What exactly happened at the first Christian Pentecost? The honest answer is that we don’t know. The wind, the fire, and the tongues defy scientific explanation. We are dealing here with extraordinary phenomena which defy description. But ultimately these supernatural phenomena are not important. For the key question we need to ask is not so much ‘What happened?’ as ‘What does it mean?’ This was the question asked by the crowd: “Amazed and confused, they kept asking each other, ‘What does this mean?’” (Acts 2.12). As Peter went on to explain, this was the day when God poured out his Spirit on young and old, men and women, people from every race and nation. There was nothing monochrome about the new community which the Spirit created – instead there was rich diversity within the new fellowship of the Spirit.

The final paragraph of Paul Beasley-Murray’s blog.