Acts Part 3 (Chapters 10-14)

As mentioned in my previous Acts post, the stage is set by the end of chapter nine for the disciples to move into a full awareness of the scope of God's intentions for the world and how the gospel truly flips everything on its head and begins a new day for humanity.

It starts with God's man praying on a rooftop.  He gets confused and even initially resists God's message to him.  Even as the vision concludes, he is left pondering its meaning.  God then uses external forces to finish making the point He began making on the rooftop.  Visitors arrive and take him away to receive full clarity of what God was intending for him to grasp.  The gospel is to be proclaimed to the gentiles!

As we will see in future chapters, this new development is one of THE primary tensions within the church and becomes a chief tool to bring persecution against the church.  You see the many questions and tensions addressed in many of the  New Testament letters.  The door opening to the gentiles for redemption underlies the circumcision controversy which shows up in the Jerusalem Council in chapter 15.  It also seems, when read closely, to be the primary thing that incited the masses at Paul's arrest in chapter 22.  The development ushers in a whole new wave of issues that had to be sorted through.  The relationship that the Old Covenant under Mosaic law has with the New Covenant under Jesus.  This new development seems to also have drawn a sharper line between those Jews who submit to the New Covenant and those who would not. 

A new center of gentile Christianity emerges in Antioch(present day Syria).  Paul and Barnabas seem tasked with being among its leadership.  A prophet named Agabus announces that there will soon be a famine, and a collection is taken up by the gentile church and taken by Paul and Barnabas to Jerusalem for the relief from the coming famine.  Around this same time, there is a new wave of persecution that is launched by Herod that takes the life of James the brother of John and leads to the imprisonment of Peter.  Peter is miraculously rescued from execution by an angel and briefly visits the mother of John Mark to make it known to the Jerusalem church before fleeing from Herod.  Paul and Barnabas then return to Antioch after fulfilling their delivery.  They take the young John Mark with them back to Antioch. 

Chapters 13 and 14 tell of the first missionary journey of Paul around the Mediterranean world to both Jews and gentiles.  Barnabas is Paul's companion for this first trek, and John Mark accompanies them for the initial leg of their trip.  An interesting thing to contrast is how they are welcomed and even given a place to speak in many synagogues.  You will notice this becoming an increasingly rare thing as more and more Jews harden their conviction either for or against the gospel throughout the Roman empire.