The Gospel of Jesus Christ began as a tiny spark on the slopes of Galilee nearly two thousand years ago, but quickly crossed all geographical barriers to become the world’s best-known Good News in human history. A brief description of how the Gospel was spread will not only empower us to be a part of its spread, but will also help us see that the Gospel is driven by divine power.

The spread of the Gospel began with the Great Commission that Jesus Christ gave His disciples before His ascension back to His Father’s side in heaven: “Go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you”. (Matthew 28:19, 20, WEB) Since the spread of the Gospel was a great responsibility that the disciples had to fulfill, it required the power of the Holy Spirit. Therefore, Jesus told his body of believers to “wait in the city of Jerusalem until you are clothed with power from on high.” (Luke 24:49) With this power, they would be witnesses for Christ in “Jerusalem, and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth.” (Acts 1:8)

The spread of the gospel in Jerusalem

Following the instructions of their Master, the disciples waited in Jerusalem for the gift of the Holy Spirit. When the day of Pentecost came, “they were all with one accord in one place. Suddenly there came from heaven a sound like a mighty rushing wind, and it filled the whole house where they were sitting. Tongues like fire appeared and were distributed among them , and one sat on each of them. They were all filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak in other languages,” so that non-Hebrew-speaking Jews from various parts of the Roman Empire could understand them in their own languages ​​(Acts 2: 1-4).

The disciples, empowered by the Spirit, immediately began working to fulfill the Great Commission. The apostle Peter was the first to add new members to the church of Christ; The Holy Spirit empowered this uneducated fisherman to give an impromptu preaching so powerful and convincing that he converted 3,000 people to Christianity on the same day (Acts 2:41).

In Jerusalem, new believers were constantly being added to Christ’s church, as Yahweh God enabled the apostles to perform many miracles, including the instantaneous healing of a man crippled from birth (Acts 3). The growth experienced by the church was so rapid that the Bible soon used “multiply” to describe the growth: “the number of the disciples multiplied.” (Acts 6:1)

The spread of the gospel to Samaria

A great persecution soon arose against the body of Christ, and consequently the believers were scattered “abroad throughout the regions of Judea and Samaria, except the apostles.” (Acts 8:1) Those who left Jerusalem took the Good News of Christ with them, spreading the Gospel outside their circle to Samaria for the first time. One such believer who spread the Gospel to Samaria was Philip, a deacon who was assigned to serve widows’ tables (Acts 6:5).

In Samaria, Philip healed the paralyzed and lame, and cast out demons from the demon-possessed, while proclaiming Christ to the Samaritans, whom the Samaritans joyfully accepted (Acts 8:5-8). When the apostles in Jerusalem “heard that Samaria had received the word of God, they sent Peter and John to them, who, when they went down, prayed for them that they would receive the Holy Spirit.” (Acts 8:14-15)

While Philip was still ministering in Samaria, an angel of God told him, “Get up and go south along the road that goes down from Jerusalem to Gaza.” (Acts 8:26) God had a greater mission for Philip: to minister to an individual, an Ethiopian eunuch, the secretary of the treasury of the queen of the Ethiopians (Acts 8:27). Without hesitating, Philip obeyed and on his way he met the eunuch, who was returning home in his chariot from Jerusalem, where he was going to worship. Commanded by the Holy Spirit, Felipe ran to the car, and once he heard the Ethiopian official reading aloud from the book of Isaiah, he asked him: “Do you understand what you are reading?” (Acts 8:30.) The official admitted that he needed help understanding the Scriptures and asked Philip to “come up and sit with him.” (Acts 8:31) Sitting next to the Ethiopian in his chariot, Philip promptly preached about Jesus Christ, beginning with the passage the man was reading: Isaiah 53:7-8:

“He was led like a sheep to the slaughter.

As a lamb before its shearer is silent,

so that he does not open his mouth.

In his humiliation, his judgment was taken away.

Who will declare his generation?

Because his life is taken from the earth.”

As they were traveling, they came across some water, and the officer said, “Behold, here is water. What prevents me from being baptized?” (Acts 8:36) Once the man’s new faith in Christ was confirmed, Philip baptized him in water. At the completion of Philip’s ministry to the officer, the “Spirit of the Lord took Philip away, and the eunuch saw him no more, for he went his joyful way.” (Acts 8:39)

The Extension of the Gospel to the “Last Places on Earth”

After the expansion of Christianity through Jerusalem, Judea and Samaria, the Good News of universal salvation of Jesus had to spread; no geographical barrier, neither imagined nor real, could stop him. The spread of the Gospel to the Gentiles had a modest beginning, but it grew rapidly as a small amount was left in a lump of dough. Cross-cultural ministry officially began with the Apostle Peter.

