Having established a viable chronology of the four gospel accounts, we are moving on to the next book that relates to us the events of the next 70 years, concerning the Nazarenes (Jewish believers in Messiah Yeshua) and the People of the Way (Gentile believers in Messiah Yeshua.) The book called Acts of the Apostles, or “Acts” for short, is a treasure trove of information concerning how the early ecclesia grew and developed. The book was written by Luke, a Greek, a physician by trade, and the only Gentile to write any part of the New Testament. He is known for his keen attention to detail. Luke accompanied the apostle Paul on some of his missionary journeys. The book is written to a man named Theophilus. While it is claimed that the identity of Theophilus is not known, some believe that he was the Jewish high priest in the years that the letter was written.
The book of Acts records for us some extremely important events in this sect of Judaism which would come to be known as Christianity. One of the first was the giving of the Holy Spirit on the Jewish feast of Shavuot, when the disciples were gathered in the “house”, that is the Temple, praying. How do we know that they were very likely in the Temple? Because that is where they would have been at Shavuot, one of the three feasts on the Jewish calendar which required Jewish men to be in attendance in Jerusalem. They had been commanded to not leave Jerusalem between the Ascension and Shavuot, but to wait for the gift that Father Yahweh had promised. On Shavuot, they received the gift of God’s Spirit, on each of them, as each person who today accepts Yeshua as Mashiach likewise receives this marvelous gift.
According to the testimony of Simon Bar Jonah (Peter) in Acts 2, this event inaugurated the time period of history known as “the last days”. This time period will reach the 2000-year mark, in the coming year 2030. It’s not that far away, is it?
3000 people accepted the gospel message and received Yeshua HaMashiach as their Messiah, were baptized and received the Holy Spirit.
The young sect of Judaism began to grow exponentially, which alarmed those in the more traditional sects of Judaism and the pagans alike. Shortly thereafter, Peter and John were arrested and hauled before the Sanhedrin. The Sanhedrin, wanting to avoid any uprising from the people, could not decide what to do with them. So, they warned them to stop preaching and healing in the name of Jesus, and let them go. It was because of the disfavor of the ruling body that many Jews would not “go public” about their acceptance of Yeshua. (Acts 5:13)
The young but growing sect fellowshipped and shared together in a communal fashion, with a great deal of unity among them. They took care of their own needy and devoted much of their material wealth to the spread of the gospel message of Yeshua HaMashiach. They lived as the Jews they were, keeping Torah, but realizing that their Messiah had come and that all that was spoken of in the Tanakh spoke of Him, was fulfilled in Him. Many miracles were performed in these early days, and I believe it was because of the unity among those who claimed the name of Yeshua.
The death of Stephen, the first person to be martyred because of his belief in Yeshua as the Mashiach, is recorded in Acts 6 and 7. He was stoned to death by some of the Jews from Cyrene and Alexandria, Cilicia and Asia. But, before his death, he gave a beautiful summation of how Father Yahweh had interacted with mankind since the days of Moses, and how prophets from Father Yahweh had often been killed for their message, the Anointed One, the Mashiach Yeshua being no exception. The Sanhedrin saw that his face was like the face of an angel (end of Acts 6). But, when Stephen said that he saw into Heaven and saw Yeshua standing at the right hand of Father Yahweh, the hardline Jews could bear it no more. They condemned Stephen to death, on the charge of blasphemy.
This was the only place in Scripture, I believe, where Yeshua is seen STANDING at Father Yah’s right hand, which some have theorized indicated that He was standing up to honor and welcome Stephen into Heaven. Just an amazing testimony Stephen had! In the wake of his death, persecutions of the believers in Yeshua increased. So, they left Jerusalem for other cities in Judea and Samaria. The apostle Philip, for example, went to Samaria, where many received Yeshua as Mashiach. He encountered, converted and baptized the Ethiopian Eunuch, as recorded in chapter 8.
The future apostle Paul was there, witnessing Stephen’s death (and probably his trial too) since Paul, known as Saul in those days was an ardent, fervent Jewish “fundamentalist”, you might say. He saw the Nazarenes, this sect of Judaism, as a tremendous threat and as the Scriptures put it in chapter 9 he was “breathing out murderous threats against the Lord’s disciples”.
It was on the road to Damascus, where Paul was headed to kill as many Jewish believers in Yeshua as possible, that he came face to face with the Lord Yeshua Himself, in a booming voice and a blinding light from Heaven. Although he was left blinded by the encounter, he proceeded on to Damascus, where the Lord sent a Jewish believer in Yeshua named Ananias to him.
