Lesson
Journeys of the Apostles
The roads Acts actually draws: Peter on the coast, Paul from Damascus to Rome, and the honesty that most of the twelve have no private map. Letters are placed where the letters themselves give a clue.
September 25, 2026
Acts does not give each of the twelve a travel diary. It stays in Jerusalem, follows Peter to the coast, and then follows Paul. Where a later church drew a private road for Andrew or Thomas, this lesson says so in a sentence and does not put it on the map. The men themselves, including how they died and which books carry their names, are The Apostles.
One shared road
They are called in Galilee, except those John introduces from Bethsaida and from Cana's country. They go up to Jerusalem with him. After the ascension they are in an upper room in the city (). Pentecost is there (). Peter and John are going up to the temple (). The council threatens them in Jerusalem (). When a persecution scatters after Stephen, Luke writes that they were all scattered except the apostles ().
Before that, in years, they had been sent out two by two (). The pairs are not named. There is no honest way to draw twelve separate lines through Galilee.
Peter
The line on that map is the one Acts tells.
With John, he is sent to Samaria after Philip the evangelist has preached there. Do not mix that Philip with the Philip. The evangelist is one of the seven (, , ). Peter and John pray, and then they return to Jerusalem, preaching in many villages of the Samaritans ().
Peter goes to Lydda. Aeneas. Then to Joppa. Tabitha. He stays many days with Simon a tanner (). From Joppa he is sent to Caesarea, to Cornelius, a Gentile (). He returns to Jerusalem and explains it ().
Herod the king, the one who dies at the end of the chapter, kills James the brother of John and arrests Peter during the days of Unleavened Bread. An angel brings Peter out. Peter goes to the house of Mary, the mother of John Mark, and says, "Send word to James and to the brothers." Then he goes to another place (). Luke does not name the place.
The next time the New Testament puts Peter on a road, it is Paul's letter, not Acts. Paul says that when Cephas came to Antioch, Paul opposed him to his face (). Antioch is north, off the land map. The Jerusalem meeting in Acts 15 also has Peter speaking (). After that, Acts does not travel with him.
1 Peter sends greetings from "the church in Babylon," and from Mark, whom Peter calls "my son" (). The common reading of Babylon is Rome. It is a reading, not a line that says "Rome." 2 Peter says the putting off of his body will be soon, as the Lord made clear to him (). That fits the word in . It does not narrate the death, and it does not name the city.
John, and then the silence
John is with Peter in the temple, before the council, and in Samaria. That is the last road Acts gives him. Revelation, if this John is the apostle, places him on Patmos because of the word of God and the testimony of Jesus (). Whether the John of Revelation is the son of Zebedee is a real split. The book names John. It does not say "the son of Zebedee." Later memory puts him in Ephesus. That memory is not a verse, and it is not drawn here as if Acts had walked it. His note is .
For the rest of the twelve, gives the shared road and then stops. Andrew brings people to Jesus in John and is in the lists. Philip the apostle is in John 1, 6, 12, and 14, in Galilee and on the way to Jerusalem, not on a later mission map. Bartholomew, or Nathanael if they are the same man, is from Cana and is at the sea in John 21. Matthew is called from the tax booth in Galilee. Thomas is at the last meal, absent at the first Sunday evening, present eight days later, and at the sea in John 21. James the son of Alphaeus, Thaddaeus, and Simon the Zealot are names in the lists. Judas dies in Jerusalem. Matthias is chosen there and never mentioned again.
Later books send Thomas to India, Andrew to Greece, Bartholomew to Armenia or India, and Simon and Jude to Persia. Those books are not the Bible. They disagree. They are not on these maps.
Paul
Acts and his own letters give four stretches you can actually follow. The colors on the map match the sections you can unroll below, in short, so the page can be read without the whole itinerary first.
He is from Tarsus (), brought up in Jerusalem at the feet of Gamaliel (), a persecutor on the road to Damascus (). He is in Damascus, then Arabia, then back to Damascus (). After three years he goes up to Jerusalem, then to the regions of Syria and Cilicia (). Barnabas brings him from Tarsus to Antioch ().
The first journey: Antioch, Cyprus, Perga, Pisidian Antioch, Iconium, Lystra, Derbe, and back ( through ).
The second: overland through those Galatian towns, Troas, Philippi, Thessalonica, Berea, Athens, Corinth for a year and a half, a brief stop at Ephesus, Caesarea, Jerusalem, Antioch ( through ).
The third: Galatia and Phrygia, then Ephesus for about three years, then Macedonia and Greece, back through Macedonia, Troas, Miletus, Tyre, Caesarea, Jerusalem ( through ).
The arrest is in Jerusalem. The custody is in Caesarea for two years (). The voyage is Caesarea, Sidon, Myra, Crete, the storm, Malta, Syracuse, Rhegium, Puteoli, Rome ( through ). Acts ends with him there two whole years, welcoming all who came, preaching the kingdom and teaching about the Lord Jesus Christ (). It does not tell his death.
Romans says he hopes to go on to Spain (). Acts never walks that road. A later memory says he reached the west. This map stops where Acts stops.
When the letters might have been written
The dates are not printed on the letters. A few of them name a city or a trip. The rest is fitting the letter to Acts, and some of the fittings are argued.
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