4 And while staying with them he ordered them not to depart from Jerusalem, but to wait for the promise of the Father, which, he said, “you heard from me; 5 for John baptized with water, but you will be baptized with the Holy Spirit not many days from now.”
Just moments before Jesus’ ascension to heaven, He exhorted his disciples to wait for the promise of the Father, to be baptized with the Holy Spirit. That’s key mark of two baptisms, one is water baptism , and the other Spirit baptism.
But this is so confusing, what’s baptism with the Holy Spirit. One of my prof Bill argued because the Spirit was not given yet, therefore this happens twice, but after the Spirit had been poured out, then we have one combo when one is converted. I tend to agree and that makes sense.
Another prof, “I take the baptism of the Spirit here to refer to the day of Pentecost, when the apostles are empowered by the Spirit to preach the gospel to all nations. Paul speaks of this in 1 Cor 12:13, when he speaks of all Christians (not some!) being empowered or equipped for ministry within the church. I don’t take it to be a second blessing, or some kind of distinct experience of the Spirit. I take it to refer to what happens to every Christian at the moment that they become a Christian (i.e., are united to Christ by the Spirit and through faith).
1 Corinthians 12:. 13 For in one Spirit we were all baptized into one body—Jews or Greeks, slaves or free—and all were made to drink of one Spirit.
In one Spirit, we were ALL baptized into one body. I agree.
But what Acts 19 in what Paul dealt with the disciples raised a lot of questions:
Acts 19:1–7 (ESV)
19 And it happened that while Apollos was at Corinth, Paul passed through the inland country and came to Ephesus. There he found some disciples.2 And he said to them, “Did you receive the Holy Spirit when you believed?” And they said, “No, we have not even heard that there is a Holy Spirit.” 3 And he said, “Into what then were you baptized?” They said, “Into John’s baptism.” 4 And Paul said, “John baptized with the baptism of repentance, telling the people to believe in the one who was to come after him, that is, Jesus.” 5 On hearing this, they were baptized in the name of the Lord Jesus. 6 And when Paul had laid his hands on them, the Holy Spirit came on them, and they began speaking in tongues and prophesying. 7 There were about twelve men in all.
Paul found some DISCIPLES. They are believers in Christ, and even disciples.
Then interestingly Paul asked them the first question “Did you receive the Holy Spirit when you believed?” When Paul asked that, it implies one can believe without receiving the Holy Spirit. (I would argue that’s baptism of the Holy Spirit. There is no way, one does not receive the Holy Spirit when one believes in Jesus. Besides, the next question is telling).
When the disciple said no, they had not even heard there is a Holy Spirit. Then Paul asked, “Into what then were you baptized?” They were then baptized in the Name of the Lord Jesus. Now this is WELL after the Pentecost, when the Spirit was given to the world.
The disciples said they were baptized into John’s baptism. In today’s language, it means water, but they were not baptized into the Name of Jesus. Only then Paul baptized them in other Name of Jesus Christ! But that’s a separate experience after their conversion, and frankly that’s what we call water baptism. Because we are baptized into the Name of Jesus. I am surprised those disciples were baptized in John’s baptism, and not in Jesus Name?? And that’s well after Jesus resurrection and the Pentecost! Well, doctrines matter!
v6 is the charismatic giftings, Paul laid hands on them, the Holy Spirit came upon them and they spoke in tongues. I believe and can accept its two different distinct processes.
If we conclude: When one believes in Jesus Christ and accepts Him, he is baptized in the Spirit? But why then did Paul ask them did you receive the Holy Spirit when you believed?
However, the operations of giftings will require a separate laying on of hands. The Spiritual gifts as listed below like utterance of wisdom, healing, miracles, prophecy, distinguishing spirits, tongues…are all valid, and I think they don’t have to be tied into the term “Baptized with the Holy Spirit” to own those gifts.
1 Corinthians 12:1–11 (ESV)
Now concerning spiritual gifts, brothers, I do not want you to be uninformed…
4 Now there are varieties of gifts, but the same Spirit; 5 and there are varieties of service, but the same Lord; 6 and there are varieties of activities, but it is the same God who empowers them all in everyone. 7 To each is given the manifestation of the Spirit for the common good. 8 For to one is given through the Spirit the utterance of wisdom, and to another the utterance of knowledge according to the same Spirit, 9 to another faith by the same Spirit, to another gifts of healing by the one Spirit, 10 to another the working of miracles, to another prophecy, to another the ability to distinguish between spirits, to another various kinds of tongues, to another the interpretation of tongues. 11 All these are empowered by one and the same Spirit, who apportions to each one individually as he wills.
