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The Significance of Pentecost

Pentecost sparked an international effort to include everyone, Jewish and non-Jewish, into God’s family, which is one reason we see the “speaking in tongues” miracle happening. In Greek, “tongues” can refer to real human languages, and that seems to be Luke’s point in Acts 2:8. He captures the question everyone was asking: “How is it that we each hear them in our own language to which we were born?”

Jesus’ apostles are all Jewish and from a small world, the northern Galilean part of Israel (Acts 2:7). They speak the same language. So getting the good news of Jesus to the whole world with them alone would be tricky. Unless—what if the whole world came to them, and they quickly became multilingual?

In Acts 2:5, Luke says that Jews “from every nation under heaven” were gathering in Jerusalem at the time for the Pentecost feast. What is the Feast of Pentecost? This is a major Jewish harvest party—also called Shavu’ot, or the Feast of Weeks—that happened 50 days after Passover. It is one of three main festivals that brought hundreds of thousands of pilgrims to Jerusalem for a big celebration.

The “whole world” had come to them. And when the wind and fire showed up, everyone was “bewildered because each one of them was hearing [each of the apostles] speaking in his own language” (Acts 2:6).

It’s almost like Isaiah was foreshadowing this Acts 2 Pentecost in the Old Testament. Back when Isaiah was promising the eventual restoration of Israel, he spoke for Yahweh, saying, “You are my witnesses … and I am God. Even from eternity, I am he” (Isa. 43:12-13). Now, the people hear Jesus saying, “You shall be my witnesses both in Jerusalem and in all Judea, and Samaria, and as far as the remotest part of the earth” (Acts 1:8). That’s a whole-world statement—nobody gets left behind.