How Did the Apostles Break out of Jail?
Please stay with us and at the end of the program we’ll let you know where to send your questions for Dave and Tom to respond to in a future Contending for the Faith. You are listening to Search the Scriptures Daily, a radio ministry of The Berean Call. Now our final segment:
UNDERSTANDING THE SCRIPTURES
We resume our excursion through the Book of Acts, here again are Dave and Tom: In this, our Understanding the Scriptures segment, we are in the Book of Acts chapter 5, and Dave, we left off at verse 18, but we’ll back up to 16, just to get a little background here. “Acts 5:16, There came also a multitude out of the cities round about unto Jerusalem, bringing sick folks, and them which were vexed with unclean spirits: and they were healed every one.”
Dave:
Every one!
Tom:
Every one. “Then the high priest rose up, and all they that were with him, (which is the sect of the Sadducees,) and were filled with indignation.” Why would that be? Well, before you answer that, let’s see what they did. “Verse 18, And laid their hands on the apostles, and put them in the common prison.” Dave, why would these priests—this is the religious, you know, those who are supposedly, as we found in Jeremiah, these were the priests, the pastors, those who had the responsibility for the care of the sheep, as it were?
Dave:
Tom, because they have done, what you know the Catholic priesthood has done, they have taken a position that is not biblical, where they do the thinking for the people, and they are indignant because, my gracious, they can’t heal people like this, God is not working through them—wait a minute, you can’t be doing that, you’ve got to go through us, you can’t just—Well, the Pope who recently died, who is praised by evangelicals, he said, You can’t go directly to God, you have to come through the Catholic priesthood. You can’t confess your sins to God, that’s not allowed. So, the Catholic church have been very indignant down through history, and people who said, Wait a minute, we don’t have to go through you guys, you don’t have some special power or special position, every one of us is a priest who is a true Christian and we have access through the blood of Christ. I think the Pope sainted more people than almost all the Popes in the last, what? 417 years, while they were keeping records, 283 or something like that. Now Tom, that’s not biblical, the Bible is written to saints, the saints at Ephesus, the saints at Corinth, and so forth. So, any Christian who knows Christ, who has been born again of the Spirit of God, is a saint. That simply means, sanctified, set apart for God. Well, they get indignant too—How dare you go to God without coming to us! Now these guys are losing control.
Tom:
And Dave, you can see how they retaliate, they put them in prison. But the Lord has something to say about this. “Verse 19, But the angel of the Lord by night opened the prison doors, and brought them forth and said, Go, stand and speak in the temple to the people all the words of this life.” “Verse 21, And when they heard that, they entered into the temple early in the morning and taught. But the high priest came, and they that were with him, and called the council together, and all the senate of the children of Israel, and sent to the prison to have them brought. But when the officers came, and found them not in the prison, they returned, and told, Saying, The prison truly found we shut with all safety, and the keepers standing without before the doors; but when we had opened, we found no man within. Now when the high priest and the captain of the temple and the chief priests heard these things, they doubted of them whereunto this would grow. Then came one and told them, saying, Behold, the men whom ye put in prison are standing in the temple, and teaching the people.”
Dave:
Tom, this was rather a big shock, wasn’t it, to them? I mean, the prison is locked, it’s secure and the prisoners aren’t there, what could possibly have happened? Now, you know, in the case of Peter when that happened, they killed the guards, that was the penalty, but they are killing them because they know the guys are still there, they haven’t run away, they haven’t escaped, they are back to the temple where we first got them and arrested them, and there they are, preaching this Jesus once again. Tom, there are dear people today, and have been down, you know, through history, I guess, not going back too far, who think, Well, I ought to get out of prison, or I ought to be able to vanish from here and appear somewhere else. And this was the case with the early church, now we are going to really work at this. So many people trying to reproduce the early church. Well, you could ask yourself, how many times did this happen? Eventually there was a time when these men were imprisoned, the apostles, Peter included, and God did not work this miracle, He did not release them. So, you can’t make a law out of it. You remember Pastor Buck, angels have set up their command post on his lawn, even his dog sees them, I forget, some of the other people have a giant angel running along holding up an airplane, you know.
