[Darris McNeely]: Welcome back to Acts. And in the last class we were talking about the topic of what happened at Antioch, and we went through that story, a lot of backstory and kind of hop-scotch, hops and skipping, what’s the term? Hopscotching from verse to verse to put together this thread. And we could talk even longer about this. This is, you probably can figure it out, one of my favorite parts of Acts, but just about every part of Acts is one of my favorite parts, so that’s why it takes longer to get through it every year. But let’s come back and let’s kind of summarize what we talked about, and again, with what it means as we look at this congregation that starts up in Antioch. We talked last time about the relief effort that they sent by the hands of Barnabas and Saul to Jerusalem at a time of famine, 45...basically 46 A.D., and to help stave that off. And it generated good vibes from the Church.

So, one thing we can see about this group of largely, essentially, Greek church, Greek Christian church that is in Antioch, probably and some Jews as well, but it’s in this huge Greek metropolis, they were a giving church. They responded to the needs of their fellow church, which was largely Jewish at Jerusalem. That’s huge. That’s huge in the ancient world. It’s huge even today, but it sets an example for us. And they were saying, “We’re all in this together, we’re all one body, we’re all one family,” by what they did. And they sent it up with Barnabas, who’d been sent down to check out the happenings there, and Saul, who’d been a persecutor of the Church. And as I talked about at that time, the last class, Saul’s presence and his aid in bringing a bag of grain to a family. Imagine maybe Saul singled out some of the families of whom he had persecuted, some of their family members, maybe even to the death. And he said to Barnabas, “I’ll take this cake of figs. I’ll take this bag of grain to them. Let me do this one.” And he takes it to their home and humbly gives it to them. And maybe there’s a little tenseness, and then maybe it’s gone. Maybe they invite him to come in and stay a period of time. You know, we’re reading into the story, but I don’t think we’re too far off as to the effect that it had. But the whole Church wanted to show their solidarity with theirs.

Now, later on, and you’ve already read this when you’ve gone through Corinthians, Paul gathers up on another later occasion, an offering it seems of money to take to Judea at the time. So, this is an ongoing feature of Paul’s ministry among the gentile churches directed back to the Jewish church, largely in Jerusalem. So, this is something that goes on. So, it’s a giving church. Now, we jumped ahead to chapter 13 verses 1 and 2 where they determine to create and fund an evangelistic mission with Barnabas and Saul that we will talk about here when we get to it there, that journey into these lands to preach the gospel and to start churches in Antioch and Pisidia, Lystra, Derbe, Iconium, and through that area, but it’s all funded by Antioch. And so, they are an evangelizing church. All right? So, they’re mission-oriented, we would just say today. They don’t want to just rest on their own laurels. They’ve been evangelized by these disciples that went up after the death of Stephen and the scattering. And they want to share that now with their fellow gentile churches, so they send Barnabas and Saul out to that, and they fund it. They fund it.

Travel in the ancient world, understand, took a lot of money. It takes a lot of money to travel today. It’s not cheap unless you do the points thing and get points and free air miles and hotels and things like that, but still, you got to spend some money. In the ancient world, the travel was either on foot, on a donkey, maybe on a horse, but if you had a donkey and a horse, that gets into money because that donkey and horse has to be fed hay, straw, grain, and you got to buy it, to begin with, wherever you start out. Or maybe a small cart that you kind of latch onto, or they actually did have small coaches in the Roman world kind of like the stagecoach of our American West. Not quite like that, but, you know, holding two, four, six people, somebody on top driving it, etc. They had coaches like that and a system, but you didn’t have holiday inns. You had inns, and if they were open, they were usually dirty. By dirty, I mean, full of lice. You shared a bed with lice. I mean, some of the stories that you read about from that period of time, there’s a story, it’s an apocryphal story of the apostle John staying in some decrepit inn in the time of the first century, and he commands the bedbugs to leave his room, and they all march out, and then the next morning they all want to get back in. It’s an apocryphal story, meaning it didn’t happen, but they ascribe it to the powers of John to command even the bedbugs to leave his room. But it tells you the perils of staying in an inn in the ancient time, if it was even open. And the quality of food, it was all kind of sketchy, let’s just put it that way. But they had them, and you can read about them from some of the ancient texts.

The point is it took money and, you know, they could only carry with them a certain amount of food for what? Two, three days. And then they’d have to replenish it, which meant they had to find a market to do all of this. And so, the Church in Antioch funded this, as we’ll see when Paul and Barnabas finished their first trip, they come all the way back to Antioch and they give a report of what happened, which is logical. You go back to your funding source, and after a couple years, you give a report. You know, we did this, we did this, spent this, and here’s an accounting. You give an accounting.

Now, there’s one other thing that we are going to see and it is at the end of chapter 14. And it’s the prelude to the story of the Acts Conference in chapter 15 where they decide circumcision, because what happens is certain Jews come down from Jerusalem to Antioch troubling them saying, “You got to be circumcised, Greeks, to be fully a member of the Church.” And they basically say, “No, we don’t. We’re bona fide, card-carrying, on the computer, we’re getting the Church newspaper-type member.” Okay. “Got the Holy Day offering envelope right here, green, so I’m a church member.” And they say to Barnabas and Saul, “Please, go down to Jerusalem and get this solved.” And they do. And that’s the story of chapter 15 we’ll get to, but it tells you something about the Church in Antioch. They wanted to be doctrinally connected. So, doctrine is important to them. Doctrinal unity. I’m running out of ink here, so I’ll have to switch to red.

So, you got three things. They were a giving church. They were a mission evangelizing church, and they wanted doctrinal unity. Now, that speaks to how much they were a part of the larger effort of the Church, which speaks to, again, the need for unity in the Church today, that we had that. We don’t have that completely. We got all different fellowships and churches of God, and this Church of God, and that Church of God, and this and that, and as, you know, we’ve had discussions as to why and how that happens. And I don’t have the answer for, you know, the future. Why can’t we all get along? I’ll leave that in God’s hands and Christ. He’s the head of the Church. He knows what He’s doing. But if we can take a lesson from the Church in the story in Antioch, when they wanted the issue of circumcision resolved, they were seeking unity of teaching. And that’s important.

So, a church, you know, these are qualities that we would bring into our church life today. We need to be doctrinally together, we need to be mission-oriented, and we need to have a giving spirit internally and among ourselves, and even to our, you know, communities where we can make a difference in serving in some type of a project or activity in the wider communities where we might live. And so, keep that in mind. This is the Church at Antioch and what is going on. And it’s a gentile church. God’s Spirit was moving through them, working all of this out. Thankfully, they sent the right man, Barnabas, down there to discern God’s Spirit working with them and what was happening. And so, we’ll kind of return to it when we discuss, again, the first mission, the first trip of Paul, but that’s what happened at Antioch, and a lot happened, which...sorry, I didn’t... For those watching this online, I’m sorry, I didn’t get all this into one lecture, but at least we’ve got it all covered here.

Now, let’s go on to chapter 12 and open a new story and a new episode here as Luke tells it. And let me... Where am I going to... I’ll just start over here in this corner right here, and it’s in red. So, we are at 44 A.D. is this particular story here that now opens up, okay? It’s an interesting story. It says in verse 1, “At about that time.” And so it’s 44. And look at this, as Luke tells it, it’s an inset within this other story that we just told that covers from about 44 to at least 45 into 46 possibly, and even a little bit further than that with the story at Antioch.

