Welcome to the For the Gospel podcast, where we provide sound doctrine for everyday people. I'm your host, Kosti Hinn, and I want to welcome our listeners on Apple, Spotify, and those enjoying this on our YouTube video podcast format. On today's episode, I want to begin a new series on the Holy Spirit because I believe he is truly the most abused and misunderstood member of the Trinity today. Most Christians understand the idea of God the Father generally, and they understand Jesus as the Son of God who came to earth, became flesh as a man, and then died, rose, and ascended. But the Holy Spirit is more mystified. He's more misunderstood and downright misrepresented by Christians and especially teachers today. In the series that we're going to jump into, I'm starting with this episode. It's titled The Abuse of the Holy Spirit. We'll look at some examples, unfortunately, of how his work is misrepresented. And I really want to give you some key reasons for why getting the doctrine of pneumatology, which is the doctrine of the Holy Spirit, the Greek word pneuma means spirit, pneumatology. We got to get that right. It matters. Second episode will be on essential truths that every Christian ought to believe and understand about the Holy Spirit. And then we're going to take a look at a practical question. After that, episode three will be the Holy Spirit is God. Now what? What should we do? What does that mean? And then we're going to take a good look at whether or not the Holy Spirit speaks to us today. If he does, how does he speak? I think that episode will be a great encouragement to you. And then lastly, we'll get into more practical questions. Should you pray to the Holy Spirit? If you do, what should you say to him? And then we'll open things up for listener questions as well. So if you have questions about the Holy Spirit, send those in and I'll make sure to get to them on the end of this series. By the end of the series, you're going to have a stronger baseline for your own understanding of the Holy Spirit and also some helpful talking points with friends or family who may be caught up in some church movement or some other ideology that twists the Holy Spirit and his ministry. All of this content and much more coincides with a book I've written. Here it is, if you're watching this on video, it's called Knowing the Spirit, and it's set to release on September 12th, 2023, just a few weeks away from when I'm recording this first episode. And it is my longest book. It's the most in-depth, and it's also the most practical. I cover pretty much all of the biggest questions that people would ask about the Holy Spirit. And each chapter has applications and a section called Learning to Live, where I take theological truths from the chapter, boil it down to three to four action steps, and then small group questions afterwards, all of it meant to give you not only theological truth, but practical application on the doctrine of the Holy Spirit. You can order that on Amazon, Christianbook.com. If our store is up by the time you listen or watch this on forthegospel.org, you can get it there or wherever books are sold. Okay. So in all of my research, one of the most alarming stats I found was that 58% of people who identify as Christian do not believe the Holy Spirit is real. At least that's what the Cultural Research Center at Arizona Christian University, right here where I live in Arizona, found in a study they did in 2021. Nearly 70% of U.S. adults self-identify as Christian, but many of them expressed a deeper reliance on their feelings, experiences, family, and friends than they do the Bible. Their moral rather guidance comes from somewhere other than the origin of all morality, which is God. George Barna concluded in one recent study that only a small minority, they found 6%, of professing Christians actually possess a biblical worldview. When you take research like that and you really think about it, it's got to break your heart. I know it breaks mine as a pastor and a fellow Christian, because if the Holy Spirit is real, he is, if he's the comforter and he takes up residence inside of every believer and bears fruit in our lives, like love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, gentleness, faithfulness, and self-control, just like Galatians 5, 22, and 23 teaches, then the vast majority of next generation professing Christians do not know the God that they desperately need. I want to pair that with a shocking statistic that I read from USA Today not long ago. It reported that nearly 60% of suicides in young people ages 10 to 24 have increased over the past 10 years, meaning we've seen a 60% increase in suicides in ages 10 to 24. Let that sink in. Why do I bring that stat up? Because ages 10 to 24, 60% increase in suicide, that's the entire next generation being affected, and they're taking their lives. Why? Well, because of despair, anxiety, and depression. So the devil works overtime to malign the work of the Holy Spirit. Why? Well, he is the one who fills people with peace, joy, gentleness, kindness, self-control. He's the one who reconciles us or brings us into a right relationship with God through regeneration. You say, what do we mean by that? Well, okay, you believe in Christ by faith. The Holy Spirit comes in, he regenerates you and helps you to walk in the Spirit and to live for the glory of Christ. Do you think if you're filled with the Holy Spirit and you're experiencing his truth, that you're never going to sin again? Well, of course you are. Or you'll never struggle with depression or anxiety. Well, that's not true. Christians do struggle with those things at times. But the answer to all of life's issues he provides. The scriptures declare that the Holy Spirit is the member of the Trinity who regenerates, renews, indwells, he comforts, he helps, he gifts, he heals, he restores, he strengthens, and he enables you as a believer to bring