Book of Acts Part 1

Let's pray. Lord Jesus, again, as we open up your word, we ask you, Holy Spirit, to help us to rightly understand what is revealed there so that we may properly believe, confess, and do all according to your holy word we ask in Jesus' name.

Amen. So I've made the decision we are going to be working our way through the book of Acts next.

That's our next book. And don't axe me why I made that decision. Boo.

Oh, sorry. But I have already pre -planned some of my bunny trails.

That's all I have to say. So I'm really looking forward to this. I just finished the book of Acts with the

Aletheia crowd and really looking forward to doing that with not only Kongsvinger, I'm intending to begin this

Bible study also at Emmanuel today as well. So all of that being said, we have to do a little pre -work.

When we talk about the book of Acts, we need to understand what this book is and the importance of what it is.

And so you'll note that the book of Acts begins with these words. In the first book, my video feed isn't working.

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All right, hold on a second here. The bonus cam isn't working. Everyone's frozen at Kongsvinger.

All right, hang on a second, let me just disconnect. We're just being really still. Have everybody sit still.

Yeah, I'm very tired. All right, let's see, there we go, we're gonna turn it off.

We'll turn it on again, here we go. All right, webcam. All right, we'll try this one more time.

There, hopefully people are moving at this point. It looks like it, okay. So coming back, the words of the book of Acts begin with, in the first book,

O Theophilus, I have dealt with all that Jesus began to do and teach. This begs the question, what's the first book?

First book is Luke. So we have to remember this, is that the Gospel of Luke and the book of Acts were written by the same author.

And this author is a unique one. He is a Gentile, he's a physician, he's a convert to Christianity, and he is closely linked with the preaching ministry of the

Apostle Paul. When we get to those sections, I will point this out, there are several unique sections of the book of Acts that don't even have a close parallel in other parts of Scripture, and that is because in those sections, the pronouns are we.

And so when we get to those sections, it's not that Luke is claiming for himself that he's not a he or a him, or he's a they, them, it's that the events that took place, he was there.

He's an eyewitness to some of the things that took place, and you'll note when we get to the end of the book of Acts, which should be sometime before the end of the decade, that you will see that Luke himself was on board the ship that Paul was on that hit that storm, and then eventually was shipwrecked.

Luke was one of the people that God saved from dying in that Mediterranean storm.

And so all that being said, it behooves us then to take a look at the opening to Luke chapter one and consider the methodology that Luke put in place for his books, because Acts is gonna build on that.

So Luke one begins with, inasmuch as many have undertaken to compile a narrative of the things that have been accomplished among us, just as those who were from the beginning were eyewitnesses and ministers of the word have delivered them to us, it seemed good to me also having followed all things closely for some time past to write an orderly account for you, most excellent, and here we got that same word again, theophilus, that you may have certainty concerning the things that you have been taught.

Now, real quick, theophilus. Theophilus may have been the guy who paid to have these books written.

You have to remember at the time that these books were written, and pen and parchment and things like that, and somebody who had the education to be able to actually use those implements was not cheap.

You couldn't just run off to Office Depot and grab yourself a peachy folder and some spiral -bound book things, some pages with lines on them.

This took some doing, but what I find fascinating is that God in his providential way of doing things saw fit that there's this wonderful double entendre here.

Theophilus means lover of God, and so what's interesting is whoever this patron is, his name then in the double entendre means that it kind of fits for you as well.

Isn't that weird? Because we who've been baptized into Christ, we who have been buried with him, raised with him to new life, who are now bearing fruit in keeping with repentance, we too are also

Theophiluses, which by the way is not how you'd say it. It'd actually be Theophiloi, but the point is this, is that we're all lovers of God as well, and so there's this wonderful double entendre, but I want you to consider what's going on here.

Several things. One, those who from the beginning were eyewitnesses, you'll note that they play an instrumental role in the construction of not only the

Book of Acts, but also the Gospel of Luke. So the eyewitnesses of the things that are recorded are there.

This is eyewitness testimony, which means this. All of it's admissible in court, right?

When people sit, oh man, I cannot believe how flippantly people just dismiss the Bible. Well, we don't even really know what the

Bible is. You know, it's been translated and changed so many times. You don't know what you're talking about, okay?

You just don't know what you're talking about. Well, I don't know if I could really trust it.

I mean, you know, it's full of myths and legends. How do you know it wasn't written by a bunch of drunken monks in the fourth century?

