In an earlier period of salvation history, when the Law (Torah) was given, God prescribed seven ‘sanctified times’ for the children of Israel, which were chosen times of encounter with God. One of these, the last and fourth feast of the spring feast cycle, was Shavuot (which means ‘Weeks’ in Hebrew), when the Jews gave thanks for divine providence: they brought the ‘firstfruits’ of the wheat harvest, the new bread, to the Temple, and then they ate some of it for the first time themselves; that is, they had harvested the ripe crop, and the time of abundance had come.
The specific day of the ‘Weeks’ was counted from the day of the Feast of Firstfruits, when the first barley harvest was offered as a sacrifice to the Temple: seven weeks (hence the term ‘Weeks’), or 50 days, had to pass between the two events, which was the period from the spring barley harvest to the early summer wheat harvest. The feast marking ‘50 days’ was later called ‘Pentēkostē’ (‘fiftieth’) in Greek, from which the English name ‘Pentecost’ comes.
What Is the Old Testament Meaning of Pentecost?
According to the original Old Testament meaning of Pentecost, it was a thanksgiving feast for God’s goodness and providence.
Three of the seven feasts were special obligatory days of rest, when believers were to focus on the ‘things of God’ instead of worldly duties. They were also so-called pilgrimage feasts: on these days every year, every Jewish male had to appear in person at the Temple in Jerusalem to show their respect for Almighty God. Shavuot was such a feast.
This designated holy period was closely connected to the other three feasts of the spring festival cycle that came before it.
‘On these days every year, every Jewish male had to appear in person at the Temple in Jerusalem to show their respect for Almighty God’
The first was Passover (Hebrew: Pesach), the later Easter holiday, in which the Jews commemorated their miraculous deliverance from Egyptian slavery; the lamb eaten during the Seder was a reminder that the Hebrews had to smear the blood of a lamb on their doorposts during the Exodus so that the angel who destroyed the firstborn sons of the Egyptians would avoid them. The second was the Feast of Unleavened Bread, in which they ate unleavened bread for seven days in memory of their having to flee Egypt so quickly that the yeast had no time to rise; and the third was the Feast of Firstfruits, when the first barley cakes from the first barley harvest were brought to the Temple to thank God for it.
If we compare the symbolism of the Jewish (Old Testament) holidays with the story of Jesus’ passion, we see that these events mystically ‘followed’ the schedule of the Jewish holidays, and thus the series of holidays itself proved to be a prophetic scenario regarding the fate of the Messiah.
Jesus preached, taught, and healed throughout Israel for three years, until in 32 AD in Jerusalem, at the complaint of the Jewish religious leaders, he was brought before the Sanhedrin and then the Roman governor on charges of blasphemy, finally sentenced to death and executed on the cross—this happened on the feast of Passover. The following day, Jesus’ body lay in a rock tomb (according to Christian theology, his soul and spirit were in hell)—all this on the Feast of Unleavened Bread. According to the Scriptures, Jesus rose in the body on the third day—this was on the Feast of Firstfruits.
‘The series of holidays itself proved to be a prophetic scenario regarding the fate of the Messiah’
Finally, after Jesus appeared to his disciples several times over 40 days in his resurrected body and then ascended from the Mount of Olives into Heaven, he had promised beforehand to send the Comforter in his place. Ten days later, on the 50th day after the Resurrection, the Holy Spirit did indeed come upon the 120 disciples gathered together in Jerusalem for the pilgrimage festival of Shavuot.
What Is the New Testament Meaning of Pentecost?
The double meaning of biblical holidays is highlighted by apostle Paul in two of his letters: ‘Therefore let no one judge you in food or drink, or in respect of a festival or a new moon or a Sabbath, which are a shadow of the good things to come, but the reality belongs to Christ’ (Col 2:16–17), and: ‘…the law has a shadow of the good things to come, not the very image of the things’ (Heb 10:1). According to Scripture, a holiday is a shadow, a visible imprint of a currently hidden reality, which imprint also indicates the existence of the reality behind it, since there is no shadow without the substance.
According to the Christian theological interpretation, therefore, behind the Jewish holidays as ‘shadows’ there are ‘realities’, and these are the following:
- The Passover pointed forward to redemption: the Lamb of God was slain (Jesus was killed)—whoever is under the protection of his blood will escape death.
