A Bible teacher who has been mightily used in soul-winning and in
stimulating other Christians to this work, dates his great success from
the time when he learned that the Holy Spirit was the secret of power
in service; he lacked the power, saw the need, asked for the fulness
of the Holy Spirit, by faith believed that God had granted his desire,
went out boldly with no reference to feeling and counted upon the fact
of the Holy Spirit’s work as he gave the message to men. The results
were marvelous, and continued to be as day by day he counted upon this
enduement of the Spirit. Along with this experience came the inevitable
longing to share it with others, for he knew that any Christian might
do as he had done; the blessed result was that many Christians through
him were led into this new life of service. It was natural that this
mighty man of God should take his true and Scriptural experience
and build around it his doctrine of the Holy Spirit and His work
for believers, interpreting the Scriptures by the experience. So he
developed an inclusive doctrinal teaching that the baptism of the Holy
Spirit at Pentecost, and to- in the life of the individual believer,
is for power in service, the evidence of the work being the results in
witnessing.
Another Christian worker had a longing for heart purity and a life free
from any feeling of condemnation because everything was not pleasing to
God. He heard a testimony from a brother who had been in a like state
and had learned that it was not by effort or struggle or trying that he
was to get peace and purity, but by the work of God through the Holy
Spirit coming into or upon the believer and purifying the heart. As the
first mentioned brother did, he asked God for this gift and then by
faith believed that his prayer was answered. The result was an amazing
transformation, a life of joy and liberty which was such a miracle
revelation and so different from the average Christian experience that
many came to him asking for the secret. He told them what had happened,
and he too proceeded to put together his doctrine of the Holy Spirit
and taught that every Christian who was born of the Spirit needed to
seek as a second work the baptism of the Holy Spirit to bring purity of
heart.
There is no question that these brethren experienced the gracious
power of the Holy Spirit. But they did not accurately relate those
experiences to the teachings of the Word.
In John 7:39 is suggested what the fundamental, primary work of the
Holy Spirit was to be, and why He was able to come into the world in
a new way at Pentecost. After our Lord, in the last great day of the
feast, cried, “If any man thirst, let him come unto Me and drink. He
that believeth on Me, as the Scripture hath said, from within him shall
flow rivers of living water,” the apostle explains, “But this spake he
of the Spirit, which they that believed on him were to receive for the
Spirit was not yet given; because Jesus was not yet glorified.”
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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