Thus then, by heavenly power and co-working, suddenly, like a beam of the sun, the saving word illumined the whole inhabited world; and at once, in accordance with the divine Scriptures, the voice of his inspired evangelists and apostles went forth into all the earth, and their words unto the ends of the inhabited world.
And indeed throughout all the cities and villages, like a teeming threshing-floor, churches thronging with thousands and crowded with multitudes were suddenly formed; and those who, by ancestral succession and by the error handed down from of old, had had their souls fettered by the ancient disease of the superstition of idols, being set free by the power of Christ — through the teaching of his disciples and their wonder-working, as it were from cruel masters — and having found release from most grievous bonds, spat upon all the polytheism of the demons, and confessed that there is one only God, the Creator of all things; and him they honoured with the ordinances of true piety, through the inspired and temperate worship which had been sown by our Saviour into the life of men.
But indeed, when the divine grace was already being poured out also upon the remaining nations — when first, in Caesarea of Palestine, Cornelius with his whole household had received faith in Christ through a more divine manifestation and the ministry of Peter, and likewise very many other Greeks at Antioch, to whom those scattered in the persecution over Stephen had preached, while the church at Antioch was just then flourishing and multiplying — at that very time and place, when very many of the prophets from Jerusalem were also present, and with them Barnabas and Paul, and besides these a further multitude of brethren, the name «Christians» was then first given there, as from a fresh and fruitful fountain.
And Agabus, one of the prophets who were with them, foretold that there was to be a famine; and Paul and Barnabas were sent forth to be of service to the ministry of the brethren.