While Peter yet spake these words, the Holy Ghost fell on all them which heard the word. -- Acts 10:44 (KJV)
Peter never reaches his closing line. Mid-sentence, the Holy Ghost falls on the whole Roman household, and Cornelius and his family begin to speak in tongues and magnify God. It is the same gift the apostles received at Pentecost, the same Spirit and the same evidence. God handed the Gentiles no smaller portion and no lesser sign. He gave them the identical thing.
Astonished Before They Were Glad
Watch the Jewish believers who came with Peter. Luke says they were astonished. They were not glad at first, only stunned, because the box they had kept God's promise inside broke open in front of them. The Spirit redrew their whole map of who was in and who was out while they stood there.
It is honest to admit the same reflex lives in us. When you picture someone far outside your circle filled with the very Spirit you carry, is the first thing you feel joy, or a small surprise that needs repenting of? Peter's friends felt the shock before they felt the gladness.
No Second Tier
Then Peter asks the question that closes the case: can anyone withhold water and refuse baptism to people who have received the Holy Ghost the same way we did? No one could. So he commands them to be baptized in the name of Jesus Christ. Repentance, the Holy Ghost, baptism in Jesus' name, the same pattern from the day of Pentecost, holding here with nothing changed because these are Romans. It is one gospel and one name, and the outsider stands on the same floor as everyone else.
The wall came down in a living room on the coast. Tomorrow the question grows, because God aimed that same gospel at every creature alive.
