Introduction

Good morning. Let us turn to Acts chapter 16. I will use the words of a demon to begin this chapter, to describe the whole event.

Once when we were going to the place of prayer, we were met by a female slave who had a spirit by which she predicted the future. She earned a great deal of money for her owners by fortune-telling. She followed Paul and us, shouting, “These men are servants of the Most High God, who are telling you the way to be saved.” (Acts 16:16-17)

The demon said that the servants of the Most High God are telling the way to be saved. Some people think that demons cannot tell the truth. Actually, we should not think of demons as being so bad. Sometimes what demons say is indeed the truth. Everyone must understand that what Chinese Mingding Destiny says may not be entirely correct, but God makes everything beautiful in its time.

Demons are also a beautiful creation. Later, I began to understand that demons are actually angels who work very hard, collecting those who are destined to perish, helping God to clear away the rubbish. Singapore has a lot of foreign workers, and jobs like cleaning up rubbish are done by them. I found that angels do the same work in the spiritual realm. Some people are regarded as treasures by God, while others are regarded as rubbish. The job of demons is to clean up the rubbish in God's eyes.

The theme of this chapter is that the servants of the Most High God are telling the way to be saved. The previous chapters said that the truth of the gospel should remain among us, that is, people are saved by trusting in Jesus. So what does it mean to be saved?

Preaching as We Go

Paul came to Derbe and then to Lystra, where a disciple named Timothy lived, whose mother was Jewish and a believer but whose father was a Greek. (Acts 16:1)

Derbe and Lystra were places Paul had visited before. When he returned, he saw that many people in that place had already believed in the Lord, one of whom was named Timothy.

Then we put out to sea from Troas and set a straight course for Samothrace, and the day after to Neapolis; and from there to Philippi, which is a leading city of the district of Macedonia, and a Roman colony. We remained in this city some days. And on the Sabbath day we went outside the gate to the riverside, where we supposed there was a place of prayer, and we sat down and spoke to the women who had come together. One who heard us was a woman named Lydia, from the city of Thyatira, a seller of purple goods, who was a worshiper of God. The Lord opened her heart to pay attention to what was said by Paul. And after she was baptized, and her household as well, she urged us, saying, “If you have judged me to be faithful to the Lord (Acts 16:11-15)

After Paul and Silas arrived in Philippi, they went to a local prayer meeting and met a businesswoman named Lydia. Lydia invited the disciples to stay at her house, and they preached as they went. The Bible does not say exactly how many people believed in the Lord in this place, but at least there were more believers than when Paul and his companions came to Derbe and Lystra before.

Although it is not recorded in the Book of Acts, I believe that Paul must have done a lot of evangelistic work when he went to these places. Most importantly, they not only preached as they went, but also strengthened the faith of the disciples. When Paul returned to this place, he found that many people were not the ones he had known before, such as Timothy and Lydia, which shows that the gospel had already begun to spread in that place.

Once when we were going to the place of prayer, we were met by a female slave who had a spirit by which she predicted the future. She earned a great deal of money for her owners by fortune-telling. She followed Paul and us, shouting, “These men are servants of the Most High God, who are telling you the way to be saved.” She kept this up for many days. Finally Paul became so annoyed that he turned around and said to the spirit, “In the name of Jesus Christ I command you to come out of her!” At that moment the spirit left her. When her owners realized that their hope of making money was gone, they seized Paul and Silas and dragged them to the marketplace to face the authorities. They brought them before the magistrates and said, “These men are Jews, and are throwing our city into an uproar by advocating customs unlawful for us Romans to accept or practice.” The crowd joined in the attack against Paul and Silas, and the magistrates ordered them to be stripped and beaten with rods. After they had been severely flogged, they were thrown into prison, and the jailer was commanded to guard them carefully. When he received these orders, he put them in the inner cell and fastened their feet in the stocks. (Acts 16:16-24)

What the demon said was true. Paul was indeed preaching the way to be saved as he went. Of course, evil spirits will also tell the truth, because demons are also created by God, and God created evil spirits to do the work of collecting rubbish.

