Acts 9, not 2 or 28

In Acts 9, Christ saves Saul of Tarsus and makes him Paul, commissioning him as the Apostle of the Gentiles and sending him out to be a testimony that Jesus is the Messiah.

“Paul gets a vision about a heavenly ministry from the Lord Jesus Christ in heaven and it starts in Act 9,” says Jordan. “Everything about his apostleship isn’t revealed to him; he’s going to get more information, but he knows he’s got this special ministry that has to do with the fall of Israel and salvation going to the Gentiles without Israel, and that that ministry begins right now.

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“The reason the Acts 28 view gets some play is because there are things Paul does in that diminishing period in order to provoke lost Jews to understand through spiritual things . . . Paul never taught the Body of Christ to do any of those things.

“In fact, he would teach the Body of Christ, 'DON’T do them!' You say, ‘Then why did he do them?’ He wasn’t doing them for the benefit of the Body of Christ; he was doing them for the benefit of lost Israel, and that provoking ministry lasted until Acts 28 and then it was over. That’s why the Book of Acts ends abruptly like it does and there isn’t an Acts 29, except in the imaginations of preachers and mission organizations.

“The problem with the Acts 28 view, just like the problem with the Acts 2 view (where you bring all this Jewish stuff into the church and it doesn’t work), you destroy the integrity of Paul’s epistles.

“During that diminishing period in the Book of Acts, between Acts 9 and 28, Paul wrote the Book of Galatians, the Book of Romans, the two books of Corinthians and the two books of Thessalonians.

“He wrote those books during the Book of Acts, so if the Body of Christ and the dispensation of grace don’t begin until AFTER the Book of Acts, then what does that mean about those books? That means they’re not written to the Body of Christ over here.

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“II Timothy is the last book Paul writes. II Timothy 1:13 says, ‘Hold fast the form of sound words, which thou hast heard of me, in faith and love which is in Christ Jesus.’

“There’s a structure to the sound, life-giving word. Where would you find the sound words? In Acts 26, Christ says, ‘I’m going to reveal things to you.’ So Christ gives Paul some additional information. Paul then writes that information down and it becomes scripture.

“Revelation is God telling you something. Inspiration is God taking that revelation and putting it on a piece of paper. Preservation is taking those words on the paper and preserving them through the multiplicity of copies. Translating is putting it into the languages of the nations. Now, that’s exactly what God expected to happen.

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“The last thing you read in Romans 16, Paul talks about the scriptures of the prophets made known to all nations for the obedience of faith. If God expected the preaching of Jesus Christ according to revelation of the mystery to be made known to all nations, what does that tell you has to happen?

“When people say, ‘The Bible doesn’t talk about translating,’ I say, ‘What?!’ What about when He tells Israel to ‘go teach all nations.’

“In Zechariah 8, he says that ten men out of every language of the nations will come and say, ‘Preach to us.’ How do you preach to ten different language groups? You had to talk in tongues. That’s what tongue-talking was for in the Bible.

“When you talk in tongues, you’re translating the message into various languages. Translating is an understood issue and God’s Word is just as much His Word after it’s been translated as it was in the language it was translated from, or those verses don’t work.

“So He gives Paul the information, Paul writes the things down and says, ‘What you’ve received from me, Tim, is a form; a structure.’ So Paul’s epistles are a unit. He doesn’t say ‘forms’ plural. These books are designed to be one unit.

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“Romans is actually the last one of the Acts epistles written; it’s first in your Bible because it’s the first in edification.

“Paul’s books aren’t put in the chronological order in which they were written. He wrote Galatians first and I and II Thessalonians second (Acts 18). He wrote I Corinthians in Acts 19 and II Corinthians and Romans in Acts 20.

“You can identify when they were written by historical references in the book, comparing them to the Book of Acts. But God puts them in the Bible in a different order because they’re placed according to the edification design; according to that form and structure for your maturing.

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Here are two verses people love to pound. Ephesians 2:12 says, ‘That at that time ye were without Christ, being aliens from the commonwealth of Israel, and strangers from the covenants of promise, having no hope, and without God in the world.’

Galatians 4:28 says, ‘Now we, brethren, as Isaac was, are the children of promise.’

“Now, wait a minute. Gentiles over there got no part of the promise; these Gentiles in here have a part of the promise. You see that? No part of the promise and then children of the promise. Now doesn’t that sound persuasive? Sure it does. You know what the problem with that is? Somewhere along the line somebody’s going to actually read Galatians 4. What a concept!

“Go back to Galatians 4:21: 'Tell me, ye that desire to be under the law, do ye not hear the law?
[22] For it is written, that Abraham had two sons, the one by a bondmaid, the other by a freewoman.
[23] But he who was of the bondwoman was born after the flesh; but he of the freewoman was by promise.
[24] Which things are an allegory: for these are the two covenants; the one from the mount Sinai, which gendereth to bondage, which is Agar.
[25] For this Agar is mount Sinai in Arabia, and answereth to Jerusalem which now is, and is in bondage with her children.
[26] But Jerusalem which is above is free, which is the mother of us all.'

“Oh, wait a minute! An allegory is taking these historical events and saying, ‘I want to show you what these things represent. They teach a spiritual truth.’ And Paul said, ‘You know who you are? Ismael represents what happens when you work in your energy. Isaac represents when God gives it to you without you working.’

“How did Abraham have Ismael? He and Sarah got the great big idea that they could take Hagar and have a kid by her. Abraham still had the ability to produce a seed.

“But God said, ‘I won’t have that one because you did that. That was your idea. Cast that one out.’ God waited until Abraham and Sarah could not have children physically, humanly speaking, and then he miraculously gave them Isaac and said, ‘That’s the one I promised you.’ He said, ‘Ishmael represents what the law does. Bondage. Isaac represents what I do when I give it to you.’

“Then Paul says in verse 28, ‘Now, in the allegory (not in the dispensational working of God through the ages but in the allegory I’m using here), you know who we are? We’re Isaac; not Ismael.’

“Who’s Paul talking to? People who want to be under the law. They knew the stories of the Old Testament.

“Some dude’s coming in, trying to put the Gentiles in Galatia back under the Old Testament and Paul said, ‘Look, you guys talk about the Old Testament and Israel’s history; don’t you understand that it’s never going to be Israel or anybody else, based on their work--it’s always going to be the promise God gives you; the free grace?’

“You got people running around the country trying to say, ‘New Jerusalem up there is my mother!’ and I think, ‘Didn’t you read Galatians 4?!’ He said, ‘Jerusalem which is above is free.’ That’s the city whose builder and maker is God, that He gave Abraham as a free gift because He promised it to him in the ALLEGORY!

“He’s not trying to say, ‘You got to figure out that city floating around in the heaven up there somehow is your mother.’  He’s saying, ‘In the allegory! Go back and read the allegory!’

“You know what happens in the allegory? New Jerusalem is a free gift of God. You know what your mother is? The free gift of God.”