Responding to Persecution

      Despite threats from the religious leaders, we learn in Acts 4 that Peter and John continue preaching the Gospel. That is, that Jesus the Messiah came to deliver the people from sin by dying on the cross, that He was resurrected from the dead, and now lives forever more.
       This infuriates the captain of the Temple and the Sadducees. The Sadducees were an elite, aristocratic faction that wielded much power in the Temple. They tended to be the rich and powerful, and included the chief priests and high priest. They held the majority of the seats in the ruling council (the Sanhedrin).
       So it’s not surprising that they were fed up with this preaching. They thought they had gotten rid of this Jesus. Also not surprising, they arrested the duo that evening and kept them in custody until they could be questioned the next day.
     Despite this religious power mongering, Acts 4:4 records, “However, many of those who heard the word believed; and the number of the men came to be about five thousand.” And that’s not counting the women and children who believed—five thousand plus in one day. I call that a successful crusade!
         The religious leaders demand to know by what power or by what name the disciples are healing and preaching. Take note: the Gospel is going forth with signs and wonders following to confirm the truths they are preaching. Filled with the Spirit, Peter begins another mini-sermon, quoting from Psalm 118:22 and Isaiah 28:16 about the new and living temple made of living stones fashioned after the Cornerstone.
         “If we this day are judged for a good deed done to a helpless man, by what means he has been made well, let it be known to you all, and to all the people of Israel, that by the name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth, whom you crucified, whom God raised from the dead, by Him this man stands here before you whole. This is the stone which was rejected by you builders, which has become the chief cornerstone.’ Nor is there salvation in any other, for there is no other name under heaven given among men by which we must be saved” (Acts 4:9-12).
         The Chronos Lesson: This is the power of being light and salt by the Spirit. Peter and John return to their brothers and sisters in the Lord to report what had transpired. How did their fellow believers respond? Did they grumble about the injustice? Did they curse the leaders? No, they prayed to God. And they used Scripture to do so, knowing that God’s Word is God’s will.
        They quote from Psalm 2, which is another Messianic time-specific prophetic Psalm. The part they quote describes the underlying antichrist spirit behind the injustice. Why do the nations rage and the people plot a vain (ego-centric and useless) thing? The disciples know God’s will and God’s appointed time for dealing with injustice.
          As for themselves, they know their assignment from the Lord and they do not intend to be deterred. They are determined not to react to the threats in an ungodly manner. They don’t call the rulers vicious names. They don’t even curse them. Instead, they pray for boldness to speak as they ought (see Eph. 6:18-20). They pray for the power of God to flow through them so that miracles can be done in the name of Jesus. Why? Because it is the goodness of God that draws people to repentance (Rom. 2:4). Light is the only thing that can dispel darkness.
          The Devil loves to see believers react according to the world’s ways—which are actually his ways. He loves to sidetrack believers, distracting them with activities that sound good but are not in concert with how God is moving in these times. It’s time to be moved by the Spirit and not by our own strategies.
         If our strategies ignore God’s prophetic plan of redemption, including the chronos times and the kairos signs, if they distract us from preaching the Gospel and making disciples, and if they keep us from being in tune with the Spirit so that we can be moved to do signs and wonders, then they are not from God, no matter how noble or religious they sound. In effect, that’s mimicking the religious leaders of Jesus’ time and our current humanistic world, and not Christ our Lord.
           Oh, by the way, the next chapter continues the story, saying that they continued to preach, with believers increasingly be added to the Lord—multitudes of both men and women. Wherever the disciples went, the multitudes gathered to hear, they brought sick people and those tormented by unclean spirits, “and they were all healed.”