Commentaries and Podcasts

Book of Acts Chapter 14 - 09-20-2013

XIV 1 And it happened in Ikonion that upon them entering into the assembly hall of the Judaeans and speaking thusly, that a great multitude of both the Judaeans and the Greeks were believing.

Ikonion, or Iconium as it is popularly spelled in modern times, is the principle city of Lycaonia (Lukaonia). Diodorus Siculus says little concerning the Lukaonians, as does Strabo, who only says that they are “barbarians” (non-Greeks) and he tells us that neither they nor their country are mentioned by Homer (Geography 12.3.27 and 14.5.27). The name Lukaon from which it is apparently derived belonged to several early heroes of Greek writing, including a son of the Trojan King Priam, and the district may have been named for one of them. There is no mention of Lycaonia in Herodotus. The city of Iconium itself was a Greek city-state which was said in legend to be founded by Perseus, an early mythological figure of the Danaan Greeks who was also said to have vanquished the former population. However Xenophon, writing in the early 4th century BC, calls Iconium “the last city of Phrygia” in his Anabasis (1.2.19). In more ancient times, the land apparently belonged to the Phrygians, who were related in the ancient Greeks poets to the Lydians. The Lydians are mentioned as Lud, the son of Shem, in Genesis chapter 10, and again in Isaiah 66:19 as one of the places to which Yahweh would send the dispersed of the children of Israel. By the end of the 7th century BC, most of Phrygia had been destroyed by the Kimmerians, who were indeed a group of the dispersion of Israel. At the end of the 3rd century BC the area was settled by the Galatae, and Galatia was to its north. These were also descended from the dispersions of Israel, and Galatae was in early times a general name given to the Germans and Gauls by the Greeks. Trojans, Phrygians and Galatians would all have been considered as barbarians to Strabo, however the principle residents of the city itself appear to have been Greeks. Strabo calls Iconium “a town that is well settled and has a more prosperous territory than the” plateaus of the Lycaonians. We shall see later in this chapter that some of these “Barbarians” are found in Lystra, another city in which Paul preaches.

Book of Acts Chapter 13, Part 2 - 09-13-2013

Last week presenting part one of Acts chapter 13, due to its great length we were impelled to leave off in the middle of Paul's address to an assembly of Judaeans in Pisidian Antioch. This address began in verse 16 of the chapter, and in it Paul's primary task was to explain that the ministry, death by crucifixion, and subsequent resurrection of Yahshua Christ was indeed the fulfillment of the scriptural promises of a Savior and King to the children of Israel. Presenting the beginning of Paul's discourse last week, we read from 2 Samuel, Jeremiah chapter 30, Hosea chapter 3, and Isaiah chapter 53 in order to show just some of the many scriptures which support Paul's assertions. Part of Paul's challenge was to convince the Judaeans dispersed throughout the oikoumene that this is true, that Yahshua Christ was indeed the fulfillment of these promises found in Scripture, and in every place which he visits, he uses the local assembly-halls of the Judaeans in order to introduce himself to the Judaeans and to the people.

Book of Acts Chapter 13 - Christogenea Internet Radio 09-06-2013

It has been nearly a month since we presented Acts Chapter 12 here. In that chapter we saw the murder of the elder James, the son of Zebedee, and the arrest and miraculous escape of the apostle Peter. Both the murder of James and the arrest of Peter were on account of the political motives of Herod Agrippa. Upon the escape of Peter, we are also introduced to the apostle Mark. Towards the end of the chapter we see the death of Herod Agrippa, who did not deny himself when the people extolled him as a god, and the cause of his death as recorded here in Acts we also saw corroborated by the Judaean historian, Flavius Josephus.

XIII 1 And there were throughout the assembly which was in Antiocheia prophets and teachers, namely Barnabas and Sumeon who is called “Niger” and Loukios the Kurenaian, and Manaen a childhood companion of Herodas the tetrarch, and Saulos.

The Codex Laudianus (E) and the Majority Text have “certain prophets and teachers”; the Bezae (D) has “prophets and teachers among them”; the text follows the Codices Sinaiticus (א), Alexandrinus (A), and Vaticanus (B). Antioch was 300 miles north of Jerusalem. It was on the Orontes river and about 20 miles upriver from the Mediterranean coast of northern Syria. It was not far from the sites of ancient cities such as Arpad, Qarqar, Hamath and Carchemish. However it seems to have been a new city founded by Seleucus Nicator, a Greek king of the early Hellenic period, around 300 BC.

Book of Acts Chapter 12 - 08-09-2013

We have said that the Book of Acts is a book of transition, and introducing the book in the first segment of this presentation we described some of the aspects of that transition. One of the things that we said is that it records a transition “from the rituals of the laws of the Old Covenant to a faith in the Word of God in Christ which was promised by the prophets of the Old Covenant, and which was recorded in the Gospel of the New Covenant”. Part of this transition is recorded in Acts chapters 10 and 11, where Peter witnessed and then acknowledged that the members of the household of Kornelios (Cornelius) had received the Holy Spirit upon hearing the Word of God, and ostensibly upon having accepted it, and it was specifically noted that this happened apart from a ritual of water baptism. Another of the things we said in our introduction is that Acts “records a transition of the primary subject of the Word of God from the remnant of Jerusalem to the dispersion of the children of Israel, the 'lost sheep' of the ancient dispersions.” The beginnings of this transition are also recorded in Acts chapters 10 and 11, where through Peter's vision the apostles had discovered that the Nations – which in a historical context refers to the Nations of the Adamic oikoumene – were to receive the Gospel of Christ.

