The Baptism of the Holy Spirit 

We received a letter from one of our readers about the baptism of the Holy Spirit and thought it well to address this subject. He wasn’t really asking questions as to how to receive the Spirit, or the baptism, etc. but, that he was confused by mixed feelings about what had happened to him so far, and of course, the mixed doctrines he had been encountering.

Join the crowd. The doctrine of the receiving of the Holy Spirit has been around at least since Christ spoke to his disciples (i.e., John 7:39), and saw abuse early on (i.e., Acts 8:19). The doctrine of "receiving the baptism of the Holy Spirit" is not scriptural, however, and was introduced into mainstream Christianity only about the turn of the last century (late 1800's, early 1900's). If until that time the church had been in the dark about the baptism of the Holy Spirit, new enlightenment focused so intensely on an experience of it that the Holy Scripture scorched under its rays. Running concurrently with the new doctrine of the Holy Spirit was women’s liberation, a true correlation and not a mere coincidence. Long-honored doctrines about church order and comeliness joined the burn pile with other things like male leadership and "proving all things." There were many other ecclesiastical tides coming in at this time, but suffice it to say there has been a common undercurrent towing at church events from then on.

Whatever winds of doctrine the church has sustained, individuals in the church tend to neglect the true Spirit regardless of what wave they are riding. But then again, they neglect faith, hope and love, so what’s all the anxiety about? Isn’t it because the true Holy Spirit has been sent to convict of sin, righteousness, and the judgment to come? (John 16:8, Acts 24:25).

The modern view on the baptism of the Holy Spirit is a synthesis between the new age movement and long-cherished Roman Catholic tradition. In the tradition of the Catholic church and its spin-offs, there has always been a place for the supernatural. They venerate saints who have weird "spiritual" experiences. Miracles, visions, and other sightings of the supernatural have been the stock in trade for the Catholic church from the very beginning. In the tradition of the Holy Roman Church, all power and answers and order are to be found in the Mother Church and Her Graces. If there are mystics, monks and middlemen, they are to be found in that church and that church alone. They recognize the so-called Protestant churches only when they find common ground in spiritual manifestations, which consist of supernatural cruises into the ocean of Catholic experience.

The new age movement, as it has come to be called by modern historians, is nothing more than a return of Native American shamanism mixed with far Eastern mysticism mixed with African voodoo mixed with astrology, psychology, pharmacology and Broadway musicals . However, that is a powerful mixture. It is basically nature worship enhanced by the new physics (that is, quantum mechanics). It all seems so supernatural! Because in the "Age of Reason" the Protestants had put away a lot of beliefs in the supernatural, they were faced with an apparent lack of spiritual gifts (and love) by the time the 1900's came rolling in. Quick on the heels of the new anti-religion came the lust for animistic power without the animism, which is the only thing left once one rejects the truth of Christ.

New societies began to feel empowered. Socially and politically, there was the women’s rights movement. Communism started to take off. Technology was coming into its own. The list could go on and on, but our modern world view was hammered out in those days. Many Christians, knowing the deadness of the church around them, jumped out of the frying pan into the fire. They could join new cults, exercise wild new information given to them directly from God, anything they wanted. Their social gospels were laced with visions and miracles unheard of until this time.

One of these was the phenomenon variously called "receiving the baptism of the Holy Spirit," "second blessing," "power from on high," "the outpouring of the Spirit," "being filled with the Spirit," etc. Pentecostals had a way of telling whether this really happened to a person or not: Speaking in tongues. Instant spirituality. There were problems, embarrassments, but the new age had a place for all of them. Whether or not the church up to this time did not allow women to hold authority over men, the new spirituality allowed them not only this, but some women were actually founding new denominations (witness Aimee Semple MacPherson/Four Square Church and Ellen G. White/Seventh-day Adventists). Much of today’s church dogma has incorporated the theological views espoused by the tongues-speakers (my apologies to Ms. White). Much of it has to do with the imminent return of Christ and setting up his kingdom on this earth. In order to accomplish this, he must rapture the church out of here first, and this is pretty phenomenal (once again, I apologize to Ms. White). So, there has to be a mystical setup for the rapture, and being "baptized in the Spirit" qualifies. It is a sure-fire way to know you are ready.

