 Alright, welcome back everyone to the second lecture today. We see 1-1-1 on faith. We've been discussing on collective faith and we will continue talking about that. Alright, let's take some questions. Ren, your question. If we pray collectively, will we see quicker results, quicker answers to prayer? If we pray collectively, will we see quicker answers to prayer? So that's an interesting question. I'm just trying to think how to answer that. Will we see quicker answers if we pray collectively? I mean, here's my thought. I don't think we can say, we will always see, okay, let's put it like this, that when there is collective faith, when we are two or more of us, are praying together for a matter, there is greater strength, greater power in that when two of us, two or more of us are agreeing together on that same matter. So from that perspective, yes, we are going to be able to do more because the Bible does teach us two are better than one and we read that scripture, Ecclesiastes 4-9. So obviously, two are better than one or when there are more people in unity or in unity and praying for something, it's making greater power available or at least from our place of agreement, it's much better. We are in a better position. So from that perspective, yes, it's advantageous for people to be in agreement and in prayer. At the same time, what I would look at is there are certain things that God will release at certain times. Let me see, he looks for or he has the Cairo moment, the right time to release something. So example, example, suppose we are collectively praying for revival. We are saying God, we want to see a mighty move of the Holy Spirit and this has happened in the history of the church many times. So you will learn in your second year when you study church history and you go to the history of the church, especially the Pentecostal history of the church, you will see numerous times in the 16th, 17th, 18th centuries. There were different groups of people praying and revival took place. So you will see it happen over and over again in the history of the church, even in India as well, Europe, North America, different parts of the world, South America, some parts of the world. So if there's a group of people praying for revival, so the more people coming together praying is important. But then there's also something there, but you can't fix the time. Okay, you all pray for five days and then revival will happen. Are you praying for five months and then revival? What we will see as we look at the history of revival and the history of the church is there is no set formula, but God, so the people are praying, the people are in agreement praying and then God sees, you know, the right time to release the move or the outpouring of the Holy Spirit. So, for example, the revival in the Herbrides Islands, I think there were two or three elderly blind ladies. So it wasn't even a big group of people. There's three of them, I think, two or three of them. One was blind, one was, I think, without writers. And so, I mean, the elderly people had, you know, so what can happen? But when these people started praying, that eventually gave birth to a revival, a mighty move, the Holy Spirit. The hundred-year prayer movement that took place among the Moravians, which was a small group of people living in Germany, and that they continued praying for 100 years nonstop. It began with a small group of people who decided to, you know, take turns and pray for 24 hours. And I think the initial group was only about 20-some people. And then they started praying. So again, it's a small group. So, but then it gave birth to something very powerful that today we look back and say in the history of the church, that was, you know, a turning point that gave birth to what later on came to be known as, you know, the first missionary movement. They impacted many, many lives. They sent more missionaries in 100 years than the church had sent missionaries before that in the long time. So, we cannot say more people will always expedite things, make things faster. We can't say that we can. We know it is better. It's good. It's more advantageous. But will it make things faster? I cannot say yes always, right? What I would say is it is better, but it's not that it will always make things happen faster because there is, there are other things that God looks at, which is the coming together of situations, coming together of people for which when God will release the answer, especially in the context of revival or seeing those kinds of things happen. Yeah, so my answer to your question is not always, but it does, it will make a difference. You know, but we can't say always more people answer will be faster. You know, so you can't do that, especially when you look at these to the church. There's no chapter and verse on it, but I'm just looking at church history to answer your question. Okay. Any other questions? Another question, Ren, go ahead. It's fine. You can ask 100 questions, no problem. I'll say a question again. Does it take one person to release the more the spirit or what's your question? Okay. So we have a question here where the question is, will the unbelief of one person affect the faith or the more of the spirit when there are other