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Acts Chapter Nineteen

Acts 19:2

The story has been told of a group of colonists who left Virginia in the late 1700s and started across the mountains to the land that lay far to the west. As the story goes, they were forced to interrupt their journey for some reason, perhaps fear of Indians, or the death of a horse, or the breakdown of a wagon. For whatever reason, they spent twenty years in the mountains, during which time they saw no other white men.

Finally, another group of travelers made its way through the region and came upon these isolated settlers. Naturally, there was much conversation about the outside world. The travelers asked the mountaineers what they thought about “the Republic” and the policies of “Congress.”

The isolated ones answered, “We have not heard anything of a Congress or a Republic.” Then they went on to explain that they thought of themselves as loyal subjects of the British king. When told all about the nation’s independence and how it came about, they entered into an understanding of their new status, and became “American citizens” in that hour by knowledge, as they had been for some time in fact.

Even many Christians, as in Paul’s day in Ephesus, are not fully knowledgeable about the power of the Holy Spirit Acts 19:2.