Tongues of Fire: The Early Church Part 4

When the truth is preached with boldness in the fire of God, people will either respond in repentance or will be filled with rage. Oftentimes this results in believers being martyred for their faith by those who are under Satan's control. This is Part 4 of our short series, "Tongues of Fire: The Early Church."

Host: Steve Gallagher has joined me in the studio. Steve is the founder of Pure Life Ministries. Steve it’s good to see you again.

Steve: I'm happy to be here.

Host: Steve, we want to continue our discussions in your series, the early Church and looking at the book of Acts. One of the things going on in the book of Acts is that we see some tensions arising within the early Church. Talk to us about what those are.

Steve: These tensions you see come forth in Acts 6 really come out of the Jewish community itself there in Jerusalem, because you have two different communities of Jewish people. You have those who are from Palestine, Judea, or Jerusalem and have lived their whole lives there. Then you have Jews that have returned there from out in the Roman world somewhere. Those are the Hellenized Jews. And what really causes the problem is mostly the Pharisees, because they are so disdainful of Jews living outside of Judea.
        So, suddenly you have 3000 Jews getting saved and many of those are Hellenized Jews. So, they are bringing that same tension into this new church. It wasn’t as bad though because when you have Christ in the mix, people are going to be more humble and loving. But still underlying that are some struggles that come forth in the church. So, in this chapter we see this tension coming forth in dealing with widows in the church where some of the widows from the Hellenized portion of the community are feeling neglected. What the Apostles do is they appoint 7 deacons to manage the affairs of the church so they can continue focusing on ministering.

Host: Well, in your talk you really laid out that this was the beginning of the structure of the Church. Talk to us a little bit about what that structure in the Early Church was.

Steve: Yeah, it did just kind of unfold this way and you see the Holy Spirit at work behind the scenes. You had the 12 Apostles and they kind of governed everything. Then these deacons are appointed to administrate what we would call the supportive services or the behind-the-scenes tasks. And then you have the congregation. And they also play a role in the function of the church. In other words, they'll end up voting for offices and so on. So, you have these three tiers being established in the Early Church already.

Host: Well, Steve, as the story moves on, it goes into the account of Stephen, who was actually one of the deacons in the Early Church. And as we know, the Lord really used him, but it provoked an attack upon him by the Hellenized Jews that you mentioned living in Jerusalem. Tell us about that.

Steve: Stephen was very bold with the Gospel, and he apparently was out preaching publicly, and the Lord was working mighty miracles through him. And Satan always attacks when God is working through an individual. In this particular case we read of this Hellenized group of Jews who begin debating with Stephen, and what's interesting about that is that Cilicia is one of the provinces these Jews are from. And who is from Cilicia? Saul of Tarsus. Knowing what Saul's personality was like, it's very likely that he was involved in these debates. Which means he was likely involved with distorting the things Stephen was saying to be able to persecute him.

Host: Well, Steve, for those who don't know the story, they became infuriated with Stephen and dragged him before the Sanhedrin. Tell us what happened next.

Steve: Well, he's standing before these 70 venerable leaders of the nation and he gives a long sermon, and basically what he does is recount the entire history of the Jewish nation. Now to us in our Western mindset, we would be thinking why is he going to all this detail? You know, TMI, too much information. Why is he telling all these different aspects of the story?
        But see, that was the way the Jews operated. They would have been completely comfortable with that and it also established the fact that Stephen was Orthodox in his thinking. It helped to establish some credibility. But when he gets to the end of the message, he zeroes in on them and how they have been like their fathers who have rebelled against the Lord throughout the entire history of the nation. He really just nails them. He calls them stiff necked hypocrites.

Host: Well, as full of pride as Jesus made it obvious to us that they all were, we can only guess what their reaction was.

Steve: Well, they got furious, of course, and this is the way it always is. When the Lord uses you to express something that is wrong inside a person's heart, a person is going to do one of two things usually. They are either going to respond to the Lord or they're going to get mad. And that's what happens here. They go into an absolute rage. If it wasn't so true, they may not have gotten so angry, but he nailed them, and they went into a rage.
        They grabbed him, even though they knew that the Romans could easily come right in there and crucify every one of them for doing something like this. They were committing murder. But even in spite of that, they just shut that out of their minds. They were so filled with rage that they grabbed him and drug him out of the city, because you couldn't kill someone within the sacred bounds of the city, and they stoned him to death.

Host: Yeah, I appreciated the conclusion you had in this teaching about Stephen. Talk about the connection you saw between what was happening here with Stephen and how it is with people today.

Steve: Well, Stephen was the first martyr, which that word in the Greek means witness. He was one who would testify the truth, and that's what we've been called to do. Well depending on what the spiritual environment is during our time is going to determine the reaction we get from people. I've received that hateful anger many times for bringing forth a strong message, and in the days ahead, I think what we're going to see increasingly is that the stronger and more powerful the testimony, the more rage the enemy is going to unleash against us.