This is not meant to demean the experience of the Holy Spirit in the believer’s life. The Spirit is necessary for life, and without life, we are none of His (Romans 8:9). It is the life of the Spirit that brings forth fruit in our lives. Paul goes to length pointing out the fruit of the Spirit (Gal. 5:22,23), but people always neglect those things in preference for the gaudy and the trite. Sure, they say they are filled with the Spirit and tell you how much they love, but do their lives reflect their bragging? It seems their love consists of whooping and hollering only (Proverbs 25:14) but they have nothing of the quietness of spirit in which to boast (1 Peter 3:4).

Having said that, there is a real baptism of the Holy Spirit taught in the Bible. It is real; not just historic, not symbolic, not formulaic, not mystic, not hysteric, but real for today. Regardless of our personal belief system, we know that John the Baptist taught that Jesus would baptize with the Holy Spirit, and that Luke spelled it out as an historical event (throughout Acts). Paul develops the idea of the indwelling Christ through the Spirit, however, he does not teach on the baptism of the Holy Spirit (except maybe one passage 1 Cor. 12:13). Neither does Peter, John, Jude. So what is the deal?

Paul sees our baptism into Christ as a baptism into death, and a resurrection into new life (Romans 6, 7). He also says there is only one baptism (Ephesians 4:5). Pentecostals, notably, see no problem with two baptisms even though this doctrine does not appear in the letters of the apostles. Regardless of fanaticism or stoicism, each believer in Christ should have an experience of the Spirit or something’s wrong. Any experience of God, whether it be the first inkling of who He Is, or the final moment when we pass into the great beyond, should be glorifying to Him, edifying to the church and mortifying to the deeds of the flesh. If otherwise, we might well examine the source, for it is no wonder that the agents of deception appear as ministers of righteousness (2 Cor. 11:4, 15).

Pentecostalism is the natural outgrowth of those who are frustrated with God’s plan for their lives and wish to speed things up a bit. Suddenly, they are "filled with the Spirit" and have "victory" and "healing" and other lovely things that the rest of Christendom apparently lacks. The 1960's and ’70's were fertile ground for popularizing Pentecostalism. The Age of Aquarius had started, the youth were unrestrained by church and state and everything old was getting a new injection of some kind of spirit. LSD and mescaline had taken the lid of the spiritual realm and the "baptism of the Holy Spirit" seemed to be the Christian answer to the new age’s promise of instant initiation into the higher spiritual realms. It was really the old age’s longing for instant gratification realized by sex, drugs and other ecstasies. False teachers in the church grasp upon these things and make it appear that our life in Christ is second rate until we have some mystical experience, or follow those that do. Paul fought the Jewish mentality (legalism) and the Gentile foolishness (Gnosticism). They are still with us today and combine together into Pentecostalism.

Instead of a life filled with richness toward God by good works, these new charismatics had much to say about wonderful experiences in the Spirit but had no fruit. They loved Jesus but also loved to covet, fornicate, steal, cheat and play rock music. Drugs and the Spirit were confused. In their legalistic and Gnostic mindset, they longed for something simplistic because their brains had been cooked. Then came the new gospel: Everything without the name of Christ on it was evil; everything with the name Jesus on it was O.K. Homosexuality, fornication, adultery, revelings (raves), cheating in business, lying, anything and everything, could be made all better by pasting a poster over it with the slogan "Everything goes better with Jesus." With a wave of the ecclesiastical hand, everything became forgivable. They spouted "Judge not," while behaving like animals (remember, we are going back to nature worship). Homosexuality, although not allowed by God, became tolerable, then allowable, then honorable, because God gave them over to their lusts (Rom. 1:28). After a time, even the mainline churches began accepting homosexuality as a loving lifestyle, one that can glorify God. Like all legalists, they demanded obedience to a certain set of church laws (of their own choosing, remember this is America). Confusion reigned supreme, and had to be sorted out by the new priest/pastor class, as exemplified by Contemporary Chapel and its brood. The unity of the Spirit now found a warped reflection in the unity of the flesh, with the doctrines of the Catholic Church presiding.

