After his resurrection, Jesus speaks to his disciples about the kingdom of God. That he was talking about the Father's kingdom (Med.#16) is underscored immediately by Luke’s reference to ‘the promise of the Father’—the coming of the Holy Spirit. Yet the disciples' view of the world, and of social order, will need to change if they are going to keep up with what their Father is about to do.

When the day of Pentecost arrives, women—like Mary (Act.1:14)—are filled with the Holy Spirit and stand prophesying to total strangers alongside men. So Peter connects the Father's promise to words of the prophet Joel. On a ‘great and memorable day of the Lord’, sometime after the sun is ‘turned to darkness’, God will pour out his Spirit on people of all ages and social classes—on both men and women! Thus, the ability to speak for God will no longer be limited to older males or to a religious elite. Coming to know God as Father—through the Holy Spirit—is thus not about a return to patriarchal religion. It is intended to be the exact opposite! For the promise of the Father and the ability to prophesy is for all humanity—for women as well as for men.

Now some of Jesus' disciples, both men and women, had already heard about the promised Holy Spirit from John the Baptist when they confessed their sins and were baptized by him. Yet they had to ‘wait’ to receive this promise for three reasons. They first needed to observe: how Jesus himself received ‘the promise alongside the Father’ at his baptism (Med.#26)—so that he could walk in the power of the Spirit on earth with his Father. Then Jesus shared this power with them so that they too could preach and perform miraculous signs in his name (Lk.9:1; 10:1,19), they still had to wait. Why? Well, the ‘promise of the Spirit’ is about more than just receiving divine power. So, secondly, ‘the promise of the Father’ would only come to them after Jesus had taken his place at the Father's ‘right hand’. Only after Jesus himself had become ‘heir of all things’ (Med.#7), could they too receive the Spirit as ‘the deposit’ on their inheritance (Med.#8), thus giving them a new position of authority in their own relationship with the Father (Med.#51).

Yet even after forty days of new instructions from their resurrected Lord, and after witnessing his ascension, they still had to wait about ten more days, till Pentecost, for a third reason. For the Father's ‘times and seasons [Gr. kairous]’ involve every nation [Gr. ethnos] on earth—and their territories (Act.1:7; 17:26; Jer.27:5-7). Yet, contrary to the expectations of the disciples' Jewish culture, the Father's kingdom will not be a strictly Jewish one, nor will it come in an obvious territorial way (Lk.20:21). So the only ‘seasons’ [Gr. kairoi] of the Father that Jesus wants his disciples to focus on are the ones in which ‘power’ and ‘refreshing’ (Act.3:20) are poured out on both Jews and on all other nations that are still spiritually ‘far away. For while the promise of the Father initially came exclusively to tens of thousands of Jews[ii], his family kingdom was going to encompass the whole world and include even Samaritans—the hated ethnic neighbors that Jews preferred to avoid (Med.#3).

And this is why the Father waited for the Feast of Weeks (Pentecost). For ‘Jews and proselytes (Jews by conversion)’ were already arriving in Jerusalem ‘from every nation [Gr. ethnous]’ to attend this yearly, week-long celebration of the first-fruits of the harvest. For the Father had planned that this ‘great and memorable Day’ would not only be multi-ethinc, but also multi-lingual. The Holy Spirit would empower Jesus' Galilean disciples to ‘speak’ in other ‘languages [Gr. glossais]. But more importantly (because God’s Word emphasizes it three times!), the Spirit would empower the people gathered to hear and understand in their own languages [glossais] and dialects [Gr. dialektos] about the ‘wonders’ that God was doing through Jesus.

By his actions on this Day, the Father wanted Jesus' disciples to remember that the Spirit was poured out so that people of all nations might call on him—to be saved, to be placed as his adult sons and daughters (Med.#4) and so become partners with them in the power of the Spirit to fulfill the Great Commission (Med.#87)! Further, it is not given to us to know the Father's ‘times and seasons’ for our own nation, nor the exact timing of Jesus' return and the end of the age. Yet we can participate in the one sign Jesus gave concerning when ‘the end will come’: the fulfillment the Great Commission—when people of all nations and ethnic groups on earth having had the chance to hear the good news of the Father’s kingdom, and understand it (Med.#89). All other ‘signs of the times’ that Jesus gave are only like birth pangs—which for a woman in labor can go on for many long hours. Thus, these other ‘signs’ merely indicate that Jesus' return is ‘near’ (Med.#88).

Have you understood the ‘promise of the Father’? In your church, are women, uneducated people and those from other ethnic groups treated as co-heirs of the Father and able to prophesy—to publicly speak God's words? The Father does have times and seasons for your nation. But is your church so focused on how the ‘end times’ might affect you and your nation that there is little commitment to missions? How can your church invest more money and people in taking the ‘promise of the Father’ to all nations on earth—so Jesus can finally return?

Father, from whom all fatherhood in heaven and on earth derives its name, strengthen us  through your Spirit so that we may have power—together with all the saints—to grasp the breadth, length, height and depth of the love of Christ, so that we all may be filled to the measure of your fullness, (Eph.3:14-19)[iii]

…to go and disciple all nations, baptizing people in the name of the Father, the Son and the Spirit… so that through the church, your wisdom in all its rich variety may now be made known, according to the eternal purpose which you have accomplished in Christ Jesus our Lord. (Mt.28:19-20; Eph.3:10-11)

[i] The Scripture Passage is taken from J.K. Mellis, The Good News of the Messiah by the Four Witnesses, pp.285-286, 289-291.

[ii] The Jerusalem church was exclusively Jewish. Based on initial ‘church-growth’ statements (Act.2:41,47; 4:4; 5:14 & 6:1) it initially increased in numbers to about 25,000 people (Wagner, Acts of the Holy Spirit: a modern commentary on the Book of Acts, Regal Books, 2000, pp.134-5).

[iii] Members can click on this link for a musical version of Paul’s Prayer (Ephesians 3:14-21)