Picture one of the gates leading into the Jewish temple at Jerusalem. Daily, a cripple is laid outside this gate to beg. Two men approach. The beggar asks them for money, and they stop. To give him money? No. They have none to give. They give him something no one has ever given him before. They heal his crippled legs through their spiritualized understanding of God as taught by Christ Jesus. The man responds immediately. The Bible reports, "He leaping up stood, and walked, and entered with them into the temple, walking, and leaping, and praising God."Acts 3:8.
What had caused these two followers of Jesus, Peter and John, to stop? Had their sense of Christ-healing—on which Jesus said his church should be built— grown to correspond with the Master's teaching and practice? How easily they could have ignored the beggar and entered the temple without that compassionate pause.
At first the disciples' healing work may have been largely the result of faith in their Master. But at Pentecost they received an outpouring of the Holy Ghost that filled them with gladness and spiritual authority. Here was the touch of the Comforter Jesus had promised when he said, "I will pray the Father, and he shall give you another Comforter, that he may abide with you for ever."John 14:16. During his time with them they had felt that comfort, that power of infinite Love, and they had seen it heal. As they put this power into practice, the Bible tells us, "mightily grew the word of God and prevailed."Acts 19:20.