Acts 12:1-3 “Herod, the king stretched out his hand to harass some from the church, and he killed James, the brother of John with the sword.” This is not James who was the brother of Christ, but it’s James son of Zebedee, brother to John. He kills him with a sword. “Because he saw that it pleased the Jews, he proceeded further to seize Peter also.” This is taking place now in Jerusalem. “And it was during the Days of Unleavened Bread.”

So, here we have a marker. We had Pentecost in the second chapter, a marker of the Holy Day. The Church was together, they received God’s Spirit. Now we have a second reference to a Holy Day in Acts. It’s not the last, but now it’s the Days of Unleavened Bread.

Now, it’s...you know, Luke uses it as a marker to his audience. It’s not in the context of observing the Holy Days like you find in, let’s say, 1 Corinthians 5, for example. But because he’s using this as just a time reference, timestamp. But it’s a unique timestamp that marks us that it’s understood it’s a part of the church life. And we see that from other references in the New Testament as well. But this is when it happened, during that Passover Unleavened Bread period of time.

Acts 12:4 “They arrested Peter, they put him in prison and delivered him to four squads of soldiers to keep him, intending to bring him before the people after Passover.”

And so he is going to wait till after the Passover season, and it’s kind of one of these references here to Passover, extending beyond the event on the 14th day of the month to that whole period, which includes Unleavened Bread. We discussed that on the doctrinal study that we did of that. But the obvious implication is he’s going to kill Peter too because it pleased the Jews.

Now, that statement tells us a lot. The antagonism between the Jews and the Church is still strong, these followers of Christ, is still strong. The killing of James by Herod pleases them. Why is Herod wanting to please the Jews? And who is this Herod that we’re talking about as it is mentioned here because it just says, Herod? Is this Herod the Great, the one who rebuilt Jerusalem, expanded the Temple Mount? No. Herod the Great was the founder of the dynasty. I hope you still have your Herodian family tree that I gave to you. Those of you watching it online, we’ve put a copy of this online as well. And for the class, you know, it is important that you know the Herodian tree as it applies to the story of the gospels in the New Testament. So, expect a question at some point on some tests that I give you to reflect your knowledge of the Herods that are mentioned in Scripture, and to get them all straight. They can be confusing.

This is Herod Agrippa that is referenced in chapter 12. He is the grandson of Herod the Great. And your Herodian family tree shows how they were all connected. We’ll have two different Herods in the story of Acts. So, this is the first. So, we’ll focus on him, but we want to put him within the context of the Herodian family tree. And so, he’s Herod Agrippa, and you’ll see him on your map all the way over midway down on the left at point nine, King Herod Agrippa I, who executed James, the son of Zebedee, and imprisoned Peter before Peter’s miraculous escape. So, he’s the grandson of Herod the Great. Herod the Great founds the dynasty, is appointed a king by the Romans. He’s the king of the Jews from 37 to 4 BC. 4 BC is the accepted date for the death of Herod the Great. Sometimes that’s disputed, but that’s the general accepted year, 4 BC, when he dies. And his kingdom goes to his four sons who are mentioned there, Herod Antipas, Herod Archelaus, Herod Phillip, and Philip the Tetrarch. But then we’re focusing here on Herod Agrippa, who is a grandson.

And so, we’re at the year 44 A.D., and let’s go ahead and read through the story. We’ll come back and I want to tell you when we talk about his death, we’ll talk about some of his background to get to this point. But let me give you just a little bit. He is a grandson who has a meteoric rise to the position that he currently has, where he is governor of Judea, Galilee, and two or three other regions, you know, in the area of the land that were a part of Herod’s old empire. And the reason he has got so much at such a short period of time is because when he was younger, he had been sent off to Rome, and there he came under the tutelage of the Emperor Tiberius. All right? At the Emperor Tiberius. So, I’m going to have to erase some of this here. I hope that Rich, you took a snapshot of this. Well, so be it. We’ll erase some of this here because I want to get this into it. Herod comes under the tutelage of Tiberius. Tiberius is the son of the big guy. Who’s the big guy? Anybody know the other Roman emperor, the first one? Who?

Augustus. He’s the big guy. All right? Tiberius is his son, who takes over after the death of Augustus. We’ll talk some more...a lot more about Augustus in the next chapter. Herod comes under his tutelage as a young man. And Tiberius has a son named Caligula. Caligula becomes the third Roman emperor. And you need to know this. I gave you a sheet, this one here of the Roman Caesars during the New Testament period. Don’t lose that because you will need to know the pertinent emperors in order that pertain to the gospels in the New Testament setting. So, we’re kind of setting this up now. Augustus, Tiberius, and Caligula.

Herod becomes a very good friend of Caligula as a young man. Caligula is the Prince of Wales of the day. He’s in line to take over, but Tiberius won’t die. Tiberius won’t die. And one day Herod and Caligula are riding around the island. Guess which island they’re riding around on? South of Rome, out of the Bay of Naples. Yes. Capri. They’re on the island of Capri. Capri was Tiberius’ pleasure palace. We won’t go into that, but they were riding around, Caligula and Herod. And Herod Agrippa makes the comment here, he says, “Boy, I wish the old man would kick off so you, Caligula, could become emperor.” A servant hears that, reports it to Tiberius. Herod is in trouble, treason. He’s kind of put in hawk, in, you know, kind of house arrest for a period of time, and yet he comes out of it. He gets out of it. And eventually, Tiberius dies. They think he dies of natural causes, but every death of a Roman emperor is always suspect. And then Caligula becomes emperor and he makes his friend Herod Agrippa the king back in Judea and Galilee real quick like. All right?

Now, Caligula doesn’t last very long because he’s kind of a really strange guy. He does all kinds of things. The story, one of the stories is he makes his horse a member of the Roman Senate. But he’s eventually killed in a plot. And he is succeeded by his uncle who is Claudius. And this is the Claudius we just read about during the famine of the previous chapter where they sent the relief up to Jerusalem during that time in the 40s. Claudius likes Herod too. Herod ingratiates himself with Claudius. His empire expands.

So, Herod Agrippa, he is sent to Rome and he becomes friends with two emperors. And he works the system and he’s got quite an empire. But Herod is a Jew. Herod Agrippa is a Jew, and he ingratiates himself now in Judea to the Jews, and that’s why he kills James because it pleased the Jews. And any good Governor King of the Romans in Judea at this time, they want the goodwill of the Jews because that will keep them from rioting and upsetting the order of things, and therefore upsetting the order...even their political position. And so, it’s a delicate balance. That’s why he kills James in order to ingratiate himself to the Jews. But, you know, it’s evidently right at the time or before Passover, and so in order not to desecrate the Passover... After all, they do have their principles, right? They will kill somebody, but they won’t kill them on a Holy Day or during the holy season. You know, everybody’s got to have their principles. So, he’s going to wait. He arrests Peter and he’s going to wait till afterwards. And that’s the setting for the...a bit of the setting for the story here. I’ll come back, we’ll talk a little bit more about this episode on Capri when we come to the death of Herod here. So, let’s get back to the text. Peter’s in prison, verse 5 of chapter 12.

Acts 12:5 “Peter was therefore kept in prison, but constant prayer was offered to God for him by the church.”

Here’s what’s happening at this moment. Look at it this way. The beast is stirring. Rome is the fourth beast of Daniel’s seven, remember. Fourth beast. The fourth part of the image of Nebuchadnezzar in Daniel 3, 4, or 2. 2, right, Daniel 2, Nebuchadnezzar’s image. And Rome then is the beast. The beast is stirring. Remember in chapter 7 and verse 1, Daniel sees this vision of the sea churning and churning and churning, these beasts, and four them rise up out of the sea one at a time. Well, the beast is now turning its attention on the Church. They killed James.

