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common or unclean. And the voice spake unto him again the second
time, What God hath cleansed, that call not thou common. This was
done thrice: and the vessel was received up again into heaven.”
This vision conveyed to Peter both reproof and instruction. It
revealed to him the purpose of God—that by the death of Christ the
Gentiles should be made fellow heirs with the Jews to the blessings of
salvation. As yet none of the disciples had preached the gospel to the
Gentiles. In their minds the middle wall of partition, broken down by
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the death of Christ, still existed, and their labors had been confined to
the Jews, for they had looked upon the Gentiles as excluded from the
blessings of the gospel. Now the Lord was seeking to teach Peter the
world-wide extent of the divine plan.
Many of the Gentiles had been interested listeners to the preaching
of Peter and the other apostles, and many of the Greek Jews had
become believers in Christ, but the conversion of Cornelius was to be
the first of importance among the Gentiles.
The time had come for an entirely new phase of work to be entered
upon by the church of Christ. The door that many of the Jewish
converts had closed against the Gentiles was now to be thrown open.
And the Gentiles who accepted the gospel were to be regarded as on an
equality with the Jewish disciples, without the necessity of observing
the rite of circumcision.
How carefully the Lord worked to overcome the prejudice against
the Gentiles that had been so firmly fixed in Peter’s mind by his Jewish
training! By the vision of the sheet and its contents He sought to divest
the apostle’s mind of this prejudice and to teach the important truth
that in heaven there is no respect of persons; that Jew and Gentile are
alike precious in God’s sight; that through Christ the heathen may be
made partakers of the blessings and privileges of the gospel.
While Peter was meditating on the meaning of the vision, the men
sent from Cornelius arrived in Joppa and stood before the gate of his
lodginghouse. Then the Spirit said to him, “Behold, three men seek
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thee. Arise therefore, and get thee down, and go with them, doubting
nothing: for I have sent them.”
To Peter this was a trying command, and it was with reluctance
at every step that he undertook the duty laid upon him; but he dared
not disobey. He “went down to the men which were sent unto him
from Cornelius; and said, Behold, I am he whom ye seek: what is the