FOT10 A Change of Priesthood - The Feast of Pentecost

"If we were called to just live a renewed human life, the Feasts of the Lord could happily stop at the Waving of the Sheaf of First Fruits. But we are not."from FOT9.

1 Peter 2: ^9-10But you are the ones chosen by God, chosen for the high calling of priestly work, chosen to be a holy people, God's instruments to do his work and speak out for him, to tell others of the night-and-day difference he made for you—from nothing to something, from rejected to accepted.
^11-12Friends, this world is not your home, so don't make yourselves cozy in it. Don't indulge your ego at the expense of your soul. Live an exemplary life among the natives so that your actions will refute their prejudices. Then they'll be won over to God's side and be there to join in the celebration when he arrives. The Message
⁹and ye [are] a choice race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people acquired, that the excellences ye may shew forth of Him who out of darkness did call you to His wondrous light;

¹⁰who [were] once not a people, and [are] now the people of God; who had not found kindness, and now have found kindness.

¹¹Beloved, I call upon [you], as strangers and sojourners, to keep from the fleshly desires, that war against the soul,

¹²having your behaviour among the nations right, that in that which they speak against you as evil-doers, of the good works having beheld, they may glorify God in a day of inspection.same thing Youngs Literal

At this point everything is going to change.....
which is a phrase similar in effect to the 60s Gerry Anderson Puppet series

"Anything could happen in the next half hour."

Up until now you have a certain image of yourself.
You've been convicted in various ways about your need for God. He has come into your life in an amazing way.Maybe you have begun sharing about your newfound faith.
In some ways there have been both internal and external changes going on, but broadly
you are carrying on

• thinking about your self and who you are much the same,

• it's just that there has been this added dimension to your life of faith that you didn't really know existed before.
  

Then Jesus interrupts your existence with yet more incredible truths....
Though you have always thought of yourself as a soul, and that is all,
it turns out you are primarily a spirit being with a soul and personality, inside the mechanics of a body.
There are things about you ,you a) didn't know at all from your secular environment or b) have learned wrongly in environments that do make use of the supernatural, like witchcraft, voodoo, horoscopes,ouija boards,tarot readings etc etc or wrong religions. Or more recently have been referred to as strong psychic or soul powers.
Proverbs 20 :27 the spirit or breath of man is Yahweh/Jehovah's lamp searching all the inner parts of the heart Youngs Literal Translation
Romans 8:

²⁶( In the same way, )the Spirit helps us in our weakness. We do not know what we ought to pray for, but the Spirit himself intercedes for us through wordless groans. ²⁷ And he who searches our hearts knows the mind of the Spirit, because the Spirit intercedes for God’s people in accordance with the will of God.NIV
- the Spirit doth help our weaknesses; for, what we may pray for, as it behoveth [us], we have not known, but the Spirit himself doth make intercession for us with groanings unutterable,....Youngs Literal Translation
The first churches in the New Testament were not like today's churches. They were formed with leadership coming from men who knew they had "died" and their new identity was in Christ. They knew , in the case of the 12 apostles when the Holy Spirit was breathed into them by Jesus in the upper room, and when the Holy Spirit had been fully released upon them in the baptism of the Holy Spirit that occurred in Acts 2. St Paul had a combined experience when at his conversion he had hands laid on him. There was ONLY this type of supernatural Christianity. Now many today claim supernatural Christianity, but there are many leaders who know little of the sort of Spirit and Word training the apostles had with Jesus for 3 years. And yet THIS is the PRECISE task and office that the Holy Spirit is commissioned to do. The devil's work has been to both blind us to this , so we end up blocking it, or if we do actually experience a kind of Baptism in the Holy Spirit, it is laid on top of a poor spiritual foundation, which effectively denies that "we have died, and it is not us who now live, but Christ (FUSED AS ONE) with our spirit, our old man having completely died at the Cross."
This denial is what Jesus referred to as building ON SAND, and not ON ROCK.

The Feast of Pentecost and the Inundation of the Holy Spirit's power, the clothing of His Power, GOD ON FLESH, is God empowering us to function as priests, as a priesthood nation. It is Christ the Anointed One.Christ means Anointing.
When Christ ascended on high to sit at the right hand of God the Father and there to rule and reign UNTIL He made all His enemies His footstool, He was anointed by the Holy Spirit to do so.His High Priesthood as it is now is described in the later chapters of Hebrews using the term the Melchizedek Order.

