Pentecost: Festival of Mystery

Tomorrow is Pentecost.

Pentecost: Festival of Mystery

By Gary Stearman on June 1, 2014

This month the Jewish observance of Shavuot – Pentecost – falls on Wednesday, June 4th. In the Jewish calendar, this date corresponds to the 6th of Sivan of the year 5774, marking the first of two days of celebration. Since the Second Century A.D., this commemoration has been given two days, and accommodates the natural fluidity of the calendar which, when counted from the lunar cycle, has no fixed date. In fact, they refer to it as “the festival without a date,” giving it an aura of mystery.
About this time every year, we are reminded afresh of Pentecost’s enormous significance in the panorama of biblical prophecy. Almost three decades ago, we first brought you its amazing prophetic truths. Better than any other ancient
Jewish festival, it embodies the elements that we associate with the catching-away, or rapture, of the church. We repeat them here to refresh your memory concerning the joys of this season and to remind you that the Lord is near, even at the door.
As we move toward the halfway point of 2014, we find ourselves experiencing another wave of renewed excitement about the near possibility of the rapture of the church. With Russia on the move in Ukraine, and nuclear weapons being brandished by Iran and Saudi Arabia, the Middle-East war threat rises to the highest probability we’ve ever seen. As a result, interest in the prophesied culmination of the church age has risen to extreme anticipation.

We have demonstrated numerous remarkable connections between Pentecost and the prophetic conclusion of the church age. It is the fourth and central feast among the seven Feasts of Israel: Passover, Unleavened Bread, Firstfruits, Pentecost, Rosh HaShanah, Yom Kippur and Tabernacles. The first three are spring festivals, representing the blood sacrifice and resurrection. The last three come in the fall, calling forth judgment and the establishment of the Kingdom. At the center – in the summer – is Pentecost. In the Bible, it is represented by two loaves of leavened bread, held aloft by the High Priest. Today’s Jews celebrate it in a ceremony called, “decorating the bride.” In a most remarkable way, it typifies the rapture of the church.
Pentecost is a harvest festival that marks the passage of seven weeks after Firstfruits:
“9 Seven weeks shalt thou number unto thee: begin to number the seven weeks from such time as thou beginnest to put the sickle into the corn. 10 And thou shalt keep the feast of weeks unto the Lord thy God with a tribute of a freewill offering of thine hand, which thou shalt give unto the Lord thy God, according as the Lord thy God hath blessed thee” (Deuteronomy 16:9 – 10).
Over the years we have stressed the fact that Pentecost is the most mysterious of all the Jewish festivals. Called by the Jews, the “Feast of Weeks” [“weeks,” or in Hebrew “Shavuot”], it is the festival of the early summer harvest. But its associated symbols and metaphors invoke meanings far beyond the mere harvesting of grain.

Among the Jews, this is the festival that celebrates the giving of the Torah, or Law. Shavuot (Pentecost) was the time, they say, when the Twelve Tribes gathered at the foot of Mount Sinai. There, they heard the actual voice of God, as He spoke the commandments. The Bible does not seem, at first glance, to make a clear connection between Sinai and Pentecost. Nevertheless, the link is there, if we take the time to look.
Furthermore, this festival presents the ceremony of the marriage between God and Israel. In this context, Passover (which precedes Pentecost by seven weeks) becomes the period of God’s courtship of His wife.

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