As we saw last week the church is growing fast, and now we have Deacons elected to help the Apostles administer the body. One of these first Deacons, though that title will not be used until much later, is Stephen. Peter is falling away as far as the account in Acts is concerned, and soon the account will focus on Paul, and the bridge between the two is this account of Stephen.

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.