During the fifty days between Passover and Pentecost, the disciples of Christ experienced deep testing to perfect them until they emerged in the power of the Holy Spirit to fulfill their commission as witnesses to the world. Like the disciples, God does something in our spirits during this time. It is a time of devastation. It is a time of repentance. It is a time of preparation for what God has for us in the next steps of our ministry, our lives, and our relationship with Him.

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Show Notes:

On the Day of Pentecost, the one hundred twenty disciples were in one place in one accord. How did they arrive at that spirit of oneness and unity? They had been on a fifty-day spiritual journey from Passover (Pesach) to Pentecost (Shavuot).

This fifty-day journey begins at Passover during the Feast of Unleavened Bread with the waving of the sheaf of the first fruits and continues up to the Feast of Pentecost. For the disciples, these fifty days included the Passover meal with Yeshua (Jesus), followed by His arrest, trial, torture, crucifixion, and resurrection. Then came His post-resurrection teaching and impartation, His Ascension, as well as their days of waiting and praying together in the upper room in Jerusalem.

This fifty-day journey created an atmosphere of testing and shaking for the disciples. It brought them to the end of their false beliefs, their false expectations, and their false hopes. It initiated a godly sorrow that brought repentance. It created broken spirits and contrite hearts. During these fifty days, they had been ground into a fine flour, baked into the loaves to be waved before God, and anointed by the Holy Spirit to be witnesses of Christ’s resurrection. Let us also embark on this same fifty-day spiritual journey, that we would also come forth as true witnesses to the world of the Lord’s resurrection power.
Key Verses:

• Leviticus 23:10-11. “You shall bring in the sheaf of the first fruits of your Harvest.”
• 1 Corinthians 15:20. “Christ has been raised from the dead, the first fruits.”
• John 12:24. “But if it [a grain of wheat] dies, it bears much fruit.”
• Matthew 27:52–53. “The tombs were opened, and many bodies … were raised.”
• Leviticus 23:15–17. “You shall count fifty days.”
• Luke 4:13-14. “When the devil … left Him … Jesus returned to Galilee in the power of the Spirit.”
• John 17:22–23. “That they may be perfected in unity, so that the world may know that You sent Me.”
• Luke 22:31–34. “Satan has demanded permission to sift you like wheat.”
• Matthew 26:30–35. “You will all fall away because of Me this night.”
• Zechariah 13:7. “Strike the Shepherd that the sheep may be scattered.”
• Mark 14:26–31. “Even if I have to die with You, I will not deny You!”
• Luke 19:11. “They supposed that the kingdom of God was going to appear immediately.”
• Matthew 26:71–75. “And immediately a rooster crowed.”
• Luke 22:61–62. “And Peter … went out and wept bitterly.”
• John 19:26–27. “He said to the disciple, ‘Behold, your mother!’”
• John 5:19. “The Son can do nothing of Himself, unless it is something He sees the Father doing.”
• Mark 16:9–14. “He reproached them for their unbelief and hardness of heart.”
• Acts 1:2–5. “He also presented Himself alive … by many convincing proofs.”
• Acts 1:9–14. “These all with one mind.”
• Ephesians 4:5. “One Lord, one faith, one baptism.”
• Acts 2:1–4. “When the day of Pentecost had come, they were all together in one place.”
• Acts 2:31–32. “This Jesus God raised up again, to which we are all witnesses.”

Quotes:

• “During these fifty days, the disciples experienced their final preparation for ministry, just as Yeshua underwent the temptation in the wilderness that prepared Him finally and surely for His ministry.”
• “What is the purpose of the disciples’ unity? They must be perfected in unity and oneness so that the world may believe that Christ was sent by the Father as the Messiah to bring salvation to all of the earth.”
• “The disciples went into this time of deep, deep repentance and of seeking God, and they began to realize they were incapable of doing anything of themselves. Christ had this same realization that in Himself He could do nothing, but that what He did was only by the Father.”

Takeaways:

1. This fifty-day journey begins at Passover with the waving of the sheaf of the first fruits and concludes on the first day of the Feast of Pentecost. In Judaism, the counting of these fifty days is called the “Counting of the Omer.”
2. This fifty-day journey was significant for the disciples because it marked the end of Christ’s ministry on the earth and initiated their final preparation as disciples. Like Yeshua’s temptation in the wilderness, either they would be destroyed by this testing and shaking, or they would emerge in the power of the Holy Spirit to fulfill their commission as witnesses to the world.
3. This fifty-day journey is important for us, because like the disciples, we must experience the preparation and perfecting of our spirits in order to enter into unity and oneness with one another, so that in the power of the Holy Spirit we will be a witness to the world in our day and age of the truth that God has sent His Son as the Savior of the world. “You will be one,” Christ told the disciples, “And when you are one, the world will believe.”