Recall please that the apostles had been commanded through the Holy Spirit to evangelize (Acts 1:2,8), had received the Holy Spirit to facilitate evangelism (Acts 2:4), and they prayed that the Jerusalem church would likewise be empowered to evangelize (Acts 4:29-31).
In this chapter, in an answer to that prayer, Phillip, who again by tradition says was one of the Seventy Two (Luke 10) that Jesus sent out as evangelists, was scattered to the City of Samaria.
There his teaching, supported by many miracles, was successful enough for Peter and John to be sent to equip other Samaritan evangelists with the evangelistic gifts of the Holy Spirit (Acts 8:14-16). This however was not done universally, but selectively, and excluded Simon the magician (Acts 8:18-21).
In these chapters we see Saul/Paul receive the Spirit by the hand of Ananias of Damascus, who also has been identified as one of the Seventy-Two.
But the last such recorded event was (Acts 19:1-7), when Paul equipped a group of 12 in Ephesus to evangelize via the power of the Holy Spirit.
This does not appear to have been perpetuated to us, but rather is the fulfillment of what Jesus Christ said specifically to His Disciples before His Ascension:
But you will receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you, and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the end of the earth.”
It is dangerous to apply what is said to the Disciples to the church universal. Yes, there is an ongoing fulfillment by indwelling of the Christian by the Spirit, and the ongoing duty to evangelize, but it should not be expected to include the miraculous powers given to the initial evangelists.
Instead, today it appears we are universally equipped just as were the disciples by the risen Christ in John 20:19-23(This prior to the events in Acts that we have been studying):
On the evening of that day, the first day of the week, the doors being locked where the disciples were for fear of the Jews, Jesus came and stood among them and said to them, “Peace be with you.”
When he had said this, he showed them his hands and his side. Then the disciples were glad when they saw the Lord.
Jesus said to them again, “Peace be with you. As the Father has sent me, even so I am sending you.” And when he had said this, he breathed on them and said to them, “Receive the Holy Spirit. If you forgive the sins of any, they are forgiven them; if you withhold forgiveness from any, it is withheld.”
The power specifically conveyed here is the power to forgive.
In what is called the High Priestly Prayer by Jesus in the Upper Room (John 17:18-26), this indwelling of the Spirit is requested and perpetuated to us by the phrase “but also for those who will believe in me through their word”and we are included in the same charge with the phrase “so I have sent them into the world”. That charge being “that the love with which you have loved me may be in them”.
As you sent me into the world, so I have sent them into the world. And for their sake I consecrate myself, that they also may be sanctified in truth.
“I do not ask for these only, but also for those who will believe in me through their word, that they may all be one, just as you, Father, are in me, and I in you, that they also may be in us, so that the world may believe that you have sent me.
O righteous Father, even though the world does not know you, I know you, and these know that you have sent me. I made known to them your name, and I will continue to make it known, that the love with which you have loved me may be in them, and I in them.”
We are given the same Spirit and the same power to love, to forgive, and to heal relationships!
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