IT WAS ABOUT this time that King Herod arrested some who belonged to the church, intending to persecute them. 2He had James, the brother of John, put to death with the sword. 3When he saw that this pleased the Jews, he proceeded to seize Peter also. This happened during the Feast of Unleavened Bread. 4After arresting him, he put him in prison, handing him over to be guarded by four squads of four soldiers each. Herod intended to bring him out for public trial after the Passover.
5So Peter was kept in prison, but the church was earnestly praying to God for him.
6The night before Herod was to bring him to trial, Peter was sleeping between two soldiers, bound with two chains, and sentries stood guard at the entrance. 7Suddenly an angel of the Lord appeared and a light shone in the cell. He struck Peter on the side and woke him up. “Quick, get up!” he said, and the chains fell off Peter’s wrists.
8Then the angel said to him, “Put on your clothes and sandals.” And Peter did so. “Wrap your cloak around you and follow me,” the angel told him. 9Peter followed him out of the prison, but he had no idea that what the angel was doing was really happening; he thought he was seeing a vision. 10They passed the first and second guards and came to the iron gate leading to the city. It opened for them by itself, and they went through it. When they had walked the length of one street, suddenly the angel left him.
11Then Peter came to himself and said, “Now I know without a doubt that the Lord sent his angel and rescued me from Herod’s clutches and from everything the Jewish people were anticipating.”
12When this had dawned on him, he went to the house of Mary the mother of John, also called Mark, where many people had gathered and were praying. 13Peter knocked at the outer entrance, and a servant girl named Rhoda came to answer the door. 14When she recognized Peter’s voice, she was so overjoyed she ran back without opening it and exclaimed, “Peter is at the door!”
15“You’re out of your mind,” they told her. When she kept insisting that it was so, they said, “It must be his angel.”
16But Peter kept on knocking, and when they opened the door and saw him, they were astonished. 17Peter motioned with his hand for them to be quiet and described how the Lord had brought him out of prison. “Tell James and the brothers about this,” he said, and then he left for another place.
18In the morning, there was no small commotion among the soldiers as to what had become of Peter. 19After Herod had a thorough search made for him and did not find him, he cross-examined the guards and ordered that they be executed.
Then Herod went from Judea to Caesarea and stayed there a while. 20He had been quarreling with the people of Tyre and Sidon; they now joined together and sought an audience with him. Having secured the support of Blastus, a trusted personal servant of the king, they asked for peace, because they depended on the king’s country for their food supply.
21On the appointed day Herod, wearing his royal robes, sat on his throne and delivered a public address to the people. 22They shouted, “This is the voice of a god, not of a man.” 23Immediately, because Herod did not give praise to God, an angel of the Lord struck him down, and he was eaten by worms and died.
24But the word of God continued to increase and spread.
Original Meaning
IN THE SEQUENCE that Luke is following in the unfolding drama of Acts, Gentile Christianity is gradually beginning to take center stage. In the middle of this growing emphasis is an insertion, as it were, that indicates that God is still active in the Jewish church. Acts 12 gives us a realistic picture typical of what seem to be tragedies and triumphs in the early church.
Herod, James, and Peter (12:1–19)
THIS TIME THE source of persecution is King Herod (Agrippa I), who makes James the first of the apostles to be martyred (vv. 1–2). This Herod was more popular with the Jews than the other Herods, possibly partly because his grandmother was a Hasmonean.1 He is said to have “set himself sedulously to win and retain their goodwill.”2 When he realized that the Jews were pleased with the killing of James, he also had Peter imprisoned (v. 3a). This incident indicates how much the relationship between Jews and Christians in Judea had deteriorated from the earlier situation of “enjoying the favor of all the people” (2:47). We do not know whether the general public was in favor of the earlier persecutions. But this time, as the use of the general term Jews suggests, approval for James’s death was widespread.
