Darris: All right. We're in the Acts 2 this morning. It's going to take us a while to get out of Chapter 2 because there's so much here. And in Chapter 3, there's a lot there. And almost every verse of Acts seems to have something that you could talk for a long period of time on, which is why I've had to have time extended and given to me for the book of Acts through the years. So, I wanted to go back in Chapter 2 to verse 39. Of course, verse 38, we talked about baptism. I think we pretty well covered the topic there where Peter issued this call of repentance that it forms kind of a base or a benchmark in terms of repentance and baptism. I will say one more word, we are going to discuss baptism repeatedly through the book of Acts and see a lot about people being baptized. And almost each time we learn something new or something is different about the rite of baptism.

And we have a doctrine, a fundamental belief about baptism within the United Church of God, which will double over into this. But through Acts, we get a lot of information and establish an understanding of how we approach baptism. And yet, you'll see certain differences. We'll point those out here. For instance, in verse 38 here of Chapter 2.

Acts 2:38 We have “Repent, be baptized for the remission of your sins, and you will receive the gift of the Holy Spirit."

Nothing is mentioned about the laying on of hands in this verse. Now, we will see, in the next instance where an instance of baptism is mentioned, where laying on of hands will be discussed. That's where Philip goes up to the city of Samaria. And then after that, we'll not see laying on of hands again.

But then in Chapter 18 or Chapter 19 of Acts, another instance, a story about baptism, we'll see laying on of hands there. So, when we put it all together, we have a pretty thorough doctrine understanding, but we don't see every detail of it in every story of baptism within the book of Acts. And there are lessons or matters we can talk about in regard to that. Now, here in Chapter 2, we talked last time about the mikvahs and the surrounding baptism or cleansing pools, ritual cleansing pools that were very likely used to baptize the 3,000 people who were added to the church on this day of Pentecost, and discussed that last time. But I wanted to focus in on verse 39 here for a moment because Peter also says something regarding the promise.

Acts 2:39-40 He says, "The promise is to you and to your children, and all who are far off, as many as the Lord our God will call. And with many other words, he testified and exhorted them, saying, ‘Be saved from this perverse generation.’"

Now, what is the promise? Well, the promise is the promise of the Holy Spirit, it's the promise of salvation, it's the promise of a calling, it's the promise of the Kingdom of God, and the hope. It is all that God does promise for His people, and ultimately for all of mankind. And so he says, "Here it is to you." Now, that would be instantly those Jews that were in front of Him on this day of Pentecost. And they would've taken it personally, just as you and I would take it personally if you hear a message and say, "This application is for you and I today." And into our life, we would take it seriously. We would let it change us, hopefully, and we would move and act upon that. And they did.

Then it goes on to say, "And to your children," I'll come back to that. But it's inclusive. It is a promise that we can look at in regard to our children, "To all who are far off, as many as the Lord our God will call." Now, who are those that are the far off? What does that mean? Does that mean geographically far off, as in on that day of Pentecost, those who were not in Jerusalem? But let's say, since people were there from all of the different lands that we read about, as far as Rome and Parthia and other places, is it people there? Well, yes. It would be to them. Here's a picture on the screen of a synagogue in the city of Sardis, right? Who knows where Sardis...anything about Sardis? Somebody tell me anything they might know about the City of Sardis from antiquity. Anybody know? Real quick. Rhys?

Rhys: I was only going to say it's one of the seven churches.

Darris: It's one of the seven churches in Revelation, which puts it in Western Asia Minor, the region from which people were here on the day of Pentecost. But this is a synagogue, and it's an excavated synagogue. And those of us that will go be going to Turkey next spring from the room, you'll see the synagogue in Sardis. It is one of the largest, if not the largest synagogue that has been excavated from the ancient world. Hopefully, we'll be able to walk around that. Last time I was there, they were doing some reconstruction, and you could only look at it from a little platform. Hopefully, we'll be able to walk on this, but it's a very large synagogue. But it was far off, and it was a place where Jews met.

