Transcript of Classes on The Acts of the Apostles by John W. Welch, Sept 2010 to Dec 2010
Acts 8 -10; Galatians 3
(Class welcome and announcements)
If you have your hymnbooks still open, it struck me that several of the phrases in this hymn are
pertinent to the chapters we have read for tonight. I suppose we could sing a lot of hymns and
find things that are relevant to just about any chapter that we might study, but these are
particularly pertinent. Did any of you see any things here?
(Student) Yes. “Though in the darkness you’ve gone astray.”
Yes, what story are we talking about tonight where that fits?
(Student) How about Paul consenting to the stoning of Stephen and arresting the saints all around
the town?
Then in the darkness, the Lord seeks him out and finds him. I think that is great.
(Student) “From every land and isles of the sea.”
Yes, that is a strong theme here, especially… what does Jesus say to Paul? “You are called to
carry that message and not just to Judea to Samaria”
Unto the High and Lowly in Station
(Student) “High and low in station,” related to “call nothing common.”
(Student) Saul with his big ships. Having all those animals coming down from Heaven…
Nothing is common - nothing is not of the Lord and the (Student) The visual representation that the Law of Moses is over and fulfilled and you can pray
when you want.
Right. So we do not come unto the Law of Moses, we come unto Jesus. Back on the “high and
lowly in station,” who did Peter stay with when he went to. What was his profession? It said he
was a tanner, right?
(Student) He was a leather worker.
That is right, he is a leather worker. If you go to one of your charts, see if I can find which one it
is here. There, here we go, Chart 3-10 is a list of the despised trades according to the mission and
the Talmud - certain trades that are wicked and prone to commit fraud, and so there is a
presumption against them in court. There are disreputable trades that deal with women and that
was because women were, whenever they were in their menstrual cycle are impure and so if you
deal with women on a business basis, the chances are that you are contracting those impurities.
Then there is a group, eight of them, bogus trades that are ineligible to serve as witnesses or as
judges in court, and a tax collector and a Publican fall into that category.
Then there are the unsavory trades. These are three types of workers whose wives may divorce
them without any cause, no questions asked. One is a dung collector, the second is a copper
smelter, and the third is a tanner.
(Student) So what does this say about politicians?
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Let us see! Since the rabbis who wrote that book were politicians, they did not say anything
about that, but what is it about dung collecting, smelting copper, and being a tanner that was such
a problem? They stink! You know, being a tanner, besides the fact that you are taking the hides
of butchered animals and curing them in all kinds of chemicals, you come home smelling pretty
bad. The same with copper smelting. You are not even working in a good black smith shop, but
copper smells pretty bad when it burns. Anyway, for those people, if a wife got weary of too
much of that in the house, she could go somewhere else.
Under Jewish law, women could not divorce their husband, but this is the exception to the rule.
They had no showers, I am sorry. When Peter stays with that kind of person, the point is that it
unto the lowliest of people, which I think is pretty interesting.
(Student) The first phrase is, “Ye heavy laden” and then, “By sin oppressed?”
There is another phrase. That was a good hymn for us to start with tonight. One last chance. Did
everybody get the handout so we can start going through that tonight. Anyone else? No? Need a
handout back there, are there more? Right here. So pass those around.
Sistine Chapel Walls Recap.
Last week, what did we finish up with? I see that several of you were not here last week at the
end of class so you missed the Sistine Chapel pictures of the typology there on the walls of the
Sistine Chapel. We have the beautiful murals on the one side; you have seven large paintings
from the life of Moses, and on the opposite wall seven paintings from the life of Jesus, and how
do we know that those seven paintings relate to each other?
(Student) Titles.
Yes, and you could read those titles, right? They are in Latin but the words are close enough that
you could probably figure out what they mean. So we know that as late as the Renaissance
people understood the importance of Jesus being a prophet like unto Moses, right? That was one
of Stephen’s main arguments before the Sanhedrin, which, of course the Sanhedrin did not like
very much, and they end up putting him to death. I just wanted to finish up with a thought or two
on that, and if you have any questions, we can take a question or two about the pictures. We did
not have much time afterwards to talk about those, but if you only learned that much tonight, you
learned more than most people can tell you about the Sistine Chapel. Everybody knows what is
on the ceiling; hardly anybody knows anything about the walls, but the walls are great.
There has been a whole book written recently, just a couple of years ago, by a man named John
Liermann called The New Testament Moses. If you can imagine writing 400 pages on Moses in
the New Testament! It is very detailed, a lot of scriptures refer to Moses, how the Law of Moses
is treated, we will deal with that a little bit in Galatians Chapter 3 tonight, but then there are other
things like the Gospel of Matthew… remember when we were doing that a while back? We have
Moses going out into the wilderness for 40 years and Jesus going out for 40 days; Moses going
up onto a mountain to bring the law down, Jesus goes up into the mountain and brings the law
down in the Sermon on the Mount. These parallels are there because it was very important to
these people to know that a prophecy had been given that another prophet like unto Moses would
come and “him shall ye listen to.”
