Leviticus 23:15-20; Exodus 34:22; Exodus 23:16
And ye shall count unto you from the morrow after the sabbath, from the day that ye brought the sheaf of the wave offering; seven sabbaths shall be complete: Even unto the morrow after the seventh sabbath shall ye number fifty days; and ye shall offer a new meat offering unto the LORD. Ye shall bring out of your habitations two wave loaves of two tenth deals: they shall be of fine flour; they shall be baken with leaven; they are the firstfruits unto the LORD. And ye shall offer with the bread seven lambs without blemish of the first year, and one young bullock, and two rams: they shall be for a burnt offering unto the LORD, with their meat offering, and their drink offerings, even an offering made by fire, of sweet savour unto the LORD. Then ye shall sacrifice one kid of the goats for a sin offering, and two lambs of the first year for a sacrifice of peace offerings. And the priest shall wave them with the bread of the firstfruits for a wave offering before the LORD, with the two lambs: they shall be holy to the LORD for the priest.
And thou shalt observe the feast of weeks, of the firstfruits of wheat harvest, and the feast of ingathering at the year’s end.
The feast of harvest, the firstfruits of thy labours, which thou hast sown in the field: and the feast of ingathering, which is in the end of the year, when thou hast gathered in thy labours out of the field.
ADAM CLARKE (1760-1832): The feast of Pentecost, called also the feast of harvest and the feast of weeks, Exodus 34:22, was celebrated fifty days after the Passover to commemorate the giving of the law on Mount Sinai, which took place fifty days after, and hence called by the Greeks Pentecost.
THE EDITOR: There is something more regarding Pentecost and these “fifty days.” It connects to the “feast of ingathering,” and the fiftieth year of the Jubilee: “And ye shall hallow the fiftieth year, and proclaim liberty throughout all the land unto all the inhabitants thereof: it shall be a jubilee unto you; and ye shall return every man unto his possession, and ye shall return every man unto his family,” Leviticus 25:10.
C. H. SPURGEON: What is the connection here?
THE EDITOR: Well, in Ezekiel 4:4-6, the Lord instructed Ezekiel in a symbolic figure of Christ bearing the iniquity of Israel and Judah, saying he must bear it “each day for a year.” In the wilderness, God reversed that ratio in judgment upon the unbelieving Jews, saying they must wander “after the number of the days in which ye searched the land, even forty days, each day for a year, shall ye bear your iniquities, even forty years,” Numbers 14:29-34. As Hebrew lunar months have 30 days, and like our leap years, lunar calendars occasionally have 13 months, thus 40 years remains an indeterminate number of days. And as those unbelievers perished in the wilderness, so this time period is a symbolic figure of eternity, representing unbelieving sinners bearing their own iniquity forever under God’s judgment, Hebrews 3:17-19. Consider that God is using a similar ratio linking the fifty days of Pentecost, to the fiftieth year of God’s Jubilee. Jubilee is about redemption and liberty in the land, Leviticus 25:8-28; and, “if the Son therefore shall make you free, ye shall be free indeed,” John 8:36. Now that is certainly true of Pentecost, when Jesus sent the Holy Spirit to indwell believers, freeing them from the “dominion of sin,” Romans 6:14, 2 Corinthians 1:22; though they wrestle with remaining sin, yet through Christ’s atonement and intercession, they are made acceptable to God—see it displayed in the priest waving those two leavened loaves before God, as the firstfruits of the wheat harvest.
H. A. IRONSIDE (1876-1951): Pentecost really means the “fiftieth day,”—when a new meal offering would be offered to the Lord: “Ye shall bring out of your habitations two wave loaves…baken with leaven.” These could not typify our Lord because they had leaven in them: leaven is a type of sin and He was the sinless one. But the loaves do typify those who through the death of the Lord Jesus Christ are presented to God as a new creation, Jew and Gentile, sinners in themselves, but their sins judged in the light of the cross of Christ.
THE EDITOR: Obviously.
