The Legacy of the Apostolic Church

Who remembers what was the last year that we observed Pentecost on a Monday? Close. 73. 1973. And I remember that. And this lady over here, who married me, she remembers that. Because we had been accepted to go on what was back in the old days called the Ambassador College Big Dig, the archaeological dig in Jerusalem. And we had gone with the Big Sandy students to New York City, where the Pasadena students met us. And we went together to London. We were there for Brickett Woods' graduation, because just another year Brickett Woods was closed. We had a guest speaker at graduation, and then we flew down on Sunday to Tel Aviv, got on buses, and we rolled into Jerusalem about the time the sun was setting. And the day of Pentecost was beginning as we understood it then. And we had the same guest speaker, who flew on down also. And he spoke to us that day, the day of Pentecost in Jerusalem, Israel.

And we heard Mr. Herbert W. Armstrong discuss the topic of the history of Jerusalem, and leading it up to the work of the church, and the ongoing work of the church. And I know as I look at the crowd, a number of you have had the blessing of going to the Holy Land. And if you ever go there, you're never the same. Because you spend years, decades, reading of the Word of God, rehearsing the stories, and trying to mentally picture it. But when you're there, and you walk to those places, and you stand there on pavements that are dated back to the days of Herod, which means the days of Jesus Christ and the apostles. It makes it become alive in a way that it never did before. As the sun set that night, the day of Pentecost, Monday evening at sunset, as again we kept it that last time, by the next year, and I guess maybe I'm opening a can of worms, because a number of you are going to wonder, well, why did we change the Sunday?

There was one little word back there in Leviticus 23 that we didn't see in a certain way. We dealt with counting. You start counting on or from that Sunday inside of Unleavened Bread. And now as we look at it, we think, well, it's very clear. You count seven sabbaths in the morning of the day after. And so here we are on a Sunday. So from 74 to present, we've kept it on a Sunday.

But that night is a sunset, a group of us as students, and we had barely been there 24 hours.

We take off and we go exploring. And we walked that night along the perimeter of the Temple Mount area.

And for two months following, we worked daily, archaeological dig, getting down there to work about 7 a.m. and working with picks and wheelbarrows and shovels and buckets and all that until 1 o'clock. When we shut down and went back to the hotel, bathed. That was very important. Bathed. Had lunch. Had class in the afternoon. But two months later, spent a lot of time around that Temple Mount area, and many times walked up on top. It wasn't quite as dangerous of a place, or at least maybe we weren't aware of the danger at that time. We were young, but it did seem to be less dangerous than it is today. I used to dream of going back to Israel again. And yet, I start thinking along that line, and then the news items, I'll think, No. No. There's always a millennium, and that'll work. Wherever the Temple was located, and of course, there are those who say the Dome of the Rock was built right over the old Temple. We don't know. There is a rock outcropping inside.

There's another rock outcropping to the north, a couple hundred feet. There's also the theory that I tend to lean toward kind of a personal heresy, but down the hill toward the City of David, where there used to be a certain higher point that has just been leveled. Because when you go to the Temple Mount, and you look at those stones that have the border that are dated to the time of Herod, who himself said, not one stone will be standing on top of another, and you go there and you see them stack the way up, and it makes you wonder, where was the Temple?

But as you walk around, you go by a gate, and you can envision a time when Peter and John said to the lame man, such as we have, we give them to you in the name of Jesus Christ, rise up and walk. And you walk around and you envision, where was that group of about 120 gathered? Where were they? Whenever suddenly they were in a room, we know, suddenly the room was filled with the sound, as it were, of a mighty rushing wind.

And then these cloven tongues of fire lighted on each person. I like to think back, and I like to go back with you today to the early Apostolic Church of God. And the question I want to ask you is, what is the legacy of the Apostolic Church? What is the legacy that has endured? Because Jesus, if we back up a little earlier, He began His ministry when He was about 30. And let's go ahead and turn to Matthew 4.

We know this is a chapter that first discusses the temptations of the devil, the tempter. But immediately thereafter He began His ministry. Luke's account tells us He was about 30. In Acts 4, in verse 18, I should have said verse 17. From that time, Jesus began to preach and to say, Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand. And Jesus, walking by the Sea of Galilee, started up north. Saul two brothers, Simon called Peter and Andrew his brother, casting a net into the sea, for they were fishermen.

And He said to them, Follow Me, and I will make you fishers of men. The story goes on as He called others, James and John, sons of Zebedee. Verse 22, And immediately they left their boat and their father and followed Him. 23 And Jesus went about all Galilee teaching in their synagogues, preaching the gospel of the kingdom, and healing all kinds of sickness and all kinds of disease among the people. His fame spread and His ministry began. The first order of the day was calling disciples. Later on, we know them as the apostles. And they began, they ran a high learning curve.

