No. 1.
MANY earnest Christians at the present day are looking for a further outpouring of the Holy Spirit —a kind of return of Pentecostal times. They long, and very rightly so, for more power and revival blessing. It is well, therefore, that we should prayerfully consider what Scripture teaches us concerning the Holy Spirit, and the results which flow from His presence on earth; counting on God that we may be enlightened and taught His mind.
When we open the Bible we find on the very first page of the inspired book that the Spirit of God was active. When the earth had not yet been shaped and formed as it is now, as a habitation for man; when it was still waste and empty, the Spirit of God was brooding over the face of the waters. Throughout the entire Old Testament we read much about the Holy Spirit, but there is a marked difference between His acting’s then and now. Then He came upon men whom He was pleased to use in various ways, and He enabled them to act for God; but He did not dwell in the saints of old. And this marks the great distinction, so far as the presence and operation of the Spirit is concerned, between the Old and New Testament times. It was not till Christ came, till He died, rose, and went on high, that the blessed Spirit of God came to dwell.
“Know ye not,” says the apostle Paul to the Corinthians, “that your body is the temple of the Holy Ghost, which is in you, which we have of God?” — this is an immense and weighty truth, which could not be said in Old Testament times. Then the Spirit of God “came upon” men and spake or acted through them: now He dwells in every believer.
This at once accounts for the fact that even the disciples themselves knew and understood the Lord much better when He was gone from them to heaven, than they did when He was present with them on earth — it was because the Spirit had come. And He says when leaving them that they were to tarry in the city of Jerusalem, until they were endued with power from on high (Luke 24:49), they were to wait for the promise of the Father, and they were to receive power after that the Holy Ghost was come upon them (Acts 1:4, 8). The fulfillment of this took place at Pentecost, when Jesus, being by the right hand of God exalted, “shed forth” the Spirit, His presence and power being manifested in the remarkable signs of which we read in the early part of the Acts.
We have many allusions to the presence of the Holy Spirit in the typical teaching of the Old Testament. For example, in the feasts of the Lord, given us in Leviticus 23, we find first the Passover and unleavened bread — type of the death of Christ. Then we have the sheaf of the first-fruits of the harvest waved before the Lord — Christ in resurrection; then they were to number, after they brought the sheaf of the wave-offering, fifty days, that is seven sabbaths. This brings us to Pentecost; and after Pentecost came the Feast of Tabernacles. We have a reference to this in John 7. — the Feast of Tabernacles was being celebrated at Jerusalem, but Jesus would not go openly to the feast, because His time was not yet. Before the fulfillment of this typical feast, which prefigured the bringing in of millennial blessing, He, the true grain of wheat, must fall into the ground and die — the Feast of Passover and Pentecost must have their fulfillment — Christ must die, and, having ascended, send down the Spirit; and so we read, “The Holy Ghost was not yet given; because that Jesus was not yet glorified”
The great distinctive truths of the present dispensation or period of time are the absence of Christ, and the presence of the Holy Ghost — Christ, as man, seated at the right hand of God, and the Holy Ghost dwelling on earth. The Lord comforted His disciples in view of His departure, with the blessed fact that the Holy Spirit would abide with them forever. He speaks of a time then future, and He says, “At that day ye shall know,” &c. What day? Clearly the day or period marked and distinguished by the presence of the Holy Ghost. When He would be absent the Spirit would be present, as the “other Comforter,” who would abide with them forever.