His Holy Spirit: His Person, Power and Works

By Tony Costa and Ron Costa

"The Holy Spirit has to become every Christian's best friend and the more we know about someone, the more intimate we become with Him. Get intimate with the Holy Spirit as your friend in this comprehensive look into the Spirit of Truth."

Reverend Andrew P. Mitrik

Dean, Greater Works Bibl

• Language: English
• Publisher: Trilogy Christian Publishing
• Release date: Oct 29, 2022
• ISBN: 9781685568764

Tony Costa

"We are all dead men walking until the Holy Spirit quickens our spirit. It is the Word of God that activates the Holy Spirit."Tony Costa, Th.D.AUTHOR OF:Truth Manifested, I AmHis Holy Spirit: His Person, Power, WorksWHO DO YOU SAY THAT I AM? Conversations on Evangelism and Apologetics

Book preview

Author’s Dedication

Firstly, to Reverend Harold G. Johnson,

God’s resolute servant who took the time

to share the gospel message with me. He also served

and ministered to the young men and women from the

East Liberty Larimer Ave section of Pittsburgh, PA,

and for this, we are all eternally grateful.

Secondly, to my wife, Linda, for her assistance and preparations,

with the biblical studies and apologetics and my

children, grandchildren, siblings, and friends who

I love so very much.

Thirdly, to the unborn children, those woven in the womb

that their innocent lives may be spared from such

brutal and inhumane people.

Oh, King Creator Lord God,

embrace the parents so that they may enjoy the

family unit that you designed for love, and see how

life in Christ is made whole.

—Tony Costa

Acknowledgment

And in the Gospel of Luke 6:38, Jesus implores us to Give, and it will be given to you: good measure, pressed down, shaken together, and running over will be put into your bosom. For with the same measure that you use, it will be measured back to you.

You know there are returns when one sows seeds into the fields and works of God. Before this book, titled His Holy Spirit, was written and sent for publishing, there was a brief concern on how to find financial resources to pay for this book and intended future books. At a recent Deliverance Service, we took prayer cloths from that rally held by pastors Gary and Andy Mitrik of Greater Works Outreach Church and Bible School. I shared with Manny the news about the sackcloth, he laid it on the book manuscript, and we prayed over it. Believing and claiming victoriously that the great cost of publishing the book will be managed by the greater wondrous acts of God, our Jireh.

We agreed together in faith that someone known or unknown to us would contribute to the costs for the book’s printing and distribution. We know God works miracles in the stories found in:

Matthew 9:20–22, healing of the woman with an issue of blood,

Matthew 14:34–36, touching His garment, And as many as touched it were made perfectly well.

Acts 19:11–12, 11: Now God worked unusual miracles by the hands of Paul, so that even handkerchiefs or aprons were brought from his body to the sick, and the diseases left them, and the evil spirits went out of them.

Acts 19:11: Miracles glorify Christ, miracles by the hands of Paul.

And in all good thoughts, we prayed and trusted that through some faithful throngs of believers and from the goodness of their hearts—someone would help bring this book, His Holy Spirit, into your own blessed household.

Even before we approached these benefactors, we believed He will deliver, Tony wrote to Manny, if God brings you to it, then God will see you through it, if God wants this book to be written and published, then God who created everything out of nothing and owns everything will make available the finances for this to be reality for His glory.

Three weeks later, benefactors like Linda Costa, Ron Costa, John and Jade Tucker showed up and made pledges to initially help pay for the printing of His Holy Spirit. You have to believe in the miracles of a powerful creator God and the works of the Holy Spirit who convicts, encourages, admonishes, and guides you to bless the men and disciples of God through the sacrificial blood of Jesus who died for all our sins.

Bless the men of God:

So now, brethren, I commend you to God and to the word of His grace, which is able to build you up and give you an inheritance among all those who are sanctified. I have coveted no one’s silver or gold or apparel. Yes, you yourselves know that these hands have provided for my necessities, and for those who were with me. I have shown you in every way, by laboring like this, that you must support the weak. And remember the words of the Lord Jesus, that He said, It is more blessed to give than to receive.

