God Makes Himself Known

Our story begins, in a sense, in Genesis 1:26-27 when “God said, ‘Let us make mankind in our image, in our likeness, so that they may rule over the fish in the sea and birds in the sky, over the livestock and all the wild animals, and over all the creatures that move along the…

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THE HOLY SPIRIT IS CALLED GOD

We will end this series with a very well-known passage from Acts 5. But first, a little background. In Acts 4, Luke describes how the believers in that early church treated one another. Acts 4:32, “All the believers were one in heart and mind. No one claimed that any of their possessions was their own,…

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In the Name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit

R.A. Torrey asserts, “The name of the Holy Spirit is coupled with that of God in a way it would be impossible for a reverent and thoughtful mind to couple the name of any finite being with that of Deity.”[1] He quotes 1 Corinthians 12:4-6: “There are different kinds of gifts, but the same Spirit…

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Is it God, or is it the Holy Spirit?

This indicator of the deity of the Holy Spirit may be a bit subtle, but in his Great Doctrines of the Bible, William Evans offers the following for consideration. Under his proofs for the deity, he says: “Passages which in the Old Testament refer to God are in the New Testament made to refer to…

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The Holy Spirit Performs Divine Works

The title above is a fancy way of saying that the Holy Spirit does things that only God can do. Since that’s a broad subject that would take a whole lot of books to explore, we will concentrate very briefly on only three works: creation, the inspiration of Scripture, and giving life. The Holy Spirit…

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The Holy Spirit Displays Divine Attributes

One of the indicators we have in Scripture to show that the Holy Spirit is God is that He displays several key attributes that belong only to God. In brief, the Holy Spirit is eternal (He had no beginning, and will never end); He is omnipresent; omniscient; and omnipotent. We will look at each of…

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THE DEITY OF THE HOLY SPIRIT

In the first few articles in this series, we followed several lines of evidence to show that the Holy Spirit is a Person. We move now into the biblical evidence that this same Holy Spirit (also called the Holy Ghost) is a full member of the Trinity along with the Father and the Son. If…

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THE HOLY SPIRIT CAN BE GRIEVED

Francis Chan comments, “For a long time whenever I read that we are not to grieve the Holy Spirit (Isa. 63:10; Eph. 4:30), I thought that was a bit of an exaggeration. It almost seems sacrilegious to say that I could grieve God. Who am I to have such power over the Spirit?”[1] In our…

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THE HOLY SPIRIT IS OUR COMFORTER

“I will ask the Father, and he will give you another advocate to help you and be with you forever” (John 14:16). The word here translated “advocate” is the Greek word parakletos. The word combines two other Greek words, para, meaning “alongside,” and kletos, meaning “one who is called to stand alongside another.” R.A. Torrey explains, “the thought…

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The Holy Spirit Acts as a Person

In a previous article we looked at three characteristics of personality displayed by the Holy Spirit—knowledge, will and emotion. These are characteristics of a person, not an inanimate object. Now we will show how the Holy Spirit’s actions also indicate personality. As Charles Ryrie says, “Actions are attributed to the Holy Spirit that cannot be…

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