Now, as we go through Acts, we will see Paul going to the synagogues to preach the gospel and there will be some Jews from the synagogues who will respond and become a part of the church. Paul, eventually he'll have to move out of the synagogue, and the church will meet in a home and other locations. And so the far-off could be literally from the 1st century, those who would hear the gospel in a far-off place like Sardis and others. And that could be the application for that as well.

Now, we see here, this is an inscription that I want to point out because it deals with a different group of people other than Jews. This is a tablet that is in a museum that another location in Turkey, in Aphrodisia, a museum there. And it is referring here, the word that you see that is outlined in the yellow there is a Greek word that means “God-fearer”. God-fearer. You need to know that term because we will see it later on in Chapter 13. It is a class of people who met within the synagogue. They were usually gentiles. A God-fearer, as it is used in Acts, is someone who was a Gentile but they were attracted to Judaism. Before Paul or any of the other apostles got to them and the church came there, they were tired of the pagan world, they were worn out with it, they were attracted by the ethics, the morality of Judaism, and the teachings from the Old Testament, essentially. They were not circumcised Gentiles, therefore, they were not full members of the synagogue, but they were God-fearers. And it is a very large group, and it will be a fertile ground from which people will be called into the church. And that's the point here.

So, when Peter says, "The promises to you, your children, and to those of far off," it can also be understood to mean these God-fearers. They found inscriptions throughout Asia Minor, modern-day Turkey, with inscriptions. There's an amphitheater in the City of Myelitis, which is another location, we'll talk about Myelitis in Chapter 20, Paul will meet there with a group of elders. But there's an amphitheater there and they found an inscription on one of the seats, the place of the God-fearer. And so a God-fearer, they had their own location within an amphitheater. The Jews did too, in these Roman cities. And an amphitheater was a feature of any good size Roman city in the ancient world. But they found inscriptions that even in an amphitheater where a section was allocated for those who were the God-fearers.

So, it's a well-known term, and we find it here in the book of Acts. We'll talk about it again in Chapter 13. But they will hear the gospel, they will respond. So, the promise is for you and your children and for all who are far away. Now, we can also understand this term in terms of how our time...it is a promise that's not just for the 1st century, it's a promise for all time to people who hear the gospel. And so, you have heard that, your families have heard the gospel, and they have taken part in the promise of salvation and the hope of God's calling in the Kingdom of God. My mother did that many, many years ago. And through her, I became a partaker of the promise. And so as have many of you through a family member, an older parent here. And so in terms of time, the promise is for those who are far off, even in a sense of time. So, it can be related to geography, even ethnicity, as it's ultimately going to go to the Gentiles, and it did, and also through time.

There's one other aspect of this that I always like to point out for us to think about. And this is another personal application. And verse 39 says that it is a promise, and it's to you and to your children. This is a promise that you can claim. How many times have you received a promise from your mom or your dad about something? "I promise you, on your next birthday, we'll do this." Or, "At the feast this year, we're going to, as a family, do this." And if you're young and you're excited about whatever that might be, you take that as a promise from your parents that something good is going to happen, right? And everybody gets excited, and you anticipate that. And we believe what our mom and dad tell us, and woe be to any parent that do not follow through on their promise, right? "Well, you promised, you said we would," whatever it might be.

Take this as a promise from God. None of you here yet, in the classroom here, none of you have...well, some of you do, you have children, we have a married couple here. But in time, as you get married, you'll have children. And one of the things that you're going to want to do if you, again, are committed to this way of life, you're going to want to pass that on to your children, right, and raise your children in this way of life. It's what I wanted to do, my wife and I, and we did, we raised our two sons in this way of life to an age when they then had the choice to either accept it on their own, get baptized, or not. That happens in every family. And as we know, sometimes children choose not to follow in the faith, right? I have two sons. One is in the church, one is not in the church at this time.

