What Happened at Pentecost and Why It Matters Now
by Nicholas Davis, Core Christianity:
The church has a birthday, and it’s called “Pentecost.”
Pentecost is a time for Christians to celebrate the descent of the Holy Spirit upon Jesus’ disciples shortly after Christ ascended into heaven (Acts 1:8–9; 2:1–47).
Pentecost was originally a Jewish holiday known as the “Feast of Weeks” (Lev. 23:15), which was observed seven weeks after the Jews celebrated the Passover. Since the resurrection of Jesus, however, Christians have celebrated Pentecost seven weeks after Easter. Luke tells us at the beginning of the book of Acts that Jesus promised his disciples they would “be baptized with the Holy Spirit not many days from now” (Acts 1:5).
In the Gospel of John, Jesus also informed them of this plan saying, “I will ask the Father, and he will give you another Helper, to be with you forever” (John 14:16-26; 15:26; 16:7). When Jesus left, the disciples were sad that their Savior-King had left them. They stood there looking off into heaven, not knowing what to do (Acts 1:10). But as God promised them, a Helper would come to them.
On the day of the Jewish celebration of Pentecost, God the Holy Spirit came down upon those gathered in Jerusalem (Acts 2). When the Holy Spirit descended, he gave them the remarkable ability to speak in other languages (Acts 2:4). This speech was human (not otherworldly) language, and thousands of people from various regions were able to hear the “mighty acts of God” for the first time in their own tongue (v. 11).
I’ve been to Zurich and I don’t speak even a bit of Swiss-German, so it was difficult for me to get around without an interpreter. But this experience of the early Christians would have made it so they could speak and interpret Swiss-German without ever studying the language! That’s pretty spectacular.
The apostle Peter made good use of this special time in history by preaching the gospel to as many people as possible. The church as we know it today was born with about three thousand baptisms (Acts 2:41).
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