There is much irony in this chapter. According to Luke, the imprisonment of Peter took place “during the Feast of Unleavened Bread,” that is, the Passover (v. 3b). At the time when the Jews were celebrating the deliverance of their nation through God’s intervention, a herald of God’s climactic act of deliverance was taken into custody to please the Jews. While they should have been celebrating a great salvation, they were hoping to inflict a great punishment on the representative of the Savior (v. 11).
To the gloomy picture of Peter in prison Luke adds the hopeful note of the church earnestly in prayer for him (v. 5). The word translated “earnestly” (ektenos) literally means “stretched out” and could thus mean continuous, in which case it carries a similar idea as it does in 1:14, which gave us the idea of prevailing prayer. But the idea of continuous or repeated prayer is already carried by the use of the imperfect tense for the verb “praying.”3 Luke’s use of ektenos here, therefore, seems more like his use of this word in Luke 22:44, where it refers to Jesus’ earnest prayer in the garden (see also Acts 26:7). This idea of earnestness (see NIV) comes from the idea of hands stretched out to God in fervent supplication. It gives the impression of wholehearted, urgent pleading to God. While Peter was fast asleep in prison in the middle of the night (the angel had to wake him—v. 7), the church was engaged in vigilant prayer for him.
The second instance of irony is the unbelief of Peter and the praying church that their prayers had been answered (vv. 9–11, 15). And this came after God had similarly released Peter from imprisonment on an earlier occasion—that time too through an angel at night (5:19–20). In fact, when the servant girl Rhoda was overjoyed over the answer to the prayers of the believers, they pronounced her out of her mind (vv. 14–15).
The statement “it must be his angel” (v. 15) reflects the Jewish belief in protecting and guiding angels, who “were sometimes thought to resemble the human beings they protected.”4 Thus the believers thought that Rhoda mistook Peter’s guardian angel for Peter. The irony continues as Peter went on knocking while the believers argued among themselves (v. 16a). While the big iron gate of the prison opened with no effort to let Peter out (v. 10), he was unable to get past the gate of his own friend’s home.
Though we do not know from whom Luke got these details, the record of Peter’s anxious gesture of motioning with his hand for them to be quiet (v. 17) indicates “the authentic touch of an eyewitness.”5 Peter probably then went “underground so successfully that no one to this day has discovered for certain where he went.”6 Peter wanted James to be informed about what had happened, which suggests that he had already become an important leader in the church (cf. also Gal. 2:1–10). Because James was known to hold strongly to Jewish ways, he would not be in as much danger from the Jews as Peter was.
A third instance of irony is Herod’s response to Peter’s escape, which deflated his ego. He restored his image by having the guards executed (v. 19a). This extreme reaction is typical of people who seek popularity but are unexpectedly humiliated. Luke then says that Herod went to Caesarea (v. 19b). He begins verse 19b with the word “and” (kai), which means it is part of the same sentence about the executions of the guards. This suggests Herod may have left Jerusalem because of frustration over Peter’s escape.7
Herod’s Death (12:20–24)
HEROD’S DEFLATED EGO received a big boost at his conference with the desperate delegates from Tyre and Sidon, who, deprived of their food supply, resort to flattery to win him over (vv. 20–22). The account of this incident by Josephus supplements the sketchy account given here.8
• According to Luke, Herod was “wearing his royal robes” (v. 21); Josephus writes that he wore a garment made wholly of silver, which shone in a surprising manner when the rays of the sun touched it.
• Luke says that Herod’s punishment was because he did not praise God when the flatterers shouted that his was the voice of a god (vv. 22–23). Josephus reports that “the king did neither rebuke them, nor reject their impious flattery.”
• Josephus says that he had violent abdominal pains and died five days later, whereas Luke says, “Immediately . . . an angel of the Lord struck him down, and he was eaten by worms and died” (v. 23). This apparent discrepancy can be explained in that Luke applied the “immediately” to the striking down with sickness (which took place immediately), not to the dying (which took place five days later).9
We are not told the exact cause of the death; Longenecker suggests it may have been through infection by intestinal roundworms.10 There is irony here too, for the man who was glorious on the outside was rotting of worms on the inside.
