Introduction

(God’s Prophetic Spirit)

You are not going to agree with everything you read in these essays. Over the next 25 essays it will be argued that whenever the Holy Spirit works directly with man His work is always prophetic in its nature and that His direct work with man has been completed. There are few who agree with that position. While I do hope to challenge your thinking, and in some measure to move you closer to my understanding of this important topic, that is not ultimately my goal. In this work I covet your understanding more so than your agreement.

Too much of Christian thinking has abandoned its commitment to textuality. No longer do preachers as a whole spend time explaining how the text supports their views and doctrine within their sermons. Too few Christians turn to the text of the Bible to answer the spiritual problems of their lives. Appeals to the heart and to an ambiguous sense of spirituality have replaced the word of the Lord as the locus of authority for saints. The reliance on the subjectivity that lies beyond the word of God is especially true in current teachings about the Holy Spirit. Rather than relying on the revelation of scripture, in much of current theology one’s dreams, feelings or leadings are deemed as the evidentiary basis of faith. The consequence of this understanding is that the Bible becomes largely irrelevant until it is empowered by the Spirit’s perceived movement in a person’s heart. Current homiletic instruction no longer encourages the preacher to declare the authority of God’s word; his task is to connect the listener to the word and assist him in finding its relevance and meaning to him. The task of the listener is to meditate and reflect on the message until the Spirit moves in some way to bring the truth hidden in the text to his heart. Too much of Christian theology has lost its way because it no longer believes that the Bible contains the answers to life and, so in some way, the work of the Spirit resides outside of the revelation of scripture. It is on this point that I am after your understanding.

The foundation of the essays in this series is a verse-by-verse examination of every instance in the Bible in which the Holy Spirit is said to be working directly with a person or people. Altogether there are roughly 200 occurrences of that work in the Bible. For some, this kind of study will seem archaic and perhaps tedious or irrelevant. You will read many thousands of words in these essays before overall conclusions are drawn. While it may not be the best thing for an author to admit, if you are after a quick answer to your questions, these essays are going to try your patience. Unfortunately, a re-introduction to this approach to scripture is what many Bible students need. They need to be shown that the Bible’s doctrine about the Holy Spirit is not found by looking outside of the text or in the meditations of their owns hearts, but that it is found in the careful and deliberate study of God’s word.

As just stated, God spoke 200 times about His Spirit’s work with man. Each one of those references is impactful. Taken together they create a coherent, understandable, and relevant doctrine about the work of the Holy Spirit. While I doubt you will agree with every conclusion drawn, it is my prayer that when the totality of God’s word on the work of the Spirit is laid out in front of you, you will find greater strength in your commitment to the belief that what the Holy Spirit of God does for you is revealed completely within the pages of God’s word.

Reading the Bible Front-to-Back

My admission that you are not likely to agree with all of the conclusions of these essays is not a statement of my lack of belief in the argumentation that follows. It is simply an acknowledgement that no work, not even the Bible itself, has ever brought consensus among believers on this topic.

Much of the controversy about the Spirit can be attributed to the just emphasized fact that we lack a commitment to textuality in our studies of His work. However, I believe another significant problem is that most view the work of the Holy Spirit in believers as a special blessing of the gospel and that there are few who connect the gospel’s teachings about the Holy Spirit to the Old Testament’s teaching about the same. In other words, we attempt to read our Bibles in a “back-to-front” manner. We interpret Paul’s words in Romans 8 or Galatians 5 without realizing how the prophecies of Joel, Isaiah, or Ezekiel impact them. In so doing we are joining God in the middle of a conversation. Hundreds of years before Paul proclaimed that God had “poured out” His Spirit into our hearts another prophet of God had uttered the same message. Do you know who that prophet was and do you know what that prophet meant in his prophecy? If not, you may have been guilty of reading your Bible backwards.

That mistake can be harmful to one’s understanding of the work of the Spirit. Truths in the Bible are revealed starting in Genesis and building from there as you move forward in the Bible. The same is true in regard to the Spirit. He is first “in” a man in Genesis long before he is ever “in” the saints in the New Testament. Does the manner and effect of the Spirit’s dwelling “in” man for 1,500 years before His coming in the preaching of the gospel have any impact on His indwelling as a part of the gospel? It is a question you need to answer.

