Rev Chris Roth

My mind has been expanded by a couple authors as I read the Old Testament. I am still processing some of this, but they are helping me to see some things I wasn't seeing.  The first author is Stephen De Young, an Orthodox Priest, and a Biblical Scholar. I find pretty much everything he writes to be helpful. For this sermon I found c hapter 2 "The Spirit, Presence, and Name of God"  of his book  Religion of the Apostles: Orthodox Christianity in the First Century    Particularly helpful.  There is also an Evangelical Old Testament scholar named Michael Heiser, who is remarkably similar in his thinking. Chapter 6 "The Word, the Name, and the Angel" of his book Supernatural has much of the information as the above mentioned book.   Supernatural is a more accessible version of his book The Unseen Realm . Chapters 16, 17, and 18 are helpful for anyone wanting to look deeper into what I talk about in this sermon.  Now to our topic. Today is Trinit...

  Acts 2: 1-21 In our reading from Acts, the disciples are in Jerusalem. Meanwhile, there was a festival called Pentecost taking place. Pentecost was a Jewish festival. It was the second of three harvest festivals. It is also sometimes called the Feast of Weeks because it took place seven weeks (or ~50 days) after the Passover ( Pentekostos means ‘fiftieth’). It was also considered to be the anniversary of the giving of the Law and the establishment of the covenant at Mount Sinai, which was believed to have happened 50 days after the Exodus from Egypt. Faithful Jews would gather from all over the known world to give offerings at the Temple. 1st century Jewish writers (like the historian Josephus and the philosopher Philo) retell the story of the giving of the law, and as a part of that story they speak about strong winds, [1] and a kind of mysterious fire. [2] Later medieval rabbinic sources make some interesting comments regarding the giving of the Law. In the 5th century B...