Right? You get the idea, but here Luke makes it very clear, and there's really good scholarly evidence that at some point

Paul quotes from Luke. It's a very interesting text, but the idea then is this, is that this comes out early.

It comes out early in the mid -first century.

It kind of put it in context. Jesus is crucified, buried, raised from the grave, ascended no later than 33

AD. Yeah, keep this in mind. I mean, legitimately, we are getting very close to being able to say, you know, we're probably sitting on the 2 ,000 year mark of when

Christ started his ministry, and by 2033, that Easter, we can say we're at the 2 ,000 year mark of when

Christ was actually crucified. All of this took place in real human history. We're not talking about the

Easter bunny. We're not talking about Santa Claus. We're not talking about Pecos Bill.

We're not talking about Babe and his ox, sorry,

Paul Bunyan and his ox Babe, the blue one, right? We're not talking about any of that kind of nonsense.

These are real things, and this took place in real history, and so we can see that what

Luke did is that in the Gospel of Luke, he sat down with the eyewitnesses.

He set out to basically do in written form a documentary film.

He's going to interview all the witnesses, compile their testimony into one narrative, and then tell the story.

So let me challenge you on this. When we get into the next section of, the opening section then of Luke, talking about Zechariah and Elizabeth, right, and talking about the conception and the birth of John the

Baptist, and we talk about then the angel appearing to Mary, who is the mother of Christ, and all the things that took place regarding her conceiving

Christ in her womb, how her husband was gonna divorce her, their ending up ending up in Bethlehem for the birth of Christ and all that kind of stuff, who do you think

Luke was talking to and interviewing and taking notes to get all this information from?

Mary. There was nobody else there who was an eyewitness who could tell the story, but how do we know that Mary was alive at the time of Christ?

She was there at the cross, right? So you'll note that what Luke has set out to do, and he's following a very well -known historical pattern.

The pattern that he is following is the pattern used by the Greeks in their histories.

So when you think about a Greek history, what Luke is setting out to do is to write a Greek history. It has all of those same elements, and this is to be as little of him as possible, and basically him, tell me what happened, what did you see, when did you see it, and all this kind of stuff, and then he put it all together.

Yes, Greek, he was absolutely Greek, and by Greek, I'm gonna say

Gentile, but he is not at all Jewish. He is a convert, probably a convert on one of Paul's missionary journeys, early ones.

That's what we're talking about. So this guy, I want you to think about it. Are doctors generally considered to be stupid people?

Some are. No, I'm gonna go with you on that one. Okay, but they're not unintelligent, okay?

I grew up in a medical family. My stepdad is a doctor, and he is not a stupid man, not at all, and so you're gonna know that generally physicians are considered people to have a little higher intelligence than the average population, which is okay, which means they get to serve us in a different way than people with average intelligence.

God has given all these different intelligences for the purpose of making sure that all things in society are taken care of.

Could you imagine how intolerable the world would be if everybody was a doctor, okay? Yeah, may it never be, may it never be.

The only thing worse is attorneys. Okay. What are politicians mostly?

The attorneys, right. I rest my case, thank you. So. Where's your gavel?

Yeah, that's it. So the idea then here is that this is a fellow who does not follow that ridiculously stupid hymn, which we never sing at Kongsvinger, okay?

And the hymn goes like this. ♪ He lives, he lives, Christ Jesus lives today ♪ ♪

He walks with me and talks with me along life's merry way ♪ ♪ He lives, he lives, he lives, to rule my heart ♪ ♪

You ask me how I know he lives, he lives within my heart ♪

Huh! Okay. Really, you know that Jesus is raised from the dead because he lives in your heart.

How much certainty do you think that's gonna give you? Okay, because on any given day, my days are a mix of hot and cold, of holy and unholy, and there are seasons in my life that are just awful.

I just went through a weird season having had diverticulitis, and I can tell you this.

It wasn't a near -death experience. It was a welcomed -death experience, okay? You go through the pain of diverticulitis and death becomes like, hmm, an option.

Like a pleasant thought. It's the weirdest thing, okay? But all that being said, we don't know that Jesus rose from the dead because he lived in our heart.

We're not Jedis, okay? We don't reach out with the force to feel things.

Ooh, I feel, I feel the Lord in my heart, right? He's in the rocks, he's in the trees.

