Acts 2:1

PENTECOST

1. The Kairites (so named from the Greek word which means time and occurs in the phrase “times and seasons”) are scholarly critics who make times and seasons a specialty of investigation. These tell us the day of Pentecost was Sunday. Our Savior was crucified on Friday, April 14th. This would make Pentecost the first Sunday in June, and the notable epoch on which the dispensation of the Holy Ghost was inaugurated. The celebrated Dr. Gordon denominated Pentecost “the birth of the Holy Ghost.” Though this strikes us as strange phraseology, yet it is not without a degree of plausibility. Of course, such a statement does not ignore the pre- existence of the Holy Ghost, as He is none other than the very and eternal God, co-existent with the Almighty from all eternity. The same is equally true of the Son; yet He was born in Bethlehem. The Son of God was as real in the old dispensation as in the new, excarnate in the former and incarnate in the latter; but just as truly a Savior of the antediluvian as of the present generation. Before Pentecost the Holy Ghost was in the world in all ages; but it may be said that He operated on human hearts extrinsically, i. e., from without. E. g., while the minstrel played, the Holy Ghost came on the Jewish prophet. When Samson arose and shook himself the Spirit of God came mightily on him. As the Son of God when born in Bethlehem came into a human body, so the Holy Ghost in the day of Pentecost came into the bodies of the disciples, thus incarnating Himself in human bodies and inaugurating His own dispensation, whose crowning glory is the incarnation of the Holy Ghost. When the Holy Ghost radically purifies a human spirit and moves into it, thus incarnating Himself in a human being, a new order of administration and operation at once supervenes, in which the incarnated Holy Spirit operates intrinsically, i. e., from within upon the external world, using the person thus occupied as a medium, spiritual, intellectual and physical, to transmit His omnipotent heavenly influences to all with whom He comes in contact. Hence you see that the incarnation was an indispensable prerequisite to make the church truly aggressive in the conquest of the world to Christ. Hence our Savior told His disciples that they would do greater works after He had gone to His Father; because He must go up and receive the Father's approval of His expiation of a guilty world before the divine administration can be magnified by the incarnation of the Holy Ghost in the people of this world. This is really the glorious earnest of the grand restitution. When the Holy Ghost thus incarnates Himself in a human being, He brings in the “age to come” (Hebrews 6:5), i. e., the millennium, a prelibation of the glorious millennial reign of our descended Lord. The grand ultimatum of the gospel dispensation is this incarnation of the Holy Ghost, in which we are actually married to Him (because He is none other than the Spirit of Jesus), and this spiritual wedlock verifies the Bridehood of Christ, anticipatory of the glorious celebration of the heavenly nuptials in the presence of the Father and multiplied millions of unfallen angels at the marriage supper of the Lamb in heaven, which shall immediately follow the rapture of the bride, for which we are this day in constant outlook. Our Lord ascended into heaven on Thursday. Flooded with the thrilling anticipations of His glorious prophetical fulfillments in the descension and incarnation of the Holy Ghost, they go away to their mission hall on Mount Zion, thrilled with jubilant expectations. Some think the Lord will honor His ascension day and send the Comforter before the sun goes down. In this they are mistaken, and a night of prayer brings deep illuminations into their hearts. Friday, ever memorable for the crucifixion of our Lord and the redemption of the world, brings a new inspiration to the rising tide of faith, intensified by Peter's fervent exhortation: “Surely this is the glorious day when our Lord will baptize us with the Holy Ghost and fire!” Friday is fled and gone, and Saturday, the good old Jewish Sabbath, ushers in. James and John are eloquent, thrilling all with their inspiring exhortations: “Surely our Lord will honor the good old Sabbath of Moses and the prophets, and augment the hallowed memories of this glorious day by sending down the promised enduement.” Another night of prayer conduces to grander spiritual illuminations. Sunday ushers in. Mary's eyes sparkle while eloquent inspiration leaps from her lips: “Surely our Lord will honor the glorious day of most hallowed memory when He broke the fetters of the tomb and arose triumphant over sin, death and hell!” These wonderful days, clustered about with the ineffaceable memories of stupendous miracles, unspeakably sacred to every loving disciple, have all flown away, and “hope deferred maketh the heart sad.” Monday ushers in, fraught with no inspiring memories. Now prostrate on the floor they cry to God. The Holy Ghost, with the effulgent lamp of His infallible scrutiny, goes down into the profound subterranean regions of their fallen spirits, revealing to Peter his cowardice, to Thomas his doubts, to James and John their ambition, and to all the dark dens of hissing serpents, the dismal lairs of roaring lions, the filthy kennels of snapping dogs and the loathsome bogs of croaking frogs, swelling toads and poisonous scorpions, constituting the dismal debris of inbred sin, the Satanic heredity of Adam the first. Tuesday follows, redeemed by no hallowed memories. So they sink deeper into the dismal subterranean regions of original sin, contemplating with unspeakable mortification the gorgon horrors of hereditary depravity revealed to the quickened spiritual eye by the infallible Heart-Searcher. Wednesday is commemorated by a deeper sinking out of self and still profounder illuminations revealing the horrors of inbred sin. That day is commemorated in the experience of many reaching bottom-rock. Thursday ushers in like a sun-burst from a world of clouds. Many exclaim, “Glory to God, for the triumphant ascension of our Lord on this hallowed day one week ago!” Mary in advance of her dispensation had known the sweet experience of entire sanctification, sitting at the feet of Jesus, felicitously oblivious of all the world; as had Nathanael, an “Israelite indeed, in whom there is no guile.” Fortunately, these two disciples stand on the high plane of cloudless sunshine beneath the clear sky of Beulah land, roaring inspiring shouts to their brothers and sisters amid the swellings of Jordan's terrifying floods. Old Peter is one of the first to heed the inspiring appeals of Mary and Nathanael, and dares to walk out in naked faith and trust the cleansing blood radically and thoroughly to purify his heart from all the vacillations and cowardice which had flooded him with intolerable disgrace (Acts 15:9). John, with brilliant countenance, swings clear by faith alone. Now they follow in platoons. Finally, doubting Thomas, with faltering tread, dares to set down his foot on Jordan's stormy billow. Friday floods them all with the ineffaceable memories of Calvary, when the Lord redeemed the world by His flowing blood. Hence, the blood has honored that memorable day from dewy morn till dusky eve. It is significantly a day of victory. Saturday, the good old Jewish Sabbath, literally signifying the perfect rest of the soul in Jesus, is truly a crowning day on the battlefield of faith so memorable the last nine days. Wonderful and glorious is the soul rest into which they sink away. The second Sunday morning of those memorable ten days now gilds the Oriental skies, while the fair-fingered Aurora, the daughter of the dawn, is moving on tip-toe over great Mount Olivet. This is our Lord's glorious resurrection day. The battle has been fought on the bloody fields of consecration and faith and a ten days' prayer-meeting without intermission. They have gone down to the bottom-rock of Consecration and prayed up to the triumphant altitudes of Faith. The battle is fought, the victory won and Hope has spread her eagle pinions ready for her celestial flight. They have spent the ten days on their knees and prostrate on the floor. But they are done praying. They have prayed up to the highlands, where heavenly visions, in seraphic splendor, roll in floods of unearthly glory, inundating that memorable mission-room with an electrical panorama of the long-anticipated descending Comforter. Hark! the roar of a cyclone fills the firmament. Behold! forked-tongues of flaming fire sit on every brow and flood the room with an unearthly illumination. That mission-room can no longer hold the fire-baptized one hundred and twenty. What a stampede down stairs! all mouths wide open, stentorian voices roaring like lions, arouse the city, and one hundred thousand people rush from all directions to see what is the matter. I visited a great convocation of scholarly clergymen and high-steeple officials with long plug hats, sleek coats, tooth-pick shoes and golden-headed canes, with long faces and lugubrious countenances and deep sighs, consulting either with other, “How to reach the masses.” Here the problem is solved once for all. Get the baptism of the Holy Ghost and fire and they will reach you.

