Acts 1:8 - Explained
"But ye shall receive power, after that the Holy Ghost is come upon you: and ye shall be witnesses unto me both in Jerusalem, and in all Judaea, and in Samaria, and unto the uttermost part of the earth."
These are basically the last words spoken by Jesus before he went up to heaven, after his resurrection and having been on earth for 40 days. He is giving instruction on soul-winning, but he is not only trying to motivate them to go soul-winning — he is giving them a logical understanding of what the progression should be.
The Bible uses the word both here when it says both in Jerusalem, and then lists four different places: Jerusalem, all Judea, Samaria, and unto the uttermost part of the earth. You might wonder why the Bible says both when there are four places listed. In the Bible when you see the word both it is referring to two. The reason it uses both rather than all is because it is saying both in Jerusalem and in all Judea, both in Jerusalem and in Samaria, both in Jerusalem and unto the uttermost part of the earth. The idea is that they are stationed at Jerusalem, and as they have a plan to reach the world with the gospel, they can never forsake their local area. It is great to expand to new areas, but you cannot make the decision to stop soul-winning in your local area and just focus on other places. You must always be starting at your local base and expanding out from there.
In our modern day we have social media, planes, missions trips, and online ministries. Those are great supplements to what Jesus is saying in Acts 1:8, but they are not a fulfilment of reaching the world with the gospel. For 2,000 years after this was spoken, we had basically none of those things. What he is essentially stating is that you get churches started in Jerusalem, in all Judea, in Samaria, and unto the uttermost part of the earth.
What you will see in the book of Acts is that they were not actually fulfilling this at first. As a result of persecution — specifically from Saul before he became Paul the Apostle — it caused them to spread out to other areas, and you start seeing churches being started in all of Judea and in Samaria. It is no longer just a church at Jerusalem but is spreading everywhere.
What the Bible is showing you is that every single church should have a goal to actually duplicate itself. If you became the biggest church in the world but never started another church, that would actually be a failure. We should not be just trying to build our local base — as we make our local base strong, we should be striving to get churches started in new locations. If great churches continued to start a lot of great churches, we would actually be able to fulfil Acts 1:8. Every church needs to come back to the focus of not just going soul-winning but also having a goal to get churches started through all Judea — the local areas — and then to the uttermost part of the earth.
Pastor Matthew Stucky
