The Baptism of the Holy Ghost/Holy Spirit - Part V Conclusion

The Baptism of the Holy Ghost/Holy Spirit - Part V Conclusion

 

 

The Baptism of the Holy Ghost

The Baptism of the Holy Ghost

Jesus baptizes with the Holy Ghost

 

Key Scriptures: “Matthew 3:11-12, John 14:15-17; 26” and “Acts 2:38-39*”.

The Baptism of the Holy Ghost/Holy Spirit - Part V Conclusion

 

Last week we took a look at the History of the Outpouring of the Holy Ghost in the United States.  “Of all the outstanding black American religious leaders in the twentieth century, one of the least recognized is William Seymour, the unsung pastor of the Azusa Street Mission in Los Angeles, CA and catalyst of the worldwide Pentecostal movement. Only in the last few decades have scholars become aware of his importance, beginning perhaps with Yale University historian Sidney Ahlstrom, who said Seymour personified a black piety "which exerted its greatest direct influence on American religious history"—placing Seymour's impact ahead of figures like W. E. B. Dubois and Martin Luther King, Jr.” (Christian History)

 

As we bring our study to its conclusion, let’s look forward to the coming kingdom of Christ as we continue to pray for a revival of an outpouring of the Holy Ghost in our society today. The Day of Pentecost in Acts 2 was the first outpouring of the Holy Ghost during the New Testament times. The frequent outpourings of God’s spirit have always brought great spiritual revivals and spiritual awakenings as we saw in the Book of Acts and with the Azusa Street Mission.

Remember, the evidence of receiving the Holy Ghost/Holy Spirit is tongues, a sign of the believer according to Jesus in Mark  16:14-18. The focus is to receive the Spirit.  Someone asked, “How do I know if I received the Holy Spirit/Holy Ghost?”  If you spoke in tongues the Holy Spirit came inside of you. I’ll show you this in scripture, in just a moment. Our next study will be on the Purpose of the Holy Spirit.  It will begin on October 7, 2014.  CORRECTION:  NOVEMBER 4, 2014

Mark 16:14-18 King James Version (KJV)

¹⁴ Afterward he appeared unto the eleven as they sat at meat, and upbraided them with their unbelief and hardness of heart, because they believed not them which had seen him after he was risen.

¹⁵ And he said unto them, Go ye into all the world, and preach the gospel to every creature.

¹⁶ He that believeth and is baptized shall be saved; but he that believeth not shall be damned.

¹⁷ And these signs shall follow them that believe; In my name shall they cast out devils; they shall speak with new tongues; (This is Jesus speaking.)

¹⁸ They shall take up serpents; and if they drink any deadly thing, it shall not hurt them; they shall lay hands on the sick, and they shall recover.

Let’s look at the fulfillment of scripture for believer speaking in tongues in the name of Jesus.

Read Acts Chapter 10

Summary:

Cornelius was a Gentile, Roman centurion, who believed the preaching of the gospel.  Because he was a Gentile, the Jews referred to Cornelius as a God-fearer, who prayed and gave alms to God.   He was a devout man and surely loved God. He was a man of prayer. (Alms are gifts to the poor) Jesus encourages us to help meet the needs of the poor. 

Not only did Cornelius fear God, but so did his entire household.  (As for me and my house we will serve the Lord: Joshua 24:15) Cornelius and his entire household served God the only way they knew: Practiced the Jews religion.  But now Jesus will show him a more perfect way through his Apostle Peter. 

As Cornelius was praying, he saw a vision: an angel of God coming in to him, and saying Cornelius, thy prayers and thy alms are come up for a memorial before God.  Send men to Joppa and call for Simon Peter and he shall tell thee what thou ought to do.  He sent two servants and a soldier to Joppa.

Now, Peter was on the housetop praying in Joppa.  He fell into a trance and saw heaven open and a vessel descend unto him which had all manner of common and unclean animals in it.  A voice came and said, “Rise, Peter, kill and eat.”  Peter response was, “Not so Lord: for I have never eaten anything that is common or unclean.”  The voice said to him, “What God hath cleansed, that call not thou common.” The voice belonged to Jesus.   The vision was done three times.

While Peter thought about the vision, the Spirit (Holy Ghost) said to him, “…three men seek thee.  Arise go with them, doubting nothing: for I have sent them.”  Peter went to Cornelius who spoke of his vision and stated in verse 33: “Now therefore are we all here present before God, to hear all thing that are commanded thee of God.”

Read verses 34-43, Peter began to preach Jesus unto them and while Peter continued speaking the Holy Ghost fell on all them which heard the word.   And they began to speak in tongues.

Acts 10:44-48King James Version (KJV)

⁴⁴ While Peter yet spake these words, the Holy Ghost fell on all them which heard the word.

