Shabbat shalom kol beit Yisra'el and Mishpachah. I wasn't sure I'd have this ready for you today as four days ago my ancient PC and software just wiped out 10-12 hours' of work clean off my harddrive and I had to start again in a state of extreme discouragement. Most of you don't know but I now have to write all my sermons standing up, which is pretty exhausting as my body is not used to this, bringing with it a whole new set of physical pain, and this on account of the fact that my fibromyalgia now makes it impossible for me to sit down for more than 2-3 minutes at a time without chronic pain, thanks to a botched job by a chiropractor a month ago. This means sermon-writing takes a whole lot longer than it used to. So it may well be that my writing days will soon be over but I will continue for as long as my legs will keep me standing. I leave my health in Yahweh's hands whether He will grant me healing or not. Perhaps this will help explain why some of my sermons are more disjointed than usual! Anyway, enough of myself, welcome back to the third in our series on Spiritual Equipping, and as I promised last week, we are today going to deal with the controversial idea of Baptism in the Ruach haQodesh and Fire, using as much of the lost material as I can remember.

One of the problems we as human beings face is poor communication. Not only that, but our gender and culture also results in our communicating rather differently and that can sometimes lead to us getting frustrated with one another. Back in 1990, Dr. Deborah Tannen, a Professor of Linguistics, wrote a really useful book called, You Just Don't Understand: Women and Men in Conversation. And it's a scientific fact - men and women think differently and behave differently.

Communication is a complicated thing because we make all sorts of assumptions about one another's ability to understand, especially when you're trying to communicate across cultures. Now in the spirit world, communication is instant and complete, whereas here in this physical world we have to grapple with words, sentence construction, inflections, tone of voice, gestures, and many other things. In some cultures people love to argue for the fun of it. In Italy, a discussione is not the same as a 'discussion' in England! Males like to tease and prank more than females which girls don't always appreciate.

I was born and raised in the Far East where communication is very different from the West. 'Maintaining face' is extremely important there, especially amongst Chinese, whereas we don't care too much about that any longer. The chivalric 'honour culture' has, sadly, nearly all but died out amongst us. But even the West isn't homogenous in that regard. Consider the real differences between the USA, Great Britain and Australia where the same language - English - is spoken. It's really easy for us to misunderstand one another. Not only that, but in my own lifestime, language and the way people communicate have radically changed. Today's radical 'cancel culture' would have been utterly alien when I was young, shocking, in fact. We would have regarded such behaviour as uncivilised, and I personally still do.

So we really should not be surprised to find difficulty in understanding an entirely different language and culture 2,000 years old now when we read the Bible. Translating the Bible into the vernacular is difficult which is why over the years I gone to great pains, to the irritation of some, to emphasise the importance of studying language, history and culture. Indeed, some of the things expressed in classical Hebrew and Greek just don't make sense to us today. Many translations will therefore contain footnotes saying things like, 'The meaning of the original Hebrew is uncertain'. Be very careful in making doctrines out of hard language. Two thousand years in the future someone reading a dialogue in which someone says, "Let's chill!" will probably think you were hot and urgently needed to cool down. The common man's language is notoriously hard to translate, a problem we face in the New Testament because most of what we have in the Greek is known as koiné that must have used expressions that no longer mean anything to us and which can't be literally translated. Here's where the Aramaic becomes particularly useful.

These are very real problems. Did you know that it is now common for separate British-English and American-English editions of a particular Bible translation to be made? I have US and UK editions of the New Revised Standard Version (NRSV) and one or two other versions like the NIV and they are different. At least for 400 years or so English was more or less standarised by the King James Version. Today we have dozens and dozens of English translations, some of them specially designed for particular denominations! That's why I like those that involve big committees from many denominations to iron out the biases, but even that's not entirely possible. Most collaborations between Protestants and Catholics have an inherent anti-Messianic, anti-Torah bias. Not only do we have denominations to consider now but also liberal versus conservative Bibles, and gender-inclusive Bibles where gender usage has been neutralised so as not to offend anyone. When that is done, meaning is lost, and sometimes prophecy can be obscured. So don't get too attached to a particular version - be prepared to be challenged and then do some research.

