If the blood of his saints, much more the blood of apostles, is precious in his eyes, and therefore, we may be sure, is not shed but upon a valuable consideration. The doctrine of His Sonship did not in the smallest degree, of course, set aside the Messiahship. Verb - Present Participle Middle or Passive - Nominative Masculine Plural. "Lord," says he, "I have heard by many of this man, how much evil he hath done to thy saints at Jerusalem: and here he hath authority from the chief priests to bind all that call on thy name." With this view He Himself instituted certain external badges of Christian profession, to come into use when they should be needed, and took measures to qualify a small and select company of believers, by attaching them constantly to His person while His earthly ministry lasted, and giving them a formal commission with extraordinary powers, when He left the world, to preside over the affairs and direct the organisation of Christian societies. But just as the great apostle of the Gentiles was the one that wrote the final word of testimony to the Christian Jews in the epistle to the Hebrews, so the great apostle of the Jews was the one sent to fling open the door to the Gentile. Verb - Present Participle Middle or Passive - Genitive Masculine Singular. Prayer to God for him was earnestly offered by the Church. During this time the church has enjoyed relative peace, but now severe persecution again raises its ugly head. Now don't try to figure out an answer, because we don't know.The ways of God are beyond our finding out. It would be a mistake to suppose that God had not wrought on the heart of Gentiles. Nobody could have this till the gospel, and even after its publication God Himself sent specifically to the Gentiles; for He has His ways, as well as His times and seasons. But that branch of criticism which consists in a full knowledge of the sources, a nice discrimination of the various readings, and a sound judgment in deciding the preferable text, as it is rarely found, so it certainly was not the forte of Dr. C. One hundred and fifty years ago, Dr. E. Wells, in his "Help for the more easy and clear understanding of the Scriptures" (Oxford, 1718), not only adopted the singular in his Greek text and his English paraphrase, but pointed out in his Annotations the great weakness of the argument drawn by dissenters from the plural , as if it favoured their system of separate churches. There were Gentiles who truly looked to the Lord, and not to self or man; who had been taught of Him to look for a coming Saviour, though they quite rightly connected that Saviour with Israel; for such was the burden of the promise. Hence though Philip might preach and they receive the gospel, the apostles come down, and with prayer lay their hands upon them, and then they receive the Holy Ghost. Why is it so important to love God and place Him first in WebTHE POWER OF PRAYER. They felt in a measure, and justly, the tremendous deed that had been done. And they of the circumcision which believed were astonished, as many as came with Peter, because that on the Gentiles also was poured out the gift of the Holy Ghost." No doubt their spiritual condition was defective, and their outward position must have seemed anomalous; but Scripture is decisive that such godly Gentiles there were. "He preached in the synagogues that Jesus is the Son of God." Normally a prisoner was chained by his right hand to his guard's left hand; but Peter was chained by both hands to a guard on each side of him, while the two remaining soldiers of the quaternion kept watch at the door. Aristopollis was one of them. Now at this point we are introduced to James, who became one of the leaders in the early church, who was a half brother to Jesus. . IDEAL OPORTUNIDAD DE INVERSION, CODIGO 4803 OPORTUNIDAD!! grace of God to sinners of the Gentiles as certainly as to the Jews to those who, in the judgment of the Jews, were nothing but refuse, vile, and unclean. It is a perilous mode of reasoning and likely to lead to universal scepticism, to maintain, for the sake of theoretical consistency, that the visible fruits of the Spirit do not possess a sufficiently distinctive character to enable us to pronounce where they are and where they are not: not to mention that the sin of denying the evident operation of the Holy Spirit is spoken of by our Lord in terms far too awful not to make us tremble at the thought of verging towards it. Then we find that if the church at Jerusalem had become impoverished, the Gentiles minister of their carnal things to them. It is not merely that the absence of it operates injuriously upon the tone and standard of piety within the Church; it affects the claims of the society as such to be a legitimate member of the visible Church Catholic. King Herod persecutes the Christians, kills James, and imprisons Peter; whom an angel delivers upon the prayers of the church. To gather together, assemble. He was the second husband of Herodias (see G2266) and consented to the death of John the Baptist. He was led into no small perplexity by the reading current in his day, and, to the shame of Christendom, still tolerated as the received reading. And the disciples were called Christians first in Antioch." Peter prayed before he raised Dorcas from the dead (Acts 9:3643), 8. What a revolution this word caused in that