 the Gospel of Luke and what we call the Book of Acts. How do they relate to each other? What do you think Luke is trying to do in each of them? How might we see either a fulfillment in Acts of what is foretold in Luke? What's going on there? And perhaps maybe you could comment about timing of those. Almost all scholars now believe that the same person is responsible for both books, even those who think that Acts consists of a combination of different sources, which somebody has pulled together. They'll still say basically it's one of which incidentally is quite a sizable proportion of the New Testament from that one pen. It's very interesting because in Luke's Gospel there are various things which are promised but which in the Gospel story, we don't see. For instance, the disciples being equipped with the Holy Spirit's power. And we've been promised that ever since John the Baptist. John the Baptist said that the coming one will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and with fire. That doesn't happen until Acts 2, the day of Pentecost. But once that's happened, if we've read Luke's Gospel we ought to know why it's happened, namely that they are to be the witnesses to all that Jesus did and then specifically his death and resurrection and all that that's going to mean in the Gentile world. So that Acts then begins the fulfillment of the veiled hints which occur in the Gospel about many will come from east and west and sit down with Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. Well, this is what it looks like. Some surprise people in Antioch or in Corinth or wherever it is. They'd never thought of anything like this but actually this is all rooted in the work of Jesus himself which is why at the beginning of Acts Luke says, Theophilus the former treatise I made about all that Jesus began to do and teach. And so there's a sense that Acts is telling you what Jesus is continuing to do and to teach. And indeed the presence of the risen and ascended Jesus is really important in Acts because the ascension doesn't mean he's gone away and left us to our own devices. I once heard a preacher say that and I thought, no, please that's entirely wrong. Jesus is the Lord who is present to and with his people and gives his people his spirit to do in and for the world the close up and personal ministry that he'd been doing among the Jewish people in Galilee and Jerusalem. And so there is a wonderful sense of to and fro and of fulfillment. And then particularly the gospel is stressing that the people who are involved in this story are in the right. They're upright people. They're not mavericks. They're not stupid. Zechariah and Elizabeth are holy and upright people and they are the start of the story. Joseph of Arimathea who provides Jesus burial. He is a devout and righteous man. These are not little fly by night characters who you might say don't wanna have anything to do with them. Thank you very much. And throughout the gospel story, it's as though Luke is saying what the second century apologists ended up saying if we tell this story you will see that we are not the kind of social subversives that you think we are. Of course they were socially subversive because they were living in a radically new way, but they weren't kind of again the government in the way that say the Jewish so-called zealot movements would have been determined to use violence to achieve national liberation. And then in the book of Acts, this is transferred particularly in the second half of Acts to Paul. And that's why I think that Acts may well have been written as a document for use in Paul's upcoming trial before Caesar because those last scenes in Acts are all about people saying actually Paul hasn't done anything wrong. Actually he's not guilty of any crime. Actually he could have been set free if he hadn't appealed to Caesar. And then the great scene of the shipwreck has Paul like Jonah apparently being submerged and lost and what's going on. But then he is rescued and vindicated and arrives in Rome safe and well able to announce God as king and Jesus as Lord openly and unhindered. And so the two really go together and in a very artistic and literary fashion with all sorts of resonances in the culture of the ancient world. But they flow the one into the other so that there is quite a difference of course. These are different moments in the story but clearly it's the same story all the way through.