Key Bible topics can sometimes be controversial because of the issues I have raised, and none more so than Baptism in the Spirit and Fire. What do we mean by 'baptised'? Or 'Spirit'? Or 'Fire'? What does it mean when people say they are 'Spirit-filled' and then behave as though they are getting direct revelation from the Throne Room whilst contradicting each other? Is it because religion is a sham, as atheists would claim, and as I once used to believe, or because there are some major misunderstandings going on? It seems to me that most people, when confronted by a big question like Spirit-and-Fire Baptism, tend to have one or more of four approaches:

• 1. They will first of all seek Yahweh in prayer anticipating the guidance of the Ruach haQodesh (Holy Spirit) and (if they're continuationists) hoping for some concrete revelation, prophecy or vision to absolutely set the seal on the matter;

• 2. If they are Protestants - and most particularly Evangelical Protestants and some Messianics - they will make a systematic study of all the passages in the Bible that talk about the subject matter at hand, lay those pieces out (I estimate there are about 60 related passages on Spirit/Fire-Baptism, so there's lots of material), and attempt to assemble them into a jigsaw-puzzle picture of some kind, trusting that the Scriptures will interpret themselves, because they believe that the language is uniform from Genesis to Revelation. This is the Sola Scriptura or 'Scriptures Alone' approach, but it has huge problems, as five centuries of Protestant factionalism have demonstrated;

• 3. If they are Catholics, Eastern Orthodox, Mormon, Seventh-Day Adventist, Jehovah's Witnesses or some Messianics - they will first of all go to their traditions (Catholic and Orthodox to the various Councils and their collection of writings of the early 'Church fathers'), to the teachings of their current leaders (Mormons), Jewish Rabbinical tradition (some Messianics), or leaders of the past (the Mormons to Joseph Smith and his revelations, the Adventists to Ellen White and her writings, the Calvinists to John Calvin and his Institutes or to men like Charles Spurgeon, John MacArthur and John Piper), the Jehovah's Witnesses to the writings of the mostly faceless Watchtower organisation leaders starting with Russel and Rutherford, and some Messianics to that vast collection of Jewish writings called the Talmud which I once tried to buy in Oxford until I realised how many books were involved; or

• 4. If they are scholars, conservative or liberal, they will study history, archaeology, language, etc., each interpreting through the lenses of their own assumptions and worldviews. Thus the liberals will assume a naturalistic, evolutionary universe and disbelieve in anything supernatural while the conservatives will assume the opposite - miracles, a Creator, and so forth.

And that is why nobody completely agrees on everything which is why you end up with different admixtures of truth and error everywhere you look. That is why the doctrine of the Baptism in the Ruach haQodesh (Holy Spirit) is so important so that you don't end up with mere intellectual opinion because someone who is authentically born again - someone who is actually regenerated, transformed, changed by the Ruach/Spirit - and someeone who is authentically and supernaturally baptised in the Ruach (Spirit) and 'filled' - and by the way, hundreds of denominations make no distinction between these two! - someone who receives these gifts from Elohim (God) will get a pure revelation along with others that will lead them, together, in power, in truth, in love, to a true unity of faith (that we spoke of last week) with no intellectual or internal contradictions of mind or heart.

Sounds good? Yes, but there's a problem, and we have to face it honestly. And the problem is this: Continuationists (those who believe the major gifts did not end after the apostles died) like Pentecostals, Charismatics, and others who claim to be "led by the Spirit" are in reality led by all sorts of 'spirits', a great many of which are far from being 'holy' which you can easily spot in some of their wild, disorderly behaviour, not to mention many of the heretical doctrines they produce like the false 'Prosperity Gospel'. This is a reason why years ago, I wrote two very important articles called Filled with the Spirit and Filled With Spirits which I urge you to carefully study. If you're reading this online, pause now and return here later after you have read these two articles. If you're listening to me live please come back to them afterwards.

There is probably no more important area of study once you have become a believer in Yah'shua (Jesus) - as a new talmid (disciple) - because there is a major separation of belief between two groups of denominations at this point. The cessationists as a rule make no distinction between being born again and being baptised in the Ruach (Spirit); they believe the big miracles ended after the apostles died whereas continuationists like ourselves believe they continued but - and this has to be emphasised too - became more scarce because of two problems:

• 1. False doctrine; and
• 2. Listening to false, demonic spirits.

