Pentecost for Israel and for Us

On the day of Pentecost during the Festival of Shavuot, the Jewish Festival of Weeks that is celebrated seven weeks after Pesach, the Apostle Peter delivers an important message. It is during one of the Jewish Temple Feasts for which Jews (and Gentiles converted to Judaism, also called Proselytes) came massively from the entire Roman world to the Temple in Jerusalem.

“On the day of Pentecost during the Festival of Shavuot, the Apostle Peter delivers an important message”

It was the Festival during which the wheat harvest started and the first fruits of that harvest were taken to the Temple. The reception of the Torah (Law) by Moses on the mountain after the Exodus from Egypt was commemorated too. In short, a Jewish Festival, in a Jewish city of Jerusalem, in the Land of the Jews in Israel, surrounding a Jewish Temple. Gentiles have actually no business there. Nothing for them to look forward to!

“When do we see that also Gentiles are connected to the outpouring of the Holy Spirit?”

And there and then the Holy Spirit is poured out upon Jews. People who were born and raised as Jews and people from the Gentile world who had converted to Judaism, proselytes. Probably on 120 of those who were present in the city of Jerusalem waiting for the Holy Spirit (according to Acts 1:15), received the Holy Spirit, just as Jesus had told them.

When do we see that also Gentiles are connected to the outpouring of the Holy Spirit? This happens some time (some months?) later. It happens in Caesarea, at the house of the Roman centurion Cornelius. Suddenly, to the utter amazement of the Jewish believers in Christ, ‘the circumcised believers’ and to the astonishment of the Apostle Peter himself, the Holy Spirit is poured out on the Gentiles, Acts 10:44-47. On Gentiles! Non-Jews! And from that moment on non-Jews, Gentiles, are ‘added to those who were being saved’, Acts 2:47b. This is our Feast of Pentecost! For us, Gentiles, who since then can come to faith in Christ!

“Not until years later the apostle Paul starts to understand what had happened at the house of Cornelius from Italy and is happening ever since”

Not until years later the apostle Paul starts to understand what had happened at the house of Cornelius from Italy and is happening ever since, everywhere where amongst Gentiles the Gospel is being preached and people are accepting Jesus as their Lord and Saviour. They are grafted into the old root as wild olive shoots (Romans 11:17-18, 24), grafted into the New Covenant made with the house of Israel and the house of Judah, Jeremiah 31:31-34 and Luke 22:20. Grafted in. Cut off from their gentile roots and grafted in the root of the New Covenant made with Israel. How different all of this would have been between the Jewish people and the Church if Romans 11 had been carefully read and preached. We are not ‘it’, we are added to ‘it’! Back to the Feast of Shavuot in Jerusalem!

APOCALYPTIC EVENTS

In Acts 2:16 Peter quotes the prophecy of Joel 2:28-29:

• “And it shall come to pass afterward, that I will pour out My Spirit on all flesh; your sons and your daughters shall prophesy, your old men shall dream dreams, and your young men shall see visions. Even on the male and female servants in those days I will pour out My Spirit.”

And that happened, there in Jerusalem.

But then Peter does something remarkable. Without interruption he continues to quote Joel’s prophecy:

• “And I will show wonders in the heavens and on the earth, blood and fire and columns of smoke. The sun shall be turned to darkness, and the moon to blood, before the great and awesome Day of the Lord comes. And it shall come to pass that everyone who calls on the Name of the Lord shall be saved. For in Mount Zion and in Jerusalem there shall be those who escape, as the Lord has said, and among the survivors shall be those whom the Lord calls.”

On the day of Pentecost in Jerusalem nothing of these kind of apocalyptic events happened. There was no trace of those “…wonders in the heavens and on the earth, blood and fire and columns of smoke. The sun shall be turned to darkness, and the moon to blood…”! How should we understand this? In Acts 2:15-16 Peter begins his speech with saying:

• “…These men are not drunk, as you suppose. It’s only nine in the morning! No, this is what was spoken by the prophet Joel…”

He does not mean to say: This is the final fulfilment of Joel’s prophecy! Peter means to say: ‘This is an example of what the prophet Joel is speaking about’! The pouring out of the Holy Spirit upon all flesh of Israel. Men, women, young, old, Jewish people of all walks of life. But only upon 120 of them. Not upon ‘all’ Jews that were present at this Feast of Shavuot.

