Since four is midway between one and seven, both the Lampstand and the feast of Pentecost may be interpreted as symbols of a midpoint experience, a turning point in our Christian experience. The person who has come thus far with Christ has "tasted the good Word of God, and the powers of the world to come." He is fully at rest neither in the soulish realm nor in the spirit realm. He is torn between the world and the fullness of resurrection life in Christ.

When we are referring to the Lampstand (Pentecostal) experience of receiving the Spirit, with the accompanying speaking in tongues, as being a midpoint in Christian growth, we are speaking of a certain amount of experience at this stage of the life in the Spirit.

A person can accept Christ, be covered with the Passover blood by faith, be healed in his body, be baptized in water, be born again, be baptized in the Holy Spirit, prophesy, share in the Lord's Supper—all in one evening. He also can reject his experience the next day. It would not be true that this person had come to a midpoint place in Christian development even though he had been baptized with the Spirit of God.

So when we are associating the Lampstand with a halfway experience in Christ we mean after the believer has had the opportunity to live for a while on the Pentecostal level of Christian growth.

Each of the elements of the Tabernacle of the Congregation (and of the Levitical feasts) and their counterparts in our Christian life may be thought of as being a concept on a particular level on an ascending spiral. We keep working at that concept on the level the Holy Spirit is stressing to us personally at a given moment. We may then leave that lesson and go on to another. Later we may come again to that particular concept, but this time it is on a higher level.

The Lampstand (Pentecostal) experience is like that. Although we may attend a "Pentecostal" church and have been doing so for many years, this is no guarantee that we have learned all there is to know about how to live in obedience to the Spirit of God.

The development of Pentecost in our lives means we have received the baptism in God's Holy Spirit and are ministering, in whatever capacity Christ has assigned to us, with the anointing of God on our life. It also means we are coming under the control of the law of the Spirit of life and are learning to live twenty-four hours of each day in obedience to the Spirit of the Lord.

Keeping in mind the idea of having a few years of "Lampstand experience," Pentecost can be likened to a halfway mark, a spiritual "adolescence." The believer no longer is a "child." Perhaps he is not a battle-wise saint as yet.

He may find that he no longer is content to remain on the plane of the happy spiritual lamb whose Christian experience consists of joyful choruses and good times in church social activities; although musical and social activities may prove to be necessary stages in his growth and development into the full stature of Christ and he may continue to enjoy them throughout his life.

To be continued.