Revival under the Apostle Peter at Pentecost Acts 2: 1-47.
Timeframe: Passover > 50days > Pentecost > 4 months > Tabernacles
Ernest Baker accurately depicted the significance and impact of the revival that took place on Pentecost:[1]
·
· One hundred and twenty disciples of the Lord Jesus were suddenly baptized in the Holy Spirit.
· Their characters were wonderfully enriched. New gifts of speech, insight, and argument were conferred upon them.
· A great accession of zeal, and love, and devotion was added to their motive powers.
· Within a few hours 3,000 men and women were converted[2]. The Christian Church was constituted. Every day conversions took place; sometimes scores, hundreds, and even thousands, were added to the ranks of the disciples.
· The work continued for years in Jerusalem itself. It was not the event of a season. It also spread abroad. The revival created missionaries, who went out in all directions. Revivals in other centers followed. Every city of any considerable importance in the Roman Empire felt the influence of the movement during the next few years.
· This revival made the Apostles, it created the Church, it caused its expansion, it inspired the Epistles, it spread Christianity throughout the whole known earth. The influence of it has reached to our own time.
Time:
Pentecost celebrated the period that began with the offering of the first barley sheaf as the barley harvest commenced during the Passover celebration and concluded fifty days later with the wheat harvest (Lev. 23: 15-16; Deut. 16: 9-12). By the time the first Christian century arrived, however, Pentecost was considered to be the anniversary of the giving of the Law at Mount Sinai (as deduced fromExod. 19: 1).
Place:
In Ezekiel 37: 9-14, the prophet had prophesied that wind, as the vitalizing breath of God, would come over the dry bones scattered in the valley in order to fill those bones of the house of Israel with new life at the conclusion of history.
Fire also was a symbol of the divine presence, as many will recall from the numerous Old Testament allusions to such things: the burning bush (Exod. 3: 2-5), the pillar of cloud by day and fire by night that guided Israel in their wilderness experience (Exod. 13: 21), the consuming fire on Mount Sinai (Exod. 24: 17), and the pillar of fire that hovered over the tabernacle in the desert (Exod. 40: 38). God was once again present among his people in a mighty way.
People:
There are four features of Pentecost that will encourage believers today to be prepared for a similar outpouring of the Holy Spirit when God graciously sends revival to the churches and nations of our time:
1. The gift of the Spirit is the fulfillment of God's promise (Acts 2: 14-21)
a. There were three basic items that were promised by Joel 2: 28-32: (1) the distinctiveness of this out-pouring of the Spirit, (2) the extent of this outpouring on all flesh, and (3) the results of this outpouring.
2. The gift of the Spirit brings assurance of God's power over everything, including death (2: 22-37).
a. Peter waxed even more eloquent and bold as he took as his second text the Old Testament passage, Psalm 16: 8-11. If the skeptical crowd at Pentecost was still mulling over what they had just witnessed — the overwhelming downpour of the Holy Spirit — they could just as well also reflect the words of the former King David. Had not David, by the same Spirit, testified that the Messiah who would come from his line would not be left in the grave but would be resurrected? And had not David, since he was a prophet (Acts 2: 30), seen ahead of time that God would raise Christ from the dead in the future, thereby giving all who wondered what would happen after death more than enough strong reasons to believe that they, too, could be raised?
3. The gift of the Spirit is the reason why we must repent (2: 38-41).
a. The gift of the Holy Spirit will give us the power we need to be saved from the evil generation, thus making us different from the ordinary run of men and women.
4. The gift of the Spirit is the basis for the continuance of those who were revived (2: 42-47).
a. Many revivals in the Old Testament and in modern history were brief. Some would last for a few weeks, while others would last for a year or two. But so decisive was the work of God on this occasion that it has continued to affect the church, and in some cases even the culture itself, right down to the present moment. The fellowship the believers enjoyed is remarkably described in verses 42-47. High on the list of priorities was a whole new appetite for hearing and acting on the teaching from God's Word. In our day, the hunger for God's Word is about as low as it can get. Rather than pushing the pulpit to give more of the apostles' teaching, or indeed the whole counsel of God, the pressure in most groups of believers is to hear less from the full canon of Scripture and more about ourselves, our needs, and our recovery groups. Isn't this a sign that we are ripe candidates for revival? Isn't Peter's word a word that the twenty-first-century church needs to hear?
Conclusion
This gift, as every other study of revivals in the Bible has taught us, depends on the initiative and grace of God. There may be conditions that we must meet, but in the end we place all our trust in what God can do. That is why it is proper and altogether necessary for God's people to cry out, "Will you not revive us again?" (Psalm 85:6).
[1]Baker, Revivals of the Bible, 137-38.
[2]Regarding the numbers, you can find the details in Josephus' Antiquity of the Jews (War 6.9.3 422-427 The Numbers that Gathered in Jerusalem for the Passover). According to his record, by Jesus' time, there were some 2 million people gathering at Jerusalem for Passover. ("No one believes the largest of these figures," writes E. P. Sanders in Judaism: Practice and Belief 63 BCE - 66 CE (p. 126). Using various means, Sanders estimates the actual number of attendees to be 300,000 to 500,000.http://www.josephus.org/Passover.htm) If 10 will share one lamb based on the instructions in Exodus, there will be 200,000 animals to be slaughtered. According to the Talmud, there were 3 rounds of sacrifices of lambs at 9am, noon and 3pm. If you divide the total evenly, there should be roughly 70,000 lambs slaughtered every round.
Below is the possible scenario:
At 9am, when the 70,000 sheep were killed, Jesus said: "Father, forgive them, for they do not know what they are doing. "After the two robbers argued with each other for a while, one converted and Jesus said: "I tell you the truth, today you will be with me in paradise." Then Jesus saw His mother and John at the cross, He said:
"Dear woman, here is your son. Here is your mother."
At noon, the second round of 70,000 animals were slaughtered, the sky turned dark and Jesus shouted: "My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?"
At 3pm, the third and last round of 70,000 animals were slaughtered and Jesus said: "I am thirsty."in order to have enough strength to shout the last words: "It is finished !" Immediately after, He shouted: "Father, into your hands I commit my spirit."
The 3000 converted on the Pentecost redeemed the 3000 died after the first Passover and Pentecost. “So the sons of Levi did according to the word of Moses. And about three thousand men of the people fell that day.” (Exodus 32:26–29)
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