ON INTERPRETIVE AND EDIFYING READING

ACTS OF THE HOLY APOSTLES

INTRODUCTION

That it is impossible to separate our Lord Jesus Christ, the Head of the Church, from the body of the Church, and in particular from the holy prophets and apostles

Nicanor, Archbishop of Kherson.

It is not new—it is a false doctrine. It is contemporary with the apostles themselves. Already in their time there appeared many false apostles, who tried to take on the guise of the apostles of Christ, and about the true apostles of Christ they were taught that they did not preach the word of Christ purely (2 Corinthians 2:17; 12:13). This false teaching was especially sharply expressed in the writings of Celsus, a pagan, the worst enemy of the Church of Christ, as early as the second century.

Meanwhile, this heresy destroys one of the fundamental dogmas of Christianity, the dogma that it is impossible to separate our Lord Jesus Christ, as the head of the Church, from the body of the Church in general, and, secondly, from the prophets and apostles. Such a separation is contrary to the clear, precise, repeatedly and variously repeated teaching of Jesus Christ Himself and to the entire mind of the undoubtedly authentic historical teaching of the holy apostles.

If the Gospel testimony seemed insufficient to confirm the truth that the Holy Apostles only continued the preaching of Jesus Christ Himself, without inventing anything of their own that did not agree with it, then here is a whole series of striking proofs of the same truth in the Book of the Acts of the Apostles, written by the writer of the Third Gospel, the Holy Evangelist Luke. For example, Jesus, after His resurrection, commands the Apostles "not to depart from Jerusalem, but to wait for the fulfillment of the promise of God the Father, of which you have heard from Me," the resurrected Lord told them, just before the ascension. "After a few days, you have to be baptized with the Holy Ghost. And when the Holy Spirit shall come upon you, ye shall receive power, and ye shall be witnesses unto me in Jerusalem, and in all Judea and Samaria, and even unto the ends of the earth" (Acts 1:4-8).

And they set up two, Joseph and Matthias, and prayed, and said, "Thou, O Lord, Knower of the hearts of all, shew one of these two, whom thou hast chosen to accept the lot of this ministry and apostleship. And they cast lots for them" (Acts 1:21-26). So, what did it mean to accept the lot of the apostleship? It meant to accept the assignment – to be a witness, a preacher, on the basis of personal testimony, of the resurrection of Jesus Christ and all His deeds and teachings during all the time that the Lord Jesus dwelt and dealt with the apostles, from the baptism of John to the day on which He ascended from them before their eyes to heaven. Then, throughout the book of Acts, this idea runs that the holy apostles were witnesses of the life, deeds and teachings of Jesus Christ. In this calling of witnesses they recognize themselves and constantly declare that they are witnesses, and declare exactly what they themselves are personal witnesses.