mighty heart! Ordered the census that took Joseph and Mary to Bethlehem (, Jesus earthly ministry conducted during his reign (, Appointed Herod Agrippa I king over Palestine (. God did not clothe him with such overwhelming influence that doors were thrown open to him though the greatest of the apostles. For all that God took precaution to bind up together the work at Samaria with that which He had wrought at Jerusalem. He killed James. God has no pleasure in the death of a sinner. Sopron, gynyr vros, az osztrk hatr eltti utols lloms. . The believers in John Marks house prayed for Peter when he was in prison, and the Lord delivered him both from prison and from death (Acts 12:111), 11. (2.) We must not limit, as ignorant people do, the operation of the Holy Spirit to the new birth. In almost every chapter in Acts, you find a reference to prayer, and the book makes it very clear that something happens when Gods people pray. But to believe is the secret of real growth in the revealed wisdom of God. Peter therefore was kept in prison, but prayer was made without ceasing of the church unto God for him. "Luke doth at length declare that certain of them brought this treasure even unto the Gentiles. To report dead links, typos, or html errors or suggestions about making these resources more useful use the convenient, Baker Evangelical Dictionary of Biblical Theology, Hastings' Dictionary of the New Testament, The Hawker's Poor Man's Concordance And Dictionary, Watson's Biblical & Theological Dictionary, International Standard Bible Encyclopedia. . A believer would have wondered more at the grace of God, and bowed in adoration before Him. . It was not that Peter did not know the same, we are all aware how blessedly he confessed Him to be (not Messiah only, but) the Son of the living God while Jesus was here below. See Luke 3:1; see also an account of the Herod family, see in Clarke's note on "Matthew 2:1". Thus on the great Gentile occasion, as before on the Jewish at Pentecost, the medium of man completely disappears. And they said, "You're crazy!" Now about that time: This phrase refers to the time Saul and Barnabus make their trip to take the collection gathered by the saints in Antioch to the famine stricken brethren in Jerusalem. So meanwhile, back at the prison Now as soon as it was day, there was no small stir among the soldiers, what was become of Peter ( Acts 12:18 ). And if anybody should try to take them, they can call down fire from heaven and consume them. whom they slew and hanged on a tree: him God raised up the third day, and showed him openly" (not to all the people, but) "unto witnesses chosen before of God, even to us, who did eat and drink with him after he rose from the dead. [Alas! Great workman as Peter was, he required the intervention of God in a vision to send him to do a work that these unnamed brethren undertook in their confidence of His grace, without any vision or sign whatsoever. Philip goes down, then, preaching Christ; "and the people with one accord gave heed unto those things which Philip spake, hearing and seeing the miracles which he did." He is mentioned, under the name of Philip ( G5376) , in Matthew 14:3; Mark 6:17; Luke 3:19. From sun and athroizo; to convene. His appointment was to take care of the tables. Why so much haste and impatience? In due time follows the further development of the truth as to Christ in testimony. And these people depended upon Palestine for their food supplies, and so they were pretty much a vassal to Palestine at this time. Oh, what a blessing it is to have and know such a Saviour! The people of Tyre and Sidon, anxious to ensure a constant food supply from Herods territory, had tried to win his favour with a show of extravagant flattery. The Church neither preaches nor teaches, but Christ sends those who evangelize the world and teach the Church. Finally, after the call of Saul of Tarsus, Peter himself (as well for other reasons as in order to cut off the semblance of discord in the various instruments of His grace) is brought in to show the perfect balance of divine truth and the wonderful harmony of His ways. The returning treasurer of Queen Candace was a proselyte, I suppose, from the Gentiles, living among them, not as a Gentile himself, but practically a Jew, whatever the place of his birth and residence. Undoubtedly they could not have believed the gospel, had there not been the quickening operation of the Holy Ghost; but we must distinguish between the Holy Ghost giving life and the Holy Ghost Himself given. Immediately the angel of the Lord struck him because he did not give the glory to God. And "when the apostles which were at Jerusalem heard that Samaria had received the word of God, they sent unto them Peter and John." Because when they are told that God has answered the prayer, Peter's at the door and they don't believe it, they accuse the poor little girl of being crazy. He handed him over to four squads of soldiers to guard, for he wished to bring him before the people after the Passover Feast. Prayers To Get A Permanent Job 15. characteristic of Christendom. It was the Lord that had brought Philip, and it was His Spirit that bad taken him away; but it was He too who had given him and left him Jesus for ever. it is beautiful to see how the Lord thus, even in the history of that which was unprecedented and might seem