They had a long way to go. And they were as carnal as could be. And so were we once upon a time. And so are we once upon a time, sometimes too, aren't we? Because it is a process. Conversion is not just a one-time event that happens, and it's over. It is an onion. It is a point where it starts. By repentance. It starts. And then it goes forward until the time that our last breath expires.

And then we're called to the very family of God within a resurrection. I want to read just a little. I brought an old classic book I have at home, Mr. of the Ages. It's worn out. It's underlined. It's written throughout. But it's good stuff. Good reading. Herbert W. Armstrong, Mr. of the Ages. In writing about the mystery of the church, he mentioned Jesus Christ the second Adam and qualified. Never until that minute could the good news of the coming kingdom of God be announced to the world.

Now the Son of God resisted and conquered Satan, had qualified to reestablish God's government and set up the kingdom of God on earth. But now the church must also qualify to reign with Him. Jesus came among other purposes to call out of the world His church. Those called out had been in and of the world. Each had brought on Himself by sin the supreme death penalty. But God had created all things by the Word who became Jesus Christ.

Now a few pages later, that was page 219. A few pages later, page 227. He continued speaking about how Sir Winston Churchill before the U.S. Congress mentioned what a blind soul a person would be if he can't recognize there's a purpose being worked out here below. A little later he said, In order for Christ to restore God's government over the earth, He would need with Him and under Him a qualified and organized personnel of God beings, all having rejected Satan's false way and proved their loyalty to the government and righteous ways of God. God's church was designed in His supreme master plan to prepare that dedicated and organized personnel of God beings.

The church then became God's instrumentality for aiding Him and bringing about the salvation to humanity. To read the story of the early church, we are familiar with the Gospel accounts as Jesus began His ministry. He began focusing more and more on His disciples, as we see in chapter 5, verse 1. Matthew 5, verse 1, And seeing the multitudes, He went up on a mountain, and when He was seated, His disciples came to Him. Great numbers of people gathered, and He left. There are those who partake Christ during His three and a half years as running around trying to save everyone He possibly could.

But there are so many places where it tells us He clearly was not calling everyone. There was this early crew, this group of firstfruits, which is a name for this day, Feast of Firstfruits. There was a group called Firstfruits that began to be called and trained.

This chapter leads into the Sermon on the Mount. If we go to Matthew 8, verse 4, after healing one who had leprosy, verse 4, And Jesus said to him, See that you tell no one, but go your way, show yourself to the priest, and offer the gift that Moses commanded as a testimony to them. Here was a healing, and Jesus told him, Don't tell anyone. He didn't want it broadcast all over.

But He did tell him, because you see the Old Testament law that covered the purification of leprosy was still intact, Go to the priest, offer what Moses said. But it wasn't being offered to everyone, and so He didn't want the man going and telling the world. Let's go to chapter 13. Matthew 13. He began speaking in parables in the course of His ministry, and His disciples were puzzled. And in verse 10, they asked Him, Why do You speak to them in parables?

Verse 11, He answered and said, Because it has been given to You to know the mysteries of the kingdom of heaven, but to them it has not been given. For whoever has to Him will be given, and he will have abundance, but whoever does not have, even what he has, will be taken away from him.

Therefore, I speak to them in parables, because seeing they do not see, and hearing they do not hear, nor do they understand. And we've seen this play out across the ages. We've seen it in our day and age too. There was a time when we were blinded. We couldn't see and we couldn't hear.

And then there was a miracle, a distinct miracle. And I hope we all remember some of those key points in our life when God began to remove the scales from our eyes. Maybe it wasn't as remarkable as was referred to with Saul, who was on the road to Damascus, struck blind, and then three days later, the scales, as it were, fell from his eyes, and he could see. But there was a time when God began calling us. And we don't need to worry about who hasn't been called.

We need to worry about what does God want me to do with the calling He's given me. Chapter 16, as His ministry goes a bit further, we find He continues to focus on this group of disciples who would become the foundational stones of a church that was going to be established on this day of Pentecost a bit later. In Matthew 16, notice verse 13, they were way up north around Caesarea Philippi. He asked His disciples, saying, Who do men say that I, the Son of Man, am? They give the answer, some say you're John, John the Baptist, some Elijah, some Jeremiah, or another prophet.

But then Peter said, verse 16, You are the Christ, the Son of the living God. And notice verse 17 and 18. As Jesus said to him, Blessed are you, Simon Bar-Jonah, for flesh and blood has not revealed this to you, but my Father who is in heaven. And I also say to you that you are Peter. Again, 13 tells us He was speaking to His disciples. You are in the Greek petros. You are small. You are little stones. You are foundational stones. And upon this rock, this Petra, this large rock, I will build my church, and the gates of Hades, the grave, shall not prevail against it.

