Video clip: Apostle Peter (Shane Adams) challenges attendees to respond (:27)

Come experience the fire . . .            Come worship together . . .        Come and be formed . . .                Come and be transformed . . .             Come feel the heat . . .          Come practice your faith . . .                  Come share with friends . . .     Come ready . . .                        Come expecting . . .               Come one . . .                         Come all . . . Come!

Create a holistic experience in your own congregation
 

Dramatic Reading: Acts 2: Pentecost from Peter’s Perspective

By Shane Adams

It had been only ten days since our Lord and leader had ascended to heaven. He promised us that he would send the Holy Spirit, so we returned to Jerusalem and gathered in the upper room on Mount Olivet. And we waited. We prayed and waited for a sign, for the Holy Spirit to come.

On the tenth day after Jesus ascended to heaven, we still were in that upper room—we the disciples and about 100 other followers—and then there came from heaven a noise like a violent rushing wind—and even that description doesn’t do it justice. It was a noise that only God could bring upon us, and it filled the whole house where we had been waiting.

For those of us experiencing it, it all happened so fast. This was what we had been waiting for, praying for. This is what Jesus had promised would happen. We thought we were ready, but nothing could have prepared us for what occurred.

And as if the thunderous wind weren’t strange enough, all of the people in the room began speaking to each other in different languages. The Holy Spirit had laid upon each of us a message and charged us to deliver it in this foreign way, unintelligible to each other. I tried to make sense of the situation, but it was chaotic.

In the surrounding village, people began to gather around the house. They had heard the loud wind from heaven, and they listened intently when they found nearly all of us speaking in different languages. People began to realize something extraordinary was happening.

But—as people do—the crowd grew skeptical and discounted our gathering, chalking it up to public drunkenness. Can you believe that? It was only the third hour of the day!

I told the crowd that it was mistaken. For it was as Joel prophesied, “After all of this I will pour out my Spirit on all kinds of people. Your sons and daughters will prophesy. Your elderly will have revelatory dreams; your young men will see prophetic visions. I will produce portents both in the sky and on the earth—blood, fire, and columns of smoke.”

At that moment, the words of the Holy Spirit came through me as I shared my personal testimony of the resurrected Christ to the gathering crowd. By my words, many were pierced through the heart by the Holy Spirit, and they were convinced—as I was—of the living God.

They looked to me for answers and guidance. “What should we do now?” they asked. I could have told them anything. The Holy Spirit had gifted me with such power. And because of my great love for Him, I passed the Holy Spirit to the crowd of more than three thousand that had gathered and called upon them to be baptized in the name of Jesus Christ.

From that moment forward, we devoted ourselves as a group to prayer and study. We the, apostles, taught, and they listened. But we rapidly became one—a people with a common goal of bringing Christ’s message to each other and to the world.

Remarkable things are possible through the presence of the Holy Spirit. It was my experience at Pentecost, and I invite you to go and encounter the Divine for yourself. What will you do when the Holy Spirit blows its wind and fire upon you? How will you respond? Hear the fire…See the fire…feel the fire…step into the fire!!!