God is constant amid change

If one can allow God to be God, it’s not too difficult or incomprehensible to embrace the phenomena that happened on the historic day of Pentecost.

God is the one who can do whatever he wants, wherever and however he wants, if he, indeed, is God.

Neither is it a problem whether it’s in the first or 21st century.

“I am the Lord, I change not,” is what he said.

He did create a universe from nothing; switch a meddling humanity from a monolingual to a multilingual society; arrange a repeatable rainbow in the sky to remind us he will never again drown the earth in water; made it possible for Sarah to have a baby at 90 and the Virgin Mary to birth the Son of God without a human father, and even make a donkey talk.

With such a track record, he surely can pump up a powerful wind, produce a deafening noise and have “tongues like as fire” dance on the heads of 120 people sitting in an Upper Room on the day of Pentecost, while speaking at least 17 languages they hadn’t known before.

As stupendous as all that was, there is no problem believing that for God it was just “a piece of cake,” if we will only let God be God.

It’s not at all too difficult or too unusual for the creator.

It actually did happen on the day of Pentecost, which annually celebrated harvest time in ancient Israel 50 days after the Passover.

The unusual phenomenon indicated that day of Pentecost was different for two reasons.

It internationalized the grace of God; so that the Gospel now could be preached beyond the Jews, to all nations.

And the availability of the Holy Spirit was universalized — “poured out upon all flesh” so that anyone’s “sons and daughters” now could be endued with God’s power.

It was a paradigm shift of historic proportions.

It happened because Jesus told his disciples that as soon as he ascended to the throne of God, he would “pray the Father” to give them the Holy Spirit.

Peter declared, “This is that” which Jesus promised.

Jesus also solemnly charged his followers to wait until they were “endued with power from on high” as the Holy Spirit was “poured out upon all flesh” (Luke 24:29; John 14:16; Acts 1:4).

It was Jesus’ position that service for God, absolutely should not be attempted without the power of the Holy Spirit.

The Acts of the Apostles is the biblical record attesting the wisdom of that precaution.

The ebb and flow of the church’s spiritual-moral power though the centuries since that day of Pentecost bears witness that this singular command of Jesus to the church can be ignored, neglected or rejected to its own peril.

Church cannot be church without the power of the Holy Spirit; and Pentecost cannot be Pentecost unless we allow God to be God.

Millions today have chosen to let God be God.

Walter J. Hollenweger, an expert on worldwide Pentecostalism, wrote, “Pentecostalism is nearly half a billion strong worldwide, and has been and continues to be the fastest growing Christian movement in the world.”

The religious unity that the ecumenical movement could not achieve through strategic planning and conferences is being accomplished by what those early Christians received on the day of Pentecost.

The church is being revitalized.

Believers of all denominations gather in conferences across the world, worshipping God “in Spirit and in truth.”

Our Lord’s prayer for the spiritual unity of the church is being answered.

The Rev. Guy BonGiovanni is interim pastor at North Bloomfield Assembly of God and President of Life Enrichment Ministries, Inc.