Now, the Church doesn’t have an army. The Church doesn’t have an ammunition store. They’re not a match to the power of Rome. What do they do? They pray. That’s all they have is prayer. Constant prayer. A prayer vigil is set up. Peter is one of...you know, he’s one of the 12, and he’s a prominent member. He’s not the future pope and he’s not, you know, necessarily the leader, but he’s a prominent one. Prominent in the story, prominent in the gospels, and they don’t want him to die. They’re beseeching God for his life. Sometimes the Church has to get into a mode of constant prayer. We pray for individuals who are sick, don’t we? We have our prayer request in congregations and, you know, people will fast and pray, and, you know, we beseech God’s mercies for our family, ourselves, our beloved church members, and for other trials that come up. Prayer’s the only thing that we have in the Church, but they’re employing it well. And so here’s what happens, verse 6.

Acts 12:6 “When Herod was about to bring him out that night, Peter was sleeping, bound with two chains between two soldiers. And the guards before the door were keeping the prison.”

You know, there’s been a previous prison episode with Peter when he was imprisoned by the Jews in the temple, and he got let out there.

Acts 12:7 “And so behold, an angel,” verse 7, “stood by him, an angel of the Lord, and a light shone in the prison. And he struck Peter on the side and raised him up, saying, ‘Get up quickly, arise quickly. Get up.’”

You know, it’s quite a jolt for Peter, obviously. You wonder why he’s even sleeping, but he did. I mean, I think if I found myself in jail knowing that I might not come out alive, bound with two chains between two soldiers, you know, maybe they remembered the story where he got loose the first time, and so they’re going to make sure that he’s not going to get loose. So, two chains, two hands, two soldiers on either side, and the feet as well. They’re not going to let go of him. But the chains fell off his hands. It’s that Jedi mind trick thing working right there, you know. Not really, but it helps us to understand. God just... It happened.

Acts 12:8-10 “The angel said to him, ‘Gird yourself, tie on your sandals.’ And so he did. And he said to him, ‘Put on your garment and follow me.’ So, he went out and followed him and did not know what was done by the angel was real, but thought he was seeing a vision.’” So, he’s kind of in a dreamland here, you know, half awake, half still sleeping perhaps, or at least in his mind, thinking he was seeing a vision. “When they were past the first and the second guard posts, they came to the iron gate that leads to the city, which opened to them of its own accord, and they went out and went down one street, and immediately the angel departed from him.”

It begs the question of where were the other guards to get out beyond the first and second guard posts here? Well, again, it’s that mind trick that God just blinded them likely if they weren’t asleep. And he comes out, walks down the street, and then, poof, just like that, the angel departs from Peter, from his presence.

Acts 12:11 And it goes, it says, “When Peter came to himself, he said, ‘Now I know for certain that the Lord has sent His angel and has delivered me from the hand of Herod and from all the expectation of the Jewish people.’”

And so, he’s awake. He’s fully understanding what’s taking place.

Acts 12:12 Says, “When he had considered this, he came to the house of Mary.” So, he goes in search of one of the well-known locations where the Church would be. “Mary, the mother of John, whose surname was Mark, where many were gathered together praying.”

Now, this is John Mark, whom we’re going to see more about, he will be a companion with Paul and Barnabas on the first trip that they make going through all these churches here. And he has an interesting story. But he’s also the same Mark who writes the Gospel of Mark. And so, Peter comes to his mother’s house. Now, this is an example. Remember when we read earlier of the disciples selling their possessions, having all things in common. This tells us that not everyone sold everything, and that the way to understand what is said there is not to think that they just had a completely communal socialistic existence in the early Church. That’s not how it went. Because Mary’s got her house at this point, and it is a hub for gatherings of the Church, telling us that it’s large enough for that purpose. Probably had an outer...you know, a wall around it. Maybe an outer courtyard and an inner courtyard, maybe two levels of housing within. So, it was more than just a small one-room or maybe three-room single-level house. It was probably larger, with a courtyard and an outer gate, as we will see.

Acts 12:12 It says, “Many were gathered there, praying.”

So, this constant prayer, it seems then would go on through the night. Peter’s asleep, remember. We’re not given the exact hour of his asleep when he is awakened by the angel, but let’s assume it’s after midnight. Just we can assume any hour, I suppose. But what he finds is the Church is still gathered, they’re still praying.

Acts 12:13 And he comes there, “Peter knocked at the door of the gate.”

And this is where it kind of gets humorous. This tells us something about a story that must have been told through the years among the disciples. Luke, years later, when he is gathering his history, picks it up and is led to include it here in his narrative. And it’s a bit of a relief. It’s been pretty heavy. You know, James gets killed, Peter’s in prison. He injects a little bit of levity in the narrative at this point, which is always good. You know, any effective speaker knows how to use humor. I think the best way to use humor is in a natural way. Personally, I’m not a joke teller. I can’t remember them, and I can’t always tell them in the way they should be told. My humor tends to be more of a natural, just flows out in that way. But humor is very good to use. Drop it in as a spice or as a moment just to ease the tension that is building in your message at times. So, guys, learn how to use it but use it judiciously and don’t use it as a crutch. And that’s all I better say about humor at this particular point in time. But here’s what happens.

Acts 12:13-14 “There’s a girl named Rhoda who came to answer Peter’s knock at the gate, the door of the gate.” Again, this tells you this is a larger home, and it’s got a gate leading into probably a courtyard. “When she recognized Peter’s voice because of her gladness, she did not open the gate.”

She just, “Whoa, Peter. Oh.” And whatever she does. And she ran in, she turns around, doesn’t even open the door, and announces that, “Peter’s here, Peter’s outside the gate,” and Peter’s left knocking at the gate.

Acts 12:15 “But they said to her, ‘Well, you’re beside yourself.’ But she kept insisting that it was so. And so they said, ‘Well, it’s his angel.’”

Again, telling you a little bit of how they looked at the spirit world, understood the spirit world. We want to be careful. Don’t read a whole lot into this, that everybody has a guardian angel or an angel presence. God’s angels do interact and work in ways we don’t always understand. I don’t personally go around thinking that I’ve got a guardian angel hovering around me all the time, personally assigned to me. Maybe I do, maybe I don’t. I don’t necessarily think about that. I do think that, you know, there have been times that I’ve had angelic protection that I could probably assume this was the case. We did a “Beyond Today” program around that a few years ago, but I’m sure also there’ve been many, many more that I didn’t even know I had the protection of angels as well. But they were, you know, they understood the angelic realm. She said it’s his angel.

Acts 12:16-17 “Now, Peter continued knocking.” So, he’s left outside. “When they opened the door and saw him, they were astonished.” They recognized the lengths that the Romans had gone to Herod to keep him under lock and key, and he’s out. “But motioning to them with his hand to keep silent, he declared to them how the Lord had brought him out of the prison.”

So, he probably just...you know, to quell, you know, their... The noise level probably got a little bit high. And he wants to explain, this is kind of how I interpret it. He wants to declare to them what happened. So, he says, “Hey, you know, calm down. Everybody settle down. I’m here. I’m okay. But let me tell you what happened.” So, he tells the story.

Acts 12:17 “And he tells them, ‘Go tell these things to James and to the brethren.’ And he departed and went to another place.’”

And so, maybe, you know, he wants to be on the move, maybe he doesn’t want to get caught again, maybe he thinks that they’ll come to that house as a first place, but he goes to another place.