Now the reason we have had to retrace our steps as the Body of Christ to celebrate again the Waving of the Sheaf of Firstfuits, is so that the Holy Spirit could further lead us into ALL TRUTH. He had to put the whole movement across the Earth on a better footing. As the Pillars were again being exported from the Heavenly Building Supply Depot for the work ahead during all the 1900s, they were unfortunately being driven into sandy soil. The Holy Spirit Contractor was insisting that BUILDING ON SAND is not going to work, and so has spent the last years since the Word of Faith Movement, creating an extreme dissatisfaction in the saints, nay nausea.... characterised in people like myself withdrawing from the initial glory we had experienced as the people of God. In more recent years this has been characterised also by Darin Hufford and Daniel and Heidi Venie.

ALL OF US ARE TO BE BUILDERS ON ROCK. Our building process is OUR spoken confession of what we SEE internally by revelation in what Christ has already performed for us.

The Anointing Oil of Pentecost is Jesus Anointing Oil at the Righthand of the Father. Except that He is the Head of the Body, and the oil starts at the Head and trickles down "the collar of His robes Ps133" down the rest of His Body which is Us.

Please dont think YOU have to struggle and strive and screw up your eyes and faith to get anointed as a SEPARATE BEING. No wonder you've had problems struggling and striving. Our Life is Hidden in Christ.
The Anointing you will receive comes because it's been tipped all over Jesus Head.
When Jesus was raised from the dead the Spirit quickened LIFE in His Body and it was raised a NEW BODY that could walk through walls. But, as we , the whole human race DIED with Him spiritually on Golgotha, our spirits lay dead in Hades with Him. The Holy Spirit quickened us IN HIM, and raised us to a position at the right hand of God the Father in Him. Baptism in the Spirit occurs because it was and is the Anointing oil of the Melchisedek Priesthood, which now being IN CHRIST we share. The task of ruling and reigning as priests. Christ's present mission of bringing everything VISIBLY under His feet that He may present it to the Father, this whole operation, is based on the total victory Jesus won against the Devil , death and hell, and His having brought into existence a totally new priesthood to carry out His instructions and plan on earth.
Evangelicals' theology of Jesus returning to do the job for us had to be totally overturned by Ern Baxter, and other leading authorities in the Body like De Vern Fromke.
But Pentecostals and Charismatics had to be totally reducated WHY they are priests, where the Anointing Oil comes from, and WHOSE it is.

Baptised into Moses 1 Cor:10
¹ For I do not want you to be ignorant of the fact, brothers and sisters, that our ancestors were all under the cloud and that they all passed through the sea. ² They were all baptized into Moses in the cloud and in the sea. ³ They all ate the same spiritual food ⁴ and drank the same spiritual drink; for they drank from the spiritual rock that accompanied them, and that rock was Christ. ⁵ Nevertheless, God was not pleased with most of them; their bodies were scattered in the wilderness.
This was the Old Testament equivalent experience of BEING BAPTISED into Christ.
I have to spell this out, for many believers have their own imagination of the phrase BAPTISED into Christ.
They think something akin to the Laver experience. The experience I have described above of our inclusion in Christ's death, which IS in fact the basis for all that follows.

The reason I am highlighting "baptised into Moses" is because this has a "jarring" effect on the limitations of the phrase of our "individual baptism into Christ.". Because what I am about to describe is relevant to THIS POST and not to the post about the Laver, or Francois DuToit's Mirror version of the Bible.
I believe "baptised into Moses" is a corporate experience the the Israelites had. They believed and obeyed completely by faith, the instructions of the I AM through this man Moses. The act of following him through the sea, being baptised LITERALLY into the corporate plan of God for His people, no holds barred, no turning back, following UNIQUELY the Pillar of Fire and Pillar of Cloud as a people, was to them a different kind of baptism. It has to do with Priesthood. It has to do with what Pentecost births in us.

