Making Life Work

An Excerpt from The Thread: God's Appointments with History

By: Ronald L. Dart

    One of the great losses to the nominal Christian faith was the abandonment of the holydays of the Bible, their dismissal as merely “Jewish” institutions. And surely, one of the greatest of the Christian holydays is Pentecost, because it was on this day that the church was empowered to do its work. Some even call Pentecost the birthday of the church.

    But on that first Pentecost of the New Testament church, no one even thought of abandoning this festival. They were too high with the experience. Imagine yourself sitting in a room with 120 of the first disciples of Jesus. You have been...

From the Program Notes of Ronald L. Dart

    When you hear the word “Pentecost” do you automatically relate it to what happens among charismatic Christian groups today? Pentecost is actually older than the New Testament church. Considering the significance of what happened on this day, it’s astonishing that so many Christian churches know so little about this most important day, and so few even keep it or take note of it.

    Let’s consider one statement from the Book of Acts. “And when the day of Pentecost was fully come, they [Jesus’s disciples] were all with one accord in one place” (Acts 2:1). But to do what? It is beyond dispute that they were there to observe the Feast of Pentecost. These were all Israelites. So, the disciples had observed...

By: Lenny Cacchio  





    Most Christians don’t realize that they keep a Jewish High Holy Day! The day known as Pentecost was originally one of the Holy Days given to the Israelites while in the wilderness. It was known as the Feast of Weeks because it occurred about seven weeks after the people of Israel offered to God the first fruits of the spring barley harvest (Deuteronomy 16:9-10).     The word “Pentecost” is derived from the Greek words “pente” and “koste”, which literally mean to “count fifty” as in counting fifty days from that offering of first fruits to the day known as Pentecost (see Leviticus 23:16 where the instructions are to “count fifty days”). Pentecost marked the end of the spring harvest, so the day was essentially...

By: Ronald L. Dart

 

 

"And God said, Let there be lights in the firmament of the heaven to divide the day from the night; and let them be for signs, and for seasons, and for days, and years" (Genesis 1:14-19).

    Nothing God gave to man has been used so consistently for the purpose He intended. Every civilization of man has used the sun, the moon, or both for the demarcation of time. They had no choice. Even a hunting society had to take notice of the passage of seasons. When would the animals migrate to the north and when would they return? How soon would the antlered animals make their move down from the high country? No people dependent upon the land could fail to notice that there was a time to plant and a time to harvest. Their problem was the prediction of that time, and that required the observation of the sun. It required a calendar, and some form of calendar has always been a mark of civilization.

By: Ronald L. Dart

 

    The holy days are, to me, an endless source of fascination. Every year I approach them with renewed anticipation. Long ago someone pointed out to me a simple, elegant pattern in the meaning of these days. The Passover, for example, portrays the sacrifice of Christ. The days of Unleavened Bread remind us to put sin out of our lives. Pentecost pictures the receiving of the Holy Spirit. Trumpets looks forward to the return of Christ and the resurrection. Atonement represents the binding of Satan and the whole world being "at one" with God. The Feast of Tabernacles look forward to the millennium, and the eighth day pictures the "Great White Throne" judgment.