by Lehman Strauss
“And the LORD said, My Spirit shall not always strive with man, for that he also is flesh: yet his days shall he an hundred and twenty years” (Genesis 6:3). T here is an urgent and imperative need in our churches for a scriptural knowledge of the Per son and Work of the Holy Spirit, because He is the neglected Person of the blessed Holy Trinity. It is a matter of great concern to observe the appalling ignorance on the part of some Christians as to the basic and essential truths concerning the Holy Spirit. It is not an uncommon error that He is referred to as a mere impersonal influence. Sometimes I hear Christians refer to Him as “ it.” This is wrong. The unfortunate use of the word “ itself” in Romans 8:16, 26, in the Authorized Version, is corrected in the Revised Version. Had the translators given us the sense of the pronoun in its true meaning and theo logical correctness, the word would be rendered “Himself” in all versions. Unfortunately they took the neuter noun “Spirit,” which, by the way, is neuter only as a matter of grammar, or syntax, and followed through with a pronoun in the neuter. But the Holy Spirit is a Person, and He must always be referred to and addressed as such. It is possible that people have drawn a wrong inference from His name as translated in the Scrip tures, “Holy Ghost." It is quite natural to associate the word “ghost” with a mere apparition, an imper sonal, shadowy something or other, an intangible phantom. A friend of mine told me that the word for ghost in the old Anglo-Saxon was the same as the
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THE KING'S BUSINESS
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