Acts 20:32–35

Tucker Family Supports, LLC on behalf of John and Jade Tucker and their mother, Sharon Tucker-Tinsley. May she gain health restoration, peace, and comfort, and her story to be told about miracles, as spoken in Psalm 51:12, Psalm 119:107, Jeremiah 31: 18, Lamentations 5:21, 2, Corinthians 13:9, 11.

And to their son, Cameron. May the contents of this book be revealed to him so that he may share in the promises of Christ Jesus.

My wife, Linda Costa, and brother, Judge Ron Costa, One of the Sons of Thunder.

My faithful editor and friend in Christ, Manny St. Mary, and Saiphin Carswell.

Other pre- and post-publication pledgors, friends, Apologetics students, church pastors, congregation members, and YOU.

And as for me and my house, I shall lift my benefactors, students, and readers to His Glory.

—Tony Costa

INTROSPECTION

About the author, Tony Costa

and his new book, His Holy Spirit

by Manny St. Mary, Editor

Some, if not all of disquieting affairs in a brokenhearted life include grief amidst dying and the sadness that accompanies such grief, making old marital joys into tears and turning sorrows into multiples of despondency, a sense of loss of hope and courage. That same grief and sadness can break you into four hundred pieces and, in the process, sting you prostrated as they become final precursors to death terminus. Grave illness, the antecedent of death, often stares at you. Even derides you. Then, you become utterly hapless in the face of such tragedy.

Being alone while grieving also becomes a horrid harbinger of death itself, annunciating that death is certain to arrive like a menacing thief at any hour of the day. And what ensues next is knowing that the person you love most—is dying. Knowing that you are losing someone distresses one’s way of life… my life.

I know you understand grief, somehow.

My wife had passed away after a prolonged period of suffering. In the weeks before and after her death, I crept and sought refuge in the lonely darkness of melancholic nights; a house turned empty, gloomy bereft of any joy and happy conversation. The vacated walls became flat and dim. No electricity, neither food nor running water. Living poor or desolate did not matter. Why should they? All I had around me was utter loneliness plus despair. Do you understand why?

Then, God saw my stained pit of desolation as I cried and begged Him to catch my tears in His palm. Oh, God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, hear the painful groaning of my restless soul! I wept for nights. In my valley, I shouted His name and pitifully begged Him to suffuse me with His grace. Jesus, please embrace me when again and again I rupture into tears. I am well soaked in anguish. I told the nights that have become my steady companions. This oppressive life did not mean anything to me. I could not see life nor light, not even the heavenly stars, which they said are witnesses to innumerable good promises to faithful children. It was dark all around me. Just darkness, brokenness.

Such is the greatest poverty of all, being alone and insentient because of my grief and complex pains. There was no one. I found such remoteness away from anyone somehow satisfying and substantial since it was only that sort of solitude that somewhere caressed me constantly, day in and day out.

Cowardice with punctuated grief had married together with sorrows and hauled me down to the floor, refusing to even return home, particularly after her death. No one will be there anyway, no children, no work, only the sad remembrances of the sight of her impending death as doctors pulled her life plug. I shrunk, fell on my face.

I could not find my way home. Surely, I would be alone with her death, alone in the voided darkness of my empty house, coupled with the muffled rumblings of belligerent nights and the medicine-scented air hovering. Pitied myself but did not blame God. I did not understand death and all its pathos.

In that moment, at an exact time, Tony repeatedly knocked at my door and walked in. He blessed me with his coming. Pastor Tony saw me with my head facing sideward, looking toward the empty deathbed of my wife in the living room where we set up a medical bed for her. I laid on the floor. My face and body were angled to one side, neck flexed, and my body facing forward, contorted. My whole body was curled up on its side like a trembling, frightened fetus. Abandoned and left alone.

