The book of Acts is our most important source of information about what happened in the thirty years which followed the Resurrection Ascension of Jesus. Acts provides an important framework into will we can set the letters which were written during this period to some the Christian congregations which had been established. In Chapter 3 we saw that there is good evidence that Luke, the author of Acts, h firsthand knowledge of the situation about which he wrote in the mid years of the first century A.D. From the information which he gives his preface to his gospel (Luke 1:1-4) and from the impression which we get from his gospel, as well as from the early chapters of Acts, we that he did not have firsthand knowledge of the ministry of Jesus or t events which led to the fast growth of the Church in Jerusalem after the Resurrection and Ascension of Jesus. He says this, 'Many people had done their best to write a report of the things that have taken place amongst us. They wrote what we have been told by those who saw the things from the beginning and who proclaimed the message. And so, your Excellency, because I have carefully studied all these matters from their beginning, I thought it would be good to write an orderly account for you. I do this so that you will know the full truth about everything which you have been taught.'

From this it is clear that Luke had been converted to the Christian faith as a result of what he had been told by those who had been eye witnesses of the work of Jesus; he had been converted by the apostolic preaching. To find out exactly what had happened during the ministry of Jesus and in the first years of the Church, he had made a very careful study of all the information he could obtain, either from eye-witnesses or from the first written accounts of the work and teaching of Jesus which had begun to circulate amongst the Christian congregations. As the number of converts increased rapidly, particularly amongst Gentiles who had no personal contact with the Jewish Church in Palestine and very little opportunity, if any, to meet someone who had known Jesus, written collections of his teachings and accounts of what he did, became very important in preserving the authentic tradition.

In the early chapters of Acts, Luke uses his information skillfully to present his readers with a dramatic picture of the way in which the Jerusalem Church came into being and very soon became a missionary Church. When the Jewish followers of Jesus were persecuted by their fellow Jews who opposed the new teaching, the members of the new Church were forced to disperse for a time, but as they did so, they spread their new message wherever they went. Peter emerges as the leading figure in these early days. Paul, then called Saul, made his first appearance as a young and hostile Pharisee, but he does not become a central figure, and Luke's hero, until we reach Acts 13.

As we know that Luke was not an eye-witness of the life of the early Church in Jerusalem, in the years immediately after the Resurrection and Ascension, he had to present the information he was given in the most appropriate form that he could. No one had been standing by with a tape recorder when Peter preached after the Pentecost experience, but what Peter had said had been remembered and repeated by others. Luke put what he had been told about Peter's early preaching into the kind of sermon presentation that he expected of Peter. We do not know if Luke ever met Peter in person.

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