Pentecost was a historic event that forever changed the cosmos. And while each believer who experiences the indwelling of the Spirit may experience their own “personal pentecost”, the event of the Spirit’s filling of the believers on the day of Pentecost was a one-time unique event that had never happened before and would never happen, in the same way, again.
Acts 2 lays out the event and the response to Pentecost and it is backed up by a rich background from the Old Testament. In this article I want to just highlight and examine several of these Old Testament elements that serve as the background to the glorious event of Pentecost. Understanding the Old Testament background of Pentecost affords us an even richer understanding of what this event was and the impact that it has on redemptive history.
The Day of Pentecost (Leviticus)
The day of Pentecost itself is established in the Old Testament in Leviticus 23. There it is called the “feast of Weeks” or the feast of ingathering. The word pentecost comes from the Greek and refers to the timing of this ancient Jewish festival. Leviticus 23:15 instructs the people of Israel, “You shall count seven full weeks from the day after the Sabbath, from the day that you brought the sheaf of the wave offering.” The Sabbath in question here in v. 15 is a reference to the Feast of Firstfruits, celebrated on the day after the Sabbath of the Passover week (see 23:11). Since the Feast of Weeks was celebrated fifty days after the Feast of Firstfruits, it was called pentecost in Greek, which means fifty.
In Leviticus, God instructs the people of Israel to celebrate His faithfulness in the harvest with the twin feasts of Firstfruits and Weeks. The Feast of Firstfruits celebrates the “first fruits” of the harvest and the Feast of Weeks celebrates the ingathering of the entire harvest.
In Acts 2:1 we read, “When the day of Pentecost arrived, they were all together in one place.” Luke, the author of Acts, places the events of the Spirit’s descent on the church at the day of Pentecost. This is no accident in timing. Christ Jesus rose on Sunday, the day after the Passover sabbath. This means He rose on the day of Firstfruits. The significance of this timing comes into clear focus when we read the rest of the New Testament:
But in fact Christ has been raised from the dead, the firstfruits of those who have fallen asleep…But each in his own order: Christ the firstfruits, then at his coming those who belong to Christ.
1 Corinthians 15:20, 23, ESV
Here in 1 Corinthians, Paul is equating the Resurrection of the righteous with a harvest. The analogy makes sense also in context of Jesus’ seed-burial-fruit analogy of death and resurrection in John 12:24. A seed “dies” when it is buried but when it dies it bears much fruit. Paul furthers this analogy in regard to resurrection. If the planting of the seed is its death and burial, then the harvesting of the “fruit” is its resurrection.
Furthermore, Paul says that Christ is the “firstfruits” of this resurrection and that believers will join Him in this resurrection “at his coming”. The significance of this doctrine, in regards to Pentecost, is that the timing of Pentecost in relation to Christ’s bodily resurrection on the Feast of Firstfruits shows that the Spirit’s descent and filling of the Church at Pentecost is the inauguration of the believer’s resurrection!
While the believer’s physical resurrection will not occur until Christ’s second coming, the spiritual resurrection of believers has begun now. Jesus declares in John 5:25, “Truly, truly, I say to you, an hour is coming, and is now here, when the dead will hear the voice of the Son of God, and those who hear will live.” (Cross-reference this with verses 28-29, which refer to the bodily resurrection at the end of the age.) Elsewhere in the New Testament, the indwelling presence of the Spirit is described as a “down-payment” of the end-time resurrection of believers (see 2 Corinthians 5:5, Ephesians 1:13-14). In fact, the Spirit is described as the “firstfruits” of our bodily redemption in Romans 8:23! We are told the Spirit “seals” us for the day of redemption (referring to end-time resurrection) in Ephesians 4:30.
In conclusion, the fact that the Spirit descended on the Church on the day of Pentecost points to the “ingathering” of a spiritual harvest, cut from the same cloth as Christ’s physical resurrection which will consummate in the believer’s physical resurrection on the last day.
The Glory of the Lord Fills the Temple
The second Old Testament element that lies behind Pentecost is the glory of YHWH filling the physical tabernacle or temple. The language used to describe the Spirit’s filling of the Church is remarkably similar. We read about God’s glory filling His earthly dwelling place in two places in the Old Testament:
Then the cloud covered the tent of meeting, and the glory of the Lord filled the tabernacle.
Exodus 40:34, ESV
And when the priests came out of the Holy Place, a cloud filled the house of the Lord, so that the priests could not stand to minister because of the cloud, for the glory of the Lord filled the house of the Lord.
1 Kings 8:10-11, ESV
These passages describe theophanies when God’s glory visibly filled the tabernacle/temple. Other theophany passages in the Old Testament include Psalm 18:6-12 where God’s theophanic presence is described using language of wind and earthquake. The presence of wind and fire at Pentecost and the language of the Spirit “filling the entire house” in Acts 2:2 draws on this Old Testament background to make an important point: the Spirit is descending from Heaven and filling His earthly temple in the Church. Numerous passages like 1 Corinthians 3:16 describe the Church as the “temple of the Holy Spirit”. Pentecost is to the true and inaugurated eschatological temple (i.e. the Church) as the theophanies in Exodus and 1 Kings are to the tabernacle and Solomon’s temple.
G.K. Beale writes, “the theophany at Pentecost also may be understood as the irrupting of a newly emerging temple in the midst of the old Jerusalem temple that was passing away.”¹ He points out that 2 Chronicles 7:1, a parallel passage to 1 Kings 8:10-11, “describes the theophany as, ‘fire came down from heaven‘”² (emphasis original to Beale).
