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CHAPTER VII.

HISTORY OF ST. JOHN IN THE ACTS OF THE APOSTLES.

RETURNS TO JERUSALEM TO AWAIT THE PROMISE OF THE SPIRIT.GALILEE NO LONGER HIS HOME.-APOSTLES ASSEMBLED IN THE UPPER ROOM.-ST. JOHN AND THE MOTHER OF JESUS.-MARY DISAPPEARS FROM HISTORY.-MATTHIAS ELECTED AN APOSTLE. DAY OF PENTECOST. APOSTLES IN ONE OF THE STOAS OF THE TEMPLE.-TONGUES OF FLAME. -THREE THOUSAND CONVERTED.-ST. JOHN ENGAGED IN EVANGELIC WORK.-ITS EFFECT ON HIM. MIRACLE AT THE GATE BEAUTIFUL OF THE TEMPLE.-ST. JOHN'S FIRST IMPRISONMENT.-ARRAIGNED THE HIGH-PRIEST.-SECOND TIME IMPRISONED. THE WORK ADVANCING. -MISSION OF ST. JOHN AND ST. PETER ΤΟ

BEFORE

SAMARIA.-TIBERIUS.

CALIGULA.-AGRIPPA I.—PUBLIUS.-PETRONIUS.-CLAUDIUS.-MARTYRDOM OF ST. JAMES.-ANTIOCH.-THE JEWISH PARTY.- -COUNCIL AT JERUSALEM. -ST. JOHN A PILLAR OF THE CHURCH.

ON the spot where His sacred feet last rested, John bowed, and worshipped the ascended Saviour. He then returned with his companions into the city, there to await, agreeably to the direction, the promise of the Spirit to be received from Him. Daily he resorted

with them to the temple, praising and blessing God. He had seen His open sepulchre; he had seen Him ascend; and he knew that He was entered into His glory, and was able to fulfil His promise, "I will not leave you comfortless; I will come unto you."

Galilee, so long hallowed by the presence and deeds of Jesus, is no more the apostles' home. They are to obey the command, “Go ye into all the world;" but Jerusalem is for the present to be their headquarters, and to be made the centre of the great movement. When they were come in they went up into an upper room: was it the same in which they had partaken of the Passover, and the Lord's Supper, already consecrated by the farewell words of their crucified and ascended Lord ?1 Here were all the eleven, not one

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1 Tò iπepov, the upper chamber. It was not an apartment in the temple, as some of the earlier interpreters supposed, but belonged probably to the private residence of some friend of Jesus. The article, the upper room, Dr. J. Addison Alexander thinks, refers to something previously mentioned, or already known. This is altogether natural if we suppose them to have still frequented the same upper room, in which they had partaken of the Passover, and which had been designated by the Lord in a remarkable manner (Matt. xxvi. 18; Mark xiv. 15; Luke xxii. 12). This is much more probable than that they had procured another

missing, Peter, James, John, Andrew, Philip, Bartholomew, Thomas, Matthew, James son of Alpheus, Simon Zelotes, and Judas the brother of James. And they continued, with the most perfect unanimity of feeling and sentiment, from day to day, in prayer and supplication. The pious women, who had been so faithful to Christ, in His life and death, were admitted to the privileges of this little assembly. Among them were Salome the mother of John, Mary the mother of Jesus, and Mary the mother of James the less. This is the last time the name of the mother of our Lord occurs in the New Testament history. John had received the charge from the lips of the Saviour, dying on the cross," Son, behold thy mother!" He cheerfully accepted it, for he tells us 2 that from that hour he took her to his own home. His father, Zebedæus, who had been possessed of property, was probably deceased; and it would seem that John already had a house, or was able to provide one, in Jerusalem. It was not with the beloved disciple as with his Master, who had not where to lay His head. To his home he took Mary, that "blessed among women"; and with what filial devotion he provided for her wants, soothed her sorrows, and smoothed her pathway to the tomb! According to one tradition, she died early in Jerusalem; according to another, she accompanied John when he removed to Ephesus, and died there at an advanced age. But whether her stay on earth was longer or shorter, she never had occasion to suspect that her confidence in the words, "Behold thy son!" had been misplaced. It is a most striking comment on the position the Church of Rome assigns to her, that she fills so small a space both in inspired and in uninspired history. She retires from the stage of human affairs, disappearing in the family circle of the beloved apostle, and nothing is known of the events of her subsequent life, nor of the circumstances and period of her death.

