Just as Christ gives the Great Commission where He commands His disciples to stay first in Jerusalem until the Holy Ghost comes upon them in power,

then they are to reach out to Judea, to Samaria, to the ends of the earth.

And that's how the book unfolds.

As each element is reached, each segment is touched.

Samaritans, Godfirs, the Gentiles, God verifies their inclusion with full privileges and membership in the New Testament Church by giving them the Holy Spirit.

The baptism of the Holy Spirit. Sadly, this is an area of great confusion in the Church today.

Is this something you receive when you become a Christian or after your conversion?

Hi, I'm Nathan W. Bingham, and thank you for joining us for this Saturday edition of Renewing Your Mind.

For the past few weeks, RC Sproul has been helping us think biblically about who the Holy Spirit is, and what His role is in the life of the Christian and in the life of the Church.

Well, today, He comes to a misunderstood and controversial area when it comes to the work of the Spirit, the baptism of the Holy Spirit. He has Dr. Sproul.

We're living now in a time in Christian history that is extremely unusual, at least in this respect.

There have been more books written on the person and work of God, the Holy Spirit, in the last 50 years than in all of the rest of Christian history combined.

And that immediately raises the question, why, while of a sudden this tremendous outpouring of literature on the person and work of the Holy Ghost, well, the answer is obvious.

It's because of the impact in the world of the so-called charismatic movement that really had its roots in the 19th century, but crossed over into the so-called mainline denominations

in the middle of the 20th century. Now, there's an unusual history behind the so-called charismatic movement, and that history has to do with the original roots of Pentecostalism, and their doctrine and teaching about the concept of the baptism of the Holy Spirit.

I think we've all heard people speak of the baptism of the Holy Spirit, and we'll say, I became a Christian such a such a time, I was baptized in the Spirit at another time and so on, or they may ask you, have you been baptized in the Holy Ghost?

And also particularly, the way in which that concept of the baptism of the Holy Spirit has been linked so closely to the phenomenon of tongue speaking, that is the glossolalia or the speaking of tongues.

Now, in the original Pentecostal theology, the concept of the baptism of the Holy Spirit and the speaking in tongues was linked to a doctrine of sanctification, a kind of perfectionism that was expressed in terms of, quote, the second blessing, or the second work of grace.

And the idea was that the first work of grace is in conversion, but beyond being converted to Christ through the power and presence of the Holy Spirit, and everybody acknowledged that the work of regenerating the soul was indeed the work of God, the Holy Spirit, but there was a second operation of the Holy Ghost that was equally dramatic, equally instantaneous,

and complete, called the second work of grace by which a person could have total sanctification in this life, where a person would be rendered perfect with respect to his spiritual obedience and righteousness.

And so the movement was called perfectionism. I'm painting with a broad brush here because there were many different representatives of that movement and of that theology, and not everybody believed exactly the same thing, there were different degrees and different types of perfectionism that were espoused.

But the point is this, originally, the idea of the baptism of the Holy Spirit was that it was related to this outpouring of God, the Holy Spirit, on the soul, whose function was to perfect or sanctify the person, and the sign of having received that baptism of the Holy Spirit was the speaking in tongues.

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