Watch this. Let me just give you a point of discontinuity right off the bat, that is also continuity at the same time. In the Old Testament Prophets, the goal is all of the time to get into Jerusalem. That is the high water mark of Israelite life: to make Jerusalem the center of everything. So they are in Egypt and then they are in Israel and then they are in Judah and then they are in Jerusalem. So finally, David conquers Jerusalem. Then he has the temple (well, Solomon builds it). But there is the temple, the palace and all that stuff and Jerusalem is the center of the universe. This is exactly what the book of Chronicles and the genealogies in chapters 1 through 9 tell us. Jerusalem is the center of the universe.
But in the book of Acts, it starts in Jerusalem. The center starts in Jerusalem, but then they go backwards and out. The gospel is not about getting into Jerusalem, but the gospel is about getting the world into the theological Jerusalem, I guess you could say. So they go from Jerusalem to Judea to Samaria to the uttermost parts of the world. So do you see how it is kind of this inverse-cone thing? The whole goal here is to get into Jerusalem, get that King and then, after that, it is to take that message out. So here Jerusalem is the ending point in the Old Testament Prophets. But Jerusalem is the beginning point in Acts and that is the launch pad for the gospel ministry. So that is a cool thing.
By Miles Van Pelt.
Original link: https://www.biblicaltraining.org/blog/significance-jerusalem-bible/miles-van-pelt
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