Unannounced, Tony came. He roused and awakened me. He held me up straight as he noticed my haplessness, concerned about my unhappy plight, financial distress, emotional woes. He began to say, If you have no light, no food, no water—you will dehydrate, become very sick. There was silence that followed from that void moment as Tony looked at me, forlorn, disconsolate. There was a glimmer of an obstructed light that crept through the draped window glass as Tony saw my precarious state of mind consumed by the ill-starred strokes of grief and loneliness that swallowed me. No one really understood me. That in time of grieving, what I would consider worse than being hungry, poor, or sick was really the thought of being alone, not finding anyone who would matter to me.

But you do not have to agree with my grief.

Being alone in my anguish, having succumbed to fear over life’s doom, or losing courage because of the bitter pangs of dying and death itself which had its teeth cut into my whole being. Such terrifying moments that loneliness breeds. That is all I had left. Nothingness.

As soon as Tony saw me, he began to share with me the dream that he had about me last night. I prayed one night, asking God to please let me find you, Manny. In my dreams that night, I saw you lying in a fetal position on the living room floor where Priscilla’s hospital bed was, crying and breathing heavily, Tony narrated his dream with some caution, you were wearing only a linen cloth-like or a diaper and looked very sickly, obviously in terrible pain, anguish and grief, he continued, I felt you needed to hear God’s news. Tony recounted his dream, Your house was dark and very cold.

A smell of tree oil incense pervaded. Tony, you must have heard my cries. That is why you came to visit. You must have been praying for me while I cried quietly in the middle of each lonely night unabatedly, I told him.

Tony answered, Let me tell you about the five stages of grief—denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance. He also recited and briefly explained the story of Job’s lot, about the many stories of grief Job suffered, even the woes and sorry remorse of King David, how Joshua felt when Moses left him. Tony continued, I came here because I had a dream about you and your poor physical condition. Then, Tony prophesied, recalling the scriptures of Joel 2:28–29.

It was in the stillness of that quiet moment after Tony sat me down that he revealed how God, the Holy Spirit, told him to come to visit me, a sick and lonely man. He said, "The Holy Spirit urged me to tell you that God is always present, that God knows His plans for you, Manny, plans for your welfare, a future with Him. Our God and Creator will give you a brighter hope, a solace to supplicate your grieving, a new purpose in life."

Tony prophesied that a new life awaits me, And it shall come to pass afterward That I will pour out My Spirit on all flesh; Your sons and your daughters shall prophesy, Your old men shall dream dreams, Your young men shall see visions. And also, on My menservants and on My maidservants, I will pour out My Spirit in those days.

He continued to reveal to me how God the Holy Spirit will work in me. He pointed to the book of Acts 2:1–4, "When the Day of Pentecost had fully come, they were all with one accord in one place. And suddenly there came a sound from heaven, as of a rushing mighty wind, and it filled the whole house where they were sitting.

Then there appeared to them divided tongues, as of fire, and one sat upon each of them. And they were all filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak with other tongues, as the Spirit gave them utterance."

I knew Tony as early as 2011 before my wife died. He said then, grief and victory may come to your life. He prophesied, that one day after grief has come through the night, and when grief is over, we both would be sharing the gospel message of Jesus Christ together like Paul and Barnabas, we will travel and spread the word in the name of Jesus. Tony was preparing me for that dreaded day of Priscilla’s passing and her coming home in 2012 to be with the Lord.

Tony was assigned as our Hospice Chaplain for my dying wife, Priscilla Almazan. As the days, weeks, and months passed, Tony and I became close with a deep friendship of brotherly love, which developed through time. But I remained hurting and still sad.

Tony had also lost his wife Shawna to breast cancer at the age of thirty-nine years young. He was left with his nine-year-old son Matthew and an eight-year-old daughter, Carolinn, to raise, but he was not all alone. Tony’s mother-in-law Carol Steele and his brother-in-law, Matt Wilson, both came to Pittsburgh to assist in Shawna’s time of need. Carol came from Colorado, and Matt came from California, and for their love, time, and help, Tony and children will forever be grateful. Tony’s sister Beverly Ohrman who lives here in Pittsburgh, was very helpful as well. Carol and Beverly were the women who helped in raising the two children.