That is in Deuteronomy Chapter 18, and Sister Dorff asked the question, “How did the Jews
generally feel about that scripture? And the answer is, they had lots of different ways of
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interpreting and explaining it, but it was a crucial scripture, and every group had its way of
interpreting that. Some people, like the Sadducees, said that Moses was only talking to the
people as they were getting ready to go into the Promised Land and so the promise was, “I will
raise up another prophet like unto me,” meaning Joshua, and you should listen to Joshua. In other
words, I will have a single successor.
Then there are the Pharisees, the more Rabbinic oral tradition. They said, “No, This is a
prophecy that there would be a whole line of prophets following in Moses’ footsteps, and the
prophetic tradition should then be followed and listened to.
Then there were others in the Book of 1st Maccabees. We have the Maccabean revolt, 166 B.C.,
and these are people who want to purify the old ways of doing things. They accept certain
leaders and Maccabee says the people agree to follow these leaders, but only until a faithful
prophet comes. They knew that they did not really have the power to reform all of Judaism and
they looked to Deuteronomy 18 to say there is yet another big prophet to come. Lots of Jews
were looking forward to a prophet like that.
Then there were the people down at Qumran in the Dead Sea Scrolls. We find them quoting
Deuteronomy 18 and looking forward to the eschatological, the final, prophet who would come,
the last one who would fulfill all of what the Law of Moses was supposed to be and make
everyone into holy followers of the way of righteousness.
One final thing is that from the Talmud, a little bit later than this period, there is a passage in the
Talmud or the Samaritan commentary on the Torah where they expected another prophet to
come because they had separated themselves from Jerusalem. They were expecting a prophet
that would come to lead them. The tradition about another prophet coming, at least according to
the source I read, said that it was even stronger in Samaria than in Jerusalem, which stands to
reason because the people in Jerusalem thought they already had everything; they have got the
temple, they are not looking for any more.
The Samaritans
(Student) What tribe of Israel?
Are the Samaritans? The Samaritans are partly remnants of the northern kingdom, but they also
intermarried with the people of Phoenicia and the Canaanites, so they were rejected by the Jews
as being of mixed descent. However, they, the Samaritans, were people who had not been taken
captive into Babylon when Jerusalem was destroyed at the time of Lehi. They were not
significant enough; they were northern Israelites, and Jerusalem is destroyed because the Kings
of Jerusalem refused to pay tribute to Babylon. The Samaritans were, in a way, spared, but they
did not have a temple. They, kind of like the Mulekites, did not have much of the scriptures
either, but it is interesting, as we will see in a minute, that when Philip goes to Samaria, he
receives a marvelous reception. Lots of people respond to what, I think, would have been the
same message. The prophet, like unto Moses, has come. That is just a little transition from last
week into where we are going tonight.
(Student) Philipos is Greek. His name is Greek.
Which one? Philipos. Yes.
(Student) In Samaria, there were a lot of Greek people.
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Samaria was a Greek city, as was Sepphoris. Jesus goes to what is being mentioned here. There
were ten cities that formed a league, the deca polis, the Decapolis. Jesus tends to skirt around
those cities that were scattered throughout Galilee and over into what we call the Golan Heights
and the east bank. There were ten of these cities so they are Greek-speaking people. Greeks are
around in that area too.
(Student) Which group looked for a whole line of prophets?
The Pharisees.
(Student) When I read this about how they [the Samaritans] accepted the gospel, I wondered
about the woman at the well and if she did not have any influence on anyone there?
Jesus was willing to go through Samaria where most of the Jews were not. Not only did he go
through there, but he talked to a woman, so unto the lowliest of stations.
(Student) It sounds like she was a walkie-talkie.
Yes, and probably not a very reputable type of woman.
(Student) In the gospel of John, it tells how she went and brought a large number of people to
him, and she stayed there for two days, and how a large number of people believed in him at that
time, so I am guessing that is when Philip went there.
Yes, the ground has been prepared. It does not say that he worked miracles there.
(Student) That is interesting. It says they believed on his word.
Yes, and what was it that convinced them? He told her…
(Student) Everything that she had ever done.
As a prophet! He could see, so it is the prophetic tradition again that they received so well.
(Student) When he left they said, “Now we believe because of your word,” not because of what
she said …
For tonight, we are going to look at the Book of Acts in yet another way. I sent you an email and
you have it on the handout.
1. How the apostles fulfilled Great Commission
We have looked first of all at how the Book of Acts, number one, shows how the apostles
fulfilled the great commission that was given to them by Jesus, to bear witness of his resurrection
to the uttermost ends of the earth, right? That is one purpose and we will see that thread running
strongly through not only these chapters but clear through to the end of the book.
2. The apostles continued the miraculous powers of Jesus
Second, we look at how the Book of Acts demonstrates how the apostles were able to continue
the miraculous working of the Savior, and that that power has not died with Jesus but it is still
now vested in his followers who have been called and ordained to go forward and we will see
that thread.
3. The apostles were brought before judges and rulers, just as Jesus had told them
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Third, last week when we talked about the stoning of Stephen, and when we talked about Peter
and John being called before the Sanhedrin, we saw the theme of how the Book of Acts shows
the prophecy of Jesus that his apostles would be hauled before rulers, kings, judges, and
synagogues, and all sorts of people. However, this would be a chance for them to bear witness of
the reality of his resurrection and of the gospel. We saw that happening.