to lie outside Christian wants, provides in His blessed word for the every day difficulties we have to prove in such a day of weakness as ours. . "Therefore they that were scattered abroad went everywhere preaching the word;" for the God who not only has hearts at His command, but controls all circumstances, was now about to accomplish that which He had always at heart, making the disciples to be witnesses of Jesus to the very ends of the earth, though first of all to Judea and Samaria. I am far from saying that it was comely on their part to indulge in hesitation touching this wondrous display of divine grace. Philip is told by the angel of the Lord to arise and go towards the south towards "Gaza, which is desert." When he saw that this gave pleasure to the Jews he went to arrest Peter too. Nevertheless, the Lord suffered him whom he had furnished with constancy to be put to death, that by death he might get the victory as a strong and invincible champion. There are just a lot of Herods in the Bible and it is a little difficult to keep them all straight. Note, Those make themselves an easy prey to Satan who make it their business to please men. Luke recorded the events in this section to illustrate Gods supernatural protection and blessing of the church, even though the Christians suffered increased persecution, and Israels continued rejection of her Messiah. Accordingly we find, as the testimony had gone forth throughout Jerusalem at least, so now the old rival of Jerusalem comes within the dealings of God. As there was need in the church at Antioch, he goes and finds him. It could not be otherwise. Isaiah 65:24 And it shall come to pass, that before they call, I will answer; and while they are yet speaking, I will hear. There is this difference, no doubt, between such cases now and that of Cornelius then, that, before the mission of Peter, it would have been presumptuous for a Gentile to have pretended to salvation; now it is the fruit of unbelief for a believer to question it. Copyright 2023 ec Estudio Integral. 515-517). It was of the greatest importance that unity should be kept up practically, not merely that there should be proclaimed the truth that there is unity, but that there should be the maintenance of it in practice. Heavenly Father, I pray that I may be quick to confess my own sin, eager to trust Your word and faithful to obey Your commands.. and that I abide in You and You in me, so that I may be a 'man' after Your own heart - to Your praise and glory. They probably believed that God would reestablish The Twelve in the resurrestion. The gospel goes forth elsewhere; it is in no way bound to Jerusalem. The exercise of discipline is the true and legitimate expression of the sanctity of a visible Church considered as a society. Simon can only answer, "Pray ye to the Lord for me." Because it is not connected with events in the chapters immediately before and after it, however, it may seem rather isolated and unimportant for Acts as a whole. Ha csak nem kritek kln, nem viszlek titeket msok ltal annyira kedvelt s elcspelt macskakves tra, ahol ti lenntek az ezredikek, akik ilyen fotval bszklkednek. This was called Jacobus major--James the greater; that, minor--the less. TovbbEskvi fotzs Eskv szervezs, Volt szerencsm Tibi es Szandra fergeteges eskvjn rszt venni. Ananias, wholly unprepared for the call of such an enemy of the gospel, slow of heart to believe all, expostulates, as it were, with the Saviour. Historical: Records the historical spread of the Gospel (Acts 1:2). Take, as the most solemn moment of all, the day of Pentecost. Chapter 15 he'll speak up and again tell how God had led him to the Gentiles, but Peter passes on from the picture. Herod the Great had ten wives. "He went on his way rejoicing." "All that dwelt in Lydda and Saron saw him, and turned to the Lord." When the earthly fortunes of the Christians seemed the most precarious, however, providential events took place with sudden finality, lifting the threat completely. So from experience we know there is many a man that you cannot doubt to be truly looking to the Lord, yet far from resting in the peace of God. Let this suffice them if the Lord grant them some time wherein they may recover their strength. And immediately the angel of the Lord smote him, because he did not give God the glory: and he was eaten of worms, and he died ( Acts 12:23 ). So James is now following his Lord in martyrdom, the brother of John. It was so ordered of God that the Holy Ghost should not at first be conferred on the disciples at Samaria: I do not mean merely on such as Simon or false brethren, but even on those that were true. So he comes to the place where the prayer meeting is being held. Had he not read or heard those words in the prophets? But it was a thoroughly illegal trial. To pray, pray for, offer prayer. Conscience would have been searched by the truth of God; and the heart would have been filled with praise at the grace of God. Paul had it not more suddenly than with a heavenly splendour which was peculiar to himself; and thus there was a vast work soon wrought. Before the gospel was preached to every creature, a new nature was communicated to many a soul; but till then there was not and could not be peace. He did this because he saw it pleased the Jews. With the apostles becoming more involved with matters outside Jerusalem, James the brother of Jesus was now the most prominent leader in the Jerusalem church (Acts 12:17; Acts 15:13; Galatians 1:18-19; Galatians 2:9,Galatians 2:12). 