There are three men in the Apostolic Writings named Ananias. One is this guy in Acts 9, who Father Yah sent to Paul to restore his physical sight and to baptize him. It is believed that when the first Nazarenes (again, for those of you unfamiliar with the term, these were the Jewish believers in Yeshua as their Messiah) fled Jerusalem because of persecution, some of them went to the ancient city of Damascus where they established a Nazarene fellowship there. Ananias is believed to have been a member of that ecclesia.
Another man named Ananias is the man who, along with his wife, Sapphira, sought to defraud the young converts in Jerusalem. This is recorded in Acts 4. Because of how they lied and intended to cheat the Bride of Yeshua, Father Yah struck them dead with the lies still on their lips.
The third Ananias was high priest of the Jews from 47 CE, when he was appointed by Herod Agrippa II, until the start of the first Jewish War, in 67 CE. This guy and the apostle Paul had some “run-ins”. (Don't confuse this Ananias with "Annas", the father-in-law of the infamous Caiaphas. Caiaphas was HP when Jesus/Yeshua was condemned to death.)
At any rate, at the end of Acts 9, Paul escaped from Damascus in a basket, at night, through a hole in the city wall. The hard-line Jews there conspired to kill him. After all, what is more powerful than your former star witness who crosses over to “the enemy’s team”? Paul’s preaching and testimony were so powerful that he quickly became to the fundamentalist Jews “public enemy #1”.
Poor Paul....he went from Damascus to Jerusalem to find that the Nazarenes there were still afraid of him, believing him to be a spy perhaps, or at best, a double-agent. Here we are introduced to Barnabas, who recognized that Paul’s conversion was genuine and advocated for him. After a short stay, though, Paul was sent by ship from Caesarea to Tarsus.
At this time, the fulness of Father Yahweh’s promise to Abraham began to come true. For hundreds of years, He had revealed Himself through the Jewish People. But, through the Apostle Paul and others, He began to reveal Himself to all people, which had been His eternal plan all along.
The scene shifts to Peter now, who in Acts 9 healed a paralytic named Aeneas and then later raised Tabitha/Dorcas of Joppa (now known as Tel Aviv) from the dead. Peter stayed in Joppa for a while and in Acts 9-10 led the first Gentile to faith in Messiah Yeshua. After Peter returned to Jerusalem in Acts 11, he was questioned about sharing the gospel message with the Gentiles. Today, we can’t even imagine what an offense that was to these Jewish believers. Culturally, they had been brought up to believe that Gentiles had no claim to the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, at all. So, this was a huge paradigm shift.
In Acts 11, we are told that those Jewish believers who scattered and got out of town (Jerusalem) after the death of Stephen, began to share the message of Yeshua with the Jews as far as Cyprus and Antioch and other parts of Asia Minor. But, they also began sharing with the Greeks. When the Nazarenes of Jerusalem heard this, they sent Paul and Barnabas, where they ministered to believers in Antioch for a whole year.
Herod Agrippa I, the father of the guy who opposed Paul later in Acts, began to ramp up a second wave of persecution of Nazarenes in Jerusalem. During this time, he had James, the brother of John, one of the sons of Zebedee, put to death. James, also called one of the Sons of Thunder, was the first apostle of Yeshua to be martyred. Agrippa the First likewise arrested Peter, when he saw that James’ death had pleased the fundamentalist Jews, and intended to do the same to him. But, an angel came to Peter’s prison cell and supernaturally freed him. Afterward, Peter went to the home of John Mark’s mother, Mary, where believers had been praying for his release. (This is the same Mark whose name is on the second gospel account.)
In 44 CE, this same evil man, Agrippa I, was suddenly struck with an illness in which he was consumed internally by worms, because (Acts 12:19-23) he accepted praise from the people that he spoke as a god, not as a man.
Paul and Barnabas had returned briefly to Jerusalem from Antioch, and when they left there to return to Antioch, they took John Mark with them.
At this point, the Holy Spirit directed Paul and Barnabas to embark on what was called the first missionary journey. They left from Antioch in northern Syria and went to Cyprus, Paphos, Pamphylia, Perga (where John Mark left them to return to Jerusalem, much to Paul’s ire), and then they went on to Antioch Pisidia. It is there Luke gives us Paul’s first recorded sermon. They often preached in synagogues on the Sabbath, to the Jews assembled there. And, on this occasion, the sermon was preceded by the customary Jewish readings from the Law and from the Prophets. Along the way, many Jews and Gentiles believed in Yeshua and converted to follow Him and the Torah walk that He lived. In fact, during that first recorded sermon by Paul, there were apparently both Jews and Gentiles present. The next Shabbat, almost the entire town of Pisidia turned out to hear Paul and Barnabas. When the hardliner Jews saw how many people were turning to Yeshua as Mashiach/Messiah, they stirred up city leaders against Paul and Barnabas to run them out of town, whereupon they went on to Iconium. But, the word of the Lord, the gospel of the Living Torah, Yeshua HaMashiach, spread throughout that entire region. They went on to Lystra, where Paul was nearly stoned to death. He survived though, and they journeyed on to Derbe, where a great many disciples of Yeshua were made.
