05 - Peter Breaks the Barrier

Gaius Caligula was killed by a Roman aristocrat, and no one mourned his passing. Bleeding from a hundred wounds, the corpse of Jupiter’s brother lay in the gutter like the carcass of a mad dog. Petronius was fortunate enough that the news of Caligula’s death reached Palestine before the command to commit suicide because of his failure to carry out the royal decree concerning the image and the Jewish Temple.

Caligula’s successor, the timid Claudius, assumed the purple with the direct assistance of the Jewish King Agrippa, who’d been able to carry on an active campaign among the senators and army leaders in favor of his friend through his extensive connections in Rome. Because of these services from his boyhood friend, Claudius treated Agrippa as one of his most trusted councilors. He not only made Agrippa’s title of King formal, but also enlarged his territory and returned all the provinces to him that had belonged to his grandfather, Herod.

Claudius went further. He extended his graciousness to Agrippa’s people, openly declaring himself a friend of the Jews. He restored the privileges of the Alexandrian community and heavily punished those who were responsible for the pogroms there. He reaffirmed all the rights granted the Jews by Julius and Augustus, proclaimed full tolerance for the Jewish faith, and instructed the governors of the various provinces to protect the synagogues against any attempted intrusions.

The effect of all this was a resurgence of the old envies among the Greek peoples of the empire. Louder than ever, many Greeks cried that in refusing to worship the local gods, the Jews were showing that they were aliens. Many of the more pious Gentiles, however, regarded the restoration of Jewish rights as a reward for their devotion to their God. They admired the extraordinary steadfastness of their faith in the days of persecution. The hideous death of the Caesar-god was hailed as a miracle.

So side-by-side with renewed hostility there was a wave of admiration and wonder. Jewish synagogues were now being attended by ever-larger numbers of Gentiles who were attracted by the mysterious bond between this heroic people and its God.


The first person to carry the gospel abroad, and to preach salvation to the Gentiles, was Philip, the head of the Cilician Synagogue. He first went to Samaria, fleeing Saul’s persecution, and when word got back to Jerusalem of the many souls won for Jesus among the Samaritans, the leaders had no objections. On the contrary, they rejoiced that their lost brothers in the faith were returning to the fold of Israel. They argued that, in accepting Messiah, the Samaritans were, by implication, accepting the prophets. They saw the finger of God in this, and the beginning of the unification of all Israel. Simon and John went up to Samaria to lay their hands on the converts and to bring them under the wings of the Holy Spirit.

When Simon saw the power of the spirit in Samaria, and the joy that the converts experienced at the common meals, he decided to branch out into other nearby towns. Some of them were entirely Jewish and others were of mixed population. He went down to the city of Lydda, a completely Jewish town, nestled in the green fields of the Sharon valley. From there he went to the harbor town of Joppa, which had a mixed population of Jews and Greeks and was not far from Caesarea. Simon stayed there with a tanner who was also named Simon. The tanner had been the first person in Joppa to join the new faith, and by the time Simon arrived, there was already a small community of believers, all Jews. Simon spent some time there strengthening their spirit.

The Greeks of both Joppa and Caesarea had been profoundly impressed by the unforgettable demonstration of Jewish faith that had occurred in nearby Akko. In both towns the rumor of a risen Messiah, and of the hopes associated with him, had also become widespread among the non-Jews. A spirit of unrest and awe came on the Gentiles, not only among the townspeople, but among the members of the Roman garrison as well.

One of the latter, a centurion by the name of Cornelius, became a pious, god-fearing Gentile. He did much for the Jews of his city, and they mentioned his name with respect and affection. Simon learned that the Gentiles of both cities greatly desired to enter the congregation of believers, but he also knew that they had a problem with circumcision and the laws of kosher food.

No right-thinking Jew, of course, could sit with Gentiles at the same table or even live under the same roof with them. By law, if a Gentile so much as touched any food, it became unclean and could not be eaten by Jews. On the other hand, the common meals were the most powerful instrument of Simon’s faith. It was at the breaking of bread that he told of the life, death and resurrection of Messiah and that the Holy Spirit came on the believers and they spoke in tongues. So how could Gentiles experience all this if Simon couldn’t even sit at table with them?


One day Simon sat with Simon the tanner, looking out over the waters of the Great Sea. It was toward the evening in summer. Far off, in the faint mist that lay on the sleeping waters, he saw the masts and the different colored sails of ships from different provinces anchored in the harbor of Joppa. Compared to the tiny Sea of Galilee, this was quite a sight. He thought of how these waters led to so many distant places with so many people who’d never heard the name of God and knew nothing about Messiah. They worshipped idols, or were deceived by stargazers and soothsayers. He himself had recently encountered a man known as Simon the Magician, who had offered to purchase the right to distribute the Holy Spirit. This Simon went about with a certain whore by the name of Helena, and he told the poor, credulous Samaritans that she was the mother of all living, even the gods. It stood to reason that all the other cities also had their deceivers and women idols. All these were waiting to be delivered from the bonds of falsehood by the word of the true Messiah.

Simon suddenly remembered the words of the lord when he told them that they should be witnesses for him in Jerusalem, Judea, Samaria, AND to the ends of the world.

“Could it be,” Simon thought, “that God desires salvation for everyone?”

Aloud he said, “What can I do if the Holy Spirit descends on us only when we sit together and eat the lord’s body and drink the lord’s blood? The Rabbis have forbidden us to sat at table with unclean Gentiles who eat all sorts of unclean things.”

