 Okay, before we begin, would somebody please open us in prayer? Dear Heavenly Father, thank you very much for guiding us all here Heavenly Father, first class Heavenly Father, bless each and every person present here Heavenly Father and help us to learn new things from Heavenly Father. Use my mightly Heavenly Father, teach us new things about your word Heavenly Father and lead us mightly in this class Heavenly Father. Please help us understand the chapter that is taken today Heavenly Father. In Jesus name we pray, amen. Thank you. Okay, so we are just coming to the end of the chapter on Paul's life. We were looking through the book of Acts. So coming to the, we finished the book of Acts. So we look a little bit at Paul's life post-Acts. So Acts covered up to Paul's imprisonment in Rome. But after that it doesn't talk about what happened after. So we look at what happens after that and then we'll go into the early church. So in AD 63 was when Paul was released from Roman imprisonment and then we, some of the things that he did after that are things that we are able to see based on what he said in other books. So the book of Titus, the book of 1st and 2nd Timothy, which are considered the pastoral epistles. Those epistles have some information about what he did after that. Let me just share screen. Just, yeah, I have it on a PowerPoint. So I'll just share that. Okay. So this is some places that Paul visited after he was released from Rome. So from Rome, he is thought to have gone to Crete, which he talks about in the book of Titus. If we look at Titus 1.5, can someone look at that? Read Titus 1.5. Titus chapter 1 verse 5. For this reason, I left you increased that you should set in order the things that are lacking and appoint elders in every city as I commanded you. Okay. So we see here that Paul has taken more of a role of just overseeing the work. So we'll also see where Timothy has taken charge of the church, the work in Ephesus. So Titus is now taking, he's kind of overseeing what's happening in Crete and he is put in charge of appointing the leaders in the church. So Paul is now going to, he's kind of stepping back and just overseeing the work of these leaders that he's already raised. So he leaves Titus in Crete and then he moves on from there. You all can see the map, right? Yeah. So the rest of it, like it's not very certain, all of the things he did, it may be that he went to Ephesus with Timothy. So if someone can read Timothy 1.3. Yes. First, yes. So here it's possible that he actually went, so if you look on the map also, he went to Ephesus with Timothy and then from Ephesus, he continued on into Macedonia and left Timothy there like he did Titus. He left Timothy in Ephesus to kind of make sure that the people were learning what is true and he was opposing anyone who was teaching anything that was not in line with what Paul had taught them. So once he's in Macedonia is where he writes 1st Timothy, he writes Titus and possibly also Hebrews is thought to have been written by him. So all those books while he's in Macedonia. So from there, he's encouraging Timothy in the work that he's doing in Ephesus and encouraging Titus in the work that he's doing in Crete. And then he asks Titus to come meet him in Nicopolis. So if you see from Macedonia, he goes on to Nicopolis on the map. You can see he goes down to Corinth and then Nicopolis and he asks Titus to come meet him there. Okay. And it may be that he also, he had earlier, if you remember, we read about him wanting to go to Spain. So in this time, he might have also gone on to Spain. So if someone can read 2nd Timothy 410. Okay. So he's Titus went on to Dalmatia. That is in, if you look in the map that Illyricum that's on the left there near the Adriatic Sea. So that's where Titus went from Crete and left the work to Taikikis. So in Titus 312, we see that some other people came and started doing the work in Crete. And then Titus moves on to Dalmatia. So finally from here, Paul is once again imprisoned in Rome, okay, from 67 to 68 AD. And this is where he is thought to have finally been martyred to have been beheaded because he's a Roman citizen. So that was the way they would treat Roman prisoners. It was not a painful death or thought to not be as painful a death as crucifixion or other kinds of treatment. So we'll read these last few passages because they are the end of his ministry. 2nd Timothy 4 622. And now there is waiting for Titus to decide if he's right or he's right to start with. The law of the righteous character will give me on the day, on that day. And not only to me, but to all those who waited for Titus' love for him. Three of them have come to me, so they will spend an hour with his servant, Joel, and I will desert you for going on to Kessronica. Kessronica went to Eurasia and tied it with Arabia. When you lose this regime, get back and bring it with you because he can help me in the world. I send thanks to his and to the Eurasian. When you come, bring my report to the National Trust with purpose. Bring the books to me. I'll send you the ones made of parsley. I'll send them to let you know if they really want to come. The law of the revival is according to what you're in there. Be on your guard against them yourself because even while you're there, you're going to be according to our message. No one should believe the person I'm going to tell myself or the person I'm going to believe. May God not hunt against them. But the law is being a thing and gave me strength