the old man and quicken the new man. We get instantaneous salvation by believing that God raised Jesus from the dead. To believe that Jesus is the Son of God is to believe that God raised Jesus from the dead.
16. “Concerning his Son Jesus Christ our Lord, which was made of the seed of David according to the flesh; and declared to be the Son of God with power, according to the spirit of holiness, by the resurrection from the dead…” (Rom. 1:3-4). This spirit of holiness is the Eternal Spirit. The Being that was talking to them at Olive was the Eternal Man. That is the man Christ Jesus; that is the Man that was physically caught up into the cloud (Acts 1:9). Our world is real. This account is not a lie. But many people are not living in this consciousness because of things here. When all these things happened to these apostles, they were baptised into them; nothing mattered to them here anymore. They had enough evidence to preach the gospel—to preach that Jesus lived, died and was raised from the dead.
17. The apostles witnessed great power. Great grace was upon them all. The apostle of this dimension or kind must be opportuned to be a witness of an Adam. Jesus was the last Adam. This means that He terminated the Adamic order. There is nothing called Adam anymore. Jesus is the quickening spirit. This kind of man is a different man.
18. There is an inheritance of the first allocation of the gospel and the inheritance is a measure of the person of Jesus. It was that person that Philip became and he could preach Christ. Philip was not preaching Christ from the revelational point of view as the power of God; it was Paul who delved into that and revealed the mystery. Philip was not preaching Christ as a mystery. He was teaching people who were not born again; it was a declaration of the Messiah. He preached Him as the anointed One; he understood the concept of Christ from the Jewish religion. He was saying that this is the person that God chose to save or lead Israel. This is because many felt that instead of bringing deliverance to them, Jesus was ‘preaching’ deliverance.
19. Under the New Testament, there is no prophetic calling to deliver a nation. That era has passed. The deliverance from the devil is what God wants to give. You can remove the bad government and you will still be under the devil. The Jews were looking for deliverance. If we are looking for physical deliverance, then we are looking for a kingdom which is the kingdom of this world. Satan raises standards that will make us reject God’s offer; he will create needs. The greatest temptation of Jesus was to deliver Israel. He had the power and knew what to do. We must do denial to the uttermost for the kingdom to appear.
20. Jesus ensured that the eleven were equipped to be a witness. Faith towards God was part of their teaching, but that was not what they witnessed; they were witnesses of a Person. The angel told them to go preach the words of this life. They should be able to preach Him because He went in and out of them until they were able to know Him. To a degree, they knew Him. The extent to which they knew Him is the extent to which they had life. The words of this life would get the people to a place where they will be able to take the life. The words of this life would train the people to be able to receive the life. The life follows the words. When you teach the words, the life follows after.
21. The preaching is Jesus, it is not just a preaching on crusade ground. When Peter preached and 3000 and 5000 got born again, he preached the words of this life. But when they were in the temple, that was when they dissected the anatomy of Jesus. It was through this that Philip’s capacity grew. Philip taught the name of Jesus Christ. He was teaching things concerning the Kingdom. Those are measures of the life. Those were things that were imparted with the seeing of Jesus physically. That impartation is heavy and Paul did not have it. The Lord Jesus had to appear to Paul to make him a witness of Himself from another level entirely.
22. “And he said, The God of our fathers hath chosen thee, that thou shouldest know his will, and see that Just One, and shouldest hear the voice of his mouth.” (Acts 22:14). Knowing His will begins the means of seeing Him. So the will opens the eyes. You know the will of God, then it opens your eyes. When you see the Just One, you will now hear the voice of his mouth. To see Jesus is different from hearing Him talk to you. These are allocations in the spirit. One can see Jesus but it is not enough; I should hear Him say things to me. Knowing His will is good but seeing Him is better. But we should not just see Him, we should hear Him say things to us. That is the only way we can be a witness.
23. One can see someone and you still do not know him. It is from the voice of His mouth we will know who we have seen. It is when we have known Him that we will become witnesses, not to some men but to all men. We need a certain light to minister to some men. Satan’s investment in men is not at the same rate. Some men need to hear Jesus talking to them through you. If one is not yet a witness, there are certain men you cannot minister to.
24. To come into real glory is to identify with the throne of God. This talks about the throne of God knowing you because the Godhead has given you enough of Themselves to the extent that you are saved. When a man is saved, he can be sent to minister to many who are not yet saved. It is also possible that one is saved and not sent. However, many people are not yet saved, so there is no way one will be saved and not be sent (Luke 24:49).
25. The reason Jesus is speaking to us is for us to know Him. We must hear the voice of His mouth for us to know Him and be a witness of His life. While many have searched the scriptures, thinking that is where life is, we must understand that the entirety of scriptures testify of the person of Jesus. The person of Jesus is life. The Apostles could speak Jesus’ words because they interacted with His life/person.
Blessings!