H. A. IRONSIDE: So God ordained that this feast should be observed in Israel as the type of the beginning of a new dispensation…Therefore Pentecost was the beginning of a new age, that of the church, the body of Christ.
THE EDITOR: The church as Jesus Christ’s body was indeed formed at Pentecost. But not in your “premillennial dispensational” concept as an “age” beginning on Pentecost and ending in a so-called “Rapture,” when His church is removed from the earth, while God deals with Jews during a tribulation period—which is followed by a millennium with Jesus reigning visibly upon earth. And only then, after all that, does He judge the earth. That whole dispensational theory is a grand complicated error, which began in Ireland at Lady Theodosia Powerscourt’s prophetic conferences in 1828, and was later popularized by the 1917 Scofield Reference Bible.
PHILIP MAURO (1859-1952): It is appropriate here to point out that one of the glaring errors of “dispensational teaching” is the failure to recognize what the New Testament plainly reveals, that names which God gave to the shadowy and typical things of the Old Covenant, belong properly, and eternally, to the corresponding realities of the New Covenant. Thus we are given the proper meanings of “Jew,” Romans 2:28,29; “Israel,” Romans 9:16; Galatians 6:16; “Jerusalem,” Galatians 4:26; “Seed of Abraham,” Galatians 3:29; “Sion,” 1 Peter 2:6; Hebrews 12:22; Romans 9:33. Likewise it is made known that according to the New Covenant meaning, “the tribes of Jacob,” are those who are Jews inwardly, that is to say, the entire household of faith, James 1:1; Acts 26:7.
THE EDITOR: As opposed to unbelievers, the “tribes of the earth,” whom Jesus said will mourn His coming in power and glory, Matthew 24:30.
AUGUSTINE (354-430): The New is in the Old concealed; The Old is by the New revealed.
THE EDITOR: Yes. And the barley and the wheat are two parts of a single spiritual harvest, combining the Old and New Testament saints together. On Pentecost, Christ united these firstfruits together by His Spirit: the church triumphant in heaven—those spirits of just men made perfect, from Adam to Abraham, the first Hebrew, Genesis 14:13; and all the believing Jews since Abraham’s day and even Gentiles like Job, Elihu, and Naaman, who had looked forward by faith to Christ’s coming atonement—all spiritually united with their brethren on earth—the church militant of Jews and Gentiles, who by faith now trust in Christ’s finished atonement; that “in all things He might have the preeminence,” as the “Head of the Body,” which is composed of everyone washed in His blood, and born of His Spirit—that is the complete “Israel of God,” Galatians 6:16; Hebrews 11:39,40; James 1:18; Colossians 1:12-20. Now as this spiritual marriage union of Christ and His bride cannot be torn asunder, neither can any of His members be separated from Him, since they are kept by the unbreakable three-fold cord of the Trinity, 1 Peter 1:3-5; John 10:30. And this spiritual wheat harvest will not be fully reaped until that “feast of ingathering,” when the angel’s trumpet announces God’s Jubilee year of our final redemption, “at the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ with all his saints,”—that great cloud of witnesses, “when there should be time no longer,” and “the mystery of God should be finished,” Romans 8:22,23; 1 Thessalonians 3:16,17; Hebrews 12:1,2; Revelation 10:4-7.
JOHN GILL (1697-1771): “Behold a white cloud, and upon the cloud one sat like unto the Son of man, having on his head a golden crown, and in his hand a sharp sickle.”—to reap the earth, as in Revelation 14:12-20; which is expressive of His power as King of saints, and Judge of the world, to gather all nations before Him; for the sickle is used to gather with, as well as to cut down.
THE EDITOR: So—here are the two options: Believe in Jesus Christ, and rest on Him bearing your iniquity, trusting God’s promise that, by the blood of Christ’s atonement, you have everlasting life; so shall you enter that spiritual land of Canaan, the “land of promise,” to be harvested with His people; or, you can continue to bear your own iniquity until you die in the wilderness of unbelief; and then, you must bear your iniquity in hell forever, “where the worm of a guilty conscience never dies, and the fire of God’s wrath is not quenched,” Mark 9:44.
