Journal: Bibliotheca Sacra
Volume: BSAC 101:403 (Jul 1944)
Article: The Baptism with the Holy Spirit Part 2
Author: Merrill Frederick Unger

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BSac 101:403 (Jul 44) p. 357

The Baptism with the Holy Spirit
Part 2

Merrill Frederick Unger

(Continued from the April-June Number, 1944)

{Editor’s note: Footnotes in the original printed edition were numbered 17–23, but in this electronic edition are numbered 1–7 respectively.}

The various causes of the prevailing confusion with regard to the baptism with the Spirit have been discussed. Attention must now be directed to

III. The Results of the Confusion

This whole theme is far from being a mere discussion of words. It is a sad and appalling spectacle to see the widespread havoc wrought in the Church of Jesus Christ the world over by gross miscomprehension of Spirit baptism. Confusion has steadily increased, especially within the past few decades, furnishing the basis for new cults to arise to trouble the peace and doctrinal purity of the Church. Destructive and dangerous results of this prevailing condition are not difficult to discover.

1. This Confusion Leads to Divisions and Lamentable Misunderstandings among God’s People.

Multitudes of deluded souls seeking some experience not authorized by the Word of God, have imagined themselves to have received some special experienced some peculiar blessing, placing them above their brethren. Error has ministered to empty spiritual pride. Disruptions and separations have flourished like weeds in the rank soil of spiritual arrogance.

Others have sought an experience of “tongues,” or “eradication of the old nature,” and have fallen into many other types of delusion and fanaticism. That confusion of Spirit

BSac 101:403 (Jul 44) p. 358

baptism with water baptism is the source of endless bitter controversy and denominational prejudice is well known to everybody.

2. This Confusion Obscures the Gospel of Grace.

Someone will say that it matters very little so long as the promulgators of these misleading doctrines preach the Gospel. The question, however, is-how can anyone preach the Gospel of the grace of God, while continually misrepresenting the teaching of the baptism with the Holy Spirit? What the Gospel really is, and what a multitude of uninstructed people are willing to call the Gospel, is quite a different thing.

Dr. Lewis Sperry Chafer’s comment on this point is very pertinent: “Where do the leaders of these great errors ever declare that God, impelled by infinite love and acting in sovereign grace, and on the ground of the absoluteness of the finished work of Christ, does save the chief of sinners eternally on no other condition than that he believe? Do they preach that, since the sin question is settled-past, present and fut...

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