Just nonsense, okay? Okay, sorry, I came back just a little bit.

I'm a little amped up. I'm not even on coffee right now. I'm on broth, what on earth?

That's good broth. I'm not sharing this, okay. So how do we know that Christ rose from the dead?

Because there's eyewitnesses. It's actually kind of that simple.

And I would remind you, Chuck Colson. Chuck Colson, I think, in our life, has given us what is possibly one of the greatest apologetic arguments for the veracity of the eyewitness testimony that I have ever heard.

If you're not familiar, Chuck Colson was part of the Richard Nixon administration. He was an insider, high up, a mucky muck among the

Republicans, and he was corrupt. He was part of the coup that came up with the idea,

I got an idea, let's go to Watergate and steal all that stuff, and we'll figure out what the Dems are doing so we can beat those guys at the polls.

Yeah, well, how many laws are you gonna break in doing that? I don't think it matters. We're just gonna cover the whole thing up, shazam.

Right. Sorry. Right? So they went and they broke into Watergate.

They stole the documents, they got the stuff, and well, the problem was this, is that then there was an investigation, and then there was a cover -up.

13 men in the Nixon administration conspired in the

Watergate crime. 13 men, and they all conspired among themselves that they were gonna keep quiet to their graves.

How long did it take before one of them went state's witness? Two, three weeks.

That's all it took. They weren't even threatened with death. They weren't even threatened with death.

No, not at all. So the idea is this. If 13 men in the most powerful nation in human history couldn't, to save their own lives, to save themselves from going to prison, couldn't keep their deep, dark secret, imagine how ridiculous it is to think, okay?

So there's the disciples. They're absolutely terrified for their lives that they are next.

Jesus has been crucified and laid in a tomb. They are hiding in an upper room.

They've got the doors locked. They've got the windows closed, and there is no air conditioning, and Peter doesn't have, well,

Old Spice to make him smell good, right? And so what, according to the conspiracy theorists, have to have taken place is they said, somebody said, hey,

I've got an idea. All right, what's your idea? Let's steal the body and tell everybody he's risen from the dead.

Yeah, let's do that. Well, there's a garrison of Roman soldiers there. We'll just pay them money.

All right, that sounds great. So they go and, hey, Mr. Roman soldier, would you like a little bit of money?

Sure, all I need you to do is let us walk in there, take the body, act like nothing ever happened.

No problemo, you go ahead, you take that corpse, although we're here to keep you from doing that. Yeah, I'm sure the price was right.

And then they now have a corpse. So what do they do?

They decide to weekend at Bernie's It, turn Jesus' corpse into a marionette, and they would say,

Jesus has risen from the dead. He's here to talk to us today. Jesus, come out and say something. Hi, everybody.

Right? And then these men, for the remaining decades of their life, are persecuted on the run from the law.

They are not men with wealth. They continue to live kind of hand -to -mouth.

And all but one of them dies a martyr's death.

I mean, let's work this out. Peter, crucified upside down, three days to die. Thomas is said to have been put up in animal skins and fed to wild animals in India.

Some of them were sawn in half, others had their heads cut off. Not a single one of them ever said, oh, oh, oh, it was just a joke.

Jesus didn't really rise from the dead. We stole the body. No, every single one of them goes to their grave trusting that the crucified

Savior, the risen Savior that they had seen with their own eyes and their hands had touched, that he was gonna greet them as soon as their eyes closed in this life.

That's not the behavior of men who'd conspired to tell a lie. That's the behavior of men who are speaking the truth and are willing to speak the truth at great cost, the cost of their own life.

Yeah. Yeah, so the

Apostle John, here's the thing. There's pretty good reason to believe this is true and not just myth.

We will note that in the later centuries, so you get into like the third, fourth, fifth centuries, there was this weird thing that happened in the church and that is that the

Christian publishing industry got started and the first books that kind of came out in the

Christian publishing industry were like these fan fictions. And so the apostles were like, they would fanboy over the apostles and write these really tall tales about them and some of the stuff they wrote is clearly spurious.

But it is true that in some of our earliest documents in the writings of the church fathers, there are accounts that the

Apostle John was convicted and ordered to be executed by being boiled in oil and the way the early church described it is that it was nothing more than a warm jacuzzi bath for him.

And since he survived the way in which he was supposed to be put to death, Roman law said that he could go free.

