The issue was not resolved until Paul and Barnabas went to Jerusalem and met with the apostles and the Jewish Christians there; Acts 15 gives the account of the heated debate which ensued. Paul, Barnabas and Peter stood against the pressure from other Jewish Christians to force the Gentiles to accept the Law and circumcision. The final agreement was that Gentile converts need not accept circumcision and the Jewish Law but should reject certain customs particularly associated with paganism. They should not eat food which had been offered in pagan sacrifices, meat from animals which had been strangled or from animals from which the blood had not been drained. They were also to avoid sexual immorality.

The decisions taken at this meeting were very important because, they marked the real difference between Judaism and the Christian faith. The future of the Christian Church was to lie with the Gentile Churches, not the Jewish Christians. In less than twenty years' time, the Jewish Christians of Jerusalem' had to leave the city when the rebellion of the Jews against the Romans broke out in A.D. 66. Leadership amongst the fast-growing Gentile Churches of the Roman empire came from other centres as the events of the Jewish rebellion and war cut ties with Palestinian Christians.

The last reference in Acts to Peter is in Acts 15 as he spoke at the Church meeting. Luke does not give us any more information about the rest of Peter's apostolic ministry, but there is a strong tradition - Peter went to preach to the Gentiles and eventually died in Rome at - time of Nero's attack on the Christians.