Pastor Jeremy M. Thomas
Fredericksburg Bible Church
107 East Austin
Fredericksburg, Texas 78624
830-997-8834      jthomas@fbgbible.org
A0814 – April 6, 2008 – Acts 2:37-41 – Repent & Be Baptized

Acts 2:37-41 Ἀκούσαντες δὲ κατενύγησαν τὴν καρδίαν εἶπόν τε πρὸς τὸν Πέτρον καὶ τοὺς λοιποὺς ἀποστόλους· τί ποιήσωμεν, ἄνδρες ἀδελφοί; 38Πέτρος δὲ πρὸς αὐτούς· μετανοήσατε, [φησίν,] καὶ βαπτισθήτω ἕκαστος ὑμῶν ἐπὶ τῷ ὀνόματι Ἰησοῦ Χριστοῦ εἰς ἄφεσιν τῶν ἁμαρτιῶν ὑμῶν καὶ λήμψεσθε τὴν δωρεὰν τοῦ ἁγίου πνεύματος. 39ὑμῖν γάρ ἐστιν ἡ ἐπαγγελία καὶ τοῖς τέκνοις ὑμῶν καὶ πᾶσιν τοῖς εἰς μακράν, ὅσους ἂν προσκαλέσηται κύριος ὁ θεὸς ἡμῶν. 40ἑτέροις τε λόγοις πλείοσιν διεμαρτύρατο καὶ παρεκάλει αὐτοὺς λέγων· σώθητε ἀπὸ τῆς γενεᾶς τῆς σκολιᾶς ταύτης. 41οἱ μὲν οὖν ἀποδεξάμενοι τὸν λόγον αὐτοῦ ἐβαπτίσθησαν καὶ προσετέθησαν ἐν τῇ ἡμέρᾳ ἐκείνῃ ψυχαὶ ὡσεὶ τρισχίλιαι. (NA27)
Acts 2:37-41 Now, having heard this (AAPart) they were pierced (3PAPI) to the heart, and they said (3PAAI) to Peter and the other apostles, “What should we do, men brothers?” 38And Peter said to them, “Repent (2PAAImp), and be baptized (3SAPImp) each of you in the name of the Jesus Christ, for the forgiveness of your sins and you will receive (2PFMI) the gift of the Holy Spirit. 39For the promise is (3SPAI) to you and your children and to all far away, as many as the Lord our God may call (3SAMSubj) to Himself.” 40And with many other words he testified (3SAMI) and implored (3SIAI) them, saying, “Be saved (2PPAImp) from this crooked generation.” 41So those who gladly accepted (AMPart) his word were baptized (3PAPI) and were added (3PAPI) something like three-thousand souls. (Author’s Translation)
Acts 2:37-41 Now when they heard this, they were pierced to the heart, and said to Peter and the rest of the apostles, “Brethren, what shall we do?” 38Peter said to them, “Repent, and each of you be baptized in the name of Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of your sins; and you will receive the gift of the Holy Spirit. 39“For the promise is for you and your children and for all who are far off, as many as the Lord our God will call to Himself.” 40And with many other words he solemnly testified and kept on exhorting them, saying, “Be saved from this perverse generation!” 41So then, those who had received his word were baptized; and that day there were added about three thousand souls. (NASB95)

Alright, now we come to the key lesson. We’ve watched a brilliant Jewish apologetic; you might just call it Jewish evangelism. Apologetics and evangelism go hand in hand. How do you do Jewish evangelism? You follow Peter’s methodology. And what was it? How did Peter get such a tremendous response which he obviously did, v 44 says 3,000 Jews responded. Well let’s just look at the sermon from the standpoint of the content. You’ll notice there’s nothing here about Peter’s experience, some kind of a warm fuzzy feeling he got around Jesus or something, there’s no personal testimony, this is what Jesus did for my life, I was a drunk and now I’m dry, you don’t’ find any of that because that doesn’t win people to Jesus Christ that wins people to your experience and that’s not the gospel. The gospel is not about getting everybody whose got our hang ups to get passed their hang ups. Rather it’s all objective and his source material is mainly the OT. Notice, the sermon starts in v 14 and ends in v 36. that’s a total of 23 verses and let’s just count how many of those are quotes from the OT, v 17, 18, 19, 20, 21, that’s five verses, drop down to v 25, 26, 27, 28, that’s four more, v 30, part of v 31 and finally vv 34 and 35, that’s 13 verses in all. 13 OT quotes out of 23 verses is about 60% of Peter’s evangelism is just quoting OT verses not to mention the OT words he uses to explain these passages, and that just goes to show that you can, very clearly, evangelize Jews from the OT and get a positive response. He didn’t go into some kind of Greek philosophy, some kind of rationalism, He went to the word of God because the word of God is the power of God unto salvation and he showed from the word of God that Jesus was the Messiah and that they were guilty of crucifying Him. That’s where the sermon ends in v 36, “Therefore let all the house of Israel know for certain that God has made Him both Lord and Christ—this Jesus whom you crucified.” You nation of Israel, you are guilty. This isn’t talking about a feeling of guilt. This is talking about legal guilt, guilty of a crime. They had crucified the Son of God. That’s the ultimate crime. And now we come to their response in v 37. Now when they heard this, they were pierced to the heart, and said to Peter and the rest of the apostles, “Brethren, what shall we do?” Obviously they’re incriminated. “Alright, we’re guilty.” So Peter’s sermon has accomplished a tremendous thing. People actually taking responsibility for their actions. That’s one of the most difficult things to drag out of people in our day. People will do anything to get around responsibility. “I’m not responsible because so and so made me do it, so and so dropped me on my head when I was a baby, my genes are all wrong so that’s my excuse, I just can’t help myself, I was temporarily insane or something” and all it is is the victim mentality. And these people will argue with you that it’s not my fault, it’s not my fault, it’s not my fault until they’re blue in the face. A hundred different rationalizations because nobody wants to take responsibility, “I’m just a victim.” So a remarkable thing has happened here. They don’t argue with Peter, they don’t rationalize their crime, they just say, “Alright, what do we need to do now Peter, how do we rectify the situation?” So obviously Peter’s sermon got through and the reason it got through was because he used the word of God. The word of God is powerful, sharper than any two edged sword (Heb 4:12) and that’s why you read, “they were pierced to the heart.” That’s a word that means “to be stabbed” (katanussomai) and they were stabbed deep down in the heart, that’s the deep recesses of a persons being. Now it’s at this point that I’m convinced they believed. They were hearing the word of God, hearing Peter’s sermon which was based in the OT word of God and when they heard it cut them deep down in the dark recesses of the heart, they realized they were absolutely guilty and that’s what stimulated faith. That’s what’s happened there. And that’s what has to happen; the word of God has to stab somebody in the heart. You don’t get people to Jesus by patting them on the back and telling them “Everything’s going to be okay, Jesus loves you.” It’s not going to be okay until the word of God stabs you deep down in the heart. And it’s painful, that’s the picture here. They were pained over this. So, before we even get to repent and be baptized these people, at least a large portion of them “believed.” You say, how do you know that? Well verse 44 is confirmation, “And all those who had believed” that’s an aorist participle, they’d already believed. We don’t have any other place where “believe” is mentioned in this passage. So, the only logical place is verse 37, described as they were pierced to the heart. And that’s the teaching throughout Scripture that faith comes by what? Hearing? And hearing by what? By the word of God. (Rom 10:17). So they heard Peter’s sermon which was largely the OT word of God and when they heard this they believed it and obviously at that time they were saved spiritually. To see a similar event turn to Acts 10. This time Peter’s preaching to Gentiles but what we want to notice is a similar event in verses 43-44. He’s preaching the gospel to them and suddenly, in the middle of his sermon what happens? “While Peter was still speaking these words, the Holy Spirit fell upon all those who were listening to the message.” Notice there wasn’t an invitation there, he’s just speaking the word of God. And this just goes to show that people don’t get saved by singing 40 stanzas of “Just as I Am,” that’s a compulsion method, “Come on down the price is right, we’re not going to stop singing until somebody comes down and makes a decision” and finally, somebody who hasn’t been down the aisle in a year gives in because they want to go eat some chicken and they step out and walk the aisle, re-dedicate their life or something. You don’t find any of that in Scripture because faith doesn’t come by the agony of singing forty stanzas of “Just as I Am.” It comes by hearing the word of God. And these people were just listening to Peter preach the word of God and they had heard all they needed to hear and they were believing it so they were saved. Now that’s how most people get saved. It’s not by walking an aisle, saying a scripted prayer or filling out a commitment card. It’s just that they’re sitting there listening to the word of God and the Holy Spirit makes sense of it to them and they believe it. Some of us were just driving down the road in the car listening to a doctrinal CD and the Holy Spirit used the word of God and we were stabbed in the heart and that’s the moment of our conversion. And this is what happened on the day of Pentecost with the Jews. Peter was giving a great sermon and the Spirit was convicting them and they believed it. 

