The Questor

The Wild Gospel..… ….. In the Power of The Spirit

We’ve spent the last 18 months working our way through the Acts of the Apostles and it’s an amazing story. It reads like an historical novel – but it’s true! In the space of 30 years, the Christian church went from having tens of members to tens of thousands. Now we’ve come to the end of the book, it’s worth reflecting on what we’ve read.

The first thing to note is that the people who made it happen were men and women like us. Some of them had special gifts like Paul the religious scholar; and others were from ordinary backgrounds like Peter the fisherman. But whoever they were, they all relied on the power of God’s Holy Spirit to do what they did – how else could such people achieve all this!

The second thing is that it wasn’t easy. In the musical, Jesus Christ Superstar, the disciples sing a song when they’ve had a few drinks at the Passover meal. It has a wistful chorus that goes:

Always thought that I’d be an apostle

Knew that I could make it if I tried

Then when we retired, we could write a gospel

So they’d all talk about us when we died.

Well, it didn’t work our quite like that did it! According to tradition, all of them except John were killed: • In 44AD, King Herod ordered James the Greater to be thrust through with the sword. He was the first of the apostles to be martyred. • Andrew was crucified on a diagonal cross. • Doubting Thomas was speared in India. • Philip was crucified in Turkey, and preached from the cross with his dying breath. • Matthew was stabbed in the back in Ethiopia. • Peter was crucified upside in Rome.

As we’ve seen, Paul writes to the Christians at Corinth: Five times I received from the Jews the forty lashes minus one. Three times I was beaten with rods, once I was stoned, three times I was shipwrecked. I spent a night and a day in the open sea. In my frequent journeys, I have been in danger from rivers and from bandits, in danger from Jews and non Jews, in danger in the city and in the country, in danger on the sea and among false brothers,…

And he ended his days being executed on the orders of the Emperor Nero.

The third thing to note is that we must carry on the work. Doctor Luke documented the life of Jesus in his gospel and then recorded much of what went on during the thirty years after Jesus’ death in Acts of the Apostles. And he must have been driven to do this because of the importance of the events he recorded to all of us who follow.

At the end of his gospel, John went further and wrote: “This is the disciple who testifies to these things and who wrote them down. We know that his testimony is true….”

Later, at the beginning of his first letter he writes: “We proclaim to you what we have seen and heard….”