I understand your fears, I share your sorrows and painful struggles and grief. We both had much to share with others who are hurting and struggling, dying, waiting for death to come, he said. Tony invited me to several apologetics classes he was teaching. He was my teacher. I became hungry for the Word.

Tony was called to be an evangelist, apologist, teacher, and now an author. Tony knew that it was the prompting of the Holy Spirit every time God calls him to keep on evangelizing.

Was he acting as a conduit or human vessel, delivering messages to others through his dream and through the divine urgings of the Holy Spirit of God? In what he prophesied some ten years ago about the fetus-dream, diaper-dream, book emblems, the hospital episode, about his wife and children, about my precarious situation—how do these episodes in my life become divine realms of reality? He answered, They are the Holy Spirit in His wisdom, using a person as an agent. Tony was the person for me at that moment in time.

I asked him, Is a prophet an individual who is regarded as being in direct contact with God who works through his own spirit aligned with Holy Spirit? Has a prophet been told to speak on behalf of God, serving as an intermediary with humanity by delivering messages and spiritual truths as the Holy Spirit directs? He answered in Deuteronomy 18:22, I will raise up for them a Prophet like you from among their brethren, and will put My words in His mouth, and He shall speak to them all that I command him. And it shall be that whoever will not hear My words, which He speaks in My name, I will require it of him. But the prophet who presumes to speak a word in My name, which I have not commanded him to speak, or who speaks in the name of other gods, that prophet shall die.’ And if you say in your heart, ‘How shall we know the word which the Lord has not spoken?’—when a prophet speaks in the name of the Lord if the thing does not happen or come to pass, that is the thing which the Lord has not spoken; the prophet has spoken it presumptuously; you shall not be afraid of him.

When Tony came to visit me weeks after the funeral, he brought his Bible and recited 1 John 4:1–2, Beloved, do not believe every spirit, but test the spirits, whether they are of God, because many false prophets have gone out into the world. By this, you know the Spirit of God: Every spirit that confesses that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh is of God.

Tony remained a great friend while I laid prostrated in my low and broken spirit, sinking deeper into the valley which seemed to me long, wide, and deep during my loneliest moments of grief and utter despair.

Tony points out even today that There will be a new season for me, and a time to fulfill my own purpose in life under heaven. A new time for me to know that I must start to live and come out of grief, out from the rock and know that there will always be a new time to plant anew and a blessed time for me to sow.

Recently, while writing this Introspection, I asked Tony what brought him to my house when I felt forlorn and when I could have died? Why was he there in my life in 2011?

He replied that he was moved by the Holy Spirit to bring to me the news of peace, life, and hope that comes only from God which I need daily to bring brighter tidings of new joys, new life—sharing the comforts and the blessedness of a brotherhood in Christ.

Is there a mathematical probability of Tony and I meeting in this journey of life? We are two different people from two remarkably diverse American and Filipino races, cultures, and varied lifestyles. Though we both live in the same borough and yet we have never met. In fact, we have never even run into each other in any grocery store or in the community. The interesting part of this story is that we live two blocks from each other.

Oh! But you see, God had other plans for you to bring you home and back to Him, back to faith with a broken heart and having seen and felt His own stripes, Tony confidently said.

When we first met, Tony already knew exactly what was in store for both me and Priscilla. Tony was a Christian, and we both agree that this was the bond that brought us together by the Holy Spirit. Yes, a God who is sovereign and providential.

God knew that Tony was the man for both Priscilla and me. He would be the vessel to be used to spiritually support me in my walk. It was providentially a divine appointment and no mere coincidence. And that is how God the Holy Spirit works. He has each of our every need already taken care of, he said.

Tony continued, As the Psalmist writes in Psalm 139:13–16, my friend, God wants you to know that you should be courageous. And know also that you are not alone since the Lord God is always with you, He continued to quote without opening his Bible,

Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of mercies and God of all comfort, who comforts us in all our affliction, so that we may be able to comfort those who are in any affliction, with the comfort with which we ourselves are comforted by God.

