When the apostle would impress his Hebrew hearers with the solemnity of their position, he wrote, `Wherefore

as the Holy Ghost saith' (Heb. 3:7), not merely, `Wherefore as it is found in Psalm 95'. It is a misconception that

limits the doctrine of the Holy Ghost either to supernatural gifts or to the New Testament. It is true that the Holy

Ghost was manifested at and after Pentecost as never before and that His office of Paraklete was new, but there are

many references to the Spirit of God in the Old Testament that indicate the Person just as surely as the New

Testament, and the fact that Paul, when speaking to unsaved Jews, could attribute the authorship of the prophecy of

Isaiah to the Holy Ghost, teaches the same lesson:

`Go unto this people, and say, Hearing ye shall hear, and shall not understand; and seeing ye shall see, and not

perceive' (Acts 28:26).

Earlier in the Acts than the witness of Stephen, already alluded to, comes the testimony of Peter:

`Moses truly said unto the fathers, A prophet shall the Lord your God raise up unto you of your brethren, like

unto me; Him shall ye hear in all things whatsoever He shall say unto you. And it shall come to pass, that every

soul, which will not hear that prophet, shall be destroyed from among the people' (Acts 3:22,23).

Israel had `heard' the words of the Lord, but not in the spiritual sense, and the record of Paul's conversion in the

Acts supplies a good illustration of the double meaning of both seeing and hearing:

`And the men which journeyed with him stood speechless, hearing a voice, but seeing no man' (Acts 9:7).

`And they that were with me saw indeed the light, and were afraid; but they heard not the voice of Him That

spake to me' (Acts 22:9).

Here men who heard, `heard not', and who saw, `saw not'. They heard a `sound', phone, and they saw a `light',

phos, but they saw `no man' and they heard no intelligible words, but, like the multitude in John 12:29, for all they

knew, it might have been thunder.

Israel `heard', but they did not `understand'; they `saw' but they did not `perceive', and the seat of the trouble

was not in the eye or the ear, but in the heart:

`For the heart of this people is waxed gross, and their ears are dull of hearing, and their eyes have they closed'

(Acts 28:27).

Pachunomai, `waxed gross', occurs elsewhere in the New Testament only in Matthew 13:15. The word is used

as early as the prophetic song of Moses, when he described the very symptoms and disease from which Israel

ultimately suffered. He spoke of the way in which the Lord had found Israel in a waste and howling wilderness and

how He had kept him as the apple of His eye:

`But Jeshurun waxed fat, and kicked: thou art waxen fat, thou art grown thick, thou art covered with fatness;

then he forsook God which made him, and lightly esteemed the Rock of his salvation' (Deut. 32:15).

Derived from pachunomai is pachne, `frost', and pachnoo, `to freeze', and pachos, `thick', a condition that

described Israel at this time. To describe a specially dull-witted fellow, we use the modern expression, `He has a

skin as thick as an elephant'; thus we can realize that such a `thick skinned' animal is a `pachyderm', and that the

modern figure and the ancient ascription are therefore akin.

The heart having `waxed gross' the ear became `dull'. Bareos, the word translated `dull', is derived from barus,

a weight or burden, and when used metaphorically indicates the hardening of the heart (Exod. 8:15,32; 9:7,34; 10:1).

Being used of Pharaoh in Exodus it provided a dreadful object lesson for Israel as they heard the word of the Holy

Ghost. Isaiah uses the word in a good sense when he speaks of one who `stoppeth his ears from hearing of blood'

(Isa. 33:15). He uses it also in the statement, `Behold, the LORD's hand is not shortened, that it cannot save; neither

His ear heavy, that it cannot hear' (Isa. 59:1). Had Israel heard with understanding and seen with perception they

would have been `converted' and `healed'. Where Paul, quoting Isaiah, said `hear' and `see', Peter said, `Repent ye

therefore, and be converted' (Acts 3:19), and if the reader will consult the section dealing with the healing of the

lame man and its prophetic import (Acts 3 and 4, in pages 80-84) it will be seen that this repentance and conversion

is spoken of as `the healing' (Acts 4:12), as the word translated `salvation' actually means. When we remember the