And so that is one of the accounts and it's early and long before the fanboy fiction stuff was being written.

But yeah, that's actually most likely true. And I would note this, the early accounts of Peter's crucifixion are also very important.

So if you've ever traveled to Rome and you've been to the Vatican, in front of St.

Peter's Basilica, there's a plaza and in the center of that plaza, there is a

Egyptian obelisk. That obelisk is the obelisk that was erected by Emperor Nero.

And Emperor Nero took that obelisk and put it in the infield section of what was called a hippodrome that he had constructed to his own glory.

And of course, the best way to think of a hippodrome is a place in the ancient Roman world where they conducted chariot races, which was like the

Roman version of NASCAR. And of course, Nero liked to compete in the chariot races.

And oddly enough, every time he competed, he won. Isn't that weird? He was such a good NASCAR driver, that Nero guy.

But in the very center part of the infield of his hippodrome was this obelisk that he had set up.

And when Peter was crucified, he was crucified right next to that obelisk.

And that, historically, we can absolutely say that that is what took place.

But what's interesting is that when Peter was to be crucified, the first person to be crucified was not

Peter, it was his wife. And he was forced by Nero to watch as they nailed his wife to the cross.

So there's his wife nailed to the cross. And she's in agony.

And his words to her, that the early church records, his words to her were this, remember the kindness of our

Lord. I can't think of a better sermon to preach to somebody who's being martyred for their faith.

Think of Christ's kindness. It's the opposite of what it is that you're experiencing. And so he watched as she spent the rest of the day dying, and she died.

And then the next morning, they dressed him for his turn, and they decided to make a spectacle of Peter.

Not only was he to be crucified in the infield next to that stupid obelisk, but they were gonna conduct the chariot races right after he was crucified.

Once he was nailed to that cross, they were gonna do it. So they marched Peter out there, and when he saw his cross, he bucked, he protested.

And his protest was this. I am not worthy to die in the same manner as Christ.

Please don't nail me to that cross. And they said, fine, you don't wanna die in the same manner as Jesus, we'll do something different.

And they crucified him upside down. And in so doing, it took him three days to die.

Crucifixion's a terrible way to die, but it's designed to basically, guys who are crucified die from asphyxiation, because eventually, your arms wear out.

Because in order to breathe, you have to pull yourself up. Because the way the chest cavity is, you have to pull yourself up to get a breath.

And then you come back down, and you can't get that next breath. And so in order to exhale and then get the next breath, you have to pull yourself up against the nails in your wrist to take that next breath.

And eventually, you just wear out, and you can't make the fight anymore. You can't make the struggle, and then you asphyxiate and you die.

But when you're upside down, that kind of takes the whole method by which you're going to die out of play.

So he didn't die that day. And so there's Nero basically participating in the chariot races with Peter upside down on the cross dying.

That's day one. Day two, he's not dying. Day three, his disciples are ready to cut him down from the cross and try to save his life.

And he's saying, no, don't do that. And then he eventually dies.

And when they cut him off the cross, they ended up cutting off his legs in the process, too. It was kind of a mess.

But again, I point this out. Men don't die for what they know is a lie.

They don't. That is just nonsense. The Watergate criminals couldn't keep their conspiracy secret for more than three weeks, and they all ended up going to prison.

If this were a lie, one of the apostles would have cracked. And just to add the icing on the cake and the cherry on top, what do you then do with the apostle

Paul? The archenemy of Christianity becomes a Christian because he's now an eyewitness of the resurrection because Jesus and him had a little come -to -Jesus meeting on the road to Damascus, right?

That's like the ice cream on the top. So you get the idea.

So Luke is writing an eyewitness testimony in both books. And then you'll note, so just as the eyewitnesses from the beginning, the ministers of the word, they have delivered them to us.

It seemed good to me also, having followed all things closely, which is his way of saying, listen,

I've paid attention to all the details. I made sure all the iotas are in the right place, that all the dots and tittles and jittles and all that stuff's there for some time past to write an orderly account for you, lover of God.

And then watch this, that you may have certainty. Now, a little bit of a note.

Have any of you ever had the unfortunate experience of listening to a liberal theologian talk about what is faith?

They will say something like this. Certainty is the opposite of faith.

This is what they say. Certainty is the opposite of faith because if you have certainty, then you don't need faith.

What a dumb thing to say, okay? What an absolutely dumb thing to say.

