Mormonism The Real Holy Spiri
THE REAL HOLY SPIRIT
In Mormonism the “Holy Ghost” is a personage, or a god, but the “Holy Spirit” is an impersonal force. The Mormons refer to verses that the Holy Spirit is symbolized by oil, fire and water and show that these are “impersonal”. The Bible refers to the Father and the Son as “bread of life”, “living water” and other “impersonal” terms. Again, we must look at the context.
In John 16:7, our Lord is placing His emphasis on His going away and the Holy Spirit’s being sent by the Father to replace our Lord himself. This change (or replacement), Jesus says, would be beneficial for His disciples. AN IMPERSONAL FORCE COULD HARDLY IMPROVE ON THE PERSONAL PRESENCE OF OUR LORD, JESUS CHRIST!
The word in Hebrew and the word in Greek for SPIRIT and GHOST both mean the same, “breath or wind” and the “translators” of the King James Bible noted that the Greek word denoted a neuter gender and mistranslated to be an “IT”, but they did utilize the word Ghost and Spirit and interchanged them on many occassions.
The words as translated are from only ONE word in Hebrew and ONE word in Greek – therefore there are NOT two words for SPIRIT and GHOST – only ONE. Now, let’s look at this ONE entity called the HOLY SPIRIT. In John 16:13 and 14 we see our Lord, Jesus telling us this about the Holy Spirit, “HE shall not speak of HIMSELF … HE shall glorify me … HE shall receive of mine ….”. NOTE that our LORD gives PERSONALITY to the Spirit. Otherwise our Lord would have used the term that Mormons use “IT”.
Jesus repeatedly (John 16:7-15) uses the MASCULINE PERSONAL pronoun “He” when referring to the Spirit. Jesus used the term clearly to tell us that the Spirit had personality and intimacy.
Ananias was struck dead for lying to the HOLY SPIRIT (Acts 5:3). You cannot lie to an impersonal force! It would be like walking up to a window box fan, turning it on and facing its “force” and then telling lie after lie to it – IT WOULD NOT CARE THE SLIGHTEST, WOULD IT? Now, you look at Ananias and, if you are not a complete idiot, you would not repeat his behavior, now would you? The Holy Spirit and the Holy Ghost are not two different items mentioned in the Bible. There is only one entity ÜfÜ referred to as both HOLY GHOST and HOLY SPIRIT.
The Holy Spirit is a person. The Spirit may be “grieved” (Ephesians 4:30) and “sinned against” by UNFORGIVABLE blasphemy (Mark 3:29). None of these things are possible for an “impersonal force”.
The Holy Ghost does things which only a person COULD do.
He SPEAKS:
“The Spirit said unto Philip, ‘Go near'” (Acts 8:29)
He STRIVES:
“My Spirit shall not strive with man forever” (Genesis 6:3) – “The Spirit also helpeth our infirmity … [and] MAKETH INTERCESSION for us.” (Romans 8:26)
He REVEALS, SEARCHES, and KNOWS:
“But God hath revealed them unto us by His Spirit; for the Spirit searcheth all things … the things of God knoweth no man but the Spirit of God” (I Corinthians 2:10,11).
Other verses can be shown in which the Spirit IDENTIFIES with believers (Acts 15:28), The Spirit is ETERNAL (Hebrews 9:14), OMNIPRESENT (Psalm 139:7-10), DOES GOD’S WORK (Genesis 1:2), INVOLVED IN REGENERATION (John 3:8), participates in the RESURRECTION (Romans 8:11).
Paul identifies the Spirit as the speaker to Isaiah. Acts 28:25-26 and Isaiah 6:8,9. An impersonal force does not counsel, speak, feel, or anything resembling personality. The HOLY SPIRIT is a person – one of the THREE ENTITIES of the ONE TRUE GOD.
Computers For Christ