The Promise and the Preparation

"For the promise is unto you, and to your children, and to all that are afar off" (Acts 2:39)

The period of the promise of the Holy Spirit extends from John the Baptist, roughly, to the resurrection of our Lord Jesus.

The marks of it are these: that there were disciples, and they were commissioned and instructed, and they exercised their commission and the authority granted them by the Lord. They knew the Lord Jesus; they loved Him. They knew Him living, they knew Him and saw Him dead, and they saw Him risen again from the dead. All the time our Lord was with them He was busy creating expectation in them. He was telling His disciples that in spite of all they had and all the blessing that God the Father had given them, they were still to expect the coming of a new and superior kind of life ... an effusion of outpoured energy which they, at their best, did not yet enjoy.

Then our Lord rose from the dead and we have what we call the period of the preparation. They had stopped their activity at the specific command of the Lord. He said, "Tarry! You are about to receive that which has been promised..." Sometimes you are going farther when you are not going anywhere; you are moving faster when you are not moving at all.

Oh, my heart, be still before Him.

~A. W. Tozer~

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The Inner Evidence

"And ye shall know that I am in the midst ... and that I am the Lord your God, and none else: and my people shall never be ashamed" (Joel 2:27)

The period of realization came upon the waiting ones when the Father fulfilled His promise and sent the Spirit. God took religion from the realm of the external and made it internal. Our trouble is that  we are trying to confirm the truth of Christianity by an appeal to external evidence.

We are saying, "Well, look at this fellow. He can throw a baseball farther than anybody else and he is a Christian, therefore Christianity must be true." "Here is a great statesman who believes the Bible. Therefore, the Bible must be true."

We are all the way out on the wrong track, brother! That is not New Testament Christianity at all. That is a pitiful, whimpering, drooling appeal to the flesh. That never was the testimony of the New Testament, never the way God did things ... NEVER! The proof lies in an invisible, unseen but powerful energy that visits the human soul when the gospel is preached - the Holy Spirit!

The final flash that introduces your heart to Jesus must be by the illumination of the Holy Spirit Himself, or it isn't done at all.

~A. W. Tozer~