Hey, this is John at the Bible Project. Right now we're working our way through the Book of Acts,

the story of the early church. The book of Acts is telling me that if I've given my allegiance to Jesus,

I'm a part of a messianic Jewish sect

that started as a persecuted religious minority movement in ancient Jerusalem.

Like, that's a living heritage.

Christianity has humble beginnings, but it had been expected by Jewish prophets, who were hoping,

expecting a new work of God's spirit

to come and recreate Israel. So in this episode, Tim and I discuss the singular event that gave

Christianity its early spark, its momentum, Pentecost, a time where God's spirit showed up

in an expected but unexpected way.

So in the same way, there was an expectation about the spirit. We looked at one from Isaiah.

Ezekiel, Joel, Zechariah, all have really explicit hopes for a new work of the presence

and spirit of God in this new age.

But what happens doesn't quite correspond to what anybody would have expected.

All the believers were in one room, and there was a loud, violent wind.

And then tongues of fire came flying over people's heads, which sounds pretty scary and pretty confusing.

But fire is an important image in the Bible about God's presence.

God appeared in a burning bush to Moses, in flames over Mount Sinai, and in a pillar of fire over the tabernacle.

And so the flames at Pentecost?

This is the marking out of temple space.

Places where heaven and earth meet become where God's appearance manifests itself.

So that's the claim being made here.

...