How to Prevail Against the Gates of Hell

18 April 2026  Acts 6:1-7

Saturday of the Second Week of Easter

“But we will devote ourselves to prayer and to the ministry of the word.”

(Acts 6:4)

So, what did the Apostles mean when they said that it wouldn’t be right for them to “neglect the word of God to serve at table”(Acts 6:2)? What did they mean when they said that they would devote themselves to the “ministry of the word” (6:4)?

It meant they were really, really busy. 

The text presumes that it is the gates of hell that are under attack, and that the gates of hell will fail. So, who is attacking hell? Obviously, the Church is. The Church is on offense. The Church has the ball. And who is attacking hell for the Church? People trained in the ministry of the word are attacking hell

Consider the matter of basic literacy. Nowhere in the ancient world did the literacy rate much exceed about 10%, and among Christians it was often much lower (see Harry Gamble, Books and Readers in the Early Church, pp. 2-10). Not only that, but almost no one actually owned a copy of the scriptures.

It is estimated that a single copy of the Bible would have cost about 30,000 Roman denarii, a sum equivalent to about 20 years’ pay for a moderately comfortable family anywhere in the Roman Empire. Buying a Bible was as expensive as buying a house. So, Christians in those days learned the scriptures the same way all ordinary people learned about literature, or politics, or the news of the world. The scriptures were read to them. And because it is beyond certain that the earliest Church did not own a Bible (by which is meant the Old Testament, which was the whole Bible for the earliest Church) the Apostles read it to them from memory, which means they had to put in the time to learn it from memory, and the time to retain it. Time with Jesus, and time for Jesus is very intense time.

So, if the very first congregation was only about 10% literate (probably less), and the scriptures had to be read to them, and there were a lot of members (certainly hundreds, perhaps thousands), then there had to be regular public readings of Holy Scripture, along with interpretations of it, and that meant that the “ministry of the word” kept the Twelve very busy.

The ministry of the word is still keeping people busy. One large Catholic parish today is four or five times the size of the whole earliest Church. Evangelists for such parishes need to be people deeply immersed in the thought world of the Bible. They need to read it and talk about it daily, they need to apply it boldly and prudently. Second, and more importantly, they need to share what they know about the Bible with others in their parishes. There are not enough priests in most parishes to do this work, so priests have to train evangelists in their parishes to teach the Bible. The ministry of the word still keeps people busy.

Jesus said that “the gates of hell will not prevail against” the Church (cf. Matthew 16:18). People usually assume that this means the attacks of hell on the Church will be unsuccessful, but that is a misunderstanding of the text. The text presumes that it is the gates of hell that are under attack, and that the gates of hell will fail. So, who is attacking hell? Obviously, the Church is. The Church is on offense. The Church has the ball. And who is attacking hell for the Church? People trained in the ministry of the word are attacking hell – evangelists who own a Bible and read it, who read long swaths of it, and commit them to memory, who think with it, speak with it, pray with it, who share what they know with others, people whose minds are full of the glory of God all day, every day.  

The ministry of the word is still keeping churches busy, especially if we mean to keep on prevailing against the gates of hell.