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"They looked when he should have swollen, or fallen down dead suddenly: but after
they had looked a great while, and saw no harm come to him, they changed their minds
and said that he was a god" (Acts 28: 6).
Subsequently the same apostle healed a man of "a fever and dysentery", and other
sufferers in the island of diseases not specified.
The fact that Mark 16: penetrates so far, reveals an unbroken connection of the Acts
with the Gospels. Presently we find the apostle at Rome, and, standing before the chief
of the Jews, he said:--
"For the HOPE OF ISRAEL, I am bound with this chain" (Acts 28: 20).
This statement was followed by an all-day exposition, to the chief of the Jews, of
Moses and the Prophets concerning the kingdom of God and "Jesus". It is impossible in
the face of such testimony to think that up to that date, the hope of Israel had been set
aside, cancelled, or changed. Should any be found who would spiritualize this reference
to the hope of Israel, it will be sufficient to turn to Acts 26: 6, 7 to prove its literality:--
"And now I stand and am judged (I am bound with this chain) 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."
During the course of our exposition we shall show many other references to the
hope of Israel, but if we find one, unchanged, hope in chapter 1:, chapter 26:, and
chapter 28:, it is difficult to deny that the same hope obtains in chapters 2:-25:
Let us now come to the epistles of the period. It matters not whether we agree as to
the exact order in which they were written, so long as we distinguish between those
epistles of Paul written before his Roman imprisonment, recorded in Acts 28:, and
those written during that imprisonment. During the Acts the apostle wrote seven epistles,
six to the churches, and one to the Hebrews. They are associated together thus:
Galatians, Hebrews, and Romans are single epistles, and Thessalonians and
Corinthians are in pairs.
The truth we here seek to set forth is that the hope of the church during the Acts was
millennial in character, and that a millennial hope is the hope of Israel. To teach that the
hope of the Acts was one thing and the hope of the churches during the selfsame period
was different, cannot be justified either by sound argument or from the epistles
themselves. There is but one hope running through both the Acts and the epistles of the
period.
Every reader will agree, that of all the epistles written by Paul during this period, the
most fundamental is the last, viz., that to the Romans. Again, if any change is to be
sought in the teaching of the epistles, we would expect to find it in the last of the series
rather than in the first or the second. Most certain it is that the hope of the church to
which the epistle to the Romans is addressed would not be more Jewish than the hope
entertained by the church addressed in the epistles to the Thessalonians. On all counts