Now we come to verse 38. And that should show you that we’ve just about solved all the problems related to Acts 2:38? Because now this is a message directed to believers not to unbelievers and that means repentance and baptism here are for believers and therefore it can’t be the means of eternal salvation. So, they asked, “What shall we do?”

And Peter said to them, “Repent, and each of you be baptized in the name of Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of your sins; and you will receive the gift of the Holy Spirit. Now, we have to do some grammatical work here. I haven’t drug you into much of it in Acts because this is narrative but we have to here. First we have two verbs, repent and be baptized but there’s a difference here in who they are directed at. You can’t see this in the English because English doesn’t have the nuances at this point that the Greek language does. This is a verb chart; 

I know, some of you haven’t seen one of these since grade school and some of you have never seen one of these because the public schools are too busy indoctrinating our kids with evolution and sex education. So we don’t have time for grammar. But we’re going to need it to work out Acts 2:38. You always have 1st, 2nd or 3rd Person verbs and they can be singular or plural. Singular in the center column, 1st Person Singular is “I”, 2nd Person Singular is “you” and 3rd Person Singular is “he, she or it” depending on the gender. In the far right column you have the plural. 1st Person Plural is “we”, 2nd Person Plural is “you” and 3rd Person Plural is “they”. Now, what’s the problem with the chart, where do you see ambiguity? On the 2nd Person singular and plural, they’re the same. It didn’t use to be this way, if you have a KJV they would use thee for the singular and ye for the plural so you knew in the translation if it was talking to one person or a crowd. But now we’ve lost this nuance, at least in some states. In Texas we decided this isn’t going to work so we coined the word “ya’ll” to fix the verb chart. So there are still some smart people around and despite how back woodsy “ya’ll” may sound it’s actually more technical. More like the original Greek.

So let’s look at the two verbs here in v 38. The first verb is “repent”. It is 2nd Person Plural, “Ya’ll repent” it says. Then it says, “be baptized,” 3rd Person Singular… 3rd Singular. Now that’s a shift and it’s a very unusual shift, you don’t find this in the other exhortations in the book of Acts. Not only are you shifting from Plural to Singular but you’re also shifting from 2nd Person to 3rd Person. That’s a sign that hey now, just a minute, let’s read this through slowly and find out what’s happening. And when we observe further in the text, we read down, it says “each one of you be baptized in the name of Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of your sins,” your sins, that in the Greek is 2nd Person Plural. That means by a most elementary rule of language, that the phrase “for the forgiveness of your sins” cannot be attached to the 3rd Person Singular verb baptized but it must be attached to the second plural verb repent. Now keep in mind that this doesn’t solve all of the theological difficulties of verse 38; I’m not proposing this as a solution to all the theological difficulties of Acts 2:38 but I am saying that it helps you solve some of these difficulties if you will understand that in Peter’s mind it was repentance that was associated with forgiveness of sins, not water baptism. Water baptism was something that came afterward. So we can put it all together and say this is how it looks: “Repent for the forgiveness of your sins, and each one of you be baptized.” That’s the point that he’s saying. He shifts because he addresses the entire group of people listening to the sermon by the verb repent; that is the whole house of Israel from v 36, he’s addressing the nation. 

