Today, I am reading and commenting on  Acts 4-6.

I am not sure that I ever noticed before that when Luke describes the arrest of Peter and John he says that “the rulers, elders, and teachers of the Law” were present.  He also mentions that the high priest and members of his family were present.  Later, when all of the apostles were arrested, Luke says that it was the high priest and his associates who had them arrested (which sounds to me as more or less the same group), but they called the entire Sanhedrin together for the hearing.  Clearly at this second hearing the high priest and his faction felt that they needed more weight behind their attempt to silence the apostles.  They attempted to use the force of their position and power to silence those whom they felt were spreading dangerous misinformation.  Gamaliel presented one of the foundational arguments about why governments, and everyone else in positions of power, should respect freedom of speech.  The basis of Gamaliel’s argument was that any group built around falsehood will dissipate with time, with no effort on the part of the powerful, and even the powerful will fail to suppress a thought which comes from God.  But there is a little more to what Gamaliel was saying.  If you attempt to stamp out the truth, you will find yourself fighting against God and suffer for doing so

I use the daily Bible reading schedule from “The Bible.net” for my daily Bible reading.