Fine-tuning

In Acts 10, Peter is preaching away when all of sudden the Gentiles receive the gift of the Holy Spirit and begin to speak in tongues and speak in Hebrew so Peter could hear them glorify God. If they hadn’t spoken in tongues Peter wouldn’t have known they had the Holy Spirit because you can’t see the Holy Spirit.

Jordan explains, “Peter says ‘Something ain’t right here!’ What was the order in Acts 2:38? Repent, be baptized and receive the Holy Spirit. But what’s happening here? Something different! Verse 47 says, ‘Can any man forbid water, that these should not be baptized, which have received the Holy Ghost as well as we?’

“It’s changing! You see, if you start out in Acts chapter 2, you got one message, but you get over into Acts 10 and all of a sudden there’s a monkey wrench thrown into the thing. Now come over to Acts 16 if you want to see it get even worse.”

Acts 16:30-31 says, “And brought them out, and said, Sirs, what must I do to be saved?
[31] And they said, Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, and thou shalt be saved, and thy house.”

Jordan says, “Now that’s pretty much the same question they asked Peter in Acts 2. But what do they say back there (in Acts 16)? What you got to do? Just believe.

“I get on the radio and read those passages and talk to people about Acts 2 and Acts 16 and we’ll get hate mail. Now you want to get hate mail just read those two passages on the radio! I think, ‘Looks simple to me. One of them is Peter’s message and one of them’s Paul’s message.’

“One is the kingdom program and one’s the dispensation of grace and there’s no problem for you because you understand that distinction. But if you took that distinction out of your mind and thought that was all one thing, wouldn’t that confuse you?

“The conversion of the Apostle Paul is the beginning of a transition period in the Book of Acts. There’s no transition up to that point but, beginning there, there’s a tremendous transition taking place in the message that’s preached and in the methodology that’s operated in the programs and everything else.

“Paul is converted and has been given a new program in Acts 9 on the road to Damascus, and from that point on, there begins to be a transition and change.

“I just want you to see as you go through the book things—it’s not just ‘hummmmmmm’; it’s sort of like you seen in that Precision Tune commercial on TV where the car goes ‘blegh, blegh, blegh,’ and you get a tune-up and it goes ‘hummmmmmm.’ Well, the Book of Acts is before the tune-up. It’s all over the page.

“You get over to Romans and it begins to smooth out for you, but Acts never does smooth out. Acts 3:18 says, ‘But those things, which God before had shewed by the mouth of all his prophets, that Christ should suffer, he hath so fulfilled.
[19] Repent ye therefore, and be converted, that your sins may be blotted out, when the times of refreshing shall come from the presence of the Lord.’

“When he says, ‘Repent ye therefore and be converted,’ who’s he talking to there? He’s talking to the nation, isn’t he? He’s not saying, ‘If any one of you Jews out there repent, Christ will come back.’ He’s saying, ‘If you (plural) the nation will repent, here’s what will happen.’

“The nations sins our going to be blotted out so people get all bent out of shape over that passage. ‘Wait a minute, what happened to the individual person?! He would trust Christ and his sins would be forgiven him, wouldn’t it?!’ Sure. We’re talking about the ‘day of atonement’ for the nation.

“The purpose of the Book of Acts is to present the fall of Israel and God’s reasons for sending salvation to the Gentiles apart from the kingdom program and apart from His chosen people. It’s not a history lesson; it’s not a pattern for Believers today. It’s not a design by which the church the Body of Christ should operate today.

“It is written for the purpose of setting forth the fall of Israel and God’s reason for sending salvation to the Gentiles apart from Israel through a new message. And if you’ll get that in your mind, and you’ll see that and consider it dispensationally like that, you’ll see the fruit of studying the Book of Acts can be very sweet.

“If you look at the other way, the traditional way where it’s a history lesson (with examples and principles to live by today) you’re going to have problems. You’re going to wreck your ministry trying to follow things that don’t work; things that God has rendered impossible for you to do today! You need to recognize His purpose; the underlying reason.”