John H. Paterson
"When the times of refreshing shall come from the presence of the
Lord ... until the times of restitution of all things" Acts 3:19-21
THE words "times of refreshing" strike a curiously modern note in the text of a Bible translated in that way in the seventeenth century. A little research into the original text, however, shows that the translation is valid and that it could, in fact, be rendered in an even more up-to-date way, as "time to get your breath back." The thought is of what we nowadays call "a breather" after a period of stress or busyness.
The only other place in the King James Version where the word "refreshing" occurs is in Isaiah 28:12, and there the original suggests, even more vividly, the calm of the sea after a period of storm. Evidently, then, God's message on these two occasions was a promise to His people of periodic relief in hard times and a chance to gather new strength for the next stage.
That this pattern has been borne out in the history of Israel and of the Church in various parts of the world can readily be shown. Much of the prayer of God's people for a revival in their spiritual lives is a plea for just such a "time of refreshing". For the moment, however, I should like to concentrate your attention on the way in which this pattern of stress and calm can be seen in the lifetime and ministry of the very man who used this expression in Acts 3 -- Peter, the leader and spokesman of the Church in its earliest days.
If you read the early chapters of Acts you cannot help being struck by the way in which progress or development went by fits and starts -- rapid growth followed by setbacks: mass conversions followed by mass persecutions. And if you examine the text in a little more detail, you will find, I think, that the stages in this early history are indeed marked off for us by "times of refreshing" -- periods of growth, joy and even approval by outsiders: all the marks, in fact, of what we might describe as success.
Let me suggest to you that there are at least eight references in Acts to such intervals of calm. There may well be more -- that is for every Bible student to discover! But the ones I have found are in 2:46-47; 4:32-34; 5:12-13; 5:42; 6:7; 8:8; 9:31, and 11:24-26.
To cite only one or two of these references in detail: the first of them, Acts 2:46-47, describes the state of the Church after its first great burst of excitement and activity at Pentecost. We see here a Church in unity, "gladness and singleness of heart", and "having favour with all the people." Then again, in 9:31, after many ups and downs and much persecution, we find the Church, several phrases later, at peace, being built up, and enjoying both "the comfort of the Holy Ghost" and numerical growth.
Now there are two ways of looking at this record, with its sequence of stress -- calm -- stress. One is to say, 'How good of God to grant these [55/56] "times of refreshing"' (and that is quite true). The other is to ask, 'But if this was the work of God, why was it not continuously successful? Why did they need "times of refreshing"?' After all, this beginning of the Church was made in uniquely favourable circumstances. There can never again be such a situation, with the memory of the Lord Jesus only a few weeks old, and a population which had heard and seen Him; which, moreover, had heard and seen the apostles both before and after Pentecost, and could judge how they had been transformed. We might have expected that, once they began their ministry, they would have carried all before them!
So, instead of concentrating on the times of rest and refreshment, we may do well to ask ourselves an opposite question: what disturbed the calm? What happened in the intervals between those references which I cited earlier, to put the believers under stress?
If we do so, we can at once distinguish between two types of pressure or stress -- that from outside and that from inside. On several of these occasions the growth and the joy of the Church were impaired by hostility from those outside its ranks, while on four occasions the trouble, the brake on growth, came from within.
