Your Sons & Daughters Shall Prophesy - Prophetic Gifts Today In The New Testament Church

Prophets and Prophecy in the Book of Acts

I remembered the word of the Lord, how He used to say, "John baptized with water, but you shall be baptized with the Holy Spirit." If God there fore gave to them the same gift as He gave to us also after believing in the Lord Jesus Christ, who was I that I could stand in God's way?"' This occasion in the house of Cornelius the Roman centurion was the first time the Holy Spirit was poured out on Gentiles, and it happened even as the apostle to the Jews was speaking. These Romans spoke with tongues and glorified God, just as the Jews had done previously (2:4, 11), and probably also the Samaritans (8:14-18). Later Peter gave his eyewitness account to some of the nervous, con cerned Jewish leaders in Jerusalem, making several important points: • The prophetic experience of the Holy Spirit was no longer restricted to Jewish Christians; the door was now open to Gentile believers as well. • Peter and his friends knew that the Romans were undergoing the same experience because they heard them speak with tongues and exalt God, just as the Jews had done on the Day of Pentecost. • Peter remembered how Jesus "used to say" (that is, it was a repeated topic) that they would be baptized with the Holy Spirit; and Peter apparently believed that the Jews at Jerusalem and the Romans at Caesarea had just experienced what Jesus had foretold. Luke's casual introduction of prophets seems to confirm the com monality of this ministry in the early Church. These prophets were not aimless wanderers but ministers who traveled to certain places to exer cise their prophetic gifts in particular ways. 14 This was possibly a prophetic team of elders with Agabus in charge, sent from the church in Jerusalem. When Agabus began to "signify"-that is, to show by sign or to give a sign 15 or to indicate "by the Spirit"-that there would be a great famine, he was actually performing prophetic ministry, bringing a message orig inated by the Holy Spirit. The Church and the other prophets judged the prophecy dependable, probably relying more on the character of Agabus than on the unknown circumstances, for they then received contributions to send to their brothers in Judea. 201 ■ Agabus and His Team (11:27-28) "Some prophets came down from Jerusalem to Antioch. And . . . Agabus stood up and began to indicate by the Spirit that there would cer tainly be a great famine all over the world."