9. In his account at Jerusalem, how did Peter describe the action of the holy spirit at Caesarea, and with what did he compare it?

⁹ When giving his own account of this at Jerusalem, Peter said: “But when I started to speak, the holy spirit fell upon them just as it did also upon us in the beginning [at Pentecost, 33 C.E.]. At this I called to mind the saying of the Lord, how he used to say, ‘John, for his part, baptized with water, but you will be baptized in holy spirit.’ If, therefore, God gave the same free gift to them as he also did to us who have believed upon the Lord Jesus Christ, who was I that I should be able to hinder God?”​—Acts 11:15-17.

11. (a) From then on, the spirit-begotten Gentile believers were free to act in what capacity? Why? (b) How was the action of the holy spirit the same on three occasions, with three distinct groups?

¹¹ Thus “God for the first time turned his attention to the [uncircumcised] nations to take out of them a people for his name.” (Acts 15:14) On this occasion, in the house of the uncircumcised centurion Cornelius in Caesarea, Peter used another of the “keys of the kingdom of the heavens,” the third key. From then on, the spirit-anointed disciples of Jesus could be witnesses of him “to the most distant part of the earth.” (Acts 1:8) What God had opened up by means of the key-holder Peter remained open for an earth-wide witness. In agreement with this, God’s holy spirit “fell upon” (Greek: epipípto) three distinct classes of believers, (1) on the baptized 120 disciples and, afterward, about 3,000 converted Jews, all at Jerusalem on Pentecost of 33 C.E.; (2) on the baptized Samaritans, but only after the arrival and services of the apostles Peter and John; and (3) on the believing Gentiles gathered in the house of Cornelius in Caesarea, in 36 C.E.​—Acts 1:15; 2:1-4, 38, 41; 8:15-17; 10:44, 45; 11:15, 16.