Acts 12:1-4
In the beginning of the world, everyone knew God, then Adam sinned and everyone who came after him began to drift away. God then choose a family to be his witness to the world so that everyone would come back to him. (Isa. 42:6) They failed to be this light, and in the fullness of time Jesus came to be that light to the whole world. (Luke 2:28-32) In the same way, Acts starts off with a Jewish revival, transitions to the proselytes, then to Samaritans, and finally to Gentiles.
Just as Peter was the dominant figure of the first half of the book of Acts, Paul will be for the remainder of the book. Acts 12 will be the last time Acts follows Peter, and Peter from the point of view of Acts will quickly fall off the radar. We know he had further ministries, but they are not recorded for us in Acts. We will also continue to see the fade of primarily Jewish church in Jerusalem as the center of importance and the rise of the Gentile church in Antioch.
There is this sense in world history of a torch being passed. It can only be seen if you take a broad bird’s eye view of world history, but it does clearly appear to be there. You can see this torch leaving Jerusalem, and heading mostly west for the next two thousand years of world history. This torch is the light of the Gospel of Christ. Every nation that has carried the torch has been greatly blessed, and when the nation itself did not embrace the torch, the citizens that did were blessed despite the country. In recent history it clearly traveled from the former British Empire, to the United States. I do not believe the United States currently has the torch though; it appears to have left and continued its march westward. Some have theorized that this westward march is a doomsday clock of sorts. That is to say that once the torch makes it back to Jerusalem, world history will be complete and Jesus will return as prophesied. If that is correct, then judging by the ever-increasing speed that the torch is moving, we are not far from the end.
Now, I am not going to put a date and time on that event. I will also point out that every generation has believed the end of the world would happen in their lifetime and so far they have all been wrong. The only thing we can be sure of at this stage is that the end is closer then it was yesterday, and will be even closer tomorrow. I do believe it is getting close, and I suspect that some people alive today will see it, but again many have said that and are long in the grave now.
As we continue to follow this transition through Acts 12, we come across this phrase “now about that time.” This ties us back to the events near the end of Acts 11 where the prophets are warning of the famine. We know the famine happened around AD 46, and we know that the Herod spoken of in Acts 12 dies in AD 44, so we can roughly date this passage to be around AD 44. Herod is still alive, but we are close to the time of the famine. This implies they had a couple years warning in which to prepare for the up coming famine, which would have been needed in that time due to the lack of modern means of sending help.
Herod is first and foremost a politician. He used his influence to get the position of ruler of this region, and he wanted to keep it. He knew that to keep it would require that the Jewish leaders were supportive of him, so he embraced the Jewish ceremonial religion. He was able to claim Jewish heritage through his grandmother, and history records him giving sacrifices and reading daily in the temple. Since he was so closely tied to the religious leaders it would have been apparent to him that the rise of Christianity was something the Jewish leadership wanted squashed, so he reaches out to help them by killing James.
Back in Mark 10:35-45 Jesus predicted that James would “drink the cup I drink and be baptized with the baptism I am baptized with.” We see that fulfilled here in the death of James at the hands of Herod. It is worthy to note how James died here since Luke points it out. If we go back to the Old Testament law, we see that some one that leads an entire city astray from God is to be killed by the sword, Herod would have known this law, and it was likely intentional that he killed James with the sword.
When Herod saw that this pleased the Jews, he went after Peter. After all if James made them happy, killing Peter, who was likely seen as the primary leader of the movement, should make them ecstatic. So Herod arrests Peter, with the intention of killing him, probably publically, after the Passover. Herod puts Peter in their equivalent of a maximum-security prison, probably because back in Acts 5:18-19 Peter had no problem getting out of prison.
Looking back over this section we can see a couple lessons for our life today. The first is clock of history is running down, and while we do not know how much time is left, we do know that every day the last day gets closer. The only question that remains in this regard for us Christians, are we living like time is running out to spread the Gospel that brings salvation?
A second lesson that comes out of this section relates to our service to the Lord. James and John were in Jesus’ closest inner circle of followers. Jesus told both of them that they would be “baptized with the baptism I am baptized with.” James is killed fairly early in the history of the church, only around a decade after Pentecost, while John lives on at least another forty or fifty years. James served Jesus through his death, and John though his life. James was baptized with physical death, and John with a life of suffering. (Rev 1:9)
We are all called to serve in different ways, but we should know that if we are truly those that call Jesus lord and master, then the road in front of us is not all shiny and happy. Jesus said he did not come to bring peace, but to bring war. (Matthew 10:34-36) Jesus also said that anyone that rejects this road is not worthy of him. (Matthew 10:37-38) We have a choice to make, and that is do we live for the rewards of this life, or the next. While we may see some blessings here in this life, the over arching testimony of the Bible is that the choices are mutually exclusive. We must choose, and I pray that all would choose wisely.
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