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The Mounting Opposition of Israel in the Acts
In this respect we find that the attitude of Israel as recorded in the Acts follows the same pattern as the Gospels.
Instead of being overwhelmed with gratitude for God's offer of mercy and forgiveness for their great sin of
murdering their Messiah-King and the promise of His return to them if they repented, Israel and their leaders
hardened their hearts all the more and the savage persecution of believers foretold by the Lord commenced. Stephen
is stoned to death. Peter is thrown into prison, James is executed. Paul is likewise imprisoned on more than one
occasion and also stoned and left for dead (Acts 14:19,20). His long list of sufferings, recorded in 2 Corinthians 11
vividly brings before us the tremendous cost of faithfulness at this time. The opposition to the ministry of the
Apostles came consistently from Israel and not from the Gentiles. In fact, at the beginning, Rome protected Paul.
No wonder the Lord's verdict on the nation is expressed in Romans 10:21 :
`But to Israel He saith, All day long I have stretched forth My hands unto a disobedient and gainsaying
(contradicting) people'.
Those loving hands were stretched forth to forgive, receive and bless this chosen nation, but they would have none
of it. Rather they persevered in their opposition to the Lord and His ministers, going farther away from Him and
deeper into the darkness of rejection.
As we have seen, Paul always went to the Jew first, asserting that it was necessary to do this (Acts 13:46),
necessary because of Israel's key position in the outworking of God's purposes for His earthly kingdom. And this
goes right on until the end of the book and is just as apparent in the last chapter as the earlier ones. It is therefore
quite incorrect to place the present laying aside of Israel in unbelief at any point prior to Acts 28.
True it is that Paul turned away locally from the Jews when they made it quite evident that they violently
opposed his ministry (see Acts 13:45-48; 18:5,6) and then appealed to the Gentiles, is clear from the record, but it
was only a local turning away for afterwards we are told that the Apostle, in going to a new place, goes straight to
the synagogue and witnesses there once more (Acts 14:1, 18:19 etc). In chapter 20 we have a summary by Luke of
Paul's speech to the elders of the church at Ephesus and this is important because of the light it throws upon his
ministry up to this point. He says to them:
`And now I kept back nothing that was profitable unto you ... wherefore I take you to record this day, that I am
pure from the blood of all men. For I have not shunned to declare unto you all the counsel of God' (Acts
20:20-27).
Here are the marks of faithful ministry. Of the truth Christ had revealed to him and commissioned him to make
known, Paul had kept back nothing; he had made known everything. Would to God that all servants of the Lord
could truthfully say this!
But the implications of these statements are often missed. During the period covered by the Acts, Paul wrote
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seven epistles, if we include Hebrews (although this is not popular among scholars today). These are Galatians,
1 and 2 Thessalonians, 1 and 2 Corinthians, Hebrews and Romans. After the Acts we have seven more, five of
which are linked with prison, they are marked with an asterisk: *Ephesians, *Colossians, *Philemon, *Philippians,
1 Timothy, Titus, and *2 Timothy. We insist that the seven epistles written during the Acts period must reflect the
conditions and the doctrine of the Acts. There cannot be a dichotomy here, the Acts teaching one thing and the
epistles of this period teaching another in contradiction.
If Paul had made known everything and kept back nothing in doctrine which Christ had given him, then he must
have revealed the later teaching concerning the Body of Christ given in Ephesians and Colossians. But in the latter
epistles this is linked with a secret (mystery A.V.) which God had hidden in Himself and was undiscoverable till He
made it known through Paul the prisoner (Eph. 3:1-11; Col. 1:24-28). Moreover this church is not an evolution from
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The case for the Pauline authorship of Hebrews is dealt with in Perfection or Perdition by Charles H. Welch and
Stuart Allen, published by The Berean Publishing Trust, 52a Wilson St., London EC2A 2ER.