Caesarea

Caesarea was Herod the Great's harbor city on the coast of Judea, built up from a small anchorage and named for Caesar Augustus. Rome ran the province from here. The governor lived in this city, not in Jerusalem, and that single fact explains why so much of the second half of Acts happens here rather than in the capital. The most important thing that ever happened at Caesarea was not political. Cornelius, a Roman officer, was told in a vision to send for Peter. Peter, in Joppa, saw a vision of his own that told him not to call any person unclean. When Peter reached Cornelius's house and preached, the Holy Spirit fell on everyone listening while Peter was still speaking, before a single person was baptized. Peter could only conclude that God had accepted the Gentiles on the same terms as the Jews, and he baptized the whole household on the spot. Caesarea kept turning up in the story of the early church after that. Philip the evangelist, one of the seven chosen to serve tables in Acts 6, made his home here with his four daughters, who prophesied. Herod Agrippa I came here to receive an embassy, accepted a crowd's shout that he spoke with the voice of a god rather than a man, and died on the spot. Paul passed through more than once, and finally was held here for two years while two Roman governors, Felix and then Festus, tried to decide what to do with him. It was in this city that Paul made his last defense before a Jewish audience that mattered, King Agrippa II, and it was here that Paul used his right as a Roman citizen to appeal his case to Caesar himself. That single decision sent him to Rome, and the second half of the book of Acts follows him there.