Acts 1

Chapter 1. The Dispensation of the SpiritHe said to them: “It is not for you to know the times or dates the Father has set by his own authority. But you will receive power when the Holy Spirit comes on you; and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth.” (Acts 1:7-8)The “Acts of the Apostles” has been variously called “The Acts of the Holy Spirit” and “The Acts of the Ascended Lord.” Both names are appropriate, much more appropriate, indeed, than the more ordinary title of “Acts of the Apostles.” This book records not only the first chapters of Church history, but the first acts of the Holy Spirit on earth and the ascended Lord in heaven. The Perspective It is important at the very outset that we should get the right projection of the dispensation of the Spirit—the perspective, as it were, of faith and hope as it looks out from Christ’s ascension to the close of the dispensation and the eternal purpose of God in redemption. In order to do this, there are three points that we must definitely and vividly fix in our thought and conception: first, the departing Lord; secondly, the returning Lord; thirdly, the descending Holy Spirit. These three points stand closely related to each other and can only be rightly understood when viewed in their mutual bearing.

Section I: the Departing Lord

Section I—the Departing LordThe opening verses of Acts give us the picture of His ascension. Foretold His Going

1. This had been definitely foretold by Him. “I came from the Father and entered the world”; again, “I am leaving the world and going back to the Father” (John 16:28), “It is for your good that I am going away…. If you loved me, you would be glad that I am going to the Father” (John 16:7; John 14:28). In these and many similar intimations, the Lord had prepared them for His departure, and made them understand that His work on earth was now finished and that His ascension was only part of His great redeeming plan. Preparations
2. His preparations for the ascension were deliberate and complete. He did not go with unseemly haste, but lingered for 40 days, meeting with them often and finishing all that remained of His prophetic ministry on earth before He assumed His priestly and kingly functions in the heavens. “He showed himself to these men and gave many convincing proofs that he was alive” (Acts 1:3). He left no doubt whatever of His identity, and He gave them full instructions concerning the kingdom of God. John tells us that if all the things He said had been recorded, the whole world could not contain the books that should be written. We may be sure then that the practice and example of the apostles, as recorded in the book of Acts, were covered by explicit directions from the Master’s lips in messages that have not come to us except as we can infer them from the manner in which the apostles themselves obeyed them. The Scene
3. The incidents of His departure were most impressive and glorious. Talking with them in His ordinary way, He had led them out as far as Bethany. Then, as if to close the little service, He raised His hands in benediction; but instead of disappearing as was His custom during the 40 days, with a calm, majestic power that neutralized without an effort the law of gravitation, He slowly began to rise before them, while His hands were still outstretched in blessing, His face beaming with love, and His lips, perhaps, still parted with farewell messages, until the vision of His majestic form grew more distant and dim in the receding space, and at length a floating cloud passed between and received Him out of their sight. Perhaps it was a cloud of angels awaiting Him as his escort. And as they steadfastly gazed, His blessed form appeared no more, but passed up into the heavens, while the next object that claimed their attention was a sudden message from two angelic beings who had dropped from that heavenly company to bring them yet one message more from their loving and departed Lord. Still the Same
4. His ascension did not change His person or character, for He distinctly sends them word that He is to remain “this same Jesus” (Acts 1:11) until they shall see Him again on His more glorious return. So in heaven where He dwells, He is still the old Christ of Galilee and Bethany, as human, as loving, as near to the race with whom He has become forever identified. Though now ascended upon high, He bends on earth a brother’s eye; Partaker of the human name, He knows the frailty of our frame. In every pang that rends the heart The Man of Sorrows has a part; He sympathizes with our grief, And to the sufferer sends relief. Still Working5. His ascension did not terminate His work, for Luke tells his friend, Theophilus, that his former treatise related only to those things which Jesus “began to do and to teach” (Acts 1:1). His present treatise, therefore, by inference, is to relate to the things which Jesus will continue to do and teach. Jesus’ ascension simply introduces another stage of His ministry. Now He officiates as our great High Priest and our sovereign Lord and King. Girded for constant service, He ever appears in the presence of God for us, and governs the universe with unceasing power and wisdom, as Head over all things for His body, the Church. Not for a moment is He idle or occupied with His own happiness. His ascension was as unselfish as His crucifixion, and He is finishing His glorious work and preparing the kingdom which He is soon to reveal to His waiting Bride. Where Is Heaven? Where did He go when He rose that day into the blue dome of heaven? While, undoubtedly, heaven is a character and state, it is just as surely also a place. There the real body of our living Lord resides, and there with Him are the actual spirits of the just made perfect, real subsistences and not ghostly shadows; persons who dwell somewhere and have a home as real as the earth they left. But which of yonder glorious worlds was the goal of that glorious journey? Was it the mighty “Arcturus and his sons,” that mightiest sun in yonder ether, or was it one of those marvelous systems which astronomy has revealed, where two suns revolve in their heavens, and while one has sunk beneath the horizon the other rises to its meridian and there is no night there? Or was it to one of those celestial empires where a group of colored suns sheds a radiance so glorious as to turn every object on which their light might fall into a flashing gem of untold beauty? Or was it one of those brilliant star clusters where the eye of the telescope can discern a thousand suns in a single system? Whither did He go from Bethany that day and where is the home of the ascended Lord? Is it possible to find an answer to our eager question from these pages of revelation? Above All Heavens There is one passage which tells us that “he ascended higher than all the heavens, in order to fill the whole universe” (Ephesians 4:10). Surely, that means that there is a sense in which all those glorious suns and stars are at His feet and around His throne, and yet that somehow He fills all the empires where their light and power extend with His presence and His actual consciousness. May this not be true? We know that the telephone and the telescope have practically annihilated distance, the one bringing the voices of the remotest regions to our side, the other bringing the distant heavenly bodies right into our immediate view. Now, suppose that in yonder heavenly world the inhabitants should have in their own brains, their ears, their eyes, their refined and perfect physical senses, all the powers of the telescope and the telephone, and this would not be hard; then, from that heavenly throne you could look out and see the most distant stars as if they were just at hand, and hear the farthest voices of the universe as distinctly as you hear the friend that is talking by your side. And thus all things would be gathered into unity together, and all the luminaries of the heavens become the lamps that light up the palace of the King, and all the voices of every planet and star one sublime harmony, one celestial chorus, ever rising in symphonies divine, and saying, as John heard every creature that was in heaven and in earth and under the earth saying, “To him who sits on the throne and to the Lamb be praise and honor and glory and power, for ever and ever!” (Revelation 5:13). If that is heaven, oh, how glorious it must be! Doubtless, that is the power Christ possesses now, and that makes it as easy for Him to bend His ear to our faintest cry as if He were still at Bethany. And that is the power which we one day shall share with Him when we behold His glory and shall be like Him, when we see Him as He is. Then we shall thank Him for His ascension just as much as for His lowly incarnation and His dying love.

