Now many signs and wonders were regularly done among the people by the hands of the apostles. And they were all together in Solomon's Portico. 13 None of the rest dared join them, but the people held them in high esteem. 14 And more than ever believers were added to the Lord, multitudes of both men and women, 15 so that they even carried out the sick into the streets and laid them on cots and mats, that as Peter came by at least his shadow might fall on some of them. 16 The people also gathered from the towns around Jerusalem, bringing the sick and those afflicted with unclean spirits, and they were all healed.
The Holy Spirit is doing a lot of extraordinary work here, stuff that seems crazy to us. The fact that people were healed by Peter's shadow falling on them shows that it wasn't Peter himself healing people. God can do whatever he wants, he can heal people however he wants.
There was a strange combination of fear of joining the church (presumably due to events like Ananias and Sapphira's death) but also an esteem that the people had for the Christians. The people seemed to like the Christians but recognised that it wasn't a group that you could just loosely associate yourself with. There were certainly no nominal Christians warming the pews in Solomon's porch!
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