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"Behold, I send the promise of my
Father upon you: but tarry ye in the city of Jerusalem,
until ye be endued with power from on high" (Luke
24:49). And being assembled together with them, He
commanded them not to depart from Jerusalem, but to wait for
the Promise of the Father, “which,”
He said,
“you have heard from Me; for John truly baptized with water,
but you shall be baptized with the Holy Spirit not many days
from now. . . . [and] you shall
receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you; and
you shall be witnesses to Me in Jerusalem, and in all Judea
and Samaria, and to the end of the earth”
(Acts 1:4-5, 8).
When the Day of Pentecost had fully come, they were all
with one accord in one place. And suddenly there came a
sound from heaven, as of a rushing mighty wind, and it
filled the whole house where they were sitting. Then there
appeared to them divided tongues, as of fire, and one sat
upon each of them. And they were all filled with the Holy
Spirit and began to speak with other tongues, as the Spirit
gave them utterance (Acts 2:1-4).
Do you not know that you are the temple of God and that
the Spirit of God dwells in you (1 Corinthians 3:16)?
And it happened, while Apollos was at Corinth, that Paul,
having passed through the upper regions, came to Ephesus.
And finding some disciples he said to them, “Did you
receive the Holy Spirit when you believed?”
So they said to him, “We have not so much as heard whether
there is a Holy Spirit.”
And he said to them, “Into what then were you baptized?”
So they said, “Into John’s baptism.”
Then Paul said, “John indeed baptized with a baptism of
repentance, saying to the people that they should believe on
Him who would come after him, that is, on Christ Jesus.”
When they heard this, they were baptized in the name of the
Lord Jesus. And when Paul had laid hands on them, the Holy
Spirit came upon them, and they spoke with tongues and
prophesied. (Acts 19:1-6) |
"To the disciples, the baptism of the Spirit was very
distinctly not His first bestowal for regeneration, but the
definite communication of His presence in power of their
glorified Lord. Just as there was a twofold operation of the
one Spirit in the Old and New Testaments, of which the state
of the disciples before and after Pentecost was the striking
illustration, so there may be, and in the great majority of
Christians is, a corresponding difference of experience. . .
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"When once the distinct recognition of what the indwelling
of the Spirit was meant to bring is brought home to the
soul, and it is ready to give up all to be made partaker of
it, the believer may ask and expect what may be termed a
baptism of the Spirit. Praying to the Father in accordance
to the two prayers in Ephesians, and coming to Jesus in the
renewed surrender of faith and obedience, he may receive
such an inflow of the Holy Spirit as shall consciously lift
him to a different level from the one on which he has
hitherto lived." (Andrew Murray) |
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Because I was close to finishing the current book I've been
working on, Spurgeon on Prayer, and because I've been
reading some of Spurgeon's sermons on the Holy Spirit, I
wrote to the powers-that-be at Bridge-Logos and suggested
that we do a book titled, Spurgeon on the Holy Spirit.
Friday I finished the book on prayer, and today I received
the assignment to do the book on the Holy Spirit.
Having Him in mind, I've selected several books for you
that we have on the Holy Spirit, and to them I've added an
extra 10% discount off
our already discounted prices. Just
enter the code HolySpirit
in the voucher box at the bottom of your checkout page in
the Shopping Cart, click the Recalculate button, and the 10%
will be deducted from your total order. The discount is good
for the next 7 days. (Click on
the covers for details.)
Harold J. Chadwick |