The Coming of the Holy Spirit
They were all sitting together in one place (again, I assume 'they' is the apostles) and from heaven came a wind which filled the house in which they were sitting. Each person started speaking in a different tongue. Then a bunch of people who speak different languages came to see them and everyone was able to understand what they were saying. They all heard it in their own native tongue.
Clearly everyone here has translator microbes. Now I feel like we can all go around saying "go watch farscape, it's in the bible."
Peter's Sermon at Pentecost
Peter stands up to address the crowd. He starts by saying that they are not drunk even though it might seem they are. Then he talks about things that the prophet Joel has said. He said in the last days God will pour his spirit on all flesh. People will see visions and various things will happen. Even slaves will benefit from the spirit. Anyone who calls on the name of the lord will be saved.
"In the last days", as usual, I'm sure there is some way to spin this, but it sounds like this is supposed to be end of times stuff.
Then he says that they killed, but he was raised from the dead because it was not possible for Jesus to be held by death. Now that Jesus is at the right hand of God, the holy spirit has been poured out. At some point the rest of the apostles asked what they should do, he says everyone should be baptized in the name of Christ to receive forgiveness of sins.
The Fellowship of the Believers
The followers devoted themselves to the teachings of the apostles. Awe (or fear) came upon every soul at the wonders done by the apostles. They sold their possessions and passed the proceeds around to any in the group who was in need.
The idea of selling all of your stuff and giving to the group is an interesting one. On one hand, if people are truly in need and you can help them out, you should. It is good to have a society where people share and help each other out when they can. On the other hand, if you get everyone in this mindset, a greedy person can really take advantage. Ultimately I think this is a really good message, but I feel the need to urge caution.
I love your farscape reference. That's pretty funny. That would probably be a more logical explanation.
ReplyDeleteThe first thing that really sticks out to me, is verse 5. He says "Now there were Jews living in Jerusalem, devout men from every nation under heaven." To me, that's one of those verses that screams written by man. I kind of doubt that the native american's and their individual nations were included in this.
The next thing in these verses it sounds to me like he is saying that they are speaking in tongues because it is the end times. Am I stretching it too much here? In the following verse he talks about the sun turning dark. It sounds like something that happens during every solar eclipse. It's also something that seems to be predicted, based on my memory, and I could be wrong, in other doomsday prophecies.
The only other thing I am going to point out is verse 30 sounds like Joseph was the physical father of Jesus. This really depends on which translation you use. I think we talked about this previously.
I bet they could get away from the native american thing because of the word nation. Does a tribe count as a nation? Would a hunter gatherer society count in this?
DeleteIroquois nations? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iroquois =P
DeleteYou seem to have gotten me there :)
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