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An early testimony against Israel in the Acts accuses them of "resisting the Holy
Ghost" even as their fathers did (Acts 7: 51). This resistance was accompanied by an
uncircumcised condition of "heart and ears", and is linked with the word spoken by
angels, namely the giving of the law.
The reader will perceive that Stephen's initial testimony is brought to its full
conclusion by the man who, in his ignorance and misdirected zeal, was found
"consenting unto his death". In both passages the Holy Ghost is associated with the
Word of God. "Heart and ears" are involved, and just as Stephen says "your fathers", not
"our fathers", so the revised text (also 50: T. Tr. A.) of Acts 28: 25 reads "your"
fathers. Here is a far-off echo of that pronouncement, "Your house is left unto you
desolate" (Matt. 23: 38).
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 Psa. 95:". It is a misconception that limits the doctrine of
the Holy Ghost either to supernatural gifts or to the N.T. 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 O.T. that indicate the
Person just as surely as the N.T., 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 destroy 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.