Pentecostal Power II - by Jim tharp 2015

And behold, I send the promise of my Father upon you; but stay in the city, until you are clothed with power from on high (Luke 24:49, RSV).

But you shall receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you; and you shall be my witnesses in Jerusalem and in all Judea and Samaria and to the end of the earth (Acts 1:8, RSV).

When the day of Pentecost had come, they were all together in one place. And suddenly a sound came from heaven like the rush of a mighty wind, and it filled all the house where they were sitting. And there appeared to them tongues as of fire, distributed and resting on each one of them. And they were all filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak in other tongues, as the Spirit gave them utterance (Acts 2:1-4, RSV).

Luke the historian pinpoints the exact day on which God fulfills His promise to send the Holy Spirit to the disciples of Jesus. The 120 believers, including those disciples, had been praying faithfully and waiting in the upper room in Jerusalem for The Promise of the Father. Jesus hadn’t given them the full details concerning the outpouring of the Spirit, but they had been following His instructions.

The Holy Spirit came and poured Himself on these obedient believers on The Day of Pentecost. It is important that we understand how Old Testament patterns were simply shadows of the realities of God’s plans for His New Testament Christian believers. So I want us to understand The Day of Pentecost in light of the Jewish celebrations.

The Feast of the Passover took place on Friday. The blood of the sacrificial lamb on the doorposts was used for the deliverance of the firstborn sons. John the Baptist prophesied that Jesus would be the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world (John 1:29, RSV). Jesus, the Lamb, gave His life on the cross at the exact time the high priest would offer the Paschal Lamb on Good Friday.

The next day was the Sabbath with the celebration of The Feast of Unleavened Bread, commemorating the difficult journey out of Egypt.

Next came The Celebration of Harvest, or The Feast of First Fruits, a shadow or type of the resurrection of our Lord. He is the first fruits of the great harvest to come (I Corinthians 15:12-28).

The harvest continued for a period of 50 days. It climaxed on The Day of Pentecost. Two loaves of bread were presented to the high priest, a symbol of the fulfillment of the harvest. During those 50 days Jesus ascended to the right hand of the Father. We are given only a brief insight into the activities in the heavenly realms. Jesus serves as the Great High Priest who offers His sacrifice once for all. He receives The Promise of the Father in order to pour out the blessing upon us on The Day of Pentecost.

I would have us consider three dimensions of the Pentecostal outpouring of the Spirit:

It Takes Prayer - by Jim Tharp 1997

So He Himself often withdrew into the wilderness and prayed (Luke 5:16).

Now it came to pass in those days that He went out to the mountain to pray, and continued all night in prayer to God (Luke 6:12).

And it happened, as He was alone praying, that His disciples joined Him ... (Luke 9:18).

Then they returned to Jerusalem from the mount called Olivet ... These all continued with one accord in prayer and supplication ... (Acts 1:12, 14).

And when they had prayed, the place where they were assembled together was shaken; and they were all filled with the Holy Spirit, and they spoke the word of God with boldness (Acts 4:31).

From the day that Jesus was anointed with the Holy Spirit in the River Jordan (Luke 3:21-22) to the time of His death on the cross, He was a Man of the Spirit and a Man of Prayer. When He was ready to birth the Church, He ordered a prayer meeting (Luke 24:49; Acts 1:12, 14; 2:1-4).

When I returned from a preaching tour of South Korea and the Philippines back in the 70s and reported the mighty movings of the Holy Spirit in those countries, my American friends wanted to know the secret. Why was God moving so powerfully in the Far East when we see so little of His power here? Of course, I said, the answer is prayer. I said that I had never been in a place of prayer like South Korea. The Koreans know how to tarry before the Lord. There they pray in the Spirit on all occasions and in every place. I noticed that they did not place nearly as much emphasis on preaching, theology, music, gifts, finances and organizations and other things, as they did on prayer. I listened to their praying in their early morning meetings, during the family prayers and at the special times of prayer among pastors. If they were not praying in English, I would ask someone to interpret their praying. I learned that for the most part, these Koreans were praying for the coming of the Holy Spirit upon the services to capture the attention and hearts of the people of God.

The Holy Spirit knows that He is welcome because of our prayer meetings and by the way we pray. Jesus knew that once His followers began to pray, they would soon be in readiness to receive the Holy Spirit. And He also knew that once they were filled with the Holy Spirit they would be equipped to pray with power.

The same is true with His modern disciples. We are called to militant, mighty praying -- the kind that frightens and defeats the forces of hell. There is a passage in Matthew 11:12 which needs to be laid hold on by Christians of this generation: "and from the days of John the Baptist until now the kingdom of heaven suffers violence, and the violent take it by force." We must no longer ignore this passage as "bizarre and irrelevant," as some have. Not a few scholars believe that Jesus meant here that "the kingdom of God is carried along by forceful means." If so, then it will require men and women who understand the nature of spiritual power to advance the cause of Christ. It so happens that such men and women are people of prayer.