The Story of Pentecost

June 6, 2025

The Resurrected Jesus spent 40 days on earth before His ascension to Heaven.

During that time, He was with the disciples and those who traveled with them. He also appeared to 500 “brothers”. (1 Cor 15:6)                                                                

The term brothers means they were Jewish Believers, as was His earthly brother James, whom He visited. I am emphasizing the point that Jesus was focusing His entire attention on the Jewish Believers in those 40-days.

He could have said,

“I am going to Spain and Portugal, then India to gather more disciples”,

but He stayed true to His calling to go only to the Lost Sheep of the House of Israel. He never left Israel until He departed for Heaven. 

The Bible gives us only one reason for why He remained.

He presented himself alive to them after his suffering by many proofs, appearing to them during forty days and speaking about the kingdom of God. Acts 1:3

At the end of the forty days, Jesus told them to remain for an unspecified time until an event like no other would take place. Their job was to wait.

Acts 1:4  And while staying with them he ordered them not to depart from Jerusalem, but to wait for the promise of the Father, which, he said, “you heard from me.”  (Lk.24:49)

 “But you will receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you, and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the end of the earth.” Act 1:8

The combination of waiting and receiving enabled them to propel into the world as Jesus’ ambassadors. They waited for ten days, the Holy Spirit arrived on schedule and the world would never be the same.

But what about the 40-days? The resurrected Jesus alone with His disciples– no miracles, no walking on water or feeding the multitudes. Nothing but conversation. What did they discuss?

I believe there is a clue based on the timeframe.

  Spring is when the Feasts of the Lord begin. On Passover Jesus fulfilled the first Feast. On the day of His burial, he fulfilled the Feast of Unleavened Bread. On Sunday, following the Sabbath, He fulfilled the Feast of Firstfuits (Easter). There was only one more Spring Feast, called Shavuot in Hebrew, or the Feast of Weeks. It was celebrated seven weeks from First Fruits. The counting begins the day before on the Sabbath, which is how Pentecost (fiftieth) got its name.

Are you beginning to get the connection between the Old and New Covenant?

“When the day of Pentecost arrived, they (disciples) were all together in one place.

And suddenly there came from heaven a sound like a mighty rushing wind…,

And they were all filled with the Holy Spirit…” Acts 2:1-4

Most Christians agree that Pentecost is the birth of the church. What a church it must have been! They soon emptied their “church pews” (metaphorically),  went out to the streets, and preached the gospel. They continued meeting in the homes, preaching in the streets and villages, and before long into the nations.

Back to the mysterious 40-days.

Let’s try to imagine what was in the minds of these Jewish disciples.

First off, they were not indoors. Initially they were staying in familiar homes and doing what they knew best–fishing in the Galilee, or walking down the Damascus Road, when Jesus would appear unexpectedly.

Perhaps He was getting them accustomed to the intersection of the natural with the supernatural lifestyle that they would soon inherit as citizens of the Kingdom of God. For now, they were in His classroom.

No longer could random thoughts be left unchecked. They had entered discipleship 2.0. They recalled that Jesus said that they were to call no man Rabbi. Because He was their Rabbi, they were more than “talmudim,” they were brothers.*  God expects brothers to love one another.

“But you are not to be called rabbi, for you have one teacher, and you are all brothers.” Mat 23:8

Rabbis demand their student’s attention. (I remember that from Hebrew school!) Every young Israeli man had a rabbi. But Jesus was like no other.

Shortly after Jesus resurrected, He breathed on His disciples and said to them,

 “Receive the Holy Spirit” (John 20:22)

That is the way His students learn.  Jesus teaches, the Holy Spirit gives understanding. When we forget, He reminds.

Before that 40-day session the disciples didn’t quote scripture, preach the gospel, perform miracles, or care for the widows. What they did though, is bicker for position. That had to end—and it did.

After Jesus ascended, they no longer bickered because brotherly love replaced it and was sealed on the day of Pentecost.

