Stephen's speech - Acts 7:35-54 - N. T. -
It was the same Moses that they had disowned when they said, "Who appointed you to be our leader and judge? who was now sent to be both leader and redeemer through the angel who had appeared to him in the bush. It was Moses who, after performing miracles and signs in Egypt, led them out across the Red Sea and through the wilderness for forty years. It was Moses who told the sons of Israel, "God will raise up a prophet like myself for you from among your own brothers". When they held the assembly in the wilderness it was only through Moses that our ancestors could communicate with the angel who had spoken to him on Mount Sinai; it was entrusted with words of life to hand on to us. This is the man that our ancestors refused to listen to: they push him aside, turned back to Egypt in their thoughts, and said to Aaron, "Make some gods to be our leaders; we do not understand what has come over this Moses who led us out of Egypt". It was then that they made a bull calf and offered sacrifice to the idol. They were perfectly happy with something they had made for themselves. God turned away from them and abandoned them to the worship of the army of heaven, as scripture says in the book of the prophets:
Did you bring me victims and sacrifices in the wilderness for all those forty years, you House of Israel? No, you carried the tent of Moloch on your shoulders and the star of the god Rephan, those idols that you had made to adore. So now I will exile you even further than Babylon.
'While they were in the desert our ancestors possessed the Tent of Testimony that had been constructed according to the instruction God gave to Moses. Telling him to make an exact copy of the pattern he had been shown. It was handed down from one ancestor of ours to another until Joshua brought it into the country we had conquered from the nations which were driven out by God as we advanced. Here it stayed until the time of David. He won God's favour and asked permission to have a temple built for the House of Jacob, though it was Solomon who actually built God's house for him. Even so the Most High does not live in a house that human hands have built: for as the prophet say:
With heaven my throne and earth my footstool, what house could you build me, what place could you make for my rest? Was not all this made by my hand?
'You stubborn people, with your pagan hearts and pagan ears. You are always resisting the Holy Spirit, just as your ancestors used to do. Can you name a single prophet your ancestors never persecuted? In the past they killed those who foretold the coming of the Just One, and now you have become his betrayers, his murderers. You who had the Law brought to you by angels are the very ones who have not kept it.'
They were infuriated when they heard this, and ground their teeth at Stephen.
Cf. - Exodus 2:14; 7:3 - O. T. - 'And who appointed you' the man retorted, 'to be prince over us, and judge? Do you intend to kill me as you killed the Egyptian?' Moses was frightened. 'Clearly that business has come to light' he thought. I myself will make Pharaoh's heart stubborn, and perform many a sign and wonder in the land of Egypt.
Cf. - Numbers 14:32-33 - O. T. - As for you, your dead bodies will fall in this wilderness, and your sons will be nomads in the wilderness for forty years, bearing the weight of your faithlessness, until the last of you lies dead in the desert.
Cf. - Amos 5:25 - O. T. - Did you bring me sacrifice and oblation in the wilderness for all those forty years, House of Israel?
Cf. - Deuteronomy 18:15,18; 4:10; 9:10; 18:16 - O. T. - Yahweh your God will raise up for you a prophet like myself, from among yourselves, from your own brothers; to him you must listen.
Cf. - John 1:17 - N. T. - Since, though the Law was given through Moses, grace and truth have come through Jesus Christ.
Cf. - Galatians 3:19-21 - N. T. - What then was the purpose of adding the Law? This was done to specify crimes, until the posterity came to whom the promise was addressed. The Law was promulgated by angels, assisted by an intermediary. Now there can only be an intermediary between two parties, yet God is one. Does this mean that there is opposition between the Law and the promises of God? Of course not.
Cf. - Numbers 14:3 - O. T. - Why does Yahweh bring us to this land, only you have us fall by the sword, and our wives and young children seized as booty? Should we not do better to go back to Egypt?
Cf. - Exodus 32:1,23; 32:4,6 - O. T. - When the people saw that Moses was a long time before coming down the mountains, they gathered round Aaron and said to him, 'Come, make us a god to go at the head of us; this Moses, the man who brought us up from Egypt, we do not know what has become of him. Aaron answered. You know yourself how prone this people is to evil. So I said to them, "Who has gold?" and they took it off and brought it to me. I threw it into the fire and out came this calf. And so, early the next day they offer holocausts and brought communion sacrifices; then all the people sat down to eat and drink, and afterwards got up to amuse themselves.
- Cf. - Amos 5:25-27 - O. T. - Did you bring me sacrifice and oblation in the wilderness for all those forty years. House of Israel? Now you must shoulder Sakkuth your king and Kaiwan your god, those idols you have made for yourselves; for I mean to take you far beyond Damascus into exile, says Yahweh - God of Sabaoth is his name.
