The Acts of the Apostles is broadly divided into three parts first the acts of Peter, secondly the acts of Paul and his associates, and thirdly the captivity of Paul, who is a figure of the Church, of which he is the minister Col. 1:2525Whereof I am made a minister, according to the dispensation of God which is given to me for you, to fulfil the word of God; (Colossians 1:25). From the overall viewpoint the Acts of the Apostles is the journey of the Church from Jerusalem Acts 1 to Rome, Acts 28.
Apart from the spiritual lessons which this implies it is readily seen that Acts is a book of activity, of travel, of preaching in the midst of great opposition and persecution. The arm of flesh cannot fight God’s battles, and so Acts is the Book of the Holy Spirit, directing His servants the Apostles. Jesus has ascended, and the Holy Spirit has descended to take His place. Acts, then, is the purposeful direction of the Lord’s armies storming the citadels of Satan. It is the historical record of the activities of the contending forces the Holy Spirit, working through the Apostles and Satan, who has organized the whole world against God.
The moment we view Acts along these lines the book begins to open up to us. It is history, true, but divine history. History is like a river. If we stand by a river we can observe its turbulent flow by walking along the river bed. But to learn more about the river we must first trace it back to its source and follow it patiently along the bed to its outlet. Applying this analogy to Acts, once we have found the source from which all flows we can walk along the river bed chapter by chapter with a better understanding of the whole. In this historical introduction we view the source as Israel’s loss of the kingdom to the Babylonians, and the transfer to the Gentiles of the rule of the world. The outlet is Rome, the last Gentile power.
World History Starts With Israel Losing the Kingdom
The history of the world, from a divine viewpoint, starts with Israel losing the kingdom. The warrior king David established the kingdom in Israel and his peaceful son Solomon built the Temple, so consolidating it. For it was in the Temple that God dwelt between the cherubim on His throne the Mercy Seat. This fact made Jerusalem the seat of God’s throne on earth. Because of this God sheltered Israel and did not permit great Gentile world empires to rise against her. True, Egypt and Assyria were powerful, but their power was regional. But when Israel sinned against God she forfeited His protection. He removed His throne from Jerusalem and turned world power over to the Gentiles. The first of these Gentile powers was Babylon. God sent its king, Nebuchadnezzar, against Jerusalem the city where His throne had been to make it clear that He disowned it and had transferred power to the Gentiles. Nebuchadnezzar destroyed the Temple and carried away the people captive.
“The times of the Gentiles” is an expression used in Scripture for the measured years God has allotted to Gentile rule in the world. These times, or years, began when Nebuchadnezzar, the King of Babylon, destroyed the Temple at Jerusalem and carried the Jews away captive.1 Later God brought together the King of Babylon and one of his captive subjects, Daniel, in a strange way. Both dream dreams, which are parallel visions of the Gentile world empires which Nebuchadnezzar headed. Nebuchadnezzar dreamed of the image of a man subdivided into four parts; Daniel dreamed of four wild beasts, each one corresponding to one of the parts in the image. Nebuchadnezzar’s vision tells us what man thinks about the Gentile empires Daniel’s of how God looks at them wild beasts of prey, agreeing with the savage character the powers in the various Gentile empires of the image were to take in the world. Because of the terrible character of the Gentile empires Daniel sees them in night visions. This is God’s way of telling us of their darkened moral state a method He repeats in the Book of Acts.
The Gentile empires are equally divided between the two empires of the East Babylon and the Medo-Persians, and two of the West Greece and Rome.
The Eastern empires are represented in Nebuchadnezzar’s dream by the golden head of the image on one hand, and its breast and arms of silver on the other. The head of gold is Nebuchadnezzar the King of Babylon, for gold is a figure of divine righteousness in Scripture and God was righteous in taking the rule of the earth away from Israel and giving it to the Gentiles for an appointed time. The breast and arms of silver represent the Medo-Persian kingdom which followed. Daniel’s dream explains what the Eastern empires were really like. The equivalent of Babylon the head of gold was Daniel’s first beast. It was like a lion with eagle’s wings, but its wings were plucked. It was made to stand like a man. This simply means that the first form of empire, the Babylonian, would lose its power, but the people themselves would not perish. The equivalent of the breasts and arms of silver is the second beast the Medo-Persian empire. We know that the Medo-Persians are the second form of Gentile power from reading Daniel 5, where their soldiers killed the Babylonian king Belshazzar, and Darius the Mede took over his kingdom. This second beast, or Medo-Persian empire, was like a bear “which raised itself up on one side” a forecast of when the Persians, the other partners in the kingdom, should become dominant c.f. Dan 10:11In the third year of Cyrus king of Persia a thing was revealed unto Daniel, whose name was called Belteshazzar; and the thing was true, but the time appointed was long: and he understood the thing, and had understanding of the vision. (Daniel 10:1). The historical books of the Old Testament stop at the Medo-Persian empire, although the canon of the Old Testament continues on.
