Holy Spirit fire

PENTECOST SUNDAY REFLECTIONS

(May 22, 2023) Dr Robert McQuillan recalls Pentecostal memories…

May 28 is Pentecost Sunday when it’s expected Pentecostal and charismatic churches will celebrate that Acts 2 occasion when the Holy Spirit fell powerfully on those first Christians.

Pentecost (pentēkostē – fifty) is the Jewish holiday festival of Shavu`ot.Originally firstfruits of the wheat harvest were presented to God 50 days after the Feast of Unleavened Bread (See Leviticus 23:16-17), celebrating the expectation of a great agricultural season ahead. Its theme became one of revelation – of God Himself, His power and His Torah (teaching, direction, guidance, law).

Reverberating
Traditionally where Jesus followers gathered in Jerusalem has been known as ‘the upper room.’ Acts 2:1 calls it a ‘place’, but interestingly this word is a reflexive pronoun linked with ‘a baffling wind.’ Little did those faithful believers image the roaring wind ahead!

That windstorm (NLT) blew through on that first Pentecost Sunday! Acts 2:2CJB records the ‘place’ as a home – ‘Suddenly there came a sound from the sky like the roar of a violent wind, and it filled the whole house…’ 

Act 2:3-4 records, ‘They saw what seemed to be tongues of fire that separated and came to rest on each of them. All of them were filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak in other tongues…’ They were a changed, charged and challenged people!

(more…)

EXTRAORDINARY REVIVAL AT ASBURY UNIVERSITY

(February 18, 2023) Mark Ellis reports more Holy Spirit fire falling in Kentucky…

As a senior at Asbury University in Kentucky, Joshua Curry, 22, decried his own sense of disquiet about his spiritual condition and the religious atmosphere at the college.

Attendance at chapel is required three days a week at the private Christian university, formally aligned with the Wesleyan-Holiness movement. Many students seemed unenthusiastic, apathetic about the mandatory obligation. ‘There were a lot of people who were just tired of having to come to chapel, people would always groan about having to show up for an hour a day, three days a week.’

‘I was actually feeling very poor spiritually, like a sinking ship. I wrote down in my journal that I’m tired of milquetoast Protestantism. I want liberty from slavery. I want forgiveness of sins. I want a zealous spirit,’ but he felt the world and its current cultural milieu was luring him away from what he desired most.

The revival that hit the school in the 1970s was fading from memory. February 2023 and student Joshua Curry bears witness to the following awakening…

(more…)