“The Rabbis also forbid eating together with ignorant Jews who don’t observe the law,” answered Simon the tanner. “Yet here you sit with me, a tanner who is so befouled by my trade that my wife has the right to divorce me if I hadn’t told her what trade I followed before we were married. You sit here with me and break bread with me and eat from the same bowl.”

“Well, the lord also sat at table with simple and ignorant people,” answered Simon. “And not just them, but tax collectors and even women of sin, if they repented. There wasn’t a soul in Israel fallen so low that my Rabbi would not sit at table with him. In fact, the lower the man had fallen, the dearer he was to my lord. He never avoided the company of sinners and tax collectors.

“But I never saw him sit at table with Gentiles, or eat anything unclean.”

“Tell me, rabbi,” said his host. “Has not God created the heavens and earth and all that is between them? Can anything God created be unclean? I’m a simple man and unskilled in the scriptures, but I ask myself, Who is the man who can make unclean what God created?”

Simon was confused by the straightforward question. He’d never thought of it like that before. As a Jew, he’d always taken it for granted that there were foods that were allowed and foods that were not allowed. It was in the order of nature.


Simon continued to wrestle with these thoughts. He tried to imagine how the lord would act if he saw all these Gentiles longing for admission to the Kingdom of Heaven and not allowed in because of the law. He thought of the lord Messiah going in to the son of the centurion of Capernaum to bring him out of his sleep of death. He thought of how the lord Messiah had dealt with tax collectors, fallen women, and Canaanites. And he finally decided that the lord would remove the barrier. He’d open wide the gates of the Kingdom to the Gentiles.

But as usual in these situations, Simon did nothing without some sign. For now he would just wait. But while he waited, he won no new souls for the holy congregation. He spent most of his time walking back and forth on the seashore, watching the fishermen cast their nets into the deeps.

One day while doing this, he came on a group of fishermen and looked at the contents of the great net they were hauling in. There were a large variety of creatures in the net, things that swam and things that crawled, the like of which he’d never seen before in all his fisherman’s life. He didn’t even know that the sea was full of so many different creatures. As the net flattened out on the sands he saw fish that were shaped like stars, while others were as black as the darkest night. Some had blown-up bellies and fat oozed out of them. There were also creatures in the form of miniature flying horses and others with huge, overlapping scales, bearded and bewhiskered fish, and fish with sail-like fins. And there were insects like gigantic spiders, with prehensile claws that made him think of tormenting demons in the nether world. There were creatures that in no way resembled living things. They were like dumb, dead growths, covered with gluey feathers. There were creatures the size of a man’s finger, with transparent skins through which could be seen the repulsive workings of their vitals. And there were others that called to mind petrified plants, but the moment they were touched they opened enormous jaws. And this entire hideous conglomeration squirmed and rolled in a slimy thickness.

The men and women of Joppa came out to the shore and bought everything from the fisherman. They split the oysters and the other sea-creatures between two rocks, and brought them to their lips, so that the living ooze ran down their chins. Simon was filled with a retching disgust, and in his heart he gave thanks to God for having made him a Jew and separating him from other people.

He slipped back into his room in the upper chamber of Simon the tanner’s house.


When the time of the afternoon Shema came, Peter lay down on the floor with his face in his hands and prayed long and hard. He prayed for clarity of spirit and illumination of heart. In the midst of his intense supplication, he became aware of the presence of the Holy Spirit. Heaven opened and light poured down. A great table descended from above, and on its radiant cover stood an enormous dish containing four-footed creatures and birds and sea beasts, some of which he knew and many of which he did not know. Crawling things were there, too, like he had seen in the fishermen’s net.

Then he heard a voice, “Rise, Simon! Kill and eat.”

Terror held Simon’s heart like a vise. Was this a dream, or a vision? Was it the Evil One tempting him, or was this a sign from the Lord? He called out, “No, I’ve never eaten anything unholy or impure!”

Then the voice rang out sternly, “What God has made clean, do not make unclean!”

Desperately he repeated, “I’ve never eaten anything unholy or impure!”

And again the voice rang, more sternly, “Arise Simon, and eat! What God has made pure, do not make impure!”

When this happened a third time, Simon was convinced it was a sign from heaven! He stretched out his hand to the now pure food. But as he did so everything vanished.

He continued to lay with his face to the floor for a long time.

Then, when he came down from the upper chamber, he was told that certain men had come, asking after him. They were messengers from the Gentile city of Caesarea. Their message was, “Cornelius the centurion, a just and god-fearing man, whose name is held in esteem by the Jews, was visited by an angel of the Lord, and told to send for you. You are to come to his house so that he may hear your words.”

This was the final proof for Simon.


Simon took some men from Joppa and went up to Caesarea with the messengers. He came into the house of the Gentile Cornelius and told him that God regarded no people as His favorite, but accepted all who feared him and walked in the paths of righteousness.

The Gentiles assembled in the house were filled with joy. Together with the Jews they sat at table and experienced the visitation of the Holy Spirit, and to the amazement of the Jews they spoke, then and there, in tongues.

Seeing this, Simon called out, “Can any man forbid these people from being baptized with water?”

And he directed that the men should be baptized in the name of the lord, even though they hadn’t entered into the covenant of Abraham.

And this was the first time that Gentiles were admitted to share in Messiah without first passing into the Abrahamic covenant.