407.]. They were not about to let that happen again. To return to the case of the Corinthians: on what principle, let us ask, did St. Paul reprove them for their inconsistencies? Cornelius was not in ignorance of the gospel going out to the children of Israel, but it was precisely because he was a lowly-minded believer that he did not therefore arrogate the blessing to himself. Quite right: only the true text delivers from the need of wresting the force of a word, and is as simply as possible Greeks, not Grecians, and means Gentiles without the smallest difficulty or discussion. And he did not know that what was happening through the angel was real but thought that he was seeing a vision, They went through the first and the second guard and they came to the iron door that led into the city and it opened to them of its own accord. It was a public privilege he was warranted to confer on the Gentiles thus baptized of the Spirit. "Repent, therefore, of this thy wickedness, and pray God if, perhaps, the thought of thy heart may be forgiven thee; for I perceive that thou art in the gall of bitterness, and in the bond of iniquity." Philip, besides being one of the seven, was an "evangelist," as we are told expressly in another part of this very book (Acts 21:8). Paul prayed for his friends before leaving them (Acts 20:36; 21:5), 14. He could not deny the might that proved itself without effort superior to anything he had ever wielded. Why should there be unwillingness to meet and submit to others when it is a question of reception? 12:1-17. The first person singular present indicative; a prolonged form of a primary and defective verb; I exist. Such, I suppose, therefore, was the principle that lay at the bottom of the difference of the divine action on these two occasions. Verb - Imperfect Indicative Active - 3rd Person Plural. . Prayer Points 1 Father, I thank you for sending Jesus Christ to us. Cornelius was one of those who, among the Gentiles, had abandoned idolatry; but more than this was sometimes found. The Old-Testament martyrs were slain with the sword (Hebrews 11:37), and Christ came not to send peace, but a sword (Matthew 10:34), in preparation for which we must arm ourselves with the sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God, and then we need not fear what the sword of men can do unto us. The sun glinted on the silver and the people cried out that this was a god come to them. This is the Herod of our present passage in Acts 12:1-25. He was a staunch friend of the Jews and was no doubt influenced by them to make the move to destroy Christianity. Notice is taken of the time when Herod laid hold on Peter: Then were the days of unleavened bread. James and John were called by Jesus the sons of thunder. It is not to be treated as mere human arrangement. 256, 257). Acts 12:25 And Barnabas and Saul returned from Jerusalem, when they had fulfilled their ministry, and took with them John, whose surname was Mark. "He commanded us to preach unto the people, and to testify that it is he which was ordained of God to be the Judge of quick and dead. On the contrary, the grand bearing of this chapter is that now the tide of blessing is flowing away from Jerusalem. And so he did. A menyasszony ton a fodrszhoz s a sminkeshez, a vlegny pedig felkszl a nagy napra testben s fejben. But no one else dared to join them, even though all the people had high regard for them. He spent some thirty years of his early life in Rome, but then came back and loved living in Jerusalem and was seeking to curry the favor of the Jews, living as the Jews lived. A nevem Hring Attila, profi fotogrfus vagyok. He made an appearance to his half brother and after that point his half brother James and His half brother Jude became pillars in the early church. "You gotta have faith brother! It may be interesting to many readers to read as follows from Mr. Edward A. Litton's work on "The Church of Christ in its Idea, Attributes, and Ministry; with a particular reference to the Controversy between Romanists and Protestants." "I am Jesus whom thou persecutest." Some of our other records tells us that he went to Rome and was there crucified upside down. And yet he had in his possession that famous Graeco-Latin Uncial (D) which he presented to the University of Cambridge in 1581, which MS. supports the Alexandrian. Nevertheless, care was taken to hinder all appearance of independence or indifference to unity. And when Herod had sought for Peter, and found him not, he cross-examined the keepers, and commanded that they should be put to death ( Acts 12:19 ). 