Don’t let the world reduce Jesus to be naturalist from supernatural. That’s what the devil wants to as well, manifested through their worldly engaging cultural sophisticated thinkers coming down from the European Enlighten period of 1900’s till today. It emerges or rears its ugly head in various forms, like majoring in social justice, Santa clause, being culturally engaged and whatever that will captivate you, except the supernatural. This is whats called being a naturalist Church! Bringing the supernatural transcendent God into a mere mortal man naturalist mindset. Sad. l have to admit, many churches carries a form of naturalist in conformity to the world or even blunter, the devil.
The church has no business in reducing the supernatural of Jesus to the naturalist. Where do they get the power or authority to do that ??? In whose name?
Gospel is supernatural. For anyone passionately defending the gospel like Paul did, I would add that, Paul’s gospel precisely includes the supernatural, and in fact it defines him and his ministry.
To say the gifts of God has ceased, is like saying only second to those time of enlightenment, or scholastics period of reformation, who did everything to remove anything supernatural from Jesus. We will leave it to another big discussion on cessationist and continuaist camps.
However, the enlightenment scholastics theologians postulate that , for example, when Jesus walked on water, it was only an optical illusion, in the name of critical scholarship, they said. Or they color code the entire bible, highlighting all the passages that carries verses showing supernatural works of Jesus, and remove them from the Bible accordingly. That abomination will definitely be facing a resolute judgement from God in the eschatological age when Christ returns in no uncertain terms! They will not get away with that. Deceiving thousands or millions, they will not be able to call it a day. In fact, God already knew even before the creation of this world, or the foundation of the world.
But what about today? Many churches theology has said that the supernatural has essentially ceased. To me and millions of charismatics, that sounds akin to what the critical scholastics have done to the gospel of Jesus Christ! What the scholastics did to Jesus by humanizing him, is exactly what some evangelicals have done to naturalizing the church! Reducing the supernatural church to a naturalist version of the supernatural church. No wonder the fastest church growing movement, by far, is the Pentecostal and charismatic movement round the globe, leaving the intellectual doctrinal rich evangelical reformed world panting in breath from behind.
While the latter basks in theology and thinking, and able to talk with the culture, racism, image of God, depravity, justification, sanctification, the former knows next to nothing of what I listed, and yet continue to far outgrow the latter. Why? That’s where theology gets sunk unfortunately . People needs an easily digestible spiritual diet and the manifestation of all the miracles working Christ in the gospels. Their churches church today simply repeats what Christ has done on the supernatural, albeit to a smaller scale, but their heartbeat in in the right direction.
The conclusion is many in evangelical world doesn’t have what the charismatics have, while the charismatics do not have what the reformed has. We need to combine them both, and can you imagine the revival that’s going to hit us??
I have not even begun to understand it, or feel it. But I can feel it in my spirit.
Come Holy Spirit!
This worship on Did you know Mary? Brings out some beautiful powerful miracles of Jesus healing the blind, raised the cripple, brought joy to the oppressed. All of these are actions.
Go and give it a listen and watch the video. Its epic.
Wait for my book “The Congruent Power of The Spirit & Reformed Theology”.
Things will just get better. If it’s not, there will always be something else that bugs you because its craving to get your attention, affection. And if you don’t get that, you lose your pease and joy because that’s what you want, and that you put that thing above God. That’s what Augustine called as “Disordered love”. It is not that you don’t love God, but you love something else more than God in your life at times. At times, you are fine. It’s just something, you need to struggle through. Like career, passion, lust, money etc., definitely something to get right before God. There is no black and white answer, but it’s a heart condition and leading of the Spirit. That’s why love the Lord with all your HEART, not just mind.
Augustine struggled a lot over his anguish over his struggle over lust for women, to dedication to the Lord. He feels guilty and shamed about himself, and his anguish knows no bound. The intensity of that is pulpable.
If you are not struggling over your love for God or others at all, you probably have not stepped into the meaning of love the Lord with all your heart and mind. Struggle is common and a given in our carnal bodies and mind. Our hearts are depraved, we need the Spirit of God and grace of God working in our lives to deliver us. In fact I would argue that a deeper anguish and struggle in a person’s life over this, is probably a good indication of a deeper work of the Holy Spirit working in his or her life. Because it goes deeper, and hence the deeper struggle. However, a superficial struggle or no struggle at all, worse still, it’s not a good sign, it simply means that you haven’t opened up much tot eh Lord. He is not yet very much Lord over your life, in which case. If so, there is some meditation, retrospection to go through in your life, as we all are , from time to time, I am sure. So no shame, no guilt, but it’s something we need to acquire for sure. It’s for the soul sanity and peace.
All the best, guys. Any question, you can message this post. Also follow my tiktok:
We have seen the absolute upheaval of US politics impact upon the evangelical church community. Catholic and Protestants alike are impacted and the call of Christ for the church to respond has manifested , ironically, in very different emphasis.
From racism, social justice to abortion, transgender, sexuality, we have seen a whole host of different responses.
