Hi Janes and Ellen,
Acts is the second letter that a doctor penned and couriered to a Christ-follower colleague – whose name was Theophilus. Luke – the physician who penned the Acts Book, was one of Paul’s faithful friends. Luke traveled at times with Paul. At the time that Luke was penning his Acts letter to Theophilus – who your grandpaa thinks was a close associate of Luke and ostensibly a new Christ-follower, Luke was with Paul in the city of Rome – where Paul had been taken and where he was being kept under house arrest. Because Luke’s Acts letter to Theophilus abruptly ends about the time that Paul was released after spending 61 and 62 B.C. under house arrest in the city of Rome and because Paul would live for another five or six years before he was martyred near the end of Nero’s fourteen year brutal reign, your grandpaa believes that Luke may have had a reason early in 63 B.C. to want to suddenly sum up his letter to Theophilus. There is nothing known about Theophilus other than that the meaning of Theophilus name is ‘one who loves God’. Luke’s Acts of the Apostles is not only the praxis, doings, transactions and achievements of the Christ-follower church leaders during the first thirty years of the existence of Christ-follower fellowships, it is also a bridging compendium to Luke’s first letter – which was given Luke’s name, that he sent to Theophilus that articulated the life, ministry and purpose of Jesus’ thirty year or so assigned tenure on planet Earth. Luke was a well learned guy who had an outstanding command of the Greek language. Luke used at times in his letters to Theophilus an extensive and rich classical Greek vocabulary while at other times, Luke used Semitic or the Jewish language to communicate what he wanted to say in what he was writing to Theophilus. Luke had an innate aptitude to articulate through his penned words the speaking styles of the speeches that were made by Peter, Stephen, Paul, Gamaliel, Tertullus and others. Your grandpaa thinks that Luke heard the speeches that he quoted in order for him to be able to intentionally morph his writing style to mimic the deliveries of the presenters. Your grandpaa thinks that Luke was a student of each context in which he was in which enabled him to pen in the kind of detail that he invariably did.
The Acts of the Apostles can be disseminated chronologically by reflecting on Luke’s Acts letter as being a series of micro incidents that Luke recorded in the context of when, where, how and with whom these episodes took place. The Acts Book spans the ascension of Jesus into heaven to the end of Paul’s house arrest in the city of Rome. Luke – through his Acts letter to his friend Theophilus, selectively recounts the history of the early Christ-follower church. Instead of using the Acts Book as an historical account of the early Christ-follower church, the Acts Book has become to charismatic or Pentecostal trending Christ-follower fellowships a primary source for indoctrinating their adherents to the need to personally accept and to apply the manifestation gifts – such as speaking in and being able to interpret ‘tongues’. Your grandpaa prefers that the Acts Book be used by Christ-follower fellowships as a Great Commission tool. Before Jesus ascended into heaven, Jesus mandated His disciples to spread His Good News message of hope throughout the developing world. This mandate is still in place today. As he begins his Acts letter to Theophilus, Luke gives his blueprint of spreading the Good News message of hope throughout the world when he wrote that a Christ-follower guy or gal is to begin his or her outreach efforts in his or her community staging out of his or her home or Christ-follower fellowship. Once a Christ-follower guy or gal has matured in his or her faith and has had the experience of communicating the Good News message in his or her immediate settings, he or she will see his or her evangelism stage stretching out from his or her locality to the end of the world. Because of the arrival of God – as God the Spirit, fifty days after Jesus – as God the Son, ascended into heaven, Christ-follower guys and gals became radically empowered through having a burning passion to spread the Good News message, through having unrestrained authority and power to use Jesus’ name to achieve victory over Satan’s strongholds and through having a controlled tongue that was clearly understood no matter the different language variances of the hearers.
The unfolding twenty-eight chapters in the Acts letter that Luke sent to Theophilus recounts Christ-follower fellowships emerging in organic, spontaneous ways. As Peter preached in open air venues in the city of Jerusalem to thousands of guys and gals about Jesus, thousands of these guys and gals devoted themselves to the teachings of the apostles, meeting together regularly to study the new Jesus centered belief paradigm, celebrating the Lord’s Supper together, praying together, selling their possessions in order to help the needy and praising God for the hope that they were experiencing. Stephen’s death by stoning that had been approved and witnessed by a self-designated Christ-follower persecutor – whose name was Saul, from the city of Tarsus resulted in Jesus’ life and death story being taken by Christ-follower guys and gals as they fled from the city of Jerusalem to wherever God had them land through His divine, providential way. This same Christ-follower persecutor – whose name was changed to Paul after he was struck by a God-directed flash of light, became the consummate itinerate missionary who went from place to place – often accompanied by Luke, often leaving behind a proactive Christ-follower community of guys and gals.
Acts