When A Stranger knocks on our door and asks to come in and speak to us, the first thing we want to know is who he is and whether he has sufficient identification. We found out many years ago that when doing door-to-door preaching, you had a much better chance of being received if you were presentably dressed and had a large Bible prominently displayed in your hands (obviously we were not alone in using this tactic!). In a very real sense, the unmistakably visible Bible was our credential and it opened many a door.
What did one have to do in the first century to open the eyes and ears of people to the gospel message?
Miracles certified the gospel
We have already seen that the miracles of our Lord Jesus Christ were intended to demonstrate to the Jews, beyond the shadow of a doubt, that he was their promised Messiah. In the same manner, our Lord sent forth his disciples door-to-door (Luke 10:7) throughout the land of Israel to teach the good tidings of the kingdom of God. He sent not only the twelve (Matt. 10:1; Mark 6:7) but also on another occasion a larger contingent of seventy disciples to spread the “good tidings” throughout the land.
They were all vested with the power to heal mental and physical illnesses and, no doubt, performed countless miracles on their preaching tour. This power to heal in the name of Jesus Christ was their calling card, it was their credential, and it served to confirm the veracity of their teaching.
Sometimes people who are not thoroughly familiar with the scriptures are surprised to learn that the disciples could perform miracles of healing long before they received the gifts of the holy spirit on the day of Pentecost. Nevertheless, that is precisely what occurred. The power of the Lord God Almighty has always existed and indeed it is evident from the very first few lines of scriptures how awesome and wonderful it is: And the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters. And God said, Let there be light: and there was light (Gen. 1:2,3).
Not an easy job
When the disciples were sent forth to preach to the four corners of the land of Israel, they were prepared for the task with a most stirring exhortation by the Lord: Go now, and remember that I am sending you out as lambs among wolves. Don’t take any money with you, or a beggar’s bag, or even an extra pair of shoes. And don’t waste time along the way’ (Luke 10:3).
The preaching of the gospel was not to be a cushy job! One could not insist on living a good middle class lifestyle, at least by first century standards, and still serve our Lord. If one wished to dine at an opulent table, or maintain a few camels in the stable to ride the preaching circuit, or keep perhaps a nice home with a servant or two to do the laundry and cooking, then one could not follow Jesus. There was both an urgency and a sense of total dedication that went with the preaching of the gospel message. If that were true at the time of the ministry of our Lord Jesus Christ, how much greater must we be committed in these latter days?
The disciples also faced the strong possibility of violent opposition to their preaching. When a lamb is among wolves it is surely the lamb that is eaten! Most often our preaching is met with apathy in this day and age, but it might not always be the case as brethren and sisters living in some areas of the world have experienced even in our own times. Radical religious fundamentalism is on the rise throughout the world and we should be prepared; for the time may yet come to pass when we may all be sheep among wolves.
The need for faith
Even with the miraculous powers that the Lord Jesus Christ gave the disciples, there was still a strong element of faith needed on their part to get the job done. On at least one occasion they failed (Matt.17:15-20). The mentally ill (possibly epileptic) boy could not be cured by the disciples, even with the powers that had been given them. In their puzzlement they asked: Why could not we cast him out? (v. 19) The answer to their question was: Because of your unbelief (v. 20).
God cannot work with us if we lack faith, just as the disciples failed to fully utilize their healing powers in the absence of complete confidence. All the knowledge we may acquire will be of little value if we cannot apply it to the work of the Lord. Once our Lord Jesus was no longer on earth to, in a sense, “bail out” failed situations, something more powerful had to be vested in his disciples if the gospel were to succeed to the ends of the earth. The time would come for the disciples when faith and power would be given them in far greater measure. That occurred on the day of Pentecost when they received the holy spirit.
The language problem
In our own times the Bible is available in almost every language spoken on this planet. Almost anyone can learn a foreign language with some effort (easier for some than for others!) if he so desires. There are language schools, libraries, tapes, disks and books on linguistics readily available to help the gospel preacher. There are places, even in the world today, where the gospel is being taught to people who cannot read and write even in their own languages, let alone in English.
Nevertheless, being taught in a language the listener can understand is the minimum required to communicate the Word of God. How shall they believe in him of whom they have not heard? and how shall they hear without a preacher? (Rom. 10:14).
The gifts of the holy spirit guaranteed that men of humble and unschooled background, such as the apostles, could effectively preach the Gospel message in any language (Acts 2:1-11). It is only in very recent times that anything approaching such a miracle has been carried out at places such as the United Nations. At the UN simultaneous translations are provided to all delegates through interpreters speaking via closed circuit transmission (though there is certainly considerable doubt whether or not understanding is also conveyed by this technology!)
The focused power of God
The holy spirit gifts involved much more than merely foreign language skills. The work of the apostles was to plant, nurture, and grow a new worldwide community encompassing every people, kindred, nation, and tongue based on the gospel message. To do this they needed impeccable credentials. So they were given the “holy spirit.”
What exactly did this mean given that the expression does not seem to be used in the Old Testament at all?
One way to imagine the scriptural usage of the term “holy spirit” is to think in terms of an analogy with the power of the sun. The sunlight that bathes this planet provides the energy for all life in a general sense, but when we focus this sunlight with a magnifying glass we concentrate its power and can readily ignite a fire. In an analogous sense, the holy spirit is the power of God focused for a specific purpose.