This new power to be holy and corrupt at the same time is really a poor knock-off of Roman Catholicism, which has been cursing and blessing people for profit since the beginning of the church. No wonder that they embraced the new ecumenism that Pentecostalism promoted. Many Protestant churches became more Catholic than the Catholic churches (with their own version of popes and mother churches). They had two standards: One used for beating the conscience; the other for assuaging the conscience through the unctions of their church. This way, the church held up holiness as a good intention, with every intention of making it go away through auricular confession or some other means like "accountability." The example set by the Roman Catholic priests forbidden to have natural sex with a wife but secretly allowed to keep harems (they even have a name for that: "sacerdotal concubinage") was not lost on her progeny. All were the traditions of men that counteract the commandments of God. But through it all, they kept speaking in tongues and casting out demons.

Personally, I believe in the gift of speaking in tongues. It is a gift of God and useful for the prayer closet. The Pentecostal doctrine twists the meaning of the scripture to mean that speaking in tongues is the sign of the "baptism of the Holy Spirit." They do not understand that it is a sign of God’s inscrutability to the unbelievers (Isaiah 28:11,12 and 45:14,15 as developed by Paul in 1 Cor. 14). When, on the day of Pentecost, the unbelievers heard the disciples speaking in tongues, they thought they were drunk. Even though they heard them praising God in their own language, they remained in their unbelief and ignorance. It wasn’t until Peter started preaching in the common language (Greek, we assume) that they began to respond to the gospel of their salvation. 

Yes, there is a baptism of the Holy Spirit, but it is unlike any baptism we can imagine in our fleshly minds because it is spiritual. The things of the Spirit can no man search out, but the Spirit searches them out and gives them to us (1 Cor. 2:10). We become recipients of the Spirit as we have faith in Jesus, the Christ, the Anointed One, to whom the Father gives the Spirit without measure to give to us (Acts 2:33, 10:38, John 3:34). In Acts, we see the overwhelming evidence of the outpouring of the Holy Spirit upon various groups of people. First, the disciples of Jesus (Jews by nature), then the Samaritans, then the Gentiles. The Pentecostals only hear speaking in tongues, but that is, like all traditions of man, formulaic. Many other things happened besides speaking in tongues, but they are not so easily faked.

The question always arises: Are we saved apart from the baptism of the Spirit? It is a Biblical record and a record of church history that many people get baptized in water and yet remain uninterested in, or ignorant of, the baptism of the Spirit. Those that believe one has to be baptized in water in order to be saved (they have their proof texts, for sure), also tend to think that the baptism of the Spirit is historical, or is a second blessing. They (and we) have proof, both Biblical and experiential, that one can go through all the ecclesiastical motions of sacraments, but still lack the reality of God’s indwelling Spirit. They are supposedly saved (because they did all the right things like "repent," get baptized in the name of Jesus and/or the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost, memorize the accepted creed, etc.), but they do not appear to be saved. They proclaim their inheritance among the saints, but they live like their heritage "before they came to Christ."

What is wrong with this picture? It is, of course, our lack of vision. We can only see a picture in time and space, but the reality of what we are seeing comes from eternity. The Holy Spirit is God, and we are flesh; we must bear this in mind if we are to receive the Spirit. The baptism of Jesus Christ is a baptism into his death (Rom. 6:3,4). But this is not a one-time only deal. It is not just an historical event. It is about our dying daily in Christ. Our fleshly mind has confidence that we can do something like get wet and we’re in, but this does not fit the rest of Paul’s doctrine. The baptism of water is a historical marker (and so is an initial filling of the Spirit), but the real baptism is eternal, and continues through every day of our life here and now. As we undergo this baptism, it is a baptism into death. That’s what water baptism symbolizes. Water baptism does not save us, any more than any outward action on our part can do. But our baptism into the body of Christ saves us, not because we have clean bodies, but because we now have a clean conscience before God. This baptism is not a pill that works instantly and then we go on to bigger and better things. This pill kills us and makes us come under the power of the cross. Without this death in Christ, we can not place any hope in the life of Christ, his resurrection power (Rom. 6).

