Pentecost

Whitsunday; the Feast of Weeks (Shavuot) in the Old Testament

Fifty days after Easter Sunday, in May or June; Armstrong churches count fifty days from the weekly Sabbath in Unleavened Bread

The Spirit comes “when the day of Pentecost was now come”, on the Jewish Feast of Weeks, with Jews gathered at Jerusalem from many nations. This is the beginning of the church, told in Acts 2:1-4 (S3). It is a dated event, not a Christian feast: Luke names the day only because the Jewish feast was already on the calendar.

Paul writes from Ephesus that he will stay “until Pentecost” (S10), and Luke tells that he hurried to be at Jerusalem for the day (S9). The Catholic Encyclopedia holds that Whitsunday goes back to the first century, but grants that there is no evidence it was kept then, as there is for Easter, and says the 1 Corinthians verse probably means the Jewish feast. Neither verse shows a Christian church holding an annual feast.

attributed to c. 180-200

The seventh of the fragments credited to Irenaeus says Whitsunday belongs to the apostles’ time. The Catholic Encyclopedia itself calls these fragments interpolated, and nothing from the first century shows a Christian annual observance. It cannot show a feast this early.

In On Baptism 19 he names Pentecost as a joyful season for baptisms, after Easter. He means the fifty days from Easter, not one day. It is the first surviving record of a Christian Pentecost, about 170 years after Acts 2.

Pentecost is a most joyous space for conferring baptisms

Canon 43, in summary from the Latin: a wrong practice is to be corrected, according to the authority of the Scriptures, so that all keep the day of Pentecost, and anyone who does not is to be marked as bringing in a new heresy. The canon does not say what the wrong practice was, and this page does not guess. It does make keeping the day a mark of right belief. It appeals to Scripture but cites no verse. This was a regional synod, not a council of the whole church.

Canon 20 orders prayer standing, not kneeling, on the Lord’s Day and in “the days of Pentecost”. Here Pentecost is the whole fifty-day season after Easter, kept as one long feast.

Her travel diary describes the Pentecost services at Jerusalem in full: the reading of Acts 2 at Sion, where the church held the Spirit had come, and a procession up the Mount of Olives. At Jerusalem in her day the Ascension was still remembered on that same fiftieth day. The Catholic Encyclopedia cites her account for how the feast was kept.

Its Directory for the Publick Worship of God says festival days, commonly called holy days, have no warrant in the word of God and are not to be continued. Pentecost falls under this, with Christmas and Easter.

Ends the obligatory rest from work on Whit Monday for the whole Catholic Church. Formerly the law courts did not sit all that week and servile work was forbidden; a Council of Constance in 1094 limited this to the first three days, and the Tuesday rest was dropped in 1771.

Under its founder Herbert W. Armstrong, it required strict keeping of the annual festivals and holy days of Leviticus 23, Pentecost among them. After his death, Joseph Tkach began changing the church’s doctrines from 1988, and it is now Grace Communion International. Other bodies in the Armstrong tradition, such as the United Church of God, still keep the days (see Who keeps it).

The first Christians were Jews, and Acts 2 puts the Spirit’s coming on the Feast of Weeks, which the law of Moses sets fifty days after the offering of the sheaf (S11). The Old Testament never ties the feast to the giving of the law at Sinai; that comes from later rabbinic teaching.

The Christian Pentecost that the record shows is not a one-day anniversary. For Tertullian and for Nicaea it is the whole fifty days after Easter, kept as one joyful season with no fasting and no kneeling (H4, H6). Only later did the name settle mostly on the fiftieth day. Even then the Western church was unsure how long to keep it: Berno of Reichenau, who died in 1048, shows that an eight-day octave was still debated in his time.

The name Whitsunday is explained by the white robes of those baptized at the vigil, as the Catholic Encyclopedia has it. Scholars also debate how far Paul’s two mentions of the day (H2) point to a Christian feast at all.

