Part V on Galatians Study

Acts 2:19-21
"And I will shew wonders in heaven above, and signs in the earth beneath; blood, and fire, and vapour of smoke; 20. The sun shall be turned into darkness, and the moon into blood, before that great and notable day of the Lord come: (that's the Tribulation, and Peter knew that it had to come) 21. And it shall come to pass, that whosoever shall call on the name of the Lord shall be saved."

Now that's not Paul, as he writes in Romans 10:9-13, but rather this is Peter. Peter is still in the prophetic program and all he's talking about here is that the One you crucified has been raised from the dead. He's gone back to glory according to Psalms 110:1, and He's sitting at the Fathers right hand; and yet would come the wrath and vexation, and then Christ would return at His second coming, and yet set up His Kingdom. But Israel rejected it so the King couldn't pour out the Tribulation wrath, He had to wait in heaven until something else more glorious would come to pass.

Now we must  turn a little farther in Acts to chapter 9. This is just a quick review. But here in chapter 9 we want to jump all the way to verse 15. Here we are at Saul's tremendous conversion on the road to Damascus. This one who detested (hated with a passion) the name of Jesus of Nazareth because he could see it as just totally rotting away at his precious Judaism. It was defaming his beloved Temple and the Law, and so he did everything humanly possible to stamp out the name of Jesus of Nazareth. So Saul thinks he's got everything pretty much under control in his homeland of Jerusalem and Judea and so now he has gone to the high priest and has gotten permission to even go to Damascus.

Remember, the high priest and the leaders of Judaism had a fair amount of clout even with the Roman government; that they could actually demand extradition from certain cities from the Romans like we do today with certain countries. And so Saul rehearses in Acts chapter 26 what they would do with these who had believed in Jesus of Nazareth. They would take them back to Jerusalem, throw them in prison, and put them to death. Now as Saul of Tarsus has met the Lord on the road to Damascus (and we all know the account here is where we have that tremendous change in the modus operandi of the Sovereign God), look at verse 15.

Acts 9:15,16
"But the Lord said unto him, (Ananias) `Go thy way: for he (Saul of Tarsus, later to be named Paul, signifying a change) is a chosen vessel unto me, to bear my name before the Gentiles, and kings, and the children of Israel: 16. For I will shew him how great things he must suffer for my name's sake.'"

Now that opens the door to the Apostle Paul's ministry among the Gentiles. Now, prophecy had run its course with the exception of the seven years of Tribulation or Jacobs troubles and the 1000 years reign of Christ in the earthy Kingdom age. Christ had come according to prophecy. He fulfilled all righteousness (the Levitical Law, and those prophecies which applied ), He was rejected, He was crucified; but now all of a sudden with Israel's continued rejection (three in Acts alone), the prophetic program of Hebrew-only has come to a screeching halt, and God's time clock stopped, and prophecy stopped. God then opened something completely new in Scripture. And what is it? The mysteries (Deuteronomy 29:29 and those related). Paul is always saying, "Behold I show you a mystery"  Let's look at it in Romans chapter 16 and verse 25: