Pentecost, the forgotten or ignored holy day

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Pentecost, the forgotten or ignored holy day
Adobe Stock Photo

For Judeo-Christian believers, Sunday, May 28, is a special day. It is more than just the eve of Memorial Day and part of a long three-day holiday weekend beckoning us to enjoy the time off from work.

Indeed, because it falls this year within the holiday weekend, Pentecost stands to be altogether overlooked and obscured — perhaps largely because it is not commercialized.

What is Pentecost?

Pentecost is a holy day mentioned in the Bible. It was one of the festivals of harvest, specifically when barley was gathered in the Holy Land.

Hebrew tradition tells us that Moses received the Ten Commandments on Mount Sinai on or about Pentecost. Fast-forward about 1,520 years or so, and the Creator poured out His Holy Spirit on Jesus Christ’s disciples then assembled in Jerusalem for the holy day. The powerful demonstration of the Holy Spirit, as believers spoke the Gospel in languages they had not studied, was the impetus of a new faith that spread like wildfire across the world.

The small fearful remnant of Jesus’ followers suddenly became very unafraid to proclaim the message of salvation from On High, and they were willing to suffer to the point of giving their lives for what they knew to be true. Whether one considers Stephen, who was stoned to death; Peter, who, according to tradition, was crucified upside down; fellow believers, who were thrown to lions in the Colosseum; or Polycarp, who was burned alive — all these were willing to exchange their lot in this fallen world for a priceless fortune in the next. Those courageous early Christians could probably relate to what Jim Elliot, a missionary who died at the hands of an indigenous tribe in South America in 1956, wrote in his diary: “He is no fool who gives up what he cannot keep to gain that which he cannot lose.”

For observant Christian believers, the rapid decline in belief in the Western world in general and the U.S. in particular is most troubling. A recent sampling of opinion by George Barna, a Christian pollster who watches the religious landscape and tracks trends in faith and practice, is rather shocking.

“The survey, released April 20 and conducted by the Cultural Research Center (CRC), based at Arizona Christian University, … finds a mere 4% of overall Americans polled who possess a ‘biblical worldview,’ down from 6%, while among born-again Christians, the incidence of biblical worldview among them fell from 19% in 2020 to 13% in 2023,” wrote Peter LaBarbera in World Net Daily recently.

As the society becomes more secular — meaning more godless — and veers away from its founding principles, are we on the path toward persecuting Christian believers? Will America become like other repressive nations who murder, imprison, torture and leave destitute those who do not merely “go along” with the downward moral slide?

Dr. Ben Carson, a world-renowned pediatric neurosurgeon, former U.S. secretary of Housing and Urban Development and a devout Christian, provided an answer.

“I am fearful that legal persecution will only intensify against Americans holding to their faith-based values and who wish to conduct their lives according to their faith,” Carson wrote in a letter soliciting support for his newly established American Cornerstone Institute.

Indeed, persecution has a way of separating the flock, dividing the holy from the unholy, the committed from the crowd-pleasers, and the sheep from the goats.

If you care to observe or mark Pentecost, think about the sufferings of those early Christians, and do not forget that Christians in many countries now are suffering for their faith and allegiance to an eternal kingdom.

— al@beacononlinenews.com

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Born in Virginia, Al spent his youth in Tennessee, North Carolina and Virginia, and first moved to DeLand in 1969. He graduated from Stetson University in 1971, and returned to West Volusia in 1985. Al began working for The Beacon as a stringer in 1999, contributing articles on county and municipal government and, when he left his job as the one-man news department at Radio Station WXVQ, began working at The Beacon full time.

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1 COMMENT

  1. DO NOT SIN AGAINST GOD THE HOLY GHOST.

    PENTECOST SUNDAY IS THE FEAST OF THE HOLY GHOST. NOT THE Holy Spirit. GOD THE HOLY GHOST IS THE 3RD PERSON OF THE MOST HOLY TRINITY. NOT THE HOLY SPIRIT.

    THE ONE UNFORGIVEABLE SIN ARE SINS AGAINST THE HOLY GHOST. DO NOT DENY HIM.

    HELL AWAITS THOSE WHO DENY HIM. This needs to be corrected by you, sir. Immediately. Do you really want to go to hell? It is NOT a utopia.

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