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B. God's Holy Spirit Enables Jesus' Followers to Carry on His Ministry
But what happened after Jesus left this world? After Jesus ascended into heaven, from where He had come, His apostles and disciples carried on His ministry of preaching and teaching that Jesus was the Messiah. They assured the people that Jesus was the long-expected Messiah whom God had promised to send. All this has been clearly reported, with the help of God's Holy Spirit, in Luke's second writing called The Acts of the Apostles. In Acts 10, Luke told how Peter, one of Jesus' apostles, was telling a Roman centurion (not the centurion we read about in Chapter 6) how the prophets among the Children of Israel had foretold the coming of the Messiah and how Jesus fulfilled these prophecies. At one point Peter stated: “You know what has happened throughout Judea, beginning in Galilee after the baptism that John preached – how God anointed Jesus of Nazareth with the Holy Spirit and power, and how he went around doing good and healing all who were under the power of devil, because God was with him.” (Acts 10:37,38; see Glossary, John the Baptist.)
What Peter reported about Jesus, His anointing with the Holy Spirit and His works, Peter had seen. Can you imagine what marvelous memories he had as he recalled Jesus' ministry of healing: that multitude of incidents when the blind saw, the deaf heard and spoke, the lame walked, those possessed with evil spirits were liberated, the lepers were cleansed – and, yes, those occasions when the dead were made alive, the irreversible reversed! For all this, too, Peter said, God had anointed Jesus with His Spirit to be the Messiah, promised by the prophets, through whom and in whom God Himself was present with His people.