Here's Acts 11:19-21:

Now those who were scattered because of the persecution that arose over Stephen traveled as far as Phoenicia and Cyprus and Antioch, speaking the word to no one except Jews. But there were some of them, men of Cyprus and Cyrene, who on coming to Antioch spoke to the Hellenists also, preaching the Lord Jesus. And the hand of the Lord was with them, and a great number who believed turned to the Lord.

“The persecution that arose over Stephen” refers back three chapters to Acts 8:1 which says “And there arose on that day a great persecution against the church in Jerusalem, and they were all scattered throughout the regions of Judea and Samaria, except the apostles”. That little phrase, “except the apostles”, is particularly pointed, for whatever reasons lay behind the apostolic inertia in this verse, it means that any specific evangelistic effort to non-Jews had started well before the apostles got their acts (sorry) together. They were still doing their apostolic thing as only they knew how in Jerusalem, even they knew full well what Jesus had said to them way back in Acts 1:8:

But you will receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you, and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the end of the earth.

Perhaps the apostles were waiting for a written invitation, since Jesus' words in Acts 1 were a starter's gun for world evangelization if ever there was one. But the very first people to hear the call and break out from evangelizing purely Jewish audiences were not apostles, but anonymous believers from Cyprus and Cyrene.

Indeed, it takes a full two chapters before the Apostle Peter, in Acts 10, finally gets around to evangelizing non-Jews. Even then, it's only because he receives an angelic vision, the celestial equivalent of a boot up the backside, that confirms that this might be the right thing to do. Even then, he is immediately hauled up before the other Jerusalem apostles who demand that Peter explain his actions.

Meanwhile, God had already been well and truly blessing the spread of the gospel among the non-Jews without the slightest hint that his Holy Spirit was acting with approval from the institutional church.

One of the messages of this bit of Acts has to be that if you feel the need to tell someone that Jesus is Lord, you don't need to wait for the church's blessing before you say something. Even apostles can be slow off the mark in doing what they ought to do, which means that you can show them the way. Just keep a low profile about it, or you may discover that you have to explain your evangelistic enthusiasm to the church leadership!

1 Comment »