Acts 28
AEKActs 28:9-28
9 Three months busy with blessing thus came out of the catastrophe. Had the ship wintered in Cnidus, as they had wished, or at Ideal Harbors, as Paul proposed, the ship and cargo might indeed have been saved, but a much greater loss would have been sustained by the islanders. Thus God always gets a greater good out of a lesser evil.
11 The Latin equivalent of Dioscuri would be “Castor and Pollux.” But this gives the impression that it was a Roman vessel, whereas most of the commerce with Rome was carried in foreign bottoms, and this was probably a Greek ship, having a Greek name.
12 There is a local tradition that Paul himself founded the first ecclesia in Syracuse. The account reads as though the centurion allowed him the utmost liberty.
15 As Paul had written an epistle to Rome there must have been a considerable company of believers there. They showed something of their regard for him by coming out to welcome him on the way. One company came as far as Appii Forum. Another delegation met him at Three Taverns, about ten miles nearer the city. No wonder Paul thanked God and took courage. He was now near the goal that he had set before him several years before, and though a prisoner of Rome, he had almost all the freedom he could wish. Indeed, from this time he preferred to call himself a “prisoner of the Lord,” as he recognized that it was the Lord’s will.
17 It is eminently fitting that the final and decisive rejection of the kingdom should follow its proclamation in Rome, the seat of the world’s greatest empire at the time. It had been proclaimed in Jerusalem and rejected by the rulers of the Jews in the land, now it has been fully heralded among the Jews of the dispersion, and they, too, have rejected it wherever Paul has gone. The most signal sign of their apostasy is his imprisonment. It reveals the height of their obstinacy. Rome would free him. But his own nation loads with chains the one who would free them from the Roman yoke.
23 Paul must have had many precious meetings with his believing brethren. He must have made known to them those transcendent truths which he teaches in his Perfection Epistles. If the Acts were giving an account of his career or of his evangel, it stops short at the most important point. As a “history of the commencement of the Christian church” it is the most disappointing of all books, for the truths which distinguish the present economy, found in Ephesians, Philippians, and Colossians, were not made known until its close and are never referred to, much less taught. Those events in Paul’s career which are of the utmost importance for present truth, from his sojourn in Arabia to the dispatch of Tychicus with the Perfection Epistles, are quite overlooked in this account. Paul’s sojourn in Rome marks the beginning of that vast work of the Spirit of God which has continued down to the present time.
Yet all we are told here is the disappointing meeting with the Jews! Instead of closing with a song of victory and sending the church on its triumphant way, he quotes Isaiah’s doleful prophecy concerning the apostate nation, showing the failure of the kingdom proclamation and the reason why it should no longer be heralded. What stronger evidence is needed to show that the Acts is not concerned with the so-called “church”? It is no mere history of the apostolic times. It is concerned only with those events which chronicle the fortunes of the earthly kingdom. It deals with a transitional period when the church was still dependent on the favored nation and had a subordinate place in the reign of Messiah over the earth, as promised by the Hebrew prophets.
26 This marvelous prophecy has had a threefold fulfillment in Israel: when they rejected Jehovah (Isaiah 6:9-10), when they rejected the Lord (Matthew 13:14-15), and, in this present instance, when they reject the testimony of the spirit, through His apostles. Israel, in part, has become calloused, until the fulness of the nations may be entering (Romans 11:25).
Acts 28:29-31
29 Verse 29 is not in the three manuscripts on which this version is based.
31 This proclamation of the kingdom would include its present abeyance and future manifestation. “That which concerns our Lord Jesus Christ” is purposely vague, and is the only hint in the whole book of the greatest of all Paul’s ministries, those mysteries or secrets which could not be revealed until the kingdom had been finally rejected. Paul’s prison epistles were written during this period. PAUL’S Paul’ s Epistles are for the present. All the rest of Scripture finds its interpretation and application either before or after the present secret administration. Paul alone gives the truth for the ecclesia which is the body of Christ. This is found nowhere outside of his writings. Israel and the nations occupy all other parts of divine revelation. What is true of them in other eras and eons must not be mixed with the present truth or it will lead to confusion and error. All Scripture is profitable, as a revelation of God’s ways, but it must not be applied outside its proper place. The main subject of the Greek Scriptures is the kingdom of Israel. It is refused in the four accounts of our Lord’s ministry, it is again rejected In the treatise called Acts, It is reaffirmed in Hebrews, James, Peter, John, and Jude, and it is realized in the Unveiling. In Paul’s epistles it is in abeyance. It is God’s purpose to bless the nations through Israel. But when Israel, the channel of blessing, fails, this becomes impossible. In Paul’s epistles the nations are blessed during Israel’s defection. The sphere of blessing is changed from earth to heaven. Repentance and pardon are replaced by justification and reconciliation. Grace replaces mercy. The scope of Paul’s epistles, both in time and In space, far transcends all the rest of revelation. He is not confined to the earth, but includes the whole universe in God’s grand climax of reconciliation (Colossians 1:20). He is not confined to the eons, or ages, but reveals a purpose formed before they began, and not concluded until after their consummation. His range reaches from a time long anterior to the first of Genesis to a period long past the final vision of the Unveiling. Paul’s writings naturally fall into two divisions, his epistles to the ecclesias, and his personal letters to Timothy, Titus and Philemon. Paul wrote nine epistles to seven ecclesias. They arrange themselves into three groups. The epistles in each group are very closely related, the first epistle in each, Romans, Ephesians and 1 Thessalonians, setting forth the truth didactically, while the other epistles of the same group are explanatory and corrective. The best commentaries on Romans are Corinthians and Galatians; on Ephesians, Philippians and Colossians; and Second Thessalonians supplements the first epistle. The Thessalonian group we have called the Promise Epistles, because they deal with the expectation of our Lord’s return. The Romans group we have named the Preparatory Epistles because they deal with the transitional era which prepared the saints for the final revelation found in the Ephesian group, which we therefore style the Perfection Epistles. Each group is characterized by one of the abiding trinity of graces, faith, expectation and love (1 Corinthians 13:13). The following outline will serve to show the groups and the relation each epistle sustains to the others in its group.
PAUL’ S THE FAITH ROMANS Justification Conciliation Deportment I Deportment II Conciliation Justification THE LOVE Doctrine Deportment Deportment Doctrine THE
I II THE LETTERS I TIMOTHY II TIMOTHY TITUS