So first let’s deal with the repentance. Repent means “have a change of mind”. Change your mind about what? About who Jesus is. That He is not a false Messiah who was demon possessed but the true Messiah, that’s the point of Peter’s sermon, that’s what they need to repent about. It was their thinking that Jesus was a false Messiah that led them to crucify Him. But the sin of crucifying Jesus was a national sin so the call to repent is a national call. What is Peter doing here? Remember, the nation of Israel already had a relationship to God by virtue of the Abrahamic Covenant. That was their position as a nation, that’s as unchangeable as God. They will always be His people. But there was another covenant God came into with Israel called the Mosaic Covenant. This was governed by the laws of Moses and there were all kinds of laws of how Israel must live in order to have blessing in their relationship with God. So the nation had an eternal relationship with God but their fellowship with God could fluctuate. If the nation was in rebellion then the nation would be out of fellowship and need to repent nationally in order to be restored to fellowship. This is the whole search through Scripture, from the OT prophets to John the Baptist, to Jesus to Peter here; “Is this going to be the generation of Israel that repents or not?” And so there’s this big search going on and the prophets keep calling the nation to repent, repent, repent, because the Lord can’t bless you until you repent as a nation. Now they’ve committed the ultimate sin, the ultimate iniquity, they’ve nailed God’s Messiah to a cross and this iniquity stands out above all others. Matt 12 calls it the unpardonable sin. And it was an unpardonable for that generation of Israel and they were under the curse. In Matt 23 Jesus pronounces 8 woes on that generation. In Luke 19, turn to this one, we want to see that the generation of Israel that rejected the Messiahship of Jesus was under a curse. Verse 42, “When He approached Jerusalem, He saw the city and wept over it, saying, “If you had known in this day, even you, the things which make for peace! But now they have been hidden from your eyes. “For the days will come upon you when your enemies will throw up a barricade against you, and surround you and hem you in on every side, and they will level you to the ground and your children within you, and they will not leave in you one stone upon another, because you did not recognize the time of your visitation.” Israel did not recognize their Messiah and so there under judgment, Jerusalem is going to be surrounded and razed to the ground, dashing men, women and children to the ground because they did not recognize their Messiah. So Peter is calling the nation who rejected Jesus as the Messiah to accept Him as Messiah, have a change of mind regarding who He is. If they do then they will be restored to fellowship with God and Jesus will return and set up His Kingdom. Remember, I told you that in early Acts the focus is on the Kingdom and if you start thinking Church, Church, Church to the exclusion of the Kingdom then you get in hot water. So that’s why I’ve kept the Church in the background for now because I want you to see that this 2nd Person Plural command to repent is a call for national repentance. Thus, as I’ve said a hundred times the kingdom is contingent, contingent on Israel’s repentance and that’s what this is all about. Then you notice something else will happen if they repent. Not only will their sins be forgiven nationally and the Messiah will return but what do you see at the end of verse 38, “And you will receive the gift of the Holy Spirit.” And that you is also 2nd Person Plural, so it’s addressed to the nation of Israel, it’s not connected to the water baptism either; it’s connected back with the repentance. If the nation will repent then the nation will receive the gift of the Holy Spirit. The problem with most modern exegetes is that they assume what Peter means is “you’ll get baptized by the Spirit into the body of Christ, the Church.” That’s not what Peter is talking about. Remember, he doesn’t know about the Church yet. He’s thinking kingdom, the kingdom, the kingdom. When he talks about the Spirit he’s talking about Joel 2; he’s talking about the pouring out of the Spirit on the entire nation of Israel. It’s a future tense, contingent on the nation’s repentance. If they repent then Jesus will return and pour out the Spirit upon the whole nation. And he’s saying, you’ve already seen a foretaste of it in us, the twelve, we spoke in tongues and that was a pouring out of the Spirit but if you will repent then the pouring out of the Spirit will occur for the nation of Israel. Joel 2 will be fulfilled. That’s why he says in verse 39 “For the promise is for you and your children and for all who are far off, as many as the Lord our God will call to Himself.” The promise of the Spirit made in Joel, Ezekiel and Jeremiah, that’s what he’s talking about. The promise is for all the nation of Israel. Some people think the far off refers to the Gentiles, not in Peter’s mind, he’s talking about Jews of the dispersion, Jews from chapter 2 that were there in Jerusalem for Pentecost, that’s what’s on his mind. So that’s what’s happening with verse 39. And you see the effectual call there at the end of the verse, that the Lord calls.