And so the promise, I think, is something that every father and mother in the church wants to pass on to their child. A few years ago here in class, there was a student from Latin America. And I went through this portion of Acts. He came up to me after the class and he told me that, in his family, large Latin family, their father sat them down and read this verse to them and said, "This is a promise to our family from God that the acceptance and the faith, baptism, this way of life is a gift and a promise." And he prayed for his children, that they would all take part in that promise. And at the time that he told me the story, every one of his siblings was in the church. And he said, "My father had faith in that scripture and applied it in that way."

And I think that that's another way, a very practical way that we should and can apply what Peter says here in Acts 2:39, "The promise is to you and to your children." And, you know, I would say to any parent who's got a child, one child in my case, or maybe none of the children stayed in the church, don't give up. Keep praying about it. Turn it over to God. Claim this promise. If that ever happens to you, or if you've got a sibling that's not in the church, you can pray that as well. It's never too late. We never know what's going to happen. I pray for my son who's not in the church. I pray for my son who's in the church. But I pray that God will hedge my non-church son around and protect him, you know, even in spite of his decisions and where he is. He doesn't follow this way of life, but I've claimed that promise for him. And you should for a sibling. Or if, you know, time goes along and you have children that, in sense, claim it for your child as well because that's how broad-ranging this particular promise is.

And God's working with each of us in so many different ways and He never gives up on us, and we as parents should never give up on our children. And so don't give up on your brothers, your sisters, your siblings, or even friends that you know who have walked away from the church and faith. Don't give up on them. And you don't necessarily have to follow their way and their decisions, but certainly, pray for them and claim this promise. I think that is why it is there, and it is an all-encompassing promise for us to remember. I remember it, you should as well. But I always remember that story from one of my friends from Latin America who tells about the faith of his particular father in that way. All right. Let's go on here. Now you see why it takes so long to get through the book of Acts. There's a practical application for it almost in every verse, it seems, and certainly, in every story that we go through. And so, verses 41 and 42 speak to the baptism of 3,000 people.

Acts 2:42 Says, "They continued steadfastly in the apostle's doctrine and fellowship in the breaking of bread and in prayers."

Now, verse 42, we have another example here of just stopping and thinking it through in what we are being told about the daily life of the church, the community of the church that is now forming. This is what has happened, 3,000 people have been baptized. They've gone from 120, just like that to thousands. And the church is exponentially in a growth spurt. And they didn't just set on their hands, they were excited about what they were beginning to learn. They continued steadfastly.

Now, what we have mentioned here in verse 42 is really a recipe, if you will, of what are keys to a healthy church, to the church even today. You've got 4 things that are mentioned in verse 42 that are critical to a sound, healthy church, whether it's a congregation or the collective body of the church and the fellowship, in our case, the United Church of God. And the four keys are this, you've got doctrine. Secondly, you've got fellowship. You've got hospitality as a third element. And you've got prayer. That's what's mentioned in verse 42. I'd write those on the board, but we left it over by the window here today. And maybe in the future classes, somebody can help me to remember to always have that over here to put things up there.

But you've got doctrine, and it says here the Apostles Doctrine. And that is teaching, that is sound teaching. Doctrine, as we are learning in our doctrines class, is so important to a healthy church. You cannot have doctrinal confusion and expect to have peace, ultimately, in the long run. The body believers have got to have a core belief system on which all agree. And that doctrine must be demonstrable from scripture, it must be truth, but then there's going to be a steadfast adherence to it. That's what verse 42 is telling us.

Now, they were learning. Now, keep in mind this, initially, these were Jews. They were already keeping the Sabbath. They were already...Church began on Pentecost, they were there keeping the Holy days. They didn't have to learn that. But there are other critical things that they had to learn. They were baptized and they would've understood the ritual cleansing to be a part of the temple. But I'm sure in time, they understood that that baptism was for the remission of their sins. And that it now, with the receipt of the Holy Spirit and the sacrifice of Christ, added an entirely new dimension to walking into a mikvah, into a baptismal pool for the ritual of baptism. And certainly, they were now learning that Jesus of Nazareth was God, and they were accepting the fact that He had come in the flesh. He was the Son of God and all that means. Now, that is huge in itself, but it's understood by the teaching or the doctrine that they were learning.

