Today, I am reading and commenting on  Acts 9-10.

As I was reading today my attention was drawn to something I never thought about before.  So, after Stephen was martyred, the early Church was heavily persecuted for a period of time.  This led to the Believers being scattered around.  The scattering led them into contact with more people causing faith in Christ to spread to new areas.  Saul was apparently a leader in the persecution and he followed the Believers to where they went in order to continue the persecution.  Then after his conversion, his confrontational approach to trying to convert those Jews who did not believe in Christ kept things going.  However, after the Believers convinced Saul to leave Jerusalem and go to his home town of Tarsus, things calmed down.  So, the persecution scattered the Believers and led the Church to grow, but the peace which came after Saul’s conversion and “exile” also led the Church to grow.  This helps us to see that God brings trials upon us in order to spread the Gospel, but He also uses times of calm to do the same thing.

I use the daily Bible reading schedule from “The Bible.net” for my daily Bible reading.