As Pentecostals and Charismatics, we are people who have been confronted by an intense experience of the Holy Spirit. This has led us to reappraise the importance we attach to the Holy Spirit within our Systematic Theologies, as well as reviewing our understanding of the Holy Spirit’s ministry. But this can lead us into territories of exciting and worrying discoveries. Does the Holy Spirit really do that? Can that person really have the Holy Spirit too, as they claim?

Fundamental to Levison’s thesis is his discovery that the Spirit is not only the bearer of charismatic endowment, but the very spirit of life that brings our life into being and on which we, as living beings, are contingent. From the Genesis narratives onwards, Levison traces life itself as contingent on the presence and empowering of the Spirit: the breath of God or wind of God are synonymous with the Holy Spirit. The Spirit is there in Creation and giving birth to all life of all kind.

The challenge arises in that, in this reviewer’s perspective, Levison does not appear to engage with the challenge of discussing where the real experience and engagement with the Spirit of God ends and that of counterfeit and demonic spirits begins.

This insight is found by Levison in the writing of Luke. The Pentecostal experience is seen to combine both comprehension and incomprehension, not either or: “To opt for either ecstatic tongues or comprehensible foreign languages in the interpretation of the Pentecost experience, not to mention subsequent moments of inspiration in Acts, is to diminish the fulness of the spirit and to deplete the levels of resonance that Luke, like Philo and the author of 4 Ezra, preserves. Pentecost encapsulates not merely the ecstatic or the intellectual but a rare, inspired blend of both” (p 345).

Study Bible Series

There has been a growing number of Study Bibles released in the last few years and Dony Donev is reviewing them along with some classic Study Bibles. Dr. Donev will be evaluating each of the Bibles by focusing on subjects such as the gifts and ministry of the Holy Spirit, free will and the security of the believer, as well as prophecy and eschatology.

Jack Hayford, ed., Spirit Filled Life Bible: A Personal Study Bible Unveiling All God’s Fullness in All God’s Word (Thomas Nelson, 1991).

The Spirit Filled Life Bible is another great example of a Pentecostal study Bible from the 90s, which sets the stage for this century’s Study Bible revival. It was edited by Jack Hayford who later served as president and chancellor of King’s University (formerly The King’s College and Seminary). The text provides Bible commentary from a conservative Pentecostal perspective and study notes are a bit more detailed than the Fire Bible.

For example, the first Old Testament control passage we use in our study from Numbers 6 is well documented and discussed almost verse by verse. Under the title of “Priestly Blessing,” the Spirit Filled Life Bible makes the case for: (1) wave offering as part of worship (v.20), (2) personal blessing through the singular “you” in the original Hebrew (v.22), (3) a definition of blessing (v. 24) and much more on the final phrases in the blessing: “make His face shine upon you” and “lift up His countenance upon you.”

Jeremiah 18 also has several historical commentaries in the Spirit Filled Life Bible as part of Jeremiah’s laments described in a note in chapter 11. The point here is being made that the responsibility for the law in the Old Testament was given to the priest.

Latest redesign of this popular Study Bible: New Spirit-Filled Life Bible: Kingdom Equipping Through the Power of the Word

The doctrine of the Rapture is commented in Revelation 4 in both the footnotes and a special block note within the text. The first one gives three views of the Last Days (dispensational, futurist and historic/preterist), while the second correlates with the elements of John’s vision. The dispensational interpretation is offered in continuity with the interpretation of the 7 Churches of Asia-Minor. Two other block notes with markings “Word Wealth” and “Kingdom Dynamics” are placed in 1 Thess. 5 explaining the origin of the word “Rapture.” Pentecostals will find it significant that the phrase “in the Spirit” is explained as “a state of heightened spiritual sensitivity.”

The Tribulation is also clearly explained as post-Rapture event with a classic interpretation of the prophecy given in the text of Daniel 8. The 24 elders are viewed as “evidence of the church’s exemption from the Great Tribulation” as they “are already glorified, enthroned and crowned,” which without a doubt proceeds from pre-Millennial doctrinal interpretation.

The doctrine of the Trinity is preserved as per the Biblical Truths of the Foursquare Church, namely: “Trinity of God the Father, God the Son and God the Holy Spirit.” The word “Trinity” itself is absent from the detailed word Concordance at the end of the Spirit Filled Life Bible. And although it is not present in the actual Biblical text, it is persistently present in the commentaries. This is true even in the largely disputed (from a manuscript point of view) 1 John 5:5-6 which is explained as trinitarian in the comments.

In this guest editorial, Pastor Mur shares his memories of being filled with the Holy Spirit and how he was reminded of this blessing of God while reading Robert Graves’ article, “The Focus of the Charismatic Experience” that appeared in Summer 1999.

Robert Graves’ excellent article on “The Focus of the Charismatic Experience” (Pneuma Review Summer 1999, Vol 2 No 3) gave new life to some of my memories. His words brought me back to 1961 when I was thirty years old and knew absolutely nothing about Protestant theology. Back then I thought that the person who had painted “Jesus Saves” on the rocks overhanging the NJ Turnpike was crazy. A friend, who I thought might help me with my career, invited me to go hear Billy Graham. At that meeting I was gloriously saved, one of those story book conversions.

A few months later, I was enrolled at the Philadelphia College of the Bible, a cessationist institute which required each student to sign a pledge that they would not go near a Pentecostal church. That was fine with me. For while I had somewhat revised my opinion about the person who painted “Jesus Saves” on the rocks, I was “safe” in Bible College, and I wanted no part of the devil, demons, holly rollers or weirdoes that ignorantly claimed to be part of the church.

The Bellevue-Stratford Hotel, in Philadelphia’s City Center, in 1976.
Image: Wikimedia Commons

Alas, I unknowingly went to a Pentecostal service and ended up challenged to seek the Baptism in the Holy Spirit including its initial evidence of speaking in tongues. That quest proved far more difficult than I first thought, and I ended up attending all sorts of meetings where I heard that the Spirit was falling. One memorable evening I went way out into the Pennsylvania countryside to hear Sister Seville preach. She said that the Ethilopian (her word, repeated many times that night) would never change his color and a leopard would never change his spots. Since I knew that signs and wonders followed the preaching of the word, I endured through her message, but I went home the same as I had come, still unfilled.

Finally on July 4, 1964 in the Academy Room at Philadelphia’s old Bellevue Stratford Hotel, the site of a Full Gospel Businessman’s meeting featuring Kathryn Kulhman, God rewarded my quest. I was filled with His Holy Spirit with the evidence of speaking in tongues. This prayer language I have exercised daily and more often for 35 years. During that time my life, values, ideas and hopes all have changed as I grew into maturity in the Kingdom of God. Those years included a career beyond my dreams in engineering, which even brought national recognition. Ten years I was a part time student at Fuller Theological Seminary. I watched as my wife was miraculously and instantly healed. I have also had the opportunity of serving on the pastoral staff at two of Foursquare’s (International Church of the Foursquare Gospel) largest churches and on Foursquare’s national finance committee. I have known these blessings and more, many more.