The Bible Study Podcast, episode 636.

Today, the Bible Study podcast does the second pre-episode for a study on the book of Galatians.

Welcome to the Bible Study podcast.

I'm your host, Chris Christensen. As I said, we're doing or starting a study on Galatians, and next week we're actually going to get to the book of Galatians. We're going to do one more pre-work, and that is going to be on the Council of Jerusalem from Acts 15. Now, you may remember that last week we talked about Acts 10, where the church first learned

that to be a Christian, you did not have to be Jewish.

And this was a vision that was given to both Peter and to Cornelius, who was a Roman centurion,

that Cornelius should send for Peter, and

Peter was told that he should go, and then the people who heard Peter's sermon, who were

Gentiles, received the Holy Spirit, and therefore were baptized, because the believers now understood

that they were also accepted by God as they were without converting to Judaism.

But that issue didn't die there. It had to be decided by a larger church council,

and that happens five chapters later in the book of Acts at the Council of Jerusalem.

Now, by this point, we get Paul and Barnabas have gone up to Antioch, and they have been teaching, as we understood by that point, that you don't have to be Jewish, but the issue comes up.

And so it says, certain people came down from Judea to Antioch and were teaching the believers,

unless you are circumcised according to the customs taught by Moses, you cannot be saved.

This brought Paul and Barnabas into sharp dispute and debate it with them.

So Paul and Barnabas were appointed along with some other believers to go up to Jerusalem to see the

apostles and elders about this question. The church sent them on their way, and as they traveled

through Phoenicia and Samaria, they told how the Gentiles had been converted. This news made all

the believers very glad. When they came to Jerusalem, they were welcomed by the church and the apostles and elders

to whom they reported everything God had done through them.

Then some of the believers who belonged to the party of the Pharisees stood up and said,

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