The Book of Acts addressed new questions and thereby set authoritative precedents. (1112)
So what is for tonight? We are going to look at five episodes and as you read, I hope you were
looking for this. The assignment for tonight was to see how the Book of Acts functions as an
account of important events or situations that address new questions and new problems that have
come up for this new church. As those problems are addressed and answered by continuing
revelation, when we talk about the importance of continuing revelation standing at the
foundation of the organization and operation of the church, can we see that happening in the
early church as well? We will watch for that. When we say we believe in the same organization
that existed in the primitive church, namely apostles, prophets, the function of prophecy is right
there at the top of the list.
What happens here is that as these events or precedent-setting situations are compiled, I think
that the Book of Acts should be read as a kind of handbook of instructions. It establishes the
unwritten order of the church. Do we have an unwritten order of the church that we follow? It
was Elder Packer then, President Packer, in a wonderful talk about how it is important for us to
[pay attention to] things that you cannot really find written down anywhere, but are the way the
church operates. How do we learn the unwritten order of the church?
(Student) You attend.
You attend, okay? You live through experiences, and that is what we are seeing here in the Book
of Acts as these experiences are unfolding, they become the order of the Church.
In the Jewish world, there were two different schools of thought about where the law came from.
One, are the people who strictly read the law only as a written text. If you cannot find it in
writing then it is not the law for these people, so the law becomes very narrow, the less law the
better for these people. These are the Sadducees, and also to an extent, the Samaritans, that for
them, really only the first five books of Moses were the Torah, the law. The written law was
narrowly enough construed that you could do a lot of things as long as it was not strictly
prohibited. The Sadducees had no problem living with, eating with, serving, or working with the
Romans or the Greeks, even though as gentiles, those people were impure. Jesus will eat with
these people; the Pharisees will not. Why won’t the Pharisees do that? Where does it say in the
written law that you cannot do that? It does not, but it says that in the oral tradition, the law that
built up around the written text that was eventually written down as the Talmud. What we have, I
think here in the Book of Acts, is, “Do they believe in the written Law? Do early Christians,
would they agree with the Sadducees that if it is in writing it is…” Of course, but they go farther
than that. In a way, the early Christians are saying, “Yes, we can also see in the explanations and
the traditions, the will and the mind of the Lord.”
(Student) What did the gentiles believe?
What do the gentiles believe?
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(Student) We are going to convert them from what? What did they believe?
That is a complicated question. They have lots of gods and…
(Student) The Greek religion declined especially as they moved away from Greece. They tried to
be absorbed with the people who are around them and tried to be one, so there was no priesthood
to guide them and to hold meetings or anything religious-wise.
You have Greeks, you have Romans. You have different Greek religion, Roman religion; in
Cyprus, they have their own. You have kind of a local emphasis on certain gods or goddesses
where you have patron-saints, and this is an important question because as Paul travels around to
these different cities, he finds himself in areas where people are worshipping, focusing on the
building of temples, sacrifices,…
(Student) Ephesus, with their Diana.
So in Ephesus, as Brother Kepas says, in Greek it is Artemis, in Latin it is Diana, they have a
huge temple, one of the seven wonders of the world, and the great, big, green marble columns
from that temple…
(Student) Unfortunately, name is there.
Your name is there on an inscription.
(Student) No, in the arch because Demetrius is the…
Oh, yes, Demetrius! It is on an inscription as you are walking into the… I will show you a
picture of that in a couple of weeks. The great, big green columns from the temple of Diana or
temple of Artemis now are found in the Hagia Sophia in Constantinople - some of them.
(Student) My father was born just ten miles north of Ephesus.
You will remember that Paul is accused of upsetting the making of little statues for Diana. In
Corinth, the big goddess there, Apollo, and, that is in the city, and up on the Acropolis,
Aphrodite. So the Goddess of love is the one that is most important in Corinth. Is it coincidental
that Paul gives his hymn to love, charity, in Corinth, the real meaning of love, to people who are
out worshipping Aphrodite, which has a different version of what love is all about. In addition to
the pantheon of regular gods, Jupiter for the Romans was the head god with all of his family, and
Zeus in Greece with all of his family. Starting in about the time of the Maccabean Revolt, about
the middle of the 2nd Century, you get the rise of a lot of other Greek religions. The worship of
Dionysus, the god of wine, becomes a big cult. One of the gods in Egypt, Isis, and the god of
grain, Serapis. Anyway, a lot of these gods, and you pick one; they are all kind of unreliable,
they…
(Student) They were being made prophets for certain groups of people.
With sorcerers, did you say?
(Student) Prophets. People were making Prophets out of them.
Prophets, yes. It is a business and we will…
(Student) This is not dissimilar to what we find as the Church extends throughout the world
today. The problem is the same, as traditions are brought with families as they convert and come
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into the Church. That is why we have these worldwide training meetings that we have, training
people how the Church works.
That is an excellent point. As we go into Africa, and my grandfather served in New Zealand with
the Maoris, all of these different religions certainly confront us just the way Christianity had to
go in and deal with a lot of these people.
