 Good morning, everyone. Welcome to another session, right? So let us just pick up from where we left yesterday. So today we will study the book of Acts, right? And what we'll do is we will divide the study into three sections, right? First portion will be the outpouring. Second portion will be the result of the outpouring. And then the third person, third section will be, we'll study a little bit about Apostle Paul, who was a carrier of revival, right? So if you're tracking along, I'm on page eight on the notes. So we'll divide the study into three sections. So let's look at the first section, right? So that is Acts chapter two to Acts chapter eight. And what basically happened is we did look at it yesterday as well. You know, revival broke out in the church in Jerusalem. It spread into Samaria, into Europe, and then finally reached Rome. But let's study it a little bit more in detail. So feel free to ask any questions in between if you'd like. Okay, so the first eight years, the first section, the church in revival. Now, like we did yesterday, we saw that there was 120 people in the upper room, praying in unity, one accord, and then what happens? The Holy Spirit falls on them and they begin to speak in tongues and 3000 people are added into the church. And then again, the healing of the lame man, 4000 people are added. Now, 7000 people in the church, right? Now, what is happening in Jerusalem, right? So let us look at it. So the outpouring has happened, right? All of a sudden, this community who believes in Jesus was a small number, 120 people. Now, all of a sudden, it's 7000 odd people. So what is happening in that outpouring, right? So that's what we're going to just look at. Let's look at some of the fruit of the outpouring that happened in the book of Acts. First thing, many souls were saved and brought into the kingdom. Let's, one of us just read Acts chapter six and verse seven. Acts six and verse seven. Shall I read it, master? Go ahead, Avni. Thank you. Acts chapter six, verse seven says, then the word of God spread and the number of the disciples multiplied greatly in Jerusalem and a great many of the priests were obedient to the faith. Amen. Amen. Thank you Avni. So we see here that the believers multiplied, right? So there were many souls being brought into the kingdom of God. This is the first result to an outpouring, right? Many souls brought into the kingdom of God. Second one, a community that continued in teaching, in fellowship, in prayer, and house to house visits and house to house prayer. So there was teaching of the word, there was fellowship, there was sharing, there was prayer, right? So let's read Acts 542. Acts chapter five and verse 42. Anybody who's ready can just read please. Can I read? Go ahead. Chapter five, verse 42. It says, and daily in the temple and in every house, they cease not to teach and preach Jesus Christ. Amen. Amen. Thank you Charles. So it says that daily they cease not to teach and preach the word of God. So one of the most important fruits of an outpouring or a move of God is the teaching and preaching of the word of God, right? Yesterday we looked at, you know, certain things and we discussed, you know, people are more towards the supernatural signs and wonders and miracles and then, you know, left aside Jesus, pursuing of Jesus, but, you know, pursuing after the miracles. But here we see that even though they saw a great number of miracles, there was teaching, continual teaching and preaching of the word of God, right? So that is something that should continue. Three, there was a great reverence for God, right? Because they saw what was happening in their midst, right? 3000 people, then 4000 people. So they're seeing the miracles, they're seeing the lame walk, they're seeing the blind see, they're seeing these wonderful things that God is doing in their midst. So there was a great reverence for God, right? So another aspect in outpouring is there is a, like what we did yesterday as well, there's a heightened revelation or a reverence for God. Okay, this is what God is doing in our midst. And so that's what happened in Jerusalem as well. Next one, we see that the community demonstrated great power and great grace for signs, wonders and miracles, right? Now, this is an interesting thing. And I believe that we also as, you know, ministers of God have to, you know, follow this thing, this guidelines that, it's so clear here. There was teaching of the word of God, right? Teaching, sharing and preaching of the word of God. And the next one says, God gave them grace to, for so many signs, wonders and miracles that affected the whole city, right? So it was not only teaching the word, nor was it only signs, wonders and miracles, right? So there was a combination of both of them, preach the word, teach the word, and then signs, wonders and miracles also happened, right? Another point is the community faced oppositions and persecution from others around and also the religious leaders at that time. They faced these oppositions with boldness, right? So there was a spirit of boldness upon them, right? Yesterday, we looked at how the disciples were fearful. But after the outpouring of the Holy Spirit, they were empowered, they were strong, they were bold. All that fear, that spirit of fear just left them. Peter stood in front of the temple and he began to share this message, right? So it went on later on, even Stephen, he didn't flinch, right? Even when James was being martyred, I'm sure there was, you know, there was no fear at all, right? And so when the outpouring of the Holy Spirit comes upon us, there is this spirit of empowerment that rests upon us, right? To face oppositions, amen? Amen. So Acts chapter 5 was 17 to 18. Let's read that. Acts chapter 5 was 17 to 18. Go ahead please. Acts chapter 5, 17 to 18. Then the high priest rose up and all those who were with him, which is the sect of the Sadducees, and they were filled with indignation and laid their hands on the apostles and put them in the common prison. Amen. Amen. Thank you Avni. So we see here that, you know, they were full of indignation, the Sadducees. Indignation means to be angry. They were so angry at this message that Peter and the other disciples are bringing that they took them and put them into prison. And we don't see any report of Peter saying, oh please, leave us. We will not share. No. They faced that opposition with boldness, right? Another aspect that we see is when the outpouring happens, there is a community of great prayer, right? Now, why is the word great there? You know, we all have our prayer times. We all pray. We all, you know, have our morning prayers. We spend time in the evening or even after work at night. We pray. So that's wonderful. You're, you know, empowering ourselves. But here we see that during an outpouring, there are times of great prayer. So that could be a season of, you know, going into 10 days of fasting and prayer, or maybe 40 days of prayer, whatever it is. There was great prayer. Something that I want to focus and stress upon, because all of us are in the ministry, stepping into ministry. The devil will do anything in his hand, anything, to stop us from praying, right? He can do anything. He will do everything that he can to stop us from praying. Because prayer is one of the most powerful weapons that you and I, as believers, can use. Right? Yes, the word of God is there, worship also. But the devil is afraid when we pray because we are praying to an almighty God. Now, I want to give you this example. I moved from Bangalore to the city of Mangalore, which is just about 350 kilometers away from Bangalore. And we were part of the church. We, you know, the church was very few. There were about 10 people in numbers. And, you know, somewhere along the line, I was, you know, so confident that, you know, we can do, we can start a good church here. The church is going to grow. And, you know, I was really confident. And, you know, we used to seek God, we used to pray. So one year was completed. And we were from 10. We had just become 30 people. And I, and I remember looking back and saying, one year is passed. We were 10 people and now we're 30 people. Right? We did all sorts of events. We did worship evening. We did youth ministry, youth programs. We did, you know, Wednesday Bible studies. We did, you know, professionals meet up. We did all kinds of events. But we were only, you know, from 10, we were 30 people in one year. I went back to God and I said, God, what is happening? Why is it that this church, the church is not growing? And I very clearly remember God just saying, I want you to pray and seek my face. Because I realized that, you know, sometimes as leaders, you know, we feel, okay, I know how to play the instrument. I know how to lead worship. I know how to preach. I know how to go out in the streets and evangelize. So sometimes we feel that we know everything and we can do all things on our own. And I remember the Lord just ministering and saying, you pray, right? And you see what will happen. So I said, okay, personally, I took up times of prayer. We did 40 days of prayer personally, 15 days continual in prayer. And all of a sudden, it was so wonderful to see families began to come into the church. So we had a couple come in, then we had some more couples coming in, then we had, you know, a few youth college students coming in. And so by the end of the second year, we were already about 80 people in the church, 80 people. So that was a good improvement. So what I'm trying to do is say is that sometimes we, in ministry, we try to do things on our own effort. It's good. It's good. We have to put an effort. Effort is very important. Hard work is important. But those efforts need to be backed up with prayer, right? So if any of you are in the ministry, you're starting a church, good, you have to pray, you have to seek God. Then there's the practical of going out, reaching out. And so we see here in the book of Acts, they are seeing miracles. They're seeing the church is already 7000 people. They didn't say, okay, we are 7000 people. So I think this should be good enough. Let's raise up a few leaders, send them all across. No, they continued in prayer. Right? So remember this, the devil will do