The Message of Acts Quotes

“We need especially to remember that between the ascension and the parousia, the disappearance and the reappearance of Jesus, there stretches a period of unknown length which is to be filled with the church’s worldwide, Spirit-empowered witness to him. We need to hear the implied message of the angels: ‘You have seen him go. You will see him come. But between that going and coming there must be another. The Spirit must come, and you must go – into the world for Christ.”
― John R.W. Stott, The Message of Acts

“These two words stand as a signpost near the beginning of each of Luke’s two volumes, in both cases embedded in an Old Testament prophecy, to point to Luke’s principal message: Jesus is the Saviour of the world; nobody is beyond the embrace of his love. In his Gospel, Luke shows Jesus’ compassion for those sections of the community whom others despised, namely women and children, the poor, the sick, the sinful and the outcast, Samaritans and Gentiles, while in Acts Luke explains how Paul came to turn to the Gentiles, and describes the gospel’s triumphal progress from Jerusalem, the capital of the Jewish people, to Rome, the capital of the world.”
― John R.W. Stott, The Message of Acts

“Without the Holy Spirit, Christian discipleship would be inconceivable, even impossible. There can be no life without the life-giver, no understanding without the Spirit of truth, no fellowship without the unity of the Spirit, no Christlikeness of character apart from His fruit, and no effective witness without His power. As a body without breath is a corpse, so the church without the Spirit is dead.”
― John Stott, The Message of Acts: To The Ends Of The Earth

“True, pastors are not apostles, for the apostles were given authority to formulate and teach the gospel, while pastors are responsible to expound the message which the apostles have bequeathed to us in the New Testament”
― John R.W. Stott, The Message of Acts

“The Church is the pilgrim people of God. It is on the move—hastening to the ends of the earth to beseech all men to be reconciled to God, and hastening to the end of time to meet its Lord who will gather all into one.… It cannot be understood rightly except in a perspective which is at once missionary and eschatological. ”
― John R.W. Stott, The Message of Acts