you get that, you always get error! God had never said that going through any rite could

save anybody; that is what so many people still think. Oh, the thousands who think that

if they go through some piece of ritual, some ceremony, that this puts them right for

heaven, and God will accept them! Nothing could be further from the truth. There is

only One who can save, and He is the Lord Jesus. And this salvation only becomes

personal, to the person concerned, when it is received by faith in Him, the one and only

Way. There is only one Name given under heaven whereby we must be saved

(Acts 4: 12).  But we do well to realize that the early church had a problem with the

coming-in of Gentiles who, after all, were pagans brought up in the utmost darkness. It is

difficult for us to realize just what the pagan world was like in Paul's day. It was

appalling, a sink of iniquity, immorality and darkness; yet God's wondrous grace was

saving such and then they were brought into relationship with believing Jews. Think of

the different upbringing of an orthodox Jew to a pagan and then, by the grace of God,

they are brought together, to live together, to walk together, and to witness together. Can

you not see the tremendous problems that would be involved? If there was to be any

sense of unity there would have to be some giving from the standpoint of the Jew, and

certainly a change round on the part of the Gentile. What would happen for instance,

concerning the law of Moses, all the rites and ceremonies, the fasts and the feasts, and

their relationship to the saved pagan? Would they be binding upon such? That was the

problem; so a meeting of the leaders was arranged at Jerusalem to discuss this problem.

The Apostle Paul was there; Peter was there; James, the leader at Jerusalem, was there.

And so they came together to seek the Lord's will as to what should be done with the

Gentile believer and the law of Moses. This is the problem that we must consider in our

next study.

We have seen, when we were looking at chapter 15: of the Acts, that the early church

had the great problem of how to bring in the pagan who had been saved into harmonious

relationship with the saved people of Israel, who had been the custodians of God's light

and truth. Since the Exodus their standard of living and walk were so utterly and

absolutely different to the unsaved Gentile that the church had to face up to this fact and

decide the relationship the converted Gentile had to the law of Moses. Some of the Jews

had come up and said, "Unless you are circumcised, unless you keep the whole law, you

cannot be saved". They should have known enough of the truth to realize that was

wrong, because salvation is by grace, by faith in Christ. And so, at this most important

meeting at the centre at Jerusalem we find the Apostle Paul speaking; we find Peter

speaking, and then follows James, the Lord's brother, the overseer of the church at

Jerusalem. Let us note what James said, in verse 13 and onward, "And after they had

held their peace James answered saying, Men and brethren, listen to me--hearken unto

me. Simeon (that is Simon Peter) hath declared how God at the first did visit the Gentiles

to take out of them a people for his name". The people that was taken out from the

Gentiles were linked to and only blessed through the people of Israel. Up to this point