anything he can to stop us from praying. You know, I don't know how many of you have felt this, but have you ever felt, you know, you sit for prayer and you pray and you pray and then you feel it's one hour, but you open your eyes, it's only 10 minutes. You think, oh, time's not going. Why is that? It's because we're doing it out of a work. Remember that times of great prayer happens through a relationship with God. And in the book of Acts, when they were empowered by the Holy Spirit, they had this relationship with God. So they had times of great prayer. Then we see that the community had one mind and one heart. The community, its influence, the influence of Jerusalem went on to spread into places, next door as well. So Mary and other places and the other places also saw the healing power of Jesus. Then, very important, during an outpouring of the Holy Spirit, the community peacefully and with wisdom resolved disputes and problems. Now, here's an important point. The community peacefully resolved disputes and problems. Firstly, when there is an outpouring of the Holy Spirit, the Holy Spirit is moving in power, there will still be disputes. Remember that we are people, we are working among people, in ministry. So there will be disputes, there will be misunderstandings. But what they did was they peacefully with wisdom resolved those disputes. So we see that in Acts chapter 6, where the widows are feeling neglected. So what did they do? Okay, let's choose seven people full of wisdom and let them handle this whole thing of serving food to the widows, while the others, we prepare, we pray, and we do the ministering and teaching of the Word of God, problem solved. So there was no, there was no, it did not become a big dispute, it did not become a whole thing where the outpouring of God itself stopped. No, it was a simple problem and it was solved with wisdom. So remember, even when we are probably part of an outpouring of the Lord is doing something in our midst, we need the wisdom of God to handle situations. I can share plenty of situations and circumstances where leaders and pastors have failed because of lack of wisdom. I mean, they know everything in the Word of God. There's knowledge but there's lack of wisdom on how to deal with things and situations within the church community. Next thing we see that in the church in Jerusalem, people were raised up full of the Holy Spirit, faith, power, wisdom, and with great signs and wonders. Here's something interesting that I always think of. We multiply people who are just like us or we multiply people of our own kind. Now remember this, if you are a leader of maybe a small group or leader in the church, we multiply people or leaders of our own kind. If we are a leader who is maybe example, I'm just using this example, maybe slack, always tired, always sleeping, always not effective in the ministry, what's going to happen? The people that we raise up are going to be the same way. Why? Because we multiply our own kind. If we in the ministry are hardworking, we learn to walk with dignity, with integrity, with power, what happens? The team members under you will watch and say, hey, I want to be like this, so you multiply great leaders. And here in the church of Jerusalem, they were great leaders. Those great leaders multiplied more great leaders and so what happened? Many leaders were formed and many leaders began to take up different ministries within the church. Then we saw that the community began to penetrate the leadership system. Acts chapter 6 and verse 7 which we read said that even the priests put their belief in Jesus Christ. So the leadership system are also affected and we will look at a few examples in church history where government leaders were affected where they began to put their belief in Jesus and the government system itself, the political system was restored during those days. And finally we see that God's divine intervention affecting people in high places. So the church in Jerusalem was about 7000 or people, leaders are growing, but God brought divine intervention where people in higher places were affected. A good example would be that of the Ethiopian eunuch and Stephen, sorry, Philip ministers to the Ethiopian eunuch and he's baptized there and I'm sure he goes into Africa sharing the gospel. Then we also look at Saul of Tassus. God brought about these divine interventions and so this is what a church should really be about. We as believers and as communities, this is what we should see, right? A church that has all these attributes attached to it. Okay, Charles has got a question, we'll just take that question and then we will pick up next. So Charles question is, so the fighting in the church today is a result of lack of boldness? So what should the church do to a word this wise? Is the church still on track? Right, thank you Charles for that question. So I believe that the fighting in the church is not only because of lack of boldness, like for example, there are places in different parts of the West where there is no persecution, even I would say even in our nation, maybe even in your nation as well, there