Guided by Jesus

Paul and his companions traveled throughout the region of Phrygia and Galatia, having been kept by the Holy Spirit from preaching the word in the province of Asia. When they came to the border of Mysia, they tried to enter Bithynia, but the Spirit of Jesus would not allow them to. So they passed by Mysia and went down to Troas. (Acts 16:6-8) If you want to ask how the Spirit of Jesus spoke, we don't really know, but the Bible records it that way. We can only guess, does not allowed mean that Paul and his companions would be arrested and imprisoned in the future, so Jesus did not allow it? Not really! It was because the Spirit of God wanted to guide people to preach the gospel, and there seemed to be a trajectory.

In fact, not all traditional Christian views are to be discarded. God specifically wanted to spread the gospel from Jerusalem to Europe, then from Europe to the Americas, and from the Americas to Asia. Then from Asia back to Jerusalem, this is all speculation by later generations. But two thousand years later, we seem to see the trajectory of the gospel being passed on. Let's speculate, why did the Spirit of God not allow Paul to preach the gospel in Asia? In fact, going east from Jerusalem is all Asia, and spreading the gospel to Asia is not a very difficult thing.

If God created Adam and Eve as Asians in those days, or spoke Chinese, if the serpent came to tempt them, before it could say anything about eating the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, they would have been planning how to make braised whole snake, a delicious dish, and there would have been no later events. Of course, this is a joke. The reason why the gospel did not spread to Asia at that time was not because Adam and Eve were not Asians, but because God had a great plan.

At the same time as the gospel was spread to Europe, Buddhism, Taoism, and some other religions in Asia also rose up. The spread of the gospel to Europe was guided by the Spirit of God. As for the reason why it did not go to Asia, we do not know what God's great plan is. Fortunately, the gospel was spread from Jerusalem to Europe, then to the Americas, and then to Asia. Thank God! In our generation, God began to raise up us Asians, which is a remarkable thing.

Since ancient times, it has been rare to hear of a way of believing in the Lord like in this generation. For example, in Korea, a church with 10,000 people is a small church, a church with 100,000 people is considered medium-sized, and a church with 800,000 people is considered a large church. After hearing this, we all feel incredible. How God led us two thousand years ago is another matter, but under the guidance of Jesus, the rise of Asian churches is really a great plan of God in the dark.

A contemporary prophet once said that a small group of Chinese people would be raised up by God to correct many absurd things in the gospel. Isn't that what we are talking about? In the 1950s and 1960s, an American prophet also said that a church would be raised up in the future, without a name or face. Could this be us? How could this be such a coincidence?

Originally, you and I are in God's great plan, and the Spirit of God is guiding the servants of the Most High God to preach the way to be saved. In this generation, it has been passed on to us, and we must take over this baton and become a blessing to the whole earth. Later, I felt that wherever there are people, there will be Chinese people. It turns out that this is part of God's great plan. God wants to raise up us Chinese in this generation, so how honored it is for us to be Chinese Christians in this era!

Sometimes I get so excited when I think about it that I can't sleep, so I start reading God's word, and I read that God's word is the way to be saved! The Spirit of Jesus led the apostle Paul to spread the gospel to Europe. If the gospel had been spread to Asia in that era, it might have been distorted long ago, and it would have been difficult to maintain the purity of the gospel. I was thinking: If Chinese people had believed in the gospel in that era, they might have easily entered into the tradition of idolatry. This is also my wild guess. Thank God! God let the gospel make a circle before it began to turn to our Asia. In terms of numbers, the current Chinese churches are very prosperous!

Paul Chooses Disciples

Paul returned to Derbe and Lystra, the places he had been to before, and met a young man named Timothy. Everyone praised this person and thought he was very good. Paul wanted to take Timothy with him on the road of the servants of the Most High God preaching the way to be saved. Timothy is very famous in the Bible, so famous that Paul specifically wrote the books of 1 Timothy and 2 Timothy.

Paul wanted to choose Timothy as his successor, thinking that if one day he left this world and was taken back to his heavenly home by God, Timothy would take over his baton and continue to move forward. Timothy's mother was Jewish and his father was Greek. According to the Jews, he was a mixed-blood, not a pure Jewish bloodline. Timothy's mother was Eunice, and his grandmother was Lois. Three generations were people who loved the Lord. Paul took Timothy with him to preach the gospel. Even if Timothy was a little weak in character, it didn't matter. His loyalty was enough to make people believe that he could be shaped.

From the whole process, being a servant of the Most High God and preaching the way to be saved includes these things: First, preaching as you go; second, being led by Jesus; and third, choosing disciples and training disciples. As for choosing disciples, let's not talk about what kind of person Timothy is for the time being, but to be a servant of the Most High God, you must do the things mentioned above. I am also doing these things, preaching as I go. At work, people call me a Christian. In fact, they say this with a derogatory meaning, but I think the name is quite good.

Why do some people come to me when they encounter difficulties? Because I am a servant of the Most High God. People like this who usually look down on me, but when they have something wrong and are about to go crazy, they will come to me and ask me to quickly help them drive out ghosts; in their words, help them clean up and say something, although their tone is not pleasant. However, no matter what they say, I know that the servants of the Most High God preach the way to be saved, which is to release people from the bondage of the devil. Jesus will definitely lead us, because we are working with God.

Think about it, ordinary people don't live as well as I do. I meet a lot of people wherever I go, because I have many disciples. In the beginning, there was only me who built the church. Being a pastor doesn't require anything else, just moving the upper and lower lips and speaking. Later, some people quit their jobs and wanted to build the church with me. At that time, my heart was hanging, afraid that taking them would make them live a poor life. But since they came, let's do it with faith! To be honest, when they came, I was very moved and cried for a day, finally ending my days of fighting alone.

If you really have the heart to serve God, prepare yourself well. What a wonderful path this is, to be a servant of the Most High God, with disciples all over the world! In the future, when people get old, their children are busy with work, and the old man and old woman stay at home, they will be very depressed! In the end, the brothers and sisters will see that the father and mother are dead, and they will fight for the inheritance until their faces are red, and the family will be scattered. How blessed I am! I can actually be a servant of the Most High God and preach the way to be saved.

What, then, is the saving doctrine? A brother from Guangdong once told me: The key to life is happiness! Can a servant of the Most High God not be happy? Man fears loneliness, but a servant of the Most High God can never be lonely. Serve God, spread the Gospel of happiness, and the older you get, the happier you become! Serving God is the path to happiness. If one is not happy, one cannot be called a complete person. Serve God together, be servants of the Most High God, and be happy throughout your life!

Strengthening Faith

The apostles Peter and James of the Jerusalem church had already written to the Gentile churches, instructing them not to worship idols, abstain from blood, and avoid sexual immorality. These were minor matters, certainly achievable, as disciples of Jesus who had dedicated themselves to God should find them insignificant.

As they traveled from town to town, they delivered the decisions reached by the apostles and elders in Jerusalem for the people to obey. So the churches were strengthened in the faith and grew daily in numbers. (Acts 16:4-5)

The core issue wasn’t merely adhering to these trivial rules. They believed it was a considerable concession to the Gentiles not to impose the Mosaic Law on them. However, these Gentiles genuinely believed in Jesus, just like our brothers and sisters, readily abstaining from blood as instructed, deeming duck blood and blood tofu insignificant sacrifices. Having dedicated themselves to God, they could live holy lives, avoiding sexual immorality. What faith was ultimately strengthened? Full confidence in Jesus Christ, believing in Jesus is wonderful because it brings happiness!

