The first part of chapter eight from Professor Williams’ book, The Gift of the Holy Spirit Today, about the greatest reality of our time.

The Gift of the Holy Spirit Today: Effects, Part 1 (Chapter 8)

Chapter Eight: Effects, Part 2

Third, still another effect of the gift of the Holy Spirit is that of providing an assurance of God’s act of salvation. The Holy Spirit bears witness to what has been done, confirms the status of sonship and God’s abiding presence and affords an earnest or pledge of what is yet to come.

It is significant that on two occasions (Acts 11 and 15) after the gift of the Holy Spirit to the Caesareans, or the Gentiles, Peter appears before the Jerusalem council of apostles and brethren to argue the Gentile cause. On each occasion Peter refers to the gift of the Holy Spirit which the Gentiles had likewise received as a kind of confirmation or witness. In the first instance the question basically was whether the Gentiles really were included in God’s purpose of salvation, and Peter’s argument was simply that “the Holy Spirit fell on them just as on us at the beginning” (Acts 11:15). Further, “If then God gave the same gift to them as he gave to us [believing]¹⁴ in the Lord Jesus Christ, who was I that I could withstand God?” (Acts 11:17). This silenced the audience; then “they glorified God, saying, ‘Then to the Gentiles also God has granted repentance unto life'” (Acts 11:18). The fact that God had given the Holy Spirit to the Gentiles was certification to the apostles and brethren that the Gentiles had indeed been granted salvation. On the second occasion, Peter stands again before the council to argue against the obligation of Gentiles to be circumcised in order to be saved. In the context of this argument Peter speaks of how it was God’s choice that “by my mouth the Gentiles should hear the word of the gospel and believe” (Acts 15:7). Then Peter immediately adds: “And God who knows the heart bore witness to them, giving them the Holy Spirit just as he did to us; and he made no distinction between us and them, but cleansed their hearts by faith”¹⁵ (Acts 15:8-9). Here the gift of the Holy Spirit is described as a witness to the Gentiles themselves that they had indeed been granted cleansing and salvation. Thus to summarize the two accounts: the gift of the Holy Spirit was viewed as both a testimony to others, an external witness, and an internal testimony that “repentance unto life,” cleansing, salvation, had unmistakably occurred.

On the matter of the testimony to others, or external witness, one of the interesting features of the contemporary outpouring of God’s Spirit is the way in which it has caused many people in churches or denominations that have been long separated from and even antagonistic to one another to change their attitude. For example, many Protestants who received the gift of the Spirit in the early to mid 1960s were ill prepared to accept the movement of the Spirit among Roman Catholics that began in 1967¹⁶ for the reason that they (the Protestants) were not at all sure any Catholics had experienced salvation. Then it began to happen among Catholics—exactly as among Protestants—and all the Protestants could do, like the apostles and brethren, was to glorify God and say, “Then to the Roman Catholics also God has granted repentance unto life!”

One other Scripture passage related to external witness is Hebrews 2:3-4: “How shall we escape if we neglect such a great salvation? It was declared at first by the Lord, and it was attested to us by those who heard him, while God also bore witness by signs and wonders and various miracles and by gifts of the Holy Spirit distributed according to his own will.” Here again God Himself bears witness to the “great salvation” through the operation and activity of the Holy Spirit. Salvation which belongs to the inward and invisible realm is attested by the outward and visible—signs, wonders, miracles, various gifts of the Holy Spirit. This passage in Hebrews is somewhat different from Acts 11 and Acts 15: the gift (or gifts) of the Holy Spirit is not spoken of as testimony to other Christians that God has granted salvation, but it is rather a testimony to those who have not experienced salvation that behind such divine work stands a living God who brings salvation.

Again, to return to the contemporary scene, it is striking that in many places the proclamation of the gospel of salvation is being given visible certification through “signs and wonders and various miracles and gifts of the Holy Spirit.” The word is preached, God “bears witness,” for example, through miracles of healing taking place, and the message of salvation comes through with powerful effectiveness.¹⁷  Indeed, in a day when people are bombarded by countless words and voices (in television, radio, printed page, etc.) and made innumerable offers, it is increasingly hard to hear the word about salvation and believe without some demonstration of power and reality. Is it really so? Is the message of an internal transformation valid? Does it actually happen? But when that message about invisible things is certified by visible demonstrations of the power of God, then credibility is vastly increased. The gospel truly must be, as is claimed, the power of God also unto salvation.

The first part of chapter eight from Professor Williams’ book, The Gift of the Holy Spirit Today, about the greatest reality of our time.