- The Feast of Unleavened Bread is about justification, about sanctification: the Saviour did not commit sin (there was no leaven in Him), therefore the leavening effect, the rot, did not take hold of Him—whoever believes in Him will himself avoid sin and decay.
- The Feast of Firstfruits is a prediction of the resurrection: the murdered Jesus rose in the body on this feast, on the third day after the Passover, as apostle Paul calls him: He became the first of the dead to be resurrected (the ‘firstfruits’)—whoever believes in Him will be resurrected in a similar way.
- The Feast of Weeks is about the completion of redemption, about divine provision, about a new beginning: the third Person of God, the Holy Spirit, came to Earth, and with this another harvest began, the ‘gathering’ of people for the Kingdom of Heaven.
Jesus’ disciples (who were almost all Jews) gathered in Jerusalem for the Jewish feast of Shavuot, ten days after Jesus’ ascension to heaven. Most of them had witnessed Jesus appearing to them in his resurrected body and later ascending to heaven. They knew the task that awaited them, because in his final commission, the Master had entrusted them with spreading the good news of redemption.
And they also knew that, true to Jesus’ promise, he would send them his Spirit, about whom he had spoken many times over the years and to whom he had attributed the divine power manifested in the miracles he performed.
What Happened at the First Pentecost, and What Is Its Significance?
On Pentecost 32 C.E., what they had been waiting for happened: 120 disciples were gathered in an upper room in Jerusalem when suddenly a storm-like noise came from heaven, and a visual phenomenon resembling tongues of fire descended upon them, while they began to pray and sing in different languages. These were clear signs of the presence of the Holy Spirit.
According to historical estimates, an average of about a million people could be in the city of outstanding religious importance during the pilgrimage festivals, and the Scriptures also write about large crowds, people from many countries coming here to offer sacrifices. The events surrounding the upper room could have been seen from afar, accompanied by a loud and spectacular phenomenon, and as the biblical text says, crowds flocked to the disciples’ house, where, to their astonishment, they heard Jewish Christians ‘preaching the greatness of God’ in their own language, dozens of languages (Acts 2:11).
Finally, apostle Peter stood up before the crowd and began to preach, which resulted in many people personally accepting Jesus as their Saviour. According to Scripture, there were 3000 who sealed their conversion that day by being baptized in water immediately. The message of the gospel spread very quickly in the Middle East, and the Holy Spirit—just as Jesus had promised—gave the believers strength and courage to proclaim the good news, and their words and stance were often accompanied by ‘signs and wonders’, that is, the Holy Spirit was active in cooperating with them.
‘There were 3000 who sealed their conversion that day by being baptized in water immediately’
According to the Bible, this era of salvation history has not yet ended, the Holy Spirit is still present on Earth today, He is the Helper of the Church, He is our Comforter, our Advocate (‘paráklētos’ = defense attorney), who asks for an acquittal for us, in contrast to the Accuser (‘diabólōs’ = prosecutor), who constantly accuses us. The Holy Spirit is not an energy, a force, nor a symbol, but the Spirit of God, the Spirit Who raised Jesus from the dead and Who sustains everything in the universe with His power.
The Holy Spirit is the ‘pledge’ placed by God in our hearts, a ‘deposit’ given to us by God (Eph 1:14), confirming that the age of the world, and then the Kingdom of Heaven, which He promised, will slowly come.
Finally, let us close with a telling symbol: on the feast of Shavuot, those who offered sacrifices had to bake two loaves of bread from the new wheat harvest, with some leaven, and then take them to the temple as an offering. According to the theological interpretation, the two loaves symbolize the two communities chosen by God, Israel and the Church, and both are leavened, that is, still in a state of sin.
Yet, Pentecost as a thanksgiving feast demonstrates that the death (sacrifice) of Jesus and the coming of the Holy Spirit destroyed the dividing wall between the two communities, and thus in the new covenant these two chosen groups became ‘one’ in Christ (Eph 2:14–15). As 1 Corinthians 12:13 says, ‘For in one Spirit we were all baptized into one body, whether Jews or Greeks, slave or free, and we were all given into one Spirit to drink’, the spirit of adoption to sonship by which we can call God ‘Father’—‘our Father’, as Jesus taught us.
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