But, after two thousand years nothing has changed, the opposition to the preaching of the Cross, which is at the centre of the Gospel message, is mainly organised and promoted by what is called the establishment. I remember an instance that happened on a farm, often used by the principal of the College where I was a student, and later as a member of the faculty. It says that after few days of heavy rain, the ground was a bit too soft, yet the farmer with his son had to attend to things that were urgent! It was in the days when horses were still generally widely used. One morning, as they had to move things around, the cart that was pulled by two horses got stuck, trying hard to get the horses to do the impossible, they tried to help each working on the wheels, but nothing doing, finally the father said to his son: ‘No use my boy, the cart is ‘established,’ just like the church down the road!

The principal of the College where I studied Theology, was a Pentecostal Evangelist, greatly used of God, before and after the second world war, he used the above story a lot as an example of churches in general, the ‘establishment’ that got stuck in their liturgy and way of doing things, unwilling to accept the Pentecostal revival that was sweeping across the whole world! Throughout the twentieth century, and to this day, thousands of preachers, having experienced the infilling, still preach the baptism in the Holy Spirit as a gift from God to get, those that will, out of the formalism of a dead religion, into the flow of a living Gospel! This was exactly the situation in Israel, when the disciples of Christ were stirring the whole of the Israeli nation, whose clergy was not happy at the situation that arose from this amazing healing, and they tried their utmost to destroy the newly born Church of Christ, whose Lord, they had crucified for the same reasons!

Needless to say that the disciples were in trouble, Peter and John were imprisoned and threatened, but nothing would deter them from preaching the Good News of deliverance from the power of sin, death and the devil, which to this very day remain the great enemies of mankind! In the background of the authorities’ efforts to silence the disciples continued, in this atmosphere of hate, Saul of Tarsus planned his own campaign against the disciples; having created havoc with the Christians in Jerusalem, he caused a scattering of the church, except for the apostles, the majority of the disciples fled into Judea, right up to Samaria and beyond, but they did not keep silent, for it is written: ‘Those who have been scattered preached the word wherever they went. Philip, (an apostle) went down to a city in Samaria and proclaimed the Christ (Messiah) there. If one splits up a seed pod it has a tendency to spread, one cannot stop the work of God.

Thus, this persecution like a wind took the seed all over the country, and the  preaching of the Gospel spread into other parts of the nation, and beyond! So, the clergy in Jerusalem, the elders and teachers of the law, often just named ‘The Jews’, saw that they could use the help of Saul of Tarsus in their campaign, hence it is written: ‘Meanwhile, Saul still breathing out murderous threats against the Lord’s disciples, went to the high priest (Caiaphas) and asked him for letters to the synagogues in Damascus, so that if he found any there who belonged to the Way, (name they gave to Christ’s disciples) whether men and women, he might take them as prisoners to Jerusalem. (Acts 9: 1-2) The story that follows show how wonderfully God works His will, because what he was about to do, would shake the ‘establishment’, bless the Church with great victory and destroy Saul of Tarsus. When we consider the moral and the spiritual state of the disciples just few weeks before the baptism in the Holy Spirit, we must be encouraged, for His power, and the authority of the risen Lord Jesus Christ is the same to this very day. Jesus is still pouring out the Holy Spirit. His anointing alone was the power at work, in Peter, James, John and the remaining apostles, with the whole Church, stood together as one man! Through them the Holy Spirit was doing great miracles, just as He can do it today; but we must stop looking to ourselves or others for we are weak, and look to the Lord and begin to seek earnestly this infilling, for God has not changed, but we have!