<p>15:14<i>Simeon has related how first God visited the Gentiles, to take out of them a people for His name</i>- The conversion of Cornelius was certainly understood as the sign that the Gentiles were to be accepted. This would imply that Cornelius was the first public Gentile conversion by the apostles, which would mean that the Ethiopian eunuch was either a Jew or a proselyte effectively counted as a Jew. After all, he was reading Isaiah in Hebrew, having visited Jerusalem on pilgrimage, when Philip preached Christ to him. It is Luke who three times records that the ministry of the Lord Jesus had been God visiting His people Israel (Lk. 1:68,78; 7:16 cp. Acts 7:23- God visited Israel to redeem them through Moses). No other evangelist records this. Now he is making the point that God was visiting the Gentiles. This did not remain with Paul as some mere theological nicety. The same word is used of how straight away, he decided to go and visit the Gentile converts (15:36). God's visitation of man in Christ quite simply means that we literally go visit others, in pastoral and preaching work. We have mentioned how the letter of James appears to be on one hand an extended commentary upon the Acts 15 decisions, which James had a major part in. His comment on 'visiting' is that we should &quot;visit the fatherless and widows in their affliction, and to keep unspotted from the world&quot; (James 1:27). The &quot;unspotted from the world&quot; would then be his form of the agreement made that Gentiles could be accepted but they must keep &quot;unspotted from the world&quot; by avoiding the fornication and idolatry of the world. James would therefore specifically have in mind 'visiting' <em>Gentile </em>widows; and we recall that the issue of discriminating against Greek speaking widows was one of the issues his church had faced in Acts 6:1. Again, God's visitation of men, seeking to take out a people for His Name, must be reflected in our reaching out to others in practice, both materially and spiritually.</p>