Now you could add other things that drive out the Ruach haQodesh (Holy Spirit) like worldliness and immorality, and I have met a lot of worldly Pentecostals and immoral Charismatics who still claim to be 'Spirit-filled' because of a particular 'sign' which they claim means they've basically got it all right. It's a big delusion they suffer from. I met active so-called 'Spirit-filled' Pentecostals in Oslo, who manifested all the right signs their denomination expected of them, who admitted to to a brother that their level of sexual morality was little different from the secular culture around them, i.e. promiscuous. Sorry, but the 'Spirit' does not fill the "sexually immoral" who are described in no uncertain terms in the Book of Revelation as being on the same level as "the cowardly, the unbelieving, the vile, the murderers...those who practise magic arts, the idolaters and all liars" whose joint fate is "the fiery lake of burning sulphur...the second death" (pure sulphur burns throughly, as it did in Sodom and Gomorah, a biblical metaphor for spiritual purification and cleansing) (Rev.21:8, NIV). Do you see that there is a contrdiction between the spiritual claims being made about 'Spirit-filling', 'baptism in fire', and the Pentecostal and Charismatic sign supposedly indicating their place among the saved and Spirit-filled?

A problem in the early Messianic Community (Church), and since, is that pagan converts were ever close to their pagan roots which is why nations that were Christian for centuries took longer for the Enemy to dismantle, something he's pretty much done now. Time is important in growing deep, enduring spiritual roots, both for individuals and cultures. Those roots have all but been pulled up in the West. Europe is reverting to the old paganism and America, Canada, Australia and other Western nations are close on Britain's heels. That is why forsaking old pagan haunts is so important for new converts and returning to them only after substantial spiritual growth has taken place and then only for evangelism and never for entertainment and the like.

Today lots of Christians and Messianics are cessationists because they are rightly scared of all the false spirits they see amongst the Continuationists like the Charismatics. I don't blame them, I was sceptical for a long time myself, even though I knew Scripturally there was no real case for cessationism. They see the craziness in the Charismatic Movement, the many fake healings, the frankly bizzare, satanic behaviour, the false prophecies (just think of all the recent failed 'Rapture' predictions), and the like, and that makes them shy off into what they believe is the 'safer' realm of the mind. And yet the 32,000+ denominations, the majority of which are cessationist, hardly inspire confidence in the mind either. The frightening thing is that Pentecostalism is growing exponentially. There's been a huge explosion of Pentecostal converts since the last war with 279 million adherents in the world. Charismatics stand at 305 million. Together they represent over a quarter of all who claim to be 'Christian'...compare this with the Catholic population of about 1.2 billion, which is only now about twice as large.

We are warned in no uncertain terms that the heart is corrupt - desperately wicked, deceitful, and hard to fathom (Jer.17:9). It fools us time and time again. The heart, remember, includes the mind in Hebrew thinking. It was the Greeks who separated them which is why you see more of that dichotomy in the New Testament which we have inherited in European civilisation. The thing is, we desperately need something in addition to our own spirit, as we shall see now.

So we need to clearly know what we're doing before we get into this study. We need go no further than the alleged oldest book in the Tanakh (Old Testament), the Book of Job, to give us some idea of what we're up against. You'll find practically every false doctrinal philosophy of Christendom and Judaism anticipated, discussed and defended in some form or another by Job's four mistaken though very sincere and religiously devoted friends. That's why it's such an important book but it does require a lot of work to understand. I'd like to make a separate study of that another day - I've been wanting to do that for a long time but it does require a lot of uninterrupted concentration which I've not had lately. Those of you with a philosophical and theological bent will enjoy it I'm sure.

I especially want to draw your attention to the remarks made by the youngest of Job's friends, Elihu, who in a way indirectly lays out the base-line of the charismatic problem for us all to see. This is especially a warning to intellectuals because this young man was bright. So let's read from Chapter 32 starting at verse 5 - I'm going to be using a paraphrase today because it conveys the overall sense of the text very well:

"...[Elihu] spoke out angrily (at the three older friends of Job), and said, 'I am young and you are old, so I held back and did not dare tell you what I think, for those who are older are said to be wiser; but it is not mere age that makes men wise. Rather, it is the spirit (ruach) in a man, the breath (neshamah - 'wind', 'violent blast') of the Almighty (Shaddai), which makes him intelligent. So listen to me awhile and let me express my opinion" (Job 32:5b-10, Living Bible).

Let's pause there a minute because I want you to be aware that in the Hebrew there is a distinction between "the spirit in a man" and "the breath or violent blast of wind of the Almighty" (also Job 33:4). What happened on the first Messianic Shavu'ot or Day of 'Pentecost'?

