For a few years the whole movement stayed in one city. Then one man was killed for what he said, everyone else ran for their lives — and the message went everywhere they went. It is one of the recurring patterns of this book: the thing meant to stop it is the thing that spreads it.

Stephen

Stephen was one of the seven chosen to look after the widows. He turns out to be far more than an administrator — he argues in the synagogues of the Greek-speaking Jews, and they cannot answer him. So they bring charges instead: that he speaks against the temple and against the law of Moses.

His defense is the longest speech in Acts, and it is not really a defense. It is the whole story of Israel retold — Abraham, Joseph, Moses, the tabernacle, the temple — building toward one point: God was never confined to a building, and at every stage His messengers were refused by the people they were sent to. Then he says it to their faces, and they stone him for it.

He dies asking that it not be held against them. Luke adds one detail almost in passing: the witnesses laid their coats at the feet of a young man named Saul, and Saul approved of the killing. That is the first we hear of him.

Acts 6:8–8:1

The persecution

What follows is not random hostility. Saul goes house to house, dragging men and women to prison. The believers scatter out of Jerusalem into Judea and Samaria — and Luke says the ones who scattered went about preaching. They had no strategy and no headquarters. They simply could not stop talking about it.

Acts 8:1–4

Philip in Samaria

Philip, another of the seven, goes to Samaria — which is worth pausing over, because Jews and Samaritans had despised each other for centuries. He preaches, and the city believes. Peter and John come down from Jerusalem to see it for themselves, and what they find satisfies them: God is plainly at work in people no one in Jerusalem would have chosen.

Simon, a local magician with a considerable reputation, believes as well — then offers money for the power he sees the apostles exercising, and is told sharply that this is not for sale. His name survives in English in the word simony, the buying and selling of holy things.

Acts 8:5–25

The road to Gaza

Then Philip is sent south to a desert road, where he meets an Ethiopian official — a man of great authority under the queen, riding home from worshiping in Jerusalem, reading Isaiah aloud in his chariot and getting nowhere with it.

He is reading Isaiah 53: “He was led like a sheep to the slaughter…” and he asks the obvious question — is the prophet talking about himself, or about someone else? Philip starts from that passage and tells him about Jesus. They come to water, and the man asks to be baptized on the spot, and goes on his way rejoicing.

Two things are set down here that the rest of the book will keep insisting on. The story of Jesus was already written into Israel’s Scriptures. And the people who receive it are increasingly the people at the edges — a Samaritan city, an African court official, and soon a Roman centurion.

Acts 8:26–40

Meanwhile Saul is still on his way to Damascus with warrants in his hand. That is the next part.