We left Basecamp, the time for tooling up for our journey, resourced with the Holy Spirit and others who will be going on the journey with us. Then we blazed into the Trailhead, the place where we saw the church growing through the bold testimony of the apostles, fueled by the bold prayers of the Church, in cooperation with the Holy Spirit in keeping them a pure church, and therefore, a powerful church. We saw the manifestation of miracles, which authenticated both the message and the messenger as ambassadors of the resurrected Jesus.
Now we continue in Acts 6-8: New Terrain. Any time there is movement, momentum, and progress in the form of advancing the Kingdom of God and His purpose on the earth, there will be opposition. This section of the journey highlights the bold courage of one, and how one bold testimony triggers a tsunami of persecution against the Church, spearheaded by one zealous Pharisee, Saul of Tarsus. Saul was taught by the esteemed rabbi Gamaliel of the Hillel school of thought. Hillel was the grandfather of Gamaliel. Saul was simply carrying out the zeal of preserving the traditions that he had been taught. Yet it will be through this persecution that will spur on obedience to Jesus’ command to go beyond Jerusalem, and into Judea and Samaria and to the ends of the earth.