While the Reformed churches have focused on the fight against racism, social justice, more in line with American liberals’ worldview, but the rest of the evangelical community like charismatics and the evangelicals have been on the lone vocal fight against abortion, transgenderism, sexuality LBGT more in line with the Catholics ironically.
There had been an uproar of hands up in the air, when the Trump administration showed racism in name calling of, example, Chinese flu, then China flu, that caused a backlash of racism against Asian Americans community. The uproar is pulpable. This is understandable and it’s a disgrace what we saw some of the racism against the blacks, Asians etc.
However, when we see the abortions pushed by Biden, sexuality transgenderism etc., there had almost been an eerie silence from the same church leaders, scholars that criticized Trump’s acts of racism, narcissism, and women down talking.
Christians are trapped in a tug of war for righteousness and justice divide depending on your denomination or background
Evangelicals and charismatics will fight the sexuality , religious rights , abortion and underaged condoms distribution in schools’ issues vehemently (righteousness), but not much on social justice and racism (justice).
While the reformed fights racism (justice) and a tiny bit abortion.
There you go. Our Christendom dilemma in America.
We should fight for righteousness and justice together as they are the foundations of our God
Psalm 89: 14 Righteousness and justice are the foundation of Your throne; Mercy and truth go before You.
That’s the Word of God. Christians will have to voice up against all the social, ills of our society to be a hill that shines in this world of darkness. To not to shine, is failure to witness for Christ. Jesus called us to shine in the world. To be in the world, but not of the world. To do anything less than that, is not being a good ambassador for Christ.
Abraham Kuyper will push for all out witnessing for Christ in our secular society. Though many disagree with him exactly how we do that, his famous quote “ Not a square inch of the land is not mine—Christ” is famously quoted all over. Kuyper is really calling for equality sharing of all secular power by all religions as in the Netherlands. This has good and bad. In our US scene, there is clearly a persecution going on in the submerging of our Christian views and ethos, by whoever is in power. Even among Christians, the interpretation of scriptures can be twisted to whatever they hearts crave. For the so called liberals, mostly among the Democrats, their call is very much in line with the liberal values like abortion, women’s rights, anti-racism. You see it’s a mixed bag. Anti-racism can be shared among all Christians with no problem. However, stuff like Critical Race Theory is so controversial that Christians are split. Even among, theologians themselves. It’s beyond the scope of this article to deal with it.
However, suffice to say that it is time for Christians to unite under the two brands:
“Righteousness” and Justice”, which are the foundation of the Lord our God
Psalm 89: 14 Righteousness and justice are the foundation of Your throne; Mercy and truth go before You.
I believe before we debate anything, let’s do sound exegesis from the scripture texts, not from some philosophy books, articles of the latest days. But let the scriptures of God’s words be our absolute final referee. Every one of us has to submit to the authority of the scriptures, or else there is no church.
There should be no choosing of between righteousness or justice. God is passionate about both, and we likewise will have to follow suit. We want to be the voice of championing for the poor, marginalized, as well as for the people who are created in the image of God in terms of skin color, unborn babies, and the sexuality as all are created by God. Similarly, we will have to do justice based on scripture, and not the latest fad.
Jesus healed the sick in the gospels, he raised the dead, he opened the eyes of the blind, he raised the crippled, he cleansed the leper, he did all these miracles!
He said “go and make disciples of all nations and teach them to do everything I’ve taught you”.
Matthew 28:19–20 19 Go, therefore, and make disciples of all the nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit, 20 teaching them to follow all that I commanded you; and behold, I am with you always, to the end of the age.”
And he said “you shall do greater things than me! John 14:12 12 Truly, truly I say to you, the one who believes in Me, the works that I do, he will do also; and greater works than these he will do; because I am going to the Father.
Did you see that? Jesus said, “greater works than these you will do.” Why is Jesus saying all these? He wants you to be moving in the supernatural! Folks!
Matthew 17:17–20 17 And Jesus answered and said, “You unbelieving and perverse generation, how long shall I be with you? How long shall I put up with you? Bring him here to Me.” 18 And Jesus rebuked him, and the demon came out of him, and the boy was healed at once.19 Then the disciples came to Jesus privately and said, “Why could we not cast it out?” 20 And He said to them, “Because of your meager faith; for truly I say to you, if you have faith the size of a mustard seed, you will say to this mountain, ‘Move from here to there,’ and it will move; and nothing will be impossible for you.”
The disciples were trying to cast out demon from a boy who was demonized but couldn’t cast him out and when Jesus came , He cast the demon out with a word! They asked Lord why they couldn’t cast him out and Jesus said this kind only come out with prayer and fasting etc. and taught them about faith like a mustard seed.
The point is that Jesus wants his disciples to cast out demons; Jesus wants his disciples to lay hands on the sick and the sick to be healed.
