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Act 6:1-7. MURMURING ABOUT THE DISTRIBUTION OF THE COMMON FUND. MEASURES FOR ALLAYING IT
By the confession of the high-priest himself (Act 5:28) Jerusalem was now filled with the teaching of the Christians, and thus the first step was accomplished in the course which Christ had ordained (Act 1:8) for the publication of the Gospel. Now, therefore, the historian of the Church’s progress turns to deal with other events and different persons, because he has to tell of a persecution which caused Christian missionaries to go forth for the next stage of the work, the spread of the faith through Judæa and Samaria (Act 8:1). The means which God employed for this end are not such as an inventor in the second century would have been likely to hit upon, nor such as any writer who merely desired to magnify the Apostles would have adopted. A system for the more effectual relief of the widows among the congregation is devised, and an outburst of popular rage, causing the death of one of the dispensers of the relief-funds, disperses the greater part of the Church of Jerusalem. A person who was free to choose (as an inventor would have been) would scarcely have selected one of the seven deacons for the first Christian martyr, and have left the Apostles out of sight, while giving the history of Stephen. The choice of such a writer would have surely fallen upon one of the Twelve to be the first to die for the faith.