There is a traditional Jewish teaching involving a candle. If you take a candle from a cupboard and examine it, it gives no light, it has potential but no life. One could easily say that it is no more than a lump of wax with a string though it. But when you touch a flame to it light shines and the candle expresses it purpose for being. The question is when do wax and string become a candle? The answer: When fire is applied. When does a beast become a man? When the fire or light of Torah is applied.
In the first century, Jesus–Yehoshua HaNazari¹–taught the new covenant as an extension and completion of the Torah and the prophets. As they took that last Seder he connected himself to the paschal lamb, his blood was to painted on wood and his flesh consumed so the messenger of death–the second death– should pass over the believer. Then he ascended to heaven leaving the disciples and the 11 remaining missionaries with the task of spreading the gospel into the whole world.
This should have been to point where they went off to accomplished the great things that lead to the rise of the church. But it wasn’t. He gave them another assignment a prerequisite to qualify for the first. First, they were to tarry in Jerusalem until the feast of Pentecost. These Christian men, whose faith was rocked by Jesus death, who had seen him rise into the sky and vanish, were like the lump of wax taken down from the cupboard.
That’s not to say they lacked the Torah. They were well versed in the Torah and prophets. They had been with Yeshua as he debated the Sectarian Sephards and Chiefs among the Rabbis, Scribes and Kohenim. But with regard to the new covenant and the Law of Grace, the new Torah Rachem, written in the blood of Meshiach–they were unlit and unprepared.
But on the day of Pentecost, tongues of fire fell on them, severally. They received a supernatural presence of the Ruach haKodesh and the power to become sons of God. The power and presence to share the gospel with boldness and world transforming results.
The question: When does a lump of wax and string become a candle? The answer: When the fire is applied.
When does a believer become a minister? When haEsh haRuach Elohim² ignites him, and never before.
¹ יהוֹשעַ הנזרי
² האשא הרוח אלהים
Amen!