Immediately after the report of Herod’s death Luke gives a report of the growth of the church he had brutally tried to suppress. The customary summary of growth in verse 24 ends the description in Acts of the Christian mission to the Jewish world.11 The section closes on a positive note. The early popularity of the church has given way to hostility, but that does not hinder the forward march of the gospel. From the next chapter to the end of Acts, the focus will be on Paul and his missionary activity.
Bridging Contexts
RESCUE AND NO physical rescue. Often in applying this passage, we focus on God’s deliverance of Peter in answer to fervent prayer (vv. 5–11) and ignore the nondeliverance of James, which resulted in martyrdom (v. 2). This is how I approached this passage for several years. But the fact that Luke has placed these two events side by side suggests that the two ways in which God’s sovereignty is expressed—physical rescue and no physical rescue—should both be considered when thinking about God’s help in times of trouble. What is common to these situations is that both Peter and James were faithful to Christ. Just as the disciples earnestly prayed for Peter’s release (v. 5), we too have the freedom to pray earnestly for physical deliverance. But we must leave it to God to let his sovereignty over a situation be expressed in the way he regards best. What is most important is that, like James and Peter, we remain faithful and obedient to God regardless of the outcome of a crisis we face.
We know also that those who oppose the work of God will be judged, as Herod was (v. 23). Wicked leaders, like Herod, may look impressively invincible and hurt the church for a time. But, as Mary warned in the Magnificat, the proud will indeed be humbled (Luke 1:52–53). God always has the last word. If this does not seem to be the case, it is because the last word has not yet been said. James was killed here, and Peter was killed some twenty years later. But the word of God continued, and will continue, to spread (Acts 12:24).
The power of earnest prayer. The sequence of verses 5 and 7 has often been repeated in the history of the church. It began with “so,” followed by a gloomy report; then came a hopeful “but” and a report of saints at prayer; and that led to “behold” (idou at the beginning of v. 7; not trans. in NIV), followed by a report of God’s intervention. Just as the words “constantly” or “prevailing” express the duration of powerful praying,12 “earnestly” expresses the mood of powerful praying. It is true that we do not always receive the answers we ask for (cf. the contrast between James’s death and Peter’s release), but the Bible is clear that “the prayer of a righteous man is powerful and effective” (James 5:16).
Here, as in 1:14, community prayer is being described. We will, of course, always submit to God’s will and accede to the fact that we do not always know what that will is. Jesus submitted to the will of God in the garden (Luke 22:42), but that did not prevent him from praying “earnestly” (22:44). Once we realize that prayer does change things, we can be bold to “storm the gates of heaven” with earnest prayer for God’s intervention.
Peter Forsyth, in his classic book, The Soul of Prayer, has argued that there is a sense in which God’s will is changed in answer to our prayers.13 This is what happened after Moses’ intense intercession for Israel, accompanied by a total fast for forty days and nights following the golden calf incident (Deut. 9:18). As a result of this prayer, “the LORD relented and did not bring on his people the disaster he had threatened” (Ex. 32:14; see Amos 7:2–6). Paul believed that through our prayers we can influence the course of history. He indicated this dual divine-human role as he contemplated his release from prison: “For I know that through your prayers and the help given by the Spirit of Jesus Christ, what has happened to me will turn out for my deliverance” (Phil. 1:19). He also saw the prayers of God’s people as a key to the effectiveness of his ministry (2 Cor. 1:11; Eph. 6:19–20).
