NOTES for Act 10:43

This phrase has to be examined word by word. "All the prophets": what matters here is "all," not "each one." Not every prophet spoke about the Messiah, not every prophet spoke about forgiveness of sins... But together they all reveal to people God's plan of salvation through Christ's redeeming sacrifice for the forgiveness of our sins.

"Bear witness": we are used to thinking that prophets anticipate the future, while testimony is a story about something that has already happened. But prophecy differs from a forecast precisely because in it a person tells about a fact that has been revealed to him, regardless of what time that fact belongs to, past, present, or future. Thus a prophet is a witness to a fact.

"Will receive... through His name." Let us picture this: we have received by mail an invitation, an admission pass to a coming distribution of certain definite gifts. After reading the invitation, we can say, "I do not need these gifts," or "I do not believe they will be giving them out there," or "I do not have time," or "How tastelessly it is designed," or "Will I really receive something because of this little piece of paper?" - AND NOT GO! In order to go, we need to take seriously this invitation and the thing to which we are being invited. God invites us to enter His life through the forgiveness of our sins; the living invitation, the living letter to us, is God's Son, His name, given to us as a pass to God. We simply need to trust and receive this name as a treasure, as a pledge of eternal life, and then come to God and present this pass.