Godbey's Commentary - Acts - Romans - Enter His Rest

DOUBLE MIRACLE.
5-9. On this occasion an unprecedented double miracle was wrought by the Holy Ghost on not
only the speakers but all the hearers. This double miracle moved like a span of cyclones through the
multitude, bringing the gospel with lightning velocity and unerring intelligibility to all. On the
speakers was miraculously conferred the power to speak in all of the languages represented in that
vast cosmopolitan assembly. Those “ignorant and unlearned” men and women preached fluently
in languages which they knew not. Of course they knew substantially and experimentally what they
were preaching, but they did not know the words and sentences they spoke. In their dispersions the
hundred and twenty men and women, all preaching with the Holy Ghost sent down from heaven,
spoke in the language of the people with whom they were providentially associated. An illiterate
disciple happens to encounter a multitude of people speaking the Coptic language, as they were
citizens of Egypt. She preaches fluently in Coptic, though she knows not a word of it. Bartholomew
happens to encounter a multitude from Rome speaking the Latin language, of which he knows not
a word, yet he preaches fluently in Latin. Thus there is a thorough accommodation to all the dialect
vicissitudes of that cosmopolitan audience. As Peter was the leading speaker and the Greek not only
the vernacular of the apostles, but the great learned language of the world, of course he delivered that
memorable introductory sermon in that language. Then the hundred and twenty, dispersing in all
directions, preached with the Holy Ghost sent down from heaven in the language of the people they
providentially met. But there is another hemisphere of this wonderful double miracle wrought by the
Holy Ghost in unutterable mercy to expedite the inauguration of the gospel dispensation and give
it a supernatural impetus at the beginning, a glorious earnest of the coming millennium, as the filling
of the heart with the Holy Ghost is really the millennial reign in the soul. Now the second
hemisphere of this glorious miracle was wrought on that vast multitude “from every nation under
heaven.” The supernatural power of the Holy Ghost wrought with the multitude a qualification in
each human spirit, quickening the intellect and enabling every person to hear in his own native
language.
8. E.g., while Peter was preaching in Greek the Parthian heard him in his native Chaldaic tongue,
the Median, the Elamite and the Mesopotamian each heard in his own native dialect. And regardless
of the language spoken by any one, every auditor heard in his own language. To human apprehension
this was miraculous superfluity, as either of these miracles covered all the ground, and to our
diagnosis precluded the necessity of the other. But in this double miracle we have a wonderful
manifestation of the divine beneficence and the superabundance of redeeming grace (Romans 5:20).
This double miracle largely accounts for the paradoxical efficiency of the gospel on that wonderful
occasion when the world saw a brilliant prelude, adumbrating the ineffable glories of the coming
kingdom.
THE LOST TRIBES OF ISRAEL NOT LOST.
9-12. Volumes have been written, and weary eyes amid nocturnal lucubrations have toiled through
the intervening ages hunting the lost tribes of Israel. It is rather a joke on the hypercriticism
characteristic of modern times. The Bible is the book of all books. When John Wesley got sanctified
he says he became “Homo unius libri,” — a man of one book. All other books must bend to the
Bible, and they are only valuable as they corroborate and elucidate the Word of God. You have