We're working through Acts in my Bible study on Friday mornings and my pastor knowing this, let me borrow this book.  He described it as a newspaper style account of the first chapters of Act.  In doing so, I think he captured what this book does the best.  It gets a very interesting presentation of some of the going ons in the early Church.

We start with the ascension and move quickly into the account of the healing of the lame man by Solomon's porch.  However something interesting happens then.  Which is to say not much of anything.  Reading through Acts unaided, I was alway under the impression that everything happened very rapidly.  Instead for 8 years, other than 2 or 3 mass infusions of the Holy Spirit, the church simply talked among themselves about Jesus.  True they spent the majority of their time doing this, but they did not immediately go out to the surrounding areas.  Then the stoning of Stephen happened and the persecution of the early church began. 

Even more amazing to me, but further in the book was Paul's story.  I always pictured Paul as immediately on fire for Jesus after his conversion.  Instead, he disappears for 3 years before he even shows up to speak to the Sanhedrin, before disappearing for another 3 years.  In fact the book contends it was 12-13 years after his conversion before he actively went out and taught. 

All in all very interesting from a timeline standpoint.  Where I feel the book went off track was in places where it provided commentary about what the church and the respective roles in the church should be.  Some of the points really seemed to conflict.  For example, after spending several paragraphs explaining how Phillip was the first to be given the gift of evangelism, the book has the following; "What is an evangelist? We really do not know."  Huh?  How can you say that someone is an evangelist because of what they did and the gifts they had and then say there's no way to know what an evangelist is? 

However, the timeline and the fact that commentary was mostly subdued makes it a book worth reading in my opinion. 

Note here's a link to Revolution through Jacob's Well.