Acts 11:19-24

THE GENTILE GOSPEL PREACHED IN PHOENICIA, CILICIA AND SYRIA BEFORE PETER PREACHED IT AT THE HOUSE OF CORNELIUS

19-24. While the above is true, yet it was necessary for Peter, responsive to his heavenly vision and the call of the Holy Ghost, to go to Caesarea and there, in the home of a prominent Roman officer, to actually unfurl the banner and throw wide open the door of free gospel grace to the Roman Empire, then embracing the known world, and represented by Cornelius, thus positively and finally ignoring the restrictions of Jewish exclusiveness as well as the circuitous route of Israelitish proselytism, thus authenticating, in the very action of the same senior apostle, who had inaugurated the Pentecostal dispensation to the Jews, also the equal rights and privileges of the Gentiles. However, we see that these Cyprian and Cyrenean men had, some years previously, been preaching the gospel to the Greeks, i. e., the Gentiles in these north countries.