(Student) The dichotomy finally came down to different rituals, different diets, and were subjects
for us, and the law of the circumcision where there actually was a separation of those that were
Christian but those were circumcised Christians and the uncircumcised Christians, and the
bringing that all that together and get it all smoothed out took some time.
It did, and it was a pretty rough go about that.
Now, let us try to go through our five topics for tonight okay? If you do not want to talk about
these, we will go through them real quick, but I thought we have event number 11…I emailed
you these, right? Did anyone not get the email with these precedents? Raise your hand if you did
not get the summary of the 11 - can you pass these out?
(Student) I do have a question. Why are we starting with 11, I do not think I have 1 through 10.
I will have to send them to you but we have done 1 through 10 (Student) Would it be on the previous?
No, I did not send them to you, but 10 was the stoning of Stephen.
(Student) You sent them, just not numbered.
Oh, did I send them, okay, not numbered? Have to count for yourself.
11. Honoring the Dead, Even at Risk of Legal Arrest
Therefore, what is with that number, you know, the one at the beginning of Chapter 8, let us look
at that. After Stephen is stoned, we have an interesting short event. Why was it so dangerous for
them to go give Stephen a burial? Let us just read this for a minute, okay? Chapter 8. “And at the
time,” so Saul was consenting to Stephen’s death and “at that time, there was a great persecution
against the church which was at Jerusalem.” This is three or four years after Peter and John’s
trials before the Sanhedrin, so it is uninterrupted. It looks like it is just happening immediately
after that, but as Peter and John and the Christians continued to preach and perform miracles in
the name of Jesus, they managed to get people more and more upset with them. Remember,
Gamaliel thought, “We can just ignore this, and it will go away.” It was not going away, and so
the stoning of Stephen was kind of the outburst of the Sanhedrin saying we have got to do
something about this, and so they do.
Coming out to bury Stephen, helping someone who had been condemned as a blasphemer, as a
vile criminal against the order of Jerusalem, would be a dangerous thing for someone to do.
(Student) I have a question about the law here. What authority did the Jewish leaders have? Like,
it seems like from Christ’s trial that they did not have the right to put him to death. Did they have
the right to put Stephen to death or was that something that sort of happened? And putting the
people in prison, did they have the right to do that?
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As usual, there are… did you all hear the question? How could the Sanhedrin do this when they
seem to need Pilate to… there are different theories on this. One theory is that Pilate is now gone.
Like I said, it is three or four years later, and there was a time - we do not know exactly - it could
have been two years, it could have been five years, but people usually put it right about three or
four years because that is a time when there was no Roman ruler yet appointed to take Pilate’s
place. So people say that would make sense, that the Sanhedrin, by default, now becomes the
ruling authority. There is nobody to argue with them. I do not particularly agree with that.
The other theory is that when the Jews come to Pilate, they would love to get Pilate to do their
dirty work. Jesus is very popular and anything they can do to obsequiously say, “Oh, Pilate, we
would never do anything that would offend Rome (snort, snort, snort), but we have simply found
this person who might, after all, be an enemy of Tiberius Caesar and if you do not kill him, you
are no friend of Caesar’s right? ” They are trying to get Pilate to do things, and it is in John that
they say, “We do not have no authority to kill him.” There is a double negative in that statement.
And I think it is double-talk, and I just do not trust…
(Student) You think that they actually did have the authority but they simply wanted to get rid of
him?
I do and I think they had pretty broad authority.
There is a third theory that says they had authority to put people to death for religious offenses,
since why would Rome have any concern about blasphemy against the temple or the law of the
Jews. The Romans could not care less about that, but if there is a threat to the Roman order, if it
becomes a political matter, then they would be able to get Rome to take an interest in it. There
are different theories, but it is very clear that if they wanted to do it, they could have. They
certainly could have put Stephen in jail, and there certainly was a Roman official even if you had
to go to Antioch to find him. It is not that there is an absence, a complete absence, of Roman
control; it is not like the Romans had given the Jews back Judea; it is just that they have not got
somebody there quite yet, although we do not know that. I mean there may have been a Roman
governor already appointed, and he is just down in Caesarea, which is 30 miles away. “Why do
we want to bother…?” Pilate happened to be in Judea and Jerusalem for the Passover. Stephen is,
you know, no big gathering there, so no reason for a Roman to even have been in town.
(Student) Pilate throws it back in their lap anyway. Pilate makes a symbolic gesture of going out
and washing his hands and turns it back to them, “Who do you want?” So they ultimately wanted
Romans to take the step, but then Pilate throws it back at them.
They are all complicit there in one way or another. It is a very interesting question about the
dynamics. I think we tend, as modern people, to think of law and order as very established. Our
rules are regularized, they are written down. It comes back to this point about oral law and
written law. Even in the Roman world, there is no code of Roman law. It is a lot of entrusting a
certain officer with the authority which is called the imperium, the delegated right of the emperor,
and whatever a person who holds imperium says, that is the law. So we tend to want to say,
“What was legal?” or “What was the law?” When in fact it may have been pretty flexible.
(Student) Was there a specific part that irritated them?
What part irritated them? It is Verse 52, Chapter 7, “Which of the prophets have not your fathers
persecuted? And they have slain them which shewed before the coming of the Just One; of
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whom ye have now been betrayers and murderers.” Pretty strong language and Stephen went
down with the ship.
