Rodman Williams: The Gift of the Holy Spirit Today: Dimensions
4. Another passage that might be noted about the Holy Spirit and outpouring is Romans 5:5 where Paul writes of how “God’s love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit …given to us.” However, Paul is speaking here of a result of the Spirit being given, namely, God’s love “poured out.”
5. “I felt the breath of God and tasted of His glory. I knew God was revealing only a minute portion of Himself, had it been anything greater I would not have been able to survive. I would have died …I felt the Spirit of God surging in as the waters of the Red Sea must have rushed together after the children of Israel had marched through to freedom.” So writes Arthur Katz in his autobiography, Ben Israel: Odyssey of a Modern Jew (Plainfield, NJ: Logos, 1970), pp. 204-5. This is the climatic moment in the pilgrimage of a “son of Israel” wherein, after a “new-found relationship with the Messiah” (p. 171), he experienced the outpouring (the “surging”) of God’s Spirit and the presence of eternal glory.
6. This will be discussed later.
7. See Acts 1:4ff. The period of waiting was about ten days.
8. The word translated above as “mighty” in the Greek is biaias, meaning “violent” or “forcible.”
9. “There came a day and hour when the Spirit of God invaded our small Saturday evening prayer group, where we met to pray for the Sunday worship service. Literally, the Spirit fell! He electrified everyone in the room! …Immediately the gifts of the Spirit began to be distributed among us and we began to see signs, wonders, and miracles that have never ceased to this day!” Words of Rev. James H. Brown, Presbyterian minister, in an article entitled “Signs, Wonders and Miracles” in Presbyterians and the Baptism of the Holy Spirit (Los Angeles: Full Gospel Business Men’s Fellowship International, 1963), pp. 6-7. Such a testimony about the Spirit’s “falling” is frequently found in the renewal of our time. It is interesting to observe that the language of “falling” was earlier used by Agnes Ozman, whose experience is usually viewed as the beginning of twentieth-century Pentecostalism: ” …the Holy Spirit fell upon me and I began to speak in tongues, glorifying God. …I had the added joy and glory my heart longed for and a depth of the presence of the Lord within me that I had never known before. It was as if rivers of water were proceeding from my innermost being.” See Klaude Kendrick, The Promise Fulfilled (Springfield, MO: Gospel Publishing House, 1961), pp. 52-53. We shall speak of tongues in the next chapter; the point here to note is that the imagery of falling is used in this early Pentecostal testimony.
10. For example, concerning Othniel: “The Spirit of the Lord came upon him, and he judged Israel” (Judges 3:10); Gideon: “The Spirit of the Lord took possession of Gideon, and he sounded the trumpet …” (Judges 6:34); Samson: “The Spirit of the Lord came mightily upon him …” (Judges 14:6, 19; 15:14).
11. “The Spirit of God came mightily upon Saul … (1 Samuel 11:6); “The Spirit of the Lord came mightily upon David from that day forward (1 Samuel 16:13).
12. Then the Lord …took some of the spirit that was upon him [Moses] and put it upon the seventy elders; and when the spirit rested upon them, they prophesied” (Numbers 11:25).
13. Balaam: “And the Spirit of God came upon him, and he took up his discourse … (Numbers 24:2).
14. David is the Old Testament exception. As a prior footnote shows, David’s endowment of the Spirit was “from that day forward.”
15. Leon Joseph Cardinal Suenens, former Roman Catholic leader in the spiritual renewal, writes in his book, A New Pentecost? (New York: Seabury Press, 1974): “We are not alone any more, we know we are guided by the Holy Spirit; our life unfolds in response to him. As we dispossess ourselves, our being is possessed by God. The void is filled …Those who allow themselves to be possessed by God, resemble the log that little by little becomes white-hot. Their life, nourished by the fire of the Holy Spirit, becomes fire in its turn. Is not this the fire of which Jesus spoke when he said: ‘I have come to bring fire to the earth …′ (Luke 12:49)? This is what it means to experience the Holy Spirit who alone can renew the face of the earth!” (p. 70).
16. The Greek preposition regularly found is en which may be translated “with” or “in.” “With” expresses the idea of the Holy Spirit coming to encompass or surround; “in” conveys the note of the Holy Spirit as the element within which one is submerged. “In” is preferred by many for two reasons: it avoids any idea that the Holy Spirit is the baptizer (“with” often means “by”); second, “in” follows quite naturally upon the word “baptize” (baptizo) which means to “immerse,” “plunge under,” “submerge within,” etc. However, the fact of envelopment may well include both ideas: to be surrounded with as well as to be plunged within.
17. In accordance with our previous footnote we shall henceforward render en as “in,” thus not following the RSV. Most modern translations use “with”; however, a marginal note usually accompanies the translation giving the other possibility of “in.”
18. The noun “baptism” is not used in these passages (nor in others which we shall notice shortly). The gift of the Spirit in each case is an event, a dynamic occurrence, a “being baptized.” However, I do not think it improper to use the substantive form (similarly with “outpouring,” which as such does not occur either; the text each time is “poured out”) if one bears in mind its eventful quality.
19. Mark 1:8. In Matthew 3:11 and Luke 3:16 the words “and fire” are added. In John 1:33 the wording is: “I myself did not know him; but he who sent me to baptize [in] water said to me, ‘He on whom you see the Spirit descend and remain, this is he who baptizes [in] the Holy Spirit.'”
20. This is true even with the interpretation that John’s Gospel refers to it in John 20:22 where Jesus says, “Receive the Holy Spirit.” This “Johannine Pentecost” (as it is sometimes called) still follows the events of Christ’s life, death and resurrection.
Category: Spirit, Summer 2002
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