We are BAPTISED not just into a Personal Christ. For this we didnt need the full on Power of the Holy Spirit's inundation. No, we need the full on HolySpirit Baptism to baptise us into the Corporate experience of BEING the Body of Christ here on earth. Of Being a co-race of Priests, who begin to operate IN and UNDER the Headship of the Son Now.
Before the Baptism in the Spirit, we had our own names. We were Baptists, Methodists,Anglicans,Free Believers. After the Baptism of the Holy Spirit we "see" only the Body of Christ. We see God stuff. We are never again interested in the externals, because , now seeing INTERNALS as clear as we see Xrays at hospital, we KNOW what is internal is going to become external anyway.

This is our entrance CORPORATELY into a new way of life. We actually enter the next stage of the Tabernacle, which is the Holy Place, there to function as priests. The manner of our meeting together changes completely OVERNIGHT. There is "no natural light" in the Holy Place. It is lit only by the candlestick. It is nolonger good ideas. Our planned structures. Our own vision and agenda. "Here a little , there a little, with stammering lips..." Christ puts together the whole vision , layer upon layer into our spirit.
After we are baptised in the Holy Spirit, God doesn't put us into some inferior Holy Place until we've passed our priest exams. We begin to function immediately in the REAL THING. This is also how it was for the disciples. Virtually from the word go they were sent out to ministry. To proclaim what they now believed. to get them used to ministry in the Spirit.
When we start, our experience is in ,out, and all over the place, but our Holy Spirit input is not inferior, it's just that we need to be ESTABLISHED in our priest walk. Our corporate experience together is that we have to maintain the Unity of the Spirit until we attain to the unity of the faith. This means there is a place where our faith grabs us, and won't put us down. It is an inner place where we are seeing God only in all things. We are seeing with a "single " eye. UNTIL we each get here, any permanent unity is hopeless and unmanageable, just as until the spokes of a wheel are all properly embedded between wheel rim and hub, that wheel is absolutely unusable....but once every spoke is in its proper position, strength and use come automatically to the whole wheel.
The Counterfeit
As if to prepare for this post, in the last few days we have been discussing the counterfeit priesthood as outlined in Frank Viola's 5th chapter of Pagan Christianity. This traces the history of where things went off track. The fake is entirely supported through tithes, but imposed from the top down as a kind of salary.
This malpractice supports a whole edifice of wrongdoing. It sets apart a whole human priesthood that has nothing to do with Spirit and Word as a basis. Living by faith from gifts , offerings, and even the work of our own hands is the Spirit way of running His work. Just as when we see the fields are white unto harvest we dont rush out and programme operations, but we pray to the Father who thrusts out workers....so doing things the right way financially puts the necessary spoke in the wheel to human endeavours to keep flesh from controlling the Spirit...or trying to do so.
It is the Holy Spirit who sets apart ministry. And ONLY in the context of every member ministry anyway.
Chapter Five, and also the whole of Jack Fortenberry's book "Corinthian Elders" explains clearly how
there is ONLY GRACE in God's work for doing things God's way.

One man church leadership, the false view that a pastor runs the show, is actually inviting demons in to crush the pastor personally under the burden of all the work he feels he must carry out, and it is inviting in demons of jealousy and malice among believers who are now excluded from doing anything other than overhead projection or loo cleaning, because of the pyramid structure, and their only means of getting on within is to topple the pastor, who was never given this role anyway by the Holy Spirit. In the local body are many pastors and teachers, and it is Jesus Christ who leads every church, as discerned by all the Body in the Spirit, and guided by mature believers who themselves by practice have trained their senses to discern good from evil.
Love and War

• Love. Our priesthood is not duty-based. A clue is God's First commandment. Deuteronomy 6 ^:4`Hear, O Israel, Jehovah our God [is] one Jehovah;

⁵and thou hast loved Jehovah thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy might,Youngs Literal Translation