The Western empires are represented in Nebuchadnezzar’s dream by the thighs of copper on one hand and on the other hand by iron legs with feet part of iron and part of clay. The thighs of copper represent the Grecian empire which Alexander the Great forged with his conquest of the preceding empire. In Daniel’s dream it corresponds to a leopard with four bird-like wings on its back Alexander’s four generals. Swiftness of movement characterized Alexander’s armies. His foray into the East and his overthrow of Persia was dazzling, but he died a young man. Did the Lord have him in mind when He said “for what shall it profit a man if he gain the whole world and suffer the loss of his soul?” Mark 8:3636For what shall it profit a man, if he shall gain the whole world, and lose his own soul? (Mark 8:36). The last kingdom is the Roman. It is divided in two ways in the image. First its legs are of iron. Then its feet are described separately partly iron and partly clay. The first division the legs is the Roman empire of the Acts; the second division, the feet, is yet to be. The feet describe the Roman empire as prophecy tells us it will yet be reconstituted in ten kingdoms. No known beast is fierce enough to depict the iron legs and feet of the image. Daniel sees its equivalent in the fourth beast dreadful and terrible, exceedingly strong, with great iron teeth an apt description of the Roman empire.
In summary the Eastern empires were regional, with the tendency to be more than that. The memory of God’s discipline of Nebuchadnezzar and of Daniel’s deliverance from the lions’ den, restrained them from unveiling the thought of the human heart that the world belongs to man, not to God, and so from the sin of worshipping man. In the Western empires the restraint is gone. Alexander the Great came close to seizing world rule and claimed divine worship. The Roman empire of the future will rule the world for 42 months and its head will receive divine worship. God will then teach the Western empires the lesson He taught the Eastern empires at the beginning—that there is a God in heaven, and that the kingdoms of this world belong to Him.
Now that we have seen the forms Gentile rule were to take in the earth, and their ferocious character, let us see how Israel fared under them historically.
Israel Under the Gentile Powers
The Jews who were taken captive to Babylon soon lost interest in the land of their nativity. About 50,000 Jews returned to the land, first under Zerubbabel and then under Ezra—a mere fraction of those who remained abroad. Under the next form of Gentile power we find the Persian monarchy treating the Jews kindly. Their commercial instincts helped them spread and flourish, and they divided into an Eastern and Western dispersion. The Sanhedrin—or “Council” of the authorized version—sent fire signals from mountain top to mountain top to inform the Eastern dispersion of the beginning of each month for the regulation of the festive calendar. The Western dispersion—the Hellenists or ‘Greeks’ of the New Testament—were held in low esteem by the Pharisees. Both dispersions had synagogues in the lands to which their sins had banished them, but returned periodically to the Temple at Jerusalem to worship. As for the Jews who remained in the land, they suffered more under the Western than the Eastern Gentile empires.
When Alexander the Great died, the empire he created was eventually carved into four parts. One of the later kings of this four-part division—Antiochus Epiphanes—greatly troubled Israel. There is a prophecy about this man— “the little horn” —and his evil works—in Daniel 8. He was determined to stamp out the knowledge of the one true God from the earth. Aided by a pro-Grecian party in the land he launched a crusade to exterminate Judaism by striking at its heart Jerusalem. He may have thought that if he could do this the Jewish religion in Gentile lands would wither away. So his armies sacked Jerusalem, massacred or sold into slavery 80,000 people, robbed the Temple of its treasures including the sacred vessels, sacrificed a pig on the altar of burnt offering, and entered the very sanctuary of the Temple. Two years later he sent an army to Jerusalem to complete its destruction. Attacking on the Sabbath he pillaged the city, set the houses on fire, demolished the wall, and barricaded the Temple to prevent worship. Later on, he dedicated the Temple to a pagan god, and placed its statue on the altar of burnt offering.
Wars of liberation were fought with the successors of this king, and for long the land was drenched in blood. Judas the Maccabee entered into an offensive and defensive alliance with Rome under the pressure of the struggle. But the land itself was disunited, and for some time religious civil war tore the nation. The seeds of a new civil war were sown, and divine displeasure assured, when a high priest laid claim to the throne by calling himself the King of the Jews. His claim was spurious for God could only recognize David’s descendants, and David’s seed had sunk into obscurity following the Babylonish captivity. As might be expected, strife broke out at a later date with two parties contending for the throne—Aristobulus, the younger son of Salome, and his brother. The contending parties sent deputations to Pompey, the Commander-in-Chief of the Roman armies in the East, seeking his intervention. Before Pompey could make a decision Aristobulus began to prepare for war in case he lost the arbitration. Furious, Pompey marched on Jerusalem to attack the partisans of Aristobulus in the Temple area. The Romans slew 12,000 and stamped out all opposition to their authority. Pompey destroyed the walls of Jerusalem and by various other measures brought the independence of the Jews to an end. All Judea was made subject to Rome. This paved the way for the establishment of the Herodian dynasty, beginning with Herod the Great. He was first made governor of Galilee in B.C. 47, and then was appointed King of Judea by Rome. In B.C. 37 he took Jerusalem. From this point on the land of promise was part of the Roman empire.
A brief sketch of the Roman empire in history and prophecy follows as Appendix “A” of this historical outline.