AFTER Jesus’ ascension into heaven the greatest event in the Kingdom of heaven is the descent of the Holy Ghost, which the Church of Christ commemorates at Pentecost. Before He ascended He had promised: “I shall send you the Holy Ghost.” And now that He is gone away, has entered into the heaven of heavens, has seated Himself at the right hand of the Father on the throne of glory, now it takes place as He had foretold, it comes to pass as He had promised His apostles: the Holy Ghost comes down upon the earth.
Apart from the working of that Spirit, and leaving aside for a moment the significance of His descent, the fact itself of this outpouring is a sign from that invisible world, which withdraws itself from our eye back of the veil of eternity. It is as though after His arrival in heaven Jesus signals to us that He has ascended His throne. For the Holy Spirit did not come, but was sent, was poured out, was effused in the Church of God. What makes Pentecost Pentecost is not something the Holy Spirit did, but what Immanuel did. He received the Holy Spirit from the Father, and sent Him from the Father to us. So He had taught and prophesied it, and so the result has given an echo to His witness and an Amen ot His prophecy. It was told the disciples that they should tarry at Jerusalem and await the fulfilment of the promise which He had left behind Him. And they have waited for it; waited ten long days; and then their unshakable expectation has been crowned. The Lord Who ascended into heaven, has from that heaven made His promise true. This Jesus, so spake Peter on the day of Pentecost, Whom ye, O Jews, have put to the tree and killed, He it is Who has worked this wonder-sign, and has poured out what now you see and hear.
Do not remove, therefore, from its connection what in the facts themselves directly hangs together. On the day of Pentecost you may not lose yourself in mere spiritual effusions on the Holy Spirit and His operations. At Pentecost you should first think of your Savior in the heavens. It is He, your from suffering exalted Immanuel, from Whom all working goes out on the holy Pentecost day.
Of course, not as though you may not count with the Holy Ghost Himself and trace His holy operations, provided you so do this, that on Pentecost day you do this differently from other days. For the Holy Ghost is from everlasting; already at the creation He moved upon the waters; and there has been no day or hour, as long as man has dwelt upon this earth before the face of God, that He has ever ceased to operate upon the human heart. The most ordinary motion in the conscience, even among heathen nations, is absolutely unthinkable, if you should think the Holy Spirit out of being, and close your eye to His working upon our human heart. And no sooner does the particular grace of God with Abraham and the Patriarchs form an own people for itself (Isa. 63: 11), but all the days of Israel’s sacred history it is the Holy Ghost, “Who has been put in the midst of them”, has animated their heroes, prophets and priests; has comforted and led them on their ways; and terrified them in their evil by reason of the anger of the Lord God.
Hence the case is not, that before Pentecost the Holy Ghost was never heard of, and nothing regarding Him had been observed, so that now suddenly, and for the first time, the existence, the being, and the working of the Holy Ghost was discovered. This verdict finds no support with him, who knows the Scriptures of the Old Covenant; and so he can not speak, who knows from the narrative of the Gospels how already before His ascension the Lord Jesus had breathed upon His apostles, saying unto them: “Receive ye the Holy Ghost”.
No, the Holy Ghost Who came on the day of Pentecost, was not a holy One unknown; was not something new; was not a thus far hidden and silent spirit; but an old acquaintance, Who all those years and centuries, had accompanied Israel and His saints on their thorny roads.
When, therefore, on the day of Pentecost you say nothing else of the Holy Ghost, than was so in all ages, and was counted as truth already before Prophets and Psalmists, and already before Jesus’ ascension had been experienced by the disciples, then it speaks for itself that you really cipher away your Pentecost; without meaning it you deny the great, mighty miracle of Pentecost day; and frankly show that you neither understand nor perceive what, in the Kingdom of heaven, the Pentecost event stands for.
And yet it is not very difficult to see clearly and understandingly what the real significance of the sublime Pentecost miracle is.
Under the dispensation of shadows God had a Tabernacle in Israel, which presently gave place to His temple on Mount Moriah. Now that Tabernacle and that Temple both were evidently purely symbolic. God dwells not in a temple made with hands. And therefore both that Tabernacle and that Temple were intended, at His own time, to pass away. But, and consider this, to pass away only when the Lord would have found another dwelling-place here on earth, even a spiritual habitation, such as comports with the majesty of His Divine Being.