So we now have a problem. Stephen’s body; he has been stoned. He is out there in a pit
somewhere. When they stoned someone, you know how they did this? You go to the brink of a
drop-off. They would find someplace where there may be a ten-foot drop-off, and they would
push the person off the cliff, not a huge cliff, but they would try to make sure that they fell head
first, and hopefully, they would at least get knocked out and maybe killed just by the fall. They
were kind to these people. The Talmud says that before you can execute someone like this,
before you can stone them, you take them to the place of execution and you there have to give
them an opportunity to recant, to confess.
(Student) That is like Abinadi.
Yes, it is. This is Jewish, this is traditional practice. They said that the court had to do that so that
the person after they are executed would not go to their maker with the guilt. Let them confess. It
will improve their lot in any event when they go on. If they do not die when they fall, then they
stand at the top, and everybody throws rocks, and of course, the witnesses, the ones who were
the accusers, had to cast the first stones. In this case, it would have been at least a good number
of the people in the Sanhedrin who had witnessed what they considered to be the blasphemy. But
there he is. There are plenty of stones all over Judea. In Babylon if they want to get rid of
somebody, they would throw them in the river, but there are no rivers in Judea, at lease none
that…
(Student) Not the Jordan!
No, the Jordan trickle will not really threaten people very much. Now picture Stephen’s body
there covered up with a bunch of stones and they walk away; the executioners, the people. Why
would they walk away? They could have covered him up with stones anyway, and they leave his
body for the vultures and the animals. They will come and pick the bones pretty clean. That is
what happened to King Ahab; he is killed - a wicked king - and the dogs and the eagles come and
pick his bones. Why else would they not want go down and do this?
(Student) The Law of Moses; not to touch a body.
Yes, you have corpse impurity if you have contact with a dead human body, and blood contact
even from animals. You would not want to, even though corpse impurity can be cleansed, but it
takes seven days. It is a one-week purification period, and during that time you cannot go to the
temple, you cannot function in your normal official capacities. For the chief priests, or for people
who would have been connected with the Sanhedrin, you know that is going to be a big
imposition on them to have all that corpse impurity, so they are not going to want to do that.
In addition, if you look back in Jeremiah Chapter 26, there is an interesting account where
Jeremiah is accused of false prophecy, and he will escape because some of the princes, the rulers,
come. They hear about the hubbub over at the temple and one of them says, “Jeremiah’s okay, let
him go,” but before that, there is a debate about whether they should execute Jeremiah for
prophesying that Jerusalem would be destroyed like Lehi had prophesied. The Sanhedrin on that
occasion remembered certain cases that had been like this one and in the case of Urijah, they said,
“Now don’t you remember what we did to him?” He prophesied this way and when we accused
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him, he fled to Egypt and we sent the army after him; we extradited him from Egypt, brought
him back, held a trial, put him to death and denied him a burial and his body was left in the grave
of commoners.
So the ultimate insult to someone was to not allow them to be buried, and it appears from what is
happening here in Acts 8, that when they executed Stephen, they were not going to give him a
burial either. There is this persecution, and devout men, so you have got some very pious
Christians who are willing to risk their lives to go and carry Stephen to his burial and make a
great lamentation over him. Normally it was the women’s job to do this, because the men did not
want to have the corpse impurity problem. When the women come to the tomb of Jesus, it is the
women that anoint the body and take care of it. That was more the normal practice. Here you
have men going out to do that. I think that is unusual, and why is that significant? They would
not send their women out to do it if it is risky.
(Student) I am thinking back to the burial of Jesus and thinking, “Was it risky, or was it better
because Joseph of Aramathea was doing. Was it less risky because they were doing it because of
their situation? Or was it really risky?
At least in Jesus’ case everything gets overwhelmed with the concern that he might really be
resurrected, so they put guards out and they put the stone up and so how that…
(Student) So they probably would not want to just leave him in the heat somewhere.
No. They wanted… I thought, and maybe this is a stretch, but I thought we might learn
something about burials, funerals. Latter-day Saints are pretty good at funerals, and I think right
here in the Book of Acts, we have a precedent where Christians say that we are going to be sure
that any Christian who dies gets a proper burial. If it was important enough for the pious men,
these are the leaders of the church, to go and give Stephen a proper burial, then shouldn’t we do
the same for all Christians? Do Christians have a strong early tradition of elaborate burials? Any
of you? Yes, catacombs. Starting back in the late 1st Century, Christians wanted to be buried in
these catacombs and they hollowed out these tombs. You can walk through miles and miles of
these burial places. Elsewhere, if you did not have catacombs, have any of you seen a
sarcophagus from the early Christian period? They would have these stone vaults made with
elaborate carvings on them. The body would be put in the sarcophagus so lots of expense went
into having proper burials. Did the Greeks care about burials? Absolutely! You had to pay a lot
of money to get your body buried in Athens, but the most important thing for the Greek burial
was a coin had to be put in the mouth of the person being buried. Why?
(Student) To pass into the underworld.
Right. You had to be able to pay the ferryboat to get across the River Styx; otherwise, the soul of
the deceased would wander endlessly on the face of the earth, kind of like Scrooge’s partner
Marley and all the chains. He is still wandering around in a Greek fashion.
