The Purpose of the Book.
Acts is a book of history. It records how the church began. It tells how the church started to spread throughout the world. Acts shows how the apostles and other Christians obeyed the Lord’s Great Commission to preach the gospel to the whole world.
This book deals primarily with the work of two apostles, Peter and Paul. The book emphasizes how people were saved, and it contains many examples for us today. We should go everywhere, preaching as the early Christians did. We should teach people only what the apostles taught. People can be saved today, just as they were in the first century.
The Author of the Book.
It is believed that Luke was the author of this book. The Gospel of Luke was addressed to Theophilus (Luke 1:3), the same man mentioned in Acts 1:1. Since the Books of Luke and Acts are quite similar in style and vocabulary, it seems they were written by the same person. The writer of Acts was a companion of Paul on his journeys, and this coincides with the travels of Luke. Luke travelled with Paul (see Colossians 4:14; 2 Timothy 4:11; Philemon 24). Several places in the Book of Acts the pronoun “we” is used, indicating that the author was present on the journeys with Paul (see Acts 16:10-17; 20:5-21; 28:16).
The Date of the Book.
Luke probably wrote the Book of Acts from Rome during Paul’s first imprisonment. It covers over thirty years of Christian history, from the Roman Emperor Tiberius Caesar to Nero. Since the book ends with Paul in prison, it was probably written about that time. Thus, the time of writing was about A.D. 63.