are some places where we enjoy freedom of religion, right? There's no persecution as such. So it's not only boldness, but it's you know what we are fighting today is we see that the things of the world is creeping into the church. I was reading this article and it really, really shocked me. I read it two weeks, two or three weeks before. This article, now I don't know if it is true, but it's written by the person who actually did it. So let me just share it. There are a couple of churches in the West which have boasted of gold dust falling on people. And so this woman writes this article. She was part of this huge movement, these charismatic movements and she was high up in the ranks. So and what they would do is they would take up cans of gold dust or gold powder, they would go up to the AC vents and they would pour this gold dust or gold powder. You find probably if you go into these hotels, you find those lobby dust powder. So they would go up and pour the, just dump in that gold dust powder into the ventilation system. So when the church services are on, the ACs are put on and the ACs blow the gold dust or the powder into the church. And what is that called? The glory of God. Now, if we are doing all these gimmicks in the church, then we're not going to see revival. We're not going to see a move of God. We're not going to see the church impacting the city and the nation and the nation. We're not going to see that. We need a genuine move of God, genuine move of God. And there are plenty of examples, but I wouldn't want to share those, but I'm just giving you this example. So what we are fighting today is not only boldness, but we are fighting all these things that the enemy is brought into the church, the love for money, all these other kinds of, when we read even Jude and 1 Peter, he says, be aware during the end times that people will have false doctrines and they would pretend to do miracles, which are not really miracles. So there are many things, Charles, that we are fighting, and these are some of them. And we need to get on track. All we need is a genuine move of God. I see Samuel's question as well. In today's context, how do leaders get elected in the church? How do we make sure that people who are not the right type don't get elected as leaders? I guess that's what you're trying to say. Yes, thank you, Samuel. So here's the thing. First thing is, as leaders, if we are choosing leaders, important thing is to see how they've been serving in the church. That's why at APC, I'll just share what we do. At APC, we have to see how have they been serving? Have they been serving faithfully? Have they been part of the service? Have they been in any team? So what we do is, we don't randomly choose people and say, okay, you be the life group leader or you be the member care leader. No, we don't do that. So we see at least, okay, this person has been there in the church for at least three years. In these three years, what he's been doing is, okay, he's serving in the book table team or he's serving in the member care team or he's a small group leader, like group leader. And so accordingly, we give them opportunities and then put them in that position. So, yes, Samuel. So I hope that answers your question. We always make sure that they are serving in some area, at least for a couple of years before they get elected as leaders. So we really know that, okay, they have a heart to serve the Lord. So, okay. Right. Thank you for those questions. That was good. Let's move into the second aspect. So the first aspect we saw is the church, what happened in the church in Jerusalem and things that we as believers in a community have to work towards and pray towards, right? And once we begin to experience this, we will begin slowly to look at and outpouring of the Holy Spirit. The second aspect is, now, since that fire came into Jerusalem, what happened? Those revival fires spread to different places. And that covers Acts chapter 8 to Acts chapter 13, right? Acts chapter 8 to Acts chapter 13. So I do believe that even in the next semester, we will be doing probably an in-depth study of the Book of Acts, but here we're just going to do like a brief overview, just so that we know what happened to the church, right? So Acts 8 to 13, the church was grown. We got about 8,000 odd people in the church. Persecution starts, right? So all this while, there was persecution, but not much. But now persecution has increased, right? And what happens? The revival did not die out. The outpouring did not die out. As a result of the persecution, the fire just scattered and spread far away. So communities of disciples raised up other communities with the same DNA, right? So Jerusalem, the church in revival, the church in Jerusalem, raised up other churches with the same DNA, right? Remember we shared that we produce, reproduce our own kind? So Jerusalem church raised up other churches with the same DNA. So what was happening in Jerusalem? Miracles, signs, wonders, teaching of the word, healings and deliverance and all these things, wisdom of God was there. The same aspects were found in new churches in