Read: 2 Samuel 20:14-21:22, Acts 1:1-26, Psalm 121:1-8, Proverbs 16:18
But you will receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you,
and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the end of the earth.”
Acts 1:8
Relate: There is a pervasive misinterpretation of this verse that I hear often, and it drives me to internal insanity every time I do. That misinterpretation goes something like this: “Jesus is presenting His disciples with four geographical locations: Jerusalem, Judea, Samaria, and the world. Jerusalem represents a person’s home or hometown. Judea represents the state, or perhaps the country. Samaria represents those neighboring areas where, for cultural, racial, or economic reasons, we are inclined to avoid. Then the ends of the earth means… well, duh.” The misinterpreter will then go on to claim that Jesus commissioned his disciples to first focus on their home, then the broader region, then cross those cultural divides, and finally go out into all the earth. There is a chronological progression taking place.
Wrong. WRONG! This lie, so frequently told, is catastrophically mistaken. As a missionary, I might have a bias that touches close to home, but I felt strongly about this horrible misinterpretation long before I ever got on a plane for the first time. This misinterpretation, so often used, has proven to be the death of missions in many mistaken churches. Why? Because we tend to mentally add a “first” before Jerusalem and a “then” before Judea, Samaria, and the world that DO NOT BELONG! It is not “First in Jerusalem, then in all Judea, then Samaria, then to the end of the earth.” Rather, it is “in Jerusalem, AND in all Judea, AND Samaria, AND to the end of the earth.”
React: There is no sequence of events. There is no division of labor. Each and every one of us, just like those first apostles, must be mindful of that “and.” Each of us has a responsibility to be witnesses for Jesus both at home, in our nation, across socioeconomic and cultural divides, and around the world. Does that mean we all need to be getting on a plane? No. But we all do need to be getting on our knees. All of us have been called to witness to our neighbor. Some of us have been called to travel across borders, making people in places like Türkiye or Kyiv our neighbors. But all of us can pray for those who do. All of us can give to those who go. Paul and a small team with him traveled across the Mediterranean, planting churches wherever they went. But those in places like Corinth and Philippi (2 Cor 8:4, Phil 4:15, etc.) picked up their God mandated task of reaching the ends of the earth by partnering with him. So, how have you recently been obedient to God’s command to be witnesses in Jerusalem? In Judea? Samaria? The world? What more can you be doing through the transformative power of “and?”
Respond:
Dear God,
We ask, as You said in Psalms 2, for the nations as our inheritance and the ends of the earth as our possession. I pray that You would give each and every one of us a deeper and more passionate burden for the lost. Help us to be more active in spreading Your Kingdom across neighborly fences, across cultural and language fences, and even across the fences Trump is building near Mexico. Everybody across the earth has the basic human right to hear an adequate presentation of the gospel. Help us to be more diligent in presenting it, and in partnering with those who present it in places we cannot go.
Amen
THE RIVER WALK 
Yes, “AND” makes a better convincing sense. But then why the sequence, from a place to vaster world? Could it not be the progress of an individual himself, he focusing on his realisations?
It is a sequence in geography, not in chronology. It also in a very real sense the thesis for the book of Acts. The rest of the book is merely a demonstration of how this played out in the first generation of the church. Even as Paul was going out into the ends of the earth, there were still people like James ministering in Jerusalem. At the end of the book, we still see both happening together.
But is that not more a perspective from the point of a missionary and not a seeker? Should there not be the essence of esoteric-spiritual possibility of an individual?
On both counts, not really. This was my perspective long before I became a missionary. It was my perspective because it is good exegesis. The truth of what Jesus was saying is not some esoteric hidden knowledge. Jesus was speaking openly and publically to those who were about to lead the church he was inaugurating. He was saying that we will be witnesses here and there and everywhere. This truth is a reality for all who follow Him.
We should not read him too much on the human level, though his work work was to humanise Europe. But he is the Son of God, a divine Incarnation, Avatar as we would say, and his utterances have far deeper preciousness than what an immediate context would convey. He did not come to propagate; he brought a certain divine truth, psychic love, Love.
Europe never knew Devotion, Bhakti, before Christ. See its efflorescence in the devotional upsurge in Europe, and also in India, and somewhere else too.
Christ never lived in Europe. But I guess it would be fair to say that Europe never knew devotion until Paul and others brought Christ. In the same way it would be fair to say that India never knew devotion until Thomas and others brought Christ. True devotion is only found in Christ.
The Indian Puranas like Vishnu Purana, Bhagawat Purana, written long before Christ are all about devotion and Bhakti. The story of the Avatars glorifies it with amazing wonders.
It is the message and ministry of Christ through the apostles that humanised Europe. But then there were the cruelest Inquisitions also.