"When the day of Shavu'ot (Weeks, 'Pentecost') came, they were all together in one place. Suddenly a sound like the blowing of a violent wind ('a rushing mighty wind' - NKJV; 'the rush of a violent wind' - NRSV; 'a strong driving wind' - NEB) came from heaven and filled the whole house where they were sitting" (Acts 2:1-2, NIV)

I want you to remember that for next week. Neshamah is powerful, rushing, driving, mighty, not a little puff of wind. Likewise, I want you to remember what Yah'shua (Jesus) did to His talmidim (disciples), "He breathed on them and said, 'Receive the Ruach haQodesh (Holy Spirit)'" (John 20:22, NIV). The word rendered "breathed" is emphusao in the Greek, from which we get the English word 'emphasise' - 'breathed' is far too weak, emphusao means 'blow at'. It's more like the power of breath in artificial resuscitation!.

Do you see a problem with the English translators sometimes use? The English words "spirit" and "breath" are actually very confusing because they translate two Hebrew words, ruach and neshamah, respectively, a distinction that is lost in the Greek translation of the New Tetament because Greek makes no distinction between the two. Not only that, but 'breath' is far too weak - it's a blast of wind, like we've seen! Same with the creation of Adam, where "Yahweh-Elohim formed the man from the dust of the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath (neshamah - 'violent wind') of life, and the man became a living being" (Gen.2:7, NIV). That is why going to Hebrew and Aramaic sources is so important. Both these Hebrew words - ruach and neshamah - can be translated 'breath' or 'wind' or 'violent blast' but they're obviously not the same because neshamah is associated with Shaddai or Yahweh and ruach with man. The one is 'lower' (ruach) and the other 'higher' (neshamah), if you like.

If this is unfamiliar linguistic territory to you, then please study my article, The Bible Teaching on "Soul" which is my oldest theological treatise made in the 1980's. Why is this important? Because without a proper understanding of how the Bible uses words like 'soul', 'spirit' and 'breath' you can end up getting lost down the Seventh Day Adventist, Jehovah's Witness, Armstrongite Worldwide Church of God, Christadelphian, and the majority Messianic rabbit trail. I am convinced Yahweh made this my very first in-depth Bible-study so that I would not go that way, even though I knew a great deal about what I call the 'soul-sleepers' and was not persuaded by their claims. None of these denominations has much of a clue about the Baptism of the Ruach haQodesh (Holy Spirit) and Fire.

Back to Elihu's speech to Job:

"'I have waited all this time, listening very carefully to your arguments, but none of them has convinced Job that he is a sinner, or has proved that he is. And don't give me that line about 'only Elohim (God) can convince the sinner of his sin.' If Job had been arguing with me, I would not answer with that kind of logic!

"'You sit there, baffled, with no further replies. Shall I then continue to wait when you are silent? No, I will give my answer too. For I am pent up and full of words, and the spirit (ruach) within me urges me on. I am like a wine cask without a vent! My words are ready to burst out! I must speak to find relief, so let me give my answers. Don't insist that I be cautious lest I insult someone, and don't make me flatter anyone. Let me be frank, lest Elohim (God) should strike me dead'" (Job 32:11-22, LB).

Quite the 'drama king', wasn't he? Yet how many of you have been pent up, full of words, ready to explode with indignance and self-righteousness when you've been overwhelmingly convinced that an innocent man was guilty of some terrible sin (though the reverse could be true too)? Recall what Yah'shua (Jesus) said?

"A good man out of the good treasure of his heart brings forth good; and an evil man out of the evil treasure of his heart brings forth evil. For out of the abundance of the heart his mouth speaks" (Luke 6:45, NKJV).

What is Elihu's argument - his rationale - for being heard and believed? "...the ruach or spirit (ruach) within me urges me on", and he implies, as his credentials, a superior God-given and God-sanctified intellect to the other three friends of Job who failed to win their arguments. (I can think of one or two very smart modern apologists like Elihu). He quotes the truth - "only Elohim (God) can convince the sinner of his sin" but then ignores it because he believes he has the correct God-ordained intellect and ruach or spirit to 'win the argument'.

Well, the four arrogant and uninspired friends were wrong and yet apparently Yahweh was only angry with three of them - Eliphaz, Bildad and Zophar...and not Elihu. Job is instructed only to interceed for the three older men who argued out of experience and not revelation! Elihu may have been over-zealous and a bit cocky but he did at least bring a coherent message to Job that his three older friends did not, a message that prepared Job for the 'Whirlwind Speech' from Yahweh. Elihu goes deeper and shows a surprising understanding of how Yahweh uses pain and suffering which is why, I believe, he is given several chapters. Elihu at least sought revelation and got some, that was ultimately a blessing, in spite of his brashness.

