Acts is the second half of a two-part work by the same anonymous author, Luke-Acts, usually dated to around 80-90 CE. The first part, the gospel of Luke, tells how God fulfilled his plan for the world's salvation through the life, death and resurrection of Jesus of Nazareth, the promised Messiah. Acts tells the story of the Early Christian church. The early chapters, set in Jerusalem, describe the Day of Pentecost (the coming of the Holy Spirit) and the growth of the church in Jerusalem. Initially the Jews are receptive to the Christian message, but soon they turn against the followers of the Messiah. Rejected by the Jews, under the guidance of the Apostle Peter the message is taken to the Gentiles. The later chapters tell of Paul's conversion, his mission in Asia Minor and the Aegean, and finally his imprisonment in Rome, where, as the book ends, he awaits trial.
Luke-Acts is an attempt to answer a theological problem, namely how the Messiah of the Jews came to have an overwhelmingly non-Jewish church; the answer it provides, and its central theme, is that the message of Christ was sent to the Gentiles because the Jews rejected it.
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