The apostle Paul and the baptism: When you put your faith in Jesus, were you given the Holy Spirit? Acts 19:2
When Jesus preached on earth many of his teachings did not make sense to his disciples and listeners, because the Kingdom of God as a hidden treasure can only be understood when it is revealed in its fullness; and this is so because the doctrine taught by Jesus is self-knowledge, inner discovery, and personal development, that is why Jesus taught with wisdom: "Very truly I tell you, no one can enter the kingdom of God unless they are born of water and the spirit" John 3:5.
And the disciples were able to confirm this truth in the celebration of Pentecost after the resurrection of the Lord, when the Holy Spirit descended in tongues of fire, and in this way the disciples received the gifts of science, spiritual discernment, and wisdom to carry the gospel to all corners of the planet. But although the Church was born with this spiritual fact, Christianity until that time was considered as the "sect of the Nazarenes", and it took some time to become the largest world religion in history, and during that time the action of the spiritual gifts poured out by the Holy Spirit was fundamental to determine the history of the Church.
And an example of this was the meeting in the city of Ephesus between the apostle Paul and some disciples of John the Baptist who lived in that region. This story is the account of how some simple men who had heard John's message of conversion recognized the charisms of the spirit through the baptism in the Lord Jesus.
The apostle Paul at the beginning of his third missionary journey arrived in Ephesus and there he found some disciples of John, and upon seeing them the apostle asked them: "When you put your faith in Jesus, were you given the Holy Spirit?" Acts 19:2. And these disciples told him that they had never heard of the Holy Spirit, because John simply told them about someone who was to come after him; and so Paul baptized them no longer in the name of John but in the name of the Lord Jesus, and in this way the Holy Spirit descended upon these followers of John who began to prophesy and speak in tongues. Through baptism, many Christians recognized the new life according to the spirit, and the mystery of eternal life during the early church.
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