Acts: To Be Continued...

Act 28:31 preaching the kingdom of God, and teaching concerning the Lord Jesus Christ with all openness, unhindered.

Notice how the Book of Acts seems to just stop there? There is no more writing after that verse. It stops, but there is a sense that it doesn't end. Was there more that Luke wrote that some how got chopped off? Did he not finish it? Did he die right after penning these words, so that the book never completed?

Or - is it that God never intended the book to be finished in printed form?

Humm...maybe the book is being finished as we speak. Maybe, we are creating the next chapters, as the Holy Spirit acts. It is His story here, after all. He is the One who is acting, not the apostles or us. But, still, He used the apostles (and He uses us) to live and write each subsequent chapter.

We are the source material for the next chapter. We are the Book of Acts. That is quite radical. Don't look at that as a quaint, cutesy thought. If I am correct, then we are much more connected to the events in chapters 1 - 28 than we hear today. There is a habit of calling Acts 2:42 the "early Church". That would become a misnomer if I am correct. If we are part of the Book of Acts, then we are the same as the Church in Acts 2:42. They are us. We are them. There is no "early Church" or "later Church", or "modern Church" or "post-modern Church". We are all the same Church. The distingushing of differences is fleshly, carnal at best, demonic at worse.

And, I ask, why not? What's wrong with removing differences? Well, it gets radical because it takes the authority away from tradition of all kinds. Our authority must return to the beginning, Acts 1 and 2. The power and authority of the Gospel resides in the main point of Peter's sermon. The Church comes out of his message about Christ:

2:23: Predetermined plan and foreknowledge of God: Death
2:24: Putting an end to the agony of death
2:32: Raised up
2:33: Exalted
2:34: Ascended
2:36: Made Lord and Christ
2:37: We, pierced to the heart
2:38: Repent
2:42: Devoted
2:44: Together