Easy Bible・Acts 11

The Gentiles are Included in God's Plan

Key Passages

About this Chapter

In Acts 11, Peter shares his experience of how the Gentiles received the Holy Spirit. He explains how he was in Joppa when he had a vision of a large sheet being let down from heaven with all kinds of animals. A voice told him to kill and eat, but Peter resisted because some of the animals were considered unclean according to Jewish law. The voice then told him not to call anything impure that God has made clean. Soon after, Peter was summoned to the house of a Roman centurion named Cornelius. He realized that God was showing him that Gentiles should not be excluded from receiving the message of salvation. When Peter arrived at Cornelius' house, he found a large gathering of Gentiles who were eager to hear the message of God. Peter began to share the good news of Jesus Christ with them, and as he was speaking, the Holy Spirit came upon the Gentiles, just as it had come upon the Jewish believers at Pentecost. This amazed the Jewish believers who had accompanied Peter, as they realized that God had granted salvation to the Gentiles as well. Peter then baptized the Gentiles in the name of Jesus Christ, and they became part of the early Christian community. This event was significant because it showed that salvation was not limited to the Jewish people, but was available to all who believed in Jesus Christ. It marked a turning point in the early church's understanding of God's plan for the Gentiles and paved the way for the spread of Christianity to the non-Jewish world.