Section II: the Returning Lord

Section II—the Returning LordHis Coming

1. But now upon our vision is projected another picture just as necessary to complete the conception of God’s perfect plan. It is the picture of the returning Lord. He had just disappeared from their view, and they were in danger of thinking that He had gone forever; therefore it is necessary to arouse them by another vision. And so, as they intently watch the distant and receding cloud, lo, two shining angels stand beside them, who speak to them as visitors from another world: “Men of Galilee,… why do you stand here looking into the sky? This same Jesus, who has been taken from you into heaven, will come back in the same way you have seen him go into heaven” (Acts 1:11). Just as when you have been sailing out of the harbor of New York on a distant ocean voyage, you have just said farewell to that beloved group on the dock and have seen their forms and faces and waving handkerchiefs fade in the dim distance, while your eyes grew more dim with tears, and suddenly you have been recalled to yourself by the steward telling you to get ready to send ashore whatever mail you had to give the pilot at Sandy Hook, and you realized that you had time to send one more parting message to your friends, and that brief but loving word was swiftly penned and sealed and sent, and in it you compressed your last and best message of love, until you should come again yourself. So the Lord was sailing out of the harbor of the terrestrial atmosphere into the great ocean of space, and He tarried a moment on the way to send these two angelic messengers with one more word of love. But that word, how important! For it was to mark the goal of all their future hopes and expectations, and to reveal something even more glorious than all He had taught them hitherto, namely: that His going away was but the prelude to His coming back again, and that the one key to all the problems of life, the one remedy for all the wrongs of time, the one solution of all the question of truth, the one outlook of faith and the one supreme goal of hope, was to be this blessed prospect and promise of His own literal and visible return. But first He tells them that He is coming back actually and literally. It is not to be fulfilled in their death or their closer union with Him, by the coming of the Holy Spirit or the spreading of His kingdom on earth, but He Himself is coming, and all the rest is but a preparation for the King.
2. He tells them that they shall see Him come. “This same Jesus… will come back in the same way you have seen him go into heaven” (Acts 1:11). It will be visible, personal, and beyond all possible mistake or confusion.
3. It will be the same Jesus that will come, arrayed, no doubt, in the majesty of the Father, the glory of the angels and the forces of the universe. He will still have the same form, the same face, the same loving heart, and we will know Him as our brother and our Christ. Our hearts will instantly and instinctively recognize Him and reach out to Him in the presence of His majesty, even as we do when He comes to dwell in the heart, its welcome Guest.
4. He will come as He went away. And how did He go away? He went away blessing them, with His hands extended in benediction. So will He come again with those arms stretched out in greeting to welcome us to His breast. Oh, not in terror, not in judgment, not as the dread Avenger is Jesus coming! Banish from your hearts these unscriptural and unbelieving specters. It is the Bridegroom that is coming. Let us love His appearing. Let us be preparing to welcome Him with joy and not with grief. This, then, is the goal of prophecy and the outlook of faith. Now place these two points clearly in your spiritual view like the two centers of a great ellipse, and you will be prepared for the next point.

