Welcome to this week's Things Unseen.

Today is actually Pentecost Monday.

You'll know what I mean if the day of Pentecost was celebrated in your church yesterday,

or marked in some way.

Perhaps I should begin by saying that all true churches are Pentecostal churches, even

if they never say so.

Because Pentecost belongs to all true churches, or it actually belongs to none.

Because without it there wouldn't be a world-wide church.

If we lack the Holy Spirit our Lord sent at Pentecost, then essentially we also lack the

gospel.

Anyway, yesterday was Pentecost.

And it's another day in the year like Christmas Day and Good Friday and Easter Sunday

and perhaps ascension day when Christians remember and celebrate the mighty works of God

in his Son Jesus Christ.

That's probably the first thing we need to remember.

Pentecost is a day we remember and celebrate something that happened in the past.

Like the cross and the resurrection, it's not an event that keeps on being repeated.

There is ever only one day of Pentecost.

Before his ascension Jesus told the disciples to stay and Jerusalem until they baptize

them with the Holy Spirit, when they would receive power to be witnesses to him to the

ends of the earth.

And that was what happened.

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