Acts 5:24
Now when the high priest and the captain of the temple and the chief priests heard these things, they doubted of them whereunto this would grow. Now when the high priest and the captain of the temple and the chief priests heard these things, they doubted of them whereunto this would grow.
The verse belongs to the account of the disciples' bold witness after the rulers expected them to be discouraged and deny Jesus, yet through the Holy Spirit their words and works reflected Jesus' own. Their witness centered on Christ's crucifixion, resurrection, and ascension, and they triumphed over opposition through the strength of Christ and the word of God. That preaching was accompanied by signs, wonders, and miracles, with multitudes of men and women added to the Lord.
Those who doubted were the high priest and the captain of the temple and the chief priests, who were perplexed, uncertain, alarmed, astonished, and bewildered, wondering whereunto this would grow. Their perplexity came when they learned the prison was securely shut and locked but the apostles were gone through miraculous deliverance by God's angel. They were then found publicly teaching in the temple instead of in custody, with Peter delivered and preaching there.
Their perplexity was provoked not only by the escape but by a growing movement they could not control or suppress. The apostles kept preaching in the name of Jesus despite the order to stop, obeying God rather than men and testifying that God had raised and exalted Jesus. Their uncertainty did not turn them from opposition; they persisted in trying to suppress the work, were moved to anger and considered killing the apostles. Yet they feared the people and did not dare use violence, fearing that the apostles' growing influence would turn public anger against the rulers, make them answer for Jesus' death, and make it impossible to stir the people against the apostles.
Their doubting exposes a clash between oppressive human law forbidding preaching in the name of Jesus Christ and God's higher government that commands it. God proved He lives and rules and overrules by sending His angel with the command to go and make known His words, keeping His word preached, having officers bring Peter without violence before the council, and answering man's prohibition with obedience to God above men. In that clash Satan is always on the side of the oppressor who enforces human law by persecution, oppression, and bondage. The same spirit sets up the spurious Sunday sabbath and Sunday law, which has no sanctity in the Word of God, is set up against Christ, and enforces obedience by saying if you do not keep Sunday you will not buy or sell, from which God lives to deliver His people.
Their perplexity belongs to a work God will cause to triumph in the earth that cannot be hindered. Every hindrance, every exorbitant price exacted, every connivance of fraud, and every deceptive, oppressive, unjust dealing in the Lord's work brings the Lord's punishment and judgment upon the actors. This includes using lawyers to take advantage of circumstances and diverting His means into a wrong channel, just as surely as the death of Ananias and Sapphira for keeping back part of the price and lying to God.