now that God is not one to show partiality, but in every nation the man who fears Him and does what is right is welcome to Him,” (emphasis mine). An amazing statement. But, do we in today’s culture gasp the gravity of Peter’s mind being opened? Later in his sermon Peter gives the Gentiles he’s preaching to a parenthetical statement that Christ is Lord of all. This is the key to the entire Bible. Jesus is Lord of all. He is Lord of the Hindu, the Muslim, the atheist, the Catholic, the Jew, the Sikh, the black, the white, the brown. Withholding the gospel from anyone is an injustice that cannot be measured but by eternity. Maybe we have the idea that it’s useless to witness to a radical Muslim or an angry urban youth or an old Buddhist. Maybe Peter might have felt that a gentile Roman centurion and his friends were not a receptive audience. But, Peter was obedient to God’s “order” to preach the gospel to anyone. Do we have those same orders from God? If you believe the words of the Bible, then you must come away from Matthew and Acts knowing that we have been “ordered … to preach to the people, and solemnly to testify that this is the One who has been appointed by God as Judge of the living and the dead.” The injustice we commit is standing on a river bank holding a rope in a coil in our hand as we watch someone swept downriver heading to the waterfall. We must throw the rope to the person heading to certain and eternal peril regardless of whether we think they will catch it or refuse it or ignore it. In this time of tensions between races, nations, and ideologies, we must never forget that we carry with us that which we’ve been commanded by God to share. It is an injustice that should cause revulsion if we don’t.]]>