The Lutheran Pioneer St. Louis — 1908, Page 41

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The Lutheran Aioneey,

A MISSIONARY MONTHLY.

PUBLISHED BY THE EVANGELICAL LuTHERAN SyNODICAL CONFERENCE OF NorTH AMERICA.

R. A. BISCHOFF, Editor.

Entered at the Post Of_ice at St. Louis, Mo., as second-class matter.

Vol. XXX.

‘St. Louis, Mo., June, 1908. _

No. 6.

The Day of Pentecost.

Let songs of praises fill the sky:
Christ, our ascended Lord,

Sends down His Spirit from on high,
According to His Word.

All hail the day of Pentecost,

The coming of the Holy Ghost!

The Spirit, by His heav’nly breath,
Creates new life within;
He quickens sinners from the death
Of trespasses and sin.
All hail the day of Pentecost,
The coming of the Holy Ghost!
T. Cotterill.

Cee ee aE
‘

: Pentecost.

The word Pentecost means the fiftieth. On the
fiftieth day after the feast of Passover the Pentecost
festival was celebrated in the Old Testament as
“the feast of harvest.” In the New Testament,
Pentecost comes on the fiftieth day after Master
and is celebrated in commemoration of the outpour-
ing of the Holy Spirit on the disciples, which oc-
curred fifty days after the resurrection of Christ.

Our Pentecost, therefore, is the festival of the
Holy Ghost,-who is still active in the spiritual har-
vest, the harvest of souls. It is He that brings sin-
ners to faith in Christ and His salvation, and thus
gathers the Church of Christ here on earth. We
confess in our Catechism: “I believe that I cannot
by my own reason or strength believe in Jesus
Christ, my. Lord, or come to Him; but the Holy
Spirit hath called me through the Gospel, enlight-
ened me by His gifts, and sanctified and preserved
me in the true faith.” We so confess, because the
Bible so teaches. The Bible tells us that man by
nature is “dead in trespasses and sin.” It is the

Spirit that brings man to spiritual life. The Bible
tells us that man is “flesh born of flesh,” and that
this flesh is “enmity against God.”: It is the Spirit
that regenerates man and makes him a child of God.
The Bible says: “The natural man receiveth not
the things of the Spirit of God; for they are fool-
ishness unto him; neither can he know them, be-
cause they are spiritually discerned.” . It is the
Spirit that opens our eyes to see.and our ears to
hear and our hearts to understand and to trust in
the wonderful things which our Savior has done for
us. The Bible says: “No man can say that Jesus
is the Lord but by the Holy Ghost.” It is the Spirit
that brings us to-faith in Jesus, so that we confess
Jesus as our Lord and acknowledge ourselves His
servants and seek His glory alone.

The Holy Spirit does His work through the
Word of God, which we read in the Bible, which
we hear in the preaching of the Gospel, and which
we see connected with certain signs in the Sacra-
ments. This Word of God is the means in which
the Holy Spirit comes to us, and by which He works
in our hearts. He that despises and rejects God’s
Word thereby despises and rejects the Holy Spirit
and will not come to faith; for “faith cometh by
hearing, and hearing by the Word of God.”

Therefore Pentecost calls upon us to be diligent
in the use of God’s Word for our salvation. It re-
minds us to be diligent also in bringing God’s Word
to those who still sit in the darkness of sin and know
not the redemption which is in Christ Jesus. God’s
Word is the means by which the Holy Spirit is
brought to them to give them light and life and
salyation. By spreading God’s Word we spread the
blessings of Pentecost over a ruined world. Chris-
tians can haye no more important Work to do..