(Student) In Spain, they have an elaborate funeral.
You know, as an early Christian church, one of the questions they would have to ask themselves,
what are we going to do? “Are we going to have burials like the Greeks?” For the Jews, the main
concern was not being sure that the soul of the person would rest securely somewhere. They are
more concerned about this corpse impurity. “We have to have spaces, cemeteries, and we can
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know where those bodies are, because you do not want to go walking through one of those places
because there are lots of evil spirits that haunt the graveyard.”
(Student) The graves outside the city walls, are those Jewish or Christian?
Those are Jewish, but they are over on the south side of Mt. Scopus, and that is where Jesus talks
about the white sepulchers; that is all Jewish. It was an area that was set aside. That is where you
buried people. You could not just bury them on the golf course or wherever you wanted.
(Student) Interestingly, as England has become more secular, the caring about funerals has gone
away, so oftentimes it is just a 20-minute thing, then a cremation, and then they throw the ashes
under a rose tree.
(Student) Just in the last year or two, they have found an honorarium limestone sarcophagus and
on the side was, “James, the brother of Christ.” They have now after 3 or 4 years decided that is
not - it is real, it is not something that done years later but it was a burial….
They would set the bones out after all the soft tissue had deteriorated then they would take the
bones and put them in a little box called an ossuary and that is what you are describing. Yes, it
was very elaborate.
(Student) They do this in Brazil today. They bury the body on top of a pile of other bodies for a
designated period of time until it has decayed, and then the family has to come, get all the bones.
So a final question then? Do we as Latter-day Saints… we do not follow the Greek or the
Hebrew or Roman ways, but we have a very, very strong tradition of funerals, of burial, of
having a closing family prayer, and why is it that we want to have… why do we spend so much
time and effort as a people celebrating or …?
(Student) I think there is some value in that because of our belief in what happens next. There is
a promise of what is to come. The bishop said there should always a message given reinforcing
the Plan of Salvation. For a lot of the people who do not have our faith it is a great teaching
opportunity, and the body is a temple and we have great reverence for that.
We have many, many reasons because to us, it is a part of our testimony that we all will be
resurrected and for the Book of Acts, of course the resurrection is a strong theme, so not much is
said here, but I think enough to say there is a precedent being established.
(Student) What does the church believe about cremation?
Cremation is sometimes required in certain countries like Japan. You have to be cremated there.
In that case, we believe in honoring, obeying, and sustaining the law, but because of the
symbolic importance of burial as a preparation for resurrection, cremation is not encouraged. It is
not prohibited, but I think that that is still the latest statement from the brethren on that point.
(Student) Is the dedication of the grave an ordinance?
Yes. It is a Melchizedek priesthood ordinance.
(Student) So that event is a testament to what we do with our remains.
Although the soul is not there, the body, the remains of the body are there, and it is dedicated for
whatever way in which that material may be useful in the resurrection. But again, we believe in
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the literal resurrection, and so we will do everything we can to see that the burial is consistent
with those beliefs.
12. Dealings in Samaria
Let us now go to Samaria, and what precedents do we find here? Philip goes, he casts out some
evil spirits, cures some crippled people and then we have this Simon Magus who was a very
popular person. He is involved in magic, sorcery, divination, doing all of those kinds of things. It
says that he is involved in sorcery and all of this and “Giving out that he himself was some great
one to whom they all gave heed from the least to the greatest, saying this man is the great power
of God.” That is a pretty impressive person. He will join the church, and you wonder how many
people would have come with him if…and he is coming with that kind of cachet. Remind you of
any conversions in the early church? Sidney Rigdon, a Campbellite minister there, and when you
convert someone like that, they are going to… so last week we said there are a lot of parallels
between the Book of Acts and the early events in the history of the Church and here is another
one like that.
Then as Philip baptizes him, does Philip then give him the gift of the Holy Ghost? Why not?
(Student) He does not have the authority.
Maybe not. I mean he maybe does not have the authority. It is possible that Philip, along with the
other seven, we do not know exactly, will have been Aaronic priesthood. They seem to be
concerned with the welfare of the widows. Can the gift of the Holy Ghost be given by one person?
I think it says the elders. Don’t we always require two for that? Anybody know?
(Student) Customary but I do not think it is a necessity.
Maybe we will check on that. Somebody look in Moroni chapter 3 verse 2. Moroni talks about
that. It may be a plural there, but that may not be indicative either, but in any event, Philip seems
to be all alone and either he has only got the Aaronic Priesthood, or he cannot do this by himself.
But who comes? Peter and John! They come and they give the gift of the Holy Ghost. So it looks
sort of like we have a Melchizedek priesthood function, where at least they hold the keys and
maybe Peter has to be there to approve it even if one of them could have done it alone. Do we
have a precedent being set there? I think so. This is the way we would do the baptism and
confirmation, right?
(Student) But in 10, they get the Holy Ghost before the baptism, and that bothers me.
That is right. The Holy Ghost falls upon him and the Holy Ghost can fall upon people without
them having the Gift of the Holy Ghost.
(Student) Otherwise people would not be converted.
Right. So does that work?