Secondly, they had fellowship, and thirdly, hospitality. You know, we come to church, we not only hear a message and sing praises and have a formal worship service, but we come early and we talk, and we usually stay late, right, for any period of time, and we followship. That's just a key part of the life of the Church of God. My wife and I, we're not the last ones out of the door on trumpets. We are pretty close on Monday. And that's just a holdover from our days in pastoring. We would, more often than not, each Sabbath close out the building in which we were in and stayed until the last person often, just talking to people, counseling, you know, in my case, and fellowshipping. But you just start conversations. And sometimes, you'll stay longer, and some weeks you may not because of other matters, or you may not always feel as well, but it is a part of getting acquainted with one another.

And it says that they were breaking bread. That gets to the hospitality because that's talking about a meal that they were having, they were sharing bread, the bread is used here in the sense of a full meal. They were having extended time in each other's homes. We do the same today. Hospitality is a very important matter. It takes fellowship to another level in the church today. I mean, you can talk to someone before or after church and in a setting of a congregation, and you can get acquainted with people and get, you know, people, but not like you will if you go to their home and you set at a meal. Or you maybe go to a restaurant sometimes and you'll just set for an extended period of time and get deeper into family and issues, life, and things like that. But I've always found that when I've had people in my home or when I've gone to their home, that's when you really get to know people, and that's when you build the connections. And it is so important.

I've given whole sermons just on hospitality, and that's going to vary church to church. Some churches are going to be very hospitable. I've been in church visits where the whole church will go to somebody's home after services and a meal's been prepared. Everybody sits in the basement. And we were up in Windsor, Ontario for a church visit a few years ago. And there was a family who had a home in the town, and we all went to their home. It was a small enough church to do that. In some cases, everybody might go out to a restaurant together and be inclusive with people. And I would say if you've never developed the art of hospitality, you should work to do that.

I don't know how your families are where you came from. You know, some families do that as part of their family life, and people are always coming in, others don't, and for different reasons, and some justified and otherwise. But I would say that as you establish your home, try to make it a home that is hospitable, a place where you could invite people big enough to do so. And you don't have to have anything fancy. You don't have to have gold and silver and the full dining set, you can have tableware. You can just put some hot dogs on the grill or whatever it might be. Or you can cook a nice roast, or a chicken, or whatever it might be. But develop the art of hospitality. It is what really binds people together.

Now, the fourth thing that's mentioned here is prayer. And that is prayer for one another. Our prayer lists are part of the life of the church. We send out prayer requests for people that we have in our local congregations and far and wide, and people we don't even know. And you'll see those, and we'll pray for them and sometimes send cards. We send a lot of cards out of this office to people all around the world who ask for prayer for their lives and illness. And your congregations are like that as well. Most that are feast sites that are coming up, we will do these things as well. And if you say you're going to pray for somebody or you that you are, be sure that you are doing that, is the only thing I could say in regard to that. But the more we do pray for each other, for the work, for the church, to develop a relationship with God, the better off the church is going to be.

But these are four keys, sound doctrine, fellowship, hospitality, and prayer. Which is the most important? Well, they're all important, let's just put it that way. Look at all of them as important to developing a kind of holistic approach to a healthy church. And do your part to do that. This was the life of the early church, and it's the life of a healthy church. So, let's move on to verse 43.

Acts 2:43 As a result, “Then, fear came upon every soul, and many wonders and signs were done through the apostles.”