I argued, but I did not understand the depth or the diversity and mystery workings of the Holy Spirit, much less comprehend events in life that are complex to even understand.

I told Tony that when my late wife was on her sickbed, Priscilla asked me three times, Why are you hugging home? Why do you affectionately kiss me? Who are you? she asked while at the Life Care Center in Pittsburgh. My husband, Manny, is coming soon, she said, then she closed her tired eyes and slept.

Tony, do you realize that this was an agonizing moment to nurse my wife every day, every night for over a year and some months, and yet she did not even know me? I addressed him. I am the person who loves her, and yet she does not know who I am to her! Does anyone understand such tormenting moments when I would hold my wife’s hands, but she did not know who I was to her? Tony said, Pray to the Holy Spirit, pray without ceasing.

Next day, I went back to Life Care Center. I kissed my wife and held her hand gently. I placed her swollen, black and blue bruised arm to where my heart had sunk. And loudly, I prayed to God, the Father almighty and a powerful God, to come to my rescue. I cried loud enough, which alerted the nurses to come to the room and witnessed how Priscilla suddenly had opened her eyes and said in Filipino, Nasaan ka nagpunta? Ang tagal mo naman bago dumating. [Manny, my husband, where have you been? It has been so long before you even came here.] My tears swelled again, and I succumbed wordlessly. Soaked in tears, crying, and kissing her gnarled and knotted cheek, I whispered to her, Because the Holy Spirit kept and detained me for a while. But now you see me, and now you know me. I have been here every single day for over a year and a half. I kneeled at her bedside, grasping her hand, and sobbed before a miraculous God. Thank you, oh! Holy Spirit for this miracle!

I asked Tony, Do you regard miracles as categorically big or life-changing? Do miracles cause a new reprocessing of purpose, or can miracles be specific or remote to one’s personal private life? Can anyone receive a miracle and not even know its operation and manifestation in the human life? As God is immeasurable in His great works, why are they not measurable miracles? Do miracles particularly happen only during trials, or can they arrive quickly like spring rain and pour out its succor of living grace one would not even know?

Tony remarked, Miracles are not fully explainable by natural forces. They are seals of God’s divine mission, above nature and above man. Miracles are attributable to the divine supernatural forces that dwell in the ministries of the Trinity. When and where miracles happen, there certainly is the presence of God. The miracles in my life during my brotherhood years with Tony carry indelible influences in my regeneration today.

As for Tony, he has a simple lifestyle, does not place his own self-interest ahead of others, particularly when the Lord declares them right. Neither does he seek professional acclamation nor seek personal honor. Tony simply ministers. He evangelizes with least of hesitation. He shares this humility and confidence with his family and friends.

Tony’s season is changing. His marching order has come. Within a year of Tony’s retirement from Law Enforcement, he began a new ministry as a hospice chaplain for the helpless and dying. He worked with the terminally ill people and their families as the end of their lives was just beneath the compass of the setting sun. This spiritual and emotional challenge was such a blessing to me as I came to know people on a very personal and intimate level that truly blessed and encouraged me at the same time, he once said. I will always continue to pray for you.

One afternoon in June 2012, a couple of months after my wife’s funeral at Thomas L. Nied Funeral, Tony and I met at Eat and Park in a small borough in Swissvale. He shared his dreams. We sat at a round table near the window with plantings of small but leafy dwarf Madagascar dragon trees. I told Tony back in 2012 that I had a dream myself about my late wife. I saw Tony carrying several books with him. My wife sat at the foot of the hospital bed; I was standing near the door.

Five years later, in 2017, Tony told me that he saw me in another dream. He recounted the dream, I saw you in a sickbed in the hospital as Saiphin was by your side. Tony recalled, I was holding some books, and he continued to say that in the dream, he thought it was the Bible.

I told him in 2017, No, Tony, I believe they are your printed book lessons… and you are going to write more of them, about a loving God, a good God whom you helped me find and meet again. When the time comes, I will join you; in His time, not ours!