Look at Peter ,James and John, look at apostle Paul everywhere he went he laid hands and healed the sick. He cast out demons by at a word to cast out of that woman that demonic spirit got out of the girl. Peter’s shadow healing people!
Some people argue though this is Apostolic age and we are not anymore. Okay give me a verse that says that Jesus said “You shall do all that I’m doing, you shall do greater things up till the apostles, and after that no more.”
Lol, I don’t see that in my Bible I don’t know which version you’re reading it isn’t in there.
My point is this there’s far greater significance then just healing the sick which is huge I mean if that person got cancer go and see all good doctors and can’t get the healing what do you do? The person goes to God ,only God can heal the person. What about blind people you know there’s so many problems in this world, we need the restoration of God, this mankind needs God’s restoration and who can do that restoration? Only the God who breathed life into us on the first place Genesis chapter 2 God used dust made into a man which is Adam and God breathed into that man and it became Adam.
Genesis 2:7 7 Then the Lord God formed the man of dust from the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and the man became a living person.
So my point is that the person who is going to heal us is going to be the one who created us. This is a lot of implications for us today. Reformed theologians and pastors have given in certain things like LBGT as just a given accepted fact in the name of the Kingdom of God, and you can’t help it. This is like inviting Christians to live in a semi defeated life in the face of the glorious promises of God in Christ Jesus. Try saying that to the crippled that Jesus raised, try saying that to th eblind that Jesus popend the eyes, try saying that to the woman bleeding for years whoim Jesus healed on an instant.
1 Now a certain man was sick: Lazarus of Bethany, the village of Mary and her sister Martha. 2 And it was the Mary who anointed the Lord with ointment, and wiped His feet with her hair, whose brother Lazarus was sick. 3 So the sisters sent word to Him, saying, “Lord, behold, he whom You love is sick.” 4 But when Jesus heard this, He said, “This sickness is not meant for death, but is for the glory of God, so that the Son of God may be glorified by it.”
John Chapter 11 Verse 11 says now there was a certain man who was sick Lazarus in the village of Marianne her sister mother so the sisters sent word to Jesus saying, “Lord behold he whom you love is sick.” When Jesus heard this he said the sickness is not to end in death but for the glory of God so that the son of God may be glorified by it.
Now this is very significant. Jesus talked like he’s so sure that Lazarus who was sick would not die. The question is how does he know? I would analyze it this way, Jesus it’s not about being sure, Jesus is about being the author of life. Jesus did not have to second guess what’s going to happen to Lazarus. In essence Jesus got to decide what is going to happen to Lazarus. This is very significant because it deals with the predestination of God and the sovereignty of God. You see in Genesis chapter one when God created the heavens and the earth, he came to the creation of man.
Genesis 1:26 (NASB 2020)
26 Then God said, “Let Us make mankind in Our image, according to Our likeness; and let them rule over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the sky and over the livestock and over all the earth, and over every crawling thing that crawls on the earth.”
Moses wrote this that God said “let us make men in our image”. Who is us here? Who is our image? He can’t be talking about God talking to angels let’s make man in our image, because angels are only created being, and God is the creator. So it must be God talking to someone on par or inequality with he himself!
And that is God the Father talking to the God the Son and to God the Holy Spirit. Then the words let us make man in our image would make sense because Father Son and Holy Spirit are all equal in the Trinitarian godhead therefore they are the same. So it makes sense that God said let us make man in our image. Angels has no power to make men. They themselves are created beings like men. God cannot be talking to angels let us make men, no!
So Jesus spoke into being what’s going to happen to Lazarus. In fact after hearing the request to go to heal him, Jesus intentionally stayed two more days on his journey to see Lazarus. And that exactly accomplished his purpose. Because by that time Lazarus has been dead for four days by the time Jesus got there. We have to understand Jesus is the author of life. Have you heard the story of a group of people debating what Shakespeare means in his very profound deep literature in a room, imagine if Shakespeare walks right into the room and told everyone that this is what he means in his literature in his story. I’m telling you the debate is over, it is settled. Why? Because the author of the literature or story has just walked into the room. In the same way Jesus is the author of life, he is not just a helper of life, or healer of life. He writes our story. That’s why the word history is really His story.
I want to encourage you today; how important it is to see the absolute sovereignty and authority of our Lord Jesus Christ. Jesus intentionally waited until Lazarus gone dead, so that it gives him an opportunity to be glorified, so that God can be glorified because Jesus was going to raise Lazarus from the death. Next story I will share more but today be encouraged to know every time we pray to our God, he listens and he’s never surprised, he knows exactly what to do, in fact he determines the story, the overall big level scheme picture. He does not determine the finite details of our life of course, but he sets the destiny, the outcome of the world and our lives in this world.
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