Certainty is not the opposite of faith. It's the very definition of faith. And you're sitting there going, well, how do you figure,

Pastor Rose, bro? I got a text, okay? I have a text. Let me show it to you, and then I'll come to you, young Master James.

I don't know why this keeps coming in and out, but it's annoying. It's just weird.

All right, in the book of Hebrews, oh, I'm gonna kill this microphone.

I feel like it's playing with me right now, but that's all right. In the book of Hebrews chapter 11, we have an entire chapter called the hall of faith, and it has a definition of what faith is.

Let's take a look. Faith is the assurance of things that are hoped for.

It is the confidence of things that are hoped for. The conviction, and here's the interesting word, aleghas, okay, the act of presenting evidence for the truth of something proving to be true, the act of charging with a wrongdoing or accusation, expression of strong disapproval, reproof, or censure, or correction.

Aleghas can technically be translated as certainty. I'm just gonna say it right here.

So here's the idea then. Faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction, or you can even say the certainty, of things that are not seen, for by it, by faith, people of old receive their commendation.

What is faith? Faith is trust, okay? If I said, well,

I trust in Jesus, but I'm not sure if, you know, when

I stand before him, if really I'm gonna be forgiven. I mean, after all, I'm kind of a miserable, awful sinner.

Does that sound like certainty to you? Does it even sound like faith? So when somebody comes to you, we are warned in scripture.

I'll remind you, because I did this the other day. There's a actual text. If you look up the word plausible, okay?

Look up the word plausible in the New Testament. In Colossians chapter two, verse four,

Paul says this, I say this in order that no one may delude you with plausible -sounding arguments, or plausible arguments.

Somebody sits there and goes, you know, you don't need faith if you have certainty. You sit there and go, wow, that's the coolest argument ever, right?

It's a plausible -sounding argument. It's nonsense. It's gobbledygook. Faith is being certain, so certain, that you are forgiven in Christ.

Luther kind of put it this way. If you stand before the judgment seat of Christ, and Jesus says to you, off to hell with you, you know what you're supposed to do?

You are to stand your ground, and you look Jesus dead in the eye, and you say to him, you can even like use the military knife hand here, okay?

You throw me into hell, then you're a liar. You can't throw me into hell, because you told me my sins were forgiven.

You told me, and I believed you, that all of my transgressions have been blotted out, and the entire record of debt that stood against me has been canceled.

You can't throw me to hell, because if you do so, you're a liar. Does that sound like doubt to you?

Does that sound like uncertainty to you? No, it's none of that. That's what faith is.

Faith is being so sure, so certain that Christ has bled and died for you, that you're betting all the blue chips on Jesus, period.

There's none of your works in your equation regarding your salvation. You completely throw yourself at the mercy of Christ and say, he's gonna forgive me, because he said so.

That's what it is. And so you can then see here in Luke chapter,

I'm sorry, Acts chapter one, these things were written so that you may have what? Certainty.

We are not following a myth. Jesus's death, burial, resurrection, and ascension are not in the same category as Santa Claus and his little dwarfs and all their little toy shops up there in the

North Pole. It's not in the same category. Jesus's death, burial, resurrection, and ascension for the forgiveness of your sins is as certain as Israel's attack against Hezbollah just a couple of weeks ago.

None of you have seen it, but you've looked at the evidence and you know that it happened, right? That whole beeper thing was hilarious.

I mean, you gotta admit, the Israelis have a sense of humor. We're gonna cut off the head of Hezbollah by having everybody's pager go off in their pocket, which means they're gonna castrate their enemies and then attack them.

That's brilliant. Okay, I'm just gonna say it, that's brilliant. So the idea then here, when we get to the opening part of the book of Acts, this is all still in play.

This is history. This isn't mythology. This is history. This isn't legend. This is recorded right after the events that took place by a guy who sat down with pen and parchment and took notes and then compiled it all together and put these books together for us.

That's the idea. So that's the quality of what it is that we are going to be reading here, and anybody who doesn't recognize that quality, get rid of them.

Anyone who would cast doubt on the historicity and the veracity of these things, don't listen to them.

I always consider it to be one of the most bizarre, bizarre projects in all of Christian theology, and I actually,

Christian theology, gotta put an air quote around both of those things, when it was Albert Schweitzer who decided to come up with this idea, you know, we need to really get, we need to get at who the authentic historical

Jesus is. What do you mean?

