The Baptism with the Holy Spirit Part 3 -- By: Merrill Frederick Unger

Journal: Bibliotheca Sacra
Volume: BSAC 101:404 (Oct 1944)
Article: The Baptism with the Holy Spirit Part 3
Author: Merrill Frederick Unger


The Baptism with the Holy Spirit
Part 3

Merrill Frederick Unger

(Concluded from the July-September Number, 1944)

{Editor’s note: Footnotes in the original printed edition were numbered 24–33, but in this electronic edition are numbered 1–10 respectively.}

II. The Samaritan Revival in Relation to the Baptism with the Holy Spirit

There are certain passages in the Acts of the Apostles which are employed to show that the gift of the Holy Spirit (or the “baptism”) is an experience after conversion. The present Scripture (Acts 8:4–25) is eagerly laid hold of to teach such a doctrine. It is essential, therefore, to examine carefully what occurred in the incident, and to trace the significance of the Samaritan revival.

1. It Marked the Giving of the Holy Spitit to the Samaritans to Undertake for Them Every Ministry Committed to Him in This Present Age.

(1) The ministry of regeneration.

Were the Samaritans saved before Peter and John came down from Jerusalem, and they received the Holy Spirit by the laying on of their hands? To this query a negative answer must be given. They were not saved. Although they “believed Philip preaching the things concerning the kingdom of God, and the name of Jesus Christ” and “were baptized” (8:12), yet their faith was evidently not saving faith, but merely intellectual assent, for it is impossible to distinguish between them and Simon Magus, who is also said to have believed and to have been baptized (8:13). Yet Simon Magus was plainly not saved, for Peter afterward pronounced him as “in the gall of bitterness, and in the bond of iniquity” (8:23).

But assuming their faith to have been genuine, they could not have been saved in the sense of every New Testament

believer, for they had not “received the Holy Spirit,” which means the Holy Spirit had not been introduced to them, as the free gift of the new dispensation to undertake for them His gracious ministry of regenerating, baptizing, indwelling, sealing, and filling. Supposing that believers in the Old Testament, and believers in the New who did not know the full New Testament message of the free gift of the Holy Spirit by simple faith in the finished work of Christ, were “regenerated” (John 3:3, 6, 10), as some maintain,1 yet such were ce...

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