Pray the Word with David Platt is a resource from radical.net.

Acts chapter 8, verse 4.

Now, those who were scattered went about preaching the word.

Oh, that is one simple verse that totally turned the world upside down. Because the gospel at this point was

stuck in Jerusalem, so to speak. I mean, Jesus had said in Acts 1, verse 8, you'll receive power

when the Holy Spirit comes upon you. You'll be my witnesses in Jerusalem from Jerusalem to

Judean Samaria to the ends of the earth. But six chapters later, the gospel hadn't gone outside of Jerusalem.

But then with the stoning of Stephen, that precipitates persecution in the church

on a greater scale and sends the church scattering.

And verse four says, those who were scattered, and it says earlier in verse one,

they were scattered throughout the regions of Judea and Samaria,

and what were they doing?

They were preaching the word.

So this is the gospel spreading to Judea and Samaria.

Now, what's interesting is it said back up in verse one that all of these people who scattered

were, it was everybody except the apostles.

So it wasn't like the leaders of the church, so we would picture spreading the gospel

in a new places.

It was just your ordinary average believers who were spreading the gospel into new places and wherever they went

they were preaching the words so when you hear preaching there don't just think okay the gifted

preachers who were making the word known all over the world it was just the everyday believers who

knew the gospel who were proclaiming the gospel. And this is how,

...