An apostolic feast

A season that narrowed to a day

Roman Catholics

The Eastern Orthodox churches

Anglicans and Lutherans

The Assemblies of God

Messianic Jews and Hebrew Roots groups

The Churches of God in the Armstrong tradition

The Church of God (Seventh Day)

The Churches of Christ

Strict confessional Presbyterians

Jehovah’s Witnesses

Baptism and confirmation

Baptisms at the Pentecost vigil gave Whitsunday its name from the white robes. Today Catholic, Lutheran and Anglican churches hold confirmations on the day, often with white robes and flowers.

Red vestments and Veni Creator Spiritus

Western churches wear red for the tongues of fire and sing Veni Creator Spiritus at the third hour, when the Spirit came. The Mass has the sequence Veni Sancte Spiritus.

Kneeling vespers and green

Orthodox churches use green, fill the church with branches, grass and flowers, and kneel at vespers for the first time since Easter.

Acts 2 read in many tongues

Some churches read the account in several languages at once to recall the tongues.

Church drama

In Italy, rose petals were dropped from the ceiling, and in France trumpets sounded for the mighty wind, during the service itself.

Whit walks and birch branches

Church and Sunday-school processions in northwest England, from Manchester in 1821, with banners and brass bands, and later band contests on Whit Friday. Birch branches are set around churches in Central Europe.

Whit Monday

A public holiday in Austria, Belgium, Denmark, France, Germany, Hungary, the Netherlands, Norway and other countries. Britain made it a bank holiday in 1871 and replaced it in the early 1970s with the late-May Spring Bank Holiday.

Whitsun ales and fairs

Merrymakings, morris dancing and horse races marked the first summer holiday of the year. Most have faded or moved to the Spring Bank Holiday.

The church’s remembrance is weekly, and it looks to the cross

The New Testament gives the church one day and one memorial: the first day, and the Supper that proclaims His death (S1, S2).

The church gathered “upon the first day of the week” to break bread (S1). The Lord gave the memorial Himself, and Paul says what it proclaims: “the Lord’s death till he come” (S2). That is the remembrance God appointed, on the day the apostles kept it. Apostolic example binds, and a specific appointment excludes other kinds: the church has no warrant to add a second, yearly feast to its worship.

The record bears this out. No source from the first century shows Christians keeping Pentecost (H2), and the first sure sign of a Christian Pentecost comes about 170 years after Acts 2 (H4), as a season. A synod ordering the day kept on pain of being marked a heretic comes later still (H5).

Acts 2 is the church’s beginning, and it is preached, not feasted

Acts 2 opens the church and is preached; the church answered it with teaching and the Supper, not a yearly feast (S3, S4).

Acts 2 is among the most important chapters in the New Testament. The Spirit fills the apostles, Peter preaches Jesus risen, and about three thousand are baptized (S3, S4). A church that preaches it gives the day its due, on any Lord’s Day.

What Luke records the church doing next is plain: it “continued stedfastly in the apostles’ teaching and fellowship, in the breaking of bread and the prayers” (S4). The text does not say Luke’s “day of Pentecost” was to be kept again. He names the day because the Feast of Weeks was already on the Jewish calendar and Jews from every nation were at Jerusalem for it. The coming of the Spirit is a fact to preach, not an anniversary the apostles appointed.

Days are a matter of conscience for each believer, not a law for the church

Romans 14 leaves a believer free to regard a day, and Colossians 2 says no one may judge another by a feast day (S5, S6).

Paul writes of believers who differed over days: “One man esteemeth one day above another: another esteemeth every day alike. Let each man be fully assured in his own mind” (S5). The days at Rome were most likely Jewish days and fasts, so the passage does not set out to approve a Christian feast. It does give the rule for a Christian’s own regard for a day: it is between the believer and the Lord.