However, Elihu's righteousness or unrighteousness isn't why I brought him into today's discussion. The point is this: whether it's brains or feelings - your 'spirit' or ruach (with a small 'r') within you, be very, very careful indeed what you subjectively attribute to Elohim (God)! Don't get on an emotional rollercoaster as Elihu appartently did! Passion or emotional excitement is not necessarily truth though equally there's no reason why a passionate or emotional person can't be speaking truth either. Usually it isn't. My only point here is that there's only a 50:50 chance that passion and emotionalism are the fruit of truth. They're simply expressions of conviction, be it right or wrong. We'll come back to that presently.

Uniquely in the Bible, which makes this passage so valuable, Elihu mentions two kinds of 'spirit' or 'breath' that were spoken of in those days - ruach and neshamah. There's a third mentioned too, which is even 'lower' or less pure than ruach, and that's called nefesh (or nephesh). Nefesh corresponds to the Greek psuche or psyche, which we've discussed before, from which we get the English word 'psychology', which is the study of the mind and of human behaviour in general - 'the good, the bad, and the ugly' - the lot. Now whilst 'nefesh' can also be translated as 'breath', 'wind' or 'life' and their cognates, one of the problems we have with all three words is that they historically came to be used interchangeably because of carelessness on the part of the users, a bit like the English word 'lust' which originally was neutral and simply meant to 'eagerly desire' something. That's still it's original sense in Norwegian where, 'Jeg har lyst' - 'I have lust' - simply means, 'I desire' as in 'I desire to go swimming'. Over time 'lust' in English came only to be used negatively in connection with impure sexual desires. We do that all the time with our language. Not only that, but neshamah, which Elihu applied to Yahweh, is also applied to man (albeit it clearly derived from Yahweh) and in a passage I know some of you are familiar with:

"The spirit (neshamah) of a man is the lamp of Yahweh, searching all the inner depths of his heart" (Prov.20:27).

The implication is that a man has both ruach and neshamah and that there is therefore a gradation of the spiritual life force in man, from the purer or finer neshamah through ruach to nefesh which are together inside a belem or body. I have come to conclude over the years that these are three levels of life-consciousness that allow us to talk to ourselves so that sometimes the 'voices' we hear in our head are in actual fact conversations between these different aspects of self (when they're not demons, of course, and when we're not dealing with a split-personality caused by violent abuse, as in MPD/DID [1]).

That some of the divine neshamah is in all man is definitely suggested by the apostle John who refers to it as the Ruach haMashiach or the Spirit of Christ in the prologue of his Gospel where we are told that a portion of this Light (notice John uses 'Light' rather than 'Breath' in order to help ex-pagans make bridges to the Hebrew life using words familiar to them in their culture) accompanies everyone being incarnated into mortality:

"The same (John the Baptist) came for a witness, to bear witness of the Light (Yah'shua/Jesus), that all men through Him might believe. He (John the Baptist) was not that Light, but was sent to bear witness of that Light (Yah'shua/Jesus). That was the true Light, which lighteth every man that cometh into the world" (John 1:7-9, KJV).

In my opinion, the King James Version is more accurate than most modern English translations which fudge the last sentence (with the exception of the Jewish New Testament (JNT) and one or two others which confirm the KJV). The others interpret the passage to mean that the Person of Yah'shua (Jesus) was the Light coming into the world, which of itself is not untrue, of course, but isn't what the text is saying. The point John is making that there the Light of Messiah is in everyone who is born, enabling those willing to listen to their conscience or the Neshamah part of their three-aspected spirit. This is an extremely important point, something I was taught by a dear friend who walked close to the Master in the earliest days of my discipleship and has now passed on. That we have more than one type of 'spirit', 'breath', 'wind' or 'life-force' in us ought not to surprise us, given that Yahweh is said to have seven Himself (Rev.1:4; 3:1; 4:5; 5:6) and we are made in His image.

When we die our body (belem) perishes in the ground leaving behind our 'life-force' or 'spirit' which has this threefold neshamah-ruach-nefesh existence. Try to imagine them, if you will, as three linked batteries storing different grades of life-energy that are shaped by the choices we make on earth. I believe this triple entitity is the "conscience" mentioned nearly 30 times in the New Testament which can either be pure or defiled, depending on the choices we make. It becomes defiled when, like a lantern allowed to get dirty and never cleaned, the Light of Messiah is prevented from manifesting properly in us. Indeed, it is my belief that these three ruachot (spirits) in man represent, at any one particular point in time, where we have grown in Messiah as represented by the three Pilgrim Feasts of Pesach (Passover), Shavu'ot (Weeks, 'Pentecost') and Sukkot (Tabernacles). I'll explain what I mean by that as we go along in this series of sermons. Meanwhile, note that the result in mortality of these three overlapping spheres of 'spirit'-plus-body is the existence of seven areas altogether, corresponding to the Seven Annual Festivals and what they each represent in our journey to, and in, Christ. When we are one day resurrected, the physical body will no longer be able to 'detatch' again.