Acts 12:18-19 “Then, as soon as it was day, there was no small stir among the soldiers about what had become of peter.” Naturally so. To lose a prisoner in that day and time, you, your life was in danger. And so, their life was on the block. “He examined the guards and he commanded that they should be put to death.”

They made search for him, could not find him, and he pronounces death upon them. Did they not do it when he left? Because it says he went from Judea to Caesarea and stayed there. We don’t know, but this was the penalty for losing a prisoner. When we see Paul in Philippi in another prison scene, he’ll get out by miraculous occurrence, and the Philippian jailer is about ready to kill himself because, again, that is the penalty for losing a prisoner under the Roman system. And so, the scene is now set. So, Peter’s out, and this is where that particular part of the story ends. Herod gives it up. And down in verse 20 then.

Acts 12:20 “Herod had been very angry with the people of Tyre and Sidon, but they came to him with one accord.”

Now, this gets us...again, we’re still, you know, at this time of the year of 44 A.D. There’s been a bit of a diplomatic problem between the residents of Tyre and Sidon and him.

Acts 12:20 “...having made Blastus, the King’s personal aid their friend, they asked for peace because their country was supplied with food by the King’s country.”

So, there was a diplomatic mission going on here at this particular time, and it occurs at a time when there’s a festivity taking place.

Acts 12:21 “On a set day, Herod, arrayed in royal apparel, sat on his throne and gave an oration to them.”

Now, he’s in Caesarea. We’ve shown pictures of Caesarea quite often here in the past, and I won’t put them up on the screen, unless maybe in post-production for those of you online, they can do that. But there’s a theater in Caesarea, and there’s a stadium in Caesarea. It says here that he’s sitting on his throne and gave an oration to them. The throne for a Governor King like this in the ancient world is called a Bema, B-E-M-A. And it’s a raised stage-like place sometimes in a market, sometimes in a theater where the magistrate, the governor or the king will set and preside or set in judgment. It’s called the Bema. We’ll see that in Corinth, when Paul’s there, he is brought before the Bema where the governor is by the Jews at that particular time. It’s been thought that this was in the theater. There’s a line of thought among the scholars today that it was not in the theater, but it was in the stadium, which is very close there in Caesarea. Doesn’t really matter in one sense to us, but what is happening, there’s a festival taking place.

And it says, “Herod comes out in royal apparel.” Now, this episode is also told in the story in the history of Josephus. We all remember Josephus, the Jewish historian of the first century. Josephus gives a very detailed account of this very episode. It’s the only New Testament episode where we have corroboration with an outside source that’s pretty close. There are a few differences, but scholars feel that they harmonize one another, and they actually compliment. It says here he comes out in royal apparel, Luke’s account is. Josephus has him coming out in kind of silver apparel. It’s quite elaborate...it’s quite an elaborate costume that Herod is dressed as. And he gives a speech.

Acts 12:22 “And the people kept shouting,” it says, “‘The voice of a god, and not of a man.’”

The voice of a god, and not of a man. They’re deifying him. They’re shouting these accolades that, “You’re a god, Herod. You’re a god, Herod. You’re not a man.” And he’s already killed James. He wanted to kill Peter. Luke puts this story in here to show the judgment of God upon even as high an official as a member of the Herodian family, Herod Agrippa the King.

Acts 12:23 “Immediately an angel of the Lord struck him because he did not give glory to God.” It wasn’t in his nature to do that, but he’d already gone too far. “And he was eaten by worms and died.”

Eaten by worms and died. Now, Josephus says he died about five years later. Or not five years. Five days later. Five days later. Josephus also tells us something else that Luke doesn’t tell us. Josephus tells us that Herod Agrippa on this occasion here looks up and he sees an owl. An owl. The Romans and the Babylonians and the Greek, all the ancient peoples were very superstitious. An owl was a harbinger, a bad omen. When Herod...remember I told you that he had been put under house arrest when he had said to Caligula, “I wish the old man would die.” And he’s reported by a servant and he’s put under house arrest. He comes out, but he sees an owl at that time, and he is told by some Roman seer, “If you ever see an owl again, it’s going to be bad news curtains for you.” This is how Josephus tells the story. And so Josephus says that in this account now in Luke, “When Herod is acclaimed as a God, he sees an owl, and he knows because of that omen told years earlier this means he’s going to die.” And he basically tells everybody around him in his court, like, “I’m done for. This is it.” He dies according to Josephus’ account, five years later, or five days later eaten by worms. A cancer, whatever it might be, he dies. And he didn’t give glory to God.

You know, a human ruler can overstep their bounds. And we see this is a lesson for that, and helps us to understand. You know, we could speculate, where has God done this at other points in human secular history? I’m sure He has. I have one in mind that I don’t have the time to tell today, but maybe we’ll tell that at another time of more recent times where a leader was struck down. And I sometimes wonder if God did not have a hand in that because of certain things, but we’ll save that. Remind me before the year’s out, I might tell you my theory on that. But I would think that God has done this at other times where there’s been the connection of his people, whether it’s Israel, the Church, or whatever, and we don’t know about. But we’re given this and I think that it can help us to understand that God does rule even down to something like this in the affairs of man. He protects His people and He watches over them.

So, this story of Herod Agrippa, and as it connects to the Herodian family tree, it’s important to know these Herods. And Herod the Great, Herod Agrippa, Herod Antipas, and Phillip the Tetrarch, they all play in the story of the gospels. But for our purposes here, at least in the Book of Acts, you should know Herod the Great, this Herod Agrippa, and then the later Herod that we’re going to come in contact with, Agrippa II, later on in the story. In the brief time that I’ve got here, let me just mention, be sure you keep handy your Caesar’s chart showing the Caesars in the New Testament. I’m going to put Julius Caesar up here. You need to know Julius, he kicks it all off when he essentially destroys the Roman Republic, tries to become a dictator, and then he gets himself killed on the Ides of March, and his son Octavian has to then wrestle for the throne with Mark Anthony. And he wins. He takes on the name Augustus. He founds the Empire. And when we get to chapter 13, in the next story of Acts, we’re going to come back to the role that Augustus plays in the Empire and that period of time as the savior, the soter. But he is succeeded by Tiberius, who is succeeded by Caligula, who is succeeded by Claudius, who is succeeded by Nero. And it’s Nero that will imprison Paul. So, you got Julius, Augustus, Tiberius, Caligula, Claudius, Nero. You should know those in order. They are important in the story of the New Testament. And then there’s three others. Vespasian, who begins the assault against the Jews in the Jewish revolt of 66 A.D., and his son, Titus, who finishes it by destroying Jerusalem in 69 A.D. And the last one is Domitian. And we all know who Domitian is. He’s the Roman emperor at the end of the first century who imprisons John on the island of Patmos. These are the Roman emperors that you should know because they deal with the story of the Church in the gospels in the New Testament, and they all have a role to play.

Between Nero and Vespasian there are three others, but they are short-lived and they don’t pertain to the story of Acts or the New Testament. So, I’m not going to worry about those, but you should know these, and should be able to describe something to them. Nero imprisons Paul. Claudius, you’ve got the famine, and he also expels the Jews, and that’s where we come into contact with Aquila and Priscilla. Caligula doesn’t apply in the New Testament story, but he’s at least in the line of things. And Tiberius is the emperor when Christ dies, 31 A.D. Augustus is emperor when Christ is born. But those are things that you should know about the New Testament and their connection with the Roman history. So, we’ll start the next class with chapter 13. We’ll begin the first journey of Paul and start moving through that.

