ALIVE Chapter 69 Pentecost - Circle Back to Meaning
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NEEDS MAJOR ABBREVIATION!!! Placeholder.
From that day that Moses climbed Mt. Sinai through thunder and smoke with every Jew who inhabited the earth in one place meeting God, from that awesome day of the Lord to this moment of reading about it thousands of years later there has been an annual commemoration of the holy and unique period between Passover night and the day God handed down the Torah through Moses. Never forget Passover. Never forget meeting God and receiving His Law. And never forget the time period between the two.
The time period is called Pentecost in Greek and Shavuot in Hebrew. Pente means five (50 days between Passover and receiving the Torah.) The word Shavuot means weeks, the completion of the seven-week counting period between Passover and (Pentecost) Shavuot. 49 days, plus the Sabbath day of Passover at the head of the weeks, hence fifty.
“But wait!” interjects the well read reader, “Exodus 19 says it was three moons later, not 50 days! That’s 90 days! And don’t forget that Shuvout also celebrates the end of the seven week barley and wheat harvest. Why two celebrations on one day, with the same name, Shavuot?”
On the fiftieth day after Passover, Israel celebrates the day it was given the Torah and became a nation committed to serving God. Although it was 90 days, it is linked to the harvest to tie together grain, the body’s life sustainer, with the law, the soul’s life sustainer. A bouquet of the life of body and soul.
The law is life because God is life. He gave us the law to teach us how to live in cooperation with Him. By obeying the law, our relationship with God is reciprocal.
From that scary dusty day for a thousand years Israel gathered from wherever they had dispersed to Jerusalem to commemorate Pentecost.
The magnificence of Pentecost cannot be overstated. It was the day that God almighty proclaimed His undying love for Israel. He said through Moses, “You have seen what I did to the Egyptians [for you] and how I bore you on Eagle’s wings and brought you to myself. Now therefore if you obey my voice and keep my covenant, you shall be my treasured possession out of all the peoples. Indeed the whole earth is Mine, but you shall be for Me a priestly kingdom and a holy nation.” And the people replied, “I will.”
“But wait! There are two Pentecosts!” exclaims the knowledgeable reader.
Yes, and there is not one, but two preceding earth shattering rescues by God.
On Passover, God rescued Israel from slavery. Freedom gave new life to the seeds of Jacob. During the courtship that became the season of Pentecost, there was nothing asked in return as Israel trekked through the wilderness to Sinai. Bitter water turned sweet for them. When they hungered and thirsted, they were fed manna and water that gushed from a rock. God guided and provided all they needed asking for nothing in return until the day of the Law.
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The second Rescue by God of Israel occurred on the night of the Crucifixion, when paradoxically the Angel of Death, instead of passing over the blood of the lamb to kill the firstborn sons of Egypt, honed in on the Lamb of God, His one and only Son.
Yet, imagine the surprise when Hades, the place of the dead received God and was forced to release its captives. On that second holy night Jesus/God rescued all the dead, and the living from the slavery of sin that causes death.
The prison that was Egypt was rendered impotent on Passover night and the prison that was death was rendered impotent on the night of the Crucifixion. Egypt still exists, sin still exists, and death still exists, but they are shells of their former conditions no longer able to hold captives.
Sin is separation from God which is missing the mark of His image and likeness. To divorce yourself from the likeness of the Giver of Life, is to be dead. (To be cruel, to hate, to lie, to cheat and steal etc. is death) That’s why it is said that sin causes death.
First, God rescued the dead in Hades, all those souls who were away from him, and then He set about to make it easier than ever to become like Him, to be truly ALIVE....to enhance the Law with Spirit, on Pentecost.
Passover and Pascha are both followed by a 50 day courting period. High in the heavens above, the stars are in the constellation of Gemini, the twins. Pentecost is the primordial twin.
The Bridegroom Christ courts His bride Ecclesia, the Church, after rescuing her from the power of death. He walks on earth for 40 of those days as an immortal man, and then ascends to heaven to prepare for Pentecost. On the day Israel commemorated the handing down of the life-giving Law, God descended upon Israel as eternal-life giving Holy Spirit.
On Pentecost the twin, God infuses humankind with life through the Law and the Spirit.
“Wait a minute!” blurted the well reader. “Remember, it was NOT 50 days, but 90 days from Passover to Pentecost. Your theory is flawed!”
When Israel walked away from Egypt three moons passed by before the loud and fearsome day when from Mount Sinai the Torah was handed to Israel. 90 days.
“Exactly 90 not 50!” reminds the smart reader.
Yes! That’s the most amazing aspect of it all!
90 minus 50 equals the holy reoccurring magical mystical 40 days. Between Passover and Pentecost lay a 40 day period, like spirit air, that evaporated into the heavens like holy rain, leaving on the books only fifty days of barley and wheat. Food. The earth’s gift of life.
To the evaporated mystical 40 days between Passover and Pentecost, Christ/God added the 10 days after His ascension to heaven.
A joining of the 40 evaporated days of the journey to Sinai, to the ten days between Christ’s ascension and Pentecost became God’s heavenly Pentecost of 50 days. One for the Law, one for the Spirit on Earth, and one in Heaven too! 50:50:50!
The Bridegroom Christ after 40 days, evaporates in His ascension, leaving the Spiritual Food of His mystical Body and Blood behind to be celebrated with the Barley and the Wheat at the Festival of Weeks, Shavuot, Pentecost.
Pentecost. Acts 2. “When the day of Pentecost had come (to commemorate the handing down of the Torah) they were all together in one place. And suddenly from heaven there came a sound like the rush of a violent wind (as in Creation, Genesis 1:2), and it filled the entire house where they were sitting. Divided tongues, as of fire, appeared among them, and a tongue rested on each of them. All of them were filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak in other languages, as the Spirit gave them the ability.”
The observers were dumbfounded and thought they were drunk. But Peter said it was only morning. He then explained the phenomenon by quoting the prophet Joel, “in the last days it will be, God declares, that I will pour out my Spirit upon all flesh...[and people shall prophecy and see visions and dream dreams.] Then everyone who calls on the name of the Lord shall be saved”....Then Peter went on to explain that Jesus is the messiah.
Time never matters for God. For Him the two Pentecosts happened on the same day with the same passionate love, giving Israel the Torah first, then the Holy Spirit .
Jeremiah 31 “I will put my law within them, and I will write it on their hearts, and I will be their God and they shall be my people. No longer shall they teach one another, or say to each other “Know the Lord” for they shall all know me, from the least of them to the greatest, says the Lord, for I will forgive their iniquity, and remember their sin no more.”
Do you see it? Isn’t it amazing?
Regard the triangle. Left bottom is Passover; the right bottom is Pascha. They join at Pentecost. One union with God through the Law and through the Spirit.
Infuse your mind and heart with the larger meaning Pentecost to be ALIVE.