Weekly Update: The Holy Spirit – for Jew and Gentile 

In the coming days, the Jewish people will celebrate Shavuot, and Christians will celebrate Pentecost.

This is a good time to remember that Christianity owes its existence to Judaism. The church cannot exist without Israel.

To be a Gentile Christian is to be a “fellow citizen with God’s people” (Ephesians 2:19), a wild branch grafted into the olive tree of God of which the Jewish people are the natural branches (Romans 11).

As the word “Pentecost” suggests (Pentecost is Greek for “fiftieth”), the Jewish festival of Shavuot is celebrated on the fiftieth day after Passover. Shavuot is also known as the “Feast of Weeks” and the “Feast of 50 days” in rabbinic tradition.

In the time of the Temple, 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 their capital Jerusalem, with hundreds of thousands of Jews surrounding the Jewish Temple.

It was on that day of Shavuot = Pentecost that the Holy Spirit descended on the Apostles and other disciples of Jesus in Jerusalem, as they were celebrating the Jewish Festival of Weeks, as recorded in Acts 2.

That first “Day of Pentecost” was a purely Jewish affair. The Holy Spirit descended on the Jews who were gathered in Jerusalem. As far as we know, there was not a Gentile in sight.

The Spirit of G-d was poured out on the people Israel, and will be poured out on the people of Israel again when they are regathered in the land, as promised in Zechariah 12.

The restoration of the Jewish people to the land is sure proof that God is faithful to His declared purposes and promises. He will never abandon His people, whom He foreknew and whom He loves with an everlasting love.

We, Gentiles, may “rejoice with His people” (Deuteronomy 32:43 and Romans 15:10).

In the coming days, may the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace as you trust in Him, so that you may overflow with hope by the power of the Holy Spirit.

Pentecost for Israel and for Us

Rev. Willem J.J. Glashouwer writes: “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.”
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 The Fulfilment of the Day of Pentecost and the Gift of the Holy Spirit

Kees de Vreugd writes: “The outpouring of the Holy Spirit did not occur just somehow or somewhere. The Spirit came “like the blowing of a violent wind from heaven and filled the whole house where they were sitting”. This house was in Jerusalem. And it happened “when the day of Pentecost was fulfilled”, as it literally reads. This is one of the days for which Jews from all corners of the earth go up to Jerusalem.”
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Anglican Church Repents for its Role in Expulsion of Jews

 Dr. James Patrick writes: “On Sunday 8 May 2022, bishops of the Anglican and Catholic churches gathered in Oxford’s Christ Church Cathedral to ‘acknowledge with shame and penitence’ the antisemitism of the Synod of Oxford, 800 years ago.”
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Through Israel’s fall – in Acts | Romans 9-11 with Johannes Gerloff #48

The final question of the disciples to Yeshua that the New Testament transmits to us is about Messiah’s central commission, the re-gathering of the nation of Israel to the land of Israel.