Acts 4:8

8. Filled with the Holy Ghost The fresh, sanctifying, inspiring, and empowering Spirit of the Pentecost.

Fourth Speech of Peter that before the Sanhedrin, 8-12.

Peter’s four speeches rise in a climax both of publicity and magnanimous boldness. The first was to the inner circle of the eleven; the second was before the pentecostal assembly; the third was before the Jews in Solomon’s Porch; this last is before the high court of the nation. The first filled up the ranks of the young Church; the second pronounced its manifesto; the third opened its aggressive movement upon Israel; this fourth announces the separation between the now dead Church of the past and the new living Church of the future.

Face to face stand the representatives of obsolete Judaism and those of vital Christianity. Here is commenced the rupture. Here the two begin to branch off, the apparently stronger into weakness and withering; the weaker into growth and power, revealing itself as the actual trunk. Says Wordsworth: “May not Caiaphas and Cephas be from the same root, כיפא ? At first Cephas had quailed before Caiaphas, but now that the Holy Ghost is given, Caiaphas cannot resist Cephas, (Acts 4:14;) the one falls, the other rises.”

Ye rulers As secular magistrates whom, in all things unforbidden of God, we are bound to obey.

Elders of Israel The religious representatives of the old theocracy, who are bound to follow the divine order.