The churches' faith in Jesus Christ grew stronger, as these brothers and sisters began to walk the path of faith. Continuing on this path, they witnessed miracles and wonders, even demons submitting, becoming tools for disposing of their trash, free of charge, and without garbage fees. God's arrangements are truly marvelous!

Reflect carefully, how much money have we saved in this lifetime? With Jesus, we avoid hospitals, as He is the greatest physician. Medical, educational, and even financial problems are resolved. By steadfastly believing in Jesus and becoming His disciples, financial issues become non-existent. A grain-sized blessing from God in heaven is sufficient for a lifetime.

Brothers and sisters, trust in God, without worrying about old age, your children's future, or your own. We already live in eternal life, chosen by God as servants of the Most High God, spreading the saving doctrine. If you cannot save yourself, who can you save? We are filled with power in the spiritual realm, possessing heavenly authority.

Nothing Can Hinder Us

Understand that we believe in the doctrine of eternal life and have witnessed God's miracles among us, solidifying our faith in Jesus Christ. Minor incidents shouldn't faze us. For example, if I had a nightmare last night, the average person would worry incessantly upon waking, fearing misfortune. But can these matters compare to Jesus? Therefore, reject them, for nothing can hinder our inner faith in God.

During the night Paul had a vision of a man of Macedonia standing and begging him, 'Come over to Macedonia and help us.' After Paul had seen the vision, we got ready at once to leave for Macedonia, concluding that God had called us to preach the Gospel to them. (Acts 16:9-10)

Excessive dreams or words are often filled with illusion. Dreams are spiritual, but not all dreams are visions. Because they are spiritual, releasing something into the spiritual realm can induce dreams. The saying you think of it during the day, you dream of it at night is somewhat inaccurate. Who idles away their daytime thinking about being unable to find their car in a large parking lot? Yet, they genuinely dream of it at night, unable to locate it for months. Thus, excessive dreams or words are often filled with illusion. I often dream of strange and bizarre things, dismissing them entirely upon waking. Can that hinder my faith in Jesus? It's merely a release of lies within the spiritual realm.

The Apostle Paul, accompanied by Silas, encountered a demon-possessed person who constantly proclaimed them as servants of the Most High Eternal God, spreading the saving doctrine. Every time Paul passed by, the demon would shout, causing quite a disturbance. Paul preferred to discreetly preach the Gospel, avoiding grand displays, allowing God's Spirit to guide him. But this demon was cunning, speaking the truth while engaging in subtle flattery.

Once when we were going to the place of prayer, we were met by a female slave who had a spirit by which she predicted the future. She earned a great deal of money for her owners by fortune-telling. She followed Paul and the rest of us, shouting, 'These men are servants of the Most High God, who are telling you the way to be saved.' She kept this up for many days. Finally Paul became so annoyed that he turned around and said to the spirit, 'In the name of Jesus Christ I command you to come out of her!' At that moment the spirit left her. (Acts 16:16-18)

When the demon left, the fortune-telling became inaccurate, infuriating the slave's owners.

When her owners realized that their hope of making money was gone, they seized Paul and Silas and dragged them into the marketplace to face the authorities. They brought them before the magistrates and said, 'These men are Jews, and are throwing our city into an uproar by advocating customs unlawful for us Romans to accept or practice.' (Acts 16:19-21)

The authorities often deal with difficult matters, like excessive construction noise, prompting police intervention. Here, the authorities, seeing that Paul and Silas had disrupted someone's livelihood, had no choice but to arrest them and imprison them.

The crowd joined in the attack against Paul and Silas, and the magistrates ordered them to be stripped and beaten with rods. After they had been severely flogged, they were thrown into prison, and the jailer was commanded to guard them carefully. When he received these orders, he put them in the inner cell and fastened their feet in the stocks. (Acts 16:22-24)

Who knew that after being thrown into prison, Paul and Silas began singing hymns.

