When we rejoin the scene in Acts, the men of Israel have a problem. They all know that the beggar that was healed was truly lame. They would have seen him there countless times over the many years he begged there. The beggar dancing around would have made it undeniable that he was completely and instantly healed. They of course looked to Peter and John as the source of the healing, but that brought them to another problem, these were fishermen from Galilee, and not pious profits or priests. To bring it to modern terms, it would be as if a mentally challenged, poor high school dropout from some ghetto won the national championship on Jeopardy.

In our last lesson Peter finished up his first public sermon, and three thousand people were saved. This group of three thousand then becomes the very first local Christian church body. In today’s section we will follow them through the beginnings of a regular church and see how they handled some of the very same situations we still face today as the Christian church.