⁴⁵ And they of the circumcision which believed were astonished, as many as came with Peter, because that on the Gentiles also was poured out the gift of the Holy Ghost.  (How did they know the Holy Ghost was poured on them?)

⁴⁶ For they heard them speak with tongues, and magnify God. Then answered Peter,

⁴⁷ Can any man forbid water, that these should not be baptized, which have received the Holy Ghost as well as we?

⁴⁸ And he commanded them to be baptized in the name of the Lord. Then prayed they him to tarry certain days.

Cornelius and his household was so hungry for God, they received the Holy Ghost immediately (Matthew 5:6).  Peter knew they received the gift of the Holy Ghost because he heard them speak in tongues. Yes, speaking in tongues is the evidence you being filled with the Holy Ghost, just like Jesus said about the believer and the Day of Pentecost, they all spoke in tongues as the Spirit gave them utterance.  “And it still happens the same way today.” 

Now the bible says:   

Acts 19 King James Version (KJV)

19 And it came to pass, that, while Apollos was at Corinth, Paul having passed through the upper coasts came to Ephesus: and finding certain disciples,

² He said unto them, Have ye received the Holy Ghost since ye believed? And they said unto him, We have not so much as heard whether there be any Holy Ghost.

³ And he said unto them, Unto what then were ye baptized? And they said, Unto John's baptism.

⁴ Then said Paul, John verily baptized with the baptism of repentance, saying unto the people, that they should believe on him which should come after him, that is, on Christ Jesus. (Matthew 3:11, Acts 1:4-5, 7-8)

⁵ When they heard this, they were baptized in the name of the Lord Jesus.

⁶ And when Paul had laid his hands upon them, the Holy Ghost came on them; and they spake with tongues, and prophesied.

⁷ And all the men were about twelve.

Now remember from our previous study on “Repentance”, John the Baptist preached that Jesus would baptize with the Holy Ghost and Jesus himself preached he would baptize with the Holy Ghost.  There is an outward manifestation of the Holy Ghost/Holy Spirit coming inside of the believer, a sign that Jesus said would be present: one of the signs is tongues.  The other signs will follow a believer: Mark 16:14-18. 

When we are born of the spirit and of the water then we can see and enter into the kingdom (John 3:1-8).  He that has not the spirit of God is none of his. That which is born of the flesh is flesh and that which is born of the Spirit is Spirit. We must have God’s Spirit dwelling within us to belong to him.

Romans 8:9 (KJV)

But ye are not in the flesh, but in the Spirit, if so be that the Spirit of God dwell in you. Now if any man have not the Spirit of Christ, he is none of his.

Don’t lose sight of the purpose of the Holy Spirit, he is our comforter. 

The Holy Ghost comes to give us:

• Commandments
• Power
• Enable us to be witnesses of Jesus

Purpose of the Holy Ghost/Holy Spirit:

• The Holy Ghost is our Comforter
• The Comforter is Jesus
• God the Father and Jesus, the Son, dwell in you through the Holy Ghost/Holy Spirit
• The Comforter is a Teacher
• The Comforter is our Helper
• The Comforter is Power
• The Comforter is a Spirit

I pray this bible study has been a blessing to you and your family.  Continue to study the Word of God on this topic and any topic that you desire.  Apply God’s word to your life.  The bible is our instruction manual. 

May God bless you to obey his word:

   "Repent of your sins, be baptized in Jesus name, and receive the Holy Ghost.”

Our next study will be on the “Purpose of the Holy Spirit”. 

The list above is not all inclusive.  Our next study will begin October 7, 2014.
CORRECTION: NOVEMEBER 4, 2014

This will be a valuable study for those who have received the Holy Ghost and for those who desire to receive the Holy Ghost.

 

This bible study has been prepared by:

Minister Mary Waters

Pure Gold Evangelistic Ministries ©2014

An ordained Minister of Jesus Christ operating in the Offices of:

Teacher and Evangelist

 

Churches, Bible Study groups, etc., that would like Evangelist Waters to speak at your:

 Church, bible study, conference, women’s ministry, special program, etc., 

 Please contact Minister Waters on her website listed below, on the

 “Speaking Engagements Page”.

 

Contact Evangelist Waters:
www.PureGoldEvangelisticMinistries.com

Follow The Bible Study Blog: 
www.PureGoldMinistries.blogspot.com

Follow the Weekly Prayer Blog:
www.PureGoldEvangelisticMinistriesPrayer.blogspot.com

The Baptism of the Holy Ghost/Holy Spirit - Part IV

The Baptism of the Holy Ghost/Holy Spirit - Part IV

 

 

The Baptism of the Holy Ghost

The Baptism of the Holy Ghost

Jesus baptizes with the Holy Ghost

 

Key Scriptures: “Matthew 3:11-12, John 14:15-17; 26” and “Acts 2:38-39*”.

