Pentecosts and Conversions

1910

When a revival has obtained many converts we commonly call it a Pentecost. The three thousand converts to Christianity were a result of what happened on that famous fiftieth day after the Great Passover, but they were not an essential of it; nor are Pentecosts always attended by conversions, though they are likely to be.

The narrative of that first Christian Pentecost is very simple and very wonderful. The conditions were these: A risen Christ, fully apprehended in his divine majesty, ardently loved for his marvelous gifts to men. His followers united in this understanding and love — not in a theological system, since there had been no time to form one, nor in ecclesiastical bonds, since there was happily as yet no ecclesiasticism to separate them; but they were united in love and in faith, which alone can unite men. Finally, Christ's followers, thus united, were all in one place, the physical basis of the spiritual miracle that was to follow. Those conditions being granted — and they are possible anywhere where there are Christians, If only two of them — what are the essentials of Pentecost? They are three.

First, Pentecost consisted of a sound from Heaven as of a rushing mighty wind, filling all the houses where the disciples were. What is essential in this? The sound of the wind? We can get it any day when the wind is blowing. We can imitate it any day when the wind is not blowing. The essential is that "from Heaven." The essential is the feeling of the other world, of supernatural power, of the divine moving upon the human.

The One Essential.

Second, Pentecost consisted of the mysterious light filling the room, centered in tongues of light flaming from each head. What is essential here? The actual vibrations of the ether? Surely not. Every living body, as the scientists are beginning to prove, gives out some light. What is essential is the spiritual clarity, the divine illumination, in the radiance of which men see what they have not before seen of themselves and God and God's universe.

Third, Pentecost consisted of the speaking with tongues. What is essential in this? That each heard his own language spoken from those previously one-languaged men? No, for they had heard their own language before, and would hear it again. The essential was that they heard "the wonderful works of God." It was what the disciples said that brought conviction, rather than the exceptional fact that each heard it said in his own tongue.

If these are the three Pentecost essentials, as I think they are, then we can have a Pentecost in any prayer meeting or Sunday school class or in the church on any Sunday morning, though only Christians are present, and only three or thirty of these and nowhere near three thousand. We can have a feeling of God's presence, and a clear vision of divine truth, and a free utterance of our spirits in view of God's presence and this new vision.

Same Joys Are Ours.

I am not denying the reality of the supernatural occurrences on the day of Pentecost. I believe in them wholly. I am not "spiritualizing them away." They may not occur to us in the same outward form, but I do believe that everything most precious and valuable in them occurs to us, and that the first Pentecost is a paradigm of the Pentecost that may be yours and mine today.

Nor will our Pentecost be less marvelous than Peter's and John's. To realize the presence of God is more wonderful than to hear the wind blow, though it blow from the skies of paradise. To see God's truth is more wonderful than the aura of any saint, and to speak of God's wonderful works in the English language to any set of Americans is as great a deed as to speak in a single breath all the tongues of Pentecost.

—Oelwein Daily Register, Oelwein, IA, Sept. 20, 1910, p. 3.