Unstoppable

If you are visiting this site for the first time, thank you. I am reading the New Testament in ninety days, and writing some of my thoughts here, every day, about what I read. This is day forty-one, and it is also the final day, and chapter, in the Acts of the Apostles.

It is also the day we find that Acts isn’t about any one person. It’s about the gospel.

Four Years

Paul survived a brutal shipwreck. On the island of Malta, his presence was a blessing to those who were sick. He healed them, and they honored him by funding the remaining part of the trip to Rome for the soldiers and the sailors.

He and his companions eventually made it to the Imperial City. While there, Paul lived alone for two years. Luke and Aristarchus, who made the trip with him, were not allowed to share a residence with him.

So, at the end of those two years, Paul had been involved in this episode, and been under arrest, for a total four years.

Four years.

The swiftly-moving and tirelessly-traveling Paul has now lost the mobility of Acts 13-19. He is now at the mercy of the authorities.

Because it doesn’t matter to God how the gospel gets to Rome. Just that it gets there.

It is inconsequential to God that Paul spend four years of his life under arrest. It may be an extreme trail for Paul (and Philippians indicates as such, even though he wrote often of joy, he was bothered at times about whether to even remain alive), but he was part of the globalizing mission of the gospel.

The ending of Acts, too, seems to be lacking for us who have followed Paul intently. Luke knew what happened after Paul’s two years in Rome, because he knew that Paul’s incarceration ended after those two years. But he doesn’t share that with us. He wants us to know two things.

Unstoppable Power

First, he wants us to know that Paul’s residence in Rome was only temporary. Whether he rented it, or whether it was furnished, makes no difference. Over and over again, the story of the gospel is a story of mobility. Even though Paul was grounded there for two years, it wasn’t permanent.

Second, the story of Acts is not the story of Paul. Or Peter. Or Philip. Or Stephen. It is the story of the gospel. It is a story without an end, and Luke won’t cheapen this book by giving us the illusion that it has stopped.

Because Luke has proven, through this writing, that the gospel cannot be stopped at all.

Not by religious zealots.

Not by murderous threats and actions.

Not by distance.

Not by time.

Not by prisons.

Not by skin color.

Not by idol-worshipers.

Not by shipwrecks.

Not by floggings.

Not by disease.

Not by death.

And certainly not by Rome.

The story of Acts begins with the coming kingdom of Jesus, and ends with the coming kingdom of Jesus. Everything between those two passages are parts played by people God allowed to share in the journey.

Which is both humbling and exciting. The gospel does not depend upon our talents, or our merits. Our place in the kingdom is a privilege that God allows us. We are honored, by God, to accept a place in its movement. Both our trials and our joys are testimonies to its power.

Acts of the Apostles proves that to us. And it proves to us how the message can transform betrayers and persecutors, Gentiles and Jews, Greeks in Athens, doctors in Troas, day laborers in Corinth, politicians on Cyprus, women in Philippi, men in Caesarea, and kids in Lystra.

This is the gospel we preach, and the God we serve. Don’t dilute this gospel down to rigid cultural stipulations, and don’t confine it to religious traditions among our fellowships. Please. It’s power is holy and amazing, and we rob it of that power when we attach anything to it at all. The grace and forgiveness of Jesus is what cleansed people flung across an Empire, not petty religious debates over practicality and opinions.

I pray we reclaim this gospel. We preach this gospel. We rejoice in this gospel. We minister this gospel. We share this gospel.

But however we use it, or abuse it, take caution dear reader. It cannot be stopped.

Proof

Reading through Acts recently, and being focused on the Forty Days of Prayer at the MoSt Church, this passage was startling to me when I read it in my personal reading time:

In my first book I told you, Theophilus, about everything Jesus began to do and teach until the day he was taken up to heaven after giving his chosen apostles further instructions through the Holy Spirit. During the forty days after his crucifixion, he appeared to the apostles from time to time, and he proved to them in many ways that he was actually alive. And he talked to them about the Kingdom of God.  (Acts 1:1-3)

For forty days, Jesus appeared with the apostles, and proved to them that he was alive.  The apostles evidently needed proof, and Jesus felt that he still needed to prove he was indeed resurrected.  Those ideas resonated with me.  If these eleven men needed proof, then is proof of Jesus’ authenticity such a bad thing?

As these forty days of prayer began, I watched The Case for Christ, a documentary based upon the book, and research of Lee Strobel.  Before watching it, though, I was indeed a skeptic of the film, and was, for a long time, a skeptic of Strobel’s works, wondering how one man could turn from an atheist to a believer, and then make book after film after book, probably for a good profit.  That is, until I read his book The Case for the Real Jesus two years ago.

That one book, other than the bible, fed my desire to know.  Written well, recording interview after interview of very prominent theological scholars, I have since read the book twice.  I am an historian, as well as a minister, and the very idea of historical evidence is something I treasure.  My childhood consisted of a very conservative theological perspective, and through that teaching, the search for historical evidence was pointless.  It was assumed that if you needed historical evidence, then your faith was merely a shadow of what it needed to be, and any want of evidence proved a weakness of faith. So reading information on the historicity of Christ was, and still is, breathtaking to me.

And, upon a re-reading of Acts 1, the apostles themselves needed assurances of the physicality of Jesus.  They needed proof, even after everything their eyes witnessed for the three years of their shared time with Jesus.

Be warned, though.  If you decided to venture into the area of Christ’s historicity, you will be challenged.  The works of Strobel are good, but his critics are fierce, and, at times, convincing.  And do not be discouraged by the need to see God work in these forty days.  Focused prayer gives rise to bearing witness to the hand of God.  Ancient Jewish mystics even prayed with their eyes open, in hopes of seeing God work, even as they prayed.

So do not be discouraged by the need to know if Jesus is who he claims he is.  Even his apostles needed proof.