Transcript
I note that in Ed's introduction, in describing my presentation of Acts to the GES group, he said it went on a lot longer than it should have. I hope you will not think that this is the story of my life, and I'm going to try particularly tonight to be relatively brief.
I am very glad to be back in Oregon country. I understand we have nice summer weather ahead of us for this week, and I'm looking forward to that. As you may know, I call this LLL territory, which stands for the land of luscious leftovers. If you need any explanation of that, anybody in the audience can give it to you.
As an ex-professor, I certainly appreciate being given an enviable assignment. All that I have to do is to cover the entire book of Acts in five evenings. But I should count my blessings, I guess. They might have asked me to cover the Clinton health care reform plan in five evenings. Even the thought of doing that drives me half mad, back to the book of Acts.
What I want to do tonight is to say some introductory things about the book of Acts. Then in the subsequent nights, we will go through each of the major units of the book of Acts. But tonight too, we want to consider some preliminary and introductory things.
One of the first things that we probably should ask ourselves about a study like this is, why should we study the book of Acts? I'm sure there are lots of reasons why we should, and I'm going to name a few. But I'm sure that you can add to them. Let me just enumerate a few reasons why I think we need to study the book of Acts.
First of all, Acts is a unique book in the New Testament canon. It is really our only inspired account of early church history. It stands alone. If we talk about the Gospels, we have more than one gospel. If we talk about the epistles, more than one epistle. This is the only book which gives us a divine record of the early history of the church.
A second reason I think that we need to study the book of Acts is that Acts is crucial, I believe, to the Christian church's self-image and to our sense of mission. It is crucial to our self-image. What are we really to be as the church in the world today, and what is our mission? There's a sense in which we could say that the book of Acts drives us back to our roots and gives us a sense of who we are as members of the Christian church.
A third reason I think that we need to study the book of Acts is that Acts gives us a crucial and appropriate perspective on dispensational truth. Acts is crucial if we're going to get a correct perspective on dispensational truth. Now I know that the word dispensation has sometimes fallen on hard times in our day, and everyone is happy to be identified as a dispensationalist or not. But I confess to you that I'm too old to change, and I'm too convinced to change. I'm an unreconstructed dispensational thinker, and so you'll just have to put up with me for the rest of the week. Because I definitely think that we can learn dispensational truth from the book of Acts.
Fourthly, I think that properly understood, the book of Acts casts a flood of light on the modern charismatic movement. That we can in fact go a long way toward assessing the validity of the modern charismatic movement by a careful study of the relevant passages in the book of Acts. And for that reason, because the charismatic movement is a very strong movement, we need the book of Acts.
A fifth reason it seems to me that Acts discloses the foundation of biblical ecclesiology. Ecclesiology is a big long theological word for the doctrine of the church. What we have in the book of Acts is significant information about early church organization and early church meetings and early church order. We are to assess what we are doing in the light of what the Bible presents. The book of Acts is a great place to start in terms of ecclesiology.
Sixth, it seems to me that the book of Acts contributes significantly to the biblical doctrine of salvation. My personal opinion is that the most fruitful verse in the whole Bible in terms of winning people to the Lord is John 3:16. It is probably true that more people have come to salvation through John 3:16 than almost any other verse. But if there is a number-two contender, I would say Acts 16:31, “Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, and thou shalt be saved.” That is quoted almost as frequently and has been almost as effective in the hands of God as John 3:16.
But there are questions that we can raise about the teaching of salvation in the book of Acts, very relevant questions like the relationship between salvation and repentance, the relationship between salvation and baptism, and the gift of the Spirit, and so on. And so we need to address these issues within the framework of the book of Acts and fit them appropriately to the larger framework of the biblical doctrine of salvation.
Now those are six reasons. One thing that I learned in Dallas Theological Seminary is that no list is complete without a seventh reason. Dr. Chafer had his sevens all over the place, and it's biblical because there are a lot of sevens in the book of Revelation. Don't you agree? So I have to find a seventh reason for studying the book of Acts, and here it is.
