We have wonderful worship services on Sunday morning and Wednesday evening, but at all other times during the week most of our churches are locked up and shut down, and the community is run by the drug dealer, the street corner pimp and the teen-age, high school dropout with a sweat shirt hood on his head and his pants sagging so low that his underwear and sometimes his backside are clearly visible. What difference does it make that we have over 800 churches in Cleveland if the church community as a whole has no power?

This is not the first time that the church has been without the power that was needed to transform the city in which it lived. The same thing was true in the city of Jerusalem as described in the opening lines of the Book of Acts. Jesus had finished his earthly ministry and had ascended back into heaven. The whole world was waiting to hear the Gospel message that Jesus had come to deliver, but not a sound could be heard. The disciples who had been called and trained by Jesus to carry his message to the ends of the earth were all locked up inside the upper room. They were hiding from the very people they were supposed to be challenging with the message. They were whispering to each other behind locked doors rather than shouting to Jerusalem about the message of salvation.

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Right outside their doors were the blind, the crippled and the sick. Jesus had touched such people and restored health to them, but these men could do no such thing because they had no power. Right outside their door were Roman soldiers who were imposing their will on other nations through force of arms. Jesus had already told Peter that of you live by the sword you will perish by the sword. But these disciples could not act on that principle, because they had no power. Right outside their door were people who were going through the motions of religion; saying prayers that held no meaning to them and sacrificing dead animals, which had no long-term affect on them. But these men could not offer the world anything better because they had no power.

However, on the Day of Pentecost, a day that marked 50 days after the Jewish festival of Passover, something happened that touched and transformed the men in that room and they in turn stepped outside of the doors and touched and transformed the rest of the world. The Bible says the room was filled with a sound like the roaring of a mighty wind. What appeared to be cloven tongues of flame rested upon the head of every man in that room. Each one of them was filled with the Holy Spirit and they began to speak in unknown tongues.

As they spoke, those men began moving out into the city and a mysterious thing happened; people from various nations throughout the Mediterranean world understood what those men were saying in their own native language. The human speech that God had confused at the Tower of Babel back in the book of Genesis had been reversed. The Gospel was being preached. By the end of the day 3,000 new converts had been added to the church. Those who heard the message that day took it with them back to their homes all over the world.