Today we read about the ministry of the apostle Paul and his companions in the large port city of Ephesus, the capital of the Roman province of Asia. In several episodes described by Luke, we can see events very similar to what happens in our own day.

Then as now, there are people burning in spirit, striving with all their hearts for knowledge of the truth, for awareness of what matters most in life. One such person is Apollos, ready to preach and bring to other people everything he has learned about salvation, and at the same time open to greater knowledge, ready to hear the good news about Christ and the gift of the Spirit from Paul's disciples, Aquila and his wife Priscilla. It is no accident that afterward Apollos becomes one of Paul's closest coworkers and friends, for the combination of readiness to teach and readiness to learn is a great and rare gift.

And this is exactly how the living message about Christ acts and is handed on. If we always thirsted for the deepening of our faith and knowledge of Him, while always being ready to share faith and knowledge with others, we too would be able to help in the work of evangelism.

What is the relationship, the connection, between baptism and the descent of the Holy Spirit? In the second chapter of Acts, baptism is accompanied by the manifestation of the gifts of the Spirit (2:38); in the eighth chapter, baptism in the name of the Lord Jesus did not lead to the outpouring of the Spirit (8:16); in the tenth chapter, the descent of the Spirit precedes baptism (10:44-48); and now in the nineteenth, the Ephesians needed John's baptism, baptism in the name of the Lord, and also the laying on of Paul's hands. Truly, the Spirit blows where He wills (John 3:8)!

Second, what is the connection between the gifts of the Spirit and salvation? If salvation is given by faith and baptism (Matt. 16:16), why is the outpouring of the Holy Spirit needed? Perhaps the Holy Spirit gives those being saved the power for witness.

Third, why does the book of Acts insist precisely on these gifts of the Holy Spirit, tongues and prophecy? After all, Paul also writes about many other gifts of the Spirit manifested in the Church (1 Cor. 12). Perhaps the point is that the gifts described here appear in people immediately after conversion; these gifts are visible at once, while others, such as the gift of healing, teaching, and working miracles, appear later.

The Kingdom's entrance into the world begins on the day of Pentecost with the descent of the Holy Spirit. God's breath permeates the Kingdom, forming its nature (or, more precisely, what replaces nature in the Kingdom). And afterward the spread of the Kingdom through the world continues in the same way: it becomes a continuous Pentecost, repeated again and again.

Not some other, new Pentecost, but the very same one, appearing now here, now there, everywhere there are people seeking the Kingdom and desiring to enter it. God's breath, the breath of the Kingdom, enters the world, but always through people. It cannot be otherwise: the Kingdom consists of people who have firm, stable, and completely real relationships with God and with Christ. These relationships form the structure of the Kingdom, insofar as they can be called a structure at all. Yet despite its apparent dependence on a person and his choice, the power of the Kingdom is fully real. It is so real that, once it has entered the world, everyone senses the effect of this power.

Of course, they sense it in different ways: although the power of the Kingdom can be felt anywhere and at any time, its breath, full of God's love, can be felt only by opening the heart to it and entering it. It is no accident that the Book of Acts so often mentions magicians who sensed the power of the Kingdom and left their former way behind. They felt the power of the Kingdom very well, but they could not feel the breath of God's love that stood behind it until they themselves became its inhabitants, and therefore Christians.

There is no other way: one cannot simply make use of the Kingdom. Some wanted to, like the "exorcists" who tried to use the name of Jesus to achieve their own goals. They had apparently heard the words about the name of Jesus by which one can be saved, and they decided that it possessed power in roughly the same sense as the names they used in their magical practice possessed power. The result was disastrous, and the newly minted exorcists barely escaped with their lives.

The power of the name of Jesus shows itself only when a person becomes an inhabitant of the Kingdom, and only to the extent that he has become one. It cannot be otherwise: God's power always changes a person from within, and God never merely wants to make a person His instrument by giving him certain special abilities. He wants to renew him, turning him into an inhabitant of His Kingdom. That is what matters most. Everything else is only forms and means, which in themselves give a person nothing.