The Gift of the Holy Spirit Today: Context (Chapter 7)

Chapter Eight: Effects, Part 1

We come finally to a consideration of the effects or results of the gift of the Holy Spirit. Our concern is not so much with long-range effects, though they are certainly not excluded, as with the immediate results of the Spirit being given. A number of these may be noted.

First of all, there is an extraordinary sense of the reality of God. As has been observed, the gift of the Holy Spirit is the gift of God’s own presence. It is not something the Holy Spirit grants—such as life, power, wisdom—but it is the Spirit Himself who is given. Since the Holy Spirit is God in His essential being, the reception of this gift means the reception of God Himself. This then signifies the stupendous fact of the coming of God, the Holy Spirit, in fullness to lay claim to His creature, and to pervade the totality of human existence. In the action, God without ceasing to be wholly transcendent is also wholly immanent as He possesses the heights and depths of creaturely life. This extraordinary event of the divine self-giving is at the same time a divine self-disclosure, a revelation of the divine reality. The reality of God, His divine presence, is made known to man with compelling force.

Further, the God who comes through the gift of the Holy Spirit is the triune God. Hence, though it is the Spirit who is given—and thus not the same personally as Father or Son—nonetheless His very presence also makes real other persons of the Godhead. He constantly points to, glorifies, makes real the Son, the exalted Jesus Christ, and through the Holy Spirit the exalted Lord constantly makes Himself known to His believing people. Jesus Christ, though now at the “right hand” of the Father and not bodily present, becomes spiritually present among those who believe in Him. Likewise, the Holy Spirit makes real God as Father, for it is through the Spirit’s indwelling and moving presence that the fatherhood of God takes on more intimate and personal meaning. By the Spirit we say “Abba! Father!” not as address to a distant deity but as the cry of the heart to one near at hand.¹  To summarize: the reality of God as Father, Son and Holy Spirit is vividly disclosed through the gift of the Holy Spirit.

As we turn again to the books of Acts, it is apparent that the reality of God is the paramount fact in everything that occurs. When the Spirit is given at Pentecost, the company immediately begins to declare the marvelous works of God and thus to exult in His wonderful presence. It matters not that thousands are gathered around them, for so full are they of God’s Spirit that they go right on praising Him. The reality of God’s presence has gripped them as a community, as individuals, and in such fashion that in all that follows they sense God moving in their midst.

The second chapter of the Praying in the Spirit Series.

Robert W. Graves wrote Praying in the Spirit (Chosen Books) in 1987, when it received great reviews from a number of Pentecostal/charismatic scholars and leaders including John Sherrill, Dr. Vinson Synan, Dr. Gordon Fee, Dr. William Menzies, Dr. Howard Ervin, Dr. Walter Martin, and Dr. Stanley Horton. It is the great privilege of the Pneuma Review to republish it here.

Most evangelicals believe that one always remembers the day he or she became a Christian. I remember the day very well. I was alone in a half‑completed apartment building off Interstate 1‑75 in Atlanta, Georgia. I was taking a lunch break from my summer job as a heating/air conditioning installer. The days preceding this found me asking serious questions about God, myself, and reality. The Sunday before, I had attended a Baptist church and picked up several tracts. Then as I read those tracts the weight of my sins became unbearable and I felt that I must return to the God of my childhood, the God my mother had so often entreated on my behalf, the God of my grandparents, the God who would deliver me from alcoholism and later deliver my father from alcoholism and lung cancer.

It is true that a person who becomes a Christian after childhood seldom forgets the day of his salvation; I believe it is equally true that he seldom forgets the day that he first expresses himself to God in a language of the heart. I happened to be at my mother‑in‑law’s house, and I had been reading Robert C. Frost’s Aglow with the Spirit. For many weeks I had sought God for a mighty enduement of power so that I might serve Him with greater effectiveness. That day I had found quiet room in the back of the house and (though many people say this figuratively) I literally did not put Frost’s book down until I had read it through.

In the backyard, separated from the house, was an old unused garage. I took the book and walked to the garage for a private time of prayer. In that old, musty garage with windows too dirty to see through, I lifted hands and heart to God and asked Jesus to baptize me in the Holy Spirit. Within seconds syllables joined in a way I had never learned were rolling off my lips, and I knew a joy I hoped would never cease. Of all the objects in that old garage, I remember only one, a large worn‑out wooden airplane propeller. I remember it well because it became a symbol of what was happening to me‑I was soaring with God in heavenly places!