To the Ends of the Earth

"Set apart for me Barnabas and Saul for the work to which I have called them" (Acts 13:2). With those words in Antioch the third stage begins, and the gospel leaves the land of Israel for good. On Cyprus the proconsul Sergius Paulus believes despite the opposition of Elymas the magician (Acts 13:6-12). In Lystra Paul heals a man lame from birth and has to stop the crowd from sacrificing to him and Barnabas as Zeus and Hermes (Acts 14:8-18). In Philippi Lydia, a seller of purple goods from Thyatira, opens her house, a slave girl is freed from a spirit of divination, and a jailer washes the apostles' wounds and is baptized with all his household (Acts 16:14-34).

The question of who belongs is settled in Jerusalem, where Peter, Barnabas, Paul and James the Lord's brother agree that God has made no distinction, "having cleansed their hearts by faith" (Acts 15:7-19). From there the mission widens through named companions: Silas, Timothy of Lystra, Titus, Luke the beloved physician, Priscilla and Aquila who explain the way of God more accurately to Apollos (Acts 18:24-26), Erastus, Tychicus, Epaphras, Onesimus, and Phoebe, "a servant of the church at Cenchreae" (Romans 16:1).

Paul is seized in the temple, rescued by the tribune Claudius Lysias, and tried before Felix, Festus and Herod Agrippa II, who says, "In a short time would you persuade me to be a Christian?" (Acts 26:28). Having appealed to Caesar, he sails for Rome, is shipwrecked at Malta under the guard of the centurion Julius, and arrives to live two whole years at his own expense, "proclaiming the kingdom of God and teaching about the Lord Jesus Christ with all boldness and without hindrance" (Acts 28:30-31).

The letters belong to this era too, and they are full of ordinary people: Philemon and his runaway slave, Timothy told to let no one despise him for his youth (1 Timothy 4:12), Demas who deserted Paul "in love with this present world" (2 Timothy 4:10), Diotrephes who liked to put himself first (3 John 9), and the readers of Jude, urged to "contend for the faith that was once for all delivered to the saints" (Jude 3). The commission of Acts 1:8 has reached Rome and the churches it planted are being taught by post. What follows it — the vision given to John on Patmos — is its own era.