Celebrating SHAVUOT (or Pentecost)

This Sunday we will be studying Acts 2:1-40. Here's a bit of back ground...

There are three major festivals of Israel on the sacred calendar of to be observed as "a statute for ever throughout your generations in all your dwellings." (Leviticus 23:14, 21, 41; Deuteronomy 16:16,17)

They are:

1. Passover, the Feast of Unleavened Bread
2. The Feast of Weeks - also called "Pentecost," a Greek translation of the Hebrew words meaning, the "fiftieth day" when the Festival was celebrated (Lev. 23:15,16).
3. Feast of Tabernacles

Passover marked the first spring harvest. The first fruits of a sheaf or "omer" of barley was required by the Torah to be presented before the LORD in the House of God, as a thanksgiving "wave offering." (Lev. 23:10,11)

From the next day, seven weeks or forty-nine days were counted to wheat harvest. (Lev. 23:10:11)

On the "fiftieth day" - "Pentecost" or "Shavuot" - another harvest thanksgiving service was observed in the House of God. This time, from the firstfruits of wheat harvest, "two loaves of bread baked with leaven were waved before the LORD," in the act of thanksgiving." (Lev. 23:16-20). These three festivals marked Israel's history in the process of their redemption. These festivals were also prophetic and typological of the greater redemption which would come through Jesus Christ the Messiah.

  Below is a dramatic scripture reading of the Pentecost story from Acts 2 from The Message. It's almost 3 minutes...