The Great Sending, Chapter 28

Reverand Dr. Paul Maier

Fortunately, we have an accurate record of how believers responded to God’s Commissioning in the earliest history of Christianity, the Book of Acts. This Scripture is a detailed and accurate record of the Church’s earliest history and concentrates on the missional journeys of the greatest follower of Jesus, Saul later Paul of Tarsus. In his achievements for the faith as the Church’s greatest missionary, theologian, and universalizer of the faith to the Gentile world of his day in the Eastern Mediterranean coast lands, Asia Minor (today’s Turkey), Greece, and Italy, he was the one person in history who totally understood the general commission of God in Christ.

Paul earned his right to be an Apostle since he had fulfilled the requirements of Apostleship as one who had seen the Risen Lord and had been commissioned by Him to preach the Gospel, both happening at his spectacular conversion on the Road to Damascus. God’s commissioning also targeted the least likely person in the world who would receive it; at that time no one hated nor opposed Jesus more than Saul of Tarsus. In fact, Saul had also persecuted the early Christians in Jerusalem and beyond.

Small wonder that Paul could call himself the “chief of Sinners.” In his letter to Timothy, Paul shows why God did it this way. Nothing is so powerful that it can withstand God’s commissioning. The second half of the Book of Acts discloses the thrilling account of how all this happened.

Timothy was Paul’s own disciple, an understudy who joined him at Lystra in Asia Minor during his second mission journey. Along with Luke, Timothy accompanied Paul for the rest of his career.

Luke, our historian, shows us the statistical effects of the Divine Commission at several points in the New Testament:
• the effect of Peter’s preaching in Jerusalem, where there were 3,000 converts to the faith
• to Peter and John in Jerusalem, sometime later, with 5,000 more converts
• in Thessalonica on the Second Journey, where Luke writes that Paul’s Jewish opponents claim that he had turned the world upside down, for the cause of Christ

Paul would also write to the Colossians (1:3) of his gratitude to God and the joy that the Gospel was now being proclaimed throughout the Mediterranean world.

Critics have scoffed at all such statistics, especially since ancient historians have trouble not exaggerating statistical successes. While this is true of ancient historians generally, it is not true of Luke. Secular sources actually support Luke’s statistics. Cornelius Tacitus, one of Rome’s finest source historians, tells us in his
annals (15:44) that in the year 64, when over half of Rome was destroyed in the Great Fire, that the Emperor Nero accused the Christians of starting the fire. Then, Tacitus explained who the Christians were:

“They were named for a Christ who was crucified by one of our Governors, Pontius Pilot, and the pernicious superstition was almost eliminated but suddenly gained new vigor and found its way even to Rome where sewage flows from all over the world.”

The point is this: The Latin term for “vast numbers” is used elsewhere by Tacitus to refer to high hundreds or thousands. This statistic is extremely important as outside testimony to the astonishing growth of the Early Church. Here in Rome, 1,500 miles away from Palestine and only 31 years after Jesus’ Resurrection, a vast multitude of converts were present, and this is only the number that were arrested. It did not include the greater number of Christians who hid from or fled the horror. Such a vast population of Christians is only possible if the numbers had grown explosively as described by Luke.

In Asia Minor, only twelve years or so after the death of the Apostle John, Pliny The Younger, a Roman Governor in Asia Minor, wrote to the Emperor Trajan (AD 98-117) that there were so many Christians that the pagan temples were being deserted, “and even the country people were singing hymns to Christ as to a God.”

For a faith to explode at such a rapid rate was unparalleled in the Mediterranean World and all but shouts that Luke was not exaggerating. Luke is reliable.

YesterdayTomorrow

Last WeekNext Week