A MIGHTY RUSHING WIND
Sunday, June 9, 2019
Pastor Carolyn Sissom
Acts 2:1-4: When the day of Pentecost was fully come, they were all with one accord in one place. Suddenly there came a sound from heaven as of a rushing mighty wind, and it filled the entire house where they were sitting. Then appeared unto them cloven tongues like as of fire, and it sat upon each of them. They were all filled with the Holy Ghost, and began to speak with other tongues, as the Spirit gave them utterance.
“God has a time for everything
And for every purpose beneath the sun;
He has a perfect schedule
By which the universe is run.
The stars vary not in their courses,
The sun’s cycles do not deviate;
And God relentlessly pursues His path,
Never too early, never too late.” (Frances Metcalfe)
Pentecost means ‘fiftieth” and is the New Testament name for the feast which began fifty days after the Passover Sabbath.
When Christ rose from the dead, He continued with the disciples for forty days,
Acts 2_3: after that he through the Holy Ghost had given commandments unto the apostles whom he had chosen… and speaking of the things pertaining to the kingdom of God.
After forty days, Jesus ascended into Heaven. Ten days later, on the day of Israel’s Feast of Pentecost, he sent forth the Holy Ghost upon the waiting disciples.
God’s waiting people---the people who are expecting and looking for the mighty outpouring of the Holy Spirit in these days ---are becoming more and more aware of a new pulse in spiritual things.
The Holy Spirit is the Feast of Pentecost. Through the Baptism of the Holy Spirit, we the "Church," the lovers of God, are beholding wonderful things! We are plumbing His secrets, receiving astounding revelations and enlightenment.
Heaven and eternity are realms beyond which there is no "ne plus ultra." We are scaling the heights of glory through eternity ---the realms supernal-eternal; broadening and expanding in revelation and vastness.
We have a long way to go to equal the power and glory of the early church, but that power and glory are by no means the sum and substance of the glorious, overcoming church. That was Pentecost in the early hours of "on the day." The church must go on to the Pentecost of the "evening and morning" of the full day; and then beyond Pentecost, on, and on, and on to the Appearing of Jesus.
The Holy Ghost is the earnest of our full inheritance. The Baptism of the Holy Spirit is the pledge of the fullness “unto the Glory of God” (2 Cor.1: 20-22) All the promises of God in him are yes and Amen, unto the glory of God by us. Now he who establishes us with you in Christ, and has anointed us to God; Who has also sealed us, and given the earnest of the Spirit in our hearts.
Earthly containers without the seal of God would not be new wineskins; they would be old fleshly ones. The spirit of Holiness filled the Disciples with Himself. Tongues of fire stood over them and entered them. Coming into them was fire. Coming out of them were tongues aflame, that broke every barrier, melted every opponent, and offered grace to kindred and nations.
Heaven and earth are kissing each other---blending. The power, rule and authority of the Kingdom of Heaven is asserting itself to those who are in the Kingdom, fearlessly apprehending and asserting that authority.
We have been given the authority to apprehend, assert and decree what God has spoken. We are to arise and come into agreement with God.
Isa. 32:6: Go set a watchman let him declare what he sees.
Do not repeat and declare what Satan says. Declare what God says.
We have cried out for the Harvest, for a revival to come to the earth, but we must begin to decree it and declare what God has already spoken. On the day of Pentecost devout Jews (Godly men and women) were in Jerusalem from every country in the world. (Acts 2:5) We can say they were “the elect.”
I have been considering:Mar 13:27-30:And then shall he send his angels, and shall gather together his elect from the four winds, from the uttermost part of the earth to the uttermost part of heaven.Now learn a parable of the fig tree; When her branch is yet tender, and puts forth leaves, ye know that summer is near:So ye in like manner, when ye shall see these things come to pass, know that it is nigh, even at the doors.Verily I say unto you, that this generation shall not pass, till all these things be done.