Now it may well be that I have oversimplified - this is a model I developped in Oxford back in the 1980's and I have since come to view Venn diagrams as being more helpful. These are diagrams that show all the possible logical relations between collections of different sets such as the internal set of ruachot or 'spirits'/life-forces in man. These are sometimes, appropriately, called 'Truth tables' and allow us to consider multiple aspects of truth without putting them into conflict with each other as, for example, in the false dichotomy of 'faith vs. works' that has split so many churches. In the following example, which you have seen me use for many years now, there is a sevenfold overlap of three spheres showing the relationship between Salvation by Faith, Torah-obedience and Humanism which I find very helpful is showing how the different denominations integrate, ignore or repudiate certain aspects of the Besorah (Gospel). This is the only way that these three fundamental biblical truths can be aligned, harmonised and integrated, allowing us to 'see' what different believers are 'up to' and what our goal ought to be - the basis of real unity:

So let this be a warning to the amateur scriptorians who don't carefully look into the English translations of the Bibles they use and as a result hastily arrive at wrong conclusions. This, incidentally, is a reason Teachers are called in every congregation with the charisma or gifting to explain the deeper things to help us grapple with issues like this and to make sure we clearly grasp the bigger picture and don't end up with a distorted view of the Besorah (Gospel).

This 'equipping' isn't downloaded instantly from Heaven into our souls but is acquired through hard work - the 'gifting' is the supernatural ability to acquire and integrate vast amounts of information, to grasp spiritual heights and depths that no mortal frame could ever accomplish alone. It follows that Pastors, who must also teach, need to be equally well equipped, particularly in our modern age. Many a time I have looked back at my own writings and wondered how on earth I got all this integrated knowledge and the answer has been it wasn't from 'earth' but a heavenly charisma or gifting. Solomon received his wisdom in exactly the same way.

You will also often find all of these designations of the 'spirit' - neshamah, ruach and nefesh - confusingly translated, for instance, as 'soul' even though 'soul' is defined in Scripture as body (belem) + spirit (ruach). Later the English language changed, under Catholic influence, to the point that a soul was no longer regarded just as a composite of body-and-spirit but rather as something in addition to body and spirit, a third 'part'. Thus commonly believers speak of 'having' a soul, which makes little scriptural sense given what a soul actually is, namely, the sum total of spirit and physical flesh. A biblical soul is a 'living being', a 'human-being'. I am a soul. You are a soul. We don't 'have' souls, as is made clear in Genesis:

"...Yahweh-Elohim formed man of the dust of the ground, and breathed (nafach - 'blew powerfully') into his nostrils the breath (neshamah) of life (chayim); and man became a living soul (nefesh)" (Gen.2:7, KJV).

"And so it is written, The first man Adam was made a living (zao) soul (psuche = nefesh - 'human being' - JNT; 'animate being' - NEB; 'living person' - NLT); the last Adam was made ('has become' - JNT) a quickening (zoopoieo - life-giving, vitalising) spirit (pneuma = ruach)" (1 Cor.15:45, KJV).

So we have to be very, very careful how we interpret our English Bibles (a reason, incidentally, why the claims of King James-onlyism are such stupidity and interfere good Berean-type discipleship). Hebrew is not a sophisticated, scientific language like our own and the language has evolved over time, just as all languages do. Modern Hebrew, for instance, is not the same as biblical Hebrew. It has changed enormously over the millennia. I've explained, for example, how, even within the Tanakh (Old Testament) itself, the word torah has changed in meaning, originally referring only to 'law' (and specifically the Pentateuch or first five Books of Moses) but by New Testament times it had also come to mean 'teaching' or 'instructions' that incorporated the whole Old Testament. In my short lifetime English has changed too. Things that meant one thing in the 1960's mean something entirely different today 60 years later. Until New Testament times people had little or no idea what the afterlife looked like, a reason why the Sadducee sect didn't even believe in an afterlife. Why? Because they only accepted the Five Books or Moses (Pentateuch) which says nothing about an afterlife (see Heaven and Hell). That doesn't mean there wasn't one, just that Yahweh had not revealed much about it yet.

