What happened on the Day of Pentecost almost twenty centuries ago is not just a matter of history. Like Christ Jesus' crucifixion, resurrection, and ascension (with which it is sequentially related), the Pentecostal experience has a vital place in our lives today.
For many, the events of this first Christian Pentecost can best be explained as a natural phenomenon of divine Science, as an activity of the Christ, which had never left the world, though Jesus had ascended. The incredible unity of the day, the influx of spiritual understanding, and the unprecedented attraction of adherents to Christianity—all these were evidence that the culmination of Jesus' career was indeed fulfillment of biblical prophecy and that the Christ Science he lived would continue to reshape the world. These events make clear that when mere belief in God is changed by the Holy Ghost to the spiritual, scientific understanding of divine reality, mankind naturally leave old beliefs and accept unfolding Truth.
Pentecost was a Jewish harvest festival, known as the Feast of Weeks, and, as was usual, people were gathered in celebration of God's provision for them. Luke records what occurred on that day, in the second chapter of The Acts of the Apostles. "When the day of Pentecost was fully come," he begins, "they were all with one accord in one place." What happened, however, at this Feast of Weeks—the first since Jesus' ascension—was dramatic proof that the Master had not been just idly comforting them when he said, "Verily, verily, I say unto you, He that believeth on me, the works that I do shall he do also; and greater works than these shall he do; because I go unto my Father." John 14.12