Thus, immediately after the descent of the Holy Spirit. The chief Peter, having preached his first sermon to the great assembly of the people, concludes it thus: "This Jesus God has raised up, of which we are all witnesses. Then He, having been lifted up by the right hand of God, and having received from the Father the promise of the Holy Spirit, poured out that which ye now see and hear" (Acts 2:33-44). A few days later, the chief Peter affirmed the same thing in his speech to the people and in the temple of Jerusalem: "Men of Israel! The God of your fathers has glorified his Son Jesus, whom you have betrayed; you have denied the Holy and Righteous, you have killed the Author of life. This God raised from the dead, of which we are witnesses" (Acts 3:12-16). The same is expressed by the chief Peter in his speech before the Sanhedrin, when the Jewish leaders forbade them to teach about the name of Jesus. Peter and John answered and said to them: "If it is righteous in the sight of God to listen to you rather than to God, judge you. For we, who have seen and heard, cannot not speak" (Acts 4:19-20), — not to bear witness to what we have been eyewitnesses and witnesses. "And with great power," concludes St. Acts (Acts 4:33), "the apostles bore witness to the resurrection of the Lord Jesus Christ. When the apostles were set up in the Sanhedrin for the second time, the high priest asked them, saying: "Have we not firmly forbidden you to teach about this name? And behold, you have filled Jerusalem with your teaching," Peter and the other apostles answered and said: "We must obey God rather than men. The God of your fathers raised up Jesus, whom you killed by hanging him on a tree. God exalted him with His right hand to be the Leader and Saviour. In this we are witnesses to Him, and the Holy Spirit, Whom God has given to those who obey Him" (Acts 5:27-32). When Samaria received the word of the Lord from Philip, and when the apostles who were in Jerusalem, after the murder of Stephen, hearing that the Samaritans had accepted the word of God, sent Peter and John to him, these apostles, having arrived in Samaria, testified, — as the Holy Synod puts it. Acts 8:25), and there they preached the word of the Lord, then they went back to Jerusalem, and in many villages of Samaria they preached the gospel. The supreme Peter proclaims the same thing in the house of Cornelius the Centurion: "God," preaches St. Peter, "sent a word to the children of Israel, preaching good news to the world through Jesus Christ; This is the Lord of all. You know what happened throughout all Judea, beginning with Galilee, after the baptism preached by John, how God anointed Jesus of Nazareth with the Holy Ghost and power, and He went about doing good and healing all that were possessed by the devil; because God was with Him. And we are witnesses of all that He did in the land of Judah and in Jerusalem, and that at last they killed Him by hanging Him on a tree. This God raised up on the third day, and gave Him to appear, not to all the people, but to witnesses who had been chosen by God, to us, who ate and drank with Him after His resurrection from the dead, and He commanded us to preach to the people, and to bear witness that He is the Judge of the living and the dead, appointed by God. Of Him all the prophets bear witness, that whosoever believeth in Him shall receive forgiveness of sins in His name" (Acts 10:36-43).

St. Peter writes the same thing in his second epistle (2 Peter 1:16-18) that "we proclaim to you the power and coming of our Lord Jesus Christ, not following cunning fables, but being eyewitnesses of His majesty." And then he tells us that Christ the Lord received honor and glory from God the Father Himself, when the following voice came to Him from majestic glory: "This is My beloved Son, in Whom I am well pleased. And this voice, – adds the holy Chief Apostle, – brought from heaven, we ourselves heard, being with Him on the holy Mount of Transfiguration." And what the apostles themselves saw and heard, they preached the gospel by the Holy Spirit, sent down upon them from heaven. Not only the apostles, but also the prophets preached the gospel by the Holy Spirit, namely by the Spirit of Christ, who dwells in them. "The prophets foretold," writes St. Peter (Pet. 1:10-12), as indicated by the Spirit of Christ who is in them, Who foretold through them the sufferings of Christ and the glory that would follow them; It was revealed to them that it was not for themselves, but for us, that which has now been preached to you by those who preached the gospel to you by the Holy Spirit (the apostles), sent from heaven. Prophecy was never uttered by the will of man, but holy men of God spoke it, being moved by the Holy Spirit" (2 Peter 1:21). In particular, also about St. Paul, St. Peter testified that Paul wrote his epistles according to the wisdom given to him by God (2 Peter 4:15).

In the same way, the Holy Evangelist John, at the end of his Gospel, declares that he is only a disciple-witness of what the divine Teacher did and taught him (John 21:24-25), that he who has seen it bears witness, and his testimony is true; and he knows that he speaks the truth (John 19:35). "We bear witness to you," John begins his first epistle (John 1:1-3), "that it was from the beginning, that we have heard, what we have seen with our eyes, what we have beheld, and what our hands have touched, concerning the Word of life (for this life has appeared, and we have seen, and testify, and declare to you this eternal life, which was with the Father, and was manifested to us),  "Of what we have seen and heard, we tell you these things, and we write to you. We are witnesses, and you know that our testimony is true," John concludes his third epistle (3 John 12).