As a Jew, Peter was initially hesitant to preach the Gospel of Christ to non-Jews, since the Jews at the time viewed Gentiles as impure (ritually polluting). However, after a vision of Christ, Peter accepted his mission among the Gentiles. Immediately after the vision, three men were asking for Peter, and by the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, Peter went to meet them. The men explained to Peter: “Cornelius, a centurion, a just and God-fearing man, of good repute among the entire nation of the Jews, was instructed by a holy angel to invite you into his house and listen to what you say.” (Acts 10:22)

Once he arrived at Cornelius’ house, Peter introduced Jesus as the Savior of the world. As he spoke, the Holy Spirit descended on the Gentiles and, as a result, they spoke in tongues, astonishing all the witnesses (Acts 10:44-46). Then Peter had them baptized in water (Acts 10:48).

The spread of the Gospel to the Gentiles continued after Peter’s first cross-cultural ministry. Some of the persecuted preached the Word in faraway places, such as Phoenicia, Cyprus, and Antioch, where the term “Christian” was first used to describe a follower of Christ (Acts 11:19, 21, 26).

Cross-cultural ministry flourished under Paul of Tarsus. On the day of his miraculous conversion from a devout Pharisee who vehemently persecuted Christians to a devoted apostle who would become a pioneer in church planting, the Master told him, “Rise up and stand tall, for I have appeared to you to this: make yourself a servant and a witness both to the things that you have seen and to those that I will reveal to you, freeing you from the people and from the Gentiles, to whom I am sending you, to open their eyes, so that they may turn from darkness to light, and from the power of Satan to God, that they may receive remission of sins and an inheritance among those who are sanctified through faith in me” (Acts 26:16-18).

Paul “was not disobedient to the heavenly vision.” (Acts 26:19) In his three Spirit-led missionary journeys throughout the Roman Empire, Paul won lives for Christ from many Gentile worlds, including Malta, Cyprus, Iconium, Lystra, Derbe, Philippi, Thessalonica, Berea, Athens, Corinth, Ephesus, Crete, and Rome, where his ministry ended due to execution and where the Bible’s book of Acts is closed to open the door for further spread of the Gospel.

The spread of the gospel after the book of Acts

After the close of Acts, the Gospel continued to spread despite great persecution. In the 2nd century, it spread to almost the entire Roman Empire, and in the 4th century, the persecution ceased and Christianity became the empire’s dominant religion after the Roman Emperor Constantine converted to Christianity and issued an edict of tolerance in 313. Then, through missionary work and colonization, Christianity spread throughout the Western world in the Middle Ages and Renaissance.

In the 15th and 16th centuries, thousands of Christians spoke out against the Roman Catholic Church for deviating from Biblical doctrines, for moral corruption, and for abuse of power. Some of these reformers began to make the Bible accessible to common people by translating it into languages ​​other than Latin, to which the sacred text was then limited. During such a reformation, many reformers were persecuted and executed, including William Tyndale, who was burned at the stake in 1536 for smuggling copies of his English translation of the Bible into England after illegally printing them in Germany. His efforts and sacrifices enabled many laymen to personally read and study the Bible on their own for the first time. The reformation was aided by the invention of the printing press by Johannes Gutenberg, which allowed for the mass production of the Bible.

In the 18th century, Christians sailed to the New World in search of religious freedom, bringing the Gospel with them to America. From that time on until the 1900s, various revivalists rose up to radically evangelize the world; among them was William Booth, who founded the Salvation Army and established “Armies” in fifty-eight countries; James Hudson Taylor, the first missionary to the Chinese interior who converted tens of thousands of Chinese to Christianity; and John Wesley, the founder of the Methodist church that spread the Gospel throughout the United Kingdom.

Today, despite centuries of mass persecution, Bible burning, and clerical abuse of power, the Gospel continues to spread and penetrate geographic borders, fueled by technological advances. And when the “Good News of the Kingdom [is] preached in the whole world for a witness to all nations… the end will come.” (Matthew 24:14) Amen!