IT is a glorious remembrance which each year Pentecost brings.
One often speaks of a Reveille, in quietness of soul one longs for a Quickening, one thirsts after a Revivifying of one’s own and another’s spirit. But what meaning has the whole history of these revivals, compared with what then happened in Jerusalem?
After the coming into this world of God the Son in the Incarnation, now the coming to us of God the Holy Spirit, in this altogether unique Outpouring? In Bethlehem the coming of God to our race, but here in the upper room at Pentecost the coming of God to the soul personally. In two stadia the consummation. We form first a family, then a people, and so the one humanity; but in that family, among that people, in that humanity, each one has a personal life, an existence of one’s own soul. And so, for the consummation of the fellowship with God there was needed a twofold thing. First our race had to be restored to the fellowship again, and that took place when God, the Son, took our human nature upon Him. But with this it could not rest. The foundation indeed was laid thereby, but the object had not yet been gained, and that this goal might be reached, fellowship with God had to be restored not merely for our race, but also for the individual person. And this was effected at Pentecost, when God, the Holy Ghost, entered into the personal soul of the Apostles, but in such a way that the unity continued, that in the Body of Christ the solidarity of all was not lost, but increased.
This event is unique in history, equally as unique as Bethlehem.
As the Son could not a second time become Flesh, because He now is and lives in our human nature, so God the Holy Ghost could not come a second time to make His abode with us, for the all sufficient reason, that He since has remained with us, has never left us again, and did not come in with us provisionally to pass the night, but to make His habitation with us, and now dwells with us forever.
That world dominating event took place at Jerusalem; not in Greece with its philosophical knowledge; not among the Romans, those men of the mighty deed; but on Zion, close by the temple, in an upper room, which was connected with the house of God.
And that outpouring of the Holy Ghost took place in Jews, in descendants of Abraham, in sons of Israel. As Jesus took our human nature from Jesse’s tribe, and therefore said: “Salvation is of the Jews,” so the fixed rule of God’s Kingdom is honored here: From Israel it goes forth; from Israel, because he had been chosen for this, and this coming of God the Holy Ghost, to make His abode with us, even as the Incarnation, took place in us men, yea, in our human nature, but as in Israel, through Isaac’s wondrous birth, it had been particularized. Not only in the first stadium of Bethlehem, but also in the second stadium, in Zion’s halls, salvation is come to us through the middle link of the Jews.
This is emphasized, not to make the Jews great, for there is nothing more dreadful than the stiffneckedness wherewith the Jews as a people, from the days of Solomon on, had sinned against God and roused the Holy One of Israel to anger. In addition to this, they have crucified the Lord of Glory. And when the Holy Spirit was poured out, they made light of it, and as though it were an outpouring of drunkenness, they first laughed at it. In the Jews there is nothing so small as the Jew, but great in the Jews is the God of Israel, Who with such a people and through such a people, has brought to pass such great, such glorious things.
The fame and the glory is not for the chosen people, but for that God, Who chose that people.
And so that selfsame God on that day of Pentecost had prepared for Himself out of that stiffnecked people a small company of believers. A hundred at most. Among them a Peter, who with cursing and swearing had three times denied Jesus, and a Thomas who would not believe, unless he could see and handle; and along with these the other nine disciples, who in Gethsemane had left Jesus to His fate, so that angels had to come to His help in their stead, the whiles they turned and fled. By no means a perfect company therefore, but for all that, men and women whose heart the Lord had touched. Vessels made meet for Him, men and women with a spirituality of soul, that was receptive for Jesus, and capable of receiving the coming Holy Ghost.
It is against all Scripture therefore and the dispensation of grace, when dear Christian people imagine, that the outpouring of the Holy Ghost can ever repeat itself. Those devoutly disposed souls thirst indeed after a more intensely spiritual stimulus, after higher exaltation of soul, after warmer glow of love in the heart. And reading what took place at Jerusalem on that great feast of Pentecost, their soul melts within them at the delightful thought that it might take place in their company, in their circle, in their home, in their soul. They cry, and they pray that once more, now that they themselves are here, this mighty miracle might be reënacted.