How many times have we borne witness to this scene? Men and women of the Gospel attacked by their enemies for preaching the resurrected Christ? How many times have we seen this inevitable and inimitable skirmish between the horizontal and the vertical, the spiritual and the carnal, the things of man and the things of God? How many times have we seen this scene within and without the church, where servants of the Lord who have confessed with their mouths that Jesus is Lord and believe in their hearts that God raised him from the dead are confronted by those of the unsaved who want to give strict orders to “keep your mouth shut and not teach in his name”?

Here Peter and the apostles are confronted by the Sanhedrin and the high priest who issue this audacious command, which in reality was a th…