At the heart of such prayer is an intensity of Spirit that is well expressed by Paul’s willingness to be cursed so that his people, the Jews, might come to Christ (Rom. 9:1–3). This desire gave rise to a prayer for Israel’s salvation (10:1). He also expresses this intensity in his cry to the Galatians, “My dear children, for whom I am again in the pains of childbirth until Christ is formed in you, how I wish I could be with you now and change my tone, because I am perplexed about you!” (Gal. 4:19–20). Through earnest prayer we can influence the course of history, for God powerfully answers such prayers.
The ministry of angels. The English word “angel,” which appears seven times in this passage, comes directly from the Greek word for messenger (angelos).14 Angels have a prominent role in Acts—directing people (8:26; 10:3–6), helping them in times of trouble (5:19–20; 12:7–10; 27:23), and acting as agents of judgment (12:23). Of particular interest is the statement of the Christians who said that the person at the door had to be “his [Peter’s] angel” (v. 15). As noted above, this reflects the Jewish belief in guardian angels. Revelation 1–3 speaks of angels assigned as representatives of churches (see Rev. 1:20). When urging the people not to look down on “little ones,” Jesus said, “their angels in heaven always see the face of my Father” (Matt. 18:10). Jesus may be saying here that there are special angels who represent the little ones in heaven. They will not go unnoticed because “the little ones matter to God.”15
These few references are insufficient to build a full-blown doctrine about guardian angels, especially since the interpretation that Jesus’ statement just mentioned refers to angels is disputed.16 But we can be certain that one key role of angels is to help the saints (see Heb. 1:14).
Contemporary Significance
GOD’S RESPONSE TO prayers of rescue. In times of trouble God’s sovereignty can be expressed by rescue or no rescue. In the violence that has engulfed Sri Lanka over the past years we have seen five types of situations that Christians have encountered that can be applied to difficulties in general. (1) Some have experienced wonderful deliverances that can be explained only as miraculous interventions from God. There have been stories of bombs missing houses or not going off, of mobs suddenly turning away and avoiding the houses of God’s servants. These certainly remind us that God can and does save his children in times of crises if it is his will.
(2) Others have gone through great crisis and earthly loss but remained so radiant with the love of Christ that they were powerful testimonies of God’s sustaining grace. In a terrible riot in 1983 the home of Dr. Arul Anketell, who directs Hospital Christian Fellowship in Sri Lanka, was burned. When I met him for the first time after the event, he ministered the peace of Christ to me rather than vice versa. He was a wonderful testimony of the sufficiency of God’s grace.
(3) The faith of certain people was shattered by the problems they faced. Not only did they question why God allowed the tragedy and became engulfed in a cloud of gloom—both of which are natural—they also never recovered from the gloom. In bitterness of spirit they turned their back on God.
(4) Other people compromised their principles in order to avoid pain. For example, some Christians left the country by illegal means or by telling lies to visa officers at embassies.
(5) Finally, some who had not cared for the things of God, owing to their relentless pursuit of earthly success, were jolted into realizing the unreliability of earthly treasures as a means of security. They turned to God for security and succor and found him to be the answer to the aching void in their hearts.
Whatever experiences God’s providence permits us to go through, our primary commitment should be to obedience. All the threats from the authorities did not cause the early church to pull back on its commitment to proclaiming the gospel. Peter saw wonderful deliverance through the intervention of God, while James faced death for Christ. But the early Christians persevered in obedience, knowing that if God is sovereign he would use their obedience to win a great victory for the kingdom.