This is for those of us who like to preach and teach. It seems to me that Acts is a goldmine of potential sermons with great relevance to Christian living. We can learn from the book of Acts about the nature of post-Pentecostal discipleship, that is the kind of discipleship that God is seeking since the day of Pentecost. One of the things that makes the book of Acts so highly preachable is that to an amazing extent it revolves around a small number of men, as other biblical historical books do exactly that.
Suppose you subtracted Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Noah, and Joseph from the book of Genesis. How much would you have left? Or Saul and David from the books of First and Second Samuel. Now try this on. If you were to subtract from the book of Acts the following people: Peter, John, Stephen, Philip, James, Barnabas, and Paul, how much would you have left? Very little.
I think that one of the things we learn from the Bible, and one of the things that is confirmed to us again in the book of Acts, is that the story of God's working on earth is oftentimes the story of His working through great men. Now we're not saying that God doesn't use everybody. He certainly does use everybody. But it's amazing how a few men in the history of mankind have been instruments in carrying forward the overarching purposes of God. And this is certainly true as we look at the book of Acts. So we have a lot of good solid personal material that we can study, and if you're a preacher, we can preach it. The book of Acts is highly preachable. Those are the reasons, not the only reasons, but some of the reasons I think we should study the book of Acts.
Now one of the first questions that we have to ask about the book of Acts is, what is its purpose? Why did Luke write this book? What was he trying to do through this book? And the moment we say this, we realize that we cannot separate the purpose of the book of Acts from the purpose of the Gospel of Luke. We have in Luke-Acts the only two-volume work in the New Testament. Obviously the prologue of the book of Acts connects back with the Gospel of Luke. So when we are thinking of an overarching purpose for the book of Acts, we cannot divorce the Gospel of Luke from that.
So I submit that first of all, if we're going to interpret the book of Acts, we will have to search for its purpose. Now if you're just beginning to study Acts, you may not know its purpose. One of the ways of discovering the purpose of a book is to study through it and then to study through it again and study through it again. One of the laws of interpretation is that you understand the whole in terms of its parts, and you understand the parts in terms of the whole. So the process of studying a book of the Bible is a process of learning what the parts have to contribute while learning the big picture, learning the overarching purpose of the book that you are studying.
Now whatever purpose Luke had, we will be able to arrive at it. For example, if you reduce this to the simplest possible level and say Luke was simply reporting historical facts, he's writing history and just reporting the facts, then you have said something about his purpose, haven't you? His purpose was to write history and report facts. So no matter which way you go in the study of a book like this, you will have to think in terms of purpose.
As a matter of fact, it is not at all probable that that was Luke's purpose. We'll say more about that later. That is certainly not a self-evident purpose for the book of Acts if you look at it carefully. And I would submit to you it is probably wrong. Luke is not merely a historian telling us what happened, because there's too much that he could have told us that he doesn't tell. We'll return to this in a moment.
But in any case, the logical place to start is with the prologue of each of these two books. I'm going to ask you to take your Bibles, and I would like to ask for a volunteer to read the prologue of the Gospel of Luke. Can I get somebody to volunteer for that? It's nine o'clock Dallas time, and I don't read well at this time of night. But I know you folks can do it. How about a volunteer to read the prologue of the Gospel of Luke? Chapter one, verses one to four is all that you're going to need to read.
Okay, well I had forgotten about the mic problem. Maybe I should read it. Should I? Or okay, Edie will read the prologue of Luke.
As many have taken in hand to set in order a narrative of those things which are most surely believed among us, just as those who from the beginning were eyewitnesses and ministers of the word delivered them to us, it seemed good to me also, having had perfect understanding of all things from the very first, to write to you an orderly account, most excellent Theophilus, that you may know the certainty of those things in which you were instructed.
Thanks. And can anyone get a glimmer of purpose out of that prologue? Theophilus is the person being addressed. What purpose does Luke say he has in addressing Theophilus? With this certainty, “that you may know the certainty of the things in which you've been instructed.”
Okay, let's all turn to Acts chapter one and read the prologue of Acts again. The first three or four verses of the book of Acts.
The former account I made, O Theophilus, of all that Jesus began both to do and teach until the day in which He was taken up, after He through the Holy Spirit had given commandments to the apostles whom He had chosen, to whom He also presented Himself alive after His suffering by many infallible proofs, being seen by them during forty days and speaking of the things pertaining to the kingdom of God.
