Now going on in fairly large steps, we come to the witness of Stephen.  He was

well-named, because his name means "a crown"--Stephanos. He was the first martyr in

the N.T. who gave his life for the truth. His speech was part of God's witness to the

leaders of the people of Israel, and how they hated it! It might have been used to their

repentance. Doubtless many believers prayed that would happen, but the leaders became

all the harder in their opposition, and it ended with Stephen giving his life for his Saviour.

And yet, how wonderfully God works! That offering-up of life was not in vain, for

surely it was one of the factors, at least, in the conversion of Saul of Tarsus. He stood

there; he held the clothes of the people who were battering out the life of that saint of

God; he saw that face "like the face of an angel" (Acts 6: 15). What a testimony, for a

man to die like that! It must have been something that Saul never forgot. How could a

man go through all that, give such testimony and look so radiant? It was one of the

things, evidently, that Saul of Tarsus tried to stifle, but in the end, of course, it

contributed to his conversion, his right about turn to the Lord, on the road to Damascus.

Passing over now to chapters 10: and 11:, we come to the conversion of the Gentile

Cornelius. We note the reluctance of the Apostle Peter to go to a Gentile; and we must

not put that down to the fact that Peter was a bigoted Jew. No! he was a faithful man,

and was only doing what God's regulation in the O.T enjoined as regards his relationship

to the Gentile world. That was the only light that existed up to that point, but now God

begins to show him that His purpose is widening and that the blessing is going out to the

Gentile. That was abnormal, because God's plan was that His truth should go out to the

Gentile through the redeemed nation of Israel, and they were anything but saved at this

point--opposing, rejecting, blinding their eyes, deafening their ears and hardening their

hearts. But here God, as it were, acts before the time, and saves a remnant of Gentiles;

and the N.T. gives us the reason. It was, humanly speaking, to stir Israel up and to

"provoke them to jealousy" (Rom. 10: 19; 11: 11).  This should have roused them to

realize their great privileges were fast slipping from them through their blindness and

hardness of heart. Peter had to have a special revelation from God to go to a Gentile

outsider and then he obeys. The next thing to notice is the astonishment of the Jewish

believers when they saw a Gentile receiving blessing, which shows us quite clearly that

with the exception of the Ethiopian eunuch, there had been no Gentile saved up to this

time, otherwise they would not have been astonished if this had been a regular

occurrence. Chapter 10: 44: "While Peter spake these words the Holy Ghost fell on all

them who heard the word, and they of the circumcision which believed were astonished

as many as came with Peter because that on the Gentiles also was poured out the gift of

the Holy Ghost."

And that was not the end for Peter, because he had to go to the mother church at

Jerusalem and go over the whole matter again and explain how it was that he had dared to

go and minister to one outside the fold of Israel, an uncircumcised Gentile! Now is it not

obvious that these early Christians knew nothing about a church where there is no Jew or

Greek? They cannot have known anything about the Body of Christ, for that was a secret

still hid in God till revealed to the Apostle Paul and made known through his later prison

ministry (Eph. 3: 1-11; Col. 1: 24-27). And so Peter goes over and rehearses the whole