The church was established, and it would never die out. And here we are, if we live long enough and time goes on long enough, we're going to be passing the 2000. I don't think we'll make it that far, the way world events have ramped up the last few years. But we'll reach 2000 years down the line from the events of Acts 2.

And I ask you, what is the legacy of the Aposolic Church? Matthew 24, a prophetic chapter, the Olivet prophecy. And He gave them signs when they asked for signs. What would be the conditions in the world before you return? And He spoke of false religion, out of warfare, and all kinds of signs. But notice what He says in verse 22. Unless those days were shortened, no flesh would be saved. But 4, the elect's sake, those days will be shortened.

That tells us several things, but one thing that we must focus on is that it tells us at the very end, the elect will still be around. The church that Jesus would found would still be in existence. It will not have gone anywhere. Acts 1, the chapters that followed in Matthew and the other Gospels told the story of that final Passover and then of the betrayal and of the sufferings of the crucifixion of, and finally, the death of Jesus Christ.

But then they also tell us of how He began to appear to them when He was resurrected. One here, a few there, 500 once, and they realized that He was raised back to life, as He had promised. And He spoke with them for 40 days, Acts 1 tells us. Verse 3, to whom He also presented Himself alive after His suffering by many infallible proofs, being seen by them during 40 days and speaking of the things pertaining to the kingdom of God.

But notice, verse 4, being assembled together with them, He commanded them to not depart from Jerusalem. So Jerusalem, that city that has been so holy to Christians and Jews and Muslims for 2,000 years and more, that city is where it all started. And you know, that's where everything's going to come to a head too. And that's where His feet are going to stand there, where He left one of these days.

But to wait for the promise of the Father, remember back in the, I believe it's John's Gospel, a bit later He appeared to them and He blew on them. He breathed on them. And He said, receive, use the Holy Spirit. And I believe it was designed to make the connection. He blew on them. They could feel the wind. And then they're gathered in chapter 2, and they heard the sound of a great mighty rushing wind.

And they had to be able to connect the dots. Wait for the promise of the Father, which He said, you have heard from Me. Spoke of John's baptism. They wanted to know, is it now? It wasn't to be now. We still want to know, is it now, Lord? And it's still not for us to know. We're always told He won't know the day or the hour. Verse 8, But you shall receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you, and you shall be witnesses to Me in Jerusalem, in all Judea and Samaria, and to the end of the earth.

Verse 15 tells us there were about 120 gathered there. And then they have the business of the fact that they realize there's supposed to be 12, but one was disqualified. And so the casting of Lot and Matthias was chosen, so there are now 12 apostles once again. And they gather there in chapter 2.

What is the legacy of the Apostolic Church of God? Number 1, they observed Holy Days. Verse 1, When the day of Pentecost was fully come, He had been with them in person 40 days. We live in a Christian world that says the law was nailed to the cross. You would think that in 40 days, He could have taught them that if that is what He had intended.

But no, rather, they gather on the day of Pentecost. And when it was there, they were with one accord in one place, waiting. I think that's no small sign, at least in my books. Keep your place. We'll be spending time in Acts 2. But let's go back to Leviticus 23. We should go back to Leviticus 23, where we have the chapter that lists all of the Holy Days.

Of course, it starts with the weekly Holy Day of the Sabbath, and then it goes throughout the rest. In Leviticus 23, verse 9, the Lord spoke to Moses, saying, "...you, the children of Israel, and say to them, when you come into the land which I give to you and reap its harvest, that you shall bring a sheaf of the first fruits of your harvest to the priest." And as you may remember, the barley ripens first, and they would go cut enough to beat out an omer, measuring unit, and omer, and go and present it, and wave it.

The priest would wave it to God. And that was the first of the first. And it started the clock ticking. It started the days. They were to count the days. Fifty days later, seven Sabbaths, they count, and then the day after, they gather again, once again, but that time to have a day of thanksgiving for the harvest. The Feast of First Fruits, the Feast of Weeks, the Day of Pentecost. It all weaves in together here, the Day of the Harvest, the Feast of the Harvest.

The priest shall wave it. Let's drop down to verse 15, and you shall count for yourselves from the day after the Sabbath. Again, our understanding is, and has been, that that's the essentially, the day of the Sabbath on man's calendar today, it's called Sunday. Our conviction has been, that's the Sunday inside of Unleavened Bread. You count forward seven weeks from there, and you have this day of thanksgiving. From the day that you brought the chief of the wave offering, seven Sabbaths shall be completed. Count fifty days to the day after the seventh Sabbath.

Then you shall offer a new grain offering to the Lord. Why would God say, count fifty days, unless they were to count fifty days? All of these other holy days, He says on, for instance, Trumpets, the first day of the seventh month, or Atonement, the tenth day of the seventh month, or Tabernacles, the fifteenth through twenty-first day, and then the eighth day, the twenty-second, is another day.

Over with Unleavened Bread, the fifteenth and the twenty-first are annual Sabbaths. And the Passover's the fourteenth, but this one alone, He said, you've got to count. And yet, there are those who disregard that, and they place it on a calendar, the third month's siven, sebum, day six. And it might be a Sunday, and it might be various days of the week. But we count fifty. They were keeping the Day of Pentecost, so the Greek word means count fifty.

They must have counted fifty. Well, as we go on down a little further here, notice verse 21, And you shall proclaim on that same day that it is a holy convocation to you. You shall do no customary work on it. It shall be a statute forever in all your dwellings throughout your generations.

And the Apostolic Church of God must have believed that forever meant forever. And no one must have asked, well, it depends on what your definition of forever is. Forever is forever. And here they are after the death and the resurrection of Jesus Christ, and they continue observing the next holy day that came along. And actually, quite a few years later in Paul's writing, one time he mentioned, I want to be in Jerusalem for Pentecost.

So it was still around. This was a church. This is a part of the legacy of the early church that they observed holy days after the death and resurrection of Christ. Most of us know the story. It's been related many times, although we do have to remember that Herbert Armstrong, next January, will have been in his grave for 30 years. And for a lot of years, you'd hear people, well, you know, they're quoting Mr. Armstrong, this and that, and somewhere down the line we have to let him just rest in his grave.

But I will cherish his memory always as a kind of a spiritual grandfather in the faith to all of us, whether you were even living when he was alive. Once upon a time, you know, we've got pieces of the puzzle, the story of the church of God, from the days of Acts, and then that begins to spread as God used persecution to drive them out.

And used greater persecution to cause them to go to some of the far outback areas of the empire, because the empire was after them and it had a sword in its hand, and the Word of God was spread in the process. And we find little groups of God's people here and there. At least we say they're God's people, because sometimes we find some of their writings, like a man named Constantina Mananale.

I have a photocopy translated of his little book of the Key of Truth from the 800s A.D. and here is a listing on one page of the, well, we call our booklet, The Fundamental Beliefs of the United Church of God, and that was his listing of their fundamental beliefs. And you can put them up side by side and you won't find a penny's worth of difference.

So I read that and we think we're reading of the chronicles of the ongoing work of the people of God.

But we get to the 20th century and it was time to fulfill some prophecies.

There was a prophecy that said the Gospel will be preached to all the world, then the end comes, and so God raised up a couple. He first worked with Loma Armstrong, used her to pique her husband's interest, anger, whatever you want to call it, to lead him to prove her wrong and found out the Sabbath, nothing has changed.

And a bit later found the annual Sabbath, the weekly Sabbath, the annual Sabbath, they're going to stand or fall together.

And they didn't know why, but they kept Holy Days the best they knew.

Seven years, just the two of them, and then with a small group, another seven years. And after 14 years, you know, in the Psalm it says, a good understanding have those who keep His commandments, who do His law, and nothing shall offend them. So when we find something in the Word of God and we just simply start doing it, in time, there is an understanding that God can pour out upon us, that He could not do otherwise. And so they began observing Holy Days and then began to understand that, oh, this is an outline of the plan of God throughout all the ages and how God is seeking to bring all men to repentance and to a knowledge of the truth, and to bring them into His very eternal family. And of course, a work followed, and you and I are the products of that work. But it was a church from the beginning in Acts 2 that was gathered there observing Holy Days. Number 2, they were unified. And you know, I sometimes struggle to say that word because we don't always do as well as we should, do we?

We all have scars. We go back in each of our families. We go back 20 years in our families. We turned around and found, well, it's us and our kids, and the entire family on either side, where we used to go and gather together and have a big family clan together for the feast, and we were down to five, and down to four, three, and that's two. But we're not going to give it up. But with one accord, it said, Acts 1, they were with one accord in one place. And that speaks of unity. Toward the end of that chapter, verse 46, after the occasion, can you imagine how 120 people worked hard to help the apostles in baptizing 3,000 people that day? What a wonderful problem to have! How are we going to get it done? I don't think they've got a whole lot of counseling. You know, sometimes in this day and age, we counsel and counsel and counsel. You know, if repentance is obvious and if faith in Christ's sacrifice is obvious, that's really all the Bible says. There's a level of knowledge we need to have. But they couldn't have spent a lot of time with each person. It was kind of like, okay, next, get out of the way. Got another one coming through, and 3,000 are baptized. And in verse 46, it 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." There was a level of unity that must have been phenomenal. And in unity, you know, the Psalm says, beautiful it is for brethren to dwell together in unity. And it is the Spirit of God. One of the emblems for God's Spirit is oil. Remember where the man has termed the good Samaritan, the man who was injured. He dressed his wounds. He used oil and wine, a disinfectant, and then something as a salve to maintain an applyability to aid the healing process. The Spirit of God, as we allow it to lead us, can bring us together. But a lot of times, after all, we didn't read the Scripture there in Leviticus 23. But on this day, you are to bake two loaves, and you are to bake them with leaven, because it represents people like us. And there's leaven. I can speak for me. There's leaven in me. There's always been leaven in the body of Christ, and there will be, until another phase of God's plan.