It is an irrefutable fact that God has His own set times and seasons for accomplishing His purposes and fulfilling His Word. Century after century, God’s plan for man has been unfolding in perfect accord with appointed times---God’s time is as immutable as His Word! Acts 1:7 seals those times and seasons as under the power of God.
The Lord set the time of His second coming when summer is near. June 21st is the first day of simmer. Depending on which calendar, whether the Gregorian or Julian, the solstice (first day of summer) always falls between June 20th and June 28th.
God’s covenant of the seasons is first spoken of immediately after the flood.
Gen 8:22While the earth remains, seedtime and harvest, and cold and heat, and summer and winter, and day and night shall not cease.
This year Pentecost is on June 9th twelve days before summer. “Summer is near.”
The day of Pentecost was near summer when the Holy Ghost came as a mighty wind to empower the disciples to start Christ’s Church.
The Wind is one of the identities of the Spirit of the Lord as the Divine Breathe, of Divine life. The disciples were cleansed by the Word which Jesus spoke unto them during His earthly ministry (Jn. 15:3). On resurrection day “He breathed on them, and said unto them, receive the Holy Ghost”. (Jn. 20:22)
Just as truly as God in the beginning breathed into Adam’s nostrils the breath of life and man “became a living soul,”---so now the Last Adam (who had now become, by virtue of His death and resurrection, a “life-giving Spirit’ --1 Cor. 15:45) --- breathed into the disciples the breath of spiritual life, and they passed experientially from death unto life.
Ezekiel saw and prophesied this day: Prophesy to the wind, prophesy son of man, and say to the wind, Thus says the Lord God; Come from the four winds, O breath, and breathe upon these slain that they may live.
Yet, “on the day of Pentecost” an even greater baptism of the Holy Ghost. Jesus commanded that they should not depart from Jerusalem, but wait for the promise of the Father, which said He, you have heard of Me. For John truly baptized with water; but you shall be baptized with the Holy Ghost not many days hence. (Acts 1: 4, 5)
Throughout the Bible, God is pictured as the Master of the winds whether natural or spiritual. He keeps them in his “storehouse” and only by his “authority do they emerge and blow where he sends them. Ps. 104:3: Who lays the beams of his chambers in the waters; who makes the clouds his chariot; who walks upon the wings of the wind.
The East wind is the wind of the wilderness. This is metaphorical of the operation of God’s Spirit in trials, tribulations, and testing’s. Every house---life, family, ministry or nation---is tested by the wind of the Spirit. (Luke 6: 46-49). All that is founded upon the Rock (Jesus Christ) will still be standing when the work of the wind is accomplished. The east wind will break us, but it will also deliver us.
I had a vision of this Holy Wind and know that it is a powerful, supernatural presence of Holiness. I have no qualms about declaring that the winds of God are His supernatural power and presence to do His work, His strange work in our lives and the universe. This I know!!!
I have also experienced what I perceived to be the south Wind, a Holy Wind of God penetrating and blowing through my whole body. This I know!!!
The following symbols reveal a measure of the Holy Spirit’s nature and His ministry.
- Wind ---May or may not be seen in the eyes of the Spirit, but definitely can be felt. I have had open-eye visions of the “Wind of God”. It is varied in its manifestation as seen in the North Wind (conviction), the South (Comforter), East (discipline) and West (brings rain).
- Water ---Rivers, floods, rain, clouds, dew, springs; absence of water means famine, thirst, and ruin. Even though God promised that He would never again destroy the world by a flood, there has been widespread flooding in various parts of the world since 1993. Psalm 93:3: The floods have lifted up, O LORD, the floods have lifted up their voice; the floods lift up their waves.
- Fire----Gives warmth and light; consumes dross; the generation of power; impelling to service, purifies; and shows God’s acceptance of sacrifice.
- Salt---Preserves; purifies; gives taste; irritates (convicts); creates a thirst.
- Oil ---used in the Bible for food, light, and for anointing.
