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Day of Pentecost—2009
Fred R. Coulter—May 31, 2009
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Today is the Day of Pentecost according to the Calculated Hebrew Calendar properly counted the way that it should be. However, if you look at some calendars improperly counted they have a little different day. What we need to understand about all of God's Holy Days is this, and it's very important for us to realize.
The Sabbath puts us in contact with God. We are taught by God every Sabbath through His Word and through the teaching. This is the duty of each one in their personal prayer and study all the time. But it is also the sacred covenant that elders and teachers have to feed the flock of God and to preach the Word in season and out of season so that God can work with all of us together.
Now you look at what we have here and you look at all of the Churches of God wherever they are and you see one thing that is common. 'Not many wise, not many great, not many exalted from the world,' but the poor, the handicapped, the aged, those who are counted as nothing in this world God has called for a great and tremendous purpose! that purpose is so that we can be in His Kingdom, and the world is going to understand even more in the future that we will become the threat to them, because we will be preaching the second coming of Christ in power, glory and honor for Him to come and take over all the governments of this world.
So, unknown to the world in general they don't know that God is teaching and training a people to be ready to take over. God works ahead, God plans way in the future. That's what the Sabbath, Holy Days and Passover are all about. You go back and you look and every single thing that God does with the Passover, Sabbath and Holy Days is an historical event especially for the first one. The first Sabbath God created, and He rested and taught Adam and Eve, and the Sabbath was given for all mankind.
But because God has given free moral agency and He has made us in such a fantastic way that:
- we have a mind
- we can think
- we have emotions
- we have expression of love
- we have capacities
- we have abilities
God gave us the whole earth and said have dominion over the whole earth, everything that is here. 'The one thing I require is you choose Me or you choose the way of the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil.' When Adam and Eve did that they decided for themselves what was right and what was wrong rather than letting God instruct us in what is right and what is wrong.
So, even though that first Sabbath was a powerful time beginning with the creation of it, and God's personal presence was in a form that Adam and Eve could see as if He were just a man. He walked with them and talked with them, and so forth, until they sinned and then they were thrust out of the Garden of Eden. You know the story of what happened with Cain.
Now let's come on down and see another very important time after the Flood with Abraham. The promises that God gave to Abraham are very important to recognize from this point of view:
- men like to see big works
- men like to see important people
- men like to have hierarchies and bureaucracies
But God chose Abraham—one man—because he would not bow down to the idols of the nations. He told Abraham, which was an important day of calling that He called him, 'I will bless you and you shall become great, and nations will come of you. Those that bless you I will bless those that curse you I will curse.' One man!
God said, 'I'm going to give you your own seed.' When he was 85-years-old, God promised him in Gen. 15—which later became the Passover Day for the children of Israel and for the Church—that He would give him a physical son of his own loins, which did not occur until 15 years later. Let's understand what God also does. He does the impossible so that we understand it is of God. So, from Abraham came Isaac and Jacob and the 12 tribes. Then God raised up Moses, one man! and his brother Aaron.
What did God do? He sent them to bring the children of Israel out of captivity from Egypt! He used His plagues, which we will that He still fights in the same way today. He used the Passover as an historic day, an historic time that is still spoken of and taught to this very day, not only in the Churches of God, but even in the world. On that day he spared the children of Israel and their firstborn and executed all the firstborn of man and beast of the Egyptians and took them out of the land of Egypt, brought them to Himself on the Day of Pentecost and gave them the Ten Commandments.
They then were to take these things and teach all the nations of the world, because God had chosen them to do so. God has said in His Word that He never at anytime, in spite of all of the sins of the children of Israel down through history, chosen any other people until we come to the time of the New Testament and Pentecost there.
So, these are important historic events. Before we get into the historic fulfillment of Pentecost for today, on this Day of Pentecost, let's understand something really very important for us to realize concerning God's days. God has inspired every word that we find in the originals of the Bible, Old and New Testament, and he raised up faithful men to do translating. For example since were talking about the Bible, we have the Bible in English because of one man. An impossible task under terrible circumstances persecuted by the religious hierarchy of the Roman Catholic Church in England.
