The Gospel Goes to All

Paul Receiving the Call to Macedonia

But you will receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you, and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the end of the earth.”  (Acts 1:8)

And a vision appeared to Paul in the night: a man of Macedonia was standing there, urging him and saying, “Come over to Macedonia and help us.”  And when Paul had seen the vision, immediately we sought to go on into Macedonia, concluding that God had called us to preach the gospel to them.  (Acts 16:9-10)

For already had the Lord, according to the preceding words (of the prophet), revealed His Holy One with His arm, that is to say, Christ by His mighty power, in the eyes of the nations, so that all the nations and the utmost parts of the earth have seen the salvation, which was from God.  By thus departing from Judaism itself, when they exchanged the obligations and burdens of the law for the liberty of the gospel, they were fulfilling the psalm, “Let us burst their bonds apart, and cast away their cords from us;” and this indeed (they did) after which “the Gentiles raged, and the peoples plot in vain;” after which “the kings of the earth set themselves, and the rulers were gathered together against the Lord, and against His Anointed.”*… Now the Greek letter Tau and our own letter T is the very form of the cross, which He predicted would be the sign on our foreheads in the true catholic Jerusalem, in which, according to the twenty-[second] Psalm, the brethren of Christ or children of God would ascribe glory to God the Father, in the person of Christ Himself addressing His Father; “I will tell of Your name to my brothers; in the midst of the congregation I will praise You.”  For that which had to come to pass in our day in His name, and by His Spirit, He rightly foretold would be of Him.  And a little afterwards He says: “From You comes my praise in the great congregation.”†  In the sixty-[eighth] Psalm He says again: “Bless God in the congregation.”‡  So that with this agrees also the prophecy of Malachi: “I have no pleasure in you, says the Lᴏʀᴅ of hosts, and I will not accept an offering from your hand.  For from the rising of the sun to its setting, My name will be great among the nations, and in every place incense will be offered to My name, and a pure offering”§—such as the ascription of glory, and blessing, and praise, and hymns.

Tertullian, Against Marcion 3.22

*  Psalm 2:2-3; Acts 4:25-30
†  Psalm 22:22, 25
‡  Psalm 68:26
§  Malachi 1:10-11