These Old Testament allusions in Acts make the powerful point that the Church is indeed God’s dwelling place on earth. The Old Testament temple system was a shadow that looked ahead to Christ, the true Temple (see John 2:21) and His Church which is the true temple of God in union with Him.
The Reverse of Babel
Another implicit Old Testament allusion in the story of Pentecost is the ingathering of the nations, thus reversing the division of humanity at Babel in Genesis 11. Since Genesis 11, the nations have been divided and disinherited by God but Pentecost is the great reversal of that. Acts 2:5 says, “Now there were dwelling in Jerusalem Jews, devout men from every nation under heaven.” And they each began to hear their own language when the Spirit-filled believers began speaking in tongues. Michael Heiser points out a linguistic parallel between God “divinding” the nations (Deut. 32:8) at Babel and the “distributed” tongues of fire in Acts 2:3. He concludes, “As Jews gathered in Jerusalem for the celebration heard and embraced the news of Jesus and his resurrection, Jews who embraced Jesus as messiah would carry that message back to their home countries—the nations. Babel’s disinheritance was going to be rectified by the message of Jesus, the second Yahweh incarnate, and his Spirit. The nations would again be his.”³
The indwelling of the Spirit empowers the Church to spread the gospel to the nations. This happens imminently at the end of chapter 2 when we read in verse 41 that three thousand souls, from among the devout men of every nation, were baptized and saved. The ingathering of the harvest at Pentecost is a far-reaching ingathering that brings back the disinherited nations. John 11:52 speaks of Caiaphas’ prophecy that Jesus would die for the nation “and not for the nation only, but also to gather into one the children of God who are scattered abroad.” This ingathering was inaugurated at Pentecost!
In the Last Days
Finally, we will examine the most direct and explicit Old Testament element at Pentecost: Peter’s quotation of Joel 2:28-32.
Peter quotes Joel’s prophecy in response to some in the crowd who were mocking and attributing the wonders and tongues-speaking to drunkenness. Peter says instead, “But this is what was uttered through the prophet Joel:” (Acts 2:16). He then goes on to quote a lengthy passage from Joel:
And in the last days it shall be, God declares,
Acts 2:17-21, ESV
that I will pour out my Spirit on all flesh,
and your sons and your daughters shall prophesy,
and your young men shall see visions,
and your old men shall dream dreams;
even on my male servants and female servants
in those days I will pour out my Spirit, and they shall prophesy.
And I will show wonders in the heavens above
and signs on the earth below,
blood, and fire, and vapor of smoke;
the sun shall be turned to darkness
and the moon to blood,
before the day of the Lord comes, the great and magnificent day.
And it shall come to pass that everyone who calls upon the name of the Lord shall be saved.
The first thing to note is that Peter sees the fulfillment of Joel’s prophecy as inaugurating the “last days”. Joel’s prophecy describes the indiscriminate pouring out of His Spirit among all His people from great to small. The young and the old alike will experience God’s Spiritual revelation. Sons and daughters, male and female both, will prophesy. Social status also has no sway on who can and will be filled with God’s Spirit and prophesy since even the servants will experience this glorious outpouring.
This seems self-explanatory but we may be confused when we read about the blood, fire, and vapor of smoke. Did the Sun go dark at Pentecost? Certainly the moon didn’t turn to blood, did it?
It is important to remember that this language in Joel does not necessarily need to refer to literal physical events. Instead, Joel’s description here is what G.K. Beale calls “stock-in-trade Old Testament cosmic dissolution language”⁴. He writes, “Consequently, Peter probably understands the language of Joel 2:30-31 to have begun fulfillment figuratively at Pentecost, though part of it could literally depict the theophany described in Acts 2:2-3.”⁵ Beale sees Peter’s use of Joel 2:30-31 as pointing symbolically to the destruction of the old creation and the inauguration of the New Creation in Christ and His people. He writes, “Acts 2 may continue a similar symbolic portrayal of destruction of the old temple, but also appears to depict believers as part of the new, descending and emerging temple because they are identified with the resurrected Christ. If they are part of the new temple, then they are part of the new creation, since the two notions are synonymous”⁶.
Conclusion
There is much more to say about the Old Testament background of Pentecost in regards to Peter’s sermon. He quotes the Psalms and applies them prophetically to the resurrection of Jesus Christ. We do not space in this article to explore these things. This article has simply sought to examine the Old Testament allusions and background in the event of Pentecost itself, that is, the actual descent of the Spirit filling the Church.
Pentecost represents a cosmic shift in redemptive history. It was the inauguration of the last days, the “age to come” breaking in on the “present age”. It was the inaugurated ingathering of the resurrection harvest to be consummated at Christ’s second coming. It was the commencement of the reclaiming of the disinherited nations from Genesis. And it was the powerful inauguration of the Church’s role as the Spirit-filled Temple of God, in union with Christ, the true Temple.
Footnotes
¹ G.K. Beale, The Temple and the Church’s Mission, (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 2004), p. 204.
² Ibid, p. 211.
³ Michael Hesier, The Unseen Realm, (Bellingham, WA: Lexham Press, 2015), p. 299.
⁴ G.K. Beale, The Temple and the Church’s Mission, p. 212.
⁵ Ibid, p. 214.
⁶ Ibid, p. 214.