When the disciples convened in the upper room following the instructions from our Lord Jesus Christ to remain in Jerusalem until they receive the Holy Spirit, I wonder what they may have gone through emotionally while in the place of waiting. They had been with Him for three years, seeing the preaching, teaching, and healing along the rugged trails of Jerusalem and Capernaum.
The Fathers of old had waited for a King to come who would deliver them from the yoke of the Roman authorities. Jesus was the King they had hoped to see. However, His mission was not exactly what they longed for. The preaching of Jesus was about the Kingdom of God and not about the kingdom of this world. He hadn’t come to liberate them from the Roman tyranny but to introduce them to the Father. They became witnesses of the power of this King, the miracles, signs, wonders, and all manner of healings, which disrupted and punctuated their daily experiences. These powerful supernatural accounts further validated the superiority and authority of Jesus’s Kingdom. They also saw the humiliation of the Cross. At this traumatic juncture, the words of Zechariah in Zech 13:7 may have echoed in their conscience, “Strike the Shepherd and the sheep will scatter.” There was a palpable sense of fear and tension in the atmosphere that be-clouded the days following the crucifixion.
Jesus had said to the Pharisaic Jews that interrogated His authority with which he subverted the whims of the devil and healed the sick, “Destroy this Temple and in three days, I will build it up.” Many doubted even more, including Peter. That argument was soon laid to rest because at the precise prophetic timetable of Heaven, He, Jesus rose from death. The sting and the fangs of death were vanquished forever. The requirements of divine justice were satisfied once and for all by His sacrifice on the Cross. For on that Cross, the scripture affirms that Jesus disarmed the enemy of our soul and made a public spectacle of him and triumphing over him in it. Hope is now forever restored, not just for the immediate disciples but for the whole world.
The promise of the Holy Spirit by Christ was soon crowned in that upper room. The sudden sound was heard and felt. It was like the sound of a mighty rushing wind. Ezekiel alluded to this strange sound in Ez. 43:2, “And behold, the glory of the God of Israel came from the way of the east. His voice was like the sound of many waters; and the earth shone with His glory.” That glorious sound invaded the holy gathering in the upper room. Note that the scripture says, ‘then there appeared to them divided tongues, as of fire, and one sat upon each of them,” (Acts 2:3). I had to pause and just marvel at the Holy poetic signature of the Word when it said “divided tongues”. It inspires me to decipher that such a fire had its supply of oxygen and resonated with the blaze of Holiness. It needed no support from natural man or the natural elements deposited within the stratosphere of human existence. Also, divided tongues may suggest the diversity of tongues which were fully acknowledged in the outpouring of the Holy Spirit. They began to prophesy mysteries in an unknown tongue, and the Spirit was present to offer utterance to their speaking. That experience set the stage for an unparalleled evangelistic and apostolic exchange in the history of the early church. A revival has just broken with a demonstrative release of the spirit and power of God all over the land. It didn’t stop there. It began in Jerusalem, spreading up to Judea and now it is in the uttermost parts of the earth. Proverbially, it was told in Judea, and Samaria and is now announced in the distant history of nations and tribes.
In early 1700, America had its share of the outpouring of the Holy Spirit. Beginning with what was tagged the Great Awakening (1734-43), five or six converts in small Northampton Massachusetts led by one young Pastor called Jonathan Edwards were moved by the Holy Spirit and a fresh fire of revival erupted and spread from small towns to cities and into bigger metropolises like Philadelphia. Starting from 1800 to 1840, the second Great Awakening enveloped America which saw more than a million souls come to the Lord. It was during this time that great generals of the faith like James McGready and Charles Finney emerged. Strange permutations of the supernatural that began in Logan County, Kentucky grew like wildfire and attracted witnesses from as far as Ohio. That move of God carried on into distant Rochester, NY yielding hundred and hundreds of thousands of new souls. God is not done with humanity. He is actively moving in diverse dimensions of His Glory through creation.
Over 200 hundred years later, we read of another sound of revival coming from Kentucky. The same is heard today in Charlotte, North Carolina. What is clear to all believers is that despite the apparent darkness threatening our freedom of worship, the light of the knowledge of the Glory of our God is covering the earth as the water covers the sea. So, at each corridor of civilization, and at a divinely chosen timetable, witnesses, believers, and non-believers are awoken by this sound like the sound of many waters.