Now, fear here is not trembling in your boots type fear, shaking and quaking over, you know, somebody's anger, something bad has happened, or just a fearful state of mind. This is respect for God. This is a reverence fear-type fear. This is where, through your teaching, through developing a community within the church, you come to respect God, the Bible, this way of life, and therefore one another. And that is a proper fear that translates into love. And wonders and signs were done through the apostles. We'll see what those wonders and signs are in the beginning of the next chapter.

Acts 2:44-45 "That all who believed were together, and they had all things in common and sold their possessions and goods," verse 45, "And divided them among all as anyone had need."

Now, this is another development within the church here. They shared possessions, they pooled resources. They were together, and they had all things in common. Now, what does that mean? Does it mean that they sold out everything they had down to every last stick of furniture and clothing or liquidated their properties and put it into a community chest from which everybody drew? Not exactly. Although we will see examples of people who did give what they had.

Barnabas is one example of an individual that we'll see in just a few chapters from the island of Cyprus who sold out there, moved to Jerusalem, and obviously, gave a large sum to the church. We'll also see the example of Ananias and Sapphira, two people who sold a parcel and then lied about what they did, pretended to probably...you know, that they were giving everything, and they didn't, and they were both struck down. But we're also going to see property still continuing. We will see that John Mark's mother has a house, and the church is meeting in that house later in the book of Acts. So, we're not looking here and seeing a situation where every member sold out everything down to their house and property and they all lived communally, or socially, or communistically. This is not scriptures to justify communism or a form of socialism that you might see politically in some example in the modern world where people do not hold private property, which is what communism has done in many, many countries, still in Cuba, like that, in the old Soviet Union, what is now Russia.

This is not talking about that, nor is it advocating for a communal life. But it is saying that where there were needs, they met those needs, and they likely did it in a balanced way. We will see where the church later, a few chapters, it grows so large that the organization has to be taken to another level. And they create a class of servants, we would call them deacons or deaconesses today, that take care of the physical needs while the apostles continued on with the spiritual preaching of the gospel. But they did take care of one another. And what you have to understand about the 1st century, the ancient world, in Judea, they were occupied by Rome, there was not the vast welfare society of unemployment, and insurance, and welfare-type programs, and assistance available to everybody. They didn't have that. If a woman was widowed at age 50, she was in dire straits, and even in worse shape if she didn't have children. That's why you will hear and see of people who are begging. And they were basically given over to the benevolence of the community. There was a level of charity among the Jews that they did take care of one another.

But the church now develops, and they seem to take it to another level, and they make sure that everybody's needs are taken care of. They did take care of one another. And we continue to do the same today based on the principles that we see back in the book of Deuteronomy and Leviticus, the law regarding tithing assistance for people, welfare within the church where we provide resources to help people. We also, today, in our modern culture, we tap into whatever community state or federal assistance program is out there. We take advantage of those, and we point our members to that, where they are eligible for them, whatever it might be. And then we will supplement from the church to bring them up to a level of living that will help them get by for a length of time. Sometimes it may go on for a few years.

So, we do that based on principles out of the Word of God. They were doing this, they could have been living more of a communal type life than we might imagine. But how we take that and apply it today is going to be under different circumstances. And again, you always have to be careful not to take examples like this and create whole systems out of it, or ideologies even. And certainly not letting it be something that is justified for a large governmental social problem, or sometimes it is a problem, like communism. But they were taking care of one another.

Acts 2:46-47 Says, "So, continuing daily with one accord in the temple and breaking bread from house to house, they ate their food with gladness and simplicity of heart, praising God and having favor with all the people. And the Lord added to the church daily those who were being saved."

So, again, He references this breaking of bread from house to house. That's the individual homes that many of them maintained and retained. "They ate their food with gladness and simplicity of heart." Some commentators will use these references here, this breaking of bread, and they will see or interpret into this the idea of what is called the Lord's Supper as a religious breaking of bread. Is that what is being talked about?

