The Acts of the Apostles

How the Gospel was carried from Jerusalem to Rome

David M Pearce

Chapter 4

The Call of the Gentiles

You could be forgiven for assuming that as soon as Saul the persecutor became Paul the disciple, he at once set out on his travels to preach the gospel. A close inspection of his letters shows this was not so. It was to be many years from his dramatic conversion before the great apostle began those famous journeys which take up so much of the Acts of the Apostles. In fact, the whole process of expanding the scope of the gospel call went ahead surprisingly slowly. Although Jesus had commanded the twelve apostles to "go into all the world and preach the gospel" (Mark 16:15), they had an instinctive bias towards the Jews as the chosen people, and it took them a long time to get used to the idea that God now favoured the call of Gentiles (non-Jews) into the gospel net.

The work received an impetus from two prominent disciples, Philip and Peter. Philip was probably a foreign born Jew. His name is Greek, and he was one of a handful of trustworthy men chosen by the Jerusalem church to supervise the distribution of alms money to the widows of overseas Jews. This background would make him less hostile to foreigners than a home-born Jew. Travelling north from Jerusalem, Philip commenced a one–man campaign to bring the news of Jesus to the Samaritans. These were the descendants of a group of foreigners deported to Israel over 500 years before by the Assyrians. In that time they had picked up the worship of Israel's God and obeyed the Law of Moses, but because they were not demonstrably descended from Abraham they were despised by the Jews and barred from the Temple at Jerusalem. Jesus spent two days among them at the beginning of his ministry, but later found them hostile towards him (John 3:40, Luke 9:52, 53). Coming to this maligned and hated minority, Philip set to work and "proclaimed to them the Christ" (Acts 8:5). He told them about the Kingdom of God that Jesus is going to bring, and taught them to call him Christ, which means 'anointed' or king. The reaction was marked. "There was much joy in that city" is the comment in Acts 8:8. "When they believed Philip as he preached good news about the Kingdom of God and the name of Jesus Christ, they were baptised, both men and women" (Acts 8:12). Like the Jews on the Day of Pentecost, they were thrilled to find that God's love extended to them too, and their past sins could be washed away in the blood of the risen Jesus.

News of the developments in Samaria soon filtered through to the Apostles in Jerusalem. They immediately sent off Peter and John to find out what was going on. Perhaps they had reservations about whether it was right to preach to Samaritans. Peter and John, as leaders, must have felt particularly concerned that young Philip had set off without their official support. Whatever their feelings, they could not help but be impressed with the results of his labours, and soon threw themselves solidly behind the brave pioneer. They too "testified and spoke the word of the Lord … preaching the gospel to many villages of the Samaritans" (Acts 8:25).

An interesting point, in passing, is that when Peter and John joined Philip they were able to pass on the gift of the Holy Spirit to the newly baptised believers. They did this, after prayer, by the laying on of their hands (Acts 8:15, 17). This is important, because some evangelical groups today claim the Holy Spirit is given automatically to all believers, either before or after they are baptised. In the case of the first century Samaritans, the gift had not come by itself to the new disciples, neither was Philip empowered to pass it on. Only the two apostles had the authority that was required.

After Samaria, Philip continued to break fresh grounds. Commanded by the Holy Spirit to journey south, he was waiting beside the main road going down from Jerusalem to Egypt when a chariot came by containing an important looking coloured gentleman who, by coincidence, was reading the Bible as he jogged along. Here was Philip's opportunity. The Ethiopian had just completed the pilgrimage of a lifetime, travelling all the way from Africa to visit the magnificent Temple in the Holy City.

The Ethiopians have a long historical association with the Jews, dating back into Old Testament times, but this man would definitely come into the category of 'gentile'. Maybe he had just bought an expensive, hand–copied copy of Isaiah in Jerusalem to take home with him.

He was reading the 53^rd chapter of Isaiah, that vivid, moving and incredibly detailed prophecy of the suffering, death and resurrection of the Messiah. Within minutes the bold evangelist had joined him in the moving chariot, and was busy explaining how the prophet's words had come true in the last hours of Jesus. To shorten the story, the Ethiopian visitor was soon asking Philip "what is to prevent my being baptised?" (Acts 8:37). It was a momentous decision that Philip had to take, with none of his brethren to turn to for advice. The man was honest, God–fearing, and convinced now of the truth about Jesus. Why should he not share the same privilege as the Jews and the Samaritans? Had not Isaiah written in the very next chapter that God would one day be called the God of the whole earth (Isaiah 54:5)? An oasis pool was before them. After some thought, he led the man to the water side "and they went down both into the water, Philip and the eunuch, and he baptised him" (Acts 8:38). With a delightful flourish, Luke concludes his account by saying "the eunuch went on his way rejoicing" (Acts8:39). Like the Samaritans, he had found joy and peace in the forgiveness of his sins. What a story he must have told back home of his great adventure, and the dramatic and unexpected turn of events on his journey. It is by many such a chance meeting, coincidence to the participants but all part of the providence of God, that Bible truth has come to troubled but thirsty souls. If we read the Bible, like the Ethiopian, and really want to understand what it means, God will always answer our prayers. "He who seeks, finds" as Jesus said.

In the last and most critical development of this stage of the spread of the gospel, the limelight moves to the apostle Peter. Like Philip, he was brought face to face with a crucial decision, which would establish a precedent from which there could be no turning back.

Peter was staying at Joppa with a friend when he had an extraordinary experience. He was dozing on the flat rooftop, just before dinner, and feeling hungry, when he had a disturbing vision. Animals, reptiles and birds were lowered down from the sky in a huge sheet, and a voice tempted him to satisfy his hunger by helping himself to meat. But Peter protested that the contents of the sheet were all creatures forbidden by the Law of Moses as unclean. The heavenly voice replied "What God has cleansed you must not call common (unclean)" (Acts 9:25).

The meaning of this revelation soon became clear. Within minutes of Peter's dream, three men began to knock on the door of the house. They explained that 40 miles away at Caesarea, Cornelius, a Roman centurion on duty in Israel, had also had a strange vision in which an angel of God advised him to send for Peter at Joppa. Under the Law of Moses, Jews were forbidden to fraternise with Gentiles, which would include Roman soldiers. Gentiles were like the unclean animals in the sheet, not to be touched. But Peter's natural reluctance to visit a Gentile was tempered by the message he had just heard. God was now calling the 'unclean', cleansed. The coincidence of the dream and the visit were too remarkable to ignore. Taking six fellow disciples as witnesses, he set off for Caesarea.

He found Cornelius a devout, kindly man, already worshipping the God of the Jews, and familiar with the teaching of Jesus of Nazareth. As Peter explained to him that, through Jesus' death and resurrection, sins could be forgiven, he and the other Jews present were astounded to hear Cornelius and his household begin to speak in foreign tongues, just like the apostles themselves on the Day of Pentecost. It was the clearest possible sign that God wanted these faithful Gentiles to join his family. Peter faced up to the challenge. "Can anyone forbid water for baptising these people … ?" (Acts 10:47) He looked all round, but none of his friends spoke against it. So he commanded Cornelius and his family to be baptised in the name of Jesus. It was a historic day. First the Samaritans, then the Ethiopian, and now a Roman soldier and his relatives – the ripples were beginning to move out across the pond, and Jesus was indeed becoming "a light to the nations", as Isaiah the prophet had foretold, "that my salvation may reach to the ends of the earth" (Isaiah 49:6).

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