Most depictions of the invisible and supernatural are therefore represented in poetic terms. So when the Hebrews talk about the 'breath' or ruach of man they're principally talking about his life-force, that which makes him a living being. They observed that when someone dies, that person stopped breathing, and so breath became a metaphor for that life-force. Likewise they observed when a man's throat was slit, that man also died. Therefore they viewed life as being "in the blood" (Lev.17:11), sustaining life (Lev.17:14). Therefore they made the next obvious deducation that blood was life, at least for the flesh (Dt.17:14) They didn't know the two (breath and blood) were biologically related, as we do, that the pulmonary system absorbs oxygen from the lungs and deposits carbon dioxide as a byproduct of metabolism there. Even with all our incredible scientific knowledge we still don't what what life is exactly. Indeed, it appears to be in every cell, not just in breath and blood. That's how they are able to make cultures of different cells and keep them alive in biochemical cultures. Why are only these two aspects of life mentioned in Scripture? Because they're the most obvious, visible signs of life.

Only 'ultra-literalists' believe that Yahweh has 'lungs' and literally blew into a clay model which He had fashioned with literal divine 'hands' like a potter working on his wheel in an art studio. Rather, this is an anthropomorphic picture indicating in story form, terms comprehensible to every culture in every age, that Elohim (God) is the Creator who imbued physical matter with His Life-force. That is why the Bible was designed the way it was. How He did it - the scientific process - is not told us, and nor is it needed to communicate the Gospel message of salvation. Likewise, Yahweh 'speaking' Creation into existence through His Word (Eng.), Logos (Gk.), Davar (Heb.) or Miltha (Aram.) does not mean Yahweh has an exceedingly large larynx, tongue and lips with which to form words as physical human beings do. Sound wouldn't have traveled through space anyway. He didn't say 'Aum' with a gigantic booming voice as the New Agers and Buddhists believe, nor did He 'speak' Creation in the literal words depicted in Genesis 1.

That He 'spoke' is probably best understood as a 'Declaration of Divine Will' that somehow penetrated everything as it was formed but how that 'Declaration' was made we cannot possibly understood with our limited knowledge and primitive languages. It certainly isn't what Charismatics claim they can do, namely, that they can speak things into existence with human words. That's nonsense bordering on blasphemy. You'll find them 'declaring', usually 'in Jesus' Name,' this or that all the time (like 'I declare healing or prosperity into your life') but without the slightest evidence that they have created anything at all except a phantom in their own minds. Yahweh alone is the one who can 'speak' things into existence and it isn't by vibrating a giant larynx. But that doesn't mean that something isn't 'vibrating' or being 'pulsed' somewhere, somehow. We just don't have the Science to explain it yet, assuming we ever do.

However, there is another sense worth considering too. The idea of 'Word' conveys 'intelligence' and 'code' - DNA is an example of such a 'word', or on a tinier scale, the software that runs your computer, and that DNA is a very long 'word' indeed! A single gram of human DNA is capable of storing 215 petabytes or 215 million gigabytes and in principle has the capacity to store every piece of data ever recorded by humans. Think on that! But such information-storing would be incomprehensible to ancient culture, and the Bible is intended for every culture from the most primitive to the most sophisticated, so the general idea of a creative Davar or Logos is really more than adequate to explain the Gospel of Salvation. It is a densely information-packed word whose depth and breadth is continually being revealed every generation.

The Ruach haQodesh (Holy Spirit) is likewise a Life-force, only this time, unlike ours in its natural state, it's 'Holy', Qadosh or 'Set-Apart', meaning He, She' or It is to be differentiated or 'separated' from the spirit or breath of man as something belonging to an infinitely higher dimension to our own puniness. But the Ruach (Spirit) is also personal - She is a Person - and is spoken of in feminine terms in Hebrew [2]. This Divine Ruach 'speaks' just as our human ruach 'speaks' only we speak viâ brain, mouth, larynx and tongue on a much lower plane of existence. Yahweh 'speaks' in ways we cannot yet comprehend. The 'literalist' Bible interpreters tend therefore to over-simplify and miss the mark. I'll explain this more fully when we come to discussing more fully the Gift and Baptism of the Ruach haQodesh (Holy Spirit) next week.

Sorry to be so technical today but the knowledge you are able to mine from all of this will enable you to untangle a lot of knotted, confused theologies out there that rely on poor English, German, Latin, Greek, or whatever language the Hebrew and Aramaic Bible has been translated into - Hebrew, Aramaic and Greek words which are rooted in primitive pre-scientific thinking. I promise you it's actually all very simple indeed. One of the charismata or gifts given at the first Messianic Shavu'ot (known as 'Pentecost' by most) was the ability to reverse the confusion caused by the confounding of languages at the Tower of Babel. That is what symbolically happened at the real Day of Pentecost in Jerusalem 2,000 years ago where everyone present heard their own distinct language or dialect being supernaturally spoken by the talmidim (disciples) present. And, critically, as we discussed some months ago, it also signalled imminent judgment on the nation of Judah-Israel.