different parts of the surrounding areas as well, like Lidda, Sharon, Joppa, these Samaria, these other churches, all about 25 to 50 miles radius. All these churches enjoyed the same DNA which Jerusalem had, right? So we see the church in Antioch as well, Antioch of Syria. There, the church grew so fast, there were so many leaders and prophets and evangelists that have been raised up and so the Jerusalem church said, okay Barnabas, you are ready, you go to Antioch, look after the church there, the church is growing, they're seeing signs, wonders, they need some teaching, they need to understand, so you go, right? So we are seeing the spread of this revival. It was not contained to Jerusalem. What do we learn here? The Holy Spirit is not contained in one place. Even now, as we are doing online services or online classes, the Holy Spirit is not contained. We are all in different places. He can minister to each one of us through this medium in different ways, right? So these other churches, Lidder, Sharon and Joppa, we read that in Acts chapter 9, also began to experience the thriving and the supernatural power of God. Why? Because they came from that church in Jerusalem. We reproduce what of our own kind, right? Then we see that the revival spread towards the Gentiles as well. Now Peter has this vision and then he goes to the Roman Centurion and he prays and they were baptized with the Holy Spirit, the gospel reaching to the Gentiles, right? So all this while, the Jews were like, okay, the gospel is for us. Jesus came for us. It's our message. It's for us. Suddenly, God is saying, go into this Roman Centurion's house, go and pray. And Peter does that. The Holy Spirit has poured out upon them and their family and what happens? Now the Gentiles also, so the revival is spreading. There's no account of what Cornelius did after he became a believer, but I'm sure he would have shared to the people around him and he being a man of power and I'm sure he would have shared the gospel to the people around. So we see that the Lord opened the door to the Gentiles as well. Again, more leaders were raised up in the Jerusalem church and then later on the churches in Samaria, in Antioch, Lidda, Sharon, Joppa, all these churches began to see a rise of leaders. So it was basically like this. Jerusalem, they raised up a few leaders. Okay, so maybe they figured out, okay, this is how we raise up leaders. So then they send a few people, okay, go to Sharon, go to Joppa, go to these churches and raise up leaders and come back. So what's happening? There's a spread. There's a move. It's not contained. There's a, the work of the Holy Spirit is spreading like fire. One of the characteristics of fire, we know it, fire spreads. It's by nature, it spreads. The nature of fire is to spread. Some of us may have heard of the bushfires that happened in Australia. It was a massive fire destruction that happened, but it would have just happened through a spark, through a spark that caused that flame and then that whole thing, the whole place was on fire. So it's important to remember that as leaders, we are to teach and spread the fire of God, to raise up leaders to, you know, who can do great things for God. Then we also saw that the church in Jerusalem remained strong and God sent angelic deliverance to people, for Peter especially. And then we also see that these new churches, the new churches, the new communities around began to see leaders like prophets, teachers, evangelists raised up in three to four years. So we see that from Jerusalem, the fire has spread to different parts of the world. But eventually if we continue to read on in the book of Acts, you see that the fire spread on more and more and more and finally it reached Rome. And Paul is writing to the Romans, he's saying, greet the people in Caesar's household. The first time I read that, I was like, wow, Paul has managed to go and preach the gospel to people in Caesar's household. And so fire spreads. So what are the lessons that we can learn and what are the lessons that we can take as a local community, as we are maybe experiencing and outpouring or a visitation from God. Now I want to just put out this point. Don't ever feel that, okay, I'm a small church, we are a small church in a small town or a small village that is nobody knows about us, we are very insignificant. Don't ever feel that. Why? Because if we read of church history, the outpourings of God, all of them started through insignificant people, small communities of 10 or 15 people. It started off as that all we need is the right understanding, the right learning and the right way to move as the Holy Spirit moves. So it's not about, okay, I need to be 100 people in the church or 200 people and then the outpouring happens. No, outpouring can happen just with 10 people and it can just spread off. If we look at the Reformation, John Wesley and Charles Wesley, it's a wonderful story. Just briefly share that. Charles Wesley would play an instrument. He was good at the piano. So John and Charles Wesley would go into these small universities. When they were at university, they would go and they would, John Wesley would say, tell his brother, okay, you sing a song. He would sing one song and then he would stand up and preach. So every day they would do that. There was two or three people who would come to that meeting and then slowly that meeting began to grow and then it became 10 people, 20 people and then all of a sudden there was an outpouring. So remember to be happy with small beginnings. Zechariah talks about it. Do not despise small beginnings. So some of us may think, okay, I have had that feeling. How can I'm a nothing or I'm not qualified? No, no, no. We open ourselves to God. God enables us. God empowers us if we are ready. So what are some of the lessons that we can learn from this? One is raise up believers who are strong in the Word of God. Even as we study things in church history examples, one of the main examples why, you know, main reason why some outpourings and revivals died out was because they failed to raise up leaders. They failed to raise up leaders who can continue the work. Many, many outpourings and revivals just died out. It was only for a seat. Why? Because they did not raise up leaders. And so very important, raise up strong leaders in the Word and in the Spirit. Right? Second point, believe God and move with him, you know, when he opens doors of opportunities. God may open a door of opportunity for us. I always, you know, I've written this and I kept it on my mirror so that I can read it every day. It says, big doors open on small hinges. Right? Big doors open on small hinges. So yes, we want big opportunities our way, but big doors open on small hinges. No matter how you can have a big 20 feet door, but the hinges are very small. Right? So be open to that as well. Believe God for angelic intervention and don't hold back. Now, I want to be, I just want to stress on this. Now, when we believe God for angelic intervention or divine intervention, I want to just emphasize this, that we as believers are not to focus only on, okay, angels. I want an angel, you know, because there'll be times, you know, we may be praying for something. And this happened where a young boy in art in that I got to speak to, he said, you know, I'm a pastor. I've, I've just finished my degree and I'm not sure what I should do next. And said, okay, just pray, seek God. God will slowly reveal to you. And then a whole year went by and I asked him, well, you know, I used to keep asking him, what happened? What are you planning to do? Don't waste a year. And he said, no, no, I'm waiting for an angel to come and tell me. I said, that's not going to happen. No angel is going to come. You got to use your wisdom. You got to pray and seek God. And he said, no, no, in the Old Testament angels came. Now angels came. But then there was a reason for that. So here, God has given his word to us. And God's word is a word that speaks to us. So don't focus on that itself. If God does it, great, wonderful praise God. But our focus is okay, not wait for an angel to come, but our focus is, you know, God to open divine those to bring in divine intervention. Now divine intervention can happen just through the word itself. Right. So be ready for that. Raise up leaders, raise up and send out leaders to go and impart and strengthen other communities or other churches. Now I just want to share this. Remember when I was working in, I was working in the IT sector before joining church and serving here. So I was working in the IT group and we just started a small prayer. So we would usually log in at about 7 a.m. I could be wrong in the timings, but 7 a.m. So 6 30 our cabs, vehicles would reach our work spot. And so we thought, okay, let's do this. Let's do 6 30 to 6 50, 655 prayer. So we sing a song, just take five minutes or 10 minutes of the word and then just, you know, wrap up in prayer, just 25 odd minutes. So, you know, we started this thing me and a friend of mine, only two of us. And for many weeks, it was only two of us. And so he would say, What is this? Nobody is coming. It's okay, let's let's go on. Let's let's do this. And along the way, we saw people joining us, people from now this was a campus where there were many offices or many companies everywhere. So people began to come from, you know, different offices, they began to come in the mornings. And all of a sudden, we were about 20, 30 people. And so it was wonderful. So everyone got an opportunity to share. And now, from many, many years later, that prayer group is still going on, where people meet. And, you know, and I'm told that, you know, there are almost about 100 people, they meet before the office hours, they meet, they have prayer. Sometimes they meet on a Saturday, and then they have fellowship together. So as we do what God has called us to do, it's important to impart, to empower, to raise up leaders to strengthen whatever we have. If we have something small, strengthen it to something bigger. Right. Any questions? Anybody has any questions? Any thoughts you'd like to share? I've been talking. Okay. All right. Let's go ahead. Right. So the first aspect we saw was the first eight years, a church in revival. Then