that I will be able to claim the full message of all the dead I'll be there. And I will rescue you from being sent to death. And the law will rest to me. All the evil that take me safely into a serendipity. There will be a glory for ever and ever. Amen. I send greetings to Prasanna and Akhara and to the faculty of Unis for each of us. There are a lot of questions stated for them. I have no feelings in the latest because they will let me. They are the best to come before we know them. Dividends, students, writers, and Claudia send their greetings. And so all the other 15,000 will not be with you today. God bless you all. So this is when he is imprisoned in Rome, right? So this is his final imprisonment. He writes to Timothy in the letter of Second Timothy. And his death is he knows it's coming soon. And so he's just writing this final letter. We see here just this really important statement. I fought the good fight. I finished the race. I've kept the faith. Very important things. So I've continued to battle for God's kingdom. I finished whatever God had purposed for me. And third is I remain faithful to God. So those are some three important things that if we look at the Israelites in the Old Testament, where God had told them to conquer the land, did they go and take everything that God had given them? No, because they got happy with whatever they had and they just settled and they started to merge with the culture around them. So that's the difference where God has called us to take his entrusted certain places to us for us to take over for his kingdom. And when he said I fought the good fight, he's battled for that, right? He very much entered a battle in so many ways, like physically traveling to all of these places, being persecuted, being imprisoned, all of these things. It was a spiritual and a physical battle. He completed that. He finished whatever God had, like he reached the finish line of the race. He didn't stop in between somewhere. He went right to the end of the race. And throughout that, he continued to stay strong in his faith. That is the key, right? That was what kept him going even in the midst of the battle. So three things for us to take away as people who are called for God's work in whatever way that may look like. Three things that God calls us to is to fight for what he has given us to finish it and to stay strong through that race, to hold on to the faith through that race. And then he lists a whole lot of people who were involved in the work with him. Some people who mistreated him. Some people who forsook him. Some people who had continued the work that he was doing. He didn't trust his work to them and they were continuing the work that he had started. So we see a lot of people named and he ends the letter with that. So we'll just look at what were the things that Paul achieved as someone who he experienced God powerfully and then carried that experience into his ministry to carry on to pass on that revival. We'll just look at a summary of that. So Paul ministered from AD 44 to 60. So about 20 to 24 years of ministry in all in that he covered about 49 cities in Asia Minor and Europe and traveled over 10,000 miles by land only. So by sea he traveled several thousand miles in addition to that. He established churches in several places and those churches are recorded to have experienced the Holy Spirit in power. They experienced God moving amongst them. He raised up many leaders and fellow workers with him that are about 24 people who are named in the New Testament. He impacted people across cultures, across social lines. He impacted people from different parts of society. So he went to the philosophers, he went to the people in the marketplace, went to different groups of people. He went to leaders when he was imprisoned. He was preaching to leaders. So he went to groups of people from all over, to the Jews, to the Gentiles, to the poor, to the rich, to the elite. All of these people that he was able to present the gospel to them in ways that made sense to them. So he contextualized it, but always in the power of the Holy Spirit, not just with words. And then he wrote 13 or 14 epistles that are recorded in the New Testament. So apart from this, he also wrote other things, but these are the ones that are in the New Testament. So things that we can learn from him is how we can seek God so passionately. To be people who are pursuing God, pursuing a personal revival so that God can move powerfully through us. To be people who can prepare other people to receive the power of the Holy Spirit. So in the way we raise leaders, in the way we plant new communities of believers, all of that to be preparing people to receive the Holy Spirit. To be people who can pass on that fire of the Holy Spirit wherever we are going. So wherever we are going to be carrying the power of the Holy Spirit and allowing people around us to experience that and then to be able to influence wherever we are. Wherever we are going to be able to influence those communities for Christ. So anything y'all want to share from what we've covered in Acts? Any takeaways? The churches that were made, are they there even now or are they not there? Are there like physical churches or just like even to various houses? Yeah, there were no physical buildings constructed. They were all house churches at this time. So we can't go visit the physical buildings. But the work definitely continued, right? Whatever. So that's the thing. That's the difference I think between