John the Baptist had been dead for a quarter of a century by the time Paul came to Ephesus on his third missionary journey. Yet such had been the influence of John’s message that twelve Jews living in Ephesus were still adhering to what he had said about the coming of the Messiah. Those Jews must have been in Israel, maybe visiting, when he was preaching there and were baptised by him.
There were two obvious issues regarding those followers of John. One was their baptism and the other was what they knew about the Holy Spirit (John had mentioned that the Messiah would baptise with the Spirit). In fact, they knew very little about the Holy Spirit, but that does not mean that the Spirit had not been working in their lives. They were living in the crossover period between the kingdom being largely limited to Israel and the new way in which it was revealed in the church.
Their ignorance revealed that they although they had heard about the coming Messiah they had not realised that he had come. They knew not that he is Jesus. Their response to this information was to accept that Jesus is the Messiah, which shows that the Spirit had been working in their hearts. Immediately, they were willing to identify publicly with Jesus by being baptised in his name, another evidence that the Spirit had been working secretly within them.
Imagine what it must have been like for those disciples of John, waiting twenty-five years or so for a Messiah who had come twenty-five years previously. Perhaps they said when they met one another, ‘I wonder if he has come yet.’ What a blessing we have in possessing the knowledge of what had happened when Jesus came!
The Holy Spirit enabled them to speak in tongues and prophesy. They experienced a mini-Pentecost, evidence that despite the lateness of their entry into the church they would not be second-class Christians. Jesus graciously confirmed that they were now his disciples.
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