While on earth, the Son of God, Jesus, promised those who accept and follow His Word the support of the Holy Spirit. There are, however, two overlapping promises that require discernment and understanding if we are to benefit maximally from them. Through Christ’s mission, we recognise that the Holy Spirit is a person, the third person of the Holy Trinity. He cannot, therefore, indwell or possess any individual, no matter how exalted. We know also that everything that exists is because of the outflow of Power by the Holy Spirit and that this power may indwell the faithful depending on how spiritually receptive they are. It is the power that has sustained all servants of God in a special way from all eternity, but which also sustains everything that exists. Indeed, if God were to withdraw this power from Creation, everything will wither away and die.
The Lord’s promise of help from the Holy Spirit included both; the power, which His coming, now made more consciously available to us, and a personal Mission of the Holy Spirit, as the Spirit of Truth, that we are to expect just before the Judgment. Unfortunately, it has not always been clear to most of us that these are two promises requiring two different fulfilments. Yet if we are to maximally benefit from this critical support, we must understand and open ourselves to the help.
The promises are interwoven in the scriptures and therefore have not been easily distinguishable even by Bible scholars. The first promise grants us the power to live in the Truth by consciously receiving the flow of God’s power into Creation. The second was to bring us conviction in the knowledge of the Truth, which will enable us to achieve salvation in the judgment. The latter will be a personal mission, similar to the coming of Christ, and is often regarded as the second coming of Jesus. More correctly, however, this describes the coming of an Envoy from the Father like Jesus.
The first promise, which was to have immediate fulfilment, was the outpouring of power for strength to live an overcoming life. The Lord Jesus describes this event as the promise of the Father[i], since it is indeed an Eternal covenant between the Creator and His work.
Part 1. The Outpouring of Power by the Holy Spirit
The Promise of the Father
Every year, every creature in creation celebrates a renewal. The sun wears a fresh look; the stars sparkle in clear beautiful skies. The seas take on deeper colours, plants wear a new cloak and start preparing to produce their fruits, the grasses in the field regrow and become greener, flowers bloom everywhere, the animals come out of hibernation. We call this time of year spring/summer.
All of nature appears to come alive. Even in the most obtuse human beings, inner joy blooms, attesting to an awakening in nature. This happening that occurs every year about May/June (at least in the northern hemisphere) has for a long time been attributed by men to the movement of the sun. But it goes beyond the activity of the sun, beyond the World of Matter. Without this pouring of fresh power into creation every year, all growth will be stunted, the world of life and joy will slowly wither away, dry up and over a limited period, everything will die, including the sun.
This event is due to an outpouring of sustaining power from the Creator to his Creation. Since creation arose from the Creative Will of God, also called the Holy Spirit, this is the outpouring of power of the Holy Spirit or by the Holy Spirit. This is an eternal covenant between the Father and His Creation that is eternally recurring. This event happens at the highest point in Creation, in the Grail Castle[ii]. It permeates Spiritual Creation and through the vast expanse of Material Creation to reach our earth, rejuvenating and empowering all movement and activity, including the Sun’s.
The power is for all of Creation, but each being in Creation must experience it according to their standing in Creation, either consciously or unconsciously, depending on how intuitively alert the individual is to the omniscience and Love of God. It is the power that supports living and non-living things. Actually, the classification into living and non-living things was based on our limited understanding. Only God has independent life, and everything that exists is but a consequence of His Radiation.
The only real life is in God and it is the motion imparted to everything arising in the mantle of His Radiation that we call life. Thus, we have classified beings with higher intrinsic movement as living or as having life in them. Other components of Creation with little perceptive movement such as rocks, water etc. we classify as non-living. The impelled motion we call life, or living power in the world around us, is thus only the natural and inevitable effect of the Radiation of God: the independent Power and Life ii.
Creation as we know it arose from the Creative Will of God, the Holy Spirit. The regular outpouring of power by the Holy Spirit supports all that exists. Unfortunately, of all Creation, human beings on earth are the least alert to this recurring outflow of power, so that what even the lowest of animals and plants receive joyfully, we who are imbued with the highest capacity to do so in Material Creation, receive indifferently and passively. Passive reception of the power ensures existence but the fuller and the more consciously we receive, the more power we experience and manifest. Only very few human spirits had been able to recognise this event consciously and even fewer had received this outpouring of power in its fullness. But this changed dramatically, as many things in Creation changed, with the coming of Jesus, the Love of God incarnate.