people in faith? Yeah. Okay. So we'll come to that. It's in the lecture notes. We'll come to it and we will look at biblical examples and I will give a response to that. Okay. So it's coming up in the next good question. Sean. So we read that in Acts 5.15 where Peter's shadow fell on the sick. They were healed. Actually, you see something similar to that in Second Kings 13 chapter where after Elisha's death is when nothing left remained but his bones and another person touched his, another man's bone touched his bone. That person came back to life. Yeah. So we will, you learn about that in your Holy Spirit course about the anointing, how the anointing operates, we'll see many examples. Go ahead. Okay. Let me pick up a question here from Taya. If we are praying for somebody where the person does not have faith or is an unbeliever, will our prayers be answered? So Taya's question is, if we are praying for somebody who does not have faith, will our prayers be answered? Okay. So Taya, I will, there is the norm and then there is the exception. The norm that is a normal way in which we see God working is that people have to have faith. The person praying and the person being ministered to both have to have faith. So when you look at the ministry of Jesus, you find that all who came to Jesus in faith received healing and Jesus required that. That was a norm that people would come to him in faith. So for example, the blind man who came to him, Jesus asked them in Matthew 9, 27 to 29, Jesus asked them, do you believe that I'm able to do this? So he required faith from people who came to him. That's the norm. But there are also exceptions. The exceptions are there are times God will move sovereignly independent of faith. So we see that also in the ministry of Jesus. For example, in John 5, when Jesus was by the pool of Bethesda and there was this man who had been paralyzed for 38 years, Jesus came to him and he asked him, will you be made whole? Now the man had no idea who was speaking to him. He had no idea that this was Jesus was speaking to him and this response was more in the natural. There's nobody who can take me and put me into the water when it is stirred. So he wasn't even having, he wasn't thinking in terms of faith at all. And yet Jesus tells him, rise, take up your bed and walk and he was healed instantly. So the norm is the person praying and the person being ministered to or receiving prayer both need to be in faith. That's what the Bible teaches us. That's what we see in the ministry of Jesus. But we also see exceptions. That means God moves sovereignly independent of faith on the part of the person being ministered to. So what should we do as people who are ministering? We try to operate according to the norm as far as possible, which is we share the Word of God. We teach people on healing so that their faith can be encouraged and they can have faith and they can believe God. So that's the norm. We try to operate in the norm. But we also remain open for exceptions, which means there may be situations. You don't have the opportunity to tell the person about Jesus. You may not have the opportunity to explain the Word of God and build faith, but you still pray knowing that God can move sovereignly to bring healing. So while we minister according to the norm, this is the way God works. We see in the scriptures. We also stay open to the exceptions, right? So we cover this in detail in our course on ministering healing. You will learn that in your second year. I will also refer you to our book, Ministering Healing and Deliverance. There's a chapter there where we look at all the norms and exceptions. And I think we list out about seven or eight of them, the norms and exceptions where this is a normal way we are supposed to minister, which we see in the ministry of Jesus. But there are also exceptions to that. And one of them is faith and the sovereign move of God. I hope that answers the question Shaya. Okay. Vimal, and then we will take Anand's question. Vimal, go ahead. Yes. Yes. In the case of Jonah, you don't have any motive. Never. That means he didn't judge them. Yeah. So I mean, what I was trying to say is we don't see that there are timings to when God wants to do something, right? In the case of Jonah, thoughts have gone and preached to them because he was ready to judge them. But it was conditional. If you repent, I will not judge. So Jonah's message was, and you find many examples of it, there is a warning that means if you don't repent, you will experience judgment, which means if you do repent, you won't have judgment. So they repented, so judgment didn't come. But it's not the same as the question where if we pray collectively, is the answer going to be faster? So the situations are different. Are there limitations to faith? Yeah. So there are boundaries within which our faith will have to work. So we will cover that in a chapter that's coming up. I don't know which chapter, but there's a chapter called Perimeters of Faith, Boundaries of Faith. So there we will explain like this is what faith cannot do. For example, faith cannot override the will of God. Faith cannot override somebody else's will. Like I cannot control somebody else through faith. So these are things faith cannot