Now careful. Is there a purpose statement here for Acts? Not really. What do we really have here in this prologue? Do we not have a summary of the previous volume? Does that have anything to suggest to us about the possible purpose of the book of Acts? It goes back to that you may know the certainty of the things of which you have been instructed.
So I think we may begin with the thought that the purpose of Luke-Acts has as its foundation certitude about the things that have been taught to Theophilus.
Now the problem of the purpose of the book of Acts has exercised the scholars extensively. They have made many, many suggestions, and much pen and ink have been expended on expounding the purpose. Quite frankly, the scholarly community, this is not surprising, but the scholarly community has not reached a consensus on the purpose.
Let me just quickly name for you some of the purposes for the book of Acts that have been suggested. One suggestion is the chief purpose of Luke-Acts, because in most modern study Luke and Acts are treated as a single whole, is evangelism. The aim was to win unsaved people to faith in Christ. In the book of Acts this suggestion works rather poorly because there is so much material that presumes some background, for example in Jewish thinking, that seems irrelevant to direct evangelism.
Let's take only Acts 21 to 28, which traces for us the various imprisonments and trials of the Apostle Paul. The longest chapter in the book of Acts is the shipwreck chapter in Acts 27. That I might add that in terms of Greek reading, many Greek students have also suffered shipwreck in the 27th chapter of Acts because it is filled with technical Greek terminology related to seagoing ships and experiences on the sea.
I remember very clearly one of our classes. We were doing speed reading, and we came to Acts 27. We said to the professor, “Do you think we could skip Acts 27?” I don't know this for a fact, folks, but I suspect that he was inclined to do it. “Yes, we'll skip it.” We went to Acts 28. All of us rose up and called him blessed because he had kept us from sinking into the waves of Acts 27. But what does this have to do with evangelism if indeed the purpose of the book of Acts is evangelism?
The problem is that there is a great deal of material contained in the book of Acts that doesn't serve this purpose. Therefore we may raise a very serious question whether we have gotten the correct purpose. One of the ways of testing a purpose construct for a book is to ask the question, does it really cover the book? Can we understand why this is in the book and why this is in the book under the supposition that this is its purpose?
Another suggestion that has been made is that Luke wrote to defend Paul at his trial. Probably none of us will spend very much time wrestling with this. There's too much else in the book that doesn't serve that purpose. One very prominent Acts scholar suggested that Luke wrote to defend Christians in the eyes of the Roman government. There was a problem with early Christianity in that if it was a part of Judaism, then it was a legal religion. If it was not a part of Judaism, then it was an illegal religion. It was a religio illicita, an illegal cult under Roman law, unless it could be shown that it was part and parcel of Judaism.
So the suggestion has been made that the purpose is to show that this was in fact a real and legitimate extension of Judaism. One of the scholars who has written on this has made a very effective rebuttal which he states better than I can. He says no Roman official would ever have filtered out so much of what to him would have been logical and ecclesiastical rubbish in order to reach so tiny a grain of relevant apology. What he's saying is the Roman official would look for this and say most of this is rubbish, this is a cult and superstition, and this would not be an effective form of apology before Roman officials. So this is a very unlikely purpose.
Now these three purposes therefore assume that the purpose of the book of Acts is outwards, beyond the church. But as a matter of fact, we can also emphasize that the purpose was inward and toward the church. Is there anything in the prologue that we read a few moments ago of the book of Luke that would suggest to us that we might have an intended audience within the church? Yes. Theophilus is not a man who is just hearing this message for the first time, right? But he's a man who has been instructed in these things. And Luke wants him to have the certainty of the things in which he's been instructed.
The best hypothesis first of all is that whatever the purpose is, it is directed to Christian people.
Now there have been some wild suggestions made here. For example, that Luke wrote to defend Paul's memory against the attacks on him embodied by Jewish Christians. In other words, under this view the writer of the book of Acts rewrites history to defend Paul's name and to prove that after all Paul was not an apostate from the Jewish faith. He was an observant person within the Jewish faith. This is clearly a liberal idea that has really no basic support to it.
