Ps Dino Cictello

This week, on Pentecost, Ps Dino walked us through the Bible and showed how the Holy Spirit functioned in the Old and New Testament, and why it should matter to all Christians.

He taught that Pentecost means the fiftieth day after Passover. Passover was the celebration of God’s children celebrating that God told them to take the blood of a lamb and mark their doorposts with the blood, this caused the angel of death to pass over their homes and prevent death in their households.

That same weekend, years later, Jesus died to save God’s people and they were under the blood of Jesus too. Before the Holy Spirit came down in the upper room, Pentecost was known as the festival of weeks (Shavuot), according to history, it was the same time that Moses came down from the mountain after God gave him the Ten Commandments to teach people a new way of living.

Ps Dino highlighted how good God’s intentions are towards His people – that He lined everything up so that 50 days later there’s a new way to live when the Holy Spirit came down, same mandate yet a new dispensation. He also reminded us that the number 50 is significant in the bible as it refers to the Jubilee (7 Sabbath years followed by the year of Jubilee), the year when all debts were written off also known as an economic, cultural, environmental, and communal reset.

Likewise, this new way of living is the same promise we come under on the day of Pentecost, seeing as it’s a new way of functioning as children of God because it’s no longer by might or power but by the Spirit of God we are therefore no longer under the Old Testament regulation but instead a New Testament relationship with God. The Holy Spirit is present throughout the entire bible (Old and New Testament) and is not a by-product or a forgotten part but instead, it’s in the beginning when God created the earth already.