This truth is well expressed in the story of the deaths of the five missionaries to the Auca Indians in the jungles of Equador. Steve Saint, son of the one of the five missionaries killed by these Indians in 1956, recently built an airstrip among those same people. He found out details about those deaths that had not previously been known. For example, the five missionaries had guns and could have easily shot and killed their assailants, but they refused to do so. This is what others had done to the Indians. Rather, the missionaries only shot into the air to frighten them. Shots had accidentally grazed and slightly injured two people, so they knew that the guns could kill them. But the missionaries had determined not to hurt anyone. And though it cost them their lives, they stuck to that decision obediently. The Aucas were struck by this decision, and that contributed much to their ultimate conversion to Christ.17
When these young men died, elements in the secular media, sometimes vehemently, criticized the whole missionary enterprise, especially missions among tribal peoples. But subsequent events have proved that God’s sovereignty indeed won a mighty victory for the kingdom through their deaths. That does not mean, however, that victory is immediately obvious. In Acts, for example, Stephen’s death led to the growth of the church through the scattering of the seed of the word. But in James’s case we see no obvious evidence of triumph. In our fast moving age we want immediate evidence to feel that the sacrifices we make are worthwhile. But God may reserve that revelation until we get to heaven, which will make it all the more glorious. Until then we persevere in patience and obedience.
We do not know what will happen to us. But we do know that whatever happens, the greatest challenge we face is the challenge to be obedient. The answer of Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego to the furious king who was getting ready to kill them is instructive:
O Nebuchadnezzar, we do not need to defend ourselves before you in this matter. If we are thrown into the blazing furnace, the God we serve is able to save us from it, and he will rescue us from your hand, O king. But even if he does not, we want you to know, O king, that we will not serve your gods or worship the image of gold you have set up (Dan. 3:16–18).
Because the Bible highlights both situations of miraculous deliverance and of triumphant fortitude amidst painful suffering, we must present both possibilities in our preaching and teaching. Of course there may be times when God gives someone an assurance of deliverance, as he did to Paul on his way to Rome that no one would die from the shipwreck (Acts 27:23–24). At such times we can act on that assurance. But that does not happen every time.
A constant refrain in Acts is that through all of the triumphs and seeming tragedies of life the word of God continues to spread (12:24). This growth has gone on unabated. The gospel, which began with such small beginnings in the first century, has now spread to the ends of the earth. The churches in Jerusalem and even in much of the areas of Paul’s labors, it is true, have either disappeared or succumbed to nominalism. As Revelation 2–3 warns, when one church loses its vitality, its place as the standard-bearer of the kingdom will be lost. But that place will be taken by another. And unless we repent, we too can lose our places, just like the churches in Asia addressed in Revelation eventually lost their places to Islam. But God cannot be defeated by human unfaithfulness. The word of God will continue to spread until the “gospel of the kingdom will be preached in the whole world as a testimony to all nations, and then the end will come” (Matt. 24:14).
Praying earnestly. The English preacher Samuel Chadwick once said, “Intensity is a law of prayer. . . . There are blessings of the kingdom that are only yielded to the violence of the vehement soul.”18 He gives several examples of this type of earnest prayer from the Bible: “Abraham pleading for Sodom, Jacob wrestling in the stillness of the night, Moses standing in the breach, Hannah intoxicated with sorrow, David heartbroken with remorse and grief.”19
However, there are many features that discourage such earnestness today. A recent book on youth is entitled A Generation Without Passion—presumably in keeping with the pluralistic mood of the day, which is accepting of everything but passionate about nothing.20 The present era is characterized by an overload of information and by many leaders, religious and otherwise, who have failed to live up to their claims. Such situations have fostered coldness, boredom, or cynicism. Contemporary society is also the era of entertainment, which has replaced passion as a means of attracting people in church and society. Passion can be a problem to people who have dropped out of charismatic groups in reaction to that emotionalism that was permitted to grow to uncontrolled excesses. Finally, many Christians have not had a vibrant experience of God. All these factors militate against the fostering of passion today.
In this environment people do not want to be passionate about anything. They play it safe spiritually. Such attitudes hinder earnestness in prayer. They will bring on the situation described by Samuel Chadwick when he said, “The crying need of the church is her laziness after God.”21 P. T. Forsyth has said that he believes the primary reason for disbelief in prayer among Christians is “the slipshod kind of prayer that men hear from us in public worship; it is often but journalese sent heavenwards, or phrasemaking to carry on.”22
When we recover the biblical vision of God and his truth, we will recover biblical passion. If God is who the Bible claims he is and if what the Bible says about life is true, then we must face up to the implications of those truths. We must be inspired to dream great things and be horrified by what we see in our lives and in the church and world. Coldness, boredom, and cynicism melt at this twofold vision of the greatness of God and the sinfulness of his creation. Fired afresh by an ambition to see all that God wishes for us, we will be emboldened to pray earnestly towards that end.