Well, though some can read that into it, the reality is that's not what's being talked about here. The idea of the Passover meal or the Lord's Supper or, in this case, kind of doing it whenever you wanted to, on a weekly, monthly, quarterly type basis. We understand when we are to keep the Passover and have that sacral meal once a year on the anniversary of Christ's death, we understand that, we'll talk about that in our fundamentals. And we don't look at this, nor does every commentator look at this as a justification for a denominational approach to the Lord's Supper, where they take it, let's say, every week in a eucharistic manner or whatever it might be there. This is basically, again, just what they were doing in terms of having meals, maybe call it a potluck, call it a Tuesday night gathering at so and so's place, and they shared just a community relationship.

You know, we have the Feast of Tabernacles coming up here just in a less than...what? Less than two weeks now. This time in two weeks, we'll all be at our respective sites. And when you look at the feast and break it down, and I was talking to somebody about it in a phone call just this morning, you have the instruction from the book of Deuteronomy, essentially about aspects of keeping the feast. And then you have what we do in the church today, how we keep the Feast of Tabernacles, right? I mean, if you're going to some exotic site this year for the Feast of Tabernacles...Italy, anybody going to Italy? Panama City? Caribbean? Okay, all right. Got a few going to Caribbean. Europe, anybody going to Europe, other places in Europe? Okay. I'm going right here. I'm not getting outta Cincinnati this year, and that's just fine. But, you know, you go to Panama City, you got a condo on the beach or nice hotel in some of these locations.

And ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls, and the press far and wide, I'm here to tell you that's not the way they kept it in the Old Testament. Okay? I always say, if you want to keep the feast the way they kept it in the Old Testament, go to Africa today, go to Kenya, go to Malawi, and you can have an Old Testament sukot, temporary dwelling, kill your own chickens, that type of Feast of Tabernacles there. They keep it closer to that. Now, we don't. I like my chicken out of a bucket with a guy named Colonel Sanders on the outside of that bucket. That's about as far as I go to wringing a chicken's neck today. And I've stayed in the nice places, and thus and such.

But when you break it down, the reality of what is critical to the feast, you take it out of the Old Testament and apply it today, you've got three things, you got food, you got fellowship, and you got worshiping God. Because that's what Deuteronomy basically says. Buy whatever your heart desires, go to a place where God's placed His name, that was where the tabernacle was at that time, and share it with others, the widow, the fatherless, the stranger, have a meal. And you're there to learn to fear the Lord, your God. Those are the three elements of the feast and the Old Testament. That's it. And you take that today, wherever we go in, whatever we do, whether it's Panama City beach, Italy, Malawi, you do those three things and you're keeping the spirit of the feast as God intended it then and now, food, fellowship, and worship of God.

And that's the life of the church that begins to develop. That's my point. That's what we're really seeing here in these early scenes of the book of Acts. And understand that, don't let it take you off into some communal type of living or some offbeat ideology of socialism or communism, or community type, you know, everybody pooling together. That's not what it is. In one sense, they were doing what the law said regarding the festivals, and therefore, the time together and with God. And that's what knits the church together. I could go on and on and on about that in just discussing things about the life of the church and how that relates to us today. But let's go on here and just look at...I want to look at this last phrase in verse 47.

Acts 2:47 "The Lord added to the church daily, those who were being saved."

Now, we learn from this, that God adds to the church, number one. Never forget that, God calls. Christ said that "None can come to me except the Spirit of the Father draw them." And God adds to the church. It is God's church. Christ is the head of the church, it is his spiritual body. He adds to it. Now, the church, the apostles were preaching the gospel. We preach the gospel today. We have a part to play and a role to do, but we always must understand that the calling is of God, and He adds to the church in that way.

Now, it says, "Those who were being saved." What is that talking about? Is it one saved, all we saved? Is that the idea here? You have to understand salvation here as it is and being saved, which is what salvation is, we are saved from our sins. That's the context of verse 38. And what the call that has gone out and what the heart of the gospel preaching is to do, it's a call to repentance, to turn from our sins, to accept Christ as our savior, be baptized, receive the gift of the Holy Spirit and the hope of eternal life, and begin a life now of righteousness before God.

