Baptism with the Holy Spirit
David Cox’s Topical Bible Concordance
Baptism With the Holy Spirit.
Foretold Eze 36:25
Is through Christ Tit 3:6
Christ administered Mt 3:11; Joh 1:33
Promised to saints Ac 1:5; 2:38,39; 11:16
All saints partake of 1Co 12:13
Necessity for Joh 3:5; Ac 19:2-6
Renews and cleanses the soul Tit 3:5; 1Pe 3:20,21
The Word of God instrumental to Ac 10:44; Eph 5:26
Typified Ac 2:1-4
Summary: Questions about the Baptism of the Holy Spirit
The Baptism of the Holy Spirit is an act whereby God merges us with God. This act is not without its conditions. Because we are sinful, we cannot have communion with God or unite with God, therefore this act is necessary. We are merged into the Body of Christ by means of the Holy Spirit or the Spirit of God’s Holiness. The Spirit is the person of the Trinity that is charged with sanctifying and making holy human beings that are saved. Therefore, the baptism of the Holy Spirit is exactly this being made part of the Body of Christ, being made acceptable for the presence and communion of God.
What is the Baptism of the Holy Spirit? Actually, the Baptism of the Holy Spirit is a total saturation (baptism where the person is not sprinkled with a little water but is totally wet all over) with God’s holiness. This has to be an act that happens at the moment of salvation. Although we still sin, we have the indwelling Spirit of God’s holiness operating within from the moment we believe.
When did it happen? Historically, God cannot save anybody in time until the ultimate sacrifice of Jesus on the Cross was made. People in the Old Testament did not go to heaven but to Paradise, a compartment of the grave. Once that Jesus died and was resurrected, after that all people who are saved go to heaven.
When does it happen today? God baptizes with his Holy Spirit everyone that accepts Jesus as their Savior the moment that they have saving faith.
What confusion is there in this? Very simply, many people (Pentecostals) confuse this baptism of the Holy Spirit with the filling of the Holy Spirit which is a separate thing, which is when a person throws off his sin and lives in righteousness. He has the Holy Spirit manifesting himself through them at that point, and they can be filled with the Spirit.
What are the manifestations of the Baptism of the Holy Spirit? Tongues are a completely separate thing. People who are filled with the Holy Spirit very frequently speak out their new found faith to others. This is a very important aspect of being saved. But in Acts, we see Old Testament believers sliding over into the New Testament dispensation, and God sending this baptizing Spirit into them. They spoke in tongues. Acts 2 is the major passage that defines what speaking in tongues is, and very clearly the key elements are 1) unsaved people present, 2) believes receiving the Holy Spirit for the first time, 3) those believers preaching and witnessing of their Savior to unsaved foreigners that don’t speak their own language. The languages are delineated as to exactly in which languages they spoke.
The problem here is that Acts is a transition between the Old and New Testaments so we cannot assume everything in Acts is for us today. The miracle of speaking in tongues did not happen widely in the New Testament, and outside the first NT books written, it is unilaterally dropped from the Christian experience. 1Corinthians 14 also is the second most important passage and Paul clearly states that tongues will cease. But were a sign for unbelieving Jews that God is judging them, and by a very short period of time in the New Testament, God had set the Jewish nation aside to use the Gentile church instead. Tongues therefore had no reason to exist.
The mystery religions practiced modern tongues which is speaking gibberish. They thought that this was a sign of God in a person. The Acts and Corinthians passages never infer higher spiritual in those that spoke tongues, and even in 1 Corinthians 14, Paul answered the problem of Tongues as a “Problem” that needed to be fixed, and for him, speaking in a language that everybody understood was more valuable that sitting through a service with a lot of preaching in another language that you don’t understand. Well he says, a few words in a language you understand is better than a thousand words in one you don’t.