Colossians 2:16-17 goes further for the feasts of the law: a feast day is “a shadow of the things to come”, and “the body is Christ’s” (S6). That is why a Christian may not be made to keep Pentecost as Israel kept it. Scholars differ over which days Paul had in view at Colossae, but a feast day is named, and the law’s feasts fit the list.

So a Christian may keep Pentecost privately, and give thanks for the Spirit. They may not make the day binding on others, or bring it into the church’s worship as a holy day (A1).

Paul rebukes those who “observe days, and months, and seasons, and years”. Pentecost is such a day.

The Galatians were Gentiles who had once served “no gods”, and teachers were pressing the law on them (verses 4:21 and 5:4). Paul fears his labor was in vain because they were taking up the calendar as part of standing right with God. Scholars read the “days” as Jewish feasts, as pagan days or as both, and the text does not say which. Read in context, it strikes at any day made necessary for God’s favor, which fits a feast imposed on the church or on Gentile believers. It does not by itself forbid a believer’s private regard for a day, which Romans 14 allows (S5). The research behind this page asks that Galatians 4:10 not be cited against a Christian feast without that context, and it is given here.

A feast the Lord never gave, taught as a duty to all churches, is worship by the precepts of men.

This is a right use where a feast is bound on the church. Elvira’s canon treats keeping Pentecost as a test of right belief (H5), and Jesus condemns teaching human rules as God’s doctrine. It weighs against the feast in the church’s worship (A1). It does not reach a Christian who sets the day apart quietly and calls it no command of God (A3).

Paul hurried to be at Jerusalem for Pentecost, which shows the day mattered to the apostles and that Christians kept it.

Luke records Paul’s schedule and does not say why he hurried. The Feast of Weeks drew Jews from every nation to Jerusalem (compare Acts 2:5), and Paul was bringing alms to his nation (Acts 24:17). The verse does not say a church kept a Christian Pentecost, or that Paul led one. It dates a journey. It shows a Jewish feast on the calendar, not an apostolic custom (H2).

Paul uses Pentecost as a date marker for a Gentile church, so Corinth must have known the day as a Christian season.

The one day this chapter asks Corinth to act on is weekly: “Upon the first day of the week” (1 Corinthians 16:2). The Catholic Encyclopedia reads 16:8 as the Jewish feast, and Luke too dates Paul’s travels by the Jewish calendar (Acts 20:6). A date marker is not an observance. Had Corinth kept an annual feast of the Spirit, the letter does not say so (H2).

Armstrong churches hold that the feast is “a statute for ever in all your dwellings throughout your generations”, so Christians must keep it.

Read the whole statute. The same passage that says “a statute for ever” commands the two loaves, seven lambs, a bullock, two rams and a goat, waved by the priest (verses 17-20), and no one who keeps the day today offers them. The phrase marks a law for Israel’s generations under the priesthood, and “the priesthood being changed, there is made of necessity a change also of the law” (Hebrews 7:12). The apostles laid no greater burden on Gentile believers than a short list of necessary things (Acts 15:28-29), and Paul calls a feast day a shadow, with the body in Christ (S6). A Christian who keeps the day privately is free; binding it as a commanded day is what Colossians 2 forbids.

Study

• Acts 2:42 lists what the new church did after Pentecost. Where does a yearly feast of the Spirit’s coming fit, if it is not listed there?
• Paul mentions Pentecost twice (Acts 20:16; 1 Corinthians 16:8). What would we need to see in those verses to call them evidence of a Christian feast, and do we see it?
• Tertullian’s Pentecost is a fifty-day season and Elvira’s is a single day (H4, H5). Does the change matter, if Scripture gives neither?
• Colossians 2:16-17 and Galatians 4:10 are cited for and against holy days. What does each passage say about the motive and the setting, and how does that bear on a day kept at home?
• The Armstrong churches keep Pentecost as law. What would it take, from the New Testament, to show that Gentile Christians must keep a feast of Israel?

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