Tom:
The angels have an encampment right there at his place, into heaven.
Dave:
Right. So, angels on assignment, I think was the—Gloria Copeland says you can command your angel, and all this. No, it doesn’t happen very often, it happened to Paul once. Paul said: The Lord, whose I am and whom I serve, sent His angel, that was when the ship was about to be wrecked. So, you try to make a rule out of this, well, I guess we ought to have angels all of the time. Benny Hinn, of course, Wow! for one year the angels were clustered around him, gathering in his room. I don’t know why.
Tom:
Or so he says.
Dave:
He must have been doing something fantastic that they thought, you know, really absorbing, amazing. No, that’s not true, it’s a lie, I’m sorry, the angels were not gathering in Benny Hinn’s room every night just to watch him, what a great man of God he was, and I don’t think he even imagined it, I think he just made it up. But there is a danger thinking, well, now look, we ought to have miracles like this happening all the time—the Lord spoke to this person, then I ought to have Him speaking to me all the time. So then, we develop techniques how we can get this to happen. Or sometimes, they lay a guilt trip on someone who is, say, dying in the hospital. And I know of people who have come and prayed, a prayer team from a church, and have said: Well, if you don’t have the faith to believe, it’s your fault. No, Peter when, we just read it a week or two ago, if his shadow even passed over someone, they were healed, it didn’t matter about their faith. You can’t make rules out of these things.
Tom:
Folks, just go through the Book of Mark. You find so many different ways that Jesus healed. Sometimes He spit on the ground and made a little paste out of the mud, or sometimes He just spoke the Word. You can’t, again, I think the reason for all those different examples is so that we don’t try to make a methodology out of it.
Dave:
Well, the final analysis, God is not going to deliver us from every problem and every persecution and every disease. Every person who is ever taught that is either dead or dying. But it’s wonderful to read of what God did for His own purposes in His own way, His own timing during the early church.
Tom:
And Dave, the interesting thing about this, I just want to interject this, they didn’t just run off—Oh we’re out, now let’s go hide! Let’s not let this happen again. By the power of the Spirit and the boldness they go right into the same place and continue to teach and proclaim the Word of God.
Dave and Tom will resume their discussion on the topic of salvation next week, we hope you can join us. This is Search the Scriptures Daily, a radio ministry of The Berean Call. If you are a serious student of God’s Word, we offer a wide variety of items that you will find helpful, from books and tracts to audio and video tapes, CD-ROM, our internet website and much more. For a complete list of materials, or to get a copy of today’s broadcast, write to us at PO Box 7019, Bend, Oregon 97708, call us at our toll free order number, 877-882-4253, that’s 877-88Bible, or visit our website at www.thebereancall.org. If you would like a copy of this broadcast, ask for Program #2105, and be sure to mention the call letters of this station. Get a pen or pencil ready, we’ll repeat our contact information in just a moment.
Next week, we will continue our series of programs entitled: Selections from Beyond Seduction, and, Does Psychology contain God’s truth? In Religion in the News, Caffeine Withdrawal Disorder, we’ll take a look at that story and address the question: Should Christians Be More Tolerant of Others? We hope you can tune in. If you have questions of comments about this program, we urge you to contact our offices. Search the Scriptures Daily Radio Ministry is made possible by God’s grace, your prayers and your financial support. I’m Gary Carmichael, and for Dave, Tom, and everyone here at The Berean Call, I would like to thank you for joining us and invite you to tune in again next week. Until then, if you desire to know God’s truth, search the scriptures daily.
You’ve been listening to Search the Scriptures Daily, a radio ministry of The Berean Call. For more information about The Berean Call, write to us at PO Box 7019, Bend, Oregon 97708, call us toll free at our order number 877-882-4253, that’s 877-88Bible, or visit our website at www.thebereancall.org.