As such, the foundation of the study in these essays will be a “front-to-back” study. Each verse will be studied as we come to it in the biblical text. The New Testament epistles will be examined in a roughly chronological order and attached to their place within the history of Acts if applicable. Along the way, conclusions will be drawn in each verse based upon the revelation of the verses preceding them. To the best of this author’s ability, we will lay line upon line and verse upon verse to see the development of God’s revelation about His Spirit with man.

The Holy Spirit Brings Prophecy

The conclusion this approach establishes is that the work of the Holy Spirit with man is always prophetic in its nature when that work is done directly with man. Whenever He comes upon man, rushes upon him, falls upon him, fills him, dwells in him, anoints him, or at least a dozen other images expressed in the Bible, the Spirit provides man some kind of prophetic ability.

This conclusion should not be taken to mean that the Holy Spirit has no work with man that is indirect or done through the influence of some mediation. These essays will also affirm that the Holy Spirit has and continues to exercise His influence upon man in mediated ways. The most apparent (and perhaps the only discernible) method is through the inspired word produced through the prophetic work with man.

Throughout this work the word “prophetic” should be considered in a generic sense. The argument is not that each person “clothed with the Spirit” (or any other similar phrase) becomes a prophet in the sense that he must become an apostle or writer of a biblical book. “Prophetic” is used as an all-encompassing expression of the Spirit’s gifts to humanity. For the purpose of this work it is meant to express that the Spirit is providing revelatory information, the gifts of inspiration needed to convey that revelation, the power to work confirmatory signs in support of that revelation, the power to complete specific works needed by God (i. e. the construction of the furniture of the tabernacle) or any other action of man which would need the divine wisdom and/or the direct involvement of God to complete. Within the Bible the Spirit is the member of the Godhead whose function it is to empower those actions.

Final Considerations

Before turning our attention to the Bible’s text, there are a few points of further clarification needed that should be remembered as you read:

This work will not seek to answer the arguments of all other positions.

While it will be necessary to reference other views from time-to-time and to anticipate the objections of some, the focus of this work is in establishing its own case, not the refutation of others. In a polemic sense, these essays are focused on an affirmative case, not a negative one.

It will be helpful to the reader to know from the outset, this author is not a Calvinist nor is he aligned with the views of charismatics. I do not believe the Calvinistic understanding of the work of the Holy Spirit has a foundation in the Bible’s text. While I do have more in common with charismatic understandings of the Spirit, in that we both see prophetic works in passages relating to the Spirit, I do believe they fail to see and apply clear statements in the Bible about the limits and duration of the prophetic influence of the Spirit.

This work avoids quoting from other views and authors.

Throughout these essays you will find very few footnotes to other writings about the Holy Spirit. This is true not because I am unaware of those works or am anti-academic in my approach. The reason for the scarcity of references is two-fold. First, it has been my experience that as soon as an author quotes another author in support of his position on the Spirit, his work is often pigeon-holed into a convenient category and then dismissed by its critics. This work is the compilation of my beliefs about the biblical text. While I certainly have been helped by many great Bible students along the way (those still living, know who they are), the arguments contained in these essays are either my own or generally used by people of like-mind on those points. It has not been my aim to plagiarize any person’s works and I do not believe that I have done so. Second, the truth of the matter is that, to the best of my knowledge, there are few works in print that take the precise position you will find in this work.

The issues raised in this work are not worthy of dividing over.

Perhaps there are some references to serious doctrinal matters in these essays, but the basic argument is not a matter of salvation. Obviously to craft a series of essays of this length, I must believe in the importance of the issue; however, causing division on such matters would be unfortunate. I have been subjected to such treatment for my views and know of people of differing views who have suffered the same. Good brothers and sisters in the family of Christ ought to be able to discuss and even argue over important matters without causing strife or calling into question the state of another’s faith or heart. If you wish to disagree with me on these matters, I will discuss them with you for as long as you wish, so long as at the end of the matter, we remain in harmony. Otherwise, let us agree to leave the matter alone. If you cannot abide by that thought, please stop reading now.

With that said, I invite you to join me in a study of God’s Prophetic Spirit.