: The Ministry of the Spirit by Gordon A J Adoniram Judson - Holy Spirit

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dering the Second Person? Scores of excellent lives of Christ have been written; and we find that in these, almost without exception, the divine story begins with Bethlehem and ends with Olivet. Though the Saviour lived before his incarnation, and continues to live after his ascension, yet it gives a certain definiteness of impression to limit one's view to his historic career, distinguishing his visible life lived in time from his invisible life lived in eternity.

So in considering the Holy Spirit, we believe there is an advantage in separating his ministry in time from his ministry before and after, bounding it by Pentecost on the one side, and by Christ's second coming on the other. We have to confess that in many respects one of the best treatises on the Spirit which we have found is by a Roman Catholic--Cardinal Manning. Notwithstanding the papistical errors which abound in the volume, his general conception of the subject is in some particulars admirable. His treatise is called "The Temporal Mission of the Holy Ghost." How much is suggested by this title! Just as Jesus Christ had a time-ministry which he came into the world to fulfill, and having accomplished it returned to the Father, so the Holy Spirit, for the fulfillment of a definite mission, came into the world at an appointed time; he is now carrying on his ministry on earth, and in due time he will complete it and ascend to heaven again--this is what these words suggest, and what, as we believe, the Scriptures teach. If we thus form a right conception of this present age-ministry of the Spirit, we have a definite view-point from which to study his operations in the ages past, and his greater mission, if there be such, in the ages to come.

In the well-known work of Moberly, on "The Administration of the Holy Spirit in the Body of Christ," the author divides the course of redemption thus far accomplished into these three stages: The first age, God the Father; the second age, God the Son; and the third age, God the Holy Ghost. This distribution seems to be correct, and so does his remark upon the inauguration of the last of these periods on the day of Pentecost. "At that moment," he says, "the third stage of the development of God for the restoration of the world finally began, never to come to an end or to be superseded on earth till the restitution of all things, when the Son of Man shall come again in the clouds of heaven, in like manner as his disciples saw him go into heaven." And what shall be the next period, "the age to come," whose powers they have already tasted who have been "made partakers of the Holy Ghost"? This question need not be answered, as we have done all that is required, defined the age of the Spirit which constitutes the field in which our entire discussion lies.

THE ADVENT OF THE SPIRIT

THE ADVENT OF THE SPIRIT

And when the first capital sin was committed in the church, in the conspiracy and falsehood of Ananias and Sapphira, Peter's question is: "Why hath Satan filled thine heart to lie to the Holy Ghost?" "How is it that ye have agreed together to tempt the Holy Ghost?" Not only is the personal presence of the Spirit in the body of believers thus distinctly recognized, but he is there in authority and supremacy, as the center of the assembly. "Incarnated in the church!" do we say? We get this conception by comparing together the inspired characterizations of Christ and of the church. "This temple" was the name which he gave to his own divine person, greatly to the scandal and indignation of the Jews; and the evangelist explains to us that "he spoke of the temple of his body." A metaphor, a type! do we say? No! He said so because it was so. "The Word was made flesh and tabernacled among us, and we beheld his glory" . This is temple imagery. "Tabernacled" is the word used in Scripture for the dwelling of God with men; and the temple is God's dwelling-place. The "glory" harmonizes with the same idea. As the Shechinah cloud rested above the mercy-seat, the symbol and sign of God's presence, so from the Holy of Holies of our blessed Lord's heart did the glory of God shine forth, "the glory as of the only begotten of the Father, full of grace and truth," certifying him to be the veritable temple of the Most High.

This order in the ministries of the Persons of the Godhead is so fixed and eternal that we find it distinctly foreshadowed even in the typical teaching of the Old Testament. Many speak slightingly of the types, but they are as accurate as mathematics; they fix the sequence of events in redemption as rigidly as the order of sunrise and noontide is fixed in the heavens. Nowhere in tabernacle or in temple, shall we ever find the laver placed before the altar. The altar is Calvary and the laver is Pentecost; one stands for the sacrificial blood, the other for the sanctifying Spirit. If any high priest were ignorantly to approach the brazen laver without first having come to the brazen altar, we might expect a rebuking voice to be heard from heaven: "Not yet the washing of water"; and such a saying would signify exactly the same as: "Not yet the Holy Ghost."

"The Work of the Holy Spirit in Man," by Pastor Tophel, p. 32.

See epistles to the seven churches: Rev 2: 11.

John 14: 10.

Lev. 23: 11-16.

THE NAMING OF THE SPIRIT

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