Bestowal of the Spirit of Truth

194:1.1The apos­tles had been in hid­ing for forty days. This day hap­pened to be the Jew­ish fes­ti­val of Pen­te­cost, and thou­sands of vis­i­tors from all parts of the world were in Je­ru­sa­lem. Many ar­rived for this feast, but a ma­jor­ity had tar­ried in the city since the Pass­over. Now these fright­ened apos­tles emerged from their weeks of seclu­sion to ap­pear boldly in the tem­ple, where they be­gan to preach the new mes­sage of a risen Mes­siah. And all the dis­ci­ples were like­wise con­scious of hav­ing re­ceived some new spir­i­tual en­dow­ment of in­sight and power.

194:1.2It was about two o’clock when Pe­ter stood up in that very place where his Mas­ter had last taught in this tem­ple, and de­liv­ered that im­pas­sioned ap­peal which re­sulted in the win­ning of more than two thou­sand souls. The Mas­ter had gone, but they sud­denly dis­cov­ered that this story about him had great power with the peo­ple. No won­der they were led on into the fur­ther procla­ma­tion of that which vin­di­cated their for­mer de­vo­tion to Je­sus and at the same time so con­strained men to be­lieve in him. Six of the apos­tles par­tic­i­pated in this meet­ing: Pe­ter, An­drew, James, John, Philip, and Mat­thew. They talked for more than an hour and a half and de­liv­ered mes­sages in Greek, He­brew, and Ara­maic, as well as a few words in even other tongues with which they had a speak­ing ac­quain­tance.

194:1.3The lead­ers of the Jews were as­tounded at the bold­ness of the apos­tles, but they feared to mo­lest them be­cause of the large num­bers who be­lieved their story.

194:1.4By half past four o’clock more than two thou­sand new be­liev­ers fol­lowed the apos­tles down to the pool of Siloam, where Pe­ter, An­drew, James, and John bap­tized them in the Mas­ter’s name. And it was dark when they had fin­ished with bap­tiz­ing this mul­ti­tude.

194:1.5Pen­te­cost was the great fes­ti­val of bap­tism, the time for fel­low­ship­ping the pros­e­lytes of the gate, those gen­tiles who de­sired to serve Yah­weh. It was, there­fore, the more easy for large num­bers of both the Jews and be­liev­ing gen­tiles to sub­mit to bap­tism on this day. In do­ing this, they were in no way dis­con­nect­ing them­selves from the Jew­ish faith. Even for some time af­ter this the be­liev­ers in Je­sus were a sect within Ju­daism. All of them, in­clud­ing the apos­tles, were still loyal to the es­sen­tial re­quire­ments of the Jew­ish cer­e­mo­nial sys­tem.