Beckoning with his hand

Acts is probably the most difficult book in the Bible for people to get straight and keep straight.

Jordan says, “It’s amazing, it’s hard enough to get it right and then you’ll see somebody get it right and then later they will have lost it. The Book of Acts, the more you keep reading it, if you don’t get it started right and get something nailed down . . . it’s so fluid as you go through it that it just sort of jumps around on the page.

“There are three books in the New Testament that, if you’re going to kill yourself, you’re going to do it in these three books. Every heretic, every cult, ever ‘ism’ and chism, uses Matthew, Acts and Hebrews to get themselves all messed up and it’s because they’re transition books.

“In Matthew, you’re coming out of the Old Testament with just the law and prophets and from the entrance of John the Baptist the kingdom of God is preached and you make the transition with the ministry of John and the Lord there.

“In Acts, you begin with the presentation of the offer of the kingdom to the nation Israel and you move from the kingdom message and the kingdom program, going in full swing, into the dispensation of grace and the mystery and the Body of Christ.

“So you’re moving in Acts from the kingdom program to the body program; from prophecy to the mystery. Then when you go to the Book of Hebrews, you’re going back into the kingdom program again and Hebrews stands at the head of the nine Hebrews epistles at the end of your Bible that represent doctrine for the ages to come and those people in that time period.

“Hebrews focuses on moving from the old covenant to the new covenant, but moving to it in a way you couldn’t have done in Matthew and early Acts because now when you get to Hebrews you’ve got all of Paul’s epistles sitting there in front of you.

“You’ll notice people will get into those books and they got all kind of goofball . . . I mean, if you’re going to teach somebody they’re going to lose their salvation, where do they go? Matthew and Hebrews. And if you’re going to teach somebody they need to speak in tongues, where do they go? Acts. If you’re going to teach somebody they need to be water-baptized to get saved, where do they go? Acts 2:38.

“You want to teach somebody they got to get the second blessing—you know, you get saved and later on you get the baptism of the Holy Ghost and the purification and all that business, you go to the Book of Acts. And if you want to get somebody real confused, you take them and show about four different ways to get saved in the Book of Acts. Then you become a Campbellite because a Campbellite just adds them all together.

“So anytime you find somebody basing their doctrine on the Book of Acts, you’re finding somebody building their ministry on quicksand, and that’s true dispensationally and doctrinally. Soon or later, they’re going to go under.

“You never interpret Paul’s epistles in light of the Book of Acts; you interpret the Book of Acts in the light of Paul’s epistles.
“With Paul’s ministry is where the change starts. It doesn’t happen in Acts 2 or after Acts 28; the change from the old to the new begins with the raising up of the Apostle Paul in mid-Acts.

“The purpose of the Book of Acts is to present the fall of Israel and God’s reason for sending salvation to the Gentiles apart from the kingdom program and apart from His chosen people. Write that down in your mind. The purpose of the Book of Acts is NOT a history lesson. It’s not a pattern for Believers today. It’s not the 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 do it the other way, the traditional way where it’s a history lesson and there’s all these 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 that God has rendered impossible for you to do today!”