ACTS 1: THE FIRST MMS
As I sit in my quiet house typing into cyber-space, I wonder whether any of this website is worth it when few are interested in listening. I find it hard to mobilize the message of the Creator God’s Global MasterPlan – no matter how good the Good News is. 
[Luke 2:10] It seems easier to just type out my innermost thoughts then pray that someone might stumble upon it one day in a “Google search”, like the find of buried treasure![a] I’m not sure what results I expect from my “mobile messaging service” – especially when every day that I write, I’m writing about “a sign to be opposed”.[b]
Pushing aside the melancholy however, I can’t help but feel called to follow in the footsteps of John in my Sept3 Breadcrumb. The message that John called out 2,000 years ago is both simple and yet relevant for us even today: The Kingdom of God really is at hand.[c] We now have only one task – just one thing is expected of us. All we have to do is “prepare the way for the Lord” – beginning first in our own hearts. And, because the life and death of Jehoshua ben Dovid (Jesus) was covered in my Breadcrumbs during March/April, I want to now follow through with the ancient Hebrew prophet Malachi’s vision, just as we’ve been doing over the past four days:
“See, I will send my messenger, who will prepare the way before me. Then suddenly the Lord you are seeking will come to His Temple.” [Malachi 3:1]
Over the past four days, we’ve seen how Malachi’s prediction was fulfilled in the first chapters of the Book of Luke. However, we also saw how in a very short time, the “messenger” was beheaded in prison and the “Lord they were seeking” was rejected and almost thrown off a cliff![d] So was there a Plan B in the Creator God’s mind, or were the stories that followed also a fulfilment of HIStory.[e]
Malachi’s vision is from the 4th Century before Christ (BC). But as with all seventeen prophetic books that I’ve been following in my Breadcrumbs since early August, there’s always a physical and immediate fulfilment, yet always coupled with both a mid-term and a long-range element to the predictions. And so, in fulfilment of the Hebrew prophet Isaiah’s vision, Jehoshua ben Dovid (Jesus) came, lived, and died[f], but that wasn’t the end of HIStory. By way of a vision in the Book of Daniel, our Maker’s epic storyline continues when in today’s chapter, Jesus was taken up to heaven.[g] He left quickly and simply, just as all of this was part of an unbroken storyline all along. [v9-11]
So then, we pick up HIStory today in the Book of the Acts of the Apostles – or “Acts” for short. Acts was also written by Luke [v1] – the same doctor who had written the Book of Luke in my four Breadcrumbs so far this month. So it’s a good follow-on from the Breadcrumbs that we’ve been following over the last four days. The “Apostles” were Jews and close friends of Jehoshua ben Dovid (Jesus), whose name in Hebrew aptly means: God is Deliverance – to deliver, to save i.e. Saviour. These close friends however, were the “sheep” that would be scattered – according to the ancient Hebrew prophet Zechariah’s prediction.[h] Now if your head is spinning, it’s because our Creator God is complex 
and multifaceted. And, due to this, His Global Masterplan is like a 3D global puzzle with pieces straddling whole millenniums. Don’t give up though! My Breadcrumbs unclip a puzzle piece every day for 365 days so that by the end of this year, you will have gained about 1/3 of your Maker’s epic storyline. Thus being able to understand who He is and what He is trying to do for those He has created in His own image to live and operate like Him.
One of the first things that catches my interest in today’s chapter, is the subject that Jesus chose to talk about after He was raised from the dead. He talked about the Kingdom of God. [v3] This was John’s pet topic when he first came out on centre stage in Part Two of the world’s longest running drama: “Repent, for the Kingdom of Heaven is near!”[i]
Some time back, my Mark met a Jewish man through his work. After the meeting, Mark did as he has always done since our Michael died – he handed him his tract, “The Father’s Love”, about a father who lost his only son. The man was moved because of his own loss of a loved-one. His response was loving and genuine with a real sense of connection in grief. Interestingly though, he didn’t want to entertain the idea of our After-Life.
Hearing this I asked, “Isn’t our Father’s Kingdom the only discussion worth having?” It would be like Adam and Eve sitting outside the 
Garden of Eden and saying to anyone who came along: “I don’t want to talk about the garden.” Surely every waking hour would have been about what it was like inside, and how to get back in the door! Surely, in their rejected state, there was nothing in their mind, desires, or interest, that would cause them to look out and away, let alone actually wander away to explore ‘better’ things.
I would have sat outside The Garden gates pining away, until I died of grief for what I once had but now have lost. Food would lose its savour. The air would smell stale with corruption. The ground would seem hard without life in a land abundant with rain, because green is no longer green when you’re colour blind. The only thing that I can think of that could have caused humans to move away from looking through those closed gates, was that the Creator’s Garden somehow disappeared. Their inbuilt ability for “seeing” His Kingdom was removed when they could no longer experience it. Humankind had no choice left but to wander far and wide in search of where they could belong.