Section III: the Descending Holy Spirit

Section III—the Descending Holy SpiritHis Relation to Christ’s Coming The Holy Spirit comes, not to be the final factor in the Christian dispensation, but as a temporary administration: first, to finish Christ’s earthly work, and secondly, to prepare the way for His second coming. But we are not prepared to understand the coming of the Spirit until we first see these two clear points—the departing and returning Lord—and between them, like a parenthesis, the dispensation of the Holy Spirit to follow the one and herald the other. The business therefore, of the Holy Spirit, and the Church through which He operates, is to bring Christ back again, and so to complete the ministry which He began on earth that He can come to bring its final stage in the setting up of His millennial kingdom on the very place where He was rejected and crucified. Having understood this, the place of the Spirit’s dispensation, let us look at the promise of the Spirit as given us by the departing Lord. A Person

1. He was to be a Person as real as Christ Himself. It is not something that we receive from God in this deeper life, but Somebody who comes to make Himself known to us, to make Himself real to us, and to be in us the source of all strength and happiness. Power
2. He was to come as the Spirit of power. Man is the weakest of beings, weaker than his own sinful nature, weaker than the elements around him, weaker even than the brutes over whom he was sent to exercise dominion. But the Holy Spirit comes to give him power, to make his life effectual, and when the Holy Spirit comes into our life He does something. He accomplishes something. He is more than a sentiment, a feeling, a fancy. He is an infinite force that makes our life powerful, and enables us to accomplish all for which we are called as the disciples of Christ. It is power over sin, power over self, power over the world, power over sickness, power over Satan, power to be, to do, to suffer and to overcome. In Us
3. The Holy Spirit does not work apart from us. The Master died and trod the wine press alone, single-handed, and went to the dragon’s den and destroyed him. But the Holy Spirit is not like Christ. We are His temple. He resides in us and works through us, and unless we yield ourselves to be His instruments, He is unable to carry out His supreme purposes, and the great exalted Head is like a man with a paralyzed body that refuses to perform the functions for which that brain has power sufficient, but the paralyzed members are unequal to the effort. Therefore, the Spirit claims us as the subjects of His working. Witnesses
4. The Spirit’s power is to be shown chiefly in our witnessing for Christ. That is the form of our service. We are not to witness of truth merely, not to become wise and wonderful orators or teachers, but we are to be witnesses of Him. I do not know how to express this better than to say that our business is to make Jesus real to men, so to live and so to speak that they shall see in us and through us a power and a Presence that will make them long for the same loving and almighty help in their lives. Thus to minister Christ to men is the highest service to which we can be called, and the most helpful thing we can do for weak and erring men. Aggressive Work
5. The sphere of their ministry was to be an ever-expanding one: “in Jerusalem, and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth” (Acts 1:8). Of course, we cannot now stop to follow this widening circle as the apostolic Church followed it through their great missionary campaign until the whole inhabited world had received the message of Christ. This remarkable verse is just a table of contents of the whole book of Acts, and the chapters that follow are the best commentary upon it, as successively we see the gospel planted first in Jerusalem, then throughout all Judea, next in Samaria, and finally in the remotest heathen nations. Doubtless, also, we have here a hint for the individual Christian, of the Spirit-filled life and service that will always begin at home, our Jerusalem; and then reach out to our relatives (“all Judea”); and next find its way to our very enemies, those farther removed from us and having, perhaps, no natural claim upon us—Samaria; and then finally will lead us out in sympathy and service to be in some sense missionaries to the very heathen lands and send the gospel to the uttermost part of the earth. Tarry
6. They were to tarry for this baptism of power. Without it they must not attempt their work, nor must we. If the Lord Himself would not begin His earthly ministry until He had received the baptism of the Holy Spirit, how much less dare we presume to go forth in our own strength and represent Him! Why should they need to tarry? First, perhaps because the fullness of the time must first come, and the Pentecostal hour which, according to the Hebrew calendar, was to be interpreted and fulfilled in the coming of the Spirit, should have arrived. But secondly, and doubtless much more probably, because they themselves were not ready, and the waiting days were necessary for their spiritual preparation, to bring them to the end of themselves, to show them their need, to give them time to search their hearts, to deepen the hunger and the longing which were necessary for them to appreciate the blessing, and to make full room and right of way in their hearts for His indwelling and outworking. And so let us wait for the promise of the Father. Let us receive in all His fullness the blessed Holy Spirit; and if any reader has not yet proved this promise true, be encouraged, dear friend, to follow even the dim light that is now shining in your heart, even the faintest longing that is springing in your soul. No words that we could speak would make you understand this experience until it comes to you. If there is within you a sense of something that you need and do not have—a cry for God in some way to give you purity, victory, power and rest—that is the blessing already begun. If you follow on to know the Lord, then surely will you know Him. He would never give you that longing desire and disappoint it when you came to tarry at His feet. Wait for the promise of the Father, “Seek the Lord while he may be found; call on him while he is near” (Isaiah 55:6), and “you will receive power when the Holy Spirit comes on you; and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth” (Acts 1:8).