And salvation is the gift of God. We're saved by grace. And Paul says in the book of Ephesians, the second chapter, "And that not of ourselves, not by our own works, it is the gift of God." Salvation is the gift of God. And it's done through the process of the sacrifice of Christ to shed blood. We accept that, we're baptized, but we're saved in the sense that we are then on that road to salvation. But there's many scriptures that we would look at and understand exactly what this is being talked about because we're saved from our past sins. And 2 Timothy 1, I want to spend a moment on this, 2 Timothy 1, Paul will write about this salvation.

2 Timothy 1:8-9 Says, "We are not ashamed of the testimony of our Lord nor of me as prisoner, but you share with me that in the sufferings for the gospel, according to the power of God," verse 9, "Who has saved us and called us with a holy calling, not according to our works but according to his own purpose and grace, which was given to us in Christ Jesus before time began."

And so Paul here, he uses it in a sense of kind of He who has saved us. Well, it's kind of past tense, a process has begun. They responded to the gospel. And it is a holy calling that is being talked about here. But the salvation is what will ultimately come when our lives, our mortal bodies, are changed to a spirit body at the time of the resurrection. And we've discussed when that is. We know how that works for those that are the firstfruits. But there's a salvation with a holy calling from our past sins that happens and that occurs. In 1 Corinthians 1, Paul says this.

1 Corinthians 1:18 He says, "For the message of the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing. But to us who are being saved, it is the power of God."

All right? Another dimension to the preaching of the gospel, the message here, he says of the cross that is of our savior who died in an ignominious method by crucifixion on the cross, he says, "That is foolishness to those who are perishing,” people who are caught up in sin, who are not able to see that, the unconverted. “But to us who are being saved, it is the power of God." And so there is a process, an ongoing present tense, if you will, to salvation. You are being saved, I'm being saved as I continue in the faith, as I am led by God's spirit, as I overcome my nature and continue, you know, in this way. The cross, the message of Christ's suffering and His death is not foolishness to us. We accept that into our life, and we share in His sufferings. That is a part of the salvation process. Now, look over Matthew 10, a statement that Jesus made.

Matthew 10:22, He says, "You will be hated by all for my name's sake. But he who endures to the end will be saved."

He who endures to the end will be saved. This is mentioned in other places as well. This idea that if you endure to the end, salvation is the promise, we will be saved. We have to endure. We could fall away. Other scriptures talk about that. We could fall away, we could turn our back. We don't plan to, I don't plan to, you don't plan to, but it's possible. Scriptures show that. And so we endure to the end. Salvation is that gift.

So, when we go back here to Acts 2:47, God adds to the church those who were being saved. We understand from, again, all of these scriptures and many, many more that we would have that salvation, you know, we're saved from the penalty of our sins as we accept Christ at the point we're baptized. We are being saved as we continue to live righteously and use God's spirit to overcome, we endure to the end that salvation will then be translated into the changing of our lives and of our bodies to a spirit-glorified body at the time of the resurrection, which the scriptures show.

So, you can't take a scripture about salvation out of context and build an idea that, you know, once you accept Christ, once saved, always saved type idea, which is commonly held by many people today. But you have to look at what all of the scriptures say and understanding the salvation process. We are being saved and we are rescued from our past to the degree that we repent, we change, and we have that hope, though, but we're being saved for something, which is God's Kingdom and eternal life and the family of God, and for work. So, you see why there's such a great amount here that is packed into almost every verse.

And we didn't get beyond half a dozen verses here in finishing out the second chapter of Acts, which is a pretty good place to begin as we're giving this class here at this particular point. This will be the last one we have before the fall break for the Holy Days Feast of Tabernacles. And so we at least have come to a good breaking point. And when we resume after the feast, we'll start with Chapter 3.