Book of Acts Chapter 11 - Christogenea Internet Radio 08-02-2013

Discussing Acts Chapter 10 over these past few programs, there are several conclusions that I think we can draw with the utmost certainty. First, in spite of Peter's words in his initial reactions, we must interpret Peter's vision by the words of Yahweh God which Peter transmitted to us, and therefore while that vision had included all of the four-footed creatures, creeping things and birds, Peter was only beckoned not to consider profane, or common, the things which Yahweh had cleansed. Examining the words of the prophets in relation to this, we saw that Yahweh intended to cleanse the children of Israel, and only Israel, on the cross of Christ. Therefore Peter's vision can only apply to Israelites. Secondly, and in relation to this same thing, we saw the difference between the words unclean, and common, which is also often rendered as profane. Things deemed unclean by the law of God cannot ever be cleansed. However things which are clean by the law, but which have been soiled or defiled, are considered profane and can be cleansed. While we did not discuss it last week, we did read several prophecies which also told us that even the Name of Yahweh was profaned by the children of Israel in their many sins, but that He would sanctify His Name as well. Therefore, with the Gospel, we can deduct that sheep can indeed be cleansed, being clean under the law. However pigs and dogs can never be cleansed. Finally, we saw that it is the Cross of Christ by which the children of Israel were cleansed, and they sanctify themselves when they receive His Word through the Gospel, as He said in John 15:3: “Now ye are clean through the word which I have spoken unto you.” Therefore once it was discovered by Peter that those of the Nations received the Holy Spirit without water baptism, which was the baptism of John, then water was never mentioned in connection with baptism again. In this regard Peter recalled the words of Christ, as we shall see here in Acts chapter 11, and which are also recorded in Acts chapter 1, that “Iohannes immersed in water, but you shall be immersed in the Holy Spirit after not many days hence.”

Book of Acts Chapter 10, Part 2 - 07-26-2013

In the first segment of our presentation of Acts chapter 10, we saw that non-Judaeans, meaning those who had not been circumcised into Judaism regardless of whether they were converts or had been born into it, had not yet been presented with the Gospel message by the apostles. We established this in several ways in our earlier presentation, and it is summarized in Acts chapter 11, at verse 19 where it says: “So then those who were scattered from the tribulation which happened after Stephanos had spread so far as Phoenicia and Kupros and Antiocheia speaking the Word to no one except only to Judaeans.” There is no better proof than this testimony in the Book of Acts itself, that the Ethiopian eunuch and all others to whom the Gospel was brought up to this point were indeed Judaeans dwelling in various places, but who were identified otherwise by citizenship or geography, as we have established from the evidence presented and from reading the accounts in context – rather than lifting a verse or a line or even a single word out of context and using it to support an agenda.

This chapter opens with Peter being at the house of one Simon the Tanner, who was ostensibly a pious Judaean since until this time Peter understood that Judaeans should only keep company with other Judaeans, as we see Peter attest himself at Acts 10:28 that “You know how it is unlawful for a Judaean man to join to or associate with another tribe.” One morning at the house of this Simon, Peter is hungry, and while Simon's servants are preparing his meal he goes up to the rooftop to pray. Knowing that Simon is a pious Judaean, or Peter would not have been staying at his home, it is apparent that Peter should not have been concerned over whether the meal being prepared for him was in accordance with the Scriptural food laws. However Yahweh God purposed to give Peter certain instructions in a vision, and evidently uses Peter's hunger as a device by which those instructions are presented.

Unrelated to Acts chapter 10, the preliminary remarks for this evening's program are posted on the Christogenea Forum here: The Valid Christian Ministry

Book of Acts Chapter 10, Part 1 - 07-19-2013

Once it is fully understood within the Biblical context, Acts chapter 10 above all other chapters of Scripture, exemplifies how so-called Judeo, or more properly Judaized Christians are willing to lift passages of Scripture out of their context and use them for the purposes of fulfilling an agenda. There are two agendas at stake here, both promoted from the account of Peter's vision by the mainstream churches, which are the acceptance of universalism and the discarding of Yahweh's food laws. Upon our examination of this chapter, both of those agendas will be deconstructed.

To begin with that deconstruction, we must note that there are several events described in the earlier chapters of the Book of Acts to which many Judeo-Christians point in order to maintain their support of universalism. Yet none of those events truly uphold universalism once they are scrutinized. The men “out of every nation under heaven” in Acts chapter 2 were all Judaeans, and although some of them were converts, meaning that they were circumcised, Peter in his address to these men only addressed the men of Israel in relation to the covenants and the promises, for which one may compare Acts 2:14 and 2:36 where Peter states that those things which transpired were for “all the house of Israel”. In Acts 3:12, regardless of who was present at the temple at the healing of the lame man, Peter again addressed Israelites specifically. While converts may have been considered Judaeans in a religious sense, neither Peter not the other apostles could have considered them to be Israelites.