The experience of the Baptism in the Spirit releases the Spirit such that we learn how to approach God, to love on Him, to wait on Him, to delight ourselves in Him. One of the biggest single things the Holy Spirit loves to do in leading us into all Truth is to "take what is mine (Jesus speaking) and show or reveal it unto you." He shows the secrets of the Kingdom. The secret of the Lord is with those who fear,respect,give value to,reverence Him.
All this is wheels within wheels, and those wheels are LOVE. For the Spirit teaches His people according to the arc shape that is embedded in the Lord's Prayer itself, how we as a BODY enter the heavenly Tabernacle and go right through the Holy Place and into the Holiest Place. IN EXPERIENCE. WHEN WE GATHER. If there are any who read Spanish, read Congregados Para Darle Gloria by Jorge Pradas. Free PDF of his book.So if the first work of the Spirit is to FORM the priest, the next work of the Spirit, and this begins at once, is to teach the priest how to function. How faith operates and how the weapons of Ephesians 6 are used. This is deepened later, but in microcosm, everything you will ever learn will in a real sense come out from these first experiences as a priest of the Most High.

• War. If worship comes alive as never before, almost the first thing after that is an immediate awareness of what we just never were able to see before. The devil is real and he is actively resisting the work and plans of God. As long as we were "locked" in our day to day form of thinking, and had not handed the "control" of our thought life , and the rest of our bodies and lives to God, as in Proverbs 3:5-12, so the Spirit of God was not allowed to release the whole of us into the sense of this New Heavenly Kingdom.
• The Holy Spirit "trains our hands for war". War in the Spirit. He teaches us to battle through on the basis of what God has spoken into our hearts as a promise and not what we "see with our eyes".

Every meeting.
Every day of our lives.
Like the puppet introduction, we literally have no idea of the power of our priesthood to be exercised in the Earth. Literally "Anything can happen in the next half hour!."
One of the biggest things God is speaking anew to His people is a new respect for the role of the priestly Body of Christ in the Earth...for if Christ cannot operate through His Body...
NOTHING WILL HAPPEN.... and history will extend. But we are told that WE CAN HASTEN HIS COMING. The Church literally has hardly any idea that the whole of history AWAITS THEM. One brother in Emsworth (Graham Kemp) put it....."If things don't change, they remain exactly the same!!!!"
Some examples I've lived through (yesterday on Facebook)
Even now there is an authority vested upon those who are really God's that is, frankly terrifying. I am not writing this, like i've got any power...God's power could just as easily be turned loose against Me if I wilfully choose. God says He raises up nations and puts down nations for the sake of His people whom He loves. In my lifetime this is what I have seen. I have seen Mother Basilea Schlink shake the living daylights out of Mao Tse Tung who was assembling his troops to conquer Europe. She did this in the Spirit. next thing we know Kissinger and Nixon are visiting Mao for a cuppa tea!. I have seen Polish Roman Catholic prayer groups in houses all over their country bring down the Iron Curtain without any bloodshed. I personally have been witness to The Yorkshire Ripper's whole operation being shut down suddenly and in an instant by the people of God. I have seen a father in my congregation give his bone marrow to his 12 year old with leukaemia, then 5 years later the healed son give it back to his Dad. The Dad only died eventually because of radiation therapy!!! a few years ago...neither died from leukaemia. They were on every channel in the world because no one anywhere had given bone marrow two ways. I have seen Tony Fitzgerald's wife about to die in a Brighton hospital commanded whole at 11am in an Emsworth meeting at the highpoint of anointing in worship, and at precisely 11am she was healed. I have seen the whole Body in Emsworth activated to bring healing to a member who spent all day every day paralysed on her back in a darkened room. I was given two breakthrough commands in meetings. But nothing happened for months.Another sister Norita was used by God to bring a lot of the practical breakthroughs...but all sorts of people had roles. The authority of Jesus upon His people is truly frightening, and people who play religion are putting their lives in such danger. God stuff is the most real stuff in the universe. One time we held praise meetings in a public hall in Emsworth, and the person I met years later said she could not hold her yoga classes in there the next day. I could write a book, well the whole church could....

Feast of Tabernacles - George H. Warnock

CHAPTER 5 - FEAST OF PENTECOST

The Feast of Pentecost was the second of Israel's three annual Feasts. As the Scriptures reveal, the Feast is also called the Feast of Harvest, of Firstfruits, or of Weeks. Pentecost is the New Testament name, and is so called because Pentecost means "fiftieth." An examination of Lev. 23:15, 16 will reveal why the Feast is called Fiftieth. It was because the Feast began on the fiftieth day after the Passover sabbath, or "the morrow after the seventh sabbath." This, of course, parallels exactly with the fulfillment of the type in the New Testament. When Christ arose from the dead, He continued with the disciples for the space of forty days, "speaking of the things pertaining to the kingdom of God." (Acts 1:3). Then He departed into Heaven, and after ten days (at the time of Israel's Feast of Pentecost), He sent forth the Holy Ghost upon the waiting disciples.