do, and that's something. So within that we have to learn to, we will cover that in a separate chapter. Any other questions? Yes, Prince. Peter Shadow, yes. Yeah. So Prince's question is, we heard about Peter Shadow healing. Can we expect those kind of miracles to happen today? The answer is yes, and much more. Because the way God works, and you read about this in Haggai chapter 2, I think it's verse 7 or verse 8, God says, the glory of the latter house will be greater than that of the former. That means in the expression of God's glory, the glory of the latter is always greater than the former. So the early church is the former, the beginning. The church of the latter days and our time towards the end is going to express greater glory than the early church. So we can expect greater manifestations of the Holy Spirit. So we should expect that. So the question is, do these manifestations happen only for people who are called specifically? The answer is God can use anybody. He can use little children. He can use anyone for these mighty manifestations to take place. Yeah, can use them. Alright, so let's continue with our discussion here on collective faith. Then we'll also, in the process, answer Ram's question on how, if somebody is in unbelief, would it impact others? So let's cover one more point here. As you talk about collective faith, that even our collective faith can grow. That means as a community, our faith in God together can go to new levels. We see that in 2 Thessalonians 1 verse 3, Paul is writing to the church in Thessalonica. I mean, he's writing to this group, this whole community of believers, and he's telling that your faith grows exceedingly. That means your collective faith is growing. That means as a community, they are in a greater place of faith. And you will see that as you pastor people, the people also grow in their faith. They grow in their own spiritual journey. Now, I remember here at APC when we started, in the early days, I did not emphasize too much on the Holy Spirit and so on. Because we had people coming in from so many different backgrounds, we slowly started teaching them. And I remember those days when we would say, stay back for Holy Spirit baptism, one person to hardly anybody because they're all afraid. Holy Spirit baptism, what is this? Many other people came from traditional backgrounds, so they were not open to these things. But then today, the same church as a community, we are open to the supernatural prayer, healing, deliverance, all these things. But it was not like this when we started 20 years ago. People were not so open to the gifts of the Spirit, not so open. They didn't understand, they had no knowledge. But then it was a journey. So today we are in a much better place, a place of greater faith concerning the things of the Spirit, concerning the prophetic and so on. So they come for weekend schools on prophetic, they come for weekend schools on gifts of the Spirit, they come for so much more openness and faith. They are at a greater level of faith. So you see the whole community moving in like this. So people go through their journey of faith in different areas and so on. So as a community, we can grow in faith and expect more. So let's talk about some of the destroyers of collective faith. So we are to be in a place of faith collectively. What are some of the things that can destroy? I just mentioned a few here. One is murmuring and complaining. So if we start murmuring, complaining about each other, about things, it really destroys our ability to walk together in faith. How do we know this? You look at this in 1 Corinthians chapter 10 verses 1 through 12. You see that it's talking about the people of Israel as they were journeying together. And one of the first problems is they were murmuring and complaining. So he tells us, don't murmur and complain like those people, and they were destroyed by the destroyer. So they're murmuring and complaining. Pause them to be destroyed by the destroyer. God was working amazing things, but this is what happened. Another thing that destroys collective faith is competition and strength. So when we start competing with each other, who's more spiritual? Who's more this, more that? Competing with each other, it destroys faith. In fact, in James 3.16, when we are in strife with each other, it opens the door to every evil book among our midst. Because the devil comes in and he causes problems. So we should avoid that jealousy and strife and so on. Connected that to self-pride and jealousy. These things destroy collective faith. They don't keep us together. So anything that divides us will keep us from moving in, collective faith. So it's so important that when we are together, at an individual level, we guard our hearts. Because nobody can see your hearts. Nobody can see what's going on in your heart. But we are coming together to pray. So only you guard your heart when you come together to pray so that collectively we can see results. So as we minister as teams, we must learn to minister as teams with collective faith. You see this in the ministry of Jesus. When he sent his disciples out, very interesting, he sent them out two by two. He didn't send them one by one, two by two, go together. So you can imagine, two of