At this point, they began to backtrack and revisit some of the places they had been on the journey, encouraging and strengthening those who had received the gospel message with great joy. After they returned to their home base, Antioch (not Antioch Pisidia), they journeyed to Jerusalem to report to the Nazarenes there what the Spirit of God had done in the first missionary journey, which ended in 47 CE.
Acts 15 reports the very important “Jerusalem Conference”, where the Nazarenes discussed with Paul and others how best to bring the new (Gentile) converts into the ways of the Torah. Acts 15:5 says that some of the Pharisees declared that the new Gentile converts had to immediately become fully Torah-observant, including being circumcised, in order to be considered a part of Judaism. On the other hand, the apostle Peter put forth the counter-argument - - - that the Gentiles had been made righteous by their faith in Yeshua, as evidenced by them having received the Ruach Hakodesh, and that it made no sense to put upon them the whole Law, which he referred to as “a yoke that neither we nor our fathers have been able to bear”. In the end, the council went with sort of a compromise position, proposed by James, the half-brother of Yeshua. James was also the head of the Jerusalem ecclesia (church). That position was as follows:
💪Refrain from sexual immorality - - this pertains to those Torah laws that touch on those matters.
💪Refrain from eating food that had been sacrificed to idols, in other words, food that had been a part of pagan worship and then afterwards sold in pagan markets
💪Refrain from eating non-kosher meats and from meat with the blood still in it - - the Torah laws that touch on these matters applied.
He went on to say in Acts 15:21 that because the Torah is read in synagogues in all these cities every Sabbath, assuming these Gentile converts would worship in those same synagogues, they would of their own conviction come to practice more of the Torah, as the Spirit of the God who wrote the Tanakh gave them revelation to do so.
James’ argument was to lead the new Gentile converts to the ways of Messiah, not to beat them over the head with Torah so severely that they would run screaming in the other direction. So, he laid out the most crucial life practices they should “keep” as new converts and then learn the rest of the Torah walk, so that they could walk in fullness of newness of life, as Yeshua walked.
This message was delivered by Paul and Barnabas, along with Judas and Silas as witnesses, to Antioch, where the new believers there viewed this as very loving and encouraging.
Now, around this same time, just after the Jerusalem Conference, the apostle Paul wrote the epistle to the Galatians, those who lived in and were part of the ecclesia at Galatia. This would have been around 50 CE. In this letter, Paul warned the new converts against trusting in a mere adherence to the Law of Moses to be their salvation. To do that would have made the Torah Law an idol and would have rendered the Law of Yeshua HaMashiach of no effect. It is not a circumcised male member that makes a follower of Yeshua; rather, it is the circumcised heart of faith. In this was (and is) fulfilled Ezekiel 11:19.
Not long after writing this letter, Paul apparently decided to start out on the second missionary journey, which included visiting the churches of Galatia. (Acts 15:36-41) Barnabas did not accompany him on this trip. Paul was still burnt about John Mark’s perceived “defection” on the first journey and Barnabas and Paul could not come to an agreement about bringing Mark along. So, Silas, who came from Jerusalem with Paul to Antioch, bearing the decision of the Jerusalem Council, accompanied Paul on this second journey. Along the way, they passed through Lystra, where Paul was stoned on his first journey, and met the family of the teenager, Timothy, who became Paul’s young protege, his “son” in the faith. Timothy had a Jewish parent but had not yet been circumcised. Therefore, he was circumcised so that this would not be a stumbling block to any Jews they encountered and shared the good news with, since he was going to continue on the missionary journey with Paul and Silas. They went through Phrygia and Galatia, and then on to Troas, where they picked up Luke. From there, the foursome journeyed on to Philippi, where Paul led to the faith a godly woman named Lydia. There a congregation was established by her and by others, and later a letter from Paul was written to that ecclesia. We know that letter as the biblical book of “Philippians”.
In Philippi, Paul was again imprisoned, only to be miraculously released again, whereby the jailer and his entire household heard the good news of Yeshua and converted. Luke stayed behind in Philippi, while Paul, Silas and Timothy traveled on to Thessalonica. The good news was not well-received during the three weeks they were there, although there were some converts. However, at their next stop, Berea, the gospel message was received with great eagerness. Silas and Timothy, because of persecution, stayed behind in Berea, while Paul proceeded on to Athens alone. Silas and Timothy came on to Athens later, for a brief time, before Paul sent them back to Thessalonica. From Athens, Paul went on to Corinth, where he spent over a year and a half, teaching, preaching and supporting himself by making tents with Aquila and Priscilla. Acts 18:8-11 tells us that Paul had a vision from God, telling him to remain in Corinth for this period.