That is how they became His witnesses.

That 40-day period of discipleship may be the most significant period in history. It is nestled between two Feasts of the Lord.

Thus, Moses declared to the people of Israel the appointed Feasts of the LORD.     ( Leviticus 23:44)

The Feast of Firstfuits, which is the day of Jesus’ resurrection was the day after the Sabbath during the Passover week, which makes it a Sunday.**

Without that day in God’s calendar, Paul says our faith would be in vain. Firstfruits implies there are more coming. The Feast of Shavuot (Pentecost) represents a harvest of souls, symbolized by wheat.

On that day, the Priest waved two loaves. Unlike Passover when the Priest offered only one loaf of barley representing the people of Israel. On Shavuot, the priest waved two loaves of wheat with leaven, representing a harvest of two peoples with similar characteristics. When God receives an offering, it becomes holy and useful.

On the first Shavuot, Moses was on Mt. Sinai receiving the Ten Commandments. While he was on the mountain with God in that 40-day period, the people were fashioning a Golden Calf to worship.

When Moses descended, he was irate and smashed the idol and the tablets. On that day 3,000 Israelites were killed. About 1500 years later that same day in Jerusalem, 3000 Israelites were saved after God poured out His Spirit.

The Law was not at fault, it was the people void of the Holy Spirit and left to their own ways. The Spirit gives life and hence the purpose and power of the New Covenant is to produce fruit after its own kind.

It was not long after that when this fast-growing group of Jewish believers brought liberating power into the Gentile world, which was previously at enmity with them.

This was an alarming event to both groups of people. These feasts were no longer symbolic, they came to life beginning on that day in the Upper Room where Jesus instructed them to wait.

Their obedience was followed by signs and wonders, people were healed, demons were cast out, the poor were fed and the widows cared for. Remarkably these uneducated Jewish disciples of Yeshua were quoting scripture wherever they went.

And the word of God continued to increase, and the number of the disciples multiplied greatly in Jerusalem, and a great many of the priests became obedient to the faith.  (Act 6:7)

Jesus’ Jewish disciples were set apart for 40-days of intimate fellowship with Him, the King of the Universe–the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob–to prepare them for the fulfillment of all the covenants and initiate the next great phase of world redemption.

If only Jews and Gentiles continued to serve together into the nations as God intended and Jesus died to achieve. (Eph 2:12)

 But they haven’t.

It’s easy to yawn at this point and plead the sovereignty of God clause, like pleading the fifth, but it won’t change the outcome.

In 325 AD the Council of Nicaea officially distinguished the Christian faith and practice from the Jewish Believer’s biblical practice. That began the elimination of the Feasts of the Lord, the Sabbath, the Hebrew language and ultimately Jews from the church.

Their codified language became the foundation of Replacement or Fulfillment theology, which ironically made null and void the work of Jesus on the cross according to Ephesians 2.

I don’t believe that Bible believing Christians (which should mean all) feel comfortable about this, but I suspect relatively few know their history.

Now is the time to change that. Those Jewish disciples who spent 40-days in preparation for Pentecost, ultimately laid down their lives for the sake of the Gospel you have inherited.

The Feasts of the Lord are God’s design. Only He could have orchestrated their significance with precision. We lose so much in their absence but even more we miss the bond of brotherly love that they point to in the unity of believing Jews and Gentiles, which must be recovered for the glory of God and His vindication.

We have to be honest if we are to save the coming generations from the wickedness that is plaguing our nation. Singing a little louder is not the answer.

Comfort My People wants to serve you. The greatest comfort for us as believers is knowing we are serving the Living God and He is pleased. Israel, by God’s confession, is the apple of His eye. (Zech. 2:8)  That does not mean it’s a love affair, it means the center of His attention. Israel means place and people, both irreplaceable.Your understanding of Israel is foundational.

*talmudim is the Hebrew word for disciples

**The Hebrew calendar is lunar, and our calendar is solar, which is why the dates and weekdays vary.

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