Acts 1:6-8 Then they gathered around him and asked him, “Lord, are you at this time going to restore the kingdom to Israel?” He 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.”
Jesus said in previous verses
that the apostles would experience the baptism of the Holy Spirit in a few
days. This assertion drove them to pose another inquiry, believing that the
Messiah would set up His Millennial kingdom within a couple of days. The
Apostles had no clue that the Lord was about to set up His Church on earth and
not His eternal kingdom. The Old Testament did not specify any time frame
between the first and second coming of Christ Jesus. The Apostles believed that
the eternal kingdom of God that He would set up on earth would occur in their
lifetime. As we have seen in other places in the New Testament, the Apostles
thought that His earthly Kingdom would be an earthly political entity. They
envisioned a political body that would remove the Roman empire from the face of
the earth and put them in the seat of worldly power.
Jesus did not say that He was
not going to set up His eternal Kingdom on earth, but that it would be delayed
and set in the Father's Hands only. In this section of scripture, the words
were some of the last words spoken by Jesus before His arrest and subsequent
Crucifixion. Rather than rejecting that He would set up His eternal realm on
the earth, He told them that the time for that glorious event was not for them
to know. This message from Jesus means that the timing for His second coming is
not for anyone to know. Thus, we can count anyone that says they have figured
out the date of His second coming as a fraud.
Jesus offered a decisive
expression about the mistake of date setting, which is something that we are
not to know. Our Lord didn't reject that He would ultimately set up His eternal
kingdom on earth. Instead, he believed His followers and believers should
realize that He has another program called the Church, which isn't equivalent
to His final ascension to earth that will reestablish the paradisical state
that God initially set up.
Jesus assured the Apostles
that he would bestow the power on them that would allow them to be a witness
for Him throughout the earth. The power mentioned here is the power of the
indwelling of the Holy Spirit. The unlimited power that comes with the
indwelling of the Holy Spirit is given to us so that we can witness to those
that do not know Christ Jesus as their Lord and Savior. Some say," I can't
witness to people; I don't know what to say." The Holy Spirit comes to
everyone who truly accepts Christ Jesus as their Lord and Savior. The amount of
influence the Holy Spirit of God has on our lives is directly interconnected
with the degree of surrender we have given to God. The problem is that some
falsely believe that there are degrees of submission. There is only one degree
of surrender to the Holy Spirit of God, and that is complete and total
surrender. The nature of any surrendered believer and follower in Christ Jesus
should be a heart for the lost and a determination to bring the Gospel to them.
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