FULFILLMENT OF THE PROMISES AS STATED IN THE EPISTLES.

As the keynote on this subject for the whole book of Acts is sounded in the second chapter, so for the Epistles it is sounded in the second chapter of First Corinthians. Paid introduces the subject by saying: "My speech and my preaching were not in persuasive words of man's wisdom, but in demonstration of the Spirit and of power; that your faith should not stand in the wisdom of men, but in the power of God." By "demonstration of the Spirit and of power," he means the working of miracles which demonstrated his possession of the power of the Holy Spirit. When the people on such evidence believed, their faith rested not in philosophy, but in the power of God. After thus repudiating the wisdom of men as a source of his power and of their faith, he admits that he speaks wisdom among the perfect, but not the wisdom of this world. On the contrary, he speaks the wisdom of God, a wisdom concerning things which men had never seen, heard or conceived; "but," he says, "unto us God revealed them through the Spirit: for the Spirit searches all things, yea, the4 deep things of God." Here is an express assertion that he received revelations through the Spirit; and this agrees with the promise to this effect recorded in the Gospel of John.

In the next place, after remarking that the Spirit searches all things, even the deep things of God, and knows them, he says: "We received, not the spirit of the world, but the Spirit which is of God, that we might know the things which are freely given to us by God." This is an assertion that the Spirit through which God revealed things to him and his fellows, had been received by them from God for the very purpose of making these revelations.

Paul next speaks of the words in which the things revealed by the Spirit were spoken. He says: "Which things also we speak, not in words which man's wisdom teacheth, but which the Holy Spirit teacheth; comparing spiritual things with spiritual." In this last clause the term "combining" would express the meaning better than "comparing." They combined the spiritual things with spiritual words.1 Than this, there could not possibly be a more explicit assertion that the inspired men were guided by or taught by the Holy Spirit, as to the very words which they employed.

Finally, the Apostle ends this invaluable series of statements by saying of the same class of whom he has spoken from the beginning, "We have the mind of Christ;" by which, in the light of the context, we must understand that in all their official utterances their thoughts were the thoughts of Christ, or the very thoughts which Christ would have them to utter.

These affirmations made by Paul are as explicit and as comprehensive as those made by Luke in the second chapter of Acts; and if any one regards the words of an Apostle as more authoritative than those of the Evangelist, he ought the more readily to accept the latter because they are thus reaffirmed. Let it be remembered, too, that even those rationalists who deny the genuineness and credibility of Acts admit the genuineness of the Epistles to the Corinthians, and consequently they admit that Paid actually wrote these affirmations. These, then, must be held both by believers and unbelievers as setting forth the apostolic teaching on this subject.

If this passage stood alone in the apostolic writings, all that we have just said would be true; but it does not by any means stand alone. Every thought which it contains is echoed again and again in other utterances scattered through the Epistles. In regard to receiving revelations through the Spirit, Paul says of his knowledge of the Gospel, that he neither received it from men, nor was he taught it; but that it came to him "through revelation of Jesus Christ" (Gal. i. 12). He says concerning the mystery of the call and the equal rights of the Gentiles, that it was made known to him "by revelation"--that "it hath now been revealed unto his holy apostles and prophets in the Spirit" (Eph. iii. 1-5). He introduces his prediction concerning the great apostasy, with the words, "But the Spirit saith expressly, that in the later times some shall fall away from the faith" (I. Tim iv. 1). He says concerning his journey from Antioch to Jerusalem with Barnabas, "I went up by revelation" (Gal. ii. 2), thus affirming, as Luke in Acts affirms, that on some occasions his journeyings were controlled by the guiding power of the Holy Spirit (Acts xvi. 6-8). Finally, he declares to the Corinth inns that his thorn in the flesh, "a messenger of Satan to buffet him," was given him to prevent him from being "exalted overmuch by the exceeding greatness of the revelations" which he received (II. Cor. xii. 7).  

The assertion, "We have the mind of Christ," is echoed in another part of the same Epistle, as follows: "If any man thinketh himself to be a prophet, or spiritual, let him take knowledge of the things which I write to you, that they are the commandment of the Lord" (I. Cor. xiv. 37). Here he not only asserts that what he wrote was the command of the Lord, which it could not be unless he had "the mind of the Lord," but he assumes that any man in the church who was a prophet or a spiritual man, that is, possessed of a spiritual gift, could know that what he wrote was in reality from the Lord. And let it not escape our notice here that this affirmation is made concerning what he wrote, and not concerning what he spoke. It shows that although, in the promises of Jesus on the subject of inspiration, reference was made especially to the speeches of the Apostles, Jesus did not intend to make a distinction between what they spoke and what they might write; but that speaking was put for all their utterances, whether with the tongue or the pen.  

In regard to the "demonstration of the Spirit and of power," mentioned in our key passage, the affirmations else where are abundant. Speaking in tongues was in itself both a demonstration of the Spirit's power, and an instance of speaking in words which the Holy Spirit taught; and on this point Paid says to the Corinthians, who prided themselves on the possession of this gilt, "I thank God, I speak with tongues more than you all" (1. Cor. xiv. 18, 19). He claims also to have imparted to the Corinthians miraculous gifts of the Spirit, including the gift of tongues, and to have done the same among the Galatians. (I. Cor. i. 5, 6; xii. 7-11; 27-31; xiv. 1-5; 15-17; 22, 23; Gal. iii. 5). Moreover, he claims to have wrought wonders, signs and mighty works in support of his preaching, throughout the whole field of his labors (II. Cor. xii. 12; Rom. xv. 18, 19). About the physical miracles he could not have been mistaken, and they were the demonstration, both to himself and to others, that he was not mistaken in claiming to be inspired.

The Epistles of the other Apostles are so much less voluminous than those of Paid, that we have not the same means of knowing what they asserted on this subject, apart from their words already cited from Acts; but what they do say, taken in connection with these other sources, is decisive?. Thus Peter, speaking of the Old Testament prophets, says: "To whom it was revealed, that not unto themselves, but unto you, did they minister the things, which now have been announced to you through them that preached the gospel to you by the Holy Spirit sent down from heaven; which things angels desire to look into" (I. Pet. i. 12). John, in almost the very language of the promise, that the Spirit of truth, when he came, should bear witness of Jesus, says: "It is the Spirit that beareth witness, because the Spirit is the truth. For there are three that bear witness, the Spirit, the water, and the blood: and the three agree in one" (I. Jno. v. 7, 8). Likewise, the author of the Epistle to the Hebrews, an apostolic writer, even if he were not the Apostle Paul, says that the great salvation which was at first spoken through the Lord "was confirmed unto us by them that heard, God also bearing witness with them, both by signs and wonders, and by manifold powers, and by gifts of the Holy Spirit, according to his own will" (Heb. ii. 4). Words are here multiplied, as if for the purpose of carefully covering all the ground which we have just gone over. More evidence than we have now presented could scarcely have been given, and certainly more should not be required. He who can not receive this, must deny the testimony of the Apostles, both as to their own experiences, and as to the promises which they claim to have received from Jesus. 

1 See Thayer's Grimm (Gr. Lex. N. T.) and Meyer, Com. in loco.