THIS IS THE AGE OF PENTECOST

Pentecost! What a vast subject looms before us as we contemplate the tremendous implications of the word! Many books have been written on the power and glory of this Feast, and men who have appropriated in some measure the experience of Pentecost have proved by the Word and by experience its reality, and the Word has been confirmed with signs following. We could not begin to adequately explain the meaning of the Feast in this study, nor is it our intention to do so. Our prime concern is to prepare to ground for truth concerning the Feast of Tabernacles, which surpasses the glory of Pentecost even as the noon-day surpasses the glory of early dawn. How strange, it seems, that good men of God who have discerned by the Spirit the fulfillment of Passover and Pentecost in the Church, should now close the door to further revelation and deny that the last Feast has any application to our day and age! At the turn of this century, when God began to restore pentecost--and right up to the present time, many evangelical circles have gone to considerable trouble in an attempt to prove that Pentecost was an event of ancient history, and that its power and glory were not for present-day experience. But a large group of hungry souls have proved by the Word and by experience that Pentecost was and is for personal appropriation by faith, just as the Passover was. Therefore let us not stop at the Passover; but let us go on to enjoy the fruits for which Christ died, even the glories of Pentecost. And let us not stop at this partial restoration of Pentecost, but let us go on to enjoy the fullness of the Pentecostal experience as recorded in the Book of Acts. And even then, let us not stop at the fullness of Pentecost, but let us go on to appropriate and experience the glories of the Feast of Tabernacles--for which Pentecost has paved the way.

Even among the saints who are hungering and thirsting for more of God there is a tendency to believe that a restoration of early apostolic Pentecost is the hope of the Church, and many will be satisfied with a return of apostolic power and blessing. True, we have a long way to go yet to equal the power and glory of the early Church; but that power and glory is by no means the sum and substance of genuine Christianity. That was Pentecost in the early hours of dawn; the Church must go on to the Pentecost of the noon-day sun; and then on, and on, and on to the Feast of Tabernacles, which will utterly eclipse the glory of any people in any past dispensation. Of course, we must enter into this glorious experience one step at a time. And we will certainly have to enter fully into the glory of Pentecost before we can hope to enter the glory of Tabernacles. Our generation has had a foretaste of Pentecost, that is true. But we have by no means seen the fullness of the Pentecostal experience, as recorded in the Book of Acts, when tongues like as of fire came down and sat upon each of the disciples, and they were given the ability to speak the languages of all nations.

But thank God, He is continuing the great work of restoration which He began in the days of Luther. The former foundations must be relaid, the gates re-established, and the walls of the Temple re-erected. "For precept must be upon precept, precept upon precept: line upon line, line upon line; here a little, and there a little: for with stammering lips and another tongue will he speak to this people. To whom he said, This is the rest wherewith ye may cause the weary to rest; and this is the refreshing: yet they would not hear." (Isa. 28:10-12).

An examination of the passages concerning the typical Pentecost are most enlightening, especially in view of the real spiritual Pentecost in the New Testament. Having a historical record of the actual fulfillment of the Feast, it is comparatively easy for us to look back into the type, and see exactly what it was intended to signify.

