Sunday, June 28, 2015

The Abiding Meaning of Pentecost

Acts 2:1-36; Isaiah 9:6; Matthew 16:28; Acts 2:34; 1 Corinthians 15:25

Acts is preeminently a book of principles; and it is just here we so often go wrong in looking for the repetition of the form by which those principles were expressed; forms of expression change, but the principles abide.

Though the Lord may do a fresh thing, He will not necessarily use the same form, but He will do it on the same principles; these principles are eternal, changeless; they abide for ever.

We are so often wanting a repetition of Pentecost in the form it took then, of manifestations and demonstrations on the outside. The Lord will do a new thing; and things basic to His activity then will be basic to His activity always. Principles, and not forms, are the things for which we are to look.

The basis of everything at Pentecost centered in and related to one thing, the enthronement of the Lord Jesus in heaven in the full virtue of His universal triumph. So far His universal triumph has not reached its full end: "Sit Thou on My right hand, UNTIL ..." (Psalm 110:1). He sits there in virtue of His universal triumph; and that triumph in this age is working out to its full issue; "until ..."

First Corinthians 15:25, 26, 57: "For He must reign, till He hath put all His enemies under His feet. The last enemy that shall be destroyed is death." "But thanks be to God, Who giveth us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ." He must reign until - His reign has now begun!

~T. Austin-Sparks~

(continued with # 2)

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