can be seen when we turn to the epistles written after the Acts of the Apostles. Turning

to Philippians, a letter Paul wrote from his Roman prison, we find in chapter 2: that he

refers to a very valued fellow-worker by the name of Epaphroditus, and in verse 26 he

says: "He longed after you all and was full of heaviness, because, ye had heard that he

had been sick". And indeed he was sick, near to death (verse 30) "because for the work

of Christ he was nigh unto death, not regarding his life" (`he hazarded his life', says the

R.V.). Does Paul heal him? No; what he says is this: "God had mercy on him . . . . .

and on me also". Now if the Apostle Paul still had the power to heal, this is inexplicable,

is it not? Here is a valued fellow-worker and all the Apostle can say is that God had

mercy on us both and preserved his life! Paul did not heal him; why not, if he still had

the power so to do?

We turn to I Tim. 5: 23, and here we have the Apostle giving health advice to his

beloved son in the faith, Timothy. Now here was one who was very close indeed to the

Apostle Paul--This is what he says to him (5: 23) "Drink no longer water, but use a little

wine for thy stomach's sake and thine often infirmities". A "little wine" prescribed,

rather than miraculous healing! Or look at Paul's last letter (II Tim. 4: 20): "Erastus

abode at Corinth; but Trophimus have I left at Miletum sick". We do not find Paul doing

that in the Acts. Evidently now the power to heal was his no longer. The covenant

nation, who had all the signs and wonders, had now been laid aside by God and all the

external evidential miracles went with them. What we are going to see now is that there

is new truth about to be revealed, and this truth is a secret phase of God's purpose which

He had never made known before. It is not directly connected with the earthly kingdom,

but with a heavenly side of His purpose, and miraculous gifts have no relationship to this

spiritual calling.

In our last study we noted how evidential miracles run right through the Acts of the

Apostles and then stop abruptly, and we noted the reason for this. In summing up, let us

now look through the Book as a whole. The Acts is a most important book in the N.T.

because, if we get a correct understanding of it, we shall be greatly helped to place the

Epistles of the N.T. in their right setting. We saw that there was an overlapping between

Luke's Gospel and the Acts. The Gospel ended with the Saviour giving the eleven

opened understanding that they might understand the Scriptures, so that whatever doubts

and wrong ideas they had before, He was able to correct. And not only that but the first

chapter tells us that for forty days they had the wonderful privilege of Him taking the

Word, the O.T. Scriptures, and explaining their meaning to them. So they were in an

extraordinarily favoured position. We should hardly think that any Christian has been in

a better position to understand God's truth. And we saw the first question they asked,

because of that instruction was, "Wilt Thou at this time restore again the kingdom to

Israel?" If we just opened the Book and pick out that verse without seeing what has gone

before, we might say, as some have said, that this was a foolish question. They should