a physical structure and a spiritual work that's done. We'll never know the impact of what, like he impacted those few people, but how many people did those people impact? And where did all those people go? They spread all over the world, right? So we might be meeting someone somewhere else completely in the world who actually was impacted because of that work in some place in Asia Minor, some place in Europe. But definitely the churches in those places also have continued as well. There are believers all over the world because of what started there and what spread from there. So yeah, it's like a small group of people. When he was writing to those churches, the congregations, we don't have specific numbers or maybe it's not mentioned in the New Testament, but all the letters that were written, even if they were written to one church, were usually passed on to the other churches. So even the New Testament, we'll cover a little bit of that later. The New Testament was finalized. It was already letters that everyone was aware of. The churches were already talking about the things that were written in these episodes. So the same things that were already being taught and being spoken about were just finalized as, this is going to be our scripture that we are going to adopt for the church. Now the letters that Paul wrote and he sent, right? Now were they just read out or were they like, like how we have this book written by Pastor Arshis? Was it like you have a teacher like you and then they're telling what they understood from this and towards the class or they're like that? Or just like, what is written there? Exactly, just read out to the crowd. As far as we know, it was probably just read, but I'm sure there was some, like, we can't just read the scripture by ourselves and fully understand it. We do depend on people who know more than us to help us understand it. In the same way, which is why he was raising up leaders. He was raising up Timothy and Titus and other people who were going with him who would understand what he was communicating and be able to help the church understand it better. So I'm sure that as they were reading it, they were also like expounding on what was said in the letters. Any questions from those online or anything you'll want to share? Just like takeaways from, we covered a lot of content from Acts. So, okay. We can move on then from there. Can you tell about this, this Antioch, which happened between this Banuvas and Paul a little more? Like what made them actually to go apart? Okay. Division. So all we know is whatever is recorded in scripture. So from scripture, all we can go back to that section. So that's at the end of the first, that's the start of the second missionary journey, right? So we can go back there and look a little bit at those passages. Let me just open it. Yeah. So we can open it in Acts to look at why I don't think this dispute is actually recorded there. Let's just see. Okay. So I'm in Acts 15. Yeah. Acts 15. Maybe I can just read it. You can open to it for sure. Acts 15 verse 1 says, certain people came down from Judea to Antioch and were teaching the believers unless you are circumcised according to the custom taught by Moses, you cannot be saved. Okay. So this is where Paul and Banuvas disagree with them and then they go into Jerusalem. Then they come back to the church and then from verse 36 onwards in chapter 15. Sometime later, Paul said to Banuvas, let us go back and visit the believers in all the towns where we preach the word of the Lord and see how they are doing. Banuvas wanted to take John also called Mark with them, but Paul did not think it wise to take him because he had deserted them in Pamphylia and had not continued with them in the work. They had such a sharp disagreement that they parted company. Banuvas took Mark in sail for Cyprus, but Paul chose Silas and they left, commended by the believers to the grace of the Lord. He went through Syria and Cilicia strengthening the churches. Okay. So Mark was related to Banuvas and so in that first journey when they went, it was the three of them, right? Going and we, when we looked at the map, they went to about three places and then they went to Pamphylia and then Mark left them from Pamphylia and went back to Jerusalem. Now we don't know why Mark left them, okay? But what is said here is he deserted them, which means he kind of abandoned them. It was not like he had to leave. It was an emergency. We don't know for sure, but what is recorded here is like, in the middle of the ministry, he just decided he was going to go for whatever reason, but it was almost like he left them by themselves and went off on his own way. It was not a good partition, at least with Paul. We don't know with Banuvas. So because Banuvas viewed Mark as he was a relative and a younger person, he could accept that and continue to care for Mark, recognizing, okay, whatever it was a mistake or it was a weakness or whatever it was, I'll continue to, I'll give him another chance. But from Paul's perspective, it was like he had failed in that mission. And because he had not been faithful to the team, Paul was not happy with taking him along. So I think Banuvas and Mark had a relationship where Paul didn't have that family relationship with him. So maybe there was more loyalty that Banuvas had towards Mark than Paul felt. Yeah, so the whole disagreement was because of Mark. There's no none of that, yeah. Yeah, yeah. So the main issue was that Mark had come in, the