Christ, the Son of God, opened his disciples to the possibility of receiving this power consciously thus empowering them to achieve, at least to some extent, the heights that human spirits in Creation can achieve. These facts are well documented in the Bible. Christ described it as the promise of the Father i and opened the possibility for fuller experiencing to the disciples on the day of Pentecost [iii].
The power that the disciples received on the day of Pentecost is the power of the Holy Spirit, which flows regularly into Creation to sustain Creation, without which everything that exists will fade and die. The Lord Jesus therefore gave His disciples, and through them all the faithful, the knowledge and the capability to truly receive the power of God in Creation consciously.
In Luke 24:49 He tells His disciples “I am going to send you what my Father has promised; but stay in the city (tarry you in Jerusalem) until you have been clothed with power from on high”. This clearly tells us that 1) This is an Eternal promise by the Father, and 2) The purpose of this promise was and still remains to empower.
This has also been called the baptism with the Holy Spirit and the baptism with fire. John the Baptist in Luke 3:16 described this as the baptism with fire and indicated it as the hallmark of Christ’s mission – “He will baptise you with the Holy Spirit and with fire”. The Lord Jesus Himself confirmed this in Acts 1:4 – “Do not leave Jerusalem, but wait for the gift my Father promised, which you have heard me speak about, for John baptised with water, but in a few days you will be baptised with the Holy Spirit”. The baptism with the Holy Spirit is the promised eternal gift from the Father for His Creation; the eternal covenant.
In Acts 1:8 the Lord further elaborates on the purpose of the baptism with the Holy Spirit “But you will receive power when the Holy Spirit comes on you; and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth”. An empowering that enables them and indeed all Creation, to fulfil their roles.
This power which the disciples received at Pentecost continues to flow to all who follow the path, perhaps not as dramatically as with the events in Acts chapter 2, but nevertheless as empowering and overwhelming in the individual’s life. It sustained the church then and it sustains the true church today. The human spirit is thereby connected with the power flowing from the Holy Spirit.
Since we know that the Holy Spirit is a person (one of the Trinity), it is clear that the Holy Spirit cannot come upon or possess an individual. Although the power of the Holy Spirit flowing into Creation empowers us, if we open ourselves to receive it, to live a fuller spiritual life, to be what we are meant to be in Creation and with our lives to become living testimonies to the power and glory of our Creator. It brings sustenance to the whole Creation.
The event in Acts 2.
The disciples obeyed their Lord’s injunction to await the empowering. They gathered in prayer as directed in a house in Jerusalem at the time indicated by the Lord and the miraculous happened iii. For the first time, modern human spirits consciously received the power poured out of the bounty of the Holy Spirit.
Their spiritual core, already awakened in the Word brought by the Son of God Jesus, connected directly with the power, enabling them not only to suddenly have greater clarity about the teachings of the Lord, but empowered and emboldened them to take on the world. Those who can see saw the spiritual flame, the true flame of the disciple, connecting them to higher guidance. Their achievements are a matter of history. It is a basic necessity and remains so today that only those who have embraced and live in accordance with the Word of Truth can consciously receive of the power.
Today, people who claim to be Christians, without attempting to understand or obey Christ, claim to be baptised by the Holy Spirit and as evidence adduce speaking in tongues; a species of unintelligible chatter that individuals must learn before they accept them into the fold. True, the power is poured out regularly for the sustenance of Creation, but only those that receive it consciously and in purity, receive the baptism or the enablement by the power of the Holy Spirit. And they do not need to speak in tongues!
This is not to say that the baptism of the Holy Spirit as happened with the disciples of Jesus has ceased or is no longer possible. On the contrary! It still empowers those that live in the Truth even today. As stated earlier, this is actually a covenant from the Father that is eternal. The reason that it became a special event for those who once again find their way to the Light is because of human failure. Thus, this fundamental event, which should be experienced by all, became a baptism into life for the few. The individual must stand aright in the Will of God to receive it. The Holy Spirit does not grant the power to make us speak in tongues, nor is it manifest by speaking in tongues, but to empower us to live and work in the Will of God.
Speaking in tongues simply means communicating in different languages from yours. It was part of the empowering giving at that time to ensure that the disciples reached their diverse audience. And subsequently, whenever it becomes necessary in other to reach out to other seeking human beings, this ability to speak in tongues went with the empowering, and this continues to the present day. But speaking in tongues was not the essence, nor does it define the baptism by the Holy Spirit.
[i] Luke 24:49
[ii] The Grail Message
[iii] Acts 2
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