1. It was not a question of being saved in the day of judgment; nor is this the meaning of the term "salvation" in the New Testament. So Peter was continuously guarded in prison. This did not at all flow from his ordination. *The copyists of old seem to have confounded in writing, as the Latin and most other ancient translators did in rendering, (Greeks) and (Hellenists), here and elsewhere. The Spread of the Gospel in Jerusalem (Acts 1-7), B. Back in Jerusalem the church was experiencing much difficulty. These essential conditions of the existence of any regular society we find from the very first in being in the Church: the Apostles were the officers, and, collectively, the organ of the community; members were admitted into it by baptism; and they testified their continuance therein by participating in the sacrament of Christ's body and blood. He began with vexing them only, or afflicting them, imprisoning them, fining them, spoiling their houses and goods, and other ways molesting them; but afterwards he proceeded to greater instances of cruelty. Though the Spirit of the Lord catches away Philip, so full is his heart of the truth that we may be sure all that occurred confirmed it in his eyes. Now about that time,. That the famine was in Judea, and Saul and Barnabas were sent thither with what the church at Antioch had collected. Luke seems to have wanted to close his portrayals of the Christian mission within the Jewish world (Acts 2:42 to Acts 12:24) with two vignettes having to do with Gods continued activity on behalf of the Jerusalem church." So he came in like a shining god, making this speech to the people and, of course, the people began to cry, "It's the voice of a god, not of a man!" He was truly in earnest before God. So when we see that the enemies of godliness, being full of fury, do not commit horrible slaughters, that they may mix and imbrue all things with blood, let us know that we need not thank their moderation and clemency for this; but because, when the Lord doth spare his sheep, he doth not suffer them to do so much hurt as they would. He had gone up to the great city of solemnities, but the blessing was no longer to be found there. With their friend on the throne, the Jewish hierarchy decided to exterminate Christianity; and there was no reason why they could not have succeeded, except for the intervention of the Father in heaven. 286, 287). Not that one would deny that a mighty work was then wrought in Cornelius. Thus we see that, while we have the angel of the Lord in certain cases, the Spirit of the Lord expressly in others, we have also simply the holy judgment of the gracious heart. 2 And he had James the brother of John put to The importance of closer attention to the text is well shown by Calvin's remarks on this verse. Mirt is kell az eskvi fots a kszldsnl? The expansive power of Christianity called it to break forth on all sides; and speedily the original congregation, or in modern language the mother church, of each city gave birth to other societies of Christians in the surrounding neighbourhood. He was not only (as Herod Antipas was) tetrarch of Galilee, but had also the government of Judea committed to him by Claudius the emperor, and resided most at Jerusalem, where he was at this time. So he went away to another place. I will not pretend to say that it cost him little, but am sure it would have been a heavy trial to many a man of God to leave that which was so bright, where He had wrought powerfully in using himself for His own glory. Herod the king This was Herod Agrippa, the son of Aristobulus, and grandson of Herod the Great; he was nephew to Herod Antipas, who beheaded John they Baptist, and brother to Herodias. On the night before Herod was going to bring him before the people, Peter was sleeping between two soldiers, bound by two chains; and guards kept continuous watch before the door. And the angel said unto him, Gird thyself, and bind on thy sandals. Vincent says the word "vex" is used "in the older and stronger sense of torment or oppress rather than its modern usage of petty annoyances" (508). He had been educated at Rome, but he sedulously cultivated the good graces of the Jewish people by meticulously keeping the Law and all Jewish observances. It was to be emphatically a witness of grace in suffering for Christ's name: "For I will show him how great things he must suffer for my name's sake." It is, then, nothing but the fact, that the invisible Church, or rather that which in the Church is invisible, preceded that which is visible. This is the only apostles death that the New Testament recorded. Father, I declare that Man, Israel, not merely Saul, was altogether blinded: the flesh never knows God. At Joppa too was wrought a still more striking miracle of the Lord in Tabitha's case, already dead, than in that of Eneas, who had been paralysed for years. Legtbb ismersm s jmagam is egy ltszlag teljesen idegen szakterletrl rkeztnk. Where, whither, when, in what place. I therefore must say that the gift of the Holy Ghost here is, in my judgment, clearly distinct from anything in the way of either a spiritual gift for souls or a miraculous power, as it is called. Luke calleth this games which was slain the brother of John, that he may distinguish him from the son of Alpheus. Ignyes eskv fotzs vllalok Veszprmben, mvszi s dokumentarista fotkkal tudlak titeket elkprztatni. And he commanded us to preach unto the people." A soul that now looks to Jesus ought to rest without question on redemption; but we must remember that at this time Jesus was not yet publicly preached to the Gentiles not yet freely and fully proclaimed according to the riches of grace. 3 And because he saw it pleased the Jews, he proceeded further to take Peter also. See Josephus, Antiq., book 19, chapter 5, section 1. . What in our Lord's discourses is a matter of anticipation or prophecy, here appears as a matter of fact.
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