Paul risen from the dead!

The Apostle Paul died and came back to life.

In  II Corinthians 12:2, Paul talks about how, “I knew a man in Christ above fourteen years ago, (whether in the body, I cannot tell; or whether out of the body, I cannot tell: God knoweth;) such an one caught up to the third heaven.”

Jordan says, “My own private, personal, subjective opinion is that’s talking about Paul, and the encounter where that took place is right there in Acts.”

Specifically, Acts 14:19 says, “And there came thither certain Jews from Antioch and Iconium, who persuaded the people, and, having stoned Paul, drew him out of the city, supposing he had been dead.”

Jordan goes on, “So, at Lystra Paul’s dragged out of town after having a ministry and preaching. Verse 20 says, ‘Howbeit, as the disciples stood round about him, he rose up, and came into the city: and the next day he departed with Barnabas to Derbe.’

“Now when somebody rises up—he’s been stoned to death and he rose up! What just happened?! If he died, what happened to him when he rose up? He’s resurrected! There’s a miracle that takes place. That shouldn’t surprise you because there are miracles that took place all through this chapter.

“By the way, he rises up, came into the city, and the next day he departed with Barnabas to Derbe. That’s a 20-mile walk from Lystra! If you were stoned to death with stones . . . if someone took brick bats and stones and whacked you in the head long enough they thought you were dead, I don’t think you’re just going to get up and walk 20 miles the next day! Unless something miraculous happened!

“Verse 21 says, ‘And when they had preached the gospel to that city, and had taught many, they returned again to Lystra, and to Iconium, and Antioch.’

“Timothy got saved right in the middle of some real interesting ministry. You follow Paul’s ministry through the Book of Acts and you’ll find something radically changed at this point. Up until this point, Paul would go into a city and people would reject him and he would just leave.

“From here on out, though, they reject him and you know what he does? He just goes right back at them! A guy once said, ‘He acted like he had a death wish from here on out.’

“Now, I don’t know about you, but if you got caught up into the third heaven and saw things that weren’t lawful for you to utter, and the Lord says, ‘Okay, you’re going back,’ and you got back down here, how long would you want to stay down here and not go back up there?

“I don’t think Paul gained that opinion in Philippians 1 in the jail in Rome. I think he had that opinion from the time of Acts 14. He lived with such reckless abandon all through his ministry from there on out. And Timothy cut his spiritual teeth on that kind of exciting dynamic ministry. Must have been an impressive time to have been around the work of the ministry.

“Timothy was there when the gospel would go into a community that had never heard the name of Christ. They didn’t have advance billing. None of them had ever heard the message Paul’s preaching. And he goes in and preaches the gospel and sees people get saved. Then he sees those saved people begin to get together and study the Word of God. He edifies them in a specific manner.

“When he tells Timothy that thing about ‘godly edifying,’ Timothy had experienced that and knew exactly what he was talking about and Timothy came out of the kind of ministry where that was the norm.

“By the time Paul’s gone, apostasy set into all of that. All of that had been co-opted into ChristenDUM. It had been co-opted into a religious system that took the truth and mixed it back into kingdom truth; got rid of right division. Mixed law and grace and produced death in the pot.  But Tim was there when it all started.

*****

“When you look at II Timothy and you see the church, it moves from rule to ruin. Paul ministered from all across Asia, all up into Europe, all the way to Rome, planning churches in tremendously diverse cultures. He didn’t give them one way it had to look in every one. He said, ‘Here’s truth, now you go wisely and maturely structure it the way you live.’

“You remember Romans 15 where he says to the Romans, ‘I’m in Macedonia and when I leave here to go to Spain I’m going to stop and preach there to you’? Paul had some plans! I think he did get to Spain and it would have taken another two-year span, at least, so what you’re seeing is Paul traveling. Now eventually he’s put back in prison and that’s when he writes II Timothy at the end.

“When he wrote I Timothy, he was writing after he left Timothy in Ephesus when he went around furthering that trip. He’s writing it at a point where they’ve both been in prison and now they’re out and Paul’s gone on to do some other things and then he writes back to Timothy, ‘Let me encourage you to keep that ministry going.’

“You see how he says in Verse 2, ‘Unto Timothy, my own son in the faith: Grace, mercy, and peace, from God our Father and Jesus Christ our Lord’? Timothy was a convert of the Apostle Paul. In II Timothy he says it a little differently: ‘To Timothy, my dearly beloved son: Grace, mercy, and peace, from God the Father and Christ Jesus our Lord.’ When he says ‘my own son,’ he’s saying in essence, ‘You’re one that I introduced to the Lord. You’re the fruit of my ministry.’

“Timothy first shows up in the Bible in Acts 16. Paul’s been to Derbe and Lystra before, but when he comes back there to minister and establish the saints, confirming the churches there, Timothy is there. Verse 2 says, ‘Which was well reported of by the brethren that were at Lystra and Iconium.’

“There are churches in two different cities that say, ‘Paul, this Timothy kid, he’s really making head way!’ and they recommend him to the Apostle Paul and Paul begins to take notice of him as far as ministry is concerned and this is when he circumcises Timothy and begins to take Timothy with him in the ministry.

*****

“The Roman, or Gregorian, or the calendar anybody works by says Jesus didn’t die in 33 A.D. He died at 33 years of age, but on the calendar we go by He died in 29 A.D. The way you figure that is the Herod that was there when He was born, according to our calendar and Roman history, died in 4 B.C. Well, if he died in 4 B.C., Jesus couldn’t have been born in 01 A.D. because the dude that was there when he was a baby was already dead 4 years.”