9th June 2025. I took the now-unusual step yesterday of attending both the morning John Bunyan Baptist and the afternoon Burmese Mission services for yesterday’s Pentecost Sunday Services – very different in style and attendances, but with a strong link. The visiting preacher in the morning – an Indian Baptist Minister with a teaching ministry – preached on the contrast between the Pentecost event and the Mount Sinai experience of the wilderness-wandering Israelites. The latter saw the Israelites, impatient with the prolongued absence of Moses on the Holy mountain receiving the Ten Commandments, demanding from Aaron fresh ‘gods’, which led to the creating of a Golden Calf, for which Moses brought divine retribution in the slaughter of three thousand Israelites. By contrast, the outpouring of the Holy Spirit at Pentecost, giving birth to the Church, saw three thousand putting their faith in Christ. From this the preacher concluded – with the apostle Paul – that while the Giving of the Law brought Death, the Outpouring of the Spirit brought Eternal Life. (I had not seen that connection of the two groups of ‘three thousand’ before, or if I had, I had forgotten). I noted that the preacher came from a region of India which had been evangelised by a Missionary who had been sent during the Welsh Revival of 1904. He also mentioned that the region was not far from Myanmar.
The small Burmese service, which was boosted by members travelling from London and Swindon, was glad to celebrate with Pentecostal worship (which I had the privilege of leading). During ‘testimony time’ I shared my fresh insights from the morning service’s preacher. After I mentioned the city in India from which the morning’s preacher was originally from, one of our Burmese men informed me he had studied there. But, the highlight of the service, for me, was when Pastor Man preached, and brought out exactly the same links between Sinai and Pentecost as the morning preacher had done. She has also been studying the effects of the Welsh Revival. I’m tempted to think there might be a lectionary of common sermons for oriental preachers to use (joke!); more likely the Holy Spirit was trying to impress something on me by having the message repeated!
Finally, a comment on the title of my post: In the church I grew up in. the season was known as “Whitsun”, not Pentecost, and I seem to recall it was the great traditional occasion for the “Sunday School Anniversary”, when we would recite and sing new things. The practice persisted long after many Sunday Schools remained viable. In one of my earlier pastorates, I was invited by a neighbouring village Baptist Church to conduct their Sunday School Anniversary, only to discover they no longer had a Sunday School but collected children from the village to attend it!
Whitsun was therefore a time to celebrate Sunday School, not the Birth of the Church through the outpouring of the Holy Spirit. Of course, embracing the Trinity as a doctrine. we believed in the Third Person, but there was little encouragement to seek the fulness of the Spirit and explore his “fruits” and “gifts”. No wonder, as my old contemporary Cliff remarked, having been in the same Sunday School, I felt as a Christian I was always “running on empty!” Since those days, we both discovered the Power!
Healing in Jesus' Name 