glory to the Holy Spirit. So, yes, a 60% increase in suicide between ages 10 to 24 should matter because those are the exact young souls who need the understanding of the Holy Spirit, the very God who helps them. We'll get into it in the series, but the Holy Spirit intercedes for us when we don't know what to pray. Think of how many people struggle with depression and anxiety and then think, oh God, I just don't know what to pray. I don't know what to say. I just I feel so depressed. I feel the weight of the world on my shoulders. Well, Paul says in Romans chapter 8 that the Holy Spirit is interceding for you. When you're a believer and you go through feelings like that, the helper is helping. So, yeah, the devil assaults the third member of the Trinity. Why? Because he's after a generation. We've got to get past the old Pentecostal versus reformed debates on the gifts of the Spirit and dig deeper into all of the aspects of his work. I know there'll be disagreement. I know the gifts of the Spirit tend to be near the epicenter of the abuses, and so there is a massive aspect to pneumatology that we need to deal with there in some of the problems. But often the doctrine of the Holy Spirit is left to the extremes. Some people just run wild in ignorance, and while others avoid the spirit's work and they don't want to discuss it much or they're not really sure what to do, things get a little awkward because they have succumbed to an over-rationalistic and hyper-reformed stoicism. If you heard the last episode from Paul Washer in our five life-changing messages series, we need a little bit more of this perspective right here.
SPEAKER_02But I will not allow anybody to take the supernatural away from me. And I'm not talking about these silly boys talking about silly gifts. I'm talking about the supernatural nature of an intimate relationship with God in which God becomes more real to you than 6,000 people in a room.
SPEAKER_01To dwell with Him. This is her teaching what she thinks about the Holy Spirit.
SPEAKER_03I feel like I'm supposed to ask you to ask him some questions today. And I want you to go to him and ask him to define who he is to you and what that looks like. So my God, God to me, Jesus to me, and the Holy Spirit to me is like the genie from Aladdin. That's black. I don't I don't agree. That's why I got I don't care. That's who he is to me. And he's funny. He's sneaky. He's silly. He's wonderful. He's like the wind. He's he's all around.
SPEAKER_01So if that's not enough, here's what they call a fire tunnel at Bethel Church. And now a lot of other places and churches are doing this because Bethel's a sort of trendsetter when it comes to this. These fire tunnels are said to be the Holy Spirit falling upon and filling people. His fire, they would say, is filling people or falling on people or igniting their lives or whatever it is. They just have sort of an ethereal thing that's difficult to describe, but the video will take care of explaining what in the world this is, although you'll probably be more confused still. They lay hands on people, they touch them, they kind of walk through it. It's sort of like a human car wash that's said to be uh filling people and and falling on the Holy Spirit is falling on them. You could see that I can't even really describe it. Here, just watch this. If you're listening to that, you probably wonder what in the world people just watched. You can see it later on our YouTube channel if you're driving. At best, this is Corinth all over again. They need to be rebuked. It's disorder, Paul would not be having it. At worst, it's blasphemy. And it could even be argued as demonic behavior. That would be at worst. Consider this clip from Bethel Church of their guest preacher, Heidi Baker, laying hands on a young boy who is believed to be getting some sort of impartation of the spirit through her laying on of hands. I'm gonna let this clip run for a couple of minutes prior to the moment that she lays hands on the boy. So you can see. I'm not taking this out of context here. Just take this at face value, listen or watch to the way uh or watch the way that this whole thing kind of unfolds, and you'll see what I mean.
SPEAKER_04And I see a very strange vision right now where I see crowns within crowns within crowns within crowns within crowns within crowns. And as soon as you take the crown off and place it on the child, I see like a pyramid of crowns upon the child's head, and they take the largest one off and place it on another, and there's another one there. And I see this, this, um, I feel like there's this, it's like a mountain of provision of anointing. The more you give away, the more you will receive, says the Lord. So right now, I'm sensing I'm sensing really strongly. Uh it's gonna sound a little odd, but too late. Uh, I want you to just to take in the spirit realm that crown that's on your head and just place it upon someone else. They're gonna just get wrecked all over the room. You're just gonna Okay, don't don't do it, don't do it like it doesn't matter. Do it in the most impartation, most impartation that you've ever believed for right now. You're gonna impart to each other. So you're gonna take it, you're gonna put it on somebody else's head, and watch, and then say more lord. More lord. Everybody, place, place that anointing, that crown, that gift upon someone else's head. Keep praying, every single one of you, impartation, legacy, legacy, legacy, legacy, legacy, legacy, legacy, legacy, increase your glory. More lord, try it again, try it again, try it again, try it again, more lord, it's fire, place it on the head. Place the I think he's got it. Place it on the little fire. Let it see. Let it see. The greatest thing you've ever seen in your life. Prophesy over him. Ten times. Start to prophesy over him. Ten times what I've seen. Let it be. Ten times what I've seen, let it be. Ten times what I've seen, let it be.