[Darris McNeely]: Welcome back to Acts. And in the last class we were talking about the topic of what happened at Antioch, and we went through that story, a lot of backstory and kind of hop-scotch, hops and skipping, what’s the term? Hopscotching from verse to verse to put together this thread. And we could talk even longer about this. This is, you probably can figure it out, one of my favorite parts of Acts, but just about every part of Acts is one of my favorite parts, so that’s why it takes longer to get through it every year. But let’s come back and let’s kind of summarize what we talked about, and again, with what it means as we look at this congregation that starts up in Antioch. We talked last time about the relief effort that they sent by the hands of Barnabas and Saul to Jerusalem at a time of famine, 45...basically 46 A.D., and to help stave that off. And it generated good vibes from the Church.

So, one thing we can see about this group of largely, essentially, Greek church, Greek Christian church that is in Antioch, probably and some Jews as well, but it’s in this huge Greek metropolis, they were a giving church. They responded to the needs of their fellow church, which was largely Jewish at Jerusalem. That’s huge. That’s huge in the ancient world. It’s huge even today, but it sets an example for us. And they were saying, “We’re all in this together, we’re all one body, we’re all one family,” by what they did. And they sent it up with Barnabas, who’d been sent down to check out the happenings there, and Saul, who’d been a persecutor of the Church. And as I talked about at that time, the last class, Saul’s presence and his aid in bringing a bag of grain to a family. Imagine maybe Saul singled out some of the families of whom he had persecuted, some of their family members, maybe even to the death. And he said to Barnabas, “I’ll take this cake of figs. I’ll take this bag of grain to them. Let me do this one.” And he takes it to their home and humbly gives it to them. And maybe there’s a little tenseness, and then maybe it’s gone. Maybe they invite him to come in and stay a period of time. You know, we’re reading into the story, but I don’t think we’re too far off as to the effect that it had. But the whole Church wanted to show their solidarity with theirs.

Now, later on, and you’ve already read this when you’ve gone through Corinthians, Paul gathers up on another later occasion, an offering it seems of money to take to Judea at the time. So, this is an ongoing feature of Paul’s ministry among the gentile churches directed back to the Jewish church, largely in Jerusalem. So, this is something that goes on. So, it’s a giving church. Now, we jumped ahead to chapter 13 verses 1 and 2 where they determine to create and fund an evangelistic mission with Barnabas and Saul that we will talk about here when we get to it there, that journey into these lands to preach the gospel and to start churches in Antioch and Pisidia, Lystra, Derbe, Iconium, and through that area, but it’s all funded by Antioch. And so, they are an evangelizing church. All right? So, they’re mission-oriented, we would just say today. They don’t want to just rest on their own laurels. They’ve been evangelized by these disciples that went up after the death of Stephen and the scattering. And they want to share that now with their fellow gentile churches, so they send Barnabas and Saul out to that, and they fund it. They fund it.

Travel in the ancient world, understand, took a lot of money. It takes a lot of money to travel today. It’s not cheap unless you do the points thing and get points and free air miles and hotels and things like that, but still, you got to spend some money. In the ancient world, the travel was either on foot, on a donkey, maybe on a horse, but if you had a donkey and a horse, that gets into money because that donkey and horse has to be fed hay, straw, grain, and you got to buy it, to begin with, wherever you start out. Or maybe a small cart that you kind of latch onto, or they actually did have small coaches in the Roman world kind of like the stagecoach of our American West. Not quite like that, but, you know, holding two, four, six people, somebody on top driving it, etc. They had coaches like that and a system, but you didn’t have holiday inns. You had inns, and if they were open, they were usually dirty. By dirty, I mean, full of lice. You shared a bed with lice. I mean, some of the stories that you read about from that period of time, there’s a story, it’s an apocryphal story of the apostle John staying in some decrepit inn in the time of the first century, and he commands the bedbugs to leave his room, and they all march out, and then the next morning they all want to get back in. It’s an apocryphal story, meaning it didn’t happen, but they ascribe it to the powers of John to command even the bedbugs to leave his room. But it tells you the perils of staying in an inn in the ancient time, if it was even open. And the quality of food, it was all kind of sketchy, let’s just put it that way. But they had them, and you can read about them from some of the ancient texts.

The point is it took money and, you know, they could only carry with them a certain amount of food for what? Two, three days. And then they’d have to replenish it, which meant they had to find a market to do all of this. And so, the Church in Antioch funded this, as we’ll see when Paul and Barnabas finished their first trip, they come all the way back to Antioch and they give a report of what happened, which is logical. You go back to your funding source, and after a couple years, you give a report. You know, we did this, we did this, spent this, and here’s an accounting. You give an accounting.

Now, there’s one other thing that we are going to see and it is at the end of chapter 14. And it’s the prelude to the story of the Acts Conference in chapter 15 where they decide circumcision, because what happens is certain Jews come down from Jerusalem to Antioch troubling them saying, “You got to be circumcised, Greeks, to be fully a member of the Church.” And they basically say, “No, we don’t. We’re bona fide, card-carrying, on the computer, we’re getting the Church newspaper-type member.” Okay. “Got the Holy Day offering envelope right here, green, so I’m a church member.” And they say to Barnabas and Saul, “Please, go down to Jerusalem and get this solved.” And they do. And that’s the story of chapter 15 we’ll get to, but it tells you something about the Church in Antioch. They wanted to be doctrinally connected. So, doctrine is important to them. Doctrinal unity. I’m running out of ink here, so I’ll have to switch to red.

So, you got three things. They were a giving church. They were a mission evangelizing church, and they wanted doctrinal unity. Now, that speaks to how much they were a part of the larger effort of the Church, which speaks to, again, the need for unity in the Church today, that we had that. We don’t have that completely. We got all different fellowships and churches of God, and this Church of God, and that Church of God, and this and that, and as, you know, we’ve had discussions as to why and how that happens. And I don’t have the answer for, you know, the future. Why can’t we all get along? I’ll leave that in God’s hands and Christ. He’s the head of the Church. He knows what He’s doing. But if we can take a lesson from the Church in the story in Antioch, when they wanted the issue of circumcision resolved, they were seeking unity of teaching. And that’s important.

So, a church, you know, these are qualities that we would bring into our church life today. We need to be doctrinally together, we need to be mission-oriented, and we need to have a giving spirit internally and among ourselves, and even to our, you know, communities where we can make a difference in serving in some type of a project or activity in the wider communities where we might live. And so, keep that in mind. This is the Church at Antioch and what is going on. And it’s a gentile church. God’s Spirit was moving through them, working all of this out. Thankfully, they sent the right man, Barnabas, down there to discern God’s Spirit working with them and what was happening. And so, we’ll kind of return to it when we discuss, again, the first mission, the first trip of Paul, but that’s what happened at Antioch, and a lot happened, which...sorry, I didn’t... For those watching this online, I’m sorry, I didn’t get all this into one lecture, but at least we’ve got it all covered here.

Now, let’s go on to chapter 12 and open a new story and a new episode here as Luke tells it. And let me... Where am I going to... I’ll just start over here in this corner right here, and it’s in red. So, we are at 44 A.D. is this particular story here that now opens up, okay? It’s an interesting story. It says in verse 1, “At about that time.” And so it’s 44. And look at this, as Luke tells it, it’s an inset within this other story that we just told that covers from about 44 to at least 45 into 46 possibly, and even a little bit further than that with the story at Antioch.

Acts 12:1-3 “Herod, the king stretched out his hand to harass some from the church, and he killed James, the brother of John with the sword.” This is not James who was the brother of Christ, but it’s James son of Zebedee, brother to John. He kills him with a sword. “Because he saw that it pleased the Jews, he proceeded further to seize Peter also.” This is taking place now in Jerusalem. “And it was during the Days of Unleavened Bread.”

So, here we have a marker. We had Pentecost in the second chapter, a marker of the Holy Day. The Church was together, they received God’s Spirit. Now we have a second reference to a Holy Day in Acts. It’s not the last, but now it’s the Days of Unleavened Bread.

Now, it’s...you know, Luke uses it as a marker to his audience. It’s not in the context of observing the Holy Days like you find in, let’s say, 1 Corinthians 5, for example. But because he’s using this as just a time reference, timestamp. But it’s a unique timestamp that marks us that it’s understood it’s a part of the church life. And we see that from other references in the New Testament as well. But this is when it happened, during that Passover Unleavened Bread period of time.

Acts 12:4 “They arrested Peter, they put him in prison and delivered him to four squads of soldiers to keep him, intending to bring him before the people after Passover.”

And so he is going to wait till after the Passover season, and it’s kind of one of these references here to Passover, extending beyond the event on the 14th day of the month to that whole period, which includes Unleavened Bread. We discussed that on the doctrinal study that we did of that. But the obvious implication is he’s going to kill Peter too because it pleased the Jews.

Now, that statement tells us a lot. The antagonism between the Jews and the Church is still strong, these followers of Christ, is still strong. The killing of James by Herod pleases them. Why is Herod wanting to please the Jews? And who is this Herod that we’re talking about as it is mentioned here because it just says, Herod? Is this Herod the Great, the one who rebuilt Jerusalem, expanded the Temple Mount? No. Herod the Great was the founder of the dynasty. I hope you still have your Herodian family tree that I gave to you. Those of you watching it online, we’ve put a copy of this online as well. And for the class, you know, it is important that you know the Herodian tree as it applies to the story of the gospels in the New Testament. So, expect a question at some point on some tests that I give you to reflect your knowledge of the Herods that are mentioned in Scripture, and to get them all straight. They can be confusing.

This is Herod Agrippa that is referenced in chapter 12. He is the grandson of Herod the Great. And your Herodian family tree shows how they were all connected. We’ll have two different Herods in the story of Acts. So, this is the first. So, we’ll focus on him, but we want to put him within the context of the Herodian family tree. And so, he’s Herod Agrippa, and you’ll see him on your map all the way over midway down on the left at point nine, King Herod Agrippa I, who executed James, the son of Zebedee, and imprisoned Peter before Peter’s miraculous escape. So, he’s the grandson of Herod the Great. Herod the Great founds the dynasty, is appointed a king by the Romans. He’s the king of the Jews from 37 to 4 BC. 4 BC is the accepted date for the death of Herod the Great. Sometimes that’s disputed, but that’s the general accepted year, 4 BC, when he dies. And his kingdom goes to his four sons who are mentioned there, Herod Antipas, Herod Archelaus, Herod Phillip, and Philip the Tetrarch. But then we’re focusing here on Herod Agrippa, who is a grandson.

And so, we’re at the year 44 A.D., and let’s go ahead and read through the story. We’ll come back and I want to tell you when we talk about his death, we’ll talk about some of his background to get to this point. But let me give you just a little bit. He is a grandson who has a meteoric rise to the position that he currently has, where he is governor of Judea, Galilee, and two or three other regions, you know, in the area of the land that were a part of Herod’s old empire. And the reason he has got so much at such a short period of time is because when he was younger, he had been sent off to Rome, and there he came under the tutelage of the Emperor Tiberius. All right? At the Emperor Tiberius. So, I’m going to have to erase some of this here. I hope that Rich, you took a snapshot of this. Well, so be it. We’ll erase some of this here because I want to get this into it. Herod comes under the tutelage of Tiberius. Tiberius is the son of the big guy. Who’s the big guy? Anybody know the other Roman emperor, the first one? Who?

Augustus. He’s the big guy. All right? Tiberius is his son, who takes over after the death of Augustus. We’ll talk some more...a lot more about Augustus in the next chapter. Herod comes under his tutelage as a young man. And Tiberius has a son named Caligula. Caligula becomes the third Roman emperor. And you need to know this. I gave you a sheet, this one here of the Roman Caesars during the New Testament period. Don’t lose that because you will need to know the pertinent emperors in order that pertain to the gospels in the New Testament setting. So, we’re kind of setting this up now. Augustus, Tiberius, and Caligula.

Herod becomes a very good friend of Caligula as a young man. Caligula is the Prince of Wales of the day. He’s in line to take over, but Tiberius won’t die. Tiberius won’t die. And one day Herod and Caligula are riding around the island. Guess which island they’re riding around on? South of Rome, out of the Bay of Naples. Yes. Capri. They’re on the island of Capri. Capri was Tiberius’ pleasure palace. We won’t go into that, but they were riding around, Caligula and Herod. And Herod Agrippa makes the comment here, he says, “Boy, I wish the old man would kick off so you, Caligula, could become emperor.” A servant hears that, reports it to Tiberius. Herod is in trouble, treason. He’s kind of put in hawk, in, you know, kind of house arrest for a period of time, and yet he comes out of it. He gets out of it. And eventually, Tiberius dies. They think he dies of natural causes, but every death of a Roman emperor is always suspect. And then Caligula becomes emperor and he makes his friend Herod Agrippa the king back in Judea and Galilee real quick like. All right?

Now, Caligula doesn’t last very long because he’s kind of a really strange guy. He does all kinds of things. The story, one of the stories is he makes his horse a member of the Roman Senate. But he’s eventually killed in a plot. And he is succeeded by his uncle who is Claudius. And this is the Claudius we just read about during the famine of the previous chapter where they sent the relief up to Jerusalem during that time in the 40s. Claudius likes Herod too. Herod ingratiates himself with Claudius. His empire expands.

So, Herod Agrippa, he is sent to Rome and he becomes friends with two emperors. And he works the system and he’s got quite an empire. But Herod is a Jew. Herod Agrippa is a Jew, and he ingratiates himself now in Judea to the Jews, and that’s why he kills James because it pleased the Jews. And any good Governor King of the Romans in Judea at this time, they want the goodwill of the Jews because that will keep them from rioting and upsetting the order of things, and therefore upsetting the order...even their political position. And so, it’s a delicate balance. That’s why he kills James in order to ingratiate himself to the Jews. But, you know, it’s evidently right at the time or before Passover, and so in order not to desecrate the Passover... After all, they do have their principles, right? They will kill somebody, but they won’t kill them on a Holy Day or during the holy season. You know, everybody’s got to have their principles. So, he’s going to wait. He arrests Peter and he’s going to wait till afterwards. And that’s the setting for the...a bit of the setting for the story here. I’ll come back, we’ll talk a little bit more about this episode on Capri when we come to the death of Herod here. So, let’s get back to the text. Peter’s in prison, verse 5 of chapter 12.

Acts 12:5 “Peter was therefore kept in prison, but constant prayer was offered to God for him by the church.”

Here’s what’s happening at this moment. Look at it this way. The beast is stirring. Rome is the fourth beast of Daniel’s seven, remember. Fourth beast. The fourth part of the image of Nebuchadnezzar in Daniel 3, 4, or 2. 2, right, Daniel 2, Nebuchadnezzar’s image. And Rome then is the beast. The beast is stirring. Remember in chapter 7 and verse 1, Daniel sees this vision of the sea churning and churning and churning, these beasts, and four them rise up out of the sea one at a time. Well, the beast is now turning its attention on the Church. They killed James.

