The story Luke takes up where the Gospels close: the Spirit poured out, the church born, and the gospel carried outward in widening rings — Jerusalem, then Judea and Samaria, then the ends of the earth (Acts 1:8). Filter by ring to watch it spread; as the journeys begin, each New Testament letter is marked where it was written.
Acts is the work of Luke, the same writer who gave us the third Gospel — its second volume (Acts 1:1). At its head stands the verse that is also its table of contents: you shall be My witnesses in Jerusalem, and in all Judea and Samaria, and even to the remotest part of the earth (Acts 1:8). The whole book moves through those three rings, and so does this timeline. The coloured badge on each event marks its ring; the filter lets you trace one ring at a time.
As the missionary journeys unfold, the New Testament letters were written into this very story — 1 Thessalonians from Corinth, 1 Corinthians from Ephesus, the prison letters from Rome. Where a letter belongs to an event, it is marked, so you can see the epistles drop into the history that produced them.
This is the overview. For the life of the apostle who carries the gospel to the nations — his conversion, his churches, his letters in detail — the Apostle Paul timeline is the companion to this one, and events here link down into it.
We reckon Pentecost at about AD 31 (consistent with the Wednesday-crucifixion framework of The Life of Christ), and Paul's arrival in Rome at about AD 60–62. The internal dates of Acts are approximate; firm anchors (Gallio at Corinth, the famine, the death of Herod Agrippa, Festus succeeding Felix) keep the framework within a year or two.
Click a ring to follow the gospel's spread. Click any event to open it.
From the promise to Abraham, to the coming of the Christ, to the church He builds going out to the nations — one unbroken story. See it run through the Old Testament Timeline, the Prophecies, the Life of Christ, and the Apostle Paul.