the disciples going together to minister and they had to be in agreement. They can't say, suppose James is laying his hands on somebody, John says, hey James, why are you laying your hand on him? If they start fighting with each other, they're gone. They're not going to be able to minister to anybody. So they have to be in agreement. James and John, whoever are going together, they had to be in agreement as they minister to people. So Jesus sent them out two by two and they went out and they ministered. So we also must learn to minister together. If two of you are standing and praying for somebody, you learn to flow together. Not flow against each other, but flow together and minister together. That's something we need to learn and we need to be trained and do that kind of training when we prepare for ministry, prepare for our mission trips. So when ministering as a team and even here, when you are as students, when you go out to minister, learn to flow together. Respect each other. Okay, God is moving through that person. Let that person finish. Then I will step in after that person finishes. We are a team, we are together. We are not competing with each other. So you flow together so that God can work through us when we walk in unity. Now we come to this next question which Ren asked a few minutes back. Does the unbelief of one person or some people affect the ministry of the others? There is the unbelief of one or two. Suppose you are a group of ten people, for example. Suppose eight people are in faith, but two people are not there. They are not in faith. Would the unbelief of the two hinder the faith of the eight? That's the question. Something like that. So that's the question. So let's look at scenarios. So what I've observed is what people do is they leave the two, say two of you, you stay here. The eight go by themselves and they pray. I observe that. Or sometimes it's the other way. The two people will say to the eight, eight of you are an unbelief. Two of us are in faith. So we will go and pray. You all stay here. I've observed that happen. The question is something like that corrects. So let's look at the New Testament. What do we see in the New Testament? When you look at Jesus and his twelve disciples in the boat, I'm just giving different examples. Jesus and the twelve disciples. Twelve disciples were in fear. Twelve disciples were saying we are going to sink. Jesus was the only one who was in faith. And he rebuked the winds and the waves and they come. So question, could did the unbelief of twelve stop the faith of one? Didn't. Another scenario. There was this lunatic boy who was lunatic, remember? Jesus went to the Mount of Transfiguration with three of his disciples, Peter, James, and Ron. Nine of them were left behind. So this father brought his son. Nine disciples could not deliver. Then Jesus came and Jesus rebuked them. Oh, faithless and evil generation. So it's like what? And later on when the disciples asked him why could we not cast out? They said because he said because of your unbelief. So they were an unbelief, whatever the cause was. So at least nine of them were in unbelief. Let's say only Jesus was in faith. I don't know about Peter, James, and John, whether they were in faith or not. We don't know. Let us not count them. Nine in unbelief. Jesus in faith. Did nine unbelievers prevent Jesus from delivering? No. The boy was still deliverance. So faith works even though nine people. One unbelief. Yes. And even when Jesus was ministering other examples, when he was going to feed the multitude by loaves to fish, when he said you give them something to eat first time, one is asking which bakery can give so much bread. Another is asking where can we get so much money, even if the bakery can supply? How will you pay the bill? This is the way they were thinking, the disciples. See, they were not thinking in faith. They were thinking where which bakery, how much money, they were thinking like that. But did it prevent the miracle from happening? No. He said you get what you have, filoes to fish, miracle happens. Peter, he walked on the water to go to Jesus. There was a boat with 12 disciples. Only one disciple had faith. Levin was saying, hey, he will stay here. You go. Levin didn't come out. Only Peter got out. And Peter walked on the water. Yes, later on he got scared because he saw the waves, but Jesus held him up. But the point is, before he got scared, he was in faith. He walked on the water. So the unbelief of Levin did not prevent one from walking in faith and experiencing the miracle. Now, one of the common instances that people quote is about Jairus' daughter. You know the story, Mark Chapter 5, Matthew 8. Jesus is with a crowd. Jairus comes and says, my daughter is sick at home. Come, lay your hand on her. She'll be well. So Jesus is going to Jairus' house. There's a crowd with him. And in the crowd, this one of his show of blood comes and touches him. And what happens? Jesus takes only three disciples. Peter, James and John. He takes only three of them and he goes to Jairus' house. So now people use that example and say, look, Jesus didn't take all the 12. He only took three. So that means only three of them were in faith, so he took them. Others were not in