Acts 11:16

Acts 11:16. Then remembered I the word of the Lord. There is great interest in observing how St. Peter describes what had been the process of his own mind at that critical moment. The interest, too, must have been extreme to some of those who were listening to him. His brother apostles, too, had heard the same words, spoken by Jesus, to which he here refers. The exact words are given in Acts 1:5, where the last interview of Christ with His apostles before the Ascension is described. This is to be connected, too, with the sayings of St. John the Baptist (Luke 3:16); and perhaps our Lord had on other occasions Himself used the same language to His disciples. On the whole, we have in this part of St. Peter's address a link of great value between the history of the Gospel time and the history of the founding of the Church. The words of Christ, however, now came, as Hackett says, into Peter's mind ‘with a new sense of their meaning and application.'