Chapter 5
What He Does
The Holy Ghost dwells in, abides with, comforts and teaches those who receive Him.
(1) The baptism with the Holy Ghost inaugurates between the redeemed soul and the eternal Father the most intimate and sacred relations. The human body out of which the carnal mind has been cast, at once becomes the temple of the Holy Spirit. “Know ye not that ye are the temple of God, and that the Spirit of God dwelleth in you?” I Cor. 3:16. Again, in the same epistle, 6:19, we read: “What know ye not that your body is the temple of the Holy Ghost which is in you, which ye have of God, and ye are not your own?”
The kingdom of God is “within you.” Luke 17:21. “The kingdom of God is not meat and drink, but righteousness, and peace, and joy in the Holy Ghost.” Rom. 14:17. When our Lord promised the disciples that He would pray the Father to send them another Comforter, “even the Spirit of truth,” He assured them that the world could not receive this Spirit , “Because it seeth Him not, neither knoweth Him; but ye know Him; for He dwelleth with you, and Shall Be In You.” One of the best preventives against temptation and sin for those who have received the baptism with the Holy Ghost, is the constant memory that God, in the person of the Holy Ghost, is dwelling in them. The thought will keep out all desire for sin, and break the power of the tempter. It will constantly gird up the soul with a blessed assurance of victory, knowing that He that is in us is greater than he that is in the world.
(2) I call the reader’s attention to the fact that when the Holy Ghost comes into His temples, our bodies, and purifies them, He comes “to abide forever.”
When Jesus said to His disciples, “Ye shall seek me; and as I said unto the Jews, Whither I go ye cannot come, so now I say to you,” their hearts were filled with sadness, and He comforted them with the promise that He would prepare a place for them, and come again and receive them unto Himself, that where He was, there they might be also.
He further assured them that if they loved Him and would keep His commandments, He would pray the Father, and He would give them another Comforter, “That He may abide with you forever.”
Christ made it a point to put in this word “forever” for the good reason that He desired the disciples to be encouraged with the assurance that the Holy Ghost would abide, not only in the Church, but in the individual who received Him. Not for a few brief years, as He had done, and then grieve their hearts by separating himself from them as He, their Lord, must now soon do, but the Comforter would abide. There would be no more painful separation like that for which He was now preparing them, which must take place in a few days.
(3) The Holy Ghost should not only be a purifier (being, sanctified by the Holy Ghost), an indweller, abiding forever, but He should also be a Comforter. This is an important office of the Spirit, the comforting of the hearts of God’s children. In sickness, in poverty, in trials and persecutions, when deserted by friends and pursued by enemies, when in a strange land, and in all the conflicts and vicissitudes of life, the blessed Spirit abiding in the heart constantly gives assurance of His presence, of the salvation of the soul, of the love of God for it, of the efficacy of the cleansing blood of Jesus Christ, and thus keeps the soul in a state of blessed comfort.
Let those who have cried to God for comfort in times of distress, learn to cry to God for the gift of the Holy Ghost, and then they will have the abiding Comforter within themselves.
(4) Christ not only promised that the abiding Spirit should comfort, but that He should also be our teacher. In John 14:26 He says: “But the Comforter, which is the Holy Ghost, whom the Father will send in my name, He shall teach you all things and bring all things to your remembrance, whatsoever I have said unto you.”
Again, John 16:13, 14, our Lord says: “Howbeit when He, the Spirit of truth, is come, He will guide you into all truth; for He shall not speak of Himself, but whatsoever He shall hear, that shall He speak, and He will show you things to come. He shall glorify me; for He shall receive of mine, and shall show it unto you.”
With these Scriptures before us, the reader will appreciate something of the importance of the baptism with the Holy Ghost, and the various offices He performs in the redemption of the souls of men.