Pneumatology

The Study of the Holy Spirit
by James T. Bartsch

"It will come about after this that I will pour out My Spirit on all mankind; and your sons and daughters will prophesy, your old men will dream dreams, your young men will see visions." Joel 2:28




























Part A:  Predictions of the Gift of the Spirit

 

A.           There are predictions in both the Old and New Testaments of the gift of the Holy Spirit.

1.               Yahweh promised that He would one day pour out His Spirit on all mankind (Joel 2:28).  This outpouring would be marked by prophesying, dreams, and visions.  Both men and women would be objects of this outpouring.

2.               John the Baptist predicted that Jesus would baptize with or by means of the Holy Spirit (Matt. 3:11; Mark 1:8; Luke 3:16; John 1:33).

3.               In Jesus’ so-called “Upper Room Discourse,” He promised His disciples that He would send them another “Helper” (Greek, parakletos) (John 14:16).  A parakletos is one who “calls out alongside.”  When Jesus used the word “another,” He thus identified Himself as a parakletos.  The various contexts of parakaleo, the verb, indicate that people “call out alongside” for at least two reasons.  They “call out alongside” to encourage or comfort (1 Thess. 4:18), or to exhort, motivate or urge (Rom. 12:1).  In an athletic setting, a coach is someone who does these things.  Jesus had been “coaching” His disciples for three years.  Jesus said that He would send someone else just like Himself to do the same.  He identified this person as the Holy Spirit (John 14:16-17, 26; 15:26; 16:7, 13).  (For the only other use of the word parakletos in the New Testament, see 1 John 2:1, where Jesus Christ is the Advocate or Attorney who defends His people before the Divine Bar, pleading that His Father not to hold sin to their account inasmuch as He has already, through His death, satisfied all legal demands on their behalf (1 John 2:2).)  The Holy Spirit would teach Jesus’ disciples all things, reminding them of what Jesus had taught them.  It would be to the disciples’ advantage for this “Helper” to come to them.  The Holy Spirit would guide them into all truth and He would disclose to them things to come in the future (John 16:7, 13).

4.               Before He departed to heaven, Jesus promised His followers that they would be baptized with the Holy Spirit in just a few days.  They were to wait in Jerusalem (Acts 1:4-5).


This study is based on, and the links to Scripture reference the NEW AMERICAN STANDARD BIBLE ®, Copyright © 1960, 1962, 1963, 1968, 1971, 1972, 1973, 1975, 1977, 1995 by the Lockman Foundation. (www.Lockman.org)
(Scripture quotations taken from the NASB 1995  Used by Permission.)

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Updated February 4, 2022