A Tree Laden with Fruit
A follow-up to Tongues, Meaning, and the Limits of Language
I ended my last post with a question rather than a conclusion.
The question was not whether speaking in tongues is meaningful. It is. The deeper question was whether the Church has quietly narrowed its expectations of prayer to what can be analysed, translated, and explained - and whether in doing so we have settled for less than Paul was pointing us toward.
I was not expecting an answer right then. But last night I had a dream.
I saw a tree made of twisted gold wire. It was not a natural tree - almost like a menorah, laid out in a flattened two-dimensional form rather than growing freely into space. Its branches spread out in seven main directions. And hanging from those branches were dozens of luminous fruits: translucent green spheres with a golden shimmer, like hollow marbles filled with light. The image zoomed-in to a shimmering fruit on the top right branch of the tree.
The fruits were packed so closely together they almost touched. The tree seemed laden, heavy with harvest. I did not count them in the dream, but as I woke thinking of the image, the feeling was that there should be fifty.
Fifty.
The number immediately brought Pentecost to mind.
Biblical Imagery and Pentecost
Numbers in Scripture are rarely arbitrary.
The Feast of Pentecost occurs fifty days after Passover. Seven weeks are completed - forty-nine days in total - and then comes the fiftieth day. The pattern appears elsewhere too. The Jubilee year follows seven cycles of seven years: forty-nine years completed, and then comes the fiftieth, a year of liberation, restoration, and return.
Fifty is not simply the next number after forty-nine. It represents the completion of a cycle and the opening of something new. Completeness.
At Sinai, fifty days after the Exodus, Israel received the Torah. At Pentecost, fifty days after the resurrection, the Spirit was poured out. The pattern is the same: a season of preparation reaches its fullness, and God gives a gift.
When I fully came round, I did a bit of research on the imagery and discovered the old Jewish mystical tradition connected with this number.
The Fifty Gates of Understanding
In Jewish tradition there is a teaching concerning the Sha'arei Binah - the Fifty Gates of Understanding.
Binah, "Understanding", is one of the highest sephirot on the Kabbalistic Tree of Life. If Chokhmah is the flash of wisdom, Binah is the unfolding of that wisdom into something fully formed. It is often described as the womb of understanding: the place where insight develops into reality, where the seed of wisdom becomes a living thing. Because creation itself unfolds through divine wisdom, Binah becomes associated with the deep structures through which reality can be comprehended. The fifty gates are the fifty levels, dimensions, or aspects of divine understanding through which the whole of creation can be perceived.
The Talmud teaches that Moses attained forty-nine of these gates - but not the fiftieth:
Fifty gates of understanding were created in the world, and all were given to Moses except one. (Rosh Hashanah 21b)
The implication is that the fiftieth gate is out of reach - a humbling reminder of human limits. However, not forever limited - the promises of scripture show that it was being held in reserve. Moses could not pass through it because the time had not yet come. What no individual, however great, could attain by wisdom or devotion alone, God was keeping for a moment of his own choosing - a gift to be poured out, not earned. And at Pentecost, that is precisely what happened. The gate that stood closed before the greatest prophet in Israel's history was thrown open to fishermen, to women, to a frightened group of disciples in an upper room. Not because they had reached it, but because God poured himself through it.
What fascinates me is how some mystical commentators describe that fiftieth gate. It is not merely another piece of information. It is not one more fact to add to a collection of facts. Rather, it represents direct participation in divine life. One cannot possess it as an object of knowledge. One must be transformed by it.
That distinction struck me with force, because it mirrors something that appears throughout Scripture.
Knowledge alone is never the goal. The goal is communion.
The prophets did not merely receive information about God. They encountered him. The apostles did not leave Pentecost with a new theory. They left transformed. And that is precisely what the fiftieth gate points toward - not understanding truth at a distance, but participating in it. Not merely hearing the Word, but becoming united to the One who speaks it.
Which strongly connected with what I saw in a vision/picture last Sunday.
Fire Spreading Across the Nations
Our church was sending out Sarah Casson.
Sarah previously worshipped at Holy Trinity Richmond before serving with Wycliffe Bible Translators and SIL. She worked in the Democratic Republic of Congo, teaching translation at Shalom University and working directly on Bible translation into local Congolese languages - work through which the Omri people came to have Scripture in their own tongue. She has since moved to developing translation resources in French for African translators working in remote regions, people who often have little access to biblical and exegetical materials in their language.
