The Jewish Rabbis also called this great feast, "The Day of the Giving of the Law," because the Law was given by God to Moses on Mount Sinai, fifty days after the Children of Israel ate the first Passover in Egypt; and this feast, as we have said, was kept on the fiftieth day after the Feast of the Passover. In the New Testament this feast day is called "The Day of Pentecost": because in Greek, "Pentecost" means fiftieth, and as we have said, the Jews were to number fifty days from the morrow after the Passover Sabbath, and then to keep this great feast. As Jesus rose on the morrow after the Passover Sabbath, our Easter Day (or Easter Sunday), the fiftieth day, would again be on the first day of the week, Sunday with us: seven weeks or fifty days from the blessed day on which our Lord rose from the grave, and ten days after His Ascension. This Day of Pentecost, distinguished already as a day of rejoicing and thanksgiving for many blessings, temporal and spiritual, and called "The Feast of Weeks," "of First Fruits," and of "The Giving of the Law," was now chosen by God as the day on which the promised gift of the Holy Spirit was to be poured out upon the Apostles, to their great spiritual benefit, as well as to that of all who were to look to their teaching, for the knowledge of what Jesus Christ has done for sinners. We read in the Book of Acts, "And when the day of Pentecost was fully come, they were all with one accord in one place. And suddenly there came a sound from heaven as of a rushing mighty wind, and it filled all the house where they were sitting. And there appeared unto them cloven tongues like as of fire, and it sat upon each of them." Fire was looked upon by the Jews as a sign of the presence of God. And those upon whom these tongues of fire descended, were at once "filled with the Holy Ghost": a visible and miraculous sign immediately followed, for they "began to speak with other tongues," that is, in strange and foreign languages, which they had never learnt, "as the Spirit gave them utterance." Thus were accomplished the promises of Jesus, to send the Comforter upon His Apostles, and that they should be baptized with the Holy Ghost. The power of speaking strange languages was a most valuable gift, enabling the Apostles to obey the command "to teach all nations," which they could not have done had they not been able to make themselves understood by all men. One miracle had, as a punishment, confounded the language of men, so that they ceased to have intercourse with each other: now another miracle mercifully removed this barrier, so that all nations might hear from the Apostles the glad tidings of salvation--the Gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ.