This book is a reading must for those people interested in the history of the Apostolic period and the beginning of Christianity. It begins just after the resurrection of Jesus Christ, then describes a progression of events in the life of the early Church involving people like Peter, John, and later Paul who became its early leaders. It provides rich insight into Roman and Greek cultures and the political system of that day and time, making it a valuable archaeological resource. Some argue that Acts should be the pattern for present-day Christianity since it depicts the character of this new Way at its time of origin. However, care should be taken in this regard, for it is also a time of transition when the Jews were rejecting the Gospel and the Gentiles were accepting it. The book of Acts covers a period of about 30 years and therefore records the reactions of both Jews and Gentiles to the message of Christianity in those first few decades. As a book of transition, it explains how and why the Jews turned away from that message while the Gentiles were turning toward it. Important changes were occurring during this period, so it may be misleading to apply it monolithically to Christianity as it came to be defined in Paul’s Church Letters.

The book of Acts may be divided into the following sections.

• (Acts 1-7):
  
  The setting for the opening scene was Jerusalem where Jesus told them to wait until the day of Pentecost, an early summer harvest celebration under Jewish Law, when the Holy Spirit would come and give them power. That occurred just ten days later when Peter became the spokesman to explain the meaning of that Pentecostal event. We look back to that time as the beginning of the Church, for it was the first occasion when a profession of faith in the resurrected Christ resulted in the gift of the Holy Spirit. About 3000 Jews accepted that invitation on Pentecost creating an instant nucleus of believers who went throughout the city spreading the message of this new Way to God. Of course, many Jewish leaders did not buy Jesus’ Messiahship and there arose immediate confrontations. These came to a showdown two or three years later when a new convert by the name of Stephen was taken before the Jewish high court to defend his faith. His remarks led to emotional outrage by members of that Sanhedrin and they stoned him to death.

• (Acts 8-12):
  
  The course of the new Church took an abrupt change with the death of Stephen. Christians could no longer communicate their faith or even worship safely in Jerusalem, and were scattered throughout the surrounding regions of Judea and Samaria. Up to this point, Christianity was almost exclusively restricted to the Jews. However, with this dispersion, Gentiles began to be introduced to it. A disciple by the name of Philip fled to the region of Samaria where many of those people received the message. The Holy Spirit then directed him to go down to the region of Gaza on the coast of the Mediterranean Sea where he met a man from Ethiopia who heard and accepted the message of salvation. Peter himself was instructed to go speak to a Roman Centurion and his family who also became new converts. Consequently, the beginning of persecution in Jerusalem did not curtail Christianity but actually marked the beginning of its spread to the outside world.

• (Acts 13-20):
  
  Oddly, the original Twelve Apostles were not the ones primarily responsible for the spread of Christianity. When it first began in Jerusalem, it had an archenemy by the name of Saul who was a Pharisee, one of a strict sect of religious Jews. He believed this new Way was heretical and must be stamped out. Saul was zealous in this belief and was probably the instigator of the stoning of Stephen. Saul’s zeal to eradicate Christianity led him to ferret out those of this new-found faith, demanding they recant on pain of death, so that he became a terror to all Christians. If a list had been made of all the persons in the world who might best further the cause of Christianity, Saul most certainly would have been at the bottom of the list. Therefore it is extraordinary that this man should become its most dedicated champion. His unexpected transformation occurred on the road to Damascus where he was miraculously confronted by the ascended Christ and converted to the faith. Other disciples were so astonished by this unlikely change of heart that they were afraid to even associate with him for a time, but his sincerity was proved as he began to preach Christ to all who would hear. Today we know this man as Paul, the Apostle who became the great proclaimer and apologist of the Christian faith. His superb intellect, unexcelled knowledge of the Old Testament, but personal humility, made Paul a worthy advocate of the faith. No one among the First Century fathers of the Church was his equal in the spread of Christianity to the Gentile world. Although his ministry was intensive, its most notable aspects involved three missionary journeys throughout the Roman and Greek world taking only a little over a decade. As his message became increasingly shrill to the hearing of his own Jewish countrymen, they stubbornly refused to accept the message of the New Covenant. He eventually became the "lightning rod" for their hatred of Christianity and the object of their attacks.

• (Acts 21-28):
  
  The final phase of the book of Acts describes Paul’s return to Jerusalem after his missionary journeys. He was confronted by hostile fellow Jews who desired to see him dead. He was arrested in the Temple after an incident and forced to appear before a series of tribunals and tetrarchs. They bureaucratically kept handing his case to the next higher authority until his appeals finally delivered him to the very seat of the Emperor of the Roman Empire. The book ends with Paul in Rome reasoning with some of the Jews at that place. That confrontation brought him to quote a prophecy in the book of Isaiah describing how Israel would finally reject their Messiah.

REDEMPTIVE PLAN