Aunty, what is the “latter rain” I hear so much about?
16 February 2025 |
Dear Aunt Sevvy,
All of my life I’ve been hearing about the latter rain. The early rain is said to be the Holy Spirit poured out at Pentecost. But what is the latter rain?
Signed, Pluviophile
Dear Pluviophile,
In Palestine’s warmish Mediterranean climate a big rain came in the autumn to germinate the seed, then another period of rain in spring to fill out the crop. The passages describing this have been applied homiletically to the work of the Holy Spirit, with the early rain said to have fallen on the day of Pentecost.
Various church leaders through history have claimed that their movement was the falling of the latter rain—and naturally, Ellen White said the latter rain would be the Advent movement.
Adventists have a severe case of main character syndrome: to this day, many of us believe that the latter rain will be a miraculous happening when all the honest people in the world will suddenly discover the Seventh-day Adventist church and start bowing in the direction of Silver Spring. Aunty isn’t sure why they think that: Ellen White said it hadn’t happened in her time, because “we have preached the law until we are as dry as the hills of Gilboa”—and there’s been no significant improvement since then.
Aunty loves a good illustration as much as anyone, but the Old Testament references and the single New Testament reference to the early and latter rains appear in context to be about agriculture: a blessing to Palestine’s farmers when the rains came, and sometimes drought as a punishment (Jeremiah 3:3). Aunty doubts that the Holy Spirit will magically turn everyone into vegetarian Sabbath-keeping tithe-payers just because we tell them we’re the only true church and everyone else is wrong—while we freeze women out of leadership and push LGBTQ people out the door. Jesus said the world will know our faith by our love—not our fundamental beliefs.
Aunt Sevvy
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