In the course of the next little while, you will hear in my storytelling over 50, and I do mean 5-0 scriptures.

If you're familiar with the Christmas story, you will know them when you hear them.

But what I'd like to do with your permission, knowing in advance that it's going to be fiction,

is that I'd like to also offer a little imagination here and there that might help

set us in the scene.

Some things that would make us perhaps feel it a little bit more.

Think about what's going on.

Try to think between the lines of Scripture.

What was it like to actually be eyewitness to something like this?

So, if you're game for that, I think we're going to have a good time. We will begin this hearing of the ancient eternal story in what will seem too many like a most unusual place.

So I'm asking you to command your mind's eye to be wide awake and your

heart to be fully engaged and let your ears be inclined to hear, step in so close to each scene

that you can practically smell the sense and that you could feel the textures, not of the sweater you have around you right now,

but of something far more similar to garments, they might have worn right around the time of

AD 30 to 33. Now, you were expecting me to say, AD1, but I'm starting us in a little different place,

and then we are going to look back behind us. So you and I are starting out our story,

not in Luke chapter 1, but in Acts chapter 1, because I hope to prove to you that we actually have more in common,

more that we can relate to, in the group that is meeting together in the opening of Acts 1,

then we would in that circle of individuals in Luke chapter 1. So, picture it now, put yourself

in the scene. You and I are crowded in an upstairs room in Jerusalem with 120 others. Most of them are men, if not nearly all, but a good handful of them. We are told explicitly by the Holy Spirit were women.

And we are told that these are women that are not just observing,

not just watching what is going on,

...