Unified. Christ had founded a church. He had a work crew. He wanted to work together in harmony. It's a beautiful thing to see in sports, a team where everything just clicks, and the play is executed, and everybody does their part. It's a beautiful thing to see. And the same is true on an assembly line. A work crew, a group of plumbers or electricians, and they're so working together, roofers, they're working together, where they all kind of anticipate what the next man needs, and it's a beautiful thing to see. But it only takes one rotten apple, doesn't it? That can happen at camp. We'll have camp before too long, and it takes one rotten egg in a dorm of a dozen.

And it can just take the fun out of it. And the same is true in the work of God. It just takes one here, one there, dragging their heels, or actually working against the overall effort. It's been a lot of years ago. One year at camp, we used the acronym TEAM, T-E-A-M, and it stood for Together Everyone Accomplishes More. Together, everyone accomplishes more, and we do. This was a church that was hitting on all cylinders. They were together. And we can again only envision, I mean, they'd gone through the crescendo of events that led to their Savior being killed. And then all of a sudden, He appears in the room with them behind a locked door. And they gather there, and they hadn't had time for some of the little penny-antie, nit-picky things to begin to bother them. But as long as we breathe for our living, we're going to have those things arise. And God help us to grow up, to mature.

God help us to reach a point where we're finding in the body of Christ that's so scattered that we're pulling together instead of pulling further apart. When Paul wrote to Corinth, of course, that was probably 25 years later after the events of Acts 2. Paul wrote to Corinth, and just in the opening chapter, he said, I hear there are schisms among you. And then he says, I was told by the household of so-and-so, and they were probably sinking down in their chairs when that letter was read to the church. But they were siding with ministers, and there were areas where Satan was beginning to drive wedges between them. They had all kinds of disagreements about, what do you eat meat that was offered to the pagan idol? And he says, the idol is nothing in the world.

And they had disagreements about, well, do we eat? Can we come to Passover drunken? And a lot of confusion had come in that he had to set in order. You look at this church in Acts 2, and they were an obedient church. They knew it was a holy day. And they remembered that their master had said, wait here for the promise from on high. And they were obediently waiting. Probably scared out of their wits then, wondering what's going to happen. But the Spirit of God changed all of that. Gave them a power, like we heard this morning, a power. Gave them a level of faith they'd never known. Peter, I mean, what a dramatic difference. On that very day, the man who had said a little earlier, well, I'm going to go fishing. That same man is the one who's standing there in short order telling them the way it was. And you guys killed the Messiah and His blood's on your hands. And you better repent and be baptized. And he told them a lot more in the next chapter, in the chapter after that. And he told them, we've got to obey God rather than men. And it didn't matter if they threw Him in prison, or they beat them, or threatened them. He was different. They were going to obey. It is interesting, and we've commented a number of times. We really wish we had all the pieces of the puzzle from back in the days when Israel left Egypt. The exodus took place. They crossed through the Red Sea. And we have some landmarks that are given, which make us wonder if they traveled, and they stopped for Sabbath at the waters of Mara, and they went on to Elam. They traveled, by the way, of the Red Sea. They were in the wilderness of sin. It appears two weeks. Rephidim. And then they ended up in Sinai. We wish we knew everything to be able to dogmatically state that the events of Mount Sinai took place on the day of Pentecost. But we don't have all the pieces of the puzzle. That is Jewish tradition, though, for whatever that's worth. But it does make so much sense that long ago, when national Israel entered a covenant with God, God wrote the law on tablets of stone front and back. Tablets that Moses held in His hand. Singular, it says. And on the events of this day, in the day of Pentecost, Acts 2, Peter quotes from the prophecy of Joel of that time when I will pour out my Spirit upon all flesh. And the Spirit of God had first come upon about 120, and then it was passed to 3,000 more. And the law of God was written on their heart.

To allow them to see, to perceive the intention behind every word written in that law. To raise the bar to a far higher level than just the letter.

Acts 5, verse 32.

Acts 5, verse 32, it says, And we are His witnesses to these things.

