Reading Time: 6 minutesQuestion 4149 The picture of the Spirit as wind is woven into the very words the Bible uses for Him, since the Hebrew ruach and the Greek pneuma both mean wind or breath as well as spirit. When Scripture presents the Spirit as wind it is drawing on something we all know, an unseen power…
Reading Time: 6 minutesQuestion 4148 The image of the Spirit as fire reaches its high point at Pentecost, when tongues as of fire rested on each of the gathered believers and the church was born in power. To grasp why the Spirit as fire is so fitting a symbol, we have to follow the thread of fire through…
Reading Time: 6 minutesQuestion 4147 The picture of the Spirit as a dove is one of the best known images in the whole Bible, fixed forever at the baptism of the Lord Jesus when the heavens opened and the Spirit descended on Him in bodily form. To understand why the Spirit as a dove appears at that moment,…
Reading Time: 6 minutesQuestion 4146 The names of the Spirit in Scripture are not a scattered handful of labels but a deliberate self-revelation, each one opening a window onto who the third Person of the Trinity is and what He does among the people of God. When the Bible gives us so many names of the Spirit, it…
Reading Time: 6 minutesQuestion 4150 The picture of the Spirit as oil runs quietly through the whole Bible, from the anointing of priests and kings in the Old Testament to the believer’s anointing that John speaks of in his first letter. When Scripture presents the Spirit as oil it draws on the ancient practice of anointing, the pouring…
Reading Time: 5 minutesQuestion 04071 The differences between Reformed, charismatic, and dispensational pneumatology come down to how each tradition understands the work of the Holy Spirit today, especially the spiritual gifts and the believer’s experience of the Spirit’s power. A dispensational pneumatology such as the one held here charts a careful course between the two, affirming that the…
Reading Time: 4 minutesQuestion Q07091 Few things matter more to a believer’s daily Christian life than the question of assurance. Whether someone can know with genuine confidence that they belong to God shapes everything: how they pray, how they face difficulty, how they relate to the prospect of death, how they live. The New Testament takes this question…
Reading Time: 4 minutesQuestion 10053 The Holy Spirit’s role in the end times is a subject that generates considerable confusion, partly because of the debate over His supposed “removal” during the Tribulation, and partly because many treatments of eschatology focus so heavily on geopolitical events, the Antichrist, and the sequence of judgements that the Spirit’s work receives far…
Reading Time: 4 minutesQuestion 4079 Every serious Christian has encountered the experience of doing something wrong — a sharp word, a deliberate compromise, an act of selfishness — and then wondering, sometimes with real anxiety, whether something has been lost with God. The question of what a single act of sin does to the Spirit’s filling is not…
Reading Time: 4 minutesQuestion 4077 The laying on of hands appears several times in Acts in connection with the Spirit’s reception, and it has been the subject of theological debate ever since. In some instances, the Spirit is received through the apostles’ laying on of hands; in others, the Spirit comes before any such action. Understanding what the…