The Story
He ascends from a hilltop near Bethany while they are still watching Him talk. "It is not for you to know times or seasons that the Father has fixed by his own authority. But you will receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you." A cloud takes Him out of sight. Two angels stand among them and ask, with what reads almost like gentle impatience, "Why do you stand looking into heaven?"
They go back to Jerusalem. They wait. About a hundred and twenty of them — the Eleven, the women, Mary the mother of Jesus, His brothers — gather in an upper room and pray. Ten days pass.
It is the Feast of Weeks — Shavuot in Hebrew, Pentecost in Greek, the fiftieth day after Passover — and Jerusalem is packed with Jewish pilgrims from every nation under heaven. Parthians and Medes and Elamites, Cretans and Arabians, Egyptians and Romans. The streets are a babel of languages.
Then, in the upper room, the sound of a mighty rushing wind fills the house. Tongues — like fire, but not fire — divide and rest on each of them. And they begin to speak in languages they have never learned. They tumble out into the street with this strange, untranslated praise on their lips, and the crowd hears them, each in his own native tongue. "How is it that we hear, each of us in his own native language?"
Peter — the same Peter who six weeks earlier had denied Jesus three times to a teenage servant girl — stands up in the street and preaches the first Christian sermon. He quotes Joel, and Psalm 16, and Psalm 110. He calls them to repent. Three thousand people are baptised that day. The Church is born.
What follows is one of the most extraordinary social movements in human history. Within thirty years, there are house churches in Antioch and Corinth and Ephesus and Rome. Within three hundred, the empire that had crucified Him has His name on its coins. The Twelve scatter to their deaths — almost all of them martyred, all of them holding to what they had seen, none of them willing to recant. Peter is crucified upside down in Rome. Paul is beheaded outside the same city. Thomas dies in India. James the brother of Jesus is thrown from the pinnacle of the temple in Jerusalem and clubbed to death on the stones below.
And the Church keeps moving. Not because of strength. Because the same Spirit who came down with fire on Pentecost is still loose in the world, blowing where He wills, calling people by name out of every tribe and tongue and language and folk into the kingdom of the Carpenter King.
Scripture
And suddenly there came from heaven a sound like a mighty rushing wind, and it filled the entire house where they were sitting. And divided tongues as of fire appeared to them and rested on each one of them. And they were all filled with the Holy Spirit.
Acts 2:2–4 (ESV)
"And in the last days it shall be, God declares, that I will pour out my Spirit on all flesh, and your sons and your daughters shall prophesy, and your young men shall see visions, and your old men shall dream dreams."
Acts 2:17 (ESV)
So those who received his word were baptized, and there were added that day about three thousand souls.
Acts 2:41 (ESV)
And the Lord added to their number day by day those who were being saved.
Acts 2:47 (ESV)
Lyrics
[Intro]
Forty days He walked among them…
Then a cloud received Him up…
And the angels said: "Why gaze at the sky?
He will come again… as He went."
[Verse 1]
I saw them in the upper room,
A hundred and twenty strong,
The fishermen, the mothers, Mary,
Praying all night long.
"Wait," He'd said. "Don't go yet —
The Father has a gift —
You'll be clothed with power from on high,
A wind that will not drift."
[Pre-Chorus]
Then a sound like a mighty rushing wind…
Filled the house where they sat…
And tongues of fire divided down
On the head of every one at that —
[Chorus]
THE FIRE FALLS!
On the sons and on the daughters —
THE FIRE FALLS!
Like the prophet Joel had said —
Every nation, every tongue,
Every old and every young,
Hears the wonders of the Risen One —
The Fire falls! The Fire falls! The Fire falls!
[Verse 2]
Then Peter stood with trembling voice —
The one who once denied —
And preached the Christ they'd crucified
Was risen, glorified!
"Repent! Be baptized in His Name!
The promise is for you!"
And three thousand souls that day
Passed from death to life made new.
[Pre-Chorus 2]
And the gospel started running…
Like a flood across the land…
Through Samaria, through Ethiopia,
Through a Pharisee's upraised hand —
[Chorus]
THE FIRE FALLS!
On the road to Damascus light —
THE FIRE FALLS!
And the blind man gets his sight —
Every chain begins to break,
Every prison starts to quake,
Every heart a holy thirst to slake —
The Fire falls! The Fire falls! The Fire falls!
[Bridge]
Stephen stood before the stones…
And saw the Son stand up for him…
And gave his life with forgiveness on his lips —
"Lord, do not hold this sin…"
And the blood of the martyrs was seed!
And the seed of the saints became a tree!
From the Alps to the Andes to the open sea!
From the slave ships of sorrow to the jubilee!
EVERY CONTINENT! EVERY CENTURY!
EVERY CATHEDRAL! EVERY PRISON CELL!
EVERY TRANSLATOR! EVERY MISSIONARY!
EVERY WHISPERED PRAYER THAT WOULDN'T FALL —
THE GOSPEL! THE GOSPEL! THE GOSPEL GOES ON!
[Final Chorus]
THE FIRE FALLS!
(on you! on me! on we!)
THE FIRE FALLS!
(come now! come now! come see!)
On the ones He called by name,
On the Bride without a shame,
On a people who will never be the same —
The Fire falls! The Fire falls! The Fire falls!
[Outro]
And the Church walks on through every age…
And the lamps are never out…
And the Bride is getting ready…
For the Bridegroom's final shout…
(… a trumpet. far away. growing louder.)
About the song
"The Fire Falls" is the album's last roar before the finale. Pentecost is the moment the story stops being Israel's story and becomes everyone's story — the doors of the upper room blow open and the Church walks out into the world. The chorus is built on the wind and the fire; the bridge belongs to Peter standing on a stone, preaching the sermon he could never have given the week before.