And so also is the Holy Spirit whom God has given to those who obey Him.

Now, a lot of us remember a time, a little over 20 years ago, when someone tried to tell us that what this word means is that God gives His Spirit so that we can obey Him. But it reads pretty clearly, God gives His Spirit to those who are obeying Him.

To the best that we can. The Spirit of God helps bump it up. But they were an obedient group. That's a part of the legacy of the Apostolic Church of God.

Holy days, they obeyed. They were unified.

Number four, they yielded to the lead of the Spirit.

They yielded to the lead of the Spirit of God.

Acts 2, verse 2, Suddenly, there was a sound from heaven as of a mighty rushing wind, and it filled the whole house where they were sitting. Then there appeared to them divided tongues as of fire, and one sat on each of them.

And they were all filled with the Holy Spirit, and began to speak with other tongues, the Greek glossa, languages, as the Spirit gave them utterance. It goes on and explains, there were Jews there from every nation under heaven.

And each of them heard what the apostles were saying in their own native language.

There are people who go way off on a tangent as far as what the gift of tongues was. And they're just as far off from the truth as they can.

The Spirit of God came upon them. The Spirit of God is just that. It's not something we can see, smell, taste, touch.

There are, Scriptures tell us, there are fruits that are born of the Holy Spirit that comes and combines with our mind.

There are gifts of the Spirit, like we talked about in last weekend, Gadsden and Birmingham.

There are emblems like fire, clothing, dove, etc. that demonstrate to us what the Spirit is, how it works, what it does. It begins to open our eyes to be able to see what it can do if we'll simply yield to the impulses. It does not seek to force us down a certain action.

But like Paul wrote to Rome, as many as are led by the Spirit, they are the sons of God.

And there are times, I think God works with us through impulses. We'll see. We'll be aware. Someone's trial.

Maybe it's a prayer. Maybe we pick up a phone column. Maybe we're able to go out and see them. The Spirit of God impresses upon us that there's another person that needs us.

And as long as we yield to those urges, God works with us even more.

But it is possible to turn that off and disregard it. But there is a power there.

This apostolic church, I think enough is written here. We can say number 5 that they knew they were the firstfruits.

They knew they were the first fruit. There was the first of the firstfruits, only one person, Jesus Christ. But they knew they were of the first group. They were the early crew. They were the ones God poured out His Spirit upon. They had been taught by Christ throughout His earthly ministry. They were taught by Christ for 40 days afterward until He ascended back to the Father. They saw and they experienced Him day in and day out. He gave them a message that would unlock for them the path to salvation, that they were to pass along to millions of others. If they would only believe and follow. But they were the first. In Acts 2, verse 36, Now this is Peter's sermon that day. And he has jumped right into it. And he's telling them, you killed Him. And this Jesus, whom we've seen, He was God in the flesh. Verse 39, So He brings in the fact that He realized everyone can't come. You can't just want to come of your own will. There is this invitation. John 6, 44, Jesus said, No man can come to Me except the Father in heaven. Draws Him and I will raise Him at the last day. He repeats the thought pretty clearly the same way in verse 65. There is an invitation that has to be extended. And if a person is not drawn of the Father, if a person is not called, if a person is not invited, it's just simply not their time yet. But this early church, it was their time. They were the firstfruits. They had been called. The promise was to them and their children. Because God had called them. Verse 47, Because salvation is a process. It's not once given always there because otherwise we'd be warned that we don't neglect so great a salvation. Why would Paul have said, after I preached to others, I would become a castaway? Romans 5. Romans 5. Just notice verse 10. Verse 10. He's talking about God pouring out His love via the Spirit of God here in this chapter, verse 5, verse 8. How? When we were sinners, God loved us so much that He allowed His Son to come and die the way He did for us. But in verse 10, For if when we were enemies, back when we were under the death penalty that we had brought on ourselves, we were reconciled. To be reconciled, if you had a breach with a family member or a friend, to come back together to restore a relationship, that is to be reconciled. And we had cut ourselves off from God by our sins, but we were reconciled to God through the death of His Son much more. Having been reconciled, we shall be saved by His life. Because that ultimate eventual spiritual salvation in every sense of the term is still future for us. We have that. We cherish it. We hold on to it. But the full realization is yet ahead. Mr. Herbert Armstrong used to refer to that verse, and he'd take us to the law of biogenesis. That life comes only from preexisting life. And God is life. Christ is life. And He began imparting that within us. Christ was that wave sheaf that was cut free and offered, and it began an early harvest. And we celebrate that early harvest. It's been going on for a lot of years now, but that's a harvest that continues on. God continues to call. One here, one there. A family here, a family there. And there have been seeds of the truth sown all over creation. I had a treat yesterday in Tupelo. There was a man and his 13-year-old son who came, I think it was two weeks before. And then they came in with the man's wife, the mother. And in talking, her father's name was mentioned. And he was a longtime member in Memphis, Tennessee. And I turned and I said, no, wait a minute.