(Student) Yes.
(Student) It is ambiguous about the two.
Ambiguous. So we have to turn to the order of the church, the unwritten rules, and maybe that is
what we have got here too.
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So Simon, after he is converted and baptized and gets the gift of the Holy Ghost, what is his
reaction? Simony, okay?
(Student) “I would like to be able to do that.”
Yes, and what is the answer? You can get it; it just takes a little while. Of course, he wanted to
buy the power and was this a sincere request?
(Student) I do not know, but to me it was very reminiscent of some things that are said in the
endowment about money and I thought, this is really something Heavenly Father wants us to be
pretty solid on, that money…there are certain things you cannot buy with money and you really
have to be square on that.
And threely, anything sacred cannot be bought with money. In the Jewish world, you could not
buy a copy of the Torah. You had to copy your own copy at the time of Christ. So copies were
fairly rare. But in order for you to do your Bar Mitzvah, the Talmud says the boy has to copy his
own copy. Kind of like getting your Eagle Scout. Got your Genesis merit badge, then you get
your Exodus merit badge. But you had to copy it they said, because you cannot buy it. Money
can contaminate it.
(Student) It is beautiful.
It is. It is nice. I like that. So everybody ought to copy their own copy of the Book of Mormon,
right?
(Student) I think he was a businessman.
He is a businessman, right.
(Student) “This is more powerful than what I have been doing and I want to buy it.”
That is right. What would he then do with it? He would go into business. Was this unusual? No.
You asked about what the Greeks and the Romans believed. If you set up a temple, you would
have a rich person who would build the temple, and then they would sell a priestly franchise and
someone would run the temple. The sacrifices that would be given would belong to the priests
who ran the temple. People came to the temple to give thanks offerings for blessings that they
thought that god or goddess had given them, and the donations would be given to the priest.
(Student) Like a wishing well.
Right, but this was a way that… Somebody had to support these places of worship; this is the
way they did it. It was not uncommon to have a power. We will see in a couple of weeks when
Paul is in Philippi, that he runs into a man who has a girl who can give prophecies in the name of
Apollo for a fee. This was perfectly ordinary and normal, so Simon Magus, in asking, “Can I buy
this?” may have been doing just what everybody normally did. Peter did not like that and he uses
some pretty strong language right? He rebukes him and says, “Your money may it perish with
you and you are in the gal of bitterness,” and so he makes it clear. Is the precedent clear folks,
that in this church you cannot buy a priesthood franchise? Can you understand that that question
would not have been easily answered until the President of the Church made it very clear that
that was not going to happen. “That is not the way we are going to run the church.”
(Student) There is a contrast between Paul and Simon. Very few people are able to do a 180
degree turn. For most people who join the church, it takes time to give up their old life.
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Yes. How long did it take Paul?
(Student) Three days?
Oh, yes but then what happens? He gets baptized in Antioch, and then the Jews are mad at him,
right, and they are after him because now he is a traitor and they have to let him down in sort of a
basket over the walls of Antioch. They get him quickly to Jerusalem so that he can check in with
the church to find out whether the church was going to accept him or not. They do, but then what
do the brethren do? They pack him up really quickly and get him to Caesarea, why? Caesarea is
where? What is Caesarea? That is the Roman headquarters. This is a port city. This is where the
governor, the center of Roman power is. Why would they take Paul there? He is a Roman citizen.
Why do they need Paul in a place where the Romans can protect him? The Jews want to kill him.
They say we want to get you out of town, they take him to Caesarea, and he catches a ship there
and goes where? To Tarsus. Why does he go there? Back home. They get him back to where he
has family and people. Tarsus is in…if you imagine Turkey … Turkey kind of goes straight east
and west on the south shore and right to the east corner of Turkey and Syria, Tarsus is right near
there. Tarsus was the capitol city of the Roman province of Cilicia. Paul came from a capitol city,
and as he says, no mean, meaning no lowly, city.
(Student) Is that the place Jonah wanted to go to? Or is that a different place?
No. Tarshish is a different place. It is thought to be Spain which is way out - he is heading as far
west as he can go to get away from those Assyrians. By the way, in your chart, you have, if you
look at it - in your charting book, there is a chronology of the life of Paul and my point is, back
to how long it took for Paul to make some transitions, how long does he spend before he surfaces
again? Fourteen years! So he has got to let things cool off for a while and finally people have
forgotten enough, I guess. He goes into Arabia...
(Student) He is not immediately converted, either. He goes about arresting and is still persecuting
after the stoning.
After the stoning of Stephen, but the conversion is when Jesus appears to him on the road to
Damascus. Next week we will look very carefully at the first apostolic council which is where
this whole big question about taking the gospel to the gentiles comes up to three different
factions - Paul is one of them, and it is an issue, like he says, it takes a while for them to sort
through.
(Student) I want to ask a question, because every gospel doctrine class I have ever been in it gets
to be an argument Oh, so we want to start one here too, huh?
(Student) Did Paul receive his conviction and knowledge of Christ when he was struck blind and
Christ appeared to him on the road, or was it when he was sent to Ananias for a long time where
he received the priesthood and the teachings and worked in the ward, so to speak, and learned the
gospel? The reason it comes up is because this conversion by miracle would be the same for Paul
as it would be for a lot of other people that seem have come that way.