Many people today think the out pouring of the Holy Ghost is a thing of the pass.  It’s not.  Receiving the Holy Ghost is for today just as it was in the Book of Acts.  Jesus made the promise of the Comforter for all of those who will believe on him and obey him.

This lesson is a History lesson of the outpouring of the Holy Ghost in the United States.  The Holy Ghost, which is the comforter, is still given today.  We want our focus to be on Jesus, his promise of the Holy Spirit and the Holy Spirits purpose (an upcoming detailed bible study) in our lives and the lives of our love ones. 

Remember this bible study is not simply about speaking in tongues, it’s about repenting and receiving the Holy Ghost/Holy Spirit: the Comforter, Spirit of Truth to lead and guide us into all truth, the power to become Sons and Daughters of God.

 How do you know someone has received the Holy Ghost, the evidence is tongues.  In our next lesson, we will see this more clearly.  Now, let’s take a look at the outpouring of the Holy Ghost in the United States.

Acts 2:38-39 King James Version (KJV)

³⁸ Then Peter said unto them, Repent, and be baptized every one of you in the name of Jesus Christ for the remission of sins, and ye shall receive the gift of the Holy Ghost.

³⁹ For the promise is unto you, and to your children, and to all that are afar off, even as many as the Lord our God shall call.

 

Christian History Issue 65: Ten Influential Christians of the 20th Century

 

“Pentecostalism: William Seymour

What scoffers viewed as a weird babble of tongues became a world phenomenon after his Los Angeles

revival.

Vinson Synan

 

Of all the outstanding black American religious leaders in the twentieth century, one of the least recognized

is William Seymour, the unsung pastor of the Azusa Street Mission in Los Angeles, CA and catalyst of the

worldwide Pentecostal movement. Only in the last few decades have scholars become aware of his importance, beginning perhaps with Yale University historian Sidney Ahlstrom, who said Seymour personified a black piety "which exerted its greatest direct influence on American religious history"—placing Seymour's impact ahead of figures like W. E. B. Dubois and Martin Luther King, Jr.

 

William Joseph Seymour was born in Centerville, Louisiana, on May 2, 1870 to former slaves Simon and

Phyllis Seymour. Raised as a Baptist, Seymour was given to dreams and visions as a youth. At age 25, he

moved to Indianapolis, where he worked as a railroad porter and then waited on tables in a fashionable

restaurant. Around this time, he contracted smallpox and went blind in his left eye.

 

In 1900 he relocated to Cincinnati, where he joined the "reformation" Church of God (headquartered in

Anderson, Indiana), also known as "the Evening Light Saints." Here he became steeped in radical Holiness

theology, which taught second blessing entire sanctification (i.e., sanctification is a post conversion

experience that results in complete holiness), divine healing, premillennialism, and the promise

of a worldwide Holy Spirit revival before the rapture.

 

In 1903 Seymour moved to Houston, Texas, in search of his family. There he joined a small Holiness

church pastored by a black woman, Lucy Farrow, who soon put him touch with Charles Fox Parham.

Parham was a Holiness teacher under whose ministry a student had spoken in tongues (glossolalia) two

years earlier. For Parham, this was the "Bible evidence" of the baptism in the Holy Spirit. When he

established a Bible school to train disciples in his "Apostolic Faith" in Houston, Farrow urged Seymour to

attend.

 

Since Texas law forbade blacks to sit in classrooms with whites, Parham encouraged Seymour to remain in

a hallway and listen to his lectures through the doorway. Here Seymour accepted Parham's premise of a

"third blessing" baptism in the Holy Spirit evidenced by speaking in tongues. Though Seymour had not yet

personally experienced tongues, he sometimes preached this message with Parham in Houston churches.

 

In early 1906, Seymour was invited to help Julia Hutchins pastor a Holiness church in Los Angeles. With

Parham's support, Seymour journeyed to California, where he preached the new Pentecostal doctrine using

Acts 2:4 as his text. Hutchins, however, rejected Seymour's teaching on tongues and padlocked the door to

him and his message.

 

Seymour was then invited to stay in the home of Richard Asberry at 214 Bonnie Brae Street, where on April

9, after a month of intense prayer and fasting, Seymour and several others spoke in tongues. Word spread

quickly about the strange events on Bonnie Brae Street and drew so much attention that Seymour was

forced to preach on the front porch to crowds gathered in the street. At one point, the jostling crowd grew

so large the porch floor caved in.

 

Seymour searched Los Angeles for a suitable building. What he found was an old abandoned African

Methodist Episcopal church on Azusa Street that had recently been used as a warehouse and stable.

Although it was a shambles, Seymour and his small band of black washerwomen, maids, and laborers

cleaned the building, set up board plank seats, and made a pulpit out of old shoebox shipping crates.

