Acts: Quick Summary

The Book of Acts is basically Luke Part 2 and covers 30 years of events: from Jesus's resurrection, through Pentacost, through the conversion of Saul to Paul, and up to just before Paul faced trial in Rome. The letters that occupy much of the remainder of the New Testament rely on Acts to provide historical context to the situations mentioned in the various letters. If you read Acts and you don't know Paul's conversion forwards and backwards, you were obviously not paying attention. That story is told once as part of the "story" of the Book of Acts and then Paul likes to use that experience in speeches quoted in this book. While some may say that the main character in the four Gospels was Jesus and in Acts the main characters are Peter and Paul, I think there is more consistency between the Gospels and Acts. Sure, the reader follows Peter and Paul a good bit in the book, but it is actually the emergence and presence of the Holy Spirit as the continuing force for God on Earth that I think is more accurately the main character of Acts.