Another suggestion that has been made is that the book of Acts was written to explain the problem of the delay of the Second Coming. Many modern scholars feel that the early Christians were exercised by the fact that though Jesus had predicted His coming seemingly very soon, He didn't come real quickly. I doubt very much that Luke was worried about that, but a lot of scholarly literature has been produced to explain this.
Another idea is that Luke wrote to counter the early Christian heresy of Gnosticism. But you have to take a magnifying glass and go over the text to find much evidence for Gnosticism behind this.
A much better suggestion has been made about the purpose of Acts if it is written to a Christian audience. Here I want to quote one of the recent writers on the purpose of Acts because I think his quote is well stated and worth hearing. He writes, “The subject of the work is those things which have been fulfilled among us. Its aim is to allow the readers to perceive the reliability of the message they have heard. It is a work aimed at reassuring the Christian community about the significance of the tradition and faith in which it stands.”
Now that's not bad. I wouldn't say it's perfect, but notice the emphasis upon certitude and that the Christian audience is to glean from this the certainty of the things in which they have been instructed. We are sure that Luke did not write just for Theophilus alone. He's the man to whom the book is dedicated, but undoubtedly there was intended a larger Christian audience than merely Theophilus himself.
We can improve on this a little bit, it seems to me. If we look carefully at the book of Acts, we encounter some immediate surprises. How many of us have ever heard Acts 1:8 as a statement of the unfolding of the book of Acts? Come on, most of us have. If we read 1:8 and had never read the book of Acts before, it's hard for us to do this. But we will read 1:8 and we say to ourselves, what are we expecting here? The answer would be, would it not, we expect to have traced for us all of the missionary activities of the Twelve Apostles. “You shall be My witnesses in Jerusalem, Judea, Samaria, and the uttermost parts of the earth.”
This is followed by a very elaborate description of the way in which the spot of Judas was filled by Matthias. We still would expect, would we not, to have the missionary journeys of the Twelve Apostles before us as they carried the gospel to the uttermost parts of the earth.
What do we get? Well, after that point when the Twelve Apostles are named and Matthias is added to their number, we only meet Peter and John. If you will look closely at the text, you will discover that John never says anything on his own. He's just there as kind of the sidekick of Peter, probably related to the Jewish law of witnesses. “In the mouth of two or three witnesses every word shall be established.” But for all intents and purposes, we have only Peter.
Then what about the middle of the book? Peter drops out. He resurfaces once in Acts 15, but here this is what I would call a cameo role. In Acts 15 his role is to support the Apostle Paul. Suddenly in the middle of the book we dismiss all twelve of the Apostles, except for that brief appearance by Peter. Who becomes the central figure who stands at the center of Luke's stage? Paul. Would we have expected that from Acts 1:8? I think not.
Acts 1:8 therefore cannot be taken as a clear indication of what the author intends to do in this book. In fact, 1:8 raises expectations which are never fulfilled. No one can adequately state the purpose of the book of Acts who does not account for the fact that Paul replaces Peter and the twelve.
Furthermore, we expect, and I've heard people say this from the platform, that the story of the evangelization of the world is what is involved here. When we get to Rome, that's considered the uttermost parts of the earth. But hold it. What does Paul do at Rome according to the book of Acts? Does he talk to the Gentiles? We don't know. What does he do? He gets together with a group of Jews, and he presents Christ out of the Scriptures. The Jews part, and Paul remains in his own lodging preaching the kingdom of God.
There we can infer things, how certainly. But the emphasis of the story is not upon his Gentile mission in Rome, right? In a way, that's the emphasis of the Roman story in Acts 28. What about 27 again? What's this big watery chapter doing in the middle of the record of evangelization? Maybe we can figure some things out, but these are obvious problems, aren't they?
That they make a working suggestion for our purposes in these nights together that in the book of Luke, Luke is concerned to lay the foundation for what he wants to do in the book of Acts. In the book of Luke it is established by Luke, I think, that the Lord Jesus Christ is the legitimate fulfillment of Israel's Messianic hope. That His death, burial, and resurrection fulfill Old Testament Scriptures. In fact, that's what Luke 24 is about, isn't it? Right at the climax there, the walk on the road to Emmaus with Christ. He opens the Scriptures and shows them how Christ had to suffer and be raised from the dead and enter into His glory.
