Acts 2:1, 2
The pouring out of the Holy Spirit on the day of Pentecost is supposed by many to be an evidence in favor of first-day sacredness. The Bible record is as follows: “When the day of Pentecost was fully come, they were all with one accord in one place. And suddenly there carne a sound from heaven as of a rushing mighty wind, and it filled all the house where they were sitting.”ChSa 56.2
It is well to notice that not a word is said in the text about the first day of the week. Yet this is regarded by the adherents of Sunday sacredness as one of the strongest evidences in its behalf. It is claimed that the disciples were assembled on this first-day Sabbath, and that the Lord poured out his Spirit in honor of the day and of their act, thus adding to its sanctity. To this claim we answer:ChSa 56.3
1. There is no evidence whatever that there was any first day Sabbath at that time to commemorate.ChSa 57.1
2. Their being assembled on that day was nothing more than had occurred on each of the previous nine days, as they were all commanded by the Savior, “Tarry you in the city of Jerusalem, until you be endued with power from on high.” Luke 24:49. They had been thus waiting “with one accord in prayer and supplication,” about one hundred and twenty in number. Acts 1:12-26.ChSa 57.2
3. There is no hint from the connection that this occurred on the first day of the week. If God had intended to honor that (lay, he most assuredly would have told us that the occurrence took place then.ChSa 57.3
4. This outpouring of the Holy Spirit came, evidently, as the antitype of the feast of Pentecost. This is doubtless the reason why that day is mentioned.ChSa 57.4
A strong effort is made by some to prove that Pentecost came that year upon the first day of the week, though this is disputed by a large number of the ablest authors, themselves observers of Sunday. The word Pentecost signifies “the fiftieth,” so many days being reckoned from the Passover. Olshausen, the celebrated German commentator, says: “Now since, according to the accounts given regarding the time of the feast, the Passover, in the year of our Lord’s death, fell so that the first day of the feast lasted from Thursday evening at six o’clock till Friday evening at the same hour, it follows, of course, that it was from Friday evening at Six o’clock that the fifty days began to be counted. The fiftieth day fell, therefore, it appears, upon Saturday.”ChSa 57.5
Jennings, in Jewish Antiquities, concludes his arguments by saying, “The day of Pentecost must fall on the Saturday, or the Jewish Sabbath.”ChSa 58.1
Dr. Albert Barnes says: “If the views of the Pharisees were followed, and the Lord Jesus had with them kept the Passover on Thursday, as many have supposed, then the day of Pentecost would have occurred on the Jewish Sabbath, that is, on Saturday. It is impossible to determine the truth on this subject.”ChSa 58.2
Dean Alford, in his “New Testament for English Readers,” says: “The question on what day of the week this day of Pentecost was, is beset with the difficulties attending the question of our Lord’s last Passover.... It appears probable, however, that it was on the Sabbath, i.e., if we reckon from Saturday, the 16th of Nisan.”ChSa 58.3
Prof. H. B. Hackett, D. D., Professor of Biblical Literature in Newton Theological Institute, in his Commentary on the Original Text of the Acts, p. 40, thus remarks:ChSa 58.4
“It is generally supposed that this Pentecost, signalized by the outpouring of the Spirit, fell on the Jewish Sabbath, our Saturday.”ChSa 58.5
Other eminent authors-Lightfoot, Kuino1, Hitzig, Weisler, etc.-take the same position. We conclude, therefore, that, taking the authority of first-day authors themselves, it cannot be established that Pentecost came upon the first day of the week at this time, and if it could be so established, it would be no evidence of Sunday sacredness.ChSa 58.6