6. _The Acts of the Apostles:_ "The Acts of the Apostles is an account of the conflicts and conquests of Christianity from the ascension of our Lord to the imprisonment of Paul in the city of Rome (33-63 A. D.) It is the earliest manual of Church History, and the only one treating of the age of the Apostles which has come down to us from the first century. Its loss would leave a wide chasm between the Gospels and the Epistles, and involve the student in great ignorance of the progress of events in the history of the Church during the period intervening between the close of our Lord's earthly activity and the destruction of Jerusalem (70 A. D.), which the direct statements and the implications of the Epistles of the New Testament and the Apocalypse would only partially illumine. He, in this case, would know nothing of the outpouring of the Holy Spirit on the day of Pentecost, the testimony and death of Stephen, the conversion of Cornelius, the miraculous manifestation making Saul a Christian, or the stages in the advance of the Church from Jerusalem to Rome and other occurrences hardly less important." (Acts of the Apostles, Intro., p. ix.) 7. _Authorship of the Acts:_ "This book, according to internal and external evidence, was writen by Luke, and forms the sequel to his Gospel. It is the history of the foundation and spread of the Christian Church--the former under Peter (i-xii), the latter under Paul (vii-xxviii). It was founded on the Day of Pentecost; its first sons were Jews (hence it appeared only a Jewish sect in Judea), and the former part of the book is occupied with its establishment there, with arguments in its favor, and with challenges to disprove the fundamental fact of Christ's resurrection. Its first development into an organized community, with official staff, provoked the first persecution and martyrdom, which precipitated its extension to Samaria and Syria, caused a new and more independent center of operations to be planted at Antioch, whence under Paul (the first converted persecutor) it spread to Asia Minor, Greece, Rome, and various parts of the Gentile world. The motive influence was the direct impulse of the Holy Spirit, not any preconceived plan of the Apostolic body (ii: 4; xv: 6, 7, 9)." (Oxford Bible Helps, p. 26.)