Acts 11:15

Acts 11:15. As I began to speak. From this we see that St. Peter was intending to say more than, in consequence of the Divine interruption, he was permitted to say. In Acts 10:44 the phrase is simply, ‘While Peter yet spake these words.' Here the apostle, recounting the history of himself, allows us to see, as it were, into his own mind.

As on us at the beginning. And therefore miraculously, with signs audible or visible or both. This seems a natural and almost inevitable conclusion. See Acts 11:17. The phrase ‘at the beginning' is worthy of careful remark. It is the same which we find at the opening of St. John's Gospel and (in the LXX.) at the opening of Genesis. St. Peter appears to claim Pentecost as the starting-point of a new dispensation. And yet eight or ten years had elapsed since that day. During this time Christianity had been limited to the Jews, and the community of the believers had been, as it were, simply a Hebrew synagogue. A second Pentecost at Cæsarea seemed necessary to supplement the first Pentecost at Jerusalem.