Читать книгу The Gospels of Jesus Christ. Collected Early and Later Gospels, Including the History of the Bible онлайн

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After the Apostolate had been again by means of the lot raised to the significant number of twelve, amid miraculous manifestations, the Holy Spirit was poured out on the waiting disciples as they were assembled together on the day of Pentecost, ten days after the Ascension of the Lord. It was the birthday of the church, and its first members were won by the preaching of Peter to the wondering multitude. By means of the ministry of the Apostles, who at first restricted themselves to Jerusalem, the church grew daily. A keen persecution, however, on the part of the Jews, beginning with the execution of the deacon Stephen, scattered them apart, so that the knowledge of the gospel was carried throughout all Palestine, and down into Phœnicia and Syria. Philip preached with peculiarly happy results in Samaria. Peter soon began a course of visitation through the land of Jews, and at Cæsarea received into the church by baptism the first Gentile family, that of Cornelius, having been prepared for this beforehand by a vision. At the same time there arose independently at Antioch in Syria a Christian congregation, composed of Jews and Gentiles, through the great eagerness of the Gentiles for salvation. The Levite Barnabas, a man of strong faith, was sent down from Jerusalem, took upon himself the care of this church, and strengthened his own ministry by securing Paul, the converted Pharisee, as his colleague. This great man, some years before, by the appearing of Christ to him on the way to Damascus, had been changed from a fanatical persecutor into a zealous friend and promoter of the interests of the church. Thus it came about that the Apostolic mission broke up into two different sections, one of which was purely Jewish and had for its centre and starting point the mother church at Jerusalem, while the other, issuing from Antioch, addressed itself to a mixed audience, and preeminently to the Gentiles.