In 2020, Tony founded Blessings HCBS Provider, LLC, home and community-based service in seven counties in Pennsylvania serving individuals with intellectual and developmental disabilities and autism disorders. After one season, Tony took a sabbatical and endorsed his leadership and operations in the business. Tony said, My calling is to continue in the ministry and preach the gospel now, he continued. The prompting of the Holy Spirit is constantly urging me to dedicate my life to authoring book after book about the glory of the living God.

Tony’s new season in his marching order has come fortuitously. The real confirmation about Tony’s new discipleship rests on a new event—becoming an author, which all came about on the day he showed me his final manuscript on Truth Manifested, his first discipleship lesson book published by Trilogy Publishing in 2021.

Henceforth, the Holy Spirit has caused Tony Costa to humbly become like a new Paul—educating, writing, and speaking about the power and works of almighty God, His sovereignty, providence, love is for mankind, infinite, and eternal.

He is also finalizing his other manuscripts on Conversations on Evangelism and Apologetics and His Miracles and the Divine Angels while waiting for the distribution of the first book, Truth Manifested, and manuscript page formatting of His Holy Spirit.

In the author’s preface, Tony felt a compelling move by the Holy Spirit to immediately embolden his hand, to begin to write and to publish this book and hopefully other books.

What drives a man to abandon a successful business and suffer in kind at his late stage in life and time and only to beget a poor simple life instead, bereft of material gains and money, suffering while enduring in exchange for a Cross with a God-given burden for today’s need for evangelism and preaching the gospel message of salvation.

Humbly he answered, The divine intervention of the Holy Spirit and the urgent burning need to spread the Word as the world comes closer and closer to its end time and patiently waiting for the Blessed Hope and the Second Coming of our Lord Jesus Christ in glory.

Various respectable pastors, authors, church leaders shared their humbling joys in celebrating Tony’s first and second books. Pledges for purchases for both the books Truth Manifested and His Holy Spirit are encouraging. They say that his books are significant and important in the grounding and discipleship of believers.

In the author’s prologue, Tony Costa outlines the deeper relationship between us and our loving God and our loving others. The chapters are designed as keys to a lesson plan on discipleship. As an author, he hopes to simplify the foundations of his new book. The book seizes the opportunity to equip those who have challenges to understand the nature and names of God, the beginning of Creation to end times in John’s book of Revelation.

Tony Costa is a quiet, brilliant author whose knowledge of the scripture is handy and dependably quick and ready when asked about references and the verses of the scriptures. He is also a poet verse libre, belonging to the tradition of a free-verse poetic form with flexibility and naturalness.

Tony honors my new life in Christ, being his former student on Evangelism and Apologetics, by allowing me to share in the formatting, art design, and literary contemplation of his books.

As his book editor, Tony’s insights, the simple expository, and commentary on the Bible are there to withstand albeit to flourish for their own sake. Tony’s new book did not suffer at all from any editor’s self-imposed dictates. I kept his dutiful composition, his own narrative elements, and Tony’s inherent writing virtues all in one goal of preserving the author’s own intent on writing good prose. We also preserved the author’s own style of composition and narratives about the Scriptures as the author himself is knowledgeable on this matter. Tony begins authoring this book by citing God and His signs, works, and wonders from Genesis to Acts, 176 plus known miracles, examples of genetic engineering, spiritual resurrection, the role of the Holy Spirit in God’s eternal purpose, unpardonable sin, and the baptism of the Holy Spirit.

Tony Costa, as an author, stands grounded and firm among the few theologians in Apologetics and among today’s young and new evangelism writers, particularly in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.

You are a very dear friend, a good brother in Christ, and my persevering Evangelism and Apologetics teacher. You helped me to come nearer to Him and embrace Him, a loving God whom I met during my grief and sorrows, whom I am meeting again as a new person in Christ.