Now, the Church doesn’t have an army. The Church doesn’t have an ammunition store. They’re not a match to the power of Rome. What do they do? They pray. That’s all they have is prayer. Constant prayer. A prayer vigil is set up. Peter is one of...you know, he’s one of the 12, and he’s a prominent member. He’s not the future pope and he’s not, you know, necessarily the leader, but he’s a prominent one. Prominent in the story, prominent in the gospels, and they don’t want him to die. They’re beseeching God for his life. Sometimes the Church has to get into a mode of constant prayer. We pray for individuals who are sick, don’t we? We have our prayer request in congregations and, you know, people will fast and pray, and, you know, we beseech God’s mercies for our family, ourselves, our beloved church members, and for other trials that come up. Prayer’s the only thing that we have in the Church, but they’re employing it well. And so here’s what happens, verse 6.

Acts 12:6 “When Herod was about to bring him out that night, Peter was sleeping, bound with two chains between two soldiers. And the guards before the door were keeping the prison.”

You know, there’s been a previous prison episode with Peter when he was imprisoned by the Jews in the temple, and he got let out there.

Acts 12:7 “And so behold, an angel,” verse 7, “stood by him, an angel of the Lord, and a light shone in the prison. And he struck Peter on the side and raised him up, saying, ‘Get up quickly, arise quickly. Get up.’”

You know, it’s quite a jolt for Peter, obviously. You wonder why he’s even sleeping, but he did. I mean, I think if I found myself in jail knowing that I might not come out alive, bound with two chains between two soldiers, you know, maybe they remembered the story where he got loose the first time, and so they’re going to make sure that he’s not going to get loose. So, two chains, two hands, two soldiers on either side, and the feet as well. They’re not going to let go of him. But the chains fell off his hands. It’s that Jedi mind trick thing working right there, you know. Not really, but it helps us to understand. God just... It happened.

Acts 12:8-10 “The angel said to him, ‘Gird yourself, tie on your sandals.’ And so he did. And he said to him, ‘Put on your garment and follow me.’ So, he went out and followed him and did not know what was done by the angel was real, but thought he was seeing a vision.’” So, he’s kind of in a dreamland here, you know, half awake, half still sleeping perhaps, or at least in his mind, thinking he was seeing a vision. “When they were past the first and the second guard posts, they came to the iron gate that leads to the city, which opened to them of its own accord, and they went out and went down one street, and immediately the angel departed from him.”

It begs the question of where were the other guards to get out beyond the first and second guard posts here? Well, again, it’s that mind trick that God just blinded them likely if they weren’t asleep. And he comes out, walks down the street, and then, poof, just like that, the angel departs from Peter, from his presence.

Acts 12:11 And it goes, it says, “When Peter came to himself, he said, ‘Now I know for certain that the Lord has sent His angel and has delivered me from the hand of Herod and from all the expectation of the Jewish people.’”

And so, he’s awake. He’s fully understanding what’s taking place.

Acts 12:12 Says, “When he had considered this, he came to the house of Mary.” So, he goes in search of one of the well-known locations where the Church would be. “Mary, the mother of John, whose surname was Mark, where many were gathered together praying.”

Now, this is John Mark, whom we’re going to see more about, he will be a companion with Paul and Barnabas on the first trip that they make going through all these churches here. And he has an interesting story. But he’s also the same Mark who writes the Gospel of Mark. And so, Peter comes to his mother’s house. Now, this is an example. Remember when we read earlier of the disciples selling their possessions, having all things in common. This tells us that not everyone sold everything, and that the way to understand what is said there is not to think that they just had a completely communal socialistic existence in the early Church. That’s not how it went. Because Mary’s got her house at this point, and it is a hub for gatherings of the Church, telling us that it’s large enough for that purpose. Probably had an outer...you know, a wall around it. Maybe an outer courtyard and an inner courtyard, maybe two levels of housing within. So, it was more than just a small one-room or maybe three-room single-level house. It was probably larger, with a courtyard and an outer gate, as we will see.

Acts 12:12 It says, “Many were gathered there, praying.”

So, this constant prayer, it seems then would go on through the night. Peter’s asleep, remember. We’re not given the exact hour of his asleep when he is awakened by the angel, but let’s assume it’s after midnight. Just we can assume any hour, I suppose. But what he finds is the Church is still gathered, they’re still praying.

Acts 12:13 And he comes there, “Peter knocked at the door of the gate.”

And this is where it kind of gets humorous. This tells us something about a story that must have been told through the years among the disciples. Luke, years later, when he is gathering his history, picks it up and is led to include it here in his narrative. And it’s a bit of a relief. It’s been pretty heavy. You know, James gets killed, Peter’s in prison. He injects a little bit of levity in the narrative at this point, which is always good. You know, any effective speaker knows how to use humor. I think the best way to use humor is in a natural way. Personally, I’m not a joke teller. I can’t remember them, and I can’t always tell them in the way they should be told. My humor tends to be more of a natural, just flows out in that way. But humor is very good to use. Drop it in as a spice or as a moment just to ease the tension that is building in your message at times. So, guys, learn how to use it but use it judiciously and don’t use it as a crutch. And that’s all I better say about humor at this particular point in time. But here’s what happens.

Acts 12:13-14 “There’s a girl named Rhoda who came to answer Peter’s knock at the gate, the door of the gate.” Again, this tells you this is a larger home, and it’s got a gate leading into probably a courtyard. “When she recognized Peter’s voice because of her gladness, she did not open the gate.”

She just, “Whoa, Peter. Oh.” And whatever she does. And she ran in, she turns around, doesn’t even open the door, and announces that, “Peter’s here, Peter’s outside the gate,” and Peter’s left knocking at the gate.

Acts 12:15 “But they said to her, ‘Well, you’re beside yourself.’ But she kept insisting that it was so. And so they said, ‘Well, it’s his angel.’”

Again, telling you a little bit of how they looked at the spirit world, understood the spirit world. We want to be careful. Don’t read a whole lot into this, that everybody has a guardian angel or an angel presence. God’s angels do interact and work in ways we don’t always understand. I don’t personally go around thinking that I’ve got a guardian angel hovering around me all the time, personally assigned to me. Maybe I do, maybe I don’t. I don’t necessarily think about that. I do think that, you know, there have been times that I’ve had angelic protection that I could probably assume this was the case. We did a “Beyond Today” program around that a few years ago, but I’m sure also there’ve been many, many more that I didn’t even know I had the protection of angels as well. But they were, you know, they understood the angelic realm. She said it’s his angel.

Acts 12:16-17 “Now, Peter continued knocking.” So, he’s left outside. “When they opened the door and saw him, they were astonished.” They recognized the lengths that the Romans had gone to Herod to keep him under lock and key, and he’s out. “But motioning to them with his hand to keep silent, he declared to them how the Lord had brought him out of the prison.”

So, he probably just...you know, to quell, you know, their... The noise level probably got a little bit high. And he wants to explain, this is kind of how I interpret it. He wants to declare to them what happened. So, he says, “Hey, you know, calm down. Everybody settle down. I’m here. I’m okay. But let me tell you what happened.” So, he tells the story.

Acts 12:17 “And he tells them, ‘Go tell these things to James and to the brethren.’ And he departed and went to another place.’”

And so, maybe, you know, he wants to be on the move, maybe he doesn’t want to get caught again, maybe he thinks that they’ll come to that house as a first place, but he goes to another place.

