Shavuot/Pentecost 5th of Sivan, 5777 - Tuesday 30 May, 2017

Shavuot in the Hebrew language

 means, "Weeks".

Pentekoste, "Pentecost" 

translated from Greek means,

 "50 Days"

marking the passage of time

 from Pesach, "Passover".

Spring flowers blooming in Jerusalem

"Pentecost, coming in late May or early June,

was likely a very beautiful day.

It doesn't rain much in Jerusalem and

indeed it's hard to find even a stray

cloud in the blue sky.

The Festival of Weeks, or Pentecost,

celebrated the early harvest of the spring,

and the major one of the fall to come.

It was a joyous occasion which drew

the Jewish people from all over Israel

and many foreign lands."

"The Spirit of Pentecost"

-Zola Levitt

A Shavuot Love Story

"And Ruth said, Urge me not to leave you

or to turn back from following you;

for where you go I will go,

and where you lodge I will lodge.

Your people shall be my people

and your God my God."

Ruth 1:16

Boaz and Ruth

 By Scottish artist James Faed

(1821-1911)

A young widow, and a woman of Moab,

 Ruth refused to return to the

idolatrous land of her birth after the

death of her husband. 

She chooses instead to accompany

her virtuous mother-in-law,

the widowed Jewess Naomi, 

who returns to Israel, arriving in Bethlehem

at the beginning of the barley harvest.

Ruth finds protection from a

kinsman of Naomi's late husband,

 a man named Boaz, who allows her to

 safely glean in his fields so that she

and her mother-in-law have

 enough food to eat. 

Ruth's tender love and devotion to her

widowed mother-in-law and to the

God of Israel wins over Boaz's heart 

 and he later takes Ruth as his wife.

Their son, Obed, was the

father of Jesse, who became the

father of David, an ancestor of

the forthcoming Messiah.

The story of Ruth is a 

beautiful illustration of how the

Kingdom of God would eventually pierce

the darkness of the heathen world

with the Light of the World,

Yeshua Ha'Mashiach.

"And I will ask the Father, and He will

give you another Comforter, that

He may remain with you forever."

John 14:16

The Miracle of Pentecost

Pentecost

El Greco

"And when the day of Pentecost had fully come,

they were all assembled together in one place,

When suddenly there came a sound from heaven

like the rushing of a violent tempest blast,

and it filled the whole house in which they were sitting.

And there appeared to them tongues resembling fire,

which were separated and distributed and which

settled on each one of them.

And they were all filled, diffused throughout their souls,

with the Holy Spirit and began to speak in other

different, foreign languages (tongues) as the

Spirit kept giving them clear and loud expression

in each tongue the appropriate words.

Now there were then residing in Jerusalem Jews,

devout and God-fearing men in every country under heaven.

And when this sound was heard, the multitude came

together and they were astonished and bewildered

because each one heard them, the apostles,

speaking in his own particular dialect."

Acts 2:1-6

The miracle at Pentecost arrived on a Jewish holiday,

a time of God's holy convocation, when His

chosen people witnessed amazing signs and wonders

of His presence among them.

What began at the Temple of God in the

holy city of Jerusalem, and was designated for

the lost sheep of the house of Israel,

 would one day sweep away the

mighty and idolatrous Roman Empire

 into the dustbin of history.

"And I have other sheep besides these
that are not of this fold. I must bring and
impel those also; and they will listen
to My voice and heed My call,
and so there will be one flock
under one Shepherd."
John 10:16

The early followers of "The Way"

  were all Jewish believers in Yeshua whom

 often faced terrible persecution and death 
in order to witness about Him in the Near East

   and later, across the continent which would
one day become the nations of Europe,

eventually reaching the New World of America
and later across the Pacific Ocean to the lands of Asia.

Today, thanks to the super technology of

the 21st century, the Good News of the
 Gospel of Jesus Christ has reached even

those who, in the words of the psalmist,
 dwell in "the uttermost parts of the earth".

Acts 1:8