Services began in mid-April in the church, which was named the "Apostolic Faith Mission."

 

What happened at Azusa Street during the next three years was to change the course of church history.

Although the little frame building measured only 40 by 60 feet, as many as 600 persons jammed inside

while hundreds more looked in through the windows. The central attraction was tongues, with the addition

of traditional black worship styles that included shouting, trances, and the holy dance. There was no order

of service, since "the Holy Ghost was in control." No offerings were taken, although a box hung on the wall

proclaimed, "Settle with the Lord." Altar workers enthusiastically prayed seekers through to the coveted

tongues experience. It was a noisy place, and services lasted into the night.

 

Though local newspaper coverage spoke cynically about the "weird babble of tongues" of "colored

mammys," on street corners and trolley cars, the news intrigued the city. Whole congregations came en

masse to Azusa Street and stayed while their former churches disappeared. Other Pentecostal centers soon

sprang up around town.

 

Reporting on all this was Frank Bartleman, an itinerant Holiness preacher and rescue mission worker, who

wrote to the Way of Faith in South Carolina that "Pentecost has come to Los Angeles, the American

Jerusalem." His reports, which were printed and reprinted in the Holiness press, spread a contagious fever

of curiosity about the Azusa Street meetings all across the country.

 

In September, Seymour began publishing his own paper titled The Apostolic Faith. At its height, it went

free to some 50,000 subscribers around the world.

 

Though many came to mock and scorn, many others heard messages in known earthly languages uttered

by uneducated blacks and whites that convinced them of the reality of the revival. Soon whites made up

the majority of members and visitors, and black hands were laid on white heads to receive the new

tongues experience. Soon an avalanche of "Azusa Pilgrims" descended on the mission to receive what were

thought to be "missionary tongues," which would enable preachers to go to the far corners of the world

proclaiming the gospel in languages they had never learned.

on't

A list of Azusa pilgrims reads like a hall of fame for the new order of Pentecostal priests.  From North Carolina came Gaston B. Cashwell, who later spread the Pentecostal message to the southern Holiness churches. From Memphis came Charles Mason who returned to lead the Church of God in Christ into the Pentecostal fold (now the largest black

Pentecostal denomination in America). From Chicago came William Durham, who later formulated the "Finished Work" theology that gave birth to the Assemblies of God in 1914.

 

To Seymour, tongues was not the only message of Azusa Street: "Don't go out of here talking about tongues: talk about Jesus," he admonished. Another message was that of racial reconciliation. Blacks and whites worked together in apparent harmony under the direction of a black pastor, a marvel in the days of Jim Crow segregation. This led Bartleman to exult, "At Azusa Street, the color line was washed away in the Blood."

 

Seymour dreamed that Azusa Street was creating a new kind of church, one where a common experience in the Holy Spirit tore down old walls of racial, ethnic, and denominational differences. 

 

Azusa Street Reveival (1906): William Seymour, a Black Holiness preacher, founded a mission on Azusa Street in Los Angeles. There, many people began to speak in “unknown tongues.” “The Pentecostal movement is still growing today.”

 

As you read this history article, “Did you recognize the fulfillment of Acts chapters 1 and 2?”  Review Acts 1 and 2. 

 

Christian History is a subject I recommend Christians to study.  There is so much that has not been taught.  Many people have lost their lives for us to have the freedom to believe on our Savior Jesus Christ.  Christian History tells us of the spread of the gospel and the challenges after the Apostles deceased.  How did Christianity spread throughout the world? Christian History can give you the answers.

 

In our next lesson, we will look at scriptures in more detail on receiving the Holy Ghost with the evidence of speaking on tongues.  Our emphasis is repentance and receiving the Holy Ghost which is evidenced by the speaking of tongues.

 

This bible study has been prepared by:

Minister Mary Waters

Pure Gold Evangelistic Ministries ©2014

An ordained Minister of Jesus Christ operating in the Offices of:

Teacher and Evangelist

Assignment:

Schedule:

Tuesday: Luke 24:46-49

Wednesday: Mark 16: 14-20

Thursday: Matthew 28:16-20

Friday: Acts 5:33-42

Saturday: Acts 10

Sunday: Reflect and Meditate on the your reading assignment

Monday: Review passages that ministered to you, pray for understanding of passages you did not understand, this should be done daily.

 

Churches, Bible Study groups, etc., that would like Evangelist Waters to speak at your:

 Church, bible study, conference, women’s ministry, special program, etc., 

 Please contact Minister Waters on her website listed below, on the “Speaking Engagements Page”.

 

Contact Evangelist Waters:
www.PureGoldEvangelisticMinistries.com

Follow The Bible Study Blog: 
www.PureGoldMinistries.blogspot.com

Follow the Weekly Prayer Blog:
www.PureGoldEvangelisticMinistriesPrayer.blogspot.com