Several of the gifts that the holy spirit endowed are outlined by the apostle Paul in I Corinthians 12:4-10: 1) wisdom, 2) knowledge, 3) faith, 4) healings, 5) miracles, 6) prophecy, 7) discerning of spirits, 8) speaking languages and 9) interpreting languages. This brief article cannot possibly do justice to all the manifold ways in which these gifts were used in the first century to spread the word of God throughout the ancient world. Nevertheless, there can be no doubt as to the success of the enterprise and to this day historians still marvel at how Christianity conquered the Roman Empire, not with the sword, but with the power of an idea.
The gifts given
A closer look at the listing of the gifts of the holy spirit reveals several important concepts. First of all, receiving the holy spirit did not mean that a person was endowed with all nine of these attributes: one is given by the Spirit the word of wisdom; to another the word of knowledge by the same Spirit (I Cor. 12:8). It would also appear that at least some measure of the holy spirit gifts may have been given to each one in the first generation of the ecclesia of God: the Spirit is given to every man to profit with a P (v. 7).
The various gifts of the holy spirit were used at sundry times by the Apostles, and passed on to the first generation of the Christian community to firmly establish the ecclesia of God. There is evidence in Acts and the epistles of the application of all the gifts of the holy spirit at one time or another.
There is, of course, the obvious knowledge and wisdom evident in the writings themselves, which in a very real sense has made us, and all others who will have read the scriptures, at the very least the indirect beneficiaries of the holy spirit that was bestowed upon the apostolic authors (II Peter 1:21).1The faith of the apostles is also without question. If historical tradition is any guide at all, it provides sufficient proof that these men suffered incredibly for their beliefs and yet never wavered.
Some raised to life
The healings that the apostles performed were powerful evidence of their ministry. This is especially true of the instances where people were restored to life. Miracles of this nature were a direct legacy of the work of the Lord Jesus Christ. Just as the restoration to life of Lazarus was the ultimate demonstration of the power of God vested in Jesus over life and death, even so the revival of Dorcas and Eutychus to life provided an indisputable proof that verified the message spoken by Peter and Paul.
In the case of Dorcas, there is no question that she was assuredly dead for the scriptures say: Her friends prepared her for burial … (Acts 9:37). In other words, her body was most probably tightly wrapped in a linen grave shroud, just as we found earlier with Lazarus. Peter was a distance away at Joppa and it would have taken perhaps a day at least for the message to get down to him and for him to walk back to Lydda. Again this distinct delay in ministering to the apparerently dead Sis. Dorcas is similar to what transpired prior to the earlier miracle at Bethany and makes it clear that there was to be no doubt about her demise. This was not to be revival from a comatose state, which would have been miraculous enough, but clearly we are meant to understand from the wealth of detail in the narrative that she was certainly dead.
Peter speaks the words: “Get up, Dorcas” and she immediately responds just as Jesus had spoken the simple command: “Come forth, Lazarus” and straightly he came out of the tomb. Finally, the large body of mourners for Dorcas became happy witnesses of this great miracle, which was quite the opposite of the disbelief displayed by the contingent of elders who had experienced the restoration to life of Lazarus.
No longer was there any doubt in the mind of the apostle Peter; his actions are those of a completely trusting and faithful man. Denial was in the past and the man who earlier had wavered in his faith to the point of thrice denying his Lord, now performs the ultimate miracle of snatching life from death. This was the working of the holy spirit.
Cessation of the gifts
We can certainly appreciate the miracles that the apostles, and their immediate successors, performed through the power of the holy spirit in the first century AD. What happened to the holy spirit gifts since that time? The answer to this question has at times been a matter of some controversy.
When the children of Israel left Egypt, sojourned in the wilderness and eventually entered the land, the age of miracles, which had lasted from Moses to Joshua, ended. From time to time in the Old Testament occasional miracles occurred, but clearly the age of wonders for the whole nation no longer existed. In ages past God did not, in a sense, put on a continual display of visible power. The miracles during the Exodus period are referred to again and again in the Old Testament record and clearly, faith in their actual occurrence was expected of succeeding generations (Deut. 32:7). A parallel situation exists with the gospel record and the age of the apostles.
We can also examine the nine gifts of the holy spirit and rely on our experience to see if they are still bestowed in our present age. We may ask ourselves: have we ever known any brethren gifted with perfect interpretation of prophecy, or have we witnessed someone being baptized and immediately demonstrating a genius level of knowledge? Has the wisdom of the scriptures suddenly changed a person who was without any common sense, or have we experienced anyone instantly speaking and/or understanding a foreign language that they have never studied? Most of all, has anyone, since Peter restored Dorcas and Paul restored Eutychus, ever raised someone from the dead?
The answer to all these queries must be an emphatic, no! This is precisely what the apostle said would come to pass: All the special gifts and powers from God will someday come to an end, but love goes on forever. Someday prophecy, and speaking in unknown languages, and special knowledge—these gifts will disappear (I Cor. 13:8)2.
That doesn’t mean that specific miracles have never happened since the age of the apostles for we know that: The effectual fervent prayer ofa righteous man availeth much (James 5:16). If our faith is sufficient, and the Lord God deems it so, some very wonderful things can and have happened. Nevertheless, these are exceptions and the idea of any individual, let alone a whole community, having the holy spirit power to perform miracles today is clearly contrary to unbiased experience and to plain scripture.
Bearing these things in mind ought to humble us, since none among us has ever had a holy spirit gift. Therefore, let us be extremely careful not to be dogmatic, as we sometimes can be, about prophecy and even on occasion about other relatively minor nuances of Bible teaching.
Our brother or sister doesn’t have to be a photo copy of ourselves to be loved and cherished as if he/she were our own flesh and blood. Let nothing be done through strife or vainglory; but in lowliness of mind let each esteem other better than themselves (Phil. 2:3).
The Origin of the Organic World – Part One