Acts 12:18-19 “Then, as soon as it was day, there was no small stir among the soldiers about what had become of peter.” Naturally so. To lose a prisoner in that day and time, you, your life was in danger. And so, their life was on the block. “He examined the guards and he commanded that they should be put to death.”

They made search for him, could not find him, and he pronounces death upon them. Did they not do it when he left? Because it says he went from Judea to Caesarea and stayed there. We don’t know, but this was the penalty for losing a prisoner. When we see Paul in Philippi in another prison scene, he’ll get out by miraculous occurrence, and the Philippian jailer is about ready to kill himself because, again, that is the penalty for losing a prisoner under the Roman system. And so, the scene is now set. So, Peter’s out, and this is where that particular part of the story ends. Herod gives it up. And down in verse 20 then.

Acts 12:20 “Herod had been very angry with the people of Tyre and Sidon, but they came to him with one accord.”

Now, this gets us...again, we’re still, you know, at this time of the year of 44 A.D. There’s been a bit of a diplomatic problem between the residents of Tyre and Sidon and him.

Acts 12:20 “...having made Blastus, the King’s personal aid their friend, they asked for peace because their country was supplied with food by the King’s country.”

So, there was a diplomatic mission going on here at this particular time, and it occurs at a time when there’s a festivity taking place.

Acts 12:21 “On a set day, Herod, arrayed in royal apparel, sat on his throne and gave an oration to them.”

Now, he’s in Caesarea. We’ve shown pictures of Caesarea quite often here in the past, and I won’t put them up on the screen, unless maybe in post-production for those of you online, they can do that. But there’s a theater in Caesarea, and there’s a stadium in Caesarea. It says here that he’s sitting on his throne and gave an oration to them. The throne for a Governor King like this in the ancient world is called a Bema, B-E-M-A. And it’s a raised stage-like place sometimes in a market, sometimes in a theater where the magistrate, the governor or the king will set and preside or set in judgment. It’s called the Bema. We’ll see that in Corinth, when Paul’s there, he is brought before the Bema where the governor is by the Jews at that particular time. It’s been thought that this was in the theater. There’s a line of thought among the scholars today that it was not in the theater, but it was in the stadium, which is very close there in Caesarea. Doesn’t really matter in one sense to us, but what is happening, there’s a festival taking place.

And it says, “Herod comes out in royal apparel.” Now, this episode is also told in the story in the history of Josephus. We all remember Josephus, the Jewish historian of the first century. Josephus gives a very detailed account of this very episode. It’s the only New Testament episode where we have corroboration with an outside source that’s pretty close. There are a few differences, but scholars feel that they harmonize one another, and they actually compliment. It says here he comes out in royal apparel, Luke’s account is. Josephus has him coming out in kind of silver apparel. It’s quite elaborate...it’s quite an elaborate costume that Herod is dressed as. And he gives a speech.

Acts 12:22 “And the people kept shouting,” it says, “‘The voice of a god, and not of a man.’”

The voice of a god, and not of a man. They’re deifying him. They’re shouting these accolades that, “You’re a god, Herod. You’re a god, Herod. You’re not a man.” And he’s already killed James. He wanted to kill Peter. Luke puts this story in here to show the judgment of God upon even as high an official as a member of the Herodian family, Herod Agrippa the King.

Acts 12:23 “Immediately an angel of the Lord struck him because he did not give glory to God.” It wasn’t in his nature to do that, but he’d already gone too far. “And he was eaten by worms and died.”

Eaten by worms and died. Now, Josephus says he died about five years later. Or not five years. Five days later. Five days later. Josephus also tells us something else that Luke doesn’t tell us. Josephus tells us that Herod Agrippa on this occasion here looks up and he sees an owl. An owl. The Romans and the Babylonians and the Greek, all the ancient peoples were very superstitious. An owl was a harbinger, a bad omen. When Herod...remember I told you that he had been put under house arrest when he had said to Caligula, “I wish the old man would die.” And he’s reported by a servant and he’s put under house arrest. He comes out, but he sees an owl at that time, and he is told by some Roman seer, “If you ever see an owl again, it’s going to be bad news curtains for you.” This is how Josephus tells the story. And so Josephus says that in this account now in Luke, “When Herod is acclaimed as a God, he sees an owl, and he knows because of that omen told years earlier this means he’s going to die.” And he basically tells everybody around him in his court, like, “I’m done for. This is it.” He dies according to Josephus’ account, five years later, or five days later eaten by worms. A cancer, whatever it might be, he dies. And he didn’t give glory to God.

You know, a human ruler can overstep their bounds. And we see this is a lesson for that, and helps us to understand. You know, we could speculate, where has God done this at other points in human secular history? I’m sure He has. I have one in mind that I don’t have the time to tell today, but maybe we’ll tell that at another time of more recent times where a leader was struck down. And I sometimes wonder if God did not have a hand in that because of certain things, but we’ll save that. Remind me before the year’s out, I might tell you my theory on that. But I would think that God has done this at other times where there’s been the connection of his people, whether it’s Israel, the Church, or whatever, and we don’t know about. But we’re given this and I think that it can help us to understand that God does rule even down to something like this in the affairs of man. He protects His people and He watches over them.

So, this story of Herod Agrippa, and as it connects to the Herodian family tree, it’s important to know these Herods. And Herod the Great, Herod Agrippa, Herod Antipas, and Phillip the Tetrarch, they all play in the story of the gospels. But for our purposes here, at least in the Book of Acts, you should know Herod the Great, this Herod Agrippa, and then the later Herod that we’re going to come in contact with, Agrippa II, later on in the story. In the brief time that I’ve got here, let me just mention, be sure you keep handy your Caesar’s chart showing the Caesars in the New Testament. I’m going to put Julius Caesar up here. You need to know Julius, he kicks it all off when he essentially destroys the Roman Republic, tries to become a dictator, and then he gets himself killed on the Ides of March, and his son Octavian has to then wrestle for the throne with Mark Anthony. And he wins. He takes on the name Augustus. He founds the Empire. And when we get to chapter 13, in the next story of Acts, we’re going to come back to the role that Augustus plays in the Empire and that period of time as the savior, the soter. But he is succeeded by Tiberius, who is succeeded by Caligula, who is succeeded by Claudius, who is succeeded by Nero. And it’s Nero that will imprison Paul. So, you got Julius, Augustus, Tiberius, Caligula, Claudius, Nero. You should know those in order. They are important in the story of the New Testament. And then there’s three others. Vespasian, who begins the assault against the Jews in the Jewish revolt of 66 A.D., and his son, Titus, who finishes it by destroying Jerusalem in 69 A.D. And the last one is Domitian. And we all know who Domitian is. He’s the Roman emperor at the end of the first century who imprisons John on the island of Patmos. These are the Roman emperors that you should know because they deal with the story of the Church in the gospels in the New Testament, and they all have a role to play.

Between Nero and Vespasian there are three others, but they are short-lived and they don’t pertain to the story of Acts or the New Testament. So, I’m not going to worry about those, but you should know these, and should be able to describe something to them. Nero imprisons Paul. Claudius, you’ve got the famine, and he also expels the Jews, and that’s where we come into contact with Aquila and Priscilla. Caligula doesn’t apply in the New Testament story, but he’s at least in the line of things. And Tiberius is the emperor when Christ dies, 31 A.D. Augustus is emperor when Christ is born. But those are things that you should know about the New Testament and their connection with the Roman history. So, we’ll start the next class with chapter 13. We’ll begin the first journey of Paul and start moving through that.