SPEAKER_01Friends, no matter where you're at on how you view the gifts of the Spirit, no matter your background, that sort of experience should be closely examined. Discernment is immensely critical to your spiritual well-being. And while I'm not that old at 38, I find myself stirred with a righteous anger as the next generation, our younger brothers and our sisters, who are future church leaders and mothers and teachers and missionaries, are being targeted with not just errant teaching, but potentially demonic encounters. And I say potentially, I'm not saying everything that these people do is demonic. But in scripture, the only people who convulsed and roared with sounds like that or violently contorted like a puppet on a string, the way that young man did, are those demonically possessed. I'm not at all confident that what we just saw was the Holy Spirit. It has the evidence of another spirit you and I want nothing to do with. One final example I want to run for you centers on the Trinity and the Holy Spirit's role within that. This clip is from mainstream pop preacher Michael Todd, who's no stranger to for the gospel for his repeated abuses of sound doctrine and his massive influence on the next generation. See if you can catch the heresies in this. It's from his series, Why Wouldn't You Accept the Upgrade? He was trying to teach that the Holy Spirit is like uh an upgrade in the operating system of God. He ended up calling the Holy Spirit at the end uh God 3.0. Things got really weird and unbiblical. There was water, there was ice, there was dry ice, there was a lot of yelling and sweat and and all of that. But overall, uh, let me run this clip and then I'll break this down. This will just be about a minute and a half, and then let me speak some truth into it, and we'll talk about why it's important to get pneumatology right.
SPEAKER_00When they when they're at the ropes and they tag in their partner, God tagged. And then Jesus tagged the Holy Spirit. And can I say it like this? I'm gonna mess with your theology right here. God's not doing anything else in your life. God the Father? It ain't he's God. Will you help me? He already did. When he sent Jesus, and Jesus, even though you wear the cross around your neck, he's not coming to earth to help you do anything. Jesus, help me. Anytime you call on him, both of them stand here and say, Holy Spirit. Y'all missed it. God the Father and God the Son. When you say, God, I need you, he said, He ain't talking to me. And then Jesus said, He ain't talking to me. It's finished. And the Holy Spirit, here I go. Where do you need me? I'm everywhere you need to be. Where do I need to show up? You have been blocking your God power on the earth, and his name is Holy Spirit.
SPEAKER_01Okay, so there's a lot of hollering there, but no substance. First of all, in John 5.17, Jesus says the Father is working until even now. That was while he was on earth, and I am working, meaning Jesus. So nothing that Michael Todd said there makes sense based on what the Bible teaches. The father hasn't stopped working or stopped doing anything. It's not like he did his seven or whatever he said, and then he said he took a nap and got some things kind of confused there. And then he's out, Jesus is in, and it's sort of this thing where you're upgrading your iPhone every year or two to get the newest version, and now why wouldn't you take the upgrade? That's not at all a healthy picture of the Trinity or what the Bible teaches. And second, Jesus isn't just standing there doing nothing when you call on him and saying, like, hey, Holy Spirit, it's all you. I'm out, I'm done, it's not us. That's completely unbiblical as well. First John chapter 2, verses 1 to 2, I remember preaching through the letter of 1 John to a group of young people, and it was just loaded with promises and truths centering on Christ and His work, what He did and what He's doing and what we ought to be living like in light of our faith in Him. And verses 1 and 2 of 1 John 2 say, Jesus is our advocate when we sin. Present active. He's not sitting up there going, Yeah, it's all you, uh Holy Spirit, not me. Hebrews 7 literally teaches that he's interceding for us. So Michael Todd, in the midst of this sermon, where to his credit he says the Holy Spirit is God, he does say that a number of times, and he does a chart. I like charts. He does a chart with the roles of the Trinity, and there's some truth. Like most false teachers and most confused influencers, there's going to be truths in this uh cornucopia of heresy if. You will, or this barrel of trouble has drops of truth in it, but it's still loaded with poison. And it just keeps butchering baseline biblical truths in every single area of this sermon. And like most false teachers, well-intentioned or not, he can't keep his teaching straight. In a very concerning and confusing statement, he provides us with further proof of why we need to get the doctrine of the Holy Spirit right. Listen to this kind of very odd and unbiblical statement.
