Question: Please explain how you find fifty days between the resurrection of the Lord, and the coming of the Holy Spirit?
Answer: The word “Pentecost” means fifty, or the fiftieth; the allusion is to Leviticus 23. In that chapter we get two offerings on the morrow after the Sabbath. The wave sheaf is the type of the resurrection of Christ (Verses 10-14). There is no sin offering attached to that; it is the Lord Himself. Then seven Sabbaths were counted, and on the morrow after the seventh Sabbath, that is, the first day of the week, a new meat offering— “two wave loaves baken with leaven” —is offered. A sin offering accompanies it, for it is typical of the redeemed church, which, though redeemed, has sin in each member (Verses 15-21).
In the New Testament we see that the Lord rose on the first day of the week, and was seen of His disciples forty days (Acts 1:3); then came His ascension. The disciples continued in prayer and supplication the rest of the period (not many days), till Pentecost, the fiftieth day was fully come; then the Holy Spirit came down.
Question: In Mark 14:3-9, the Lord’s head is said to have been anointed, and in John 12:38, His feet. Please explain this, and say if Luke 10:38-42 refers to the same event.
Answer: No doubt both are true. The propriety of the head being mentioned in Mark, and the feet only in John will be at once seen if we consider that in the former we have Christ as the servant, in the latter as the Son of God. Luke 10 describes a previous scene in which Mary was not rendering any service to Christ, but learning from Him. In John 12 we get Mary giving, in Luke 10 she is getting. And it was doubtless what she got on this and similar occasions that enabled her to show such exquisite feeling when it became her turn to give.
Question: Who are meant by “His servants” in Revelation 22:3? Does not our service end with our lives on the earth
Answer: Surely not. It means us. Are we not to be kings and reign? Our weariness and toil, our tears, our weakness, our unfaithfulness, will all be over then, but not our service. He ever will still be a servant (Luke 12:37), and shall not we? This, indeed, will be the bliss of heaven to be permitted to manifest, in a small but thus perfect measure, our love and faithfulness to our beloved Lord.