Acts 2:3

‘And there appeared to them tongues dividing apart, like as of fire, and it sat on each one of them.'

There also “appeared to them divided tongues as of fire” sitting on each of them. Previously such fire would descend on the Sanctuary. Now it is on His people. Once again it is not suggested that the manifestation is real fire. It is God-fire revealing His presence through supernatural signs. It is God descending in fire on the new Temple of His people by His Spirit. In the Old Testament He regularly revealed His presence by ‘fire'. He did it to Abraham (Genesis 15:17), and to Israel at the Exodus (e.g. Exodus 13:22), at Sinai (Exodus 19:18; Exodus 24:17) and at the Tabernacle (Exodus 40:38), and Moses could say that God “spoke out of fire on the mountain” (Deuteronomy 4:11) at the giving of the covenant, so that they saw no likeness of God, only heard His voice. Similarly in Ezekiel 1:27; Ezekiel 8:2 God reveals Himself in “the likeness of the appearance of fire”, while in Isaiah 4:5 God is to be a flaming fire shining over His people, when He covers them with His protection.

This would suggest that the fire is here a symbol of the presence of God as covenant-maker and adopter of those whom He has made His own, as protector of His people, and as declarer of His holy commands from the midst of the fire. It therefore signifies a new deliverance, a new presence of God with His people, and a new giving of God's instruction with the same awesome demand for obedience, as the fire at Sinai and elsewhere signified of the old. Its resting on each of them, in the same way as it had rested on the Mount, is declaring that as God had dwelt on the Mount so He was now permanently indwelling each and all of His people as His new Tabernacle and Temple, while the dividing of the fire demonstrates that each one present is experiencing the fullness of the whole. While therefore His fire is overall and all absorbing, it is also specific and personal to each individual involved. They were all His Temple (2 Corinthians 6:16), and each was His Temple (1 Corinthians 6:19).

Here then was the ‘drenching of the Holy Spirit. Here was the revelation of the new presence of God on earth which would be manifested wherever these men were, and would continue to be manifested on all those who through them became partakers of the Holy Spirit. Here was God's new Dwellingplace, these people who were now the Temple of the Holy Spirit. God was here to stay. No wonder the next few Chapter s reveal the powerful impact of the manifestation of the new Kingly Rule of God.