In John 7:38-39 we find Jesus speaking to some of the Jews who had gathered in Jerusalem to celebrate the Feast of Tabernacles.  On the final day of the feast He said: “If any man thirst (for righteousness–Mat. 5:6), let him come unto Me and drink.  He that believes in Me, as the Scripture says, ‘out of his innermost being will flow rivers of living water.’  He spoke this about the Holy Spirit that those who believes in Him would receive, for the Spirit had not yet been given because Jesus had not yet been glorified (resurrected).”

The point in time when those who believed in Him would receive the Holy Spirit was the Day of Pentecost.   In Acts 2 we find a vivid description of that day and the receiving of the Holy Spirit by those who had gathered in an upper room in Jerusalem.  They were celebrating the holy day in seclusion out of fear of the those Jews–the vast majority–who had rejected Jesus as the Son of God.  Jesus having been crucified and His body supposedly stolen by His followers, the disciples feared for their lives.  Thousands of Jews annually journeyed to the nation’s capital from “every nation under the sun” to celebrate the annual Holy Day which came 50 days after Passover.  It was not unusual for those who came from afar to arrive in Jerusalem for Passover, then remain in the city until Pentecost.

As they huddled in seclusion trying to be as inconspicuous as possible, the Lord suddenly made their presence known to the entire city.  Without warning He poured out His Holy Spirit in an awesome display of sound and light.  Following a blast of wind they began speaking loudly as  fingers of fire came to rest on their heads.  The thing that got the attention of the masses of Jews in the city was that they heard them speak in the native tongues of their home countries (Acts 2:2-12).  The Jews did not know what to make of what they were seeing and hearing.  Exactly what was it they were dealing with?  As they heard these Greek speaking Jews praising God in languages they did not know, their questions mounted as they headed toward the commotion that was being created by the Lord’s disciples who by this time had left the upper room and were facing the gathering crowd.

Today most church people are ignorant of spiritual things because most have no association with God’s Spirit, His Son or Himself.  In this modern age only a few people have direct contact with the Holy Spirit.  Even fewer are used by God in the area of spiritual works, signs and miracles that are performed by the Spirit’s power.  For the vast majority of professing Christendom the Holy Spirit is confined to the pages of the Bible.  As was the case on the Day of Pentecost, questions remain within the religious community as to who or what is the Holy Spirit.  Is the Spirit a ghost?  Is it a person?  Is it a God?  Is it part of a trinity?

The answer to those questions was spoken by the angel Gabriel to a young woman named Mary who was living in the city of Nazareth some three decades earlier when Gabriel appeared to her and spoke to her in her native tongue.  As one can imagine, his message had a startling effect on her.  He told her that she would that day become pregnant and would give birth to a man-child who would be called Jesus.  Being a virgin, Mary asked how she could become pregnant.  It was at that point that the angel identified the Holy Spirit as “POWER OF THE HIGHEST” (vs 35) by which she would be empregnated.  The Scriptures are clear: the Holy Spirit is the power of the two Gods Who make up the Godhead–the Father (Yahweh) and His Son (Adonai).  In various places the Spirit is called both the “Spirit of God” and the “Spirit of Jesus.”  This proves that the Holy Spirit is the power shared by Father and Son.

The Hebrew (Old Testament) word for “spirit” is “ruwach” which is defined as “wind, breath, blast, breeze.”  As the Scriptures make clear, the Holy Spirit does not have a mind of its own and does not operate on its own.  In the Greek language of the New Testament the word “spirit” is rendered “pneuma” which has the same definition as in Hebrew.  Because both the Hebrew and Greek languages nouns are gendered (designated as either male, female or neuter), during the translation process the King James translators rendered the Holy Spirit both as “he” and “it,” depending on the author of the writing.  Many believe that because the Spirit is sometimes depicted as a male (he), that it is a god, a member of a trinity.  In other cases the Spirit is referred to as an “it.”  Such is the case in the Acts 2 description of the Lord’s outpouring of the Spirit on His disciples in the upper room (vs 3).  Although the King James translators sometimes called the Holy Spirit “he,” it is in reality the impersonal power of the Godhead by which Yahweh and Adonai have done what they have done and continue to do what They do.

It was by the Holy Spirit’s power that God renewed the face of the earth as depicted in Genesis 1:2-25 and Psalm 104:30.  It was also by this impersonal power that the Godhead made man as recorded in Genesis 1:26-31 and Job 33:4.  The Psalm 104 statement is especially interesting in that it reveals exactly how the Godhead used Their Spirit in the process of creation: “You (Adonai) sent forth Your Spirt and they (the parts of the universe) were created and You renewed the face of the earth” under the direction of Yahweh.  This statement by King David needs some explanation.  The “You” he was praying to was the Word (Adonai) Who was “with God (Yahweh) in the beginning” and was the God (Adonai) by whom God (Yahweh) “created everything that was created” (Jn. 1:1-4,14) using the power of the Holy Spirit.  This is made even more clear in Psalm 110:1 where David is saying, “The Lord (Yehweh) said to my Lord (Adonai/the Word) ….”  David knew that the Lord he dealt with personally (“my Lord”) was a fellow God with “the Lord” (Yahweh) whose form has never been seen, nor has His voice been heard by man (1 Jn. 4:12/ Jn. 5:37).  In other places we are told that the Father spoke to the Son Who spoke the Father’s words, prompting the Holy Spirit to do what the Father had commanded.  In this way the universe was created.  Nothing has changed.  God still speaks to His sons–his disciples.  His sons then speak what they have heard.  The Holy Spirit then brings God’s Words to fruition.  God speaks to His true disciples both through His Spirit and through His Word.  The Spirit and the Word always agree.  L.J.