This silence * * * * indicates that it matters everything how a Christian lives; little how he dies. Christianity advances with a steady and rapid progress from Jerusalem to Antioch, Antioch to Corinth, and Corinth to Rome. There are references to the numbers of the believers (2:40; 4:4), and constant statements that they were increasing rapidly (2:47; 5:14; 6:7; 12:24; 16:5). Besides the more formal notices, there are incidental allusions to the churches in Samaria and Phoenicia (15:3), Syria and Cilicia (15:23), Troas (20:6, 7), Tyre and Ptolemais (21:1-7), and other cities. The book is the missionary's best companion on the frontier and in foreign lands. The Acts is animated with the universal aims of the Gospel. It has a Gentile ring. Palestine was only the birthplace of Christianity, not its exhaustive theatre. Peter catches this tone in his speech on the day of Pentecost (2:39), whose various tongues were themselves a type, and witnesses a figurative representation of it in the vision on the housetop of Joppa. Stephen's eye takes in this larger horizon, and Paul, who uttered the significant words in Antioch of Pisidia, 'Lo, we turn to the Gentiles' (13:46), looks out to Rome itself when he insists, 'I must also see Rome' (19:31; 20:22). The motto of the Acts is the command of the ascending Saviour, 'to the uttermost part of the earth' (1:8), and continues to be the motto of the Church. The Acts of the Apostles is not yet a closed book." (The Acts of the Apostles, by J. S. Howson and H. D. M. Spence, p. xix and xx. International Commentary, Introduction.)