Acts/Revelation Side by Side

For a full understanding of the early church we need to read
*the Acts of the Apostles* and *The Book of Revelation* side by
side. Both tell much the same tale of the church and its
experience of conflict, but from a different perspective. Luke in
Acts chronicles what unfolded on the stage of history before the
eyes of observers; John in the Revelation enables us to see the
hidden forces at work. In the Acts human beings oppose and
undermine the church; in the Revelation the curtain is lifted and
we see the hostility of the devil himself, depicted as an enormous
red dragon, aided and abetted by two grotesque monsters and a lewd
prostitute. Indeed the Revelation is a vision of the age-long
battle between the Lamb and the dragon, Christ and Satan,
Jerusalem the holy city and Babylon the great city, the church and
the world. Moreover, it can hardly be a coincidence that the
symbolism of the dragon's three allies in Revelation corresponds
to the devil's three weapons wielded against the church in the
early chapters of Acts, that is, persecution, moral compromise,
and the danger of exposure to false teaching when the apostles
became distracted from their chief responsibility, namely, `the
ministry of the Word and prayer'.