Sure. There has to be a lot more than just the miraculous appearance, but he did see the Savior as
did Alma the Younger. We have a chart comparing those, but it was not the seeing of the Savior
that converted even Alma the Younger, right? It is after 3 days and he calls out, “Thou Jesus,
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thou Son of God, have mercy on me who am in the gall of bitterness.” It is at that point that, “Oh
what marvelous light,” and the conversion takes place.
(Student) I think we all gain our testimony a verse at a time …
I think so, and we are not going to have much time to talk about Galatians Chapter 3, which is a
very difficult chapter, I admit. I did not want you to read that to solve all of the problems here,
but Paul came to his conversion - he was put on the path of conversion as he was called to
repentance and commissioned by the Lord whom he persecuted coming completely out of the
blue. It was something that he had not deserved; he was 180 degrees off of the path and the Lord
had a mission that he needs this man to fulfill.
Paul is a unique commodity and we will talk about this next week more too. He has three legs.
One in the Roman world; he is a Roman citizen, one in the Jewish world, he is the son of a
Pharisee, and one in the Greek world, he was educated in a gymnasium. He speaks marvelous
Greek; he knows the vocabulary words, very academic. His argument in the book in the 3rd
Chapter of Galatians is a classic, rhetorical diatribe just butchering people who he does not agree
with. He learned to do that in high school. He is a master; when he wants to pull out all the stops,
he can just cut people to shreds. He has all the tools to do the things that only he can do, and the
Lord needs him. Paul talks a lot about how he was justified by the grace of God.
(Student) Later when he comes to the church, he comes to Apollos and they are baptizing
incorrectly. He reorganizes the whole ward and baptizes everybody again with the priesthood.
That is right, with the priesthood. Another good precedent being set there. So with that, I hope
that did not create too much of an argument, but we will talk more about that next week. I want
to just at least hint at a couple of things and then we will close.
13. Baptizing a Eunuch
The 13th event, and you have got it written down in your hand out there, the baptism of this
Eunuch, he is from Ethiopia. I like how in these stories did you notice how the spirit tells people
where to go? What did the spirit tell Philip to do?
(Student) To jog alongside.
Yes, or to jump on the chariot or something. The eunuch is sitting there doing - what is he
reading? Isaiah, and he does not know what he is reading, and Philip says, “Let me explain it to
you.” Then the eunuch is immediately converted. We talked about going to the high and the low.
Is the eunuch a low or a high person? How low can you go? How low is a eunuch in the Jewish
world? No rights whatsoever. Can he read - can he go into the synagogue? No. He cannot pick
up the Torah and read it. Why? Because only men can do that, and he is “not a man." This is a
non-person. When he, he says to Philip, “What hindereth it that I be baptized?” One of the
questions for a Christian is, “Can we baptize this person?” Philip says, “You know, the Lord sent
me to you. He said go catch up with that chariot, I did not know who you were, I did not know
you were a Eunuch, but the Lord did and the Lord sent me to you so he must want you baptized,”
and they look around and what do they see? Water. Where are they? They are out in Gaza. How
often do you find water in the Gaza strip? They must have been near some oasis or something,
but there was water.
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Does this set a precedent? It sets the precedent that under Jewish law, this person could not have
any kind of official conduct, but here he is being accepted as any other person. That is a big step
in the direction that Peter will then even go farther with when all people are all accepted. There
is no one common.
That is another precedent that opens the door. It tells Christians, to whom they should minister.
Who is qualified to be baptized? Before the eunuch is baptized, what does he say? “I believe in
Christ the Son of God.” That is one of the earliest statements of credo, or belief. Credo means “I
believe,” right? In Latin. So a creed is a statement of belief. Did you have to subscribe to the
Nicean Creed in order to be baptized by Philip? No. The earliest Biblical creeds are all the very
short statements saying, “I believe that Jesus is the Son of God.” Or, “Who do men say that I
am?” “Peter, who do you say?” “Thou art the Christ, the Son of the Living God.” That was the
creed of the early Christians, and we get that precedent set here that is the real baptismal
requirement. You see how that works with these Episodes. Why don’t we save for next week the
comments that you might want to make on Acts Chapter 10, but I think we have covered the
principles. We have already talked about the tanner, we have talked about him accepting and
taking the gospel now to all people, but in the next few chapters we are going to see how that
plays out with some of the early missionary activities and go from there. I think with that we
have taken all the time that we have tonight. Thank you again for your comments. I will send you
a few more questions but keep on reading and look for as many precedents as you can find.
(Student) In the written order of things, in the 20th section of the Doctrine and Covenants Verse
68, we have the order of confirmation and receiving the Holy Ghost.
Yes and does it say two?
(Student) No, but it says “the hands of the elders.”
“The elders” - the plural there. Good. So that could at least support, I guess.
(Student) And it says all things will be done in order, just as you have witnesses, you have two
elders.
One Elder has two hands, so, that can work, but …
(Student) Missionaries, there are always two of them. One baptizes then they have two to
confirm and bestow the Holy Ghost.
Transcribed by Carol H. Jones
Edited by Rita L. Spencer
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