The After After thousands of people came to faith in Christ on the day of Pentecost, authorities

attempted to extinguish Christianity by dialing up the persecution. God and His Providence used that abuse

to greatly expand the church instead and today on Truth for Life we'll explore

the beginning of Phillips cross-cultural

evangelistic ministry. Alistairbegg is teaching from Acts Chapter 8. Philip had to deal with the Simon Factor, but he also had to deal with another factor and that is referenced in the arrival of Peter and

John in the 14th verse. The Apostolic Delegation was sent down from Jerusalem to find out just exactly what was going on.

Because up until this time everything that was happening in terms of growth, in terms of evangelism, in terms of

baptisms and faith was all happening in Jerusalem. So there was no precedent for

this. This was an unprecedented event. And the Apostles, and this was to become a pattern as we can see later in Acts, the Apostles did what we would expect them to do, namely they set two of their number aside

to go down and to the city of Samaria and to find out exactly what was going on. Because what they had here was a fledgling congregation. As soon as

people are baptized and as soon as they have professed faith in Jesus

Christ, then of course the pattern from A H2 was that they devoted themselves to the Apostles'

teaching, to the breaking of bread and to the prayers.

And so the establishing of that pattern at least raised the possibility that since these people

came from a Samaritan background and everything that had been happening had been

within the context of Judaism,

the opportunity for an immediate distinction and an immediate faction in the church

was represented in this event. How were these people going to

handle themselves? What were they going to do? Was it going to be a separate

congregation? Was it going to be a church plant from Jerusalem? What are we supposed to do with these people?

We've never had to face this before. And it is in that context that they go down and visit the place and in verse 15 when they arrived they

prayed for them the people who were there these, that they might receive the Holy Spirit.

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