Acts Chapter Ten

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Acts Chapter Ten

Kefa (Peter) hears a voice saying "arise kill and eat" but the voice does not identify itself. What would Kefa do if an unidentified voice told him to violate Torah? Notice that Kefa calls the animals "common and unclean" but the voice says only not to call them "common". Notice (17) Kefa is perplexed about the meaning of the vision. It’s meaning is NOT obvious. Note that in verse 15 the voice says: What God has cleansed, you must not call common. One is left to ask the question: When did God ever cleanse these animals? In fact a series of questions come to mind: Why did the voice say "arise Kefa, kill and eat"? When did God ever cleanse these animals? What is the meaning of this vision? These are the questions God wanted Kefa to ask himself. The answer to the first question is that God wanted Kefa to think about why he could not eat these animals. This was prompted by the first statement of the voice: "arise Kefa, kill and eat" The answer to the second question is Gen. 9:2-3 which closely parallels the description in Acts. 10:11. Kefa was to realize that God had made these foods clean for Noachide Gentiles in Gen. 9:2-3 but unclean for Kefa in Lev. 11. Kefa was to understand from this that while he as a Jew would have become unclean by eating things, a gentile who had not entered the Mosaic Covenant would not become unclean. Thus a Righteous Gentile, a "Noachide" was not to be viewed as unclean. Lets test our theory and see what the text says the vision really meant. Read verse 28.