This new way of thinking gave Peter a new con- ception of his mission. Now he, and the other disciples, must make haste in gathering members for the new Kingdom. Actuated by the genuinely altruistic motive of mediating this new knowledge to their Jewish kinsmen, and desiring to fulfil as quickly as possible the conditions preliminary to the Kingdom's coming, they began a vigorous preaching activity to propagate the new faith. Whatever doubts may be entertained regarding the verbal accuracy of the speeches of Peter recorded in Acts, the accuracy of the main content is hardly to be disputed, so far at least as the interpretation of Jesus' Messiahship is concerned. Here we have a primitive stage of thinking, when the e.xpectation of the Coming is vivid, and when Christians have not yet come to see — as they did in later times — that Jesus had made an adequate display of His Messiahship while He was still upon earth. In these early discourses of Peter attention is fixed upon the future : the real manifestation of the Messiah is an afTair of the future, and the Jews are exhorted to repent so that God may send Jesus to discharge His full Messianic functions (Ac 3"'-). While upon earth He had been a 'Servant' — a highly honoured messenger of God — who conducted a propaganda of preparatory prophetic preacliing (Ac 3"- '--"^) ; He had been a ' man approved of God by mighty works and wonders and signs, which God did by him ' (Ac 2'^-), the great and ultimate sign of Divine approval being the elevation of Jesus to a position of heavenly Messianic dignity and lord-
ship through the Resurrection (2^). Since the Messiah's coming awaited the restoration of all things (3-'), Peter threw himself energetically into the task of preaching the restorative message. Henceforth this constituted, both for him and for his companions, their great mission, and in this propaganda Peter was undoubtedly the leader. The general situation described in Acts is corro- borated by St. Paul when he atlirms that Peter had been especially equipped for carry ing on the work of Jewish missions (Gal 2').
Peter's equipment consisted not merely in some new command received from the Risen Lord, or in a new stock of Messianic beliefs ; he now possessed a new power, an endowment by the Holy Spirit, as the first believers called it. 1 his phase of the new community's life, as described in the Pentecostal experience of Ac 2, has doubtless been somewhat formalized ; but that the early disciples, in the glow of their new faith in the Risen Lord, did experience an elation of feeling which sometimes expressed itself in ecstasy and the performance of miracles, seems beyond question. * In Jewisli think- ing the work of the Holy Spirit had already come to be very closely associated with the Messiah and His Kingdom. Isaiah had pictured the ideal ruler as one who would be richly endowed by the Spirit (IP 41' 61"f-), and Joel (2^''-) predicted, among the displays to precede the advent of the Messianic Age, an outpouring of the Spirit upon all Hesh, equipping the sons and daughters of Israel with power to prophesy and inspiring dreams and visions in the old and young. Later Jewish Messianic literature retained and heightened this empliasis upon the functions of the Spirit. Enoch repre- sented the Messiah as a spiritually endowed being (49'"' 62-), and according to the Testament ofjudah this pneumatic Messiah would similarly equip his subjects (Judah, 24 ; cf. Levi, 18). It was per- fectly natural that the disciples, who had now come to believe in Jesus as the Messiah elevated upon His throne in heaven, should become con- scious of the new power which was theirs by right of membersliip in the new Kingdom about to be more fully revealed. Their inherited Jewish thinking, together with their visions of the Risen Jesus, supplied a very fitting background for the Pentecostal phenomenon. In view of Peter's i)re- eminence in the early community, we may .safely assume that he was one of the first to attain this type of experience.
This unique spiritual endowment normally ex- pressed itself in miraculous activities. On this subject it may be well to supplement the generous testimony of Acts with the somewhat less extra- vagant, but quite specilic, corroborative evidence from St. Paul. Christianity as a historical pheno- menon is defined by him largely in terms of spirit- ual endowment, with its resultant activities. While all Christians share the one Spirit in common, its power is manifested variously in difierent persons, and among these manifestations ' miracles ' and ' gifts of healings ' occupy a prominent place (1 Co 12-*). In controverting his opponents St. Paul appeals especially to miracles as the unique differentia of the new religion and the final evidence of his own right to be reckoned among the genuine apostles. In denouncing the Judaizers' gospel of the flesh St. Paul (Gal Z^) asks the Galatians a test question designed to prove beyond doubt the genuineness of his gospel of the Spirit ; ' He there- fore that supplieth to you tlie Spirit, and worketh miracles among you, doeth he it by the works of the law, or by the hearing of faith ?' Nor was this miraculous power peculiar to the Christianity of St. Paul, for he replies to his opponents in Corinth :