About midnight Paul and Silas were praying and singing hymns to God, and the other prisoners were listening to them. (Acts 16:25)

Singing hymns at this time was beneficial, far better than self-pity. The songs were so captivating; Paul and Silas likely didn't have my croaking voice. This is my natural voice; artificial intelligence has learned many things, even my croak. Paul and Silas, without microphones or tools, sang like Pavarotti, with two distinct voices in perfect harmony. Art is undoubtedly powerful; it’s just that I am not capable.

News spread that Paul and Silas had been arrested, beaten, and imprisoned for expelling a demon and disrupting someone's livelihood. People thought they could mock them, but to their surprise, these two began to sing. Their beaten buttocks were still bleeding, so they sang while lying down, and remarkably, their voices were enchanting. Everyone listened intently, even moved by their melodious songs.

Suddenly there was such a violent earthquake that the foundations of the prison were shaken. At once all the prison doors flew open, and everyone's chains came loose. The jailer woke up, and when he saw the prison doors open, he drew his sword and was about to kill himself because he thought the prisoners had escaped. But Paul shouted, 'Don't harm yourself! We are all here!' (Acts 16:26-28)

We think of it as a miracle. The jailer realized he had arrested the wrong people, servants of the Most High God.

The jailer called for lights, rushed in and fell trembling before Paul and Silas. He then brought them out and asked, 'Sirs, what must I do to be saved?' They replied, 'Believe in the Lord Jesus, and you will be saved—you and your household.' Then they spoke the word of the Lord to him and to all his household. At that hour of the night the jailer took them and washed their wounds; then immediately he and all his household were baptized. The jailer brought them into his house and set a meal before them; he was filled with joy because he had come to believe in God—he and his whole household. (Acts 16:29-34)

The jailer frequently witnessed prisoners being led away to execution, causing him psychological trauma. Despite his family's constant comfort, life remained difficult. Meeting the servants of the Most High God, preaching the saving doctrine, he finally grasped at a lifeline, pleading for the path to salvation. Do you believe Jesus can solve your and your family's problems? Absolutely. Man's greatest problem is living in a world filled with hopelessness. Contemplating the future demands finding the path to salvation. Your fortune lies in meeting me and hearing me preach this saving doctrine.

Paul differed from Peter, who, after imprisonment, abandoned the idea of preaching to the Gentiles. Paul and Silas, even with their chains unlocked, remained, waiting. Consequently, the jailer believed, and the Gospel was preached within the prison. The saving doctrine enables a better and happier life. If you desire happiness, follow me and believe in Jesus! One will walk this Mingding Destiny path, serving the Most High God, spreading the saving doctrine. Even demons know, like Sha Wujing and Zhu Bajie, Sun Wukong certainly knows.

We must recognize the need for hope in eternity, preparing ourselves for eternal life—the saving doctrine—while still alive. For Paul, nothing could hinder his service as a servant of the Most High God, spreading the saving doctrine. Later, Paul stated that woe would be upon him if he did not preach the Gospel, a certainty. Like when God repeatedly calls you to do something, and you continually refuse, you are contending with God, acting foolishly.

This chapter concludes here—to be servants of the Most High God, spreading the saving doctrine. Thank God for allowing us to walk the path filled with His glory, leading people to salvation. A sister who suffered from severe depression years ago had parents who came to me and were overjoyed at their child's recovery. Some depression patients require lifelong antidepressants, but causing our sister to become depressed is no longer possible. Once plagued by insomnia, she now falls asleep as soon as her head hits the pillow. That is truly the saving doctrine; parents are incredibly happy to see their child's recovery. May we, brothers and sisters, become servants of the Most High God, and spread this saving doctrine. Brothers and sisters, arise and receive this blessing. Insignificant setbacks and hardships are nothing. We are determined to walk this path filled with God's glory!

May God bless everyone!