Acts Chapter 1

Acts Chapter 1

O Theophilis, I already wrote to you about what Jesus began to do and teach, until he was taken up to heaven.  After that the Holy Ghost gave commandments to the apostle that he had chosen.

 Oh wow.  We’ve already seen how smart these apostles are, now they are going to interpret the Holy Ghost’s ideas on their own.  Hold on folks we are in for a bumpy ride!

The ones JC came to and proved beyond a doubt he was alive even after his “passion”, a polite way of saying horrific death.  He was seen by them for forty days telling them things about the kingdom of God.  When he was with them he told them not to leave Jerusalem but to wait for the promise of the Father.  John baptized with water but you will baptize with the Holy Ghost in a little while.  I though JC already did that in Matthew.  I would have thought they he had already baptized his disciples.

When they were all together they asked him will you restore the kingdom to Israel?  JC told them it wasn’t for them know when the Father uses his power.  But you will receive power after the Holy Ghost comes to you.  And you witness me in Jerusalem, Judea, and in Samaria and all over the earth.  After he spoke a cloud took him up  out of their sight.  They all watched him being taken up, and behold two men in white stood in front of them. These men asked them, you men of Galilee, why are you looking up to heaven.  Jesus who was taken up to heaven, will also come back down in a cloud too. 

They came back to Jerusalem from Mount Olivet, which is about a day’s journey form Jerusalem.  They came to an upper room, where Peter, James, John, Andrew, Philip, Thomas, Bartholomew, Matthew, James son of Alphaeus, Simon Zelotes and Judas the brother of James, not Iscariot.  They all prayed with the women, and JC’s mother Mary, and his brethren.  Pete stood up in the idle of the disciples, there were about a hundred twenty of them.  He told them the scriptures that David spoke, while guided by the holy ghost, about Judas have been fulfilled.   He was one of us and got part of his ministry.

Now we get to hear what happened to Judas.  He bought a filed with the money he had received for betraying JC.  He fell headfirst into the field and burst open and all his bowels gushed out! Yuck!  No seriously that’s what it says “and all his bowels gushed out.”  This fiels became known as “The field of blood” in their proper tongue of Aceldama.  It is written in the book of Psalms, let his habitation be desolate with no man dwelling there, and let his bishop’s office take another.

These men where with us when JC was with us, beginning with John’s baptism until the day JC was taken up from us, one must be ordained to be a witness of his resurrection.  Really how about all of those women who witnessed it?  Were they ordained?    Well they pointed Joseph Justus and Barsabas Matthias.  And they prayed saying, Lord, who knows the hearts of all men, which of these two you would have take Judas’s place as one of the twelve.  And they gave for their lots, which I understand is some sort of gambling, and the lot fell upon Matthias.  Welcome Matthias the new apostle!