Now let’s deal with the baptism because this has certain groups such as the Campbellites all up in arms. Historically the Church of Christ was known as Campbellism and this is one of the verses they camp out on to develop their doctrine that water baptism is required to go to heaven. That’s number two on the list of six things you have to do in Campbellite doctrine. Not only is it contrary to 198 verses that say it’s by faith alone but it also ignores the grammar of this verse which we’ve already shown, because the forgiveness of sins does not attach to baptism but to repentance. What’s happening here is your baptism is a 3rd Person Singular, so its baptism of the individual and it’s clearly water baptism, not Spirit baptism. So each Jew is being commanded here to be baptized but it in no way has any bearing on the forgiveness of sins. That’s tied up with national repentance. Second problem here for the Church of Christ, as if one were not enough, is the historical context. Baptism was already a practice well known to the Jews. The meaning of baptism is identification. To be baptized is to identify yourself with a message and or a group and or a person. Here it’s identification with a person, the person of Jesus Christ, that’s why he says, and be baptized in the name of Jesus Christ. When you are baptized you change your identification and your association. There are two other baptisms in the NT. 1) Proselyte Baptism. When a Gentile converted to Judaism. He did this to change his identification and association. He was no longer identified with paganism, but with Judaism. 2) Baptism of John. When John came baptizing these individuals were identifying themselves with John’s message, that the King and the kingdom were coming and that they would accept the one John pointed out as the Messiah. 3) Believers Baptism is identifying with the death, burial and resurrection of Jesus. In this context, repentance demands the witness of Baptism. They need to change their identification so they can change their association. This generation of Israel was under a physical judgement because they committed the unpardonable sin. The only way one could escape the physical judgement was to change his identification which would break them off from Judaism. Water baptism formally broke one with Judaism. Thus, to avoid the physical judgement of 70AD a Jew had to break from Judaism. The method of doing so was water baptism. Then they would be identified with a new group and separated from the old one. If they were baptized by water they would be saved from the physical judgement of 70AD upon Jerusalem. So verse 40, And with many other words he solemnly testified, in other words Peter said much more but this is what the Holy Spirit wanted preserved, and he kept on exhorting them, saying, “Be saved from this perverse generation!” That’s an imperfect meaning he kept on and on and on with this message “Be saved from this perverse generation!” Why’s he telling them they need to be saved? Because that generation had rejected Messiah and therefore in 37 years, by the end of that one generation, 3 years of the kingdom offer by Jesus in the Gospels, thirty seven years of the kingdom offer in Acts, thirty-seven plus three equals forty and forty years equals one generation. So in AD70 judgment would come upon Israel by invasion. So he is saying that invasion hangs over your heads and when you see the verb “save” in verse 40, especially those of you who have been raised in Christian circles, you have heard this word save, save, save, save, save, save, save, save, save until you use it like hello and goodbye and it’s lost all meaning for you. When you see a word like this, ask yourself, “In the context where was it used first?” And you look and see in the context it was used first in verse 21, in that Joel quote. And what is that salvation’s from? It is salvation from the physical judgment that is coming on the nation of Israel. So, baptism was the means through which an individual Jew would sever himself from Judaism and identify himself with Jesus Christ; that would separate him from that perverse generation that was coming shortly upon the city of Jerusalem. So water baptism for these Jews would save them physically from the physical judgment coming on that generation. 

Historical side-note. Did this take place in history or is Jeremy just full of hot air here? Turn to Luke 21. This is the companion volume to Acts. Now, if you were a Jewish believer and you lived in this period you’d be real concerned with any prophecies related to Jerusalem. And here’s one of the foremost, verse 20, “But when you see Jerusalem surrounded by armies, then recognize that her desolation is near. 21“Then those who are in Judea must flee to the mountains, and those who are in the midst of the city must leave, and those who are in the country must not enter the city; 22because these are days of vengeance, so that all things which are written will be fulfilled. 23“Woe to those who are pregnant and to those who are nursing babies in those days; for there will be great distress upon the land and wrath to this people;” the Jewish people, “24and they will fall by the edge of the sword, and will be led captive into all the nations; and Jerusalem will be trampled under foot by the Gentiles until the times of the Gentiles are fulfilled.” So the early Hebrew Christians were watching for this. Judaism could care less, they didn’t believe the NT Scriptures but the Hebrew Christians did. Let’s trek down to the events near 70AD and we want to see what happened to the Hebrew Christians in Jerusalem. Three early church fathers report on this event, so I’m not making this up. Josephus, the secular Jewish historian writes about it and he was an eyewitness of the events of 70AD. Heggesipus, a 2nd century Jewish Christian wrote about it. And Eusebius, a Gentile Christian who lived in the 4th century. They all report the remarkable fulfillment of Luke 21. Now, in 66AD the Jewish revolt broke out against Rome at Caesarea by the Sea. When this revolt began, “the Roman general in the Land, Cestus Gallus, came with his armies from Caesarea and surrounded Jerusalem. The surrounding of the city marked the sign that Jesus had promised, and the Jewish believers knew that Jerusalem would soon be destroyed. Jesus had commanded the Jewish believers to desert the city when they saw this happening. However, it was impossible to do so while the Romans were surrounding the city. Then Cestus Gallus noticed that his supply lines were not secure. He did not have enough supplies to maintain an extended siege, so he lifted the siege of Jerusalem in order to go back to Caesarea. On the way, he was attacked by Jewish forces and killed. Temporarily the city was no longer surrounded by the armies, so every single Jewish believer was able to leave Jerusalem. They crossed the Jordan River and set up a new community of Jewish believers in the town of Pella in the Transjordan. 