During this time, he received reports from Silas and Timothy about the young congregations in Macedonia and some questions raised. So, in response, Paul wrote 1 and 2 Thessalonians, around 51 CE. These believers, both Jew and non-Jew, had been discipled by Silas and Timothy. The first letter had apparently given the recipients the impression that Yeshua’s return would happen right away. For this reason the second letter was written, to share the events that would lead up to the return of the Mashiach and to not “get the cart before the horse”, so to speak.
Things weren’t all “roses” in Corinth, though. At one point, the ardent hard-line Jews had Paul hauled into court (Acts 18:12-17). However, Gallio, the Roman proconsul of the area, felt that such “petty, religious differences” were beneath him. He refused to hear the case. After he essentially threw the plaintifs out of the courtroom, they beat the local synagogue leader right there in the courtroom! Gallio could not have cared less. smh.
After his stay in Corinth, just before he left, Paul took a Nazarite vow (Acts 18:18-22 and Numbers 6:1-21). This shows that Paul was still quite Torah-observant. We also can see references to where Paul went to the Temple for the feasts, made offerings, etc. Paul then set sail and returned to Antioch, by way of Ephesus, Caesarea and Jerusalem. It was in Jerusalem that he completed the terms of his Nazarite vow, a procedure he appears to have undertaken at least two more times, as recorded in Acts 21:24-26 and 24:18.
This taking of a Nazarite vow, a very Jewish thing for a Jewish man to do, has puzzled traditional Christians for hundreds of years. Why would the apostle who preached “grace, grace and more grace” to the Gentiles, himself take a Nazarite vow (a very costly and self-denying process) not just once, but at least 3 times? I believe these actions by Paul point to two things:
First, even after he met the Living Torah (Jesus/Yeshua) on the road to Damascus, he continued to keep Torah in his daily walk. Paul is an outstanding example of how the first century followers of Yeshua lived. He not only preached how to have a relationship with the Divine Majestic Mystery we sometimes refer to as God, he illustrated how the Torah-observant life was the way to walk with Him, how to honor and revere Him.
Second, after he led Gentiles, such as those in Corinth, to faith in Yeshua, after they had begun their eternal spiritual relationship with Him, Paul was showing the Gentiles how to walk out in their lives the Torah of God, to walk as Yeshua walked. I reject the idea that Acts teaches that there would be two ways to practice faith in Yeshua. Everyone after they have met Yeshua and that saving faith relationship has begun, will by the power of the Ruach HaKodesh seek to please Him, to honor Him, to serve and magnify Him by the way they live. Paul was teaching His young converts, by example, how to let the Holy Spirit lead them, to mold them more into the image of their Mashiach.
We are not told how long Paul stayed in Antioch before beginning his third missionary journey. And, it appears he goes alone, if you only read Luke’s account in Acts 18:23. Later on it is noted that for part of his trip he was accompanied by a Gentile from Ephesus, named Trophimus, whom he {allegedly} took into the Temple in Jerusalem, which caused a huge uprising.
On this third journey, Paul went through Galatia and Phrygia, and eventually came to Ephesus, that great capital city of Asia, and his intended destination on his second journey, until the Lord sent him to Macedonia instead. Meanwhile, another man greatly used by the Lord, Apollos, a Jew and native of Alexandria Egypt, came to Ephesus. He had converted to follow Yeshua and was apparently a great master of Jewish apologetics (the defense of the faith, using Scripture). Acts 18:28 says that he was a master at proving to the Jews from the Hebrew Bible that Yeshua was the Mashiach. I wish we today had his notes.... 😉
Acts 19:1-7 are an interesting passage, because they point out both the necessity for repentance when coming to begin a faith relationship with Yeshua, but also pointing out that repentance alone is not sufficient to becoming right with Elohim.
I want to step aside from Paul for a moment and talk about James. The biblical book of James is believed to have been written sometime between 50 and 60 CE, by the Lord Yeshua’s half-brother, Ya’akov (or Jacob). No more accurate date can be determined. This is the same “James” who is called “James the Just” and who was presiding over the Jerusalem Nazarenes (the ecclesia/church) in Acts 15. Why, then, is the book called “James”? Because the king of England who ordered the KJV, King James Version of the Bible (1611), wanted a book of the New Testament named after himself. Therefore, the translators anglicized the name of Ya’akov, and named the book “James”. I have already mentioned James, the son of Zebedee, one of the Sons of Thunder, and the first apostle to be martyred. There was also a 3rd “James” in the New Testament, James the son of Alphaeus.
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