During the service, we gathered around her and prayed.
As I prayed, I saw an image.
I saw the fire of Pentecost spreading across a surface - like flames filmed in slow motion rippling across oil or petrol, pouring outward from a central source in all directions at once, not advancing in a single line but fanning out like a living thing. The leading edge of the flame was the missionary frontier. It was the places where the Spirit's work was arriving for the first time.
Then something struck me with unusual force.
The conference Sarah was travelling to would be working on the book of Acts. People would hear Peter's Pentecost sermon in their own language - for the first time.
I still find it hard to write that without emotion.
We often read Acts 2 as a historical event. The Spirit falls. The apostles speak. The crowd hears in many languages. But for many language communities around the world, Pentecost is still unfolding. Each time Scripture enters a language that has never possessed it before, people hear the mighty works of God in their own tongue - not merely reading about Pentecost, but participating in its continuing outworking.
The miracle continues. Not always through supernatural speech. Sometimes through decades of painstaking linguistic labour: through translators, teachers, editors, missionaries, apostles - people like Sarah. The same Spirit who enabled the first Apostles to speak is still enabling people to hear.
From Pentecost to Revelation
While looking back through our church posts about Sarah, I came across a thank-you video from Wycliffe - sent after a summer Gift Day donation, part of a relationship our church has sustained over many years. In it a few verses appeared on screen in the Lese language of the DRC.
At first glance it is exactly what it is - Scripture in a language I cannot read, from a people I had never heard of, carrying words I know by heart. The passage was Revelation 7:9-10.
After this I looked, and behold, a great multitude that no one could number, from every nation, from all tribes and peoples and languages, standing before the throne and before the Lamb...
The significance of that struck me immediately.
Acts 2 and Revelation 7 are bookends.
At Pentecost, the nations hear. In Revelation, the nations worship. At Pentecost, the Gospel crosses linguistic boundaries for the first time. In Revelation, every tribe, people, nation and language stands together before the throne. Pentecost is the beginning. Revelation is the completion.
Bible translation stands directly between those two moments. Every new translation is a bridge between Acts 2 and Revelation 7. Every language reached is opening the 50th door a bit further. Every new Christian filled with the Holy Spirit is a participation in the fruit of Pentecost.
Which brings me back to the dream.
A Tree Laden with Fruit
A golden tree. Seven branches. Roots gripping a rock. Fifty luminous fruits.
The more I reflected, the more the symbolism seemed to converge and fill out the dream image.
The branches evoke the Menorah - itself a golden tree of light, the lampstand that was to burn continually in the presence of God.
The fifty fruits evoke Pentecost and the Fifty Gates of Understanding - the completeness of what God has poured out and is still pouring out.
And the fruits themselves evoke something richer still. At one level they are the nations - distinct fruits, distinct languages, distinct peoples, yet all drawing life from the same tree, all luminous with the same light. But fruit in Scripture is never merely numerical. Paul's list in Galatians is not a catalogue of achievements but a description of what the Spirit produces in a life yielded to him: love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control. The harvest God is gathering across the nations is not simply headcount. It is Christlikeness - the image of the Son being formed in people from every tongue and tribe.
The image from prayer had shown flames - fire spreading, mission advancing, the Gospel moving outward. But the dream showed fruit. Not movement, but fulfilment. Not the sowing, but the final harvest. The fire had already done its work, and the fruit was ripe.
The promise of Pentecost was never simply tongues of fire. The promise was: I will pour out my Spirit on all flesh. The goal was always the gathering of the nations - the healing of Babel, the formation of one family from every tribe, people and language. A tree so laden with fruit that the branches can scarcely hold any more. The fullness of the Gentiles, a great multitude that no one can number.
In my last post I asked whether the Church has settled for too little - whether we have quietly confined our expectations of the Spirit to what is ordinary, analysable, and safe. But I wonder if the same question runs deeper still. Are we content to understand Pentecost as something that happened once, rather than something that is still happening - still spreading outward, still blowing opening that fiftieth door, still bringing people from every nation into direct participation in divine life?
The fire still spreads. The translators still labour. The gift of tongues still flows. The nations are still hearing.
But perhaps, every now and then, God grants us a glimpse of the harvest.
Last night, I think I saw this in a tree heavy with fruit.
Sarah Casson serves with SIL and Wycliffe Bible Translators. Holy Trinity Richmond remains her sending church. You can find out more about her work at htr.church/mission-partners.
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