the second aspect we saw was that spreading of that revival to different churches. Now, the third aspect we will look at is Paul, the Apostle Paul. So this is the next 20 years of how this great man was a carrier of revival. Right. So let's just look at a few points here. And then what we will also do from next week is we look at Paul's first missionary journey, second and third and fourth, and, and, and see how the, you know, he has a carrier of revival spread that revival into Asia, Asia Minor. And, and so we will also study that. So I want to encourage you if you find time from Acts 13 onwards, probably you can just start reading it, go through it so that when we are in the class, it may bring some context to you as well. Right. So Apostle Paul, we all know the story of Apostle Paul. Now, there may be a lot of dates, but more than the dates, let's look at the important points here. Right. So from Acts 13 to Acts 28 is, it focuses on the journeys and the ministry of this man, the great Apostle Paul. And he just blazed this gospel of Jesus Christ all across the parts of Europe. Right. And then Asia Minor, he did a wonderful, wonderful ministry. Paul, 8038 Paul is converted in Damascus. He has this vision of Jesus. And he's about probably, you know, a lot of historians say he was about 33 years old. And Paul begins to preach in Damascus for some time. So he did not waste any time. He becomes a believer and he begins to preach the gospel. Right. Then he went into Arabia. There he spent a few years there. After that, from Arabia, he came back to Damascus and he spent some period preaching the gospel in Damascus. And again, there was an attempt to assassinate him or to kill him. So Paul escaped Damascus, traveled to Jerusalem. Now in Jerusalem, Paul was introduced to the other disciples. He says there in Galatians chapter one, 18 and 19, he says, you know, I saw no one other, no, none of the apostles other than Peter and James, the Lord's brother. So he visits Jerusalem. He's there for some time. He's not yet started this whole, you know, that spark of revival is still, you know, small inside him. Right. Because he, he tried to share the gospel in Damascus and he tried in Jerusalem. But it was just a small work that happened there. But here's the thing, Acts 929, during his stay in Jerusalem, Paul spoke boldly in the name of the Lord. Right. He engaged with the Jews, which means he sat, he engaged, he discussed with them. Right. And then he learned that the disciples, when the disciples learned that there was a plot against Paul, they quickly escorted him away and Paul went to his hometown called Tarsus. We know that in Tarsus, this was his silent years. Nobody knows what Paul was doing. It is probably about a period of as long as 10 to 12 years where the curtain is drawn in Paul's life. Nobody knows who, where's Paul. Right. Now you can picture this, this great man of God. Right. The Lord Jesus appears to him. He has an encounter. He begins to share the gospel in Damascus. He goes into Jerusalem, speaks the word of God poorly. Many people are touched by his message. Many people accept his message. There's an assassin's threat on him and then he escapes and then after he escapes, he goes into his hometown Tarsus and in Tarsus, nobody knows where Apostle Paul is, meaning nobody knows what he did. The Bible does not record what ministry he did. Since his occupation was a tent maker, most probably he was in the tent making business, but nothing is known of Apostle Paul and the curtain is drawn. So from next week, next Monday, we will pick up on Paul's first missionary journey. That's Acts 13 onwards. And it's going to be really interesting because we know what a wonderful revival was sparked out through him. So I want to encourage each of us to be prepared, read Acts 13 onwards. You have a week. Probably you can read one or two chapters a day, be prepared and we will pick this up from next week. All right. Shall we just pray and close? Father, we want to thank you for this wonderful time that you have given us to sit together and study your word. We thank you, Lord, that your word is powerful. Your word brings life to us. We thank you for all that you've done in the past, all that you're doing now, and all that you're able to do ahead of God. Lord, we put our trust in you and we know God that Ephesians 3.20 says that you are able to do exceedingly and abundantly more than we can ask or think or imagine through your power that is at work in us. We thank you, God. We pray, Lord, that you will be with each one of us, especially the students, that you will bless them even as they prepare and study the word of God throughout the entirety of this week, that you will, God, give them the spirit of wisdom, the spirit of revelation, that everything that they study and learn, that it be born in their spirit of God and bless each of them, Lord. Use them for the ministry and for the call of God upon their lives. We thank you. In Jesus' name we pray. Amen. Amen. Thank you so much for joining. Have a wonderful week ahead. I will see you next week. God bless. Thank you, Pastor. God bless you.