Sabbath School Today
With the 1888 Message Dynamic
The Book of Acts
Lesson 2. Pentecost
"Pentecost" is a big word to Christian people. It came 50 days after Christ's resurrection. The disciples met together to pray and study for 10 days previous, so that by the time that the Day of Pentecost arrived, they were finally in total harmony and unity, in "one accord" (Acts 2:1).
A great blessing came on that day. The true and genuine "gift of tongues" was manifest so that everyone from all parts of the world who were gathered in Jerusalem heard the glad tidings in his own language so he could clearly understand it. The Holy Spirit was given in a fullness that has never since been equaled.
What was it about the message of Pentecost that had such tremendous power that 3000 were converted, truly converted, in a day? There is one "great truth" that shone clearly on the Day of Pentecost that even the apostle Paul did not preach. Speaking to that great crowd of thousands of people from many nations and languages, Peter boldly declared that they had crucified the Son of God: "Therefore let all the house of Israel know assuredly, that God hath made that same Jesus, whom ye have crucified, both Lord and Christ" (Acts 2:36). A few days later he told them, "Ye denied the Holy One and the Just, ... and killed the Prince of life" (3:14, 15). Nothing in Paul's epistles is quite so strong, so directly confrontational!
The greatest "evangelism" of all time was what happened at Pentecost. It was not emotionalism, and what brought the deep conviction of truth on people's hearts was not the miracle of the apostles' speaking foreign languages--a "sign and wonder" indeed, but not the real thing that did it: the apostles proclaimed what had happened when the Son of God died on His cross.
They didn't "mince words," or say it daintily: "You murdered the Prince of life, the Son of God!" They laid the guilt of the ages upon the souls of those Jews and Gentiles. There was no political making friends and influencing people, no attempt to make the message palatable, to "win" the top leaders by psychology. It was the most direct super-confrontation that has ever been between lowly people and religious society leadership (read it in Acts 2:23, 36; 4:10; 5:30, etc.).
When, at Pentecost, Peter said, "God hath made that same Jesus whom ye have crucified, both Lord and Christ" (Acts 2:36), immediately came the heart-broken cry, "What shall we do?" (vs. 37). Then when Peter and John healed the paralytic, Peter again said, "Ye denied the Holy One and the Just, ... and killed the Prince of life, whom God hath raised from the dead" (3:14, 15). You couldn't yawn and sit on the fence when you heard a charge like that! Then Peter and John told the rulers and leaders of the nation, "Ye crucified Jesus Christ of Nazareth, whom God raised from the dead" (4:10).
Ordinary people like the apostles could never have galvanized themselves to tell it like they did had it not been for the 10 days of repentance they spent beforehand. They had knelt very low in self-humiliation; what fools they had been! The Holy Spirit had eleven men in whom self had been "crucified with Christ." This made it possible for the Son of God to be exalted in them.
What happened on the day of Pentecost was a repentance deeper than has ever been known. The murder of the Son of God is the greatest sin ever committed; repentance for that sin is the greatest a human heart can ever know.
A repentance like that of Pentecost is what Christ calls for today. It will come, like a lost vein of gold in the earth that must surface again in another place. Our idea of repentance can produce only what we see today--hazy, indistinct devotion; lukewarmness. Like medicine taken in quantity sufficient to produce a concentration in the bloodstream, our repentance must be comprehensive, full-range, in order for the Holy Spirit to do a fully effective work.
This full spectrum of repentance is included in "the everlasting gospel." But its clearest definition has been impossible until now, as history reaches the last of the seven churches. The original word "repentance" means a looking back from the perspective of the end: metanoia, from meta ("after"), and nous ("mind"). Thus, repentance can never be complete until the end of history. Like the great Day of Atonement, its full dimension must be a last-day experience. We have now come to that moment in time.
But what about "1888"? The little group who went through the Great Disappointment of 1844 were deeply beloved of Jesus in a special sense. They refused to give up their faith, confident that the true Holy Spirit was in the Midnight Cry through the Great Disappointment. They were especially dear to His heart (Jesus describes them in His message to "the angel of the church of the Philadelphians," Rev. 3:9, 10).
When new truth came to them (the heavenly sanctuary and the opening of the second apartment), they believed; there was an endearing love for that "little flock" in His eyes. When Rachel Preston brought them the seventh-day Sabbath-truth, they welcomed it; no resisting and fighting it (as "they" did other "most precious" truth forty-plus years later). Then when the first principles of health reform came, again they eagerly accepted. Through the early history of this people, a special heavenly love affair was developing. Not since Pentecost had Jesus found such a group of believers loyal to Him.
The 1888 idea lifted the cross of Christ higher than it had been displayed since Pentecost. Ellen White said, "Great truths that have lain unheeded and unseen since the day of Pentecost are to shine from God's word in their native purity." [1] The Sabbath and the cross finally came together.
But here the Song of Solomon 5:2-8 comes on stage. [2] The Lover has come "home" to His beloved after a long trip; tired, lonely, hungry, wet from the rain; He longs to be with her intimately. He "knocks" (the Hebrew says banging on the door). The woman whom He loves disdains him, she is too relaxed, gone to bed for the night; why does He bother her now? (The world is too comfy a place as it is, says the church of the Laodiceans.) Finally, she forgets about her own selfish comfort and thinks about Him out in the darkness, hungry and alone; she belatedly gets up and goes to let Him in, but when she opens the door, He is "gone."
We've been looking for Him for well over a hundred years (cf. 6:1). Increasingly, thoughtful people see here the story of "our" disdaining Him in the "most precious" message of the beginning of the latter rain. In rejecting the message, says the Lord's servant, we disdained Christ [3], just as "the woman" did her Lover in Song of Solomon 5:3.
Christ's pathetic appeal in His message to "the angel of the church of the Laodiceans" [4] ("be zealous therefore, and repent," Rev. 3:19) demands attention.
--From the writings of Robert J. Wieland
Endnotes:
[1] Ellen G. White, Review and Herald, Aug. 17, 1897, emphasis supplied.
[2] There seems no reason to include this book in the Bible unless it speaks of Jesus and His love for the church. Jesus described it as "scripture" in John 7:37, 38 (SS 4:15). Paul quoted it in reference to the church in Ephesians 5:27 (SS 4:7). Scholars have long recognized that Jesus quoted the Septuagint version in Revelation 3:20, "I stand at the door and knock."
[3] The Ellen G. White 1888 Materials, pp. 398, 399.
[4] Ellen White identifies this as the Seventh-day Adventist Church (op. cit.).
Notes:
Pastor Paul Penno's video of this lesson is on the Internet at:
https://youtu.be/MdIrRel4XH0
"Sabbath School Today" is on the Internet at: http://1888message.org/sst.htm
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