Mark had gone with them. Paul was not happy with Mark. Banuvas had some loyalty towards Mark and wanted him to continue in the work. Because Banuvas wanted Mark to go along, Paul refused to continue ministry with them. Oh, the journey, it's not there, or? Yeah, there's no more about Banuvas or Mark's work in acts after that. But Banuvas does continue to work and Paul does continue to show respect towards Banuvas. So that's what we see in 1st Corinthians where he refers to. So he does have respect towards Banuvas and Mark also continues to do work and he shows respect towards Mark also. Like he recognizes Mark's work. So even the passage we just read in 2 Timothy, at the end of his ministry and life, that last letter that he's writing, he mentions Mark in it. So something changed over time. So he might have seen Mark's change and that Mark continued in the ministry and then he was willing to accept him back. But at that time, he was unhappy about whatever Mark did. Yeah. Faster, so about Paul in Acts chapter 21 verse 10, like where this prophet he comes and tells Paul that something's going to happen to you if you go to Rome and all that. So then why does he go against it? Because he's a prophet. So he's a Holy Spirit that's speaking God, speaking through him. So is it like he disobeyed God or was he overconfident? Verse 21 verse 10 to 14. So yeah, Paul's response is there in verse 13. He says, why are you weeping and breaking my heart? I'm ready not only to be bound, but also to die in Jerusalem for the name of the Lord Jesus. So Paul's goal here was clear that whatever was going to happen to him, he was willing to let it happen. So we also read, I don't remember the reference and we can look it up, but where he talks about before I enter every city, people warned me that there's going to be persecution, that there's going to be trouble. So he always knew that it was coming. So here also, he's like, I know that this, if it's going to come, let it come, but I'm going to continue the work. I'll go do what I've purpose to do. And if it means that death is what is awaiting me in Jerusalem, then it's fine. So he was willing to die. But that was not the time that he died, right? He still had so many more years of ministry even after that. At every city, I'll tell you, we actually covered that. Can you read that out, please? Mike. Phase four, I'm with you and I want to attack you to hurt you for how many people in this city? Act 1810. Okay, I'll find the verse and tomorrow we can look at it. Okay, so yeah, anything? Which was all written by the Paul. It's like, it's the exact prince we have in Bible now. Whatever Paul wrote, is it? All of it is very close. So we don't have original, like the original text, but we have like the copies that were made. So as it was going to churches, they would make copies for the other churches, all of that. So we have copies and the copies are in very close agreement with each other. So we can say that it's very close to the original, even if there are changes throughout scripture, right? All of the changes are very minor, even if there are any differences in scripts, in the manuscripts, it's very minor. Nothing that is a doctrinal issue, nothing that is going to change what we believe. They removed any chapters like that, or I was asking. Whatever we have will be whatever is closest to the original. So whatever came into scripture was what was being used in the church at that time, right? So we can be very sure, confident of what is there in the text. Compared to the Old Testament writing and New Testament writing, like we see Paul here, was this easier to translate compared to that, or is it just about the same? Translate to English? Yeah, because Old Testament writing, I thought maybe different from the New Testament writing, where Paul is writing, right? That's why I asked if it's E. Hebrew to English, now our current Bibles are Hebrew to English. Yes, so there are Greek translations that are used to help in our interpretation, but otherwise it's Hebrew to English. So Hebrew is, I don't know, maybe you should ask some Hebrew. Because in English language, right? Look at the 18th century, the way I'm speaking was different. Then you come back to how we are now, it's where you're speaking is different. So I thought the same way might be that in the Old Testament, the way of how they spoke would be different, how they wrote would be different. And not like that. Like, yeah, the Akinja's version and Good News version, you see both, it's very different like that. So Hebrew is a little more descriptive. The language is a little more descriptive. It's not very strict in it. Use of grammar and all of that. So in those ways, there is a lot more interpretation when translations happen. And Greek is close to English also in the origin, like the way the language has developed. It's close to English. So it's easier to translate word for word in those kinds of ways. But I think because we also have the Greek translation, which was being used by the Jews, we have a sense of what the Hebrew text was. So all of those things help in the translation process, using the Greek translation and all that. Ma'am, in the next chapter, we're looking a bit about how the Bible was formed. I'm just going straight to the revivalist. Yeah, we won't look at that in detail. It's just like, I think like two lines. Okay. The canon was set in place. Ma'am, this question was like, we have, you told that the letters that was Paul written was spread