Unfortunately, the Pentecostal and Charismatic movements have gone in the opposite direction and given us gibberish instead, making the situation worse than the outcome of Babel, and they rejoice in all that added confusion, fooling themselves into believing it is some kind of private language for each individual known only by them and by Elohim (God) even though they have no idea what they have been saying. Instead of us having hundreds of languages they - or to be exact, the spirits that guide them - have given us no language at all and turned worship into an apish mockery of the glory of Elohim (God). Sorry, they're going to have to do some hard work to fully understand what really happened 2,000 years ago but once they've done that, the pieces will all fit comfortably together and the Ruach haQodesh (Holy Spirit) will confirm the true picture or story and bring about real unity, not the 'unity in chaos' of Babel which even non-Christian religions do (as you would expect of them) as well as the counterfeit atheist-communist-run Ecumenical Movement that tries to artificially mimic it.

I think we're probably ready now to apply what we have learned about the etymology of 'spirit' (a word, remember, borrowed from Latin, spiritus), and 'word' (which comes from the Frisian word, the Dutch woort, the old High German Wort, the old Norse orð and the Gothic waurd) to a proper understanding of what John the Baptist was explaining about 'Baptism in the Ruach haQodesh (Holy Spirit) and Fire'. Fortunately the word 'fire' (Hebrew, 'esh) is a lot simpler to understand as there is no etymological dispute. 'Fire' in the Scriptures has only really meant one or two closely related things and John the Baptist clearly explains what it means in the context of Ruach or Spirit Baptism in the only pair of references to Spirit/Fire Baptism that there are in the Gospels that have a singular historical context. We'll end today's study with that.

Next week we will unpack the Baptism of the Ruach haQodesh (Holy Spirit) and Fire and find out what that description really means. But first your homework in the form of a short passage of Scripture that I want you to think and pray about which is the key to our understanding, coming from the lips of John the Baptist who is the first to mention it. It first appears in Matthew 3:11 and is duplicated in Luke 3:16. These two identical passages will give you a huge understanding of what Fire Baptism is and who it's for and why. We need to absorb this understanding before we consider what Paul has to say, and he has a lot to say. We'll now read the Matthean passage, as well as some of the material before and after the key verse, and that will give you your homework for next week. We'll start with verse 5 (though you can start with verse 1) and read through to verse 12:

"Then Jerusalem, all Judea, and all the region around the Jordan went out to him (John the Baptist) and were baptised by him in the Jordan, confessing their sins. But when he saw many of the Pharisees and Sadducees coming to his baptism, he said to them, 'Brood of vipers! Who warned you to flee from the wrath to come? Therefore bear fruits worthy of repentance, and do not think to say to yourselves, 'We have Abraham as our father.' For I say to you that Elohim (God) is able to raise up children to Abraham from these stones. And even now the ax is laid to the root of the trees. Therefore every tree which does not bear good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire. I indeed baptise you with water unto repentance, but He who is coming after me is mightier than I, whose sandals I am not worthy to carry. He will baptise you with the Ruach haQodesh (Holy Spirit) and fire. His winnowing fan) is in His hand, and He will thoroughly clean out His threshing floor, and gather His wheat into the barn; but He will burn up the chaff with unquenchable fire" (Matt.3:5-12, NKJV).

Your assignment is to ask Yahweh what this passage about the Baptism with Fire is all about. Until then, Yahweh bless you and keep you, and give you His shalom (peace) is my prayer in Yah'shua's (Jesus') Name. Amen.

Endnotes

[1] See the MPD Section on the Deliverance website
[2] Unfortunately, when ruach is translated into Greek (pneuma) and Latin (spiritus), the gender changes from feminine (Hebrew), to neuter (Greek) to masculine (Latin). The Ruach (Spirit) has come to be rendered as male in our English Bibles only because our English decends from the Latin pedigree of Bibles (the Latin Vulgate principally) where 'Spirit' or 'Ghost' is regarded as masculine. This linguistic error has led to the formulation of an all-male 'Trinity' that does not accurately represent the original Hebrew thought.

Acknowledgements

[1] Katie Cleveland, Why Wasn't Elihu Included in God's Scolding to Job's Friends?

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