David Pawson’s TV interview: Being filled with the Holy Spirit - Part 1 - New Testament Practice

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Thoughtful Thoughts 25.9.20 Being filled with the Holy Spirit - Part 1 - New Testament Practice

This week’s message looks at the New Testament teaching on the Holy Spirit.

In this TV interview with David Aldous, David Pawson summarises two opposite extremes. In the blog we will provide some supporting evidence to add to David Aldous’s interview with David Pawson.

“For”

On the one hand, Paul had to correct those who only accepted into membership those who spoke in another languages. He taught that there are many gifts and each has a different gift. One gift is not more spiritual than another - because all the gifts are given by God. In 1 Corinthians 13 Paul tries to correct that thinking.

“Against”

On the other hand, there are those who reject believers who have gifts of the Holy Spirit. In Acts 2:38 Peter says, “Repent and be baptized, every one of you, in the name of Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of your sins. And you will receive the gift of the Holy Spirit.”

In spite of that, even some main stream churches don’t want believers in ‘their’ church membership, who have gifts of the Holy Spirit. Paul pointed out that he too spoke in another language - so it is wrong to reject those speaking in other languages.(Jackie Pullinger’s book ‘Chasing The Dragon’ helps show that the Holy Spirit’s gifts are for today’s church just as much as the early church.) Paul tries to correct the thinking those who dismiss the gifts of the Spirit in 1 Corinthians 12.

“Early Church Practice”.

Paul’s practice was to baptize new believers by immersion as soon as they repented, and then immediately to pray for them to receive the Holy Spirit. Both were essential and all in that order. The only exception was when Peter had to be taught by God that He had already accepting repenting Gentiles into the church. Peter had hesitated to baptize a Gentile convert by immersion - so God filled the convert with the Holy Spirit anyway to show Peter that he had to catch up. Then Peter immersed him in water. Peter even explained his hesitation at the time. Then, after that, the precedent was set for Gentiles to be included, as soon as the Apostles realised God was including Gentiles as equal members in His family. In future it would be Jew and Gentile alike. That tells us that the church was Jewish up to that point, but changed rapidly. This link to Bible verses may help you to get started with references to look up...

https://www.biblegateway.com/quicksearch/?qs_version=NIV&quicksearch=baptize&begin=51&end=51

Next week is for those who want to know how they can also have more of the Holy Spirit, and if you can’t wait, you can watch next week’s ‘In Depth’ on the David Pawson Trust website listed by the video above, but for now, that is the early church teaching on the Holy Spirit, bringing us to the end of ‘Thoughtful Thoughts’ for another week.

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