Luke is punctuating for us the entire book. This is the Savior of whom the Scriptures have spoken. But something very unexpected happens when the risen Christ works after His exaltation to the right hand of God. What happens? The Jews reject His message. The testimony of the twelve apostles is shut out more or less from the Jewish community. God begins to work with the Gentiles, and His principle figure in working with the Gentiles is the Apostle Paul.
Now put yourself in the place of a man like Theophilus. Let us suppose that Theophilus was a Pauline Christian. Suppose he hears criticism from unbelieving Jews, and they say, “Look, Paul is a heretic from the Jewish religion. He renounces the law of Moses as necessary to salvation. He teaches us that we are in a unique body of individuals in which Jews and Gentiles are equal.” The majority of the Jewish teachers and theological teachers reject him. How can he claim that he is teaching the fulfillment of Israel's legitimate hopes in preaching the Lord Jesus Christ?
You can fill in the blanks on that kind of an argument that would be very effective, couldn't it? “Oh wait a minute. Have we been led astray by a heretic from the Jewish religion, his own nation? They reject his message. They reject his Messiah.” This process could call into question the certainty of the things in which they've been instructed.
But by reading and studying the two-volume work of Luke-Acts, it seems to me that what is demonstrated here beyond any question of a doubt is that the risen Christ, who does in fact legitimately fulfill Israel's expectations, is at work in the life and ministry and program of the Apostle Paul.
Suddenly Acts 27 has an auto meaning. This is God's man to whom God has said, “As you have borne witness of Me in Jerusalem, so you must bear witness of Me at Rome.” God is going to get him there even if He gets him there on the loose boards and planks of a shattered ship. In the midst of the Acts 27 narrative, who is it that stands tall when everybody else gives up hope? Paul. Who is it that knows more than the owners of the ship when to sail? Paul. Whose prayers preserve the ship? It's Paul.
In big letters in Acts 27, Luke is saying Paul is God's man. Hopefully that has already been evident from the ministry of the Apostle Paul, from the call of the Apostle Paul, to the ministry of the Apostle Paul, to his full testimony in front of the Roman governors, to his bold and confident reliance upon Christ in the midst of his final trip to Rome according to this book.
I submit therefore the purpose of the book of Acts is in a sense to verify that the Pauline mission is a work of the risen Christ.
I'm about finished, but I want to give you an idea of where we're going in the next nights. I'm already reducing the assignment, but that's because it's now 9:46 Dallas time.
One of the questions we have to face as we try to unfold the book of Acts is not only its purpose but its structure. I don't want to spend more than just a couple more minutes with you in terms of structure. But I think that a very viable analysis of the structure of the book of Acts can be laid out.
I hasten to say that this structural analysis of Acts is not original with me. It goes back to a man named C. H. Turner who presented it in 1898 in an article in the Hastings Dictionary of the Bible. In Turner's breakdown of the book of Acts, each section he calls a panel, and there are six panels. So in Turner's six panels, according to Turner, there is a period of five years covered. So his analysis of the book of Acts was basically five years, five years, five years, five years, five years, five years.
That was Turner's analysis. Relying upon the fact that there were at the end of each of his panels summary statements that seemed to conclude the panel. We're going to look at those summary statements in just a moment.
But let me say one thing about this. In adopting Turner's idea of the structure of the book of Acts, we are not adopting his chronological sequence here. In my opinion the panels stand or fall by the content of the book, and the chronological aspect of this is not relevant. I very much doubt that all panels in the book of Acts cover five years and five years only. But I do believe that Turner was right in analyzing these panels.
Very quickly, as basically the final thing we're going to do, I want you to look at the summary statements that conclude each of the panels. We will of course take chapter 1 verses 1 through 3 as a prologue. Then we will say panel number one begins at 1:4 and concludes at 6:7.
Panel number one. Notice the summary statement.
Then the word of God spread, and the number of the disciples multiplied greatly in Jerusalem, and a great many of the priests were obedient to the faith.