And as we talked, I realized this was an 11-year-old girl in the Memphis church when we were moved to Lubbock, Texas once upon a time. And we talked family. I mean, a big family clan. Four brothers with families in the church. And it was a joy. But you know, there are people like that who've been sitting out there sometimes for a lot of years. 15, 20 years, maybe more. But the truth of God is something, once it has been invested in you, you can try to put it down, cover it up, ignore it, hope it'll go away. But it doesn't work that way. It will haunt you. It will beckon you. And the time will come when you're going to have to pull that cover back off of it and pick up that Bible and begin looking at it again. You'll never be truly happy until you do. This is a church they knew they had a work to do. And in Acts 2, they began to do it. They began to preach, repent, and be baptized, every one of you in the name of Jesus Christ, for the remission of sins. And you'll receive the Spirit of God, the gift of the Holy Spirit. I think we've read enough back in Acts 2 that we can say, point number 6 is that they continued steadfastly.

We read that last verse, they continued in the apostles' doctrine and the breaking of bread from house to house. They continued. And there are a lot of pieces of the story I sure wish we had as far as the history of the church of God. But there again, we have a little here, a little there. Sometimes it seems like, as far as what we know, it disappeared. But no, you find out later, there it is lifted up somewhere else.

And you know, you had that early church. You had then, as Acts continued, the early, what, 12 chapters or so, largely focused on Peter. And then you have Paul becoming a factor. And in chapter 13, he and Barnabas are sent out. And it shifts into more the story of Paul, where he was going, into areas of Asia Minor and up through Macedonia and Greece.

It's a fascinating story. But we do know enough from history to realize that the Jews revolted in 66 AD. The Jews revolted, and Rome came down on them. And first of all, the Roman legions under Vespasian came. Well, events happened back up in Rome. They, in short order, went through a couple. That was after the death of Nero, the end of the Julian line. And you had a couple of emperors that didn't last, and so they called General Vespasian back to become the emperor.

And so the Roman armies pulled back to Alexandria, Egypt. They later came back under his son, the general Titus. But in that intervening time, from the temple, on the day of Pentecost, Josephus says, curious, there was a voice heard from the temple that said, let us remove hints.

Around here, we'd say, let's get out of here. Or let's get, but let us remove hints. And the church got out of Jerusalem. They got out while the Roman armies had pulled back. They went up toward the north, across the Jordan, a little outback place called Pella. And they were there for a while, and they had to keep moving. And the story goes on.

A lot of the work, you know, when we have the end of the book of Revelation with John, the last living apostle, the bulk of the work was over in Asia Minor. Modern day, what we would know as Turkey. The bulk of the people were there because you started having resistance from the Roman Empire. You had John's trained disciple, Polycarp, who would contend with the Roman leader. Is it Passover on the 14th of Nicene, or is it Easter?

And then another generation later, you had Polycrates, and another leader at Rome. And it led to the fact that the church had to get out. Get out on the fringes of the Empire and keep their head down. You began to have certain laws that were passed. You had decrees that came that essentially established the venerable day of the Son as the day of worship for the Empire. It was dangerous to be in the body of Christ. Let's go to Revelation 12.

There is a prophecy of the church fleeing to the wilderness. We've looked at that, pondered that in part we know and in part we don't know, but it's a fascinating story, at least to ponder and to think about. Chapter 12 tells of this woman clothed with the Son. You've got the two women in the book of Revelation. One is a false church, and one is the true church of God.

She's clothed with the Son. The Son represents the light of God. So this is the true church here. She is to give birth. We're looking here basically in the analogy of national Israel. From Judah, you're going to have the lady's name specifically became Mary. Mary was, I'm sure, very carefully chosen by God. Yes, she did give birth to that Son. Anyhow, as we go down here, she bore a son, verse 5, who was to rule all nations with a rod of iron. Now that tells us enough who we're talking about.

This male child is the Son of God, who is to come and reign with a rod of iron. And her child was caught up to God and His throne. Then the woman fled into the wilderness, where she has a place prepared by God, that they should feed her there 1,260 days. I think that's as far as we'll read today. But as you get into the 300s, you had decrees that came out around 321, 325 that basically outlawed Sabbath keeping in the Empire. Could that not be a fulfillment of this?

