Yet it seems that the Christian widows were not cared for by the Jewish leaders probably because they didn’t like the fact that the apostles kept preaching Jesus when they were told to stop.ĭ.
The care of widows and orphans was an important part of Jewish life, and normally the temple authorities organized the distribution to the needy. There is the hint here of a growing division between the religious leaders and the early followers of Jesus. The daily distribution: The early church took its responsibility to help support widows seriously because they often had no other support but they also expected these widows to serve the church faithfully (1 Timothy 5:3-16). They were all from a Jewish background, but they had all embraced Jesus as their Messiah.Ĭ. It’s important to remember that though the titles Hebrews and Hellenists are used, these were Christians, followers of Jesus. There was already a natural suspicion between the two groups, and Satan tried to take advantage of that standing suspicion. To oversimplify, Hebrews tended to regard Hellenists as unspiritual compromisers with Greek culture, and Hellenists regarded Hebrews as holier-than-thou traditionalists. The Hellenists were those Jews more inclined to embrace Greek culture and mostly were from the Diaspora (from all over the Roman Empire). Against the Hebrews by the Hellenists: The Hebrews were those Jews more inclined to embrace Jewish culture and were mostly from Judea.
All these indicate at least some level of organization.ī. Money and goods were collected and distributed to those in need. They knew how many were saved they met together at specific places and specific times. The mention of growth again reminds us that the early church was organized. When the number of disciples was multiplying indicates that the work of God’s kingdom through the early Christian community was still highly successful, and they dealt with the problems well. How they dealt with those things made all the difference. They now had to deal with internal corruption, and now disputes and potential divisions. We can say that with Acts 5 and 6, the good old days were over for the earliest Christians. Now Satan hoped to “divide and conquer” by raising one group of Christians against another. These strategies were all unsuccessful in stopping or slowing the work of the church. He attempted many forms of direct opposition and intimidation, and he tried to corrupt the church from within.
There arose a complaint against the Hebrews by the Hellenists: To this point in the Book of Acts, Satan’s attacks on the church came on many different fronts. Now in those days, when the number of the disciples was multiplying, there arose a complaint against the Hebrews by the Hellenists, because their widows were neglected in the daily distribution.Ī. (1) A dispute about the distribution of assistance to widows. In order to make a club or widow line disappear, you can use solutions such as rewording or reordering, changing fonts or margins, or commands like \enlargethispageįollowing up Nico's comment, this solution works with XeLaTeX and LuaLaTex only, and you need to have fontspec loaded.A.