As the apostles continue, day after day, in prayer and supplication, in the upper room, and in their visits to the temple, praising and blessing God, they are led to take notice of the gap in their number, occasioned by the defection of Judas Iscariot. In order to complete

place for their assemblies, either in a private house, or in the precincts of the temple. Even supposing that they could have been accommodated in one of the chambers or small houses which surrounded the courts of the temple, they could have had no reason for preferring it to one already consecrated by the presence and farewell words of their ascended Master." See Alexander on The Acts, in loco.

Acts i. 13, 14. J. A. Alexander thinks there is no express reference to the women that accompanied Him from Galilee, but that, according to a strict translation, the meaning is that there were women as well as men in the assembly; i.e., it was not confined to either sex.

2 John xix. 27.

their number as originally constituted, the disciples in and around Jerusalem are called together. They assembled to the number of about one hundred and twenty. Peter takes the lead. He is spokesman, as on former occasions in their intercourse with their Master, not on account of any superiority or primacy, as of right belonging to him, but probably on account of his age, and his character for ready action. John must of course have taken a deep interest in the important transaction; but if he is less conspicuous here, and throughout the history of the Acts, than Peter, it must be remembered how much he was his junior, and how closely they were associated, insomuch that the acts and words of the one may almost be regarded as the acts and words of the other. With solemn prayer, Matthias was chosen to fill the place "from which Judas by transgression fell, that he might go to his own place." 1

Fifty days after the resurrection of Christ, ten days after His ascension, something very wonderful occurred in the temple at Jerusalem. The city was full of people. There were assembled representatives of the Jews who had settled among the different nations of the earth. They were men of a serious or devout class, who had come to be present at Jerusalem on the occasion of a great religious festival. Some had come from the regions adjacent to the Caspian Sea, and from the borders of the ancient Persian empire; others from the countries lying between the rivers Tigris and Euphrates; others from the shores of the Egean Sea; others came from Arabia; others from Africa; and others still from Rome, the capital of the world. 2 The festival they had come to attend occurred at the end of seven weeks, or a week of weeks, from the second day of the Passover, and hence was called the feast of weeks. In the time of the apostles, it had

1 Acts i. 24-26. The view has been advocated by Stier and others, that Paul was the true twelfth apostle, and that the appointment of Matthias was in opposition to the will of God. The circumstance that the labours of Matthias as an apostle are not mentioned no more proves that he was not an apostle, than the silence in respect to several of the twelve proves that they were not apostles. Paul never claimed that he was one of the twelve, but makes a distinction between them and himself, as in 1 Cor. xv. 5. Matthias must have been, according to what is implied in Peter's address, a constant attendant of Christ from the begining to His resurrection and ascension. Some have conjectured that he was one of the seventy disciples sent forth by Jesus, and there is nothing unreasonable in the suggestion.

2 Even Judæa is introduced into this catalogue of foreign names. Olshausen adduces the circumstance that St. Luke, writing probably from Rome, considered the geographical position of Judæa from the point of view at Rome, rather than Jerusalem. Bengel and Meyer account for its insertion from the fact that the dialect of Galilee was different from that of Judæa, and this dialect was that of the speaker.

received the name of Pentecost, or fiftieth; i.e., it was the feast of the fiftieth day after the second day of the Passover. According to a tradition of the Jews, it commemorated the giving of the law on Sinai with fire from heaven. They had come to worship the God of their fathers in the capital of their nation. Probably they had been present at the preceding Passover, and had remained, or had been. "dwelling," at Jerusalem in the meantime. first occasion on which some of this host of pilgrims had visited the holy city. It was to be ever memorable to thousands of them, and in the history of the Church and the world.

