Acts 19:2

“Did you receive the Holy Ghost, having believed? And they said, But we did not hear that the Holy Ghost is given.” Apollos, under the powerful preaching of John the Baptist, having learned that the Messiah will baptize with the Holy Ghost and fire, after He has consummated the atonement on Calvary and ascended into heaven, thus satisfying the violated law and preparing the way for the incarnation of the Holy Ghost as in the Eden times. Apollos, after his powerful conversion and call to the ministry under the preaching of John the Baptist, who so constantly emphasized the coming Baptism of the Holy Ghost by his Divine Successor, had gone away to Africa, faithfully preaching the glorious gospel, but not enjoying an opportunity to keep posted in the current events at Jerusalem. Thus, under the Johanic dispensation, as was his custom, on arrival at Ephesus he preaches in the Jewish synagogues, proclaiming Jesus after the manner of John, who had introduced Him, and assuring them that it will be their privilege to receive the personal indwelling Holy Spirit when the Messiah shall baptize them. The E. V., “We have not so much as heard that there be any Holy Ghost,” is not only illusory, but out of harmony with the Greek. Apollos, “fervent,” i. e., boiling over in spirit, was really a Holy Ghost preacher, bright in the experience of regeneration, so prominent in the ministry of John the Baptist, to whose dispensation he belonged, yet preaching, as we see from this record, the second work of grace, though he had not yet received it, and was consequently incompetent to lead others into it.