faith. Well, the Bible doesn't say that. So when you look at the ministry of Jesus, you find that there were times, he took the three of these disciples because they were closest to him, not because they were all in faith all the time, but they were closest to him. So he took Peter, James and John. So in this particular case, the Bible doesn't say this, but the common sense conclusion should be he left the nine to minister to the crowd. Because there was a crowd of people there. So nine of you, you stay here, you minister to the crowd. I'll take three of them and go to Jairus' house. The Bible doesn't give us a reason why he took only three of them and didn't take all the 12. It doesn't give a reason, but we have to come to a common sense conclusion. And you look at the full ministry of Jesus. There were times he took only three of them. He took only three of them to the Mount of Transfiguration because they were closest to him. In the Garden of Gethsemane, all the disciples were there, but he took three of them aside and said, you pray with me. So even in this case, there was a crowd of people. So it is likely that he left the nine to minister to the crowd. So Peter James won't come. We'll go to Jairus' house. He went there. And also maybe there's a crowd there. So you don't want such a big 12 disciples coming into the house. All these practical things, right? So to use that as a conclusion saying, Jesus himself took only three because they were in faith. The nine were in unbelief. They were not in faith. No, you can't. That's not the right conclusion. That is not the right conclusion. Because they were with Jesus all the time, right? So my answer to the question is, when we are ministering, we cannot say that the unbelief of other people is preventing our faith from ministry. That you go ahead and minister in faith and don't say, okay, you're not in faith. That's why the miracle didn't happen. Don't say that. It's wrong to say that. Because you don't find Jesus ever turning around and telling his people that. So you minister in faith. You expect the results. And yes, there may be some people who are not believing or they are not there in that place to believe yet. But their unbelief will not prevent the miracle from happening. That's my conclusion from looking at all these examples. Go ahead, Anath. We should not say that because we already know God's will. For example, if we are praying for healing, healing is God's will. Why? Because God said, I am Jehovah Rafa. So God is not Jehovah Rafa part-time. And other time he is not Jehovah Rafa. No, he is Jehovah Rafa all the time. He is Jehovah Rafa to every human person. Otherwise he would be a partial God. He'd say, for you, I'm Jehovah Rafa. For you, I'm not Jehovah Rafa. For you, it's my will to heal. For you, it's not my will to heal. God is not like that. So that's a wrong understanding. So God's will, simple thing. God's will is consistent with God's nature and God's words. So we can be very clear about the will of God. If you know who God is and if you know his words. God's will is always consistent with who God is and with his word. That's his nature and his word. So when it comes to healing, what is God's will? It's God's will to heal. We don't even have to worry about it. When it comes to salvation, we know God's will. It's to be saved. When it comes to protection, it's God's will for people to be protected. When it comes to provision, it's God's will to provide because he said, I am Jehovah Jaira. See, that's his name. His name is Jehovah Jaira. He's a provider. Now, in certain cases, suppose you're thinking of whom to marry. You have four proposals. Then only one, you can only marry one. You can't marry all four. That is not God's will. You have to choose one. So there, yes, you pray. You understand God's will, then we move forward. So in those kinds of situations, our responsibility is to understand the will of God first because that's very personal. That's very subjective. It's for you. It's for you. That is God's will for you. So you have to understand God's will. Then you exercise faith. So in those matters, we can say God's will is this and it's not that for other things. For what you should do in life, God has a will or a plan or a purpose for you. So that you have to follow. We can't say, you know, somebody else's thing applies to you. So in general, we know God's will by knowing God's nature and God's word. In specific things, things like your personal things, you have to find out God's will for your life and then you have to follow that. So two things. Is there a kairos time for healing? Sorry? Okay. So the question is, is there God's kairos time for healing, for provision? So here's what we know. And this is 2 Corinthians chapter 6 verse 2 and 3. It says, now is the appointed time. Now is the day of salvation. Okay. So when it comes to salvation, God's time is now. Okay. So that word salvation is an all-inclusive word. It includes forgiveness of sins, healing. It includes deliverance. It's salvation. So God's time for salvation is now. Now is the appointed time. Now is the time for salvation. So when it comes to salvation, we should pray for now. God now. Healing now. Deliverance now. But when it comes to other things, other matters, you