PENTECOST WAS A NEW FEAST

"Ye shall offer a new meat (meal) offering unto the Lord." (Lev. 23:16). The Passover was wonderful--and an experimental appropriation of the Passover produces pardon and justification from all our sins. But that is really a negative experience: the old is taken away, sins are forgiven, the past life is forgotten, and the sinner is left with a clean record before God and ready to start a new life. In conformity with this happy state, therefore, the God of grace and glory invites the justified man to receive a new experience in the Holy Spirit, whereby he can offer a "new... offering unto the Lord." He is invited to drink into God's Spirit, and be baptized with the Holy Ghost. In justification he is pardoned; in this new experience he is empowered for service. The early disciples were cleansed by the Word which Jesus had spoken unto them during His earthly ministry. (Jn. 15:3). Furthermore, on resurrection day "He breathed on them, and saith unto them, receive ye the Holy Ghost." (Jn. 20:22). The original Greek of the word "receive ye" proves conclusively that right there and then the Spirit of God entered into the disciples--and that imparted life brought them into the experience which we call regeneration or new birth. Just as truly as God in the beginning breathed into Adam's nostrils the breath of life and man "became a living soul,"--so now the Last Adam (who had now become, by virtue of His death and resurrection, a "life-giving Spirit"--1 Cor. 15:45)--so now the Last Adam breathed into the disciples the breath of spiritual life, and they passed experimentally from death unto life.

This experience, however, was not sufficient by way of equipping them for the great and mighty tasks which lay just ahead of them; and so the Lord "commanded that they should not depart from Jerusalem, but wait for the promise of the Father, which, saith he, ye have heard of me. For John truly baptized with water; but ye shall be baptized with the Holy Ghost not many days hence." (Acts 1:4, 5). And so they tarried in Jerusalem for the "promise of the Father," and after ten days the Holy Ghost came down upon them, and literally revolutionized their whole concept of life and service by transforming weak and humble vessels into the mighty apostles of truth and power and authority.

PENTECOST WAS A HARVEST FEAST

In one instance it is called "the feast of harvest." (Ex. 23:16). It was so called because they had just completed the harvesting of their grain. The sheaf had already been waved before the Lord fifty days before, heralding the coming of the harvest; and now the harvest time had come. And what a tremendous harvest there was! Peter preached his dynamic sermon under the "dunamis," the "power" of the Holy Ghost, and some three thousand souls were added to the disciples. A few days later there was another harvest, and we are told "the number of the men was about five thousand." (Acts 4:4)--to say nothing of the hundreds or thousands of women and children who also must have believed at the same time. The revival continued with ever-increasing power from day to day, "And believers were the more added to the Lord, multitudes both of men and women." (Acts 5:14). Great and mighty signs and miracles were wrought amongst the people, until--in very short order--Jerusalem, and then Samaria, and then the uttermost parts of the earth literally rocked under the mighty impact of the Holy Ghost through His anointed ministers. Truly the Day of Pentecost was a great Day... but the Day is not finished yet... that was but the dawning of the Day. We have yet to witness the noon-day splendour of the Feast of Pentecost.

PENTECOST SIGNIFIED THE FORMATION OF THE BODY

"Ye shall bring out of your habitations two wave loaves of two tenth deals: they shall be of fine flour; they shall be baked with leaven; they are the firstfruits unto the Lord." (Lev. 23:17). The loaves of bread would speak to us of God's people in union with Christ. "For we being many are one bread, and one body; for we are all partakers of that one bread." (1 Cor. 10:17). The number "two" is quite significant in that it refers to Christ in the fullness of His Body. It would be interesting to follow the meaning of the number "two" through the Scriptures. There is Adam and Eve, two and yet, one,--Eve being the complement, the likeness, the counterpart of Adam. Then there is the sun and moon--the latter being the glory of the former, having no light of its own. Then there were two rows of bread on the table of shewbread in the holy place of the tabernacle; and the two tables of stone in the ark of the covenant--the law written first on the heart and mind of the only begotten Son, and finally on the heart and mind of His people. Then there were the two trumpets that were used for the calling of the assembly and for the journeying of the camps. And so we read concerning Christ and His Body, that He died and rose again that He might "make in Himself of twain one new man." (Eph. 2:15).

Hence in the "two" loaves of this new meal-offering we have the completion of this new Body of believers known as the Church, wherein all the believers were "made... one" by the grace and Spirit of Christ. (Eph. 2:14). The grain had been harvested, and now instead of a sheaf we have two loaves, a body of believers. The loaves were "baked with leaven" because from the time of Pentecost right until now, the Church of Christ has never been really free from division, sectarianism, and carnality. How wonderful it is to know that God knew exactly what the Church would be like throughout her long history, and made the type to fit accordingly!

