A sudden death provoked by lying to the Holy Spirit. An event that rippled through the early church movement.
Signs and wonders, daily increase in numbers, and people edging in to touch, not the Apostle Peter’s actual body, but just his shadow. Power was growing in the Church!
Imprisoned for the faith and yet supernaturally freed in the middle of the night only to be arrested again, beaten and put on trial by the indignant religious of the day, and yet UNDAUNTED.
The early days of the church’s infancy was testament to the unbridled flow of the Holy Spirit. People radically changed from religious to sincere, pagan to sanctified. The sick healed, the tormented delivered, the bound made free. All because of ONE NAME: Jesus.
This Name, the Name above every name and the Name by which all humans can be saved, is not without contest, however. The very Name by which the believers in the early church clung to and stood on would be the Name that the religious of the day would seek to muzzle, to eradicate, to demonize.
“….they commanded that they should not speak in the name of Jesus and let them go.” (Acts 5:40)
Did they listen to this decree? How could they?! This Name is the Name of Jesus: God’s Son who they had touched, seen, learned from, and held. Jesus, who had walked amongst them to then die an unfair, criminal death before their very eyes, only to come back to life and visit with them before he ascends into thin air with his last words to them echoing: “I have been given all authority in heaven and on earth. Therefore, go and make disciples of all the nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit. Teach these new disciples to obey all the commands I have given you. And be sure of this: I am with you always, even to the end of the age.” (Matthew 28: 18-20)
They were on a mission and they didn’t just know, but they had experienced the power of this Name. And they wouldn’t, couldn’t be stopped. Their answer, their creed, their mantra? “We ought to obey God rather than men.” (Acts 5:29)
There is NO other name.