Here the word "moved" is the same as is translated "rushing" in Acts 2: 2.

There are many today who feel that the absence of the gift of tongues is a serious

handicap to witness, but when the facts are faced we find it is not so. During the period

covered by the Acts of the Apostles the church possessed no other Scriptures than the

O.T. The New Testament, as we know it, did not exist. Slowly, as years went by, an

Epistle here and a "Gospel" there would be written, and when the church finally

possessed the prophetic writings now known to us as the New Testament, the need for the

gift of tongues and other supernatural endowments ceased. Consequently, today he who

faithfully uses the inspired Word of God in its fullness is on the same level of equipment

as those of the early church. The fact that physical healing and other phenomena are not

now associated with the preaching of the Word is explainable on the ground of the

absence of Israel, as a nation, a feature that is of the utmost dispensational importance.

Those who are acquainted with the Jewish mind and Jewish history know that it was

the ambition of many Jews who had been born in foreign lands, to spend their last days in

Jerusalem. These are described as "dwellers" at Jerusalem. That there were those who

had come to keep the feast, other than "dwellers", is clear from Acts 2: 10, where some

are called "strangers of Rome", and where, in the same verse, the whole company is

summed up as "Jews and proselytes".

At first sight the enumeration of the countries from which the assembled Jews came

strikes the reader as somewhat odd, but when we stand with Peter and think of the

dispersion of Israel, we shall see definite order and intention. There had been three great

dispersions of the Jews and these are indicated in the list of countries given in

Acts 2: 9-11.

The first was of the ten tribes into Media and Assyria, and the two tribes to Babylon.

At the time of the apostles, the Parthians ruled over a district that extended from the

Euphrates to the Jordan and the Oxus to the Persian Gulf. The second took the Jews to

Asia Minor, Cappadocia, etc., and as an offshoot of the Assyrian dispersion. The third,

or Egyptians dispersion, took place under Ptolemy Lagus. There is also in this list of

countries an evident allusion to the prophecy of restoration found in Isa. 11: 11:--

Fuller details of these dispersions are given in Conybeare and Howson, Vol. 1: 20, 22,

and in Medes' Essays. We do not further pursue the matter here, but would remark in

passing that Peter seems to have kept in touch with the dispersion during his lifetime. He

went to Babylon (I Pet. 5: 13). He also wrote his two epistles to the dispersion in

Asia Minor, and, if Jerome is to be trusted, he provided for the spiritual needs of the

Egyptian dispersion by sending John Mark to them.