Holy Spirit Baptism: A Handbook

By Paul Hughes

Jesus told his disciples that He would send them "another Comforter" like himself, to remain with them forever and teach them all things. But before the Comforter could come, Jesus had to go away. Why? Because it was God's plan to make Christ the Giver of the Holy Spirit in order to indwell and empower His Church throughout the Church Age. The author draws from Scripture, personal experience, and insights from psychology and medical science to construct a cogent theory of how Spirit Baptism works, where the indwelling Spirit resides in the believer, and what the believer can expect, along with practical advice on how to receive the Baptism in the Holy Spirit and to manifest Gifts of the Spirit.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Lulu.com
• Release date: Aug 13, 2014
• ISBN: 9781312434110

Book preview

Holy Spirit Baptism: A Handbook

Holy Spirit Baptism

A Handbook

Paul Hughes

Rev. Paul A. Hughes, M.Div

Copyright © 2014 by Paul A. Hughes

All rights reserved under International and Pan-American

Copyright Conventions.  Published in the United States

by God's Trombone, Liberty, Texas

[e-mail]

Library of Congress Cataloguing in Publication Data

Hughes, Paul A., 1957–

Includes graphic illustrations and notes.

ISBN 978-1-312-43411-0

Previously published privately as Christ Within You: The Indwelling of the Holy Spirit (1993, reprinted 2003).  The bulk of the content of this book has also been incorporated into the larger work by the same author, Christ in Us: The Exalted Christ and the Indwelling of the Holy Spirit (Liberty, TX, 2006), ISBN 978-0-6151-3840-4.

Unless otherwise noted, translations of Bible passages in this book were made in consultation with the Greek text of the New Testament, the King James Version, the NIV Study Bible, ed. Kenneth Barker (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1985), and Walter Bauer’s A Greek-English Lexicon of the New Testament and other Early Christian Literature (2d ed.) trans. and adapt. by Wm. F. Arndt and F. Wilbur Gingrich, rev. and aug. by F. Wilbur Gingrich and Frederick W. Danker (Univ. of Chicago Press, 1979).

ON THE COVER:  The Pentecost by El Greco, circa 1600.  Public domain, as established under U. S. law in Bridgeman v. Corel, 36 F. Supp. 2d 191 (S.D.N.Y. 1999), supported by the U. S. Supreme Court in Feist v. Rural, 499 U.S. 340 (1991)[1], applying Article I of the Constitution and the Copyright Act of 1976.  Copyright claims to public domain works risk the criminal provisions of Section 506 of the Copyright Act for fraudulent use of a copyright notice.  All other graphic images by the author.

Other Books by Paul A. Hughes

Christ in Us: The Exalted Christ and the Indwelling of the Holy Spirit (Liberty, TX: God's Trombone, 2006), ISBN 978-0-6151-3840-4.

Divine Parodies & Holy Histories: with Select Poems: Illustrations of Gospel Truth (Liberty, TX: God's Trombone, 2007), ISBN 978-1-4303-0781-5.

Editor, A Practical Discourse Concerning Death by William Sherlock, with historical introduction (Liberty, TX: God's Trombone, 2007), ISBN 978-1-4303-1731-9.

Neoplatonist Stew: Or, How Sacramentalism, Mysticism, and Theurgy Corrupted Christian Theology (Liberty, TX: God's Trombone, 2014), ISBN 978-1-304-54918-1.

God's Laws: Sin, Law, Grace, and Obligation in Pauline Theology (Liberty, TX: God's Trombone, 2014), ISBN 978-1-312-41010-7.

Dedication

To my maternal grandfather, Thomas Josiah Kinard I (1889-1971), farmer, soldier, refinery worker, pastor, and church planter; and my grandmother, Cecyle Lesley Hutchins Kinard (1906-1988), working beside him to the end—true Pentecostal pioneers.

Preface

Jesus told his Disciples, as He prepared them for his Ascension, that He must go away in order to send them the Paraclete to guide and teach them (John 16:7-15).  He commissioned them to preach the Gospel to the world in the power of his Spirit, accompanied by miraculous signs and wonders.  At Pentecost, Peter identified the outpouring of the Spirit upon all flesh as that foretold by the prophet Joel (2:28).  When the unbridled exercise of spiritual gifts caused confusion in Corinth, Paul wrote to the church, not to limit or proscribe spiritual manifestations, but to explain more perfectly their purpose and proper use (1 Corinthians 12-14).

The Paraclete was meant to remain the Church’s resource and guide throughout the Church Age; but over the centuries the free exercise of New Testament manifestations of the Spirit became a battlefield due in part to extremes such as those at Corinth, but perhaps even more due to church leaders feeling their authority threatened.  Like the outpouring upon all flesh, manifestations of the Spirit remain a fundamentally democratic activity, for now all Christians have direct access to the risen Christ and his resources through the Holy Spirit.

How does one receive the Holy Spirit?  Why should one desire this experience?  How does it feel?  Does one become possessed, and is there any cause for fear?  Of all the vast libraries of Christian books, the majority ignore or deny that true manifestations of the Holy Spirit can happen today, and amazingly few address such basic questions as these.  The best and nearly the only source for information on spiritual matters is the Bible itself.  Finding Spirit Baptism so neglected and ignorance of it widespread, and wishing to explain it in a simple handbook, I sat down in 1993 to write what