Acts 8:4

Acts 8:4. Therefore they that were scattered abroad went everywhere preaching the word. The immediate result of this bitter persecution was the fulfilment of the first part of the Saviour's words: ‘Ye shall be witnesses unto Me both in Jerusalem and in all Judea and in Samaria.' Tertullian's famous saying, ‘The blood of the martyrs is the seed of Christians,' is first exemplified in the conduct of these earliest missionaries, in the days that followed the death of Stephen. Persecution and trouble only served to make them more earnest in their Master's cause. Wherever they went, they proclaimed the faith, and the joyful tidings concerning the Redeemer and His work. Some of the ‘dispersed ‘carried the message as far as Phenice, and Cyprus, and Antioch (Acts 11:19). Some probably travelled even to Rome and Italy, for Romans 16:7 makes mention of Andronicus and Junia, who were also in Christ before Paul's own conversion.

As a specimen of the work done by these persecuted banished ones, the writer of the ‘Acts' gives us in detail, an account of the proceedings of one of the more distinguished of them, Philip the deacon, known as the evangelist.