“Have ye received the Holy Ghost since ye believed?” Acts 19:2. The question, fired as a broadside from the pulpit of Paul the Apostle, sent consternation through the hearts of his spell-bound Ephesian audience. It brought also the gasp of dismayed confession: “‘We have not so much as heard whether there be any Holy Ghost.” Acts 19:2.
In the course of his missionary journeys Paul had
come to the upper coast of Ephesus. There he found
certain disciples, and preached earnestly to them.
They had a degree of Truth. They had been baptized
in water unto John’s baptism; but much was yet
lacking. During the course of Paul’s message, he
apparently noted the lack of glory upon the faces of
his audience. The sheen of the Spirit was missing
from their countenances. ‘‘Amens” and “‘Hallelujahs”
flowed weakly and sluggishly, if at all; and the fire at
the point of contact between pulpit and pew was
missing. - With the hand of an expert, Paul laid his finger
upon the trouble. And, as sure as you live, he laid it
also upon the trouble in ninety-nine out of every
hundred of our Churches today.
Concise, direct, searching and with no mincing of
words he flung out the question of the hour. 152 Tue Hoty SPIRIT
“Have ye received the Holy Ghost since ye believed?”
Would God that he could stand in some of the fashionable pulpits in our great cities today and thunder the same question! Answering with the truthfulness of the Ephesians, many of us would be forced to reply with them:
“We have not so much as heard whether there be a Holy Ghost.”
Not heard?
Who then is to blame? The preacher? The Theological Seminary?
Certainly not the Lord! He is still on the giving hand; and the Comforter is come to abide forever!
Not heard?
We have our Bibles and we of today still live in the Dispensation of the Holy Ghost, the Teacher divine.
Yet, how few of us have heard a sermon really devoted to the constructive preaching of the Holy Ghost. We have heard negative references scorning the doctrine. We have heard sermons attempting to explain away the power of Pentecost in the present day. But, otherwise, comparatively few ever hear the name of the Holy Spirit mentioned except in benediction or at a wedding ceremony.
Ask the average Christian: ‘“Who or what is the Holy Ghost?” he will probably answer: “He is a divine influence, a mystical, mythical urge or impulse toward that which is good.” He will tell you that we no longer live in the same dispensation as did the saints of the New Testament Church.
Does he ever pause to ask himself, “If I am not living in the Dispensation of the Holy Ghost, in what period do I live?”
The Dispensation of the Father, as recorded in the Old Testament, has come and gone.
The years unfolding the life of Jesus Christ upon earth in the flesh opened with His birth at Bethlehem and closed with His ascension.
Then followed the Dispensation of the Holy Spirit, a dispensation embracing the entire Church Age — the period of preaching the Gospel unto every creature (Mark 16:15), and continuing until ‘‘this same Jesus, which is taken up from you into heaven, shall so come in like manner’ Acts 1:11.
Christ has not yet returned. His Spirit has not been withdrawn. We still live in the Dispensation of the Holy Spirit, and are heir to the same fulness of promise enjoyed by saints of old.
The Ephesian believers who had been baptized into John’s baptism were immediately re-baptized adding the name of Jesus and then, according to Acts 2:38, they were ready for the deeper work of grace. We read accordingly:
“When Paul had laid his hands upon them, the Holy Ghost came on them; and they spake with tongues, and prophesied.”’ Acts 19:6.
Twenty-three years have elapsed since the outpouring on the Day of Pentecost (Acts 2:4); yet, here in distant Asia, we find the Holy Spirit falling upon still other Gentile believers in the selfsame manner and signifying His incoming by the selfsame sign as that employed by God years ago among Jew and Gentile in far off Palestine.
Where is he who declares that the Baptism of the Holy Spirit with attendant signs and wonders was confined to the Day of Pentecost?
One is reminded of the Word of the Lord which came unto Moses saying: ‘“‘See that thou make all things according to the pattern shewed to thee in the mount.” Heb. 8:5. And of the Scripture: “I am the Lord, I change not.”” Malachi 3:6.
Prayerful reading of the Word convinces the student that a deep underlying motive, a permanent and useful meaning, motivated the strange and miraculous manner in which the Lord manifested His out-poured Spirit upon believers throughout those twenty-three recorded years, in those widely divergent lands, and upon those vastly different races.
In the New Testament Mount, the blessed Upper Room upon Mount Zion, about which tenderest memories clustered, the Lord gave His followers a pattern; and subsequent Baptisms of the Holy Spirit were fashioned according to that pattern.
The Lord is neither fickle nor changeable of heart or mind that He should swerve from His course, His method, His plan, thus confusing His children at each turn of the Christian road. He does not establish an order today and change His mind and cancel it tomorrow.
He ordained a plan and a manner of receiving the Baptism of the Holy Spirit, and in the Scriptures there are no indications that that plan has ever been
Tue Hoy Spirit 155 changed. If it was the intention of the Lord to deviate from the original Pentecostal pattern in bestowing His Spirit He either forgot or neglected to mention the contemplated alteration anywhere in His Holy Word.
The fact that the Church at Ephesus spake with other tongues when the Holy Spirit came upon them is interesting in this connection.
If that experience was not a sign intended to accompany the incoming of the Spirit, of what particular benefit was it unto the Ephesians? It is self-evident that there were no foreigners there to necessitate such an experience for missionary purposes. Personally, I can think of no other reason for the speaking in tongues in Acts 19:6 than that it was a distinctive and peculiar evidence which God had ordained as a sign of the incoming of the Spirit.
The Ephesian Church after the coming of the Holy Spirit became deeply spiritual. Paul referred to them as “‘the faithful in Christ Jesus’; they whom the Father “hath blessed with all spiritual blessings in heavenly places in Christ.” Ephesians 1:1, 3.
Had God intended changing His pattern ‘‘given in the mount,’ one would have thought He would have changed it not later than Acts 10:46, with the first Gentile outpouring. Yet, although the Book of Acts is essentially a ‘‘book of patterns,” a ‘‘book of samples,” in which we are usually given but one description of any certain phase of the work, the Lord goes into details upon the express manner in which the Spirit manifested Himself at the time of His incoming upon at least three occasions, and follows the experience through for a good twenty-three years. And, moreover, twenty-six years after the Day of Pentecost, we find Paul setting in order the church which ‘Gg at Corinth” and where “speaking in tongues”’ is
so abundant that while he encourages the Corinthian - Christians by saying: “I would that ye all spake with tongues,” and by shedding an interesting side-light upon his own Spirit-filled experience in which he makes the statement: ‘I speak with tongues more than you all,” he nevertheless admonishes them also to covet to prophesy, that the Church may receive edifying. 1 Cor. 14:18, 19.
Making a provision and establishing a ruling concerning other Churches, besides those specifically mentioned, receiving the same Baptism of the Holy Spirit with the selfsame signs and evidences at even a later date, Paul admonishes ‘Forbid not to speak with tongues.”’ I Cor. 14:39.
As this is a bitterly contested point, and as in this book we take recourse unto no other book than the Bible, it is well to pause for a few moments to take stock of the contentions and the arguments offered by the opponents of this Truth, and of the efforts made to explain away the fact that in the Word of God the sign of “speaking with other tongues” accompanies the incoming of the Spirit.