As we experience the life of Christ, in our baptism into him, we see how the decay cannot hold us any more than it held Jesus. By faith we can know that even though we are dead, yet shall we live, for he who believes in Jesus will not see death, but have the light of life (John 8, John 11). This is about as mystical as anything can get, and yet we want more, tangible objects of faith? We want to roll around on the floor, or fall into a swoon, or babble nonsense in the presence of the church, contrary to Paul’s teaching on the gathering of the saints? Do we want to receive another spirit, or another jesus or another gospel?

The baptism of the Holy Spirit is a lifelong process. It is not a once only happening. From our limited perspective, it may seem that there is a moment in time when we were "baptized by the Holy Spirit," but we must remember that Christ is referring to the entire church and not just one member. Sure, it happens one member at a time, but remember, we as members are one body in Christ and therein we are partakers of the divine nature. To be separated from the vine is to be dead to Christ and his blessings. To be dead to the world is to be baptized into Christ, and made alive by his Spirit (Rom. 6:8, 8:10,11, Gal.6:14).

"...who shall tell thee words, whereby thou and all thy house shall be saved. And as I began to speak, the Holy Ghost fell on them, as on us at the beginning. Then remembered I the word of the Lord, how that he said, John indeed baptized with water; but ye shall be baptized with the Holy Ghost. Forasmuch then as God gave them the like gift as he did unto us, who believed on the Lord Jesus Christ; what was I, that I could withstand God? When they heard these things, they held their peace, and glorified God, saying, Then hath God also to the Gentiles granted repentance unto life." Acts 11:14 -18.

Our preaching and teaching today fall into the category of weak and lukewarm. This is why the Holy Spirit doesn’t manifest his power as he could. There is a baptism that we must be baptized with, but the flesh don’t like it none. This is why our messages are powerless, because we are interested in keeping the carnally-minded coming back to church. The true believers are hindered in their walk. The preachers get fat off the flock. So they convince the flock that they too can have the Baptism of the Holy Spirit if they just do the following things....

Speak in tongues, hoot and holler;

Fall down backwards, twitch and roll;

Giggle and laugh, give another dollar

To the church - that’s wonderful!

Roll over Rover and submit to the collar.

(adapted from 2 Corinthians 11:4 and 11:20, Galatians 2:4 and 6:12, Philippians 3:2, Colossians 2:18, 1 Timothy 6:5, Titus 1:11, &etc.)

If you are not sure whether you have been baptized in the Holy Spirit, or whether you are saved, or whether you are following Christ, etc., this is not the worst thing that can happen. Don’t let some whitewashed sepulcher assure you of your salvation . Use this anxiety for your good and put your attention on the things above, where Christ sits at right hand of God. When Paul says don’t be in anxiety, he means to have us ask God, letting our prayers and supplications rise up to heaven in honest need for help in time of distress, knowing that he hears us. If we ask our Father for food, will he give us a venomous snake? Let us be thankful before this God who gives us life and peace. Peace, not of the world, but of the Holy Spirit, will come and guard our thoughts and hearts through Jesus Christ. (Philippians 4:7).

"So I say to you, ask, and it will be given to you; seek, and you will find; knock, and it will be opened to you. For everyone who asks receives, and he who seeks finds, and to him who knocks it will be opened. If a son asks for bread from any father among you, will he give him a stone? Or if he asks for a fish, will he give him a serpent instead of a fish? Or if he asks for an egg, will he offer him a scorpion? If you then, being evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your heavenly Father give the Holy Spirit to those who ask Him!" Luke 11:9-13.

We encourage you to email the author to prove or disprove, from the Scriptures, the intent, meaning, purpose or doctrine of this piece. email Chris