Acts

The Acts of the Apostles is the sequel to the Gospel of Luke, written by Luke the beloved physician and traveling companion of Paul, and addressed to the same Theophilus. It is the Bible's only history of the early church, picking up exactly where the Gospels end, with the risen Jesus ascending to heaven, and carrying the story roughly thirty years forward. Acts is the bridge between the Gospels and the Epistles: nearly every letter Paul wrote fits somewhere inside its narrative of journeys, churches, and trials.

The book opens with Jesus' promise that his followers will be witnesses in Jerusalem, Judaea, Samaria, and the uttermost part of the earth, and that promise becomes the book's outline. The Holy Ghost falls at Pentecost and Peter's sermon adds three thousand souls in a day. Stephen becomes the first martyr, Philip baptizes the Ethiopian eunuch, and Saul the persecutor is struck down on the Damascus road and transformed into Paul the apostle. Three missionary journeys plant churches across the Roman world, and the book closes with Paul, shipwrecked and imprisoned, preaching the kingdom of God in Rome itself.

Acts matters because it shows what the gospel does when it is unleashed: ordinary fishermen turn the world upside down, persecution only scatters the seed farther, and the door of faith swings open to the Gentiles. It is the story of the unstoppable advance of the word of God.