A perusal of Acts 15: will clearly show the relative ascendancy in the church at that

time of the Jew over the Gentile, and in Acts 16:, while neither synagogue nor Jew is

mentioned, the fact that Paul and his companion joined the women gathered together on

the sabdath day for prayer is proof enough that those women were Jewess. In Acts 17:

"Paul, as his manner was", went into the synagogue. How could Luke say that, if Paul

had turned to the Gentile? Even at Athens, it is the Jews in the synagogue who are

mentioned before the philosophers (Acts 17: 17, 18), and upon his arrival at Corinth,

Paul went at once to the Jewish quarter and found a certain Jew, and once again we read:

"He reasoned in the synagogue every sabbath, and persuaded the Jews and the Greek"

(Acts 18: 4). But here, too, the Jews resented the teaching of the Apostle, calling forth

his condemnation in the words, "Your blood be on your own heads; I am clean: from

henceforth I will go unto the Gentiles" (Acts 18: 6).

It may not have particular significance, or it may be typical, that the next verse tells us

that he entered into a house which was "hard by the synagogue" and that Crispus the

chief ruler of the synagogue believed on the Lord, and from I Cor. 1: 1, we gather his

successor, Sosthenes (18: 17) also. But the objector may say that Paul's words in

18: 6 are final "from henceforth". Yet we have only to read on to verse 19 to find him

once again in the synagogue and reasoning with the Jews.

After his visit to Jerusalem we once more find the Apostle speaking boldly in the

synagogue, occupying the space of three months in this public ministry (Acts 19: 8).

Again his testimony was followed by opposition, and for two years he conducted his

ministry among the disciples in the school of one Tyrannus (verse 9), where both Jews

and Greeks heard the word of the Lord Jesus.

Still the opposition of the Jews persisted, for it is found again in Acts 20: 3; and, in

verse 22, the Apostle's testimony as a free man draws to an end. His own summary of it

says nothing of any turning from the Jews to the Gentiles, but, on the contrary, his own

words are, "Testifying both to the Jews, and also to the Greeks".

No valid opposition can be discovered in the record of the Acts to the position we

have reached, namely, that at Acts 28: 28 a door was opened to the Gentiles that had

never been opened before and that there the dispensation of the mystery was given to the

imprisoned apostle; there the high glories of heavenly places were, for the first time,

revealed. Acts 28: 28 is the dispensational landmark.