`For this cause therefore have I called for you, to see you, and to speak with you: because that for the hope of

Israel I am bound with this chain' (Acts 28:20).

In his defence before Agrippa, who was expert in all `customs' of the Jews and who therefore would be able to

appreciate the apostle's definite avowal, he said:

`And now I stand and am judged for the hope of the promise made of God unto our fathers: unto which promise

our twelve tribes, instantly serving God day and night, hope to come' (Acts 26:6,7).

This was none other than the promise which formed the burden of the apostles' question in Acts 1:

`When they therefore were come together, they asked of Him, saying, Lord, wilt Thou at this time restore again

the kingdom to Israel?' (Acts 1:6).

It was to this Peter referred when he said that the times of restitution of all things, which God by the mouth of all

his holy prophets had spoken, would commence upon the repentance of Israel (Acts 3:19-26). Moreover, the apostle

could have shown these Jews his own written statement in the letter he had sent to the church at Rome touching their

hope, that it was the hope of Israel:

`There shall be a root of Jesse, and He that shall rise to reign over the Gentiles; in Him shall the Gentiles trust

(hope, elpizo). Now the God of (that) hope (elpis) fill you with all joy and peace in believing, that ye may

abound in hope, through the power of the Holy Ghost' (Rom. 15:12,13).

Once we admit that these are the words of truth and soberness, we must also admit that the hope of the church up

till the writing of the epistle to the Romans was the hope of the Kingdom, for what other meaning can attach to the

words `reign over the Gentiles'? It is, moreover, the hope of Israel, for if not, why introduce the title `The root of

Jesse'? and why say `reign over' the Gentiles? If any should object to this translation of archo, let them turn to Mark

10:42. Moreover, this hope was associated with the power of the Holy Ghost.

It is therefore impossible to dissociate the hope of the early church from the hope of Israel, without impugning

the veracity of the apostle Paul, or denying the inspiration of Romans 15.

From the first chapter of the Acts one hope is before the church right on to the moment when Israel were set

aside. But then, for the very sufficient reason that a new calling had been revealed, it became necessary to pray that

the church might perceive `what is the hope of His calling' (Eph. 1:18).

There are three sects mentioned in the Acts:

The sect of the SADDUCEES (Acts 5:17).

The sect of the PHARISEES (Acts 15:5).

The sect of the NAZARENES (Acts 24:5).

The apostle refers to this sect of the Nazarenes, saying:

`But this I confess unto thee, that after the way which they call heresy (airesis, "sect"), so worship I the God of

my fathers, believing all things which are written in the law and in the prophets' (Acts 24:14).

The Sadducees worshipped the God of their fathers after the way that men called `a sect', but they did not

believe all that was written in the law and the prophets, for they particularly denied the hope of the resurrection. The

Pharisees, too, worshipped the God of their fathers after the way that men called `a sect', believing, at least

professedly, all that was written, and definitely including the hope of resurrection in their creed, yet they overloaded

the written word with an accumulation of tradition so great that it was made of none effect.

The Christian Church began, as a movement of the Spirit of God, within the ranks of the Jews: it grew up as a

minority that still worshipped in synagogue: it was augmented by believing Gentiles, who were blessed under the

New covenant, and were accounted children of Abraham and heirs according to the promise (Gal 3:29), but the