But what has this to do with Malachi’s prophecy about a “messenger”? And how does that connect with the last four days in the Book of Luke and now Acts c1? Well… far from a story over [v6-7], Jesus now unveils the Creator God’s long-range prediction by bringing in the prophet Joel’s prophecy [v5]:
“And afterwards, I’ll pour out My Spirit on all people. Your sons and daughters will prophesy, your old men will dream dreams, your young men will see visions. On My servants, both men and women, I’ll pour out My Spirit in those days.” [Joel 2:28-29]
We “Jesus Followers” (both men and women, young and old) have all been left standing where John started: God’s “messengers” – a mobilized messaging service sent out to “prepare the way for the LORD”. But we weren’t called to start a new world religion with temples and priests and sacrifices. The people whom the Creator has made in His own image to be like Him have been called to speak – just as God spoke in The Beginning. The message: All people everywhere, in every generation, must “make straight paths in their lives for Him” because “all mankind is about to see God’s Salvation”.[j] It’s a simple message and, everything in the rest of Part Two of this Epic Play – what’s now called The New Testament or The New Covenant (contract/agreement) – everything that you will read in my Breadcrumbs until the year ends – is all geared towards “the coming Lord” who will appear suddenly just as Malachi said He would.
So if you take this journey with me, what you will be reading over the coming months will be an expanded version of what John started to tell us[k], but couldn’t elaborate on it in detail before he was killed. Apart from the fact that his head was chopped off, it’s also because the Hebrew Law of Moses requires more than one witness to make it truth.[l] There are four witnesses to the life stories of Jehoshua ben Dovid (Jesus) in the books of Matthew, Mark, Luke and John. I covered these books in my Breadcrumbs during March/April. In addition, the 27 books/letters of The New Testament (that is now the last ⅓ of the Creator God’s Handbook for LIFE) are written by nine more Jews, all thoroughly educated in their Maker’s story through their own Hebrew scriptures: the Old Testament.
And so from the very first sentence in this Book of Acts, we can see that Luke is not an uneducated fisherman writing down fairytales. He is instead a non-Jewish doctor, who is putting his educational abilities to use by writing an official report for a Roman politician. [v1] It’s estimated that around 500 people saw Jesus alive in the 40 days after His crucifixion and miraculous resurrection. [v3] And again, Jesus reiterated a message that He had previously given: 
that we’re not to know the time and the date when He will return. [v7] Only Father God Himself knows the time and the date.[m] Our role is simple: to ensure that the Good News of the Kingdom of God – as it has been written since the days of Moses[n] – is mobilized and sent out even to the remote parts of earth. [v8]
The rest of today’s chapter is about replacing the disciple Judas, who had betrayed Jesus and died in the process. [v16-20] In Hebrew understanding, twelve has always been a significant number for “completion” throughout HIStory. For example, at the end of HIStory the Kingdom of God includes a city with 12 gates, representing the 12 tribes of Israel, and 12 foundations representing the 12 Apostles.[o] The fact that Jesus chose twelve to be “apostles” (spiritual leaders) caused Peter to suggest a replacement for number twelve – the one who betrayed Jesus and died. But because of what’s about to come in my Breadcrumbs, I wanted to leave you with this thought…
Even after living with Jehoshua ben Dovid (Jesus), working with Him, and even sleeping beside Him for 3+ years, spiritual leaders are not perfect. They do indeed choose Matthias to join their leadership team [v21-26], but I notice that nothing’s ever said about him again. Instead, Jesus Himself seems to choose another man named Paul.[p] It was this Jewish academic and member of the ruling council, that Jesus used extensively as a mobile messaging service in the rest of Part Two of the Creator God’s epic storyline. His writings went throughout the Roman Empire to change history. Much of our understanding on how Part Two (the global promise) fits with Part One (the Hebrew promise) i.e. how the new contract agreement fits with the old contract agreement, and what the Creator God now expects of His image-bearers – all of humankind – was mostly written down by the Hebrew scholar, Paul. By divine intervention it was then miraculously preserved, translated, and spread to virtually every tribe, nation, and tongue on earth. This explanation of Hebrew HIStory has been used by “Followers of The Way” for 2,000+ year now. Paul, and the twelve in today’s chapter, were HIStory makers. So the question is: Will you join your Father God’s mobile messaging service to the world and make HIStory too?
CLICK to return to today’s “Daily Breadcrumbs”
[a] Isaiah 45:3
[b] Luke 2:34
[c] Luke 3:4
[d] Luke 3:20 and Luke 4:28-29
[e] Isaiah 28:16; Psalm 118:22 & Matthew 21:42 (See also: Mark 12:10, Luke 20:17; Acts 4:11 & 1Peter 2:7)
[f] Isaiah 9:2-3,6-7; 42:1-4; 50:6-7 and 53:1-12
[g] Daniel 7:13-14
[h] Zechariah 13:7
[i] Matthew 3:1-2
[j] Luke 3:4-6 (Referencing Isaiah 40:3-5)
[k] Luke 3:9-14
[l] Deuteronomy 19:15b (See Also Deut.17:6)
[m] Matthew 24:36-41
[n] Luke 24:27
[o] Revelation 21:12-14
[p] Acts 9:1-16