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Rejection.
The fact that the restoration is deferred to future times indicates rejection. Stephen
touches upon this in the speech that led to his martyrdom. His words revolve around two
typical incidents in the lives of Joseph and Moses:--
"And at THE SECOND TIME Joseph was made known to his brethren" (Acts 7: 13).
"This Moses whom they refused, saying, Who made thee a ruler and a judge? The
same did God send to be a ruler and a deliverer" (Acts 7: 35).
These two typical events Stephen brought to bear upon Israel's rejection of the Lord
and of His second coming, and when his hearers were cut to the heart, Stephen looked up
into heaven and said, "I see the heavens opened, and the Son of man standing on the right
hand of God" (Acts 7: 55, 56), which is but another reference to Dan. 7:
The Judge of quick and dead.
Peter and Paul refer to the second coming by stating that the Lord Jesus was to be the
Judge of the quick and the dead:--
"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 the dead" (Acts 10: 42).
"He hath appointed a day in the which He will judge the world in righteousness by
that Man Whom He hath ordained' (Acts 17: 31).
The charge against Paul, in this same chapter, was that he preached "another King, one
Jesus" (Acts 17: 7). The statement in Rev. 11: 18: "the time of the dead, that they
should be judged", is at the sounding of the seventh trumpet when great voices in heaven
proclaim that "the kingdoms of this world are become the kingdoms of our Lord and of
His Christ" (Rev. 11: 15-18). It needs the introduction of another word to bring these
passages into the range of the hope of the church, and that word is not used of the second
coming during the Acts.
The last reference we turn to is found in Acts 28: Paul's ministry as recorded in
this book is drawing to its close. A fresh, unexplained ministry is in view. Whatever
name the apostle shall give to the hope he entertained in this chapter when the epistles to
Galatians, Thessalonians, Corinthians and Romans had already been written, must
indicate the hope that covers all that period. In verse 20 he tells us that it was "for the
hope of Israel" that he was bound with a chain. Now if the hope of the church during the
Acts was something peculiar, something secret, something special, how could Paul,--the
preacher of truth, the advocate of right division, the steward of the mysteries--how could
he say such a thing? The blessing of the nations under the Abrahamic covenant is not
"church" truth, but is involved in the "restoration" made known by the holy prophets
(Acts 3: 19-26). Throughout the Acts ministry, for this selfsame reason, Paul put the
"Jew first" (Acts 3: 26; Gal. 3: 13, 14; Rom. 15: 8, 9, 12, 13).