Gone With the Spirit

GONE WITH THE SPIRIT

by Bryan Norford

GONE WITH THE SPIRIT

Copyright © 2011 by Bryan Norford

All rights reserved. Neither this publication nor any part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording or any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the author.

Scripture taken from the Holy Bible, New International Version®. Copyright © 1973, 1978, 1984 International Bible Society. Used by permission of Zondervan. All rights reserved.

Kindle Version

ISBN: 978-1-77069-323-4

Word Alive Press

131 Cordite Road, Winnipeg, MB R3W 1S1

www.wordalivepress.ca

Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication

Norford, Bryan, 1936-

Gone with the spirit : tracking the Holy Spirit through the Bible / Bryan Norford.

ISBN 978-1-77069-226-8

1. Holy Spirit--Biblical teaching. I. Title.

BS680.H56N67 2011 231’.3 C2011-900977-3

Dedicated to our beloved grandchildren:

Jenny, Lee, Joshua, Dan, Dustin, Shawn and Luciano.

Contents

Some Helpful Thoughts

Part One: Prior Considerations

1. Preliminary Perspectives

2. Who is the Holy Spirit?

Part Two: The Old Testament

3. Setting the Stage

4. The Desert Wanderings

5. The Time of the Judges

6. The Founding of the Monarchy

7. The Prophets and Priests

8. The Messianic Prophecies

Part Three: The New Testament

9. Jesus’ Birth and Preparation for Ministry

10. Jesus’ Teaching on the Holy Spirit

11. The Promise Fulfilled

12. The Gift Spreads

13. Paul and the Spiritual Gifts

14. Paul and the Holy Spirit

15. Hebrews to Revelation

Conclusion

Notes on Further Reading

About the Author 

Some Helpful Thoughts

What do the words Holy Spirit conjure up for you? Is it excitement at the experience you believe God has given you, or are you mystified by such claims? Is the Holy Spirit a positive presence in your life or simply a background force that energizes God’s actions in the world? The title of this book, Gone with the Spirit, reflects usage in the Old and New Testament languages of the same word for wind and spirit. But what does the title suggest to you? Does it imply those lost in wonder at the Spirit’s friendly foray into their lives, or some who have apparently taken leave of their spiritual senses?

The Charismatic movement of the last century, a major phenomenon of church history, has created a divide between those claiming contemporary evidence of the New Testament Church’s experience and sceptics who doubt similar activities occur today. Your answers to the forgoing questions will determine which approach you consider the most appropriate to your faith. Perhaps, like my experience, the force of Charismatic claims has undermined your own reason and experience and left you sitting uncomfortably on the fence. Although I grew up in and pastored Pentecostal churches, I queried some contemporary practices of the New Testament Pentecostal experience. While Scripture identified much activity of the Holy Spirit that I saw demonstrated, how much was a legitimate expression? Which was the real thing or a counterfeit copy?

This book follows my previous book, Guess Who’s Coming to Reign: Jesus Talks about His Return, written in a similar format. The purpose for that book was to give an overview of a subject that has become clouded by speculation and fiction, to the point where many have given up study of the subject. Gone with the Spirit attempts to provide an overview of the contentious and poorly understood person and work of the Holy Spirit. As in my previous book, I have deliberately kept sections short for use as a study guide, and to aid finding information from a particular part of the Bible. Scripture references deliberately interrupt the text to encourage reading them, and Scriptures at the head of most sections provide helpful reading to establish contextual setting for the events. In addition, each section provides material for a weekly discussion in group study.

A lifetime of study and teaching on the subject lies behind this small book, and I pray it may help you to a secure understanding of the issue. The Bible gives perspective that goes beyond blinkered teaching based on sporadic references. It provides a broad-based view of the actions of the Holy Spirit over millennia that will help identify his work today.

Terminology

I want you to have a clear understanding of the terminology I have used. The title Evangelical defines the Christian group that considers the Bible as God’s inspired and inerrant message to us in the original written documents. Modern translations of the Bible endeavour to reproduce those original documents as accurately as possible. Pentecostals and Charismatics both belong to this group, but differ in their understanding of the work of the Holy Spirit. The charismatic stance on the issue now defines a separate category within evangelicalism.

There are some distinctions between Pentecostals and Charismatics. Pentecostals were the first to identify the modern activity of the Holy Spirit about the beginning of the twentieth century. Unable to remain in their parent churches due to harassment, they separated, and new Pentecostal denominations emerged. The Charismatic movement, following similar experiences and ideas, began in the sixties, but unlike Pentecostals, grew in groups that generally remained in their traditional churches. Belief in the modern work of the Spirit, as described in the New Testament Church, is common to both groups.

References cited are from The New International Version (NIV) of the Bible. The NIV capitalizes the initial letters designating the Holy Spirit to distinguish it from other uses of the word spirit; for example, used as a synonym for attitude. In particular, lower case use of the initial letter for spirit identifies its use for other created beings such as angels, evil and lying spirits. Note the different terms used in the Bible for the Holy Spirit’s activity on people: take from, put upon, rest upon, give, have, baptize, and fill, among other terms. They all describe the similar effect of the Spirit uniting with people in both Old and New Testaments.

You may find it helpful to note that the names of Messiah and Christ are interchangeable. Messiah is a transliteration from the Hebrew in the Old Testament, and Christ from the Greek in the New; but they both have the same meaning: The Anointed One.

Finally, there is a difference in meaning between the names God and Lord. God, Elohim in Hebrew, is the creator of the universe, the universal King of creation, and to whom all inhabitants of the earth are accountable. Lord, Yahweh in Hebrew, printed in capitals as Lord in the Old Testament, is a sort of shorthand for the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, designating his particular role as the covenant God of Israel. The Bible sometimes uses these titles interchangeably. The cry Jesus is Lord, in the New Testament is a proclamation that Jesus is the covenant Lord of the Old Testament and of his people, not only for the Jew but also for all those he calls to himself.

Part One

Prior Considerations

1

Preliminary Perspectives

Personal

After a teaching session during my pastorate of a Pentecostal church several years ago, an enthusiastic member asked, Well, where is the Spirit in all this? He assumed a message without a liberal sprinkling of references to the Holy Spirit—especially in a Pentecostal church—was not authentic. The simple answer was, Well, the Holy Spirit wrote the Word we’ve been discussing.

However, the exchange raised the possibility of constructing a message, even a series of messages, without any reference to the Holy Spirit. After all, references to the Spirit are frequent through the Bible; considerably more so in the New Testament. Yet often the preached message sounds as if the Holy Spirit is in the background pulling strings, but not directly relevant to what is happening centre stage.

The Bible is