Jesus called the disciples when they were engaged in their ordinary occupations and none of them fully realized what they were getting themselves into. Little did they know that Jesus would, after just three years of ministry with them, end up being crucified and then shortly after would return to His Father in Heaven. And then, when He told them He would be leaving, He made an amazing statement: “…He who believes in Me, the works that I do shall he do also; and greater works than these shall He do; because I go to the Father” (Jn. 14:12).  That had to be a puzzling prediction because they had been struggling in their faith even while He was with them, and I’m sure were wondering what Jesus had seen in them to pick them. I mean one of them had betrayed Jesus and another—one of the three closest to Jesus, Peter, had even denied knowing Jesus during His trial and crucifixion!  How could Jesus say to them, “…It is to your advantage that I go away…” (Jn. 16:7a)? The answer was: “…If I go, I will send Him (the Comforter, the Holy Spirit) to you” (Jn. 16:7b).   That’s why, just before He ascended back to heaven, “He commanded them not to leave Jerusalem, but to wait for what the Father had promised, which you heard of from Me” (Acts 1:4)... (a reference, of course, to the coming of the Holy Spirit on Pentecost). Jesus went on to explain, “But you shall receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you; and you shall be My witnesses both in Jerusalem, and in all Judea and Samaria, and even to the remotest part of the earth” (Acts 1: 8).  Taking the Gospel (the Good News of Jesus’ death and resurrection for sin) to all the world and seeing lives transformed by the power of the Gospel (Ro. 1:16,17), that would be the “greater works” of which Jesus spoke in the Upper Room. Their future success did not depend upon their own ability but on the power of Christ at work in and through them through the Holy Spirit who would come to permanently indwell them (and us, when we believe).