What he did in translating first the New Testament and he had to exile himself to Europe to do it. He went to Germany and that's where he had the first… William Tyndale was trained unknown by God to prepare for translating the Bible in English. He spoke seven languages like a native and could switch from one language to the other without losing a word. He was the one who established the basis for the modern English that we have today in which the Bible has been printed in the greatest number.
For 12 years he was chased from pillar to post. They confiscated what they could. They hunted him down like a dog. He had to hide and run and finally he had some businessmen who helped him out, and they smuggled pages of the New Testament into England and started the Protestant Reformation in England. Of course, the Catholic Church was furious. He finally was arrested after the second printing of the New Testament and he was working on translating the Old Testament, and by time he was finally betrayed by a man named Phillips he was arrested by the Catholic authorities taken to Val Verde prison in Antwerp. There for 18 months with a candle, with his Hebrew Lexicon, with barely enough clothes to keep warm, God gave him grace and favor in the eyes of the jailer and the jailer's daughter who actually helped him, and they may have become converted as well.
But there he translated the entire Old Testament, gave it to his friend John Rogers, and John Rogers brought it back and did all the corrections and things like that and got it ready. Well, after 18 months William Tyndale was brought before the inquisitor and given one last chance to renounce what he was doing. He did not do it! So, they put him up to the stake they put all of the burnable material around him to burn him at the stake. They also had a hole through the stake where they put a rope and put it around his neck. As they lit the fires, his last words were—
That's why we have what we have today. What we've done here doesn't amount to anything what he went through the provided for us. So the point is God uses one man and uses small groups of people. But as he was ready to be burned and the inquisitor said all right light the fire,' Tyndale lifted up his voice and cried aloud
—'God, O Lord, opened the eyes of the King of England,' who happened to be Henry VIII.
They pulled the cord around his neck and he died and was burned, so that we can have the Word of God! John Rogers took that completed Bible and he called it the Thomas Matthew Bible.
- T is for Tyndale
- M is an upside down W
And right on the last page of the Old Testament were the initials WT. That's how we got the English Bible. Everything else in there down to even what we're doing is dependent upon it.
I want you to see through the thread of history that God does not use the mighty of the world. He gets one man like William Tyndale. When he was at a dinner, I forget whose house was, with other religious officials around; William Tyndale was actually a Catholic priest. But that doesn't mean that he believed anything that they taught in the way that they did, if you've ever read some of his writings about the conduct of the Catholic Church at that time.
One man spoke up at this dinner and they were talking about having a translation for the English people. One man said, 'We better be without God's Law than the pope's law.' And William Tyndale says, 'I defy the pope and all his laws! If God gives me enough strength and air and number of years to live I will make the plowboy behind the ox know more about the Word of God than the pope himself.' Now, those are paraphrased so don't quote be exactly correct. But that's what he did.
What I want us to do is understand that through the history of the Church, through the work of God:
- there are rises and falls
- there are high points and there are low points
- there are times of peace and there are times of war and persecution
We're reaching a point right now in this age of both. We have been high and mighty and what did God do to the Church when it got high and mighty? Corrected it and scattered it, because God wants everyone to love Him and serve Him and not be exalted in the self. He's called all of us—weak, blind, handicapped—but we love God. That's what's more important than anything else, because God has called all of those to the first resurrection for a great and a glorious purpose as pictured by this Day of Pentecost.
But I think as we look at the historical things that have happened with the Holy Days of God and we will see that with every Holy Day that comes along we also need to understand how God is working with us. I never want you, at anytime, to think: Oh well, I'm just a little so and so; God couldn't care for me. That's not true! God loves all the little so and so's! All the weak that He has called!
- He has called us so we can have His strength
- He has called us so we can have His spirit
- He has called us to defy the rulers of this world
- He has called us to defy the government that they are working on bringing now, the world government
We are going to take over the reins of the governments of this world so we need to have the history from the Bible.
- look up what all the apostles went through
- look at what all the prophets went through
- look at what has happened to the Church down through history
The DVD: Israel of the Alps, put out by the SDAs, shows how the Church in the Middle Ages survived, how the Word of God was carried through:
- even though they were persecuted
- even though they were martyred
- even though they were spoken against
- even though someone would say, 'Who are these peasants to defy the pope?'
You can see from that that God was with them.
