<p>13:11 <i>Whenever you are arrested and brought to trial- </i>The very language of the Lord's final sufferings, which will be fellowshipped / experienced in the latter day tribulation (s.w. Lk. 22:54; 23:1,32; Jn. 18:28; 19:4,13).</p><p><i>Do not worry beforehand about what to say- </i>A major theme of the Sermon on the Mount is not to be anxious; the same word occurs in Mt. 6:25,27,28,31,34. Here the Lord is surely saying that the general principles He had taught there would have specific fulfilment in time of persecution.&nbsp;</p><p><i>Say whatever shall be given you in that hour- </i>&quot;Given you&quot; is language appropriate to Moses and prophets like Jeremiah; it is here applied to the Lord's generally secular followers (Ex. 4:10-12; Jer. 1:6-10). He was continually encouraging them to see that ministries which they had never considered possible of realistic emulation were in fact to be their pattern. Time and again, the Lord is saying that His experience under persecution will be ours. For it was&nbsp;<i>given&nbsp;</i>Him what to&nbsp;<i>speak&nbsp;</i>(Jn. 3:34; 12:49 same words) and He wants us to know that if we preach Him and seek to replicate His ministry in our own, then God likewise will strengthen us as He did His own Son. We note that it was likewise&nbsp;<i>given</i>&nbsp;to the apostles what to&nbsp;<i>speak</i>&nbsp;in Acts 2:4; 4:29. They misunderstood the great commission- they twisted it to mean that they must preach to all Jews rather than to all the Gentiles; but by grace, God still kept this aspect of the promise to support obedience to the commission given; even if it was misunderstood.</p><p><i>For it is not you that will speak but the Holy Spirit</i>- Even although &ldquo;we do not know how to pray for as we ought, the Spirit himself intercedes for us&rdquo; (Rom. 8:26). The Spirit of the Father and Son speaks in us when we pray (Rom. 8:15), if our will / spirit is theirs. To put this in more technical but I think very telling terms: &ldquo;The subject-object scheme of &lsquo;talking to somebody&rsquo; is transcended; He who speaks through us is he who is spoken to&rdquo; (Paul Tillich,&nbsp;<i>Systematic Theology</i>&nbsp;Vol. 3 (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1963) p. 192). It&rsquo;s perhaps the thought behind this idea of not us by the Spirit speaking.</p><p>Mt. 10:20 says that the Spirit will speak &quot;in you&quot;, not, as we might expect, &lsquo;through you&rsquo;. It may be that the Lord is hinting that if we have the Spirit of God within us, if we are thinking in a spiritual way generally in life, then in times of crisis that Spirit which is in us will guide us to say the right things when under pressure. If we are&nbsp;<i>now</i>&nbsp;spiritually minded, with our spirit being God&rsquo;s Spirit, then in that future time of crisis we will know how to speak, the words will come out right, because we have lived now in a spiritually minded way. The idea of the Spirit of God speaking in a person, so that their words are not theirs but God&rsquo;s, was language which Jews would&rsquo;ve associated with the Old Testament prophets. Again we see the Lord inviting His secular, immature followers to see themselves as the prophets, those whom they had been taught were in a class of their own, and to whom they as mere secular men could in no way pretend. But the Lord&rsquo;s followers were to be a new Moses, new prophets, a new priesthood, a new Israel.</p><p>Luke adds here: &quot;For I will give you the words and wisdom, which all your adversaries shall not be able to withstand or to contradict&quot; (Lk. 21:15). This is alluding to Ex. 4:12, where God tells Moses at the time of the Egyptian persecution of God's people, &quot;I will be with your mouth and teach you what you shall say&quot;. This persecution lead to intensified prayer to God, resulting in&nbsp;the deliverance of the suffering saints at Passover time, after a period of especial distress and 'time of trouble' for the surrounding world due to the plagues. After this deliverance, God's people went into the wilderness and were declared God's Kingdom. We have earlier shown how all these events form a remarkable latter day prophecy. This verse also suggests that the gifts of the Spirit may be given to some in the Elijah ministry in order to enable them to make a more powerful witness (as in Rev.11:6). The fact they are given personally by Christ would indicate that in some way, Christ is already back at this stage. Time and again we will see how the prophecies of events in the last days are ambiguous as to whether Christ is already back at the time of their fulfilment, or whether they herald his return. Seeing that we will never know the exact time of Christ's return, this is understandable. Similarly Joel 2 prophesies the pouring out of the gifts &quot;before the great and terrible day of the Lord&quot; (:31). Malachi surely refers to this passage when prophesying the Elijah ministry &quot;before the coming of the great and dreadful day of the Lord&quot; (Mal. 4:5). This suggests that the three and a half year Elijah ministry of the last days (James 5:17) will be accompanied by Spirit gifts, and will coincide with the time of persecution. Note that the gifts were given &quot;before the day of the Lord&quot; in AD70 too. It is possible that because of this possession of the gifts by 'Elijah', false teachers within the ecclesia at the end will also claim to possess them (Mt. 24:24), so convincingly that all but the elect within the ecclesia will be duped into following them. Yet it must be stressed that it is a feature of the gifts that they are unmistakable and obvious to identify (cp. Acts 4:16); it will be evident enough if and when they are poured out in the last days.</p>