They were joined by Jewish believers from Judea, Galilee, and the Golan. There they waited for the prophecy of Yeshua to be fulfilled. In the year A.D. 68, a new Roman general by the name of Vespasian and his son, Titus, again besieged the city, and in the year A.D. 70, the city and the Temple were destroyed. Altogether 1,100,000 Jews were killed in this final onslaught, but not one Jewish believer died because they obeyed the words of their Messiah.” These historians report that more than 20,000 Jewish believers alone lived in Jerusalem at the time and that not a single Jewish believer lost his life in that conflict because they had severed themselves from Judaism and identified with Jesus as the Messiah. As a result they obeyed the words of Luke 21:20-24 and departed when they had their chance. “It is at this time that the term Meshumod or Meshumodim began to be applied by the Jewish community to Hebrew Christians, and it is still used today.” It was and is a derogatory term applied to Hebrew Christians because they were traitors. So, that story had a good ending, the Book of Hebrews is warning about this in one place (10:26) and Peter possibly warns about this in his 1st epistle as well (1 Pet 3:21).

What were the results on that day, Acts 2:41 says, So then, those who had received his word were baptized; Now let’s watch what the elements are so we can conclude by applying what should be applied and not applying what can’t be applied because of the cultural shifting. Notice the first thing mentioned in verse 41, “they that gladly received his word,” in the Greek we have a verb, apodekomai, dekomai is a verb stem that means “to welcome, to receive.” It’s used in 1 Corinthians 2, “the natural man does not welcome the things of the Spirit of God,” that’s what it means. It doesn’t mean that you can’t hear it, it doesn’t mean that the message never gets into the brain; it means that the message gets into the brain and is welcomed by the conscience and by the mind; it’s absorbed with welcoming, not by resistance. That’s the word dekomai. Now when you put a prefix like apo, one of the Greek prepositions in front of the main verb stem it has the effect of intensifying the meaning; not always in the direction of the preposition but the preposition generally intensifies that. So what we have is really welcome and they separated from Judaism and identified themselves with Jesus. and that day there were added about three thousand souls. So you had 3,000 Jews that day who had believed, repented and been baptized, in that order. Belief, repentance and baptism. People always object to the baptism of 3,000, it’s just too many. This just shows ignorance of archaeology. Remember, I told you this event of the tongues did not happen in the upper room of chapter 1, it happened in a house much closer to the Temple Mount and if you go there today you’ll find on the southern steps of the Temple Mount a large number of ritual baths called miqveh’s. 

These have steps that go down in then one way and you walk out another and you have about 30 of these baths along the southern wall. So 12 men could easily have baptized 3,000 people in a few hours, that would be 250 baptisms each; not a problem at all.

So, in conclusion, let’s summarize what we’re saying, don’t worry if you don’t get all this we’ll review next week, but we want to put it all together now. What’s happened is Peter has preached a marvelous sermon to these Jews quoting from the OT and when they heard the OT word of God they were pierced to the heart, indication, they believed at which point they were justified before God. Then they asked, What shall we do?” And Peter told the nation to “Repent”, that’s the national condition Israel must meet for the Messiah to return. They had committed a national sin of rejecting the Messiahship of Jesus and so they needed national repentance. This would result in the forgiveness of the nations sin and the reception of the Spirit which was promised to them, their children and all the Jews far off. In other words Joel 2 would be fulfilled, what they had seen in a small way with the 12 speaking in tongues would actually be fulfilled to all the nation and they would dream dreams and see visions and all that. They were to individually be baptized to save themselves from that generation of Israel that was under imminent judgment. Baptism would separate them from Judaism and identify them with Christ. This would result in their salvation from the physical judgment that came in 70AD. History reports that every Jewish believer escaped the city of Jerusalem to Pella when Gallus removes his armies for a short period of time. These Jewish believers became known as the Meshumodim or “the traitors”. Next time we’ll get into some verses used to justify Communist Christianity and we’ll show why that’s wrong, that the issue is the Kingdom once more and that’s why everyone’s selling their property and goods because in the Kingdom God has already allotted land to each tribe.