The Acts of the Apostles: Preliminary Matters

The Acts of the Apostles:

Preliminary Matters

The Book of Acts is one of the most important books in the Bible for Christians today.  Or not, depending on your interpretation.  It is either the only real picture we have of the church in its purest form, or it is simply a record of some events that happened a long time ago in a land far, far away.  The events would be important to give us a complete picture of God’s work in the past, but interesting only in the way museums are for showing us the past. 

What makes the book difficult to understand is that 1) there are conflicting systems of interpretation offering the keys to explaining the events of this book, and 2) there is a significant gap between our experience and what we read about in this book.  The attempts to explain this gap is one reason for the conflicting systems of interpretation.

There are essentially two approaches to this book, which can be considered as the two ends of a continuum.  On the one end, the events in the Book of Acts are unique, involving unique individuals (the apostles) at a unique time in history (the birth of the Church, the beginning of the Holy Spirit’s indwelling work, the offer of a Kingdom to Israel, the oral proclamation prior to the writing of the New Testament, the extension of God’s work to involve the Gentiles) requiring unique means (signs and wonders and miracles to confirm and authenticate the message and the messengers).

At the other end of the continuum, the Book of Acts is seen as the only picture we have of the Church in its purest form, the Church as it is supposed to be.  If the events are unique, the story becomes merely another story from old having little relevance for our lives today.

The reason for the difficulty and divergence of opinions is simple.  The events in this book are unlike the experience of anyone we know, and we need to find an explanation for that.  There are only two.  Either God has not chosen to work today as He did then for reasons known only to Himself, or there are factors either in our circumstances or our lives that affect how God works in our day.  And, of course, there are any number of combinations of these two positions.

Those who maintain that everything is unique have no problem identifying people, events, and circumstances which are in some way unique.  I suggest that the evidence to support this uniqueness as an explanation of the problem is sparse if not absent.  The bigger problem is that the entire New Testament was written by people with whom and at a time where all this uniqueness was to have occurred.  We are left not knowing how much or what things have changed since that time.

Those who believe that the phenomena depicted in this book are meant to be examples of how the Church is to be today can find both encouragement and discouragement in the fact that the Book of Acts parallels the experience of the Israelites in the Old Testament.

The Israelites were redeemed from bondage and death in Egypt and given the promise of a new life in a new land.  This new land was not a picture of heaven, because this land had to be conquered.  It was not a place of rest from their labors. 

Moses, who represented the law, was not allowed to enter the land.  He did ask God for someone to lead them into the land, and God gave to him Joshua.  By the way, the name Joshua is regularly translated as Jesus in the Greek Old Testament, perhaps as a clue in case anyone missed the connection.

But when Joshua was old, he did not ask God for a leader to replace him.  I view this as a mistake, but it corresponds better with the reality.  The Israelites experienced the victory and power of God during the lives of that first generation who had seen God work mightily in their midst.   When this first generation died off, the next generation had nothing of their own to inspire and lead them (Judges 2:6-11).  Why should we think that the Church would have a different experience?

The nation of Israel in its natural state was easily and strongly influenced by their surrounding culture and quickly turned from following after God with their whole hearts.  In many cases the people as a nation cried out to God in their misery, and God raised up a leader to deliver the people from their enemies and to encourage them in the right paths. 

When Israel chose to have kings over them, while this change in the structure of the nation was considered to be a rejection of God’s leadership over their lives (I Samuel 8), the ensuing life of the nation essentially showed that they prospered and followed God when the king did, and they went back to their old ways when the king was not a strong leader who followed God.

The history of the Church since the New Testament times reflects this same pattern.  We may trace the decline of spiritual vitality and the miraculous to the death of the apostles, but there is good evidence that much of this continued for several centuries afterwards.  But most of Church history can be written with the names of those individuals whom God raised up at various times in its life.

Even in the Old Testament, God raised up individuals first through whom He did His work.  Moses brought the Israelites out of Egypt, and Joshua brought them into the Promised Land.  David delivered them from their enemies, and Solomon built their temple at the time of their greatest prosperity.

The questions are many; the answers are important.  And you can’t rely on anyone else to decide the issues for you.