So this cannot be the ultimate and total fulfilment of Joel’s prophecy. Because according to the Jewish historian Flavius Josephus there were over one million Jews present at these Temple Feasts in Jerusalem in and around the Temple. But only one hundred and twenty of them received the Holy Spirit. First fruits of the harvest. But the great harvest of “all Israel” as Paul puts it in Romans 11:26 is yet to come. That is still in the future.

When will it come? When those apocalyptic events will hit and devastate the earth: “…wonders in the heavens and on the earth, blood and fire and columns of smoke. The sun shall be turned to darkness, and the moon to blood, before the great and awesome Day of the Lord comes.”

The first outpouring of the Holy Spirit was for Israel. The last and final outpouring of the Holy Spirit will be for Israel again. That is why the remaining Jews, the remnant that survived the persecutions and atrocities of the ages gone by, are returning home. From all over the world, back to Israel, Isaiah 43:5-8. Under pressure of the anti-Semitic circumstances in which they live, they will start to flee – like today from the horrible events in Ukraine. Flee to Israel!

The prophet Zachariah says in Zachariah 2:6:

• “Up! Up! Flee from the land of the north, declares the Lord. For I have spread you abroad as the four winds of the heavens, declares the Lord. Up! Escape to Zion…”

To Jerusalem! And the Apostle Peter knows what will happen next, based on the prophecy of Joel 2:32:

• “And it shall come to pass that everyone who calls on the Name of the Lord shall be saved. For in Mount Zion and in Jerusalem there shall be those who escape, as the Lord has said, and among the survivors shall be those whom the Lord calls.”

The survivors of the Holocaust. They return, fulfilling God’s promises. They get out, like a big Exodus, from their exile all over the world. Back to Israel and Jerusalem. Why is God doing this in our days? Because soon, very soon, from Jerusalem peace will cover the entire earth. Under the leadership of the coming King of kings and Lord of lords, the Messiah of Israel,. And the nation and the people of Israel will be a blessing for the whole world. Again!

Zachariah 2:10-12 says:

• “Shout and be glad, O Daughter of Zion. For I am coming, and I will live among you,” declares the Lord. “Many nations will be joined with the Lord in that day and will become My people. I will live among you and you will know that the Lord Almighty has sent Me to you. The Lord will inherit Judah as His portion in the Holy Land and will again choose Jerusalem. Be still before the LORD, all mankind, because He has roused Himself from His holy dwelling.”

Zachariah 8:23 says:

• “This is what the LORD Almighty says: “In those days ten men from all languages and nations will take firm hold of one Jew by the hem of his robe and say, ‘Let us go with you, because we have heard that God is with you.”

Isaiah 4:3-6 sees it like this:

• “Those who are left in Zion, who remain in Jerusalem, will be called holy, all who are recorded among the living in Jerusalem. The Lord will wash away the filth of the women of Zion; He will cleanse the bloodstains from Jerusalem by a Spirit of judgment and a Spirit of fire. Then the Lord will create over all of Mount Zion and over those who assemble there a cloud of smoke by day and a glow of flaming fire by night; over all the Glory will be a canopy. It will be a shelter and shade from the heat of the day, and a refuge and hiding place from the storm and rain.”

About the final outpouring of the Holy Spirit upon Israel we read in Zachariah 12:10-14:

• “And I will pour out on the house of David and the inhabitants of Jerusalem a Spirit of grace and supplication. They will look on Me, the One they have pierced, and they will mourn for Him as one mourns for an only child, and grieve bitterly for Him as one grieves for a firstborn son. On that day the weeping in Jerusalem will be great, like the weeping of Hadad Rimmon in the plain of Megiddo. The land will mourn, each clan by itself, with their wives by themselves: the clan of the house of David and their wives, the clan of the house of Nathan and their wives, the clan of the house of Levi and their wives, the clan of Shimei and their wives, and all the rest of the clans and their wives.”

From top to bottom. In the entire Land of Israel. The political leaders, the spiritual leaders, the prophets, the secularized Jews, men and women by themselves, everyone personally.

The Lord will do it Himself. This is what Paul means by writing to us in Romans 11:25-27:

• “I do not want you to be ignorant of this mystery, brothers, so that you may not be conceited: Israel has experienced a hardening in part until the full number of the Gentiles has come in. And so [in this way] all Israel will be saved, as it is written:

“The Deliverer will come from Zion;

He will turn godlessness away from Jacob.

And this is My covenant with them

when I take away their sins.”