I think we have panel number one here. Panel number two begins at 6:8 and goes all the way to 9:31. Acts 9:31,
Then the churches throughout all Judea, Galilee, and Samaria had peace and were edified. And walking in the fear of the Lord and in the comfort of the Holy Spirit, they were multiplied.
The next panel I think goes from 9:32 to 12:24. Let's go to 12:24. Here we have a relatively short summary statement.
But the word of God grew and multiplied.
The next panel I think goes from 12:25 to 16:5. Acts 16:5,
So the churches were strengthened in the faith, and increased in number daily.
The next panel I think goes from 16:6 to 19:20. Let's flip over to 19:20.
So the word of the Lord grew mightily and prevailed.
The final panel is the rest of the book from 19:21 to 28:31, I believe it is.
Now it will be one of our objectives in the following nights to go through the book of Acts panel by panel. The only way we confirm that these are indeed significant and independent units of the book of Acts is to attempt to show you the way in which they hang together around a basic theme which advances the total progress of thought in the book of Acts.
I think you will be surprised at some of the things we will be able to show you about these panels. Because what we really have in the author of the book of Acts is a very fine and skilled craftsman. These are the sometimes almost invisible seams between the units of his book. But once we have isolated the sections of the book, we are amazed how each section has things that bind it together and that the section as a whole communicates the central message. Each section builds on the preceding section until we get to the end.
It is evident if this analysis is correct, what is the most important section for Luke? Which of the six panels is the most important to him? Number six. It is far longer than any of the others. Now understand this doesn't make any of the panels unimportant. But isn't it true that when we study the book of Acts we usually concentrate on the early part of Acts? That's where all our problems are, you know, the baptism of the Spirit, the filling of the Spirit, the gift of tongues. When we get to the last unit, we go, forgive the pun, sailing through it because all of this is straightforward stuff, right? Now here he is. He's on trial. He appeals his case. He gives another defense. He appeals to Caesar. He goes to Caesar. He arrives in Rome. What problems are there here? But this is the most important unit without which the purpose of the book of Acts could not possibly be fulfilled from the standpoint of the author.
So hopefully I can keep you hanging in here until we get to the last unit on Saturday night. So that's the approach we're going to take, and hopefully this will be a profitable exercise for me. I haven't been through this material in a public forum for a number of years, and for you. Hopefully you learn a few things in the process.
Let me take about five minutes to field any questions that you may have, and then I'll turn it back to Ed. Any questions? Obviously there are going to be questions about all sorts of things before the week is over. But questions that arise immediately from anything that I've said tonight.
Yeah, well the major question in my mind is what would you say to Acts 1:8? It is easy to trace through the book where people have taught that when we meet we see it. But from Jerusalem to Judea to Samaria to the uttermost parts, did you see that progression? Even sees a repetition of the same thing. What would you say to people who say that Luke is proving that the gospel spread or I've heard it to prove that the work of the Holy Spirit spread to convince Jews that Gentiles also have the same thing?
Well I think there are many things that the book of Luke and the book of Acts could be said to verify. But the difference here I think is between seeing this as an important verse and seeing it as a thematic verse. In other words, it is true that geographically, loosely speaking, we get Jerusalem, we get Judea and Samaria. It may be questionable whether we get the uttermost parts of the earth even at Rome. But here you're just on the in terms of the uttermost parts. I'm sorry you can promptly forget this. They excited you out or a walk through. But we're pushing it a little bit to say that Rome is the uttermost parts of the earth. First of all, Spain was the uttermost part of the earth as known in Roman times. Furthermore, we don't have the evangelization of the city of Rome except perhaps in the summary statement. It does not look as if the major concern of Luke the writer when he gets Paul to Rome is to show how he evangelizes the Gentiles of Rome. It's his interaction with the Jews that is so crucial. We shall see that that serves the actual purpose of Acts much better than to say and to kind of push it and say well this is you know Rome is the great big city and this must be tantamount to the uttermost parts of the earth. Again we're pushing a little bit. The unfolding is kind of like that but it's not perfect.
Furthermore Acts 1:8 says you guys shall be my witnesses and certainly those guys at least don't get to Rome. They don't even get out of Palestine for that matter. So we have a problem there. In other words this is a very functional verse but not a thematic verse in my judgment. It tells us something about the programmatic development of the spread of the gospel but it does not tell us why Luke is writing this book.