find out God's timing in the sense, example for your future ministry or even money to do something, whatever. God will orchestrate it. God will bring it together at the right time. So salvation is now. Everything that is part of salvation is now. Other things you seek God for the right time. Okay. Let me see. Good questions. Let me see any questions from the online class. Any questions from online class? Everything is okay. Are you all following? Okay. So let's go to, I think, the last section here on collective faith. And we will close with this very quickly. So what happens or what should we do when there is failure in collective faith? Sean, what's your question? So can we say that if there's two people out of 10 who are not in the prayer room, who cause problems in the collective faith or who are not with the group of people through having a collective prayer with, as you said before, if there are two people who are not in that faith and out of the... So out of 10 people, two people are not in faith? Yeah. Okay. And if those two people affect the faith of the others, so does that mean that it's not these guys fault, it's their fault? Because even though there are two people who are not in faith, the others can remain in faith and remain... So what we concluded, Sean, by looking at the ministry of Jesus is that as a team and your ministry, right? So we're not talking about people who are receiving, we're talking about the team that's ministering. If there are people in the team who are not in faith, it will not hinder the people who are ministering in faith. So that's the conclusion we came to by looking at the ministry of Jesus because we find numerous examples where some of the disciples were not in faith, but yet it didn't prevent the miracle from happening. So the conclusion we came to is if there are people on the team who are not in faith, it should not prevent the ones who are in faith from seeing results. We should still minister and see results. So it won't prevent it. Your question? Yeah, so like you said, by chance if it affects the other people because of these two, because these two are not being in faith, it affects the other people who are in faith, it doesn't mean that these people are not in the right faith, they don't have a strong faith because they're easily affected by these two who are not in faith. So you're saying if, for example, out of ten people of two are not in faith and the eight people get pulled down by the two, so does it mean that the eight, what was your question? Does it mean that the eight's faith are not strong? Does it mean the eight are not strong in their faith? Yeah, they're not strong in their faith. They got pulled down by the other two. So all of them need help. You can't blame the two, you can't blame the two are not in faith. If the eight got pulled down because the two it's not the other two persons fault, it's just the eight people are not in a strong faith with God. I think we shouldn't waste time on something like that. What we should do is help all ten of them to strengthen their faith and one of the things we must learn to do as a team or we must learn not to do as a team is not to blame people. Because we are working as a team, we either win as a team or we fail as a team. So example, if two people are not in faith, eight are in faith and you see a miracle, all ten must rejoice together. It's not like the eight say it happened because of our faith in your two guys, no, no. Ultimately it's God who works. So we should not in our mind at any point think like that. That's one thing we should be a team. We win together, we fail together. So we don't even blame anybody for anything. We don't do that at all because we win together, we fail together. If we fail together, then we should work together to become stronger. Don't blame like two of you pulled us down. That's not good team spirit. We don't do that. We never talk like that. We win together, we fail together. We fail together, let us together become stronger. Let us together grow in faith. So we should have that kind of a mindset. Okay, let me... Okay, a lot of questions we have. We are already over time. Okay, what we're going to do is this. You can hold your questions for next week. Write it down. We will come back to this section on overcoming failure in collective faith. So we'll talk more about this. We will begin next week with your questions. Don't forget your questions. So Ren has to ask questions. Ramil has to ask questions. Wells has questions. Okay, so at least two questions. Don't forget your question. Ask your question next class. And then we will finish this chapter. Same thing with those of us online. Please feel free to ask your questions and, you know, we will complete this section on collective faith and learn how to be in this together. I'm just going to quickly pray. We just have less than a minute and we will close this class. Father B, thank you for things we could discuss and learn and understand. Increase your understanding. Help us to grow in faith and collectively, Lord, be a blessing in our world, in Jesus' name. Amen. Okay, thank you everyone. Thanks for being on the class. And we'll continue this next week. Answer more questions. Thank you. God bless. Bye now.