“Hear, O heavens, and give ear, O earth! For the LORD has spoken:
‘I have nourished and brought up children, and they have rebelled against me.
The ox knows his owner, and the ass his master’s crib,
but Israel does not know; my people do not consider.’ ”
Isaiah 1:2–3
Before shaking your head at Israel for not knowing where her blessings came from, consider this: Peter predicted, accurately, that many of God’s New Testament people wouldn’t know, either. He wrote, “There shall also be false teachers among you, who shall bring in destructive heresies, even denying the Lord who bought them. . . . And many shall follow them. . . .” (2Pet. 2:1–2). How did this happen? I will tell you.
It is the holy Ghost baptism that makes us clean in the sight of God, not repeating a few verses of scripture and “getting saved”. You are purchased by