You need no advertisement but the stentorian shout of new-born souls and Spirit-filled pilgrims. Peter's seniority is recognized in his leadership, complimented with the first gospel sermon on that wonderful occasion. O, that sermon! of which Luke gives us but a brief epitome. It was a clap of thunder from beginning to end, sheet-lightning flooded with dynamite.

Modesty and cowardice have been burnt up with the fire of the Holy Ghost. So the illiterate fisherman faces kings and potentates, the combined authorities of church and state, panoplied by all the persecutionary power of earth and hell, and without a flicker looks them squarely in the face and arraigns them at the judgment bar of God Almighty, charged with the murder of His Son, the Savior of the world. The countless multitude stands appalled, as if the archangel of doom had come down and was blowing his mighty trumpet, waking the dead and gathering the world to the judgment- bar. Amid the forked lightnings of this first gospel sermon, preached without preparation, grammar or logic, thousands fall prostrate, as if a battery of a hundred cannons had been simultaneously turned on them.

They make Jerusalem roar and reverberate, “What must we do?” Now that the lightning of conviction has sent panic to listening myriads, immediately the hundred and twenty-five baptized men and women disperse in all directions, preaching with the Holy Ghost sent down from heaven. Do you see Mary Magdalene mounted on David's tomb preaching to the thunder- riven multitude falling round her and crying for mercy? Look at Thomas the doubter, his doubts all burned up with Holy Ghost fire, standing on the wall of Jerusalem, with a voice like a lion, preaching to the appalled multitude! O, that wonderful day! never to be forgotten, memorialized by the incarnation of the Holy Ghost. The world had never seen such a day since from Sinai's melting summit, amid lightning bolts, deafening thunder and heaving earthquakes, Jehovah God came down and launched the Mosaic dispensation. Again He is come in the culminating miracles of fiery Pentecost to inaugurate the last dispensation, destined to prepare the world for the glorious theocracy, never to go into eclipse.