It may have been the

And when the day of Pentecost was fully come, the disciples were all, with the same delightful accord, or union, in one place. The place probably was the temple, to which the apostles, since the ascension, had been in the habit of daily resorting for praising and blessing God. They knew the relation which this great festival had to the giving of the law by Moses; and the public ceremonials would not only draw them, but lead them to protract their stay at the temple; so that the place in which they were gathered was most probably one of the oratories, or stoas, which occupied the upper range of the inner court of the temple. They were full of expectation, awaiting the advent of the promised Comforter from the Father. To the great mass of the inhabitants of Jerusalem, and to the throng of strangers, they were unnoticed and unknown; or, if not altogether unknown, they were regarded as of very little account.

2

Suddenly, there came a sound from heaven as of a rushing mighty wind, which filled the apartment, and lambent flames, like tongues of fire, playing around, lighted upon each of them. Now were fulfilled the words of their great Master. The Comforter had come. The awful rush as of that mighty wind and the tongues of fire were the sensible signs, addressed to their eyes and ears, of the presence of the Holy Spirit. The old law on Mount Sinai was given amid darkness, tempest, and fire, and thunders, which shook the mountain; and now as the Church was about to be reorganized, on the basis of a new and better covenant, this assembly, representing the body of believers, hear the sound as of a mighty breathing about them, and see the flashing of flames, which in the shape of tongues alight on each of them. These

1 Acts ii.

2"Apvw, unexpectedly. The disciples were not looking for anything so extraordinary. It is not said that a wind or tempest accompanied the manifestation, but that there was xos, a sound as of a mighty rushing wind or breathing, voñs. The common impression that the tongues were divided into two or more is not sustained by the original, as the word diaμepicóuevo means distributed; i.e., the pointed tongue-like flames were distributed upon each of them.

external sensible signs of spiritual influence were followed by the influence itself: "they were all filled with the Holy Ghost, and began to speak with other tongues, as the Spirit gave them utterance." Their speaking in languages different from their own, and previously unknown, was miraculous, and another sign of the presence of a Divine power. The design of this gift was not merely to facilitate the preaching of the gospel; it served, like any other miracle, but with a special propriety and force, to prove the reality of an extraordinary spiritual influence. "And it served as a symbol to prefigure the vocation of the Gentiles, whose exclusion from the Church, or chosen people, had been typified of old by a corresponding prodigy, the miraculous confusion of tongues at Babel. As the moral unity of mankind had been then lost, it was now to be restored by the preaching of the gospel to all nations." 1

2

The body of the disciples, on whom the tongues of flame were sitting, and who were speaking with other tongues, so that the multitude, composed as it was of men speaking so many different languages, heard them speak every man in his own language, became of course at once the centre of attraction. They were filled with astonishment, as well they might be, when they heard these Galileans address them every man in his own tongue, wherein he was born. There was a general exclamation, "What meaneth this?" But some tried to make light of it, and said, "These men are full of new wine." "3 But Peter, with the eleven, stood up, and addressing the multitude, showed them that what had occurred was the fulfilment of a signal prophecy of Joel, and demonstrated, in a discourse of great power, the Messiahship of Jesus. The hundred and twenty, who appear to have shared in the gift of tongues, scattered among the crowd, probably acted as interpreters, so that every man might be able to understand the purport of the discourse. Or the meaning may be, that in whatever language Peter spoke, every man heard him

1 Alexander on Acts, in loco.

To say that they only preached and prayed with a flow of language, and fervour entirely new to them, or that their tongues "now became the organs of the Holy Ghost" (Baumgarten), is inconsistent with the following narrative, where men from distant countries are represented as hearing every man in his own tongue, wherein he was born. Bloomfield well remarks that there is no phraseology in Pindar himself more lyrical than the high-wrought figure thus ascribed to a plain prose narration.

3 FλEÚKOVS, sweet, rather than new-made, wine. It denotes a fermented wine in which the sweetness was retained. The word is used in the Sept. version (Job xxxii. 19) for the common Hebrew word for wine, where the reference to fermentation is essential to the meaning. Athenæus, a physician and voluminous writer, supposed to have lived in the first century after Christ, uses the word in the same sense. See Rob. Lex. N. T.