The Kingdom (Elgar) Jesus's disciples. It depicts the community of the early church, Pentecost, and the events of the next few days. Elgar had been planning a work depicting the Apostles as ordinary men, reacting to extraordinary events, for many years. His ideas outgrew the confines of a single work: parts of "The Kingdom" were written before "The Apostles", and later Elgar considered them as the first two parts of a trilogy. "The Kingdom" is, in effect, its slow movement. In the event, the projected third part was never written. "The Kingdom" is written for a large orchestra, of typical late Romantic proportions.
Acts of the Apostles Acts of the Apostles Acts of the Apostles (, "Práxeis tôn Apostólōn"; ), often referred to simply as Acts, is the fifth book of the New Testament; it tells of the founding of the Christian church and the spread of its message to the Roman Empire. Acts and the Gospel of Luke make up a two-part work, Luke–Acts, by the same anonymous author, usually dated to around 80–90 AD. The first part, the Gospel of Luke, tells how God fulfilled his plan for the world's salvation through the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus of Nazareth, the promised Messiah. Acts