Lesson
Pentecost to Rome
From Pentecost to two years in a rented house in Rome. The firm peg is Gallio in Corinth, about AD 51 to 52. No later story of an apostle's death is added.
October 7, 2026
The risen Jesus presents Himself alive for forty days, speaking about the kingdom of God. He tells them to wait for the promise, and that they will be His witnesses in Jerusalem, Judea, Samaria, and to the end of the earth. A cloud takes Him. They wait. At Pentecost the Spirit comes like a rushing wind and tongues of fire. Peter preaches the death, the resurrection, and the forgiveness of sins. About three thousand are added. That feast is in the same year as , fifty days after the Sunday of the resurrection. The year is AD 30 or 33, as the previous lesson left it.
shares bread and the apostles' teaching. A lame man is healed in the name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth. The council arrests, threatens, and flogs. Stephen sees the Son of Man standing and is stoned. Saul approves. A persecution scatters everyone except the apostles. Philip preaches in Samaria and to an Ethiopian on the road.
Saul is on the road to Damascus with letters. A light, a voice: Saul, Saul, why are you persecuting me? He is told this is Jesus, whom he is persecuting. He is led in blind, and Ananias lays hands on him. He is baptized and immediately proclaims in the synagogues that Jesus is the Son of God. The timeline does not date this by a tradition of his age. It is after Stephen, and before the journeys, an estimate of a few years.
Peter is sent to Cornelius, a Gentile centurion. The Spirit falls while Peter is still speaking. The circumcision party in Jerusalem objects, and then they hold their peace. God has granted to the Gentiles also the that leads to life. Herod Agrippa kills James the brother of John and imprisons Peter. An angel brings Peter out. Herod, dressed in royal robes, is praised as a god and is struck and dies, eaten by worms. tells a king's death at Caesarea in AD 44 with a similar shape. The year on the card is that usual date, labeled an estimate, because Acts itself does not number it.
The journeys
The Holy Spirit says, set apart Barnabas and Saul. They go through Cyprus and the cities of south Galatia. Paul is stoned at Lystra and gets up. They appoint elders and sail home. Then men from Judea teach that unless the Gentiles are circumcised they cannot be saved. Paul and Barnabas go up to Jerusalem. Peter, Paul, Barnabas, and James speak. The letter that goes out does not put the yoke of the law on the Gentiles. It asks them to abstain from idol meat, blood, what is strangled, and sexual immorality. Galatians belongs beside this journey or this council. The letter does not date itself, and the argument about which Jerusalem visit it tells is real. The card puts the letter there without pretending the argument is over.
A second journey. A vision of a man of Macedonia. Philippi, a jail, a song at midnight. Thessalonica, Berea, Athens. Corinth for a year and six months. and Priscilla are there because Claudius had commanded all the Jews to leave Rome. The usual date of that command is AD 49, from Suetonius, who says it in one nasty sentence about Chrestus. Acts gives the fact of the order, not the year. Gallio is the peg, and the scroll is his inscription. From that peg the rest of the years are stepped, which is why they stay estimates even when they are careful ones.
A third journey. About three years in Ephesus, so that all the residents of Asia hear the word. A riot over Artemis. Macedonia and Greece, three months. A plot. He speaks all night at Troas, and Eutychus falls and is taken up alive. He hurries to Jerusalem for Pentecost. He tells the Ephesian elders that the Spirit testifies in every city that imprisonment and afflictions await him, and that he does not account his life precious, if only he may finish the course. From this journey he writes the Corinthian letters and Romans. The dates, about 55 to 57, are the Gallio step, not a line in the letters.
Rome, and no further
In Jerusalem he is seized in the temple. The tribune rescues him and is surprised he speaks Greek. Paul tells the crowd his story. A plot to kill him. He is sent to Caesarea. Felix leaves him in prison two years, wanting a bribe. Festus, wanting to do the Jews a favor, offers a trial in Jerusalem. Paul appeals to Caesar. Before he sails, he tells Agrippa the story. Agrippa says Paul almost persuades him to be a Christian.
A storm of fourteen nights. Paul says an angel of the God he belongs to has said he must stand before Caesar, and that God has granted him all who sail with him. The ship breaks on Malta. A viper on his hand does not kill him. In the spring they reach Rome. He stays two whole years in his own rented house, welcoming all, proclaiming the kingdom and teaching about the Lord Jesus Christ with all boldness and without hindrance.
The book stops. It does not say that he was released, and it does not say that he was killed. The prison letters, Philippians, Colossians, Philemon, and Ephesians, fit a captivity, and Philippians speaks of the praetorium and Caesar's household. If that captivity is this one, they belong to these two years. The pastoral letters speak of travel Acts does not narrate. They are placed after the book, from their own contents, and no account of an execution is borrowed from a later writer. Peter's letters, John's letters, Jude, Hebrews, and Revelation are on the timeline as books, each with the limit the book itself has. Revelation puts John on Patmos. Acts does not. The date under Nero or under a later emperor is left as an estimate.
Who the apostles were, apart from this travel, is The Apostles. This lesson is the years Acts actually counts, and the one year an inscription nails down.
That year is Gallio's. An inscription found at Delphi dates his year as proconsul of Achaia to about AD 51 or 52, and Acts 18 puts Paul before him in Corinth (). The other dates in Acts are counted out from that point.
This lesson's home is Timeline.