After Paul and Bar-Nabbas part ways for a journey to visit the congregations they reached the first time, Paul seemed to contradict his teachings on circumcision by circumcising Timothy. In Philippi, Paul shut up a demon that had possessed a girl and was haranguing him with truth. Paul and Silas were shut up in prison, then led the jailer to salvation by their rejoicing during their incarceration.
Tag: Acts of the Apostles
Acts 15 recounts a “watershed” moment among believers in Messiah Yeshua (Jesus) — should believers among the nations be allowed into the assembly of Israel and how. These events didn’t happen in a vacuum. Events from Acts 1–14 — Peter’s encounter with Cornelius and Paul’s first tour of Asia Minor — led to this momentous ruling by the elders. The passage from Amos 9 of restoration of a tabernacle for all believers is important. The Yerushalayim council ruled that we mustn’t “trouble” new believers as they learn Torah.
Paul presents the good news about Yeshua (Jesus) as Mashiakh (Messiah) in Pisidian Antioch and splits the synagogue apart. The pattern of persecution he experiences here is a pattern of things to come. First to the synagogue, then to the Gentiles.
Apostle Sha’ul the Asked For becomes Paul the Rest-maker in his first missionary voyage, stopping in Cyprus. There he meets a truth-seeking official and a “truth”-peddling Jewish sorcerer. How could a Jew be involved in the occult, and where do we see such corruption of the truth today?
It’s no coincidence God frees Petros (Peter) from jail during Passover/Unleavened Bread, which even at that time was understood to be a removing of “sourness” from one’s life. In Acts 12, the “leaven” of Herod and of the leaders was shown to be “spoiling” Israel.
The vision of Acts 10, repeated in Acts 11, has been misinterpreted for millennia, in part because many people reading the text fail to see the vision of the animals in the context of Peter’s later meeting with Cornelius and the conversion of Cornelius household to the Gospel and God’s gift of the Holy Spirit upon Cornelius. Many Christians see the vision of the animals on the sheet as simply a change in dietary laws. The focus on physical food rather than upon the spiritual reality of God’s call of both Jews and Gentiles to believe in the one and only Messiah Yeshua becomes lost when this vision is interpreted out of context.