Well, you know, I mean, look at the Bible. It has stories about Jesus, and clearly this is a religious book, and it's got an ax to grind theologically, and the accounts that we read of Jesus, I mean, of him casting out demons and walking on water and performing miracles and stuff like this, don't you think it's time for us to, like, figure out who the real historical

Jesus is, because this Jesus that's come to us in the scriptures doesn't seem like it fits the historical one.

That was done by Christian theologians, okay? Christian theologians.

There is no Jesus apart from the Jesus given to us by the apostles. There is no

Jesus, because the apostles were the eyewitnesses that Jesus chose to reveal him and to record for us what he said, what he did, what he accomplished for us, what he taught, what he commanded.

You can't go anywhere else to find anything about Jesus. Full stop.

Anyone coming today saying, I have found another source, I have found a different source altogether that tells us, sheds, how do they put it?

Sheds more light, right? Sheds more light on the historical Jesus, right?

And Jesus, when he was a young boy, he struggled with his supernatural powers and he used to take clay pigeons and make them come to life and stuff, right?

It's nonsense, okay? There's only one place you can go, one, in order to interact with and come to grips with the real

Jesus, and that's the one in the end.

There is no other place you can go. In fact, Jesus even prayed for everybody who would believe through them.

Let me explain. John chapter, I'm going to lose my temper, because this thing keeps going in and out.

It's like, one second I can hear myself and I'm clearly broadcasting, next time I'm not, what is going on here?

I'll put this out here and just, I don't know. All right, in the night that Jesus is betrayed,

Jesus says some very interesting things, but one of the things he does, I'm going to look for the word believe through.

All right, here we go. No, that's not what I want. Hang on, who will believe?

I'm doing this from memory. There it is, ah, here it is. So in Acts chapter 17, which is part of that discourse that begins in 14,

Jesus is praying, and listen to what he prays. I do not ask for these only, talking about his apostles who were there with him at that time, but I'm also praying for those who will believe in me through their word, that they may all be one just as you,

Father, are in me and I in you, and they also may be in us, so that the world may believe that you have sent me, the glory that you have given me,

I have given to them, that we may be one even, that they may be one even as we are one.

So note here, Christ, in John 17, 20, prays for those who will believe in him through their word.

How many books did Jesus write during his lifetime? Not a single one, not a single one.

He left all the writing to the eyewitnesses. You can't get at Jesus unless you go through them.

Yeah, yeah, well, he cheats, that's right. All scripture is God -breathed, therefore he did write it, but the idea then is that physically,

Jesus didn't write any books. There's no autobiographies of Jesus in the

New Testament. They're all biographies written by the eyewitnesses. So as we consider then

Acts chapter one, again, the words, in the first book, O Theophilus, love the double entendre, that applies to you,

I have dealt with all that Jesus, note the word, began. All the things that he had started to do, that he began to do and teach, until the day he was taken up, and after he had given commands through the

Holy Spirit to the apostles whom he had chosen. And this, we'll talk a little bit more about this in depth as we get ahead, because I've already got some pre -planned bunny trails that will address the false doctrines of the

New Apostolic Reformation, the claim that there are apostles today. There are not any, okay?

Christ chose his apostles. To be an apostle of Jesus Christ is a unique office, and you'll see that when we get to this in the text.

So Christ chose his apostles. He presented himself alive to them after his suffering by many proofs, appearing to them during 40 days and speaking about the kingdom of God.

And so you'll note that all of this basically says, hey, what I started off in Luke, I'm now continuing here, same premises are in place, this is all the case, and here's a summary of what's going on, here's what the apostles have done, and here's where we're at, right?

Christ has risen from the dead, he appeared for 40 days, gave not some proofs, many proofs.

Jesus wouldn't sit there and go, just believe in your heart and you'll know that I've raised from the dead. What's wrong with you?

What's wrong with your heart, man? You're so hard -hearted, why don't you believe that I rose from the dead,

I'm right here, dude. No, he would actually give proofs, okay? He presented himself alive after his suffering by many proofs, appearing to them for 40 days, speaking about the kingdom of God.

And so you'll note that the kingdom of God does come into play as a major theme then in this account, but that's as far as I wanna go here today, because this gives us the foundation that we can build the rest of this book on, which is exactly what

Luke did. So, all right, we'll end up here, and great to be back, great to be standing and eating again,