04.02. INTRODUCTION.

INTRODUCTION.

"Acts of the Apostles," or the shorter title "Acts," is the designation in one of the oldest uncial MSS. of that book of the New Testament which is the earliest and the only inspired history of the Church of God on record. As to its author there can be no doubt. The writer of the Third Gospel is the writer of the Acts. And the same man for whom that Gospel was written was before his mind when he penned this the later history. Luke is by general consent acknowledged to be the writer of the Third Gospel. He must therefore by consequence be the writer of the Acts, as its opening sentence indicates.

"The former treatise have I made, O Theophilus, of all that Jesus began both to do and to teach, until the day in which He was taken [or, received] up, after that He through the Holy Ghost had given commandments unto the Apostles whom He had chosen" (i. 1,2). So reads the short introduction. Luke had written an account of the Lord Jesus Christ’s sojourn upon earth from His birth to His ascension. He will now write an account of the effect produced in early years by the coming of the Holy Ghost to dwell on this earth in the Church of God. For about thirty-three years was the Lord Jesus Christ dwelling here below. Of the Church’s history, for the first thirty years of its existence, Luke writes for the benefit directly of Theophilus, and indirectly for all his readers in subsequent ages. Who Theophilus was, in whom the Church historian was so deeply interested, as we have remarked in the companion volume, that on the Gospel of Luke, is now wholly unknown. How Luke became acquainted with him, and where, are facts buried in oblivion. His name only has been imperishably preserved, being embalmed in the pages of Holy Writ. Yet some day we shall see him. He will come with Christ. He will reign with Christ. And the teacher and the pupil will be together in glory, both trophies of Divine grace. We have said we know nothing of Theophilus - of his parentage, of his abode, or of his life. Very different is it as to the historian. Though neither his birth nor his death are matters substantiated by reliable history, we know a good deal about him from the Acts and from the Epistles of St. Paul. But having traced that out, as far as Scripture is our guide, in the volume already referred to, there is no need to repeat it here. We would only now remind the reader that he first joined Paul at Troas (Acts 16:10); then went with him to Philippi, where apparently he stayed till the Apostle revisited it (xx. 6) ; after which he travelled with him to Jerusalem, sailed with him to Rome, and never left him, that we read of, till the latter’s martyrdom.