28 October 2025
Picking up where last week's study of Acts 1 left off, this session pressed into two things sitting side by side in the same short passage: the promise that Jesus would baptise His followers with the Holy Spirit, and the disciples' very human question about when Israel's kingdom would finally be restored. Harry traced the promise of Spirit-baptism through all four Gospels and into Acts itself, then turned to the disciples' question about timing and Jesus' famously unsatisfying answer. Along the way the class faced an uncomfortable question of its own: why the church today seems content to baptise people in water while quietly sidelining the baptism Jesus actually promised.
Editor's note: This article is a written summary based on the substance of Harry's Bible study on this passage. It is not a verbatim transcript, and while it aims to reflect the heart of the teaching faithfully, it cannot fully convey the warmth, care, and encouragement of the class itself.
Opening Prayer
Heavenly Father, we thank you for the gift of your word and for the privilege of gathering together in the Name of your Son, Jesus Christ. As we open the Scriptures today, we ask that your Holy Spirit would illuminate our minds and soften our hearts, that we might hear your voice, grow in the knowledge of you, and be equipped to live and speak for Christ. We commit this time of study into your hands, in Jesus' Name, Amen.
Harry began by returning the class to Acts 1:1-11, the passage they had started the previous week, resuming the recap and reading from where they had left off. Rather than working back through the whole section verse by verse, this week's session zoomed in on two threads within it: the promise of baptism in the Holy Spirit in verse 5, and the disciples' question about the kingdom in verses 6 and 7 - the Kingdom of God theme that gave the session its focus.
Harry stressed just how much weight the words of Acts 1:5 carry by pointing out that the contrast between John's baptism in water and Jesus' baptism in the Holy Spirit is recorded in all four Gospels (Matthew 3:11; Mark 1:8; Luke 3:16), not mentioned once in passing and left there. To bring the point home the class read John's own testimony in full: "I saw the Spirit come down from heaven as a dove and remain on Him... the One who sent me to baptise with water told me, 'The man on whom you see the Spirit come down and remain is the one who will baptise with the Holy Spirit.' I have seen and I testify that this is God's Chosen One" (John 1:32-34). The point Harry drew out was that this was not a detail Luke happened to pick up on his own, but a truth so central to the good news about Jesus that every Gospel writer felt compelled to record it.
Harry noted that this same pairing of water-baptism-versus-Spirit-baptism surfaces only twice in Acts: here in 1:5, and again in Acts 11:16, where Peter uses it to defend the extraordinary news that God had given the Holy Spirit to Gentiles. The class read Peter's account in full (Acts 11:1-18): summoned to Jerusalem and criticised for eating with uncircumcised men, Peter recounts his vision of a sheet let down from heaven, the voice telling him "Do not call anything impure that God has made clean," and how the Holy Spirit fell on Cornelius's household exactly as it had on the apostles at the beginning. "Then I remembered what the Lord had said: 'John baptised with water, but you will be baptised with the Holy Spirit.' So if God gave them the same gift he gave us who believed in the Lord Jesus Christ, who was I to think that I could stand in God's way?" (Acts 11:16-17). Hearing this, the Jerusalem believers had no further objection and praised God that "even to Gentiles God has granted repentance that leads to life" (Acts 11:18).
From there Harry put a pointed question to the class: why do we content ourselves with baptising people in water but not in the Holy Spirit? Three honest answers emerged - ignorance, in that many have simply never heard of a baptism in the Holy Spirit distinct from water baptism; fear, of the Holy Spirit Himself and what His coming might mean; and a plain lack of faith, the nagging suspicion that if we actually prayed for the Holy Spirit to come, nothing would happen.
The class then turned to the question at the heart of the session: "Then they gathered round Him and asked Him, 'Lord, are you at this time going to restore the kingdom to Israel?' He said to them: 'It is not for you to know the times or dates the Father has set by His own authority'" (Acts 1:6-7). Harry set this in context by showing that the question did not come out of nowhere - it grew naturally out of things Jesus Himself had taught. Jesus had told the disciples, "Do not be afraid, little flock, for your Father has been pleased to give you the kingdom" (Luke 12:32), and at the Last Supper had promised, "I confer on you a kingdom, just as my Father conferred one on me, so that you may eat and drink at my table in my kingdom and sit on thrones, judging the twelve tribes of Israel" (Luke 22:29-30). Harry also pointed the class to the Parable of the Ten Minas (Luke 19:11-27), told, Luke tells us, precisely because Jesus was near Jerusalem and the people thought the kingdom of God was going to appear at once - a parable about a nobleman who goes away to be appointed king before returning to settle accounts with his servants and deal with those who had rejected his rule. Taken together, Harry argued, this teaching would readily have been understood by the disciples in terms of Israel - the restoration of the nation to its former glories - and such an expectation stood in continuity with the hope of Israel's prophets for national restoration. Seen this way, the disciples' question in Acts 1:6 was not a foolish or tone-deaf thing to ask; it followed naturally from what Jesus Himself had taught them.
Harry was careful to spell out exactly what Jesus does and does not do with the disciples' question. He does not deny it or dismiss it as a misunderstanding - the hope that the kingdom of God is bound up with the restoration of Israel is, in effect, reaffirmed. What Jesus corrects is the timing: "It is not for you to know the times or dates the Father has set by His own authority." Harry noted that Jesus Himself operated under exactly this same constraint during His earthly ministry, teaching elsewhere, "But about that day or hour no one knows, not even the angels in heaven, nor the Son, but only the Father" (Matthew 24:36), and, "Therefore keep watch, because you do not know the day or the hour" (Matthew 25:13). Knowledge of God's timetable belongs to the Father alone, and neither the Son during His earthly ministry nor the apostles after Him are given access to it.
Instead, Harry showed, Jesus redirects the disciples' attention in the very next verse, Acts 1:8, which stands almost as an outline for the whole book of Acts that follows. The priority is not speculation about dates and times but witness, carried out in the power of the Holy Spirit - God's rule expressed in and through the Spirit, exalting the name of the Father and the Son. Yet, Harry was clear, the disciples' original question is not thereby closed off or abandoned. The gospel goes on, the proclamation of the kingdom continues, and the hope and mission of Israel has not yet been completely fulfilled - a thread Paul is still holding near the very end of Acts: "It is because of the hope of Israel that I am bound with this chain" (Acts 28:20).
Harry's real aim in this session was to unsettle two comfortable habits at once. The first was settling for water baptism as the whole story, when Scripture - across all four Gospels and twice in Acts - insists that Jesus baptises in the Holy Spirit, and that our hesitancy to expect or pray for this is more often down to ignorance, fear, or unbelief than to sound theology. The second was the instinct to treat an unanswered question about timing as a problem to be solved or a failure of faith. The disciples asked a reasonable question rooted in Jesus' own teaching, and Jesus did not rebuke them for asking it - He simply reminded them that some things belong to the Father's authority alone, and redirected their energy toward the task actually given to them: to be witnesses in the power of the Spirit. Harry wanted the class to hold both things together - a real, expectant hope in what God has promised, including for Israel, and a settled contentment with not knowing when or how it will be fulfilled, trusting that the Father's timing, not ours, is the one that matters.
Closing Prayer
Heavenly Father, thank you that we are gathered here in the Name of your Son, Jesus Christ. Father, by the power of your Holy Spirit, open up our hearts and our minds that we might understand your words in the Scriptures and get to know you more, that we might live holy lives, and that we might share the Good News about Jesus in the power of your Spirit, for the building of your Church and the extending of your Kingdom here on earth as it is in heaven, in and through Jesus Christ, Amen.