PENTECOST SIGNIFIES THE GATHERING OF THE FIRSTFRUITS

Pentecost signifies a great harvest, that is true. But compared to the coming glory, it is really but a harvest of firstfruits. "The feast of harvest, the firstfruits of thy labours..." (Ex. 23:16; Lev. 23:17). And so Christ as the Sheaf that was waved, was the "firstfruits" of a great harvest to follow. Pentecost is that harvest. But even the harvest of Pentecost is the firstfruits of the coming harvest of the Feast of Tabernacles! Pentecost is wonderful, as we shall discover--when the real fullness of this experience is restored to the Church. But wonderful as it is, Pentecost is but the firstfruits of great and mighty things awaiting the Church of Jesus Christ in the Feast of Tabernacles.

PENTECOSTAL POWER

If there was to be a great ingathering of souls at Pentecost then truly it would require the power of the Holy Ghost to accomplish so great a task. Therefore God imparted not only great miracle-working power, but a new language to the people--that men of all nations might hear the wonderful works of God proclaimed in their own tongue, and be won to Christ. This was a day when a "new meal-offering" was to be presented to the Lord; hence God imparted a new language. See what a great secret remained locked up in the counsels of God until the Day of Pentecost was revealed! For if it was God's plan that the nations should at first be scattered abroad over the face of the earth by means of the confusion of languages--why should it be thought incredible that God should now restore the gift of languages to His disciples, that they might preach the Gospel in the tongues of many nations, and reverse the order (or shall we say the disorder) of Babel? And that is exactly what the all-wise God did. In the beginning He confused the languages of the disobedient, to scatter them over the face of the earth and make many nations out of one. (Gen. 11:1-9). But now in the time of the harvest, God in grace and wisdom imparts to His own disciples the gift of languages (languages which came into being because of Babel), that He might gather together a people for His name, and create one holy nation out of the midst of many nations--a nation that would serve Him in obedience and love and unity, even the holy nation and the holy priesthood of the Church. (Some would object to the statement that God gave His disciples the gift of languages to preach the Gospel to the nations. They insist that the disciples declared "the wonderful works of God," and not the Gospel! As if there was a more "wonderful" work of God than the story of redeeming Grace!)

And so the pattern of Pentecost takes on real meaning. "And when the day of Pentecost was fully come (was being fulfilled), they were all with one accord in one place. And suddenly there came a sound from heaven as of a rushing mighty wind (a violent impetuous blowing), and it filled all the house where they were sitting. And there appeared unto them cloven tongues like as of fire, and it sat upon each of them. And they were all filled with the Holy Ghost, and began to speak with other tongues, as the Spirit gave them utterance. And there were dwelling at Jerusalem Jews, devout men, out of every nation under heaven. Now when this was noised abroad, the multitude came together, and were confounded, because that every man heard them speak in his own language." (Acts 2:1-6).

THE DISORDER OF BABEL REVERSED

Notice the contrast between Pentecost and Babel. There the Lord did "confound the language of all the earth," but here at Pentecost harmony is restored by the gift of languages, and the people are "confounded." At Babel the people were "confounded" because they could not understand the language of their own fellow-workmen and fellow-citizens; here at Pentecost the people are "confounded" because they can actually hear and understand the tongue of foreigners! O the depth of the riches, both of the wisdom and knowledge of God! How unsearchable are His judgments, and His ways past finding out! Shall a God of wisdom and power bring judgment upon the nations, and shall He not bring grace? Shall He curse and not bless? Shall He slay and not make alive? And shall He not bring grace out of the midst of judgment, and blessing out of cursing, and life out of death? Should we deem it an incredible thing therefore, that in the fullness of the Pentecostal experience the saints of God shall receive a gift of languages so perfect and so real and so genuine, that just as the people of Babel were "confounded" by hearing strange languages they could not understand,--so now in the day of restoration the people of Babel shall be "confounded," but this time even unto repentance, by hearing their own languages from the lips of foreigners?

Thank God for the truth of Pentecost, and for the hope and confidence that the Lord has implanted in the hearts of His people, that we are yet to receive and experience a real Pentecostal experience, when the saints of God shall go forth into the world preaching the unsearchable riches of Christ in all the languages of the heathen. Praise His Name!

But even then we must go on, and on, and on... on from Pentecost to the greatest Feast of the Church, the Feast of Tabernacles.