to all the churches. Like how we can know it was spread to all the churches because he have wrote to certain church addressing certain issues, right? But how they can take the letter that was written for Corinth and apply to themselves? So it's like how we are taking it, right? It was written to Corinth for their context for the issues they were facing. But we are still looking at it and we are taking what are the main principles or what is Paul's teaching on a certain doctrine or a certain issue? What can we learn as a church tree? So there's that aspect of it, but there's also the aspect of it was a shared culture and shared timeline, even if they were in different places. So in some ways they were, they could take more because they were facing similar things. They were facing persecution, different things like that. So there would be certain things that for them would be very relevant at that time. For us, we are learning more in principle. Is there any scripture to back up? There isn't scripture, but there is history. So if we look at historical records of how the, and I can look more into it also tomorrow, I can talk more about it. But that's how the canon of the New Testament was decided was because they had already accepted these books and letters within the church. They'd already been talking about it. They'd already kind of agreed that it was authoritative. So it was already there in the church. They, all they were doing was saying, okay, these are the books we're going to say, come into agreement of these are going to be the canon of scripture. So there were other letters that were rejected because it was not, from Paul, I'm not sure, but there were other books that were there, other letters that were there that they considered as maybe we don't need to put this part of the canon. So ma'am, how does this letter working thing there, how does the Paul letter that is, because some like passage you see the last passage, he says that this I did my own handwriting. So how did the process work? So usually he was just narrating and somebody else was writing for him. So that last part of writing and saying, this is my thing was kind of his stamp of this is original from me. It's not somebody else has written it and saying it's written by Paul. That was just too, yeah. It comes out in the 16th verse from Acts 16 verse 6 to 10. Verse 6 to 10. Okay, this is where the Holy Spirit didn't allow them to go to another place, right? So I think this is in one of his letters because he is saying it about his own journeys. He says in every place that we are going to people warn us about persecution and all that, I still continue to go there. So we all have to find which letter it's in. Yeah, the Holy Spirit. To these places. Yeah, to Malaysia and Trigia. Yeah, that your book has a map of all the places he visited and how many times and in which journey he visited them. We didn't look at that map, but yeah, it's there. Okay, so we'll move on to chapter three. Okay, so we've finished the book of Acts, which was like the early years after Jesus's resurrection and the Pentecost, all of that, the church began, right? So from there until now, several thousands of years, 2000 years and more have happened and God has continued to move in these 2000 years. And there have been different events and different people through whom God moved, right? And he has revealed new things. He's brought restoration to the church and restoring us to that original church in Acts of his Holy Spirit being poured out. So we are going to look at some of the main events. There's lots of things that have happened, but we obviously can't cover everything. So here we only look at key things that happened, key people that were involved in it. So we look at the early church fathers. We look at the reformers that come after the whole Catholic church era. Then we look at revivalists post the Reformation and then missionaries who have impacted the church. So all of these things are connected. So Reformation to revival, to restoration of the church, to missions and church growth. All of those things are connected. Where truth came back to the church through the Reformation, that sparked revivals, right? So truth brings revival, revival brings restoration, restoration brings missions and missions brings church growth. Okay, so we look at how all of these things are connected. Why it's important to do this? So we look at a few passages. Do you try on me 4-9? Can somebody read that, please? Only take heed to yourself and legitimately keep yourself, lest you forget the things your eyes have seen, unless they depart from your heart all the days of your life. And please them to your children and your grandchildren. So we see a right at the start when God is establishing this relationship with Israelites, this commandment to pass it on from generation to generation. Because if God reveals himself to one group of people and it's not passed on, then each generation is trying to get the same revelation. Like there's no possibility of moving on in revelation and growing in revelation, right? So the idea is God has revealed himself, you pass this on to the following generations, and then there's place for greater revelation for us to grow in our knowledge and understanding of God. Which is why scripture is so powerful for us. We can look back at it and we have this revelation of God from the time of creation to even future, like the future, right? What we haven't yet seen. We have all of this knowledge