Cf. - Exodus 25:40 - O. T. - The table for the offertory bread - The lamp-stand - The tabernacle. Fabrics and hangings - The framework - The veil - ... See that you make them according to the pattern shown you on the mountain.
Cf. - Hebrews 8:5 - N. T. - These only maintain the service of a model or a reflection of the heavenly realities. For Moses, when he had the Tent to build, was warned by God who said: See that you make everything according to the pattern shown you on the mountain.
Cf. - Psalm 132:5 - O. T. - Until he had found a place for Yahweh, a home for the Mighty One of Jacob.
Cf. - 1 Kings 6:2 - O. T. - The Temple that king Solomon built for Yahweh was sixty cubits long, twenty cubits wide and twenty-five in height.
Cf. - Acts 17:24 -
Cf. - Hebrews 9:11-12,24 - N. T. - But now Christ has come, as the high priest of all the blessings which were to come. He has passed through the greater, the more perfect tent, which is better than the one made by men's hands because it is not of this created order; and he has entered the sanctuary once and for all, taking with him not the blood of goats and bull calves, but his own blood, having won an eternal redemption for us. It is not as though Christ had entered a man-made sanctuary which was only modelled on the real one; but it was heaven itself, so that he could appear in the actual presence of God on our behalf.
Cf. - Isaiah 66:1-2 - O. T. - Thus says Yahweh: With heaven my throne and earth my footstool, what house could you build for me, what place could you make for my rest? All of this was made by my hand and all of this is mine - it is Yahweh who speaks. But my eyes are drawn to the man of humbled and contrite spirit, who tremble at my word.
Cf. - Exodus 33:3-4 - O. T. - Go on to the land where milk and honey flow. I shall not go with you myself - you are a headstrong people - or I might exterminate you on the way. On hearing these stern words the people went into mourning, no one wore his ornaments.
Cf. - 2 Chronicles 30:7-8; 36:14-16 - O. T. - Do not be like your fathers and brothers who were unfaithful to Yahweh, the God of their ancestors, and whom he handed over to destruction, as you can see. Do not be stubborn now as your ancestors were. Yield to Yahweh, come to his sanctuary which he has consecrated for ever. Serve Yahweh your God and he will turn his fierce anger from you. Furthermore, all the heads of the priesthood, and the people too, added infidelity, copying all the shameful practices of the nations and defiling the Temple that Yahweh had consecrated for himself in Jerusalem. Yahweh, the God of their ancestors, tirelessly sent them messenger after messenger, since he wished to spare his people and his house. But they ridiculed the messengers of God, they despised his words, they laughed at his prophets, until at last the wrath of Yahweh rose so high against his people that there was no further remedy.
Cf. - Isaiah 63:10 - O. T. - But they rebelled, they grieved his holy spirit. Then he turned enemy, and himself waged war on them.
Cf. - Jeremiah 4:4+ - O. T. - Circumcise yourselves for Yahweh; off with the foreskin of your hearts (men of Judah and inhabitants of Jerusalem), lest my wrath should leap out like a fire, and burn with no one to quench it, in return for the wickedness of your deeds.
Cf. - Matthew 23:34-35 - N. T. - This is why, in my turn, I am sending you prophets and wise men and scribes: some you will slaughter and crucify, some you will scourge in your synagogues and hunt from town to town; and so you will draw down on yourselves the blood of every holy man that has been shed on earth, from the blood of Abel the Holy to the blood of Zechariah son of Barachiah whom you murdered between the sanctuary and the altar.
Cf. - John 8:44 - N. T. - The devil is your father, and you prefer to do what your father wants. He was a murderer from the start; he was never grounded in the truth; there is no truth in him at all: when he lies he is drawing on his own store, because he is a liar, and the father of lies.
Cf. - Acts 2:23+; 3:14+; 7:38+ - - PAGE 105 -
The stoning of Stephen, Saul as persecutor
But Stephen, filled with the Holy Spirit, gazed into heaven... - PAGE 106 -
Hence, these two books (The Gospel According To Apostle/Saint Luke & The Acts Of The Apostles) of the New Testament were closely associated, and being call 'a history of the rise of Christianity'. Therefore, I faithfully believe that it is utmost importance for us; all human beings to comprehend these two books, [ All the others Old Testament and New Testament books are equally importance, but as for now, we will start studying and read these two books first, that is, being call 'a history of the rise of Christianity', before continuing the other books.] to the best of our knowledge and enabling our spirit to acknowledges: "Who is God, and how, and in what ways, that is, God is with us." Amen!
HE / SHE WILL GLORIFY ME, SINCE ALL HE / SHE TELLS YOU WILL BE TAKEN FROM WHAT IS MINE. EVERYTHING THE FATHER HAS IS MINE; THAT IS WHY I SAID: ALL HE / SHE TELLS YOU WILL BE TAKEN FROM WHAT IS MINE." - JOHN 16:12-15 -
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