You had to go to the outskirts of the Empire. She had to keep her head down, or it was going to get cut off. And yes, we go through history, and we see little groups here and there. That Constantine of Manonalee, not Constantine the Emperor, but Constantine of Manonalee in the 800s. And you read of their fundamental beliefs, and they're basically the same as what we put down today. And you had groups in France around Lyon, textile merchants, the poor men of Lyon, they were called. And you had groups called cutthrobrusians, named after a leader. And you had Waldensians over in northern Italy, up in the park called the Cothian Alps.

And you had them up there in the Alpine regions. And they had a university, a college, they trained, they sent out by two, they had to memorize entire books of the Bible to send them forth. And so you see a little here or there. And then, as time goes on, I was looking this morning in my old King James, inside the cover.

I hadn't reread that letter from the translators to King James. But you had a lot of things happening at the end of the 1500s. And if we would figure 1,260 days, and there is that two different places where it talks about each day is for a year. The spies, in other words, were in the Holy Land, the Promised Land for 40 days. With their sin, they wandered and woken us 40 years. So 1,260 days, if that's 1,260 years, and if you start around 325 AD, you come out to 1,585, and do you know what happened that year?

Not one thing that I know of. I had you, didn't I? You were waiting for the Great Revelation.

Not one thing that I know of, but the next year, Mary Queen of Scots had her head lifted. Which is sad, I'm sure, especially for her, but it ensured that the British Isles were going to remain Protestant. The importance there is that there was a degree of religious freedom and tolerance. Therefore, King James VI of Scotland became King James I of the UK, the United Kingdom, and part of France. And in 1603, he gave the order and gathered.

It's a beautiful story to read of the battery of 54 of the greatest minds in Hebrew and Greek and Calvi, and getting them together in groups of nines and the checks and the balances, and sent them forth to translate the Holy Scriptures into the vernacular, which is what we call King James English. Eight years later, 1611, it was completed.

Go back and read that letter in the front of a King James Bible some day. It's inspiring to read that. Somewhere in there, you have the beginning of an industrial revolution that began to focus a lot of wealth and a lot of power into the hands of the English-speaking peoples, frankly.

And you had inventions. Cotton jins and all kinds of things were invented in that window of time. And in 1588, you had war again. Britain, I mean Europe, they always go to war. We can't cast any stones, though, can we? But the Spanish Armada, the greatest naval power of the day, the Navy of the greatest Catholic power of the day, the freak English Channel storm was broken up.

And it, again, allowed for a bit of religious freedom and tolerance. And for the first time, you began to have the wherewithal that your average blue-collar working family out there could have a copy of the Holy Scriptures. And do you know what they did? They began to read it.

And if you have an open mind and you just start reading it, what do you find? Well, at the beginning, God rested and sanctified the seventh day. And you follow it all the way through, and there's nothing in this book that changes that. And in 1st Britain, you had little Sabbath-keeping groups that began to crop up. And 1644, I believe it was, a little group of seven came over to Newport, Rhode Island.

We had the privilege of going in that building and reading about them. And when you stand there and when you read of them, you realize, you know, I'm taking a walk through my own spiritual roots. And there was a church there, and then over to Westerly, and the rest is history.

You had these loosely affiliated conferences of the Church of God. And that led to the Oregon Conference of the Church of God, and the rest is history. That led down the line to where we, God lifted up a couple that began to understand the Sabbath and the Holy Days, and began a work because He read, you know, you start here and you go to the end of the earth, and you preach the Gospel to all nations, then the end comes, and you and I cut our teeth by being called to a church that is always talking about the work.

Preaching the Gospel of Jesus Christ to the world. Preaching the path to salvation. The Apostolic Church began, and it continued steadfastly. And on a regular basis, we will always have an adversary, and he tries his dead level best to destroy the Church of God.

He oftentimes attacks Holy Days and the Sabbath. I'm not a prophet, but I will prophesy that it will happen again. We've been around the Church long enough to realize it's only a matter of time it will happen again. Sometimes from without and sometimes from within, but He'll try to divide us.

He'll try to get us to leave the law of God that we have cherished. The work of God goes onward. 31 A.D. A day of Pentecost. God began to pour out His Spirit upon the early Apostolic Church of God. They kept Holy Days. They reunited. They were obedient. They yielded to the lead of the Spirit of God as it led them. They realized they were the first fruits, the first group, and they continued.

Where do we find the legacy of the Apostolic Church? Well, I just simply ask you to look around you today. Look at each other. Think of other groups far and wide scattered around this world and individuals, because some spend parts of a Holy Day in an emergency room, and some are recovering from hip replacement surgery, and some have other health issues, and they aren't able to be here. But look around you, and you see the legacy of what was started on the day of Pentecost, when God poured out His Spirit upon His people, and that is a process that continues.

And the greatest thanks we can give to God is to appreciate it, cherish it, value it, rally together to pass that Gospel on to as many others as we can, and continue steadfastly in the Apostles' doctrine.