Acts 5:1-11

ANANIAS AND SAPPHIRA

1-11. In that country the summers are very hot [and this was June], superinducing very quick and rapid putrefaction, necessitating a speedy interment of the dead, especially in a vast multitude. They had no grave to dig, as they did not use them. The sepulchers were always ready for the deposition of the dead. From this history of the mournful fate of Ananias and Sapphira, we learn an exceedingly valuable and eminently profitable symbolic truth, pertinent to all ages; i. e., that if we do not radically and truly consecrate all to God, spiritual death will inevitably supervene. Horace, the celebrated Roman lyric poet, says:

“Retribution, though with lame foot, will inevitably overtake the criminal.”

Though the irrelevancy of the heathen poet, how significantly true! The Holy Spirit is omniscient, seeing every thought, feeling and motive of our being. Hence we can not deceive Him. Millions try it and fall dead [spiritually] like Ananias and Sapphira. Reader, profit by this awful warning. You can not deceive God. Now and evermore submit unreservedly, be loyal as an angel, your watchword ever ringing, “Thy will be done.”

IDENTITY OF THE TRINITY

3, 4 and 9 (also Romans 8:9). These Scriptures prove clearly the identity of the Holy Ghost, the Spirit of Christ, and the Spirit of the Father. In Acts 5:3, Peter accuses Ananias of lying to the Holy Ghost. In Acts 5:4, he accuses him of lying to God. In Acts 5:9, he accuses him of tempting the Spirit of the Lord, i. e., of Christ. Hence we see that all these are used synonymously, proving their identity.

Romans 8:9: “But you are not in carnality, but in the spirit, if the Spirit of God dwelleth in you. And if any one has not the Spirit of Christ, he is none of his.”

In this verse we find the Spirit of God and the Spirit of Christ used synonymously, and both synonymous with the Holy Ghost. I have met much inquiry and know many people exceedingly puzzled and muddled along these lines of revealed truth, some having actually digressed into the tritheistic heresy, i. e., the doctrine of three Gods, because they too idly discriminate between the three persons of the one God, becoming somewhat oblivious to the fact that there is only one God, of whom the Father, Son and Spirit are three distinct persons, executive of the different departments in the gracious economy, and accommodatory to our finite apprehensions of the incomprehensible Divinity. I am editor in the morning, teacher in the afternoon, and preacher at night, day by day, in my industrial life; thus exhibiting three distinct characters and working on three separate lines. Therefore you see in me a human trinity. Yet I am only one man.