And also many think that progression meant to show that it's just the same could be subsumed under your purpose. Yes but it doesn't work the other way. That's right. Yes and most of the ideas that we have correctly picked up out of the book of Acts can be subsumed under the larger purpose. But the thing that makes the larger purpose better is it makes the entire book functional. Whereas if you deal just with the book of Acts it makes all of the parts of the book of Acts functional. I mean he spends a lot of time with Paul, you know, the riot, the shipwreck, the trials. We can say that's evangelization but we're pushing a little bit. It would be better if he were free and out there preaching to Caesarea and so on. So we're looking for a purpose I think that this plan shows us what the function of each of these segments is.
Now conceivably I can fail to convince you by Saturday night that I've made all the parts functional but I'm going to give it a shot. I think that under the general purpose that we're suggesting we can see new meaning in parts of Acts that maybe were only on the periphery of our concept of the purpose before. That's a great question though because that obviously is one of the first questions that gets asked.
Art, as anybody says last honest. Now you all will think that I have planted in the audience. As a matter of fact yes I know I'm just kidding you. Floyd Filson in his book in 1963, Three Crucial Decades, adopts this structure for the book and repeats it in an article he did for Apostolic History and the Gospel. Dale Moody in a chronology study that he did in Perspectives in Religious Studies also adopts this division. Richard Longenecker in his commentary on Acts in the Expositor's Bible Commentary also adopts this division. This is not one of those cases where Zane Hodges has gone way out on a limb and all the rest of the exegetes were falling near the base. That's right. Thank you Art.
I didn't have time to go over that but since you asked the question I just had to say that. Yes this has appeal to more than one student of the book of Acts. This construction. It's not original with me and I'm not the only one who holds that. It's basically the breakdown.
Yes sir. Well what Acts 1:8 is addressed to the eleven apostles whose number was promptly filled up by the twelfth, Matthias. We would expect the book, let's say we've never read it. They formed what we have trouble putting ourselves in that position. But we're reading it for the first time. We would expect that we are going to see here the history of the Twelve Apostles as they spread the gospel around the world. For instance there is a tradition that Thomas carried the gospel to India but if he did not a word out of the book of Acts. For that matter we have zero information about Peter going anywhere outside of the land of Palestine. Tradition is that he went to Rome based on First and Second Peter. We would say he was also in the area of Asia Minor which Paul also evangelized. Book of Acts, zero.
Even when we come to the history of Paul this is noteworthy by the way. We are used to calling the first missionary journey of Acts the first missionary journey. But when we turn to Galatians 1 it would appear that we have two other missionary journeys that preceded chronologically. Arabia, I think we have to take that as a missionary journey, and Syria and Cilicia. Now the book of Acts throws out little indirect clues that Syria and Cilicia have been evangelized. But really what is the first missionary journey in Acts is probably at least the third missionary journey of the Apostle Paul. So if we are looking here for a writer who's going to give us the history of the Christian movement, we just don't get it. We get a very selective slice of what actually happened. He has selectively spiced it, it seems to me, that compels us to go back and look again at the purpose and intention of the writer.
Yes. Mario, finally Pentecost which would that fit in because of all our tradition of similar or concept? Well I'm going to suggest when we get to that section that we are now in a transition period moving away from the nation of Israel and preparing the ground for the Apostle Paul within that section. Interestingly enough the section is really made up of three individuals: Stephen, Philip, and Paul. Three men. We suddenly lose sight temporarily of Peter, and these three men each of them is for Luke, as I hope to show you, a kind of transitional figure. So that we get up to the Apostle Paul. He gets converted, and then in the next section we go back to Peter. Why? Because now Peter is going to be the instrument in opening the doors to the Gentiles. The apostle to the Gentiles has just been saved in the preceding section. The door to the Gentiles is now open, and the balance of the book will have a great deal to say about the ministry of the Apostle to the Gentiles. But these are things that I hope to be able to show you in somewhat greater detail each night as we move through the book of Acts.
Thank you for your attention and I'll turn the meeting back to Ed.