At the beginning of Acts Jesus’s disciples asked him about the kingdom, “Lord, will you now restore the kingdom of Israel?” (see Acts 1:6). Jesus gave an interesting answer. He talked about the Holy Spirit coming upon his disciples and how they would then take the message of the kingdom of God to Israel and to the world (see 1:8).

Acts tells us how the gospel went to Jerusalem. (Remember how the Spirit came, Peter preached, and many believed?) Acts tells us how the gospel went to Samaria (Acts 8) and how it went to the Gentiles. (Remember Peter’s and Cornelius’s visions?) By the end of Acts the Gospel reached the capital of the Roman Empire! But how it got there is a story for the ages.

Paul had been put in prison for preaching the gospel. It looked as though the gospel would not make it any further. But Paul (and, more importantly, God) had other plans. God put Paul on a prison ship to Rome. Paul knew that the trip was destined for danger, so he tried to warn the captain—no luck. They pressed on. Sure enough, just like Paul said, a storm arose. The expert sailors of this Roman prison ship tried every trick in the book to survive—they had tied the ship together and thrown excess weight overboard—but the storm kept pounding them. They were sure they’d all die. But Paul comforted them. God had plans, and none of them were going to die. God was going to get him to Rome one way or the other. Sure enough, the ship ran aground and all on board made it safely to a nearby island.

Somehow Paul had managed to escape death. But then, when he was on the island gathering wood for a fire, a venomous snake bit him! The people of the island concluded that Paul must have done something very wrong—the gods weren’t allowing him to escape death. But God had plans for Paul, and the snakebite didn’t kill him. The islanders changed their minds about him and thought, “Is Paul a god himself?” No, but the power of God was with him. And so, just like Jesus had said at the outset of Acts, God brought Paul to the capital of the known world to proclaim the gospel. This is how the book of Acts ends: “[Paul] lived there two whole years . . . and welcomed all who came to him, proclaiming the kingdom of God and teaching about the Lord Jesus Christ with all boldness and without hindrance” (28:30–31).