century was pre-Christian, while our century is post-Christian. Also, whereas Christianity has come to fit quite comfortably within many 21st-century cultures, it was the object of intense and sustained persecution in the 1st century. We see in Luke’s description of Paul that suffering was the normal state of affairs for Christians in the early church. Reflecting on the dating of Acts helps us to remember the chronological and cultural differences between the context of the book’s events and ours.