Tony, thank you for your time and instruction on Evangelism and Apologetics classes, particularly when I was grieving and brokenhearted. This walk with Christ and the nurturing of my spirit are also all new seasons for me. And you were there, He is there.

—Manny St. Mary, Editor in Residence

Bro. Manny attended the Evangelism and

Apologetics classes with Tony Costa in 2015 and

continues to study scriptural tutoring one-on-one

with Pastor Tony.

PREFACE

Primarily, I am being compelled and guided by the Holy Spirit to share with you the purpose of the book, His Holy Spirit.

It is being written primarily to glorify the one God and the three persons of the Trinity, or aka the Godhead. The motivating factor is directed toward knowing the Person of the Holy Spirit, as to who and what He does and how He works and the power of the Holy Spirit according to the Holy Bible, and God’s divine will and His sublime purpose.

He has clearly revealed to me the challenges of completing this mission, albeit slowly and surely, finishing book after book. And why worry about where the finances will come from to pay the publisher. And I trust Him to make it possible for me to tackle this mission, a mission which is immediate, inspiring, purposeful, and for all God’s glory!

None can be so vital and necessarily immediate as clarifying today the foundations of a fundamental doctrine since the beginning of time as we draw nearer to the end of the age, waiting patiently for Jesus’s second return in triumphant glory.

My humble purpose is for the clarification and identification of the fundamental truth of the Person of the Holy Spirit, of the Triune God supported with biblical truths to make known the person, the power, and works of His Holy Spirit.

He has been the most forgotten entity, the Holy Spirit. By no means is this book meant to be an exhaustive work on the Holy Spirit; rather, its purpose is to make it informative and become an additional knowledge tool, a book about the person of the Holy Spirit. Many Christians today have no clue as to who or what the Holy Spirit is or is not.

Personally, I believe that one of the contributing reasons is because of the lack of preachers in the pulpit along with the church leaders teaching about the Holy Spirit from the pulpits and gatherings. Others have become shy and reticent or even reluctant to preach about anything that somehow may be controversial for fear of rebuke or upsetting the congregation. By no means am I trying to redesign the wheel. My goal is to educate others concerning the spiritual truths concerning His person, power, and works. The knowledge, love, worship, and respect that is due to the Holy Spirit, for He is the third person of the eternal Godhead.

During the time when I was teaching Bible classes and apologetics, it became obvious that many believers in Christ Jesus have no clue as to who or what the Holy Spirit is according to the Bible. Oh, most knew the name and use of the Holy Spirit in studies but failed when asked if He was an it or a who, a force or a friend. I was baffled and concerned because of my passion for the Christian faith evangelism and the need for apologetics. Evangelism and Apologetics are like book ends of the gospel message!

The word apologetics comes from the Greek word apologia, which refers to a speech of defense. And it is typically for one’s own self, a defense, especially of one’s opinions, position, or actions. The word appears in the New Testament.

In an Apologetics class, a student once asked me, Why is He a Person? Why is the Holy Spirit a he? Who is He, tell us, who He was and who He was and will be according to the Holy Bible?

The truth is that He is God and the Third Person of the Trinity, aka Godhead. Refer to these verses as scriptural direction and or command.

Paul tells Timothy in 2 Timothy 2:1–2:

You then, my son, be strong in the grace that is in Christ Jesus, and what you have heard from me before many witnesses entrust to faithful men who will be able to teach others also.

Also, in 2 Timothy 2:15:

Be diligent to present yourself approved to God, a worker who does not need to be ashamed, rightly dividing the word of truth.

In 2 Timothy 4:2:

Exhorts us to preach the word, be urgent in season and out of season, convince, rebuke, and exhort, be unfailing in patience and in teaching.

Paul tells Titus in Titus 1:9:

He must hold firm to the sure word as taught, so that he may be able to give instruction in sound doctrine and also to confute those who contradict it.

Then Peter tells us in 1 Peter 3:15:

But in your hearts reverence Christ as Lord. Always be prepared to make a defense to anyone who calls you to account for the hope that is in you yet do it with gentleness and reverence.

"Sanctify Jesus in your