We all must realize that in the Book of Acts Christ is living with all His members. Never think that Christ is only in the four Gospels and not in the Acts. In the Gospels we have Christ in the body given Him by Mary, His physical body; but in the Acts we have Christ in a larger Body, a mystical Body, given Him by the Holy Spirit. Acts 1 tells how Christ ascended into the heavens in the presence of all His followers. Then Acts 2 tells how this ascended Christ came down upon His followers. From that day, the Day of Pentecost, Christ was fully one with all His saints. From that day He was not only within them, but also upon them; He not only filled them, but also clothed them. He was fully and thoroughly one with all His disciples to the extent that His disciples just became Jesus Christ.
You remember what that persecutor, Saul of Tarsus, heard when he was smitten down on the road to Damascus: The Lord Jesus said to him, "Saul, Saul, why persecutest thou Me?" (Acts 9:4). Then Saul replied in so many words, "Lord, who are You? I never persecuted anyone in the heavens; all those whom I persecuted were on earth. I persecuted John, I persecuted Peter, and I persecuted Stephen; now I am on my way to persecute some people in the city of Damascus. Who are You?" The Lord Jesus answered, "I am Jesus whom thou persecutest." The Lord said in effect, "You must realize that Peter, John, Stephen, and all My believers are just Me. When you persecute them, you persecute Me. I am one with them, and they are one with Me."
Hence, in the Book of Acts Christ is still here on this earth living with, in, and among all His disciples. We all must realize that the sufferings, journeys, and speeches of these disciples were absolutely the acts of Jesus. Jesus was still acting, living, moving, working, and doing things in all His disciples.
We can also see in the Book of Acts that Christ was still versus religion. The battle between Christ and religion was even more severe in the Book of Acts than in the four Gospels. The disciples of Jesus went forward testifying and witnessing for Jesus, absolutely ignoring religion. This greatly offended the religious people and rulers; therefore, they exercised their religious authority to arrest and imprison them. The religious rulers, in a sense, were opposing all the followers of Jesus, but they were not mainly against the followers, but against Jesus Himself. They had no problem with those Galilean followers of Jesus; their problem was with Jesus. They instructed the disciples never to speak or teach in the name of Jesus. You see, they didn't mind their teaching or preaching as long as they would leave out the name of Jesus. They were not against those Galileans; they were against Jesus. They did not hate His followers; they hated Jesus. The disciples, of course, would not take their word: they had something more living and powerful within them than what they heard from those religious rulers. They proceeded fearlessly to preach and to praise Christ, and thus brought upon themselves swift arrest and imprisonment.
But that was not the end. "An angel of the Lord by night opened the prison doors, and brought them out, and said, Go ye, and stand and speak in the temple to the people all the words of this life" (5:19-20). What life? The life which nothing can hold, the life which even the prison cannot hold. The angel told them to go and speak the words of such a life. And so they went early in the morning to the temple and spoke. The rulers sent the officers to the prison that day to bring forth the disciples to the counsel, and the officers returned saying, "The prison house we found shut in all safety, and the keepers standing at the doors: but when we had opened, we found no man within" (v. 23). Eventually, they found all the prisoners in the temple speaking boldly in the name of Jesus. When the chief priests received this report, we read that they were "much perplexed concerning them whereunto this would grow" (v. 24). They probably said one to another, "What shall we do? We cannot do anything with these people." What they really meant was that they could not do anything with this life. The Galilean people were nothing, but the life within them was tremendous. The life was the real troublemaker, not those Galilean fishermen.
Then in chapter 6 various groups of people came to debate with Stephen. Have you noticed what kind of people they were? They were the people of all the synagogues, of all the various groups of religion from different places. All combined to fight against Stephen. Eventually, outwardly speaking, they gained the victory because they stoned Stephen to death; but inwardly they lost the case. We must realize that Stephen was not there by himself. While they were stoning him, he was connected to the heavens. At that very moment "the heavens opened," and Stephen saw "the Son of man standing on the right hand of God." That means that Jesus was one with Stephen, and Stephen was one with Jesus. That also means that the heavens and the earth, the earth and the heavens, were also one. They were not persecuting Stephen; they were persecuting Jesus. They were not stoning Stephen; they were stoning Jesus who had ascended to the heavens. It is not a small matter.