that is revealed to us. Joshua 4.1-7, can someone read that please? And it came to pass when all the people had completely crossed over the Jordan. That the Lord spoke to Joshua saying, Take for yourselves 12 men from the people, one man from Evertide, and command them saying, Take for yourselves 12 stones from here, out of the midst of the Jordan, for the place where the priest feet stood firm. You shall carry them over with you and leave them in a lodging place where you lodge tonight. Then Joshua called 12 men whom he had appointed from the children of Israel, one man from every tribe. And Joshua said to them, Cross over before the ark of the Lord your God into the midst of the Jordan and each one of you take up a stone on his shoulder. According to the number of the tribes of the children of Israel, that this may be a sign among you when your children ask in time to come saying, What do these stones mean to you? Then you shall answer them that the waters of the Jordan were cut off before the ark of the covenant of the Lord when it crossed over the Jordan. The waters of the Jordan were cut off. And these stones shall be for memorial to the children of Israel forever. Okay, so here we see again God commanding the people of Israel to do something, right? So in the previous one it was to tell the succeeding generations, their children and their grandchildren to pass on the stories. Here it's like a physical structure that is being built to be a place of remembrance. So when people go back to that place, so when they see those stones, there's an opportunity for that story to be retold. So apart from speaking, there's also physical things. So like Sean asked, is there a physical church that we can go visit? So the benefit of having that while there is an absence of the physical church, when there is a physical church, we go back and we can retell the things that have happened in that place, the things that God has done. So we'll go on to Psalm 44 and 4, if someone can read that. We have heard with our ears, O God, our fathers have told us, the deeds you did in their days, in days of old, you draw out the nations with your hand, but then you planted. You afflicted the peoples and cast them out, for they did not gain possession of the land by their own sword, nor did their own arm save them, but it was your right hand, your arm, and the light of your continents. Because you favored them, you are my King, O God, command victories for Jacob. Okay, so here it tells us when we look at what God has done in the past, then we have faith to fight the battles in our day. Right? And we can believe God for things even greater than what we have faced. So that's why it's important for us to look at all of these things. And apart from what is mentioned here, there are other things like, if we look at the heresies, we look a little bit at the heresies that were there in the early church. A lot of what is taught wrongly nowadays is similar to that. So it's so important for us to know what happened there, how did the people, how did the early church fathers respond? What did they teach the church to make sure that the church was following truth? When we know those things, then when we face the same things today, we don't have to go back and start searching for answers. We already have the answers to give two wrong teaching that's coming into the church. So we'll start with this tomorrow, and I'll give you the reference for what we talked about as well. Thank you, everyone. Thank you to those joined us on Google. Want to just take the mic so it's for whoever's online. The first one is like there are spiritual journey. We have to write about the spiritual journey, but for there is no spiritual journey recorded or written off like the one that I choose. Who did you pick? Jonathan. Go forth. Go forth. Okay. There's nothing much about his spiritual and like his encounters with God. There's nothing much. Okay, so I'll just look up. I'll see if I can find some things and then I'll get back to you. Okay. Is there any criteria that like we have to do in this many slides? No, there's no slide limit. There's just a time limit. So if you whatever you can finish within five to seven minutes are given you. So how much ever you can finish within that time is fine. Yeah, and if you feel that a PowerPoint presentation is going to help, then feel free to use it. If there is any point like so we have to submit the PowerPoint and then this doc also would what we are presenting, what we are talking. You don't have to submit the document. If you want to submit a document, you can. Like in the class, when this class is happening in the starting, we have to hear the screen of our presentation. Yeah, if you're doing a PowerPoint, you can join on Google Classroom and share and present. Yeah, so for those on Google Classroom, those joining us online, if on the day of your presentation, you can be prepared to actually talk for those five or seven minutes. If you have a PowerPoint presentation, you can share that. If you don't have a PowerPoint presentation, you can just be prepared to like have your video on and to be able to speak for that time. I'll just have to find out about permissions for sharing screen. I'm not sure how that works for everyone, but I'm sure we'll be able to figure that out. I'll just have to change. Yeah, meaning like just like permission wise, you'll be allowed to share. Okay, that is fine. That you can go ahead and check. Okay, you had a question? Okay, thank you.