It’s coming up to the time when the church celebrates Pentecost – the event which happened in Acts Chapter 2. The scriptures record that the 12 apostles were all with one accord in one place. They were obeying the last command of Jesus before He ascended to heaven – not to depart from Jerusalem but to wait for the Promise of the Father – the baptism of the Holy Spirit. He said they would receive power and be witnesses to Him in Jerusalem, Judea and Samaria and to the end of the earth. As they waited they prayed and suddenly a sound of a rushing mighty wind and tongues as of fire appeared and sat on each of them. They were all filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak with other (unknown) tongues as the Spirit gave them utterance. At this time there were Jews from various nations gathered for the Feast. They heard the apostles (Galileans) speak in their own languages declaring the wonderful works of God. Then Peter explained this phenomenon as a fulfilment of Joel’s prophecy and proclaimed the gospel of Jesus’ death and resurrection to the crowd. They repented and were baptised and that day 3,000 souls were added to the church. If the Holy Spirit had not given them the ability to speak in other tongues none of this may have happened. It was a miraculous breaking of the language barrier. There are around 7,000 distinct languages in the world and thanks to many dedicated bible translators some of them now have at least a portion of the Bible translated but many still do not. People need both the Bible and good Christian teaching in their own language. Since we recorded Roy Godwin’s teaching in 2014 his five sessions on Prayer and Blessing have been dubbed into 7 different languages – Swahili, Turkish, French, Welsh, Portuguese, German and just recently Farsi. More are to come and we rejoice that the teaching is reaching more people, causing growth in local churches around the world!