Here we are today for this year's Pentecost. Now that we've had a little history background, let's read about how we are to figure this day. Not only are we going to figure out to count it. Because the Calculated Hebrew Calendar is a solar/lunar calendar. That becomes important to understand. It's not like a solar calendar, the Roman calendar that we have, and you know every year that 31st of August is Halloween, 25th of December is Christmas; Easter is a little hard to figure out because they tried to counterfeit the Passover and how to count to Pentecost. But all the pagan holidays have a set day in the year.
Certain of God's Holy Days have set days. But since the calendar is solar lunar there are years when they're a little longer than the other and so therefore the dates fall differently on the Roman calendar that we have. Some years we meet for Pentecost in May, other years it is in June. That's because of the difference in the way that the solar/lunar calendar is figured. But what does this do? This is very important. It makes us understand and keep track of when these days are because of their importance. This makes it hard for the world to try and figure us out. Pentecost is one of those days.
From the time of the of the crucifixion, death, resurrection and ascension of Jesus Christ there is a continuous period of history that is prophesied by the seven weeks and the 50th day. There is a continual harvest of the firstfruits from the first Pentecost right on down to the last Pentecost and the first resurrection.
Leviticus 23:9: "And the LORD spoke to Moses, saying, 'Speak to the children of Israel and say to them, "When you have come into the land which I give to you, and shall reap the harvest of it, then you shall bring the premier sheaf of the firstfruits of your harvest to the priest"'" (vs 9-10). That's symbolic of Christ; He was the First of the firstfruits!
Verse 11: "And he shall wave the sheaf before the LORD to be accepted for you…." That is so that we can have acceptance by God through the sacrifice and the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ.
"…On the next day after the Sabbath…" (v 11). That is the Sabbath during Unleavened Bread or more correctly it is the first day of the week that falls during the Feast of Unleavened Bread. Then it says all the other things that you shall offer.
Verse 15: "And you shall count to you beginning with the next day after the Sabbath, beginning with the day that you brought the sheaf of the wave offering; seven Sabbaths shall be complete." You have whole weeks: day one through seven day, seven times.
Verse 16: "Even unto the day after the seventh Sabbath you shall number fifty days…."
Then they were to offer a new offering. Now let's look at something that's also important. You take the week of the crucifixion of Jesus Christ.; He was crucified and died in the middle of the week. He was in the grave three days and three nights. He was resurrected toward the end of the Sabbath and He ascended to the Father on the eighth day, or the first day of the week the eighth day of that week.
Now likewise, when you come to the last week and counting for Pentecost you have a similar pattern. You have seven days then the first day of the week becomes the eighth day, and eight is a new beginning. We find the same sequence that is going to happen during the resurrection of the firstfruits. We will see something very similar in the ritual that was done here and why it was done in showing our acceptance by God.
Verse 17: "You shall bring out of your homes two wave loaves of two tenth parts…." Specific size in making this loaf.
"…They shall be of fine flour. They shall be baked with leaven…" (v 17). Being baked with leaven means it's a very unusual offering because during the Feast of Unleavened Bread leaven pictured sin. God will not accept sin so you can't say at this time 50 days later that the leaven pictures sin. Why would the leaven be there?
"…they are the firstfruits to the LORD" (v 17)—symbolic of the first resurrection and what they were to do
Verse 20: "And the priest shall wave them with the bread of the firstfruits, a wave offering before the LORD, with the two lambs. They shall be Holy to the LORD for the priest."
Very similar thing that happened to the symbolic wave sheaf symbolizing the resurrection of Jesus Christ.
Verse 21: "And you shall proclaim on the same day that it may be a Holy convocation to you…. [the 50th day; today] …You shall do no servile work therein. It shall be a statute forever in all your dwellings throughout your generations."
Now, on the Holy Days we always take up an offering. The only time we take up an offering during a congregational or fellowship meeting. Considering what God has called us to and every offering and tithe that you give, consider what God is doing with you and for you and through you and a very purpose as to why you have been called.
Scriptural References:
Leviticus 23:9-11; 15-17, 20-21
Scripture referenced, not quoted: Genesis 15
Also referenced: DVD: Israel of the Alps (put out by the Seventh Day Adventists)
FRC: po/bo
Transcribed: 2/15/17
Reformatted/Corrected: 5/2020
