Bible Commentaries
Acts 8

Verses 5-40

PART SECOND.

THE CHURCH IN TRANSITION FROM JEWS TO GENTILES, Acts 8:5 to Acts 12:25.

Through this Second Part of his history Luke traces in perfectly regular progress the successive steps by which Christianity emerges from her Jewish trammels into a free and universal Church. The Samaritans are first evangelized, and the eunuch is the first apostle to Africa. The Gentile apostle is next converted and put in preparation for his work. Peter, emerging from Jerusalem, is taught by the case of Cornelius the lesson of the direct convertibility of Gentiles to Christianity. The refugee Christians, driven from Jerusalem by the Stephanic dispersion, gather a Gentile Church in ANTIOCH, the capital and sallying point of Gentile Christianity. A second check is given to the Jerusalem Church by the Herodian persecution. Thenceforth old Jerusalem, abandoned by the twelve, wanes to her final destruction, and we are prepared to behold in chapter thirteen the Third Part of Luke’s history, opening with Gentile missions issuing forth from Gentile Antioch.