This earnestness may express itself in prayer for a loved one, as in the prayer for Peter’s release in Acts 12. It is seen in the prayers of parents as they agonize for their rebellious children, just as Monica agonized for years for her son Augustine.23 It is seen in prayers for the conversion of unbelieving spouses.24 It may also express itself in prayers for church and nation. The Scottish reformer John Knox expressed this earnestness when he cried, “Give me Scotland or I die!” We end this section with a plea from the Scottish preacher Alexander Whyte: “Let every man put his passion into his prayers.”25
The role of angels today. My first reaction to discussions about angels looking after us has usually been something like this: “That is kid’s stuff. It was good for the Christmas story, but we live in the era of the Holy Spirit. The Spirit is the one who now ministers to us.” But the ministry of angels is pronounced in Acts,26 even with Acts’ focus on the acts of the Holy Spirit. In other words, even in the era of the Spirit angels minister to us. God, who almost always works through some medium to send us help, can use angels for this. In the book of Acts he often did this in the lives not of little children, but of eminent apostles.
We too, therefore, should anticipate the ministry of angels on our behalf. The texts cited from Acts suggest that angels have an important ministry in the lives of Christian ministers. In other words, ministers too should take this doctrine seriously. Without any doubt God never lets us go through a crisis without preparing us adequately for it and providing for us to come out of it victoriously. We are reminded of the promise to Paul as he was troubled by his thorn in the flesh: “My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness” (2 Cor. 12:9). God always sends us sufficient help to see us through our most difficult times, and he sometimes does it through angels, as happened to Jesus after his temptations and before his death (Mark 1:13; Luke 22:43). We are reminded of the familiar verse in Psalm 91:11–12:
For he will command his angels concerning you
to guard you in all your ways;
they will lift you up in their hands,
so that you will not strike your foot against a stone.
John G. Paton, a Scottish missionary to the New Hebrides Islands in the South Pacific, was a heroic figure in recent missionary history. One night hostile tribesmen surrounded his mission headquarters, intent on burning it and killing Paton and his wife. The two of them prayed all through that terror-filled night, asking God to deliver them. When daylight came they were surprised to see the attackers leave. A year later, the chief of the tribe was converted to Christ, and Paton had an opportunity to ask him what kept them from burning the house and killing them. The chief replied, “Who were all those men who were there with you?” Paton said, “There were no men there; only my wife and I.” But the chief said that they had seen hundreds of big men in shining garments with drawn swords in their hands. They seemed to circle the mission station, so the tribesmen were afraid to attack.27 Paton realized that God had sent his angels to protect them.
John Paton did not always experience God’s provision in that way. His first wife died as a result of problems during childbirth. Seventeen days later the child also died. That happened early in his missionary career, and he had no one to comfort him. He even had to dig the graves for his wife and child. But he writes about that difficult time: “I was never altogether forsaken. The ever merciful God sustained me to lay the precious dust of my loved ones in the same quiet grave. But for Jesus, and the fellowship he vouchsafed me there, I must have gone mad and died beside that lonely grave!”28 Jesus was there, and he gave sufficient grace—grace enough for him to stay on working among those people and reap a great harvest for the kingdom.
Sometimes angels are present in times that, unlike the two stories of Peter’s deliverance in Acts, are times of apparent tragedy. I think of what Steve Saint found out about his father’s death in the jungles of Equador: At the time they were being killed, the Auca Indians saw a multitude of angels in the sky and heard them singing. This played an important role in their eventual conversion to Christ.29