- Seal---Speaks of ownership, authentication, witness, authority, and impression.
- Clothing---Speaks of covering, protection, and beauty.
- Dove---Loving, peaceful, harmless, sacrifice, constant, swift, beautiful, mournful, gentle, particular in diet, single-eyed.
- New Wine---New, fresh outpouring of the Spirit; intoxicates, no inhibitions; easy communication; joy, boldness.
Our generation has had a foretaste of Pentecost. But we have by no means seen the fullness of the Pentecostal experience, as recorded in the Book of Acts, where tongues like as of fire came down and sat upon each of the disciples, and they were given the ability to speak the languages of all nations.
Pentecost was a new feast set for a certain day, (Lev. 23:17) “You shall offer a new meat (meal) offering unto the Lord. The Passover Feast was wonderful. The appropriation of the Passover from the Cross produces pardon and justification from all sins. The old is taken away, sins are forgiven. The past life is forgotten. The sinner is left with a clean record before God and ready to start a new life.
In conformity with this new happy state, therefore, the God of grace and glory invites the justified man to receive a new experience in the Holy Spirit, whereby he can offer a “new…offering unto the Lord”. He is invited to drink into God’s Spirit, and be baptized with the Holy Ghost. In justification he is pardoned. In this new experience he is empowered for service.
In one instance Pentecost is called “the feast of harvest” (Ex. 23:16). The grain harvest was completed. The sheaf had already been waved before the Lord fifty days before, heralding the coming of the harvest; and now the harvest time had come.
What a tremendous harvest there was! Peter preached his dynamic sermon under the “dunamis power” of the Holy Ghost, and some three thousand souls were added to the disciples. A few days later there was another harvest, and we are told “The number of the men was about five thousand” (Acts 4:4); to say nothing of the hundreds or thousands of women and children who also must have believed at the same time.
The revival continued with ever increasing power from day to day. “Believers were the more added to the Lord, multitudes both of men and women” (Acts. 5:14). Great and mighty signs and miracles were wrought among the people, until---in very short order---Jerusalem, and then Samaria, and then the uttermost parts of the earth literally rocked under the mighty impact of the Holy Ghost through His anointed ministers.
The Lord continues to take us beyond Pentecost, from glory to glory and from faith to faith.
Let us declare in “one accord” on the Day of Pentecost: “The Harvest is coming Forth”!
Preached by: Pastor Carolyn Sissom
Scripture from KJV
The Holy Spirit is the Feast of Pentecost, 5/19/13, Carolyn Sissom; Frances Metcalfe as quote and C. R. Oliver as noted in quotations. Comments and conclusions are my own and not meant to reflect the views of those of whom I entered into their labors.
Notes:
50th day from Passover Sivan – the season of the birth of the Church. It is a Covenant Month, a time of consecration and heavenly visitation---Israel came to the Mount---the Church to the Upper Room. A set time to favor Zion.
The Holy Spirit empowers men and women to:
- Cast out devils (Mt. 12:28)
- Is the agent of new birth (Jn. 3: 5-8)
- Takes that which is Jesus’ and brings to us.
- Quickens (Jn. 6:63)
- It is the Holy Spirit who gives life”; imparts power (Lk. 29:49)
- “Knows things of God” (1 Cor. 2:11)
- “Imparts gifts to men” (1 Cor. 12: 1-10)
- Speaks mysteries through man (1 Cor. 14:2; 14-16).
- “Imparts character of God (Gal. 5:22).
- “Works miracles” (Rom. 15:19; 1 Cor. 12: Heb. 2:34)
- Can carry man (Acts 8:39)
- Raises the dead; imparts skill, ability and knowledge in all kinds of crafts, etc. etc.
- Helps us to be overcomers.
Ne plus ultra the height, the zenith, the ultimate, the crown, the pinnacle. It's the peak, the summit, the crest, the high-water mark. All these expressions, of course,
"The highest point attainable."