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On The Day of Pentecost, we find Christ’s followers enjoying the festival that we talked about earlier this week with their fellow Jews. Remember, the first “Christians” were Jews, Jesus was a Jew, we tend to forget this because we find our place in Christian history separated from the Jewish people and culture.
So as the group is hanging out, enjoying the festival at someone’s house, a large rushing wind comes from the sky and focuses in on this house. The wind is the arrival of the Holy Spirit. Jerusalem is a very compact city so people in the neighborhood noticed what had just happened and came to see.
What happens next is remarkable, through the power of the Holy Spirit, the disciples are suddenly able to speak in all the languages of the people present in the crowd that has gathered.
As an illustration of how these people felt, go check out a YouTuber called Xiaomanyc (I can feel Palmer and Sarabeth’s eyes roll…). He loves to learn languages and then go visit people who speak that language as their native tongue and surprise them when he can converse with them. The reactions he gets from people are priceless; I can only imagine what was happening on the Day of Pentecost was 1000x better!
© 2026 Grace Raleigh