SPEAKER_00What I'm trying to say to you is if you need help knowing what to do in your business, God can help you, Jesus can help you, but there's a God, Holy Spirit, who has been fashion formed and included to help you, and you need to know where to go. Because the Holy Spirit is your help.
SPEAKER_01God can help you, Jesus can help you, but there is a God, Holy Spirit, who has been fashioned, formed, and suited. That's heretical. God is not fashioned or formed, He's not a created being. The Holy Spirit, absolutely not. And so while Michael Todd says he's God in one part, he sort of rears his head again with his false teaching, saying now, well, he's fashioned and formed and suited. This has got shades of Arianism all over it, where uh in the early centuries of the church, there were these heresies. People were getting the doctrine of the Holy Spirit, of Christ confused. And Arianism taught that Jesus and the Holy Spirit were created beings by the Father. They were sort of less thens. And Arianism was condemned as heresy in AD 325 at the Council of Nicaea. When you call God an operating system in a sermon, when you refer to him as parts, when you refer to the Holy Spirit as fashioned and formed, and at the end of a sermon you call the Holy Spirit God 3.0, and you're saying he's fashioned and formed, you've not only left sound doctrine, you've led people into extreme versions of false teaching and heresy. So they are both confused, and if they place their faith in this God of Michael Todd's juvenile imagination, they are lost. You say, what's the point? Well, let me give you three. Number one, getting the doctrine of the Holy Spirit right matters for your soul. If the Holy Spirit is God, and he most certainly is, then we need to get his work, his personhood, his deity, and his role in the Trinity right. The doctrine of the Holy Trinity is tier one. It's primary doctrine. If you get the Trinity wrong, you will not be in heaven. Meaning if you believe in a lower than God Jesus or a created version of the Holy Spirit, or some 3.0, 2.0, less than otherwise, and you're placing faith in some fake God that Mormonism even would find some relatability with. You've got the Trinity wrong. If you get the Holy Spirit wrong, this is not uh, you know, tertiary. It's the same as getting Christ and the Father wrong. He's not a second rate member of the Trinity. If you can get the Father right, place faith in Christ, and then abuse and twist the doctrine of the Holy Spirit, you have got salvation wrong. You don't have assurance. This doesn't mean everybody needs to be a theologian the second they profess faith. But it does mean if you teach andor buy into a theology that has trinitarian heresy in it, your soul is in trouble. Number two, getting the doctrine of the Holy Spirit right matters for your relationships. Let's get practical on this one. The Holy Spirit is the one who sanctifies, unites, gifts, empowers, helps. He seals, he indwells, and he fills the body of Christ. You and I, we can't bear his fruit, walk in love, experience healthy marriages, healthy families, church relationships, even workplace dynamics that are healthy as Christians in the world without his work. And the most important relationship of all is our one with God, which is linked to our purpose. So getting him right has to matter. Our purpose here on earth matters. So the Holy Spirit helps us with that. Our relationships with others and him matter. So we got to get him right. And this is where number three comes in. Getting the doctrine of the Holy Spirit right matters for your purpose. Say, what is the purpose you keep referring to? Well, to his disciples regarding the Holy Spirit's role. Jesus said in John 16, 14, he will glorify me, meaning Christ. Jesus was saying, the Holy Spirit's going to glorify me. He's referring to the fact that the Holy Spirit exists to put the spotlight on Jesus, and therein lies our purpose as well. We exist to bring glory and honor to Jesus Christ. The Holy Spirit fills us. We want to have a healthy relationship with him so that we can glorify Jesus. The Holy Spirit baptizes us into the body of Christ. He fills us to walk in obedience to Christ, and our lives serve as a witness for the glory of Christ. If we're going to fulfill the purpose for our very existence, we must get the doctrine of the Holy Spirit right. In the next episode, I'll unpack, I'll unpack three essential truths that you need to believe and you need to relish in regarding the Holy Spirit if you're a Christian. Don't forget, you can order my newest book, Knowing the Spirit, which I wrote. Here it is again. If you're watching this, this is the cover, this is the copy, and it'll help you get to know the Holy Spirit like never before or refresh your understanding and appreciation of his work. You can pick that up wherever books are sold. Thanks for listening and for watching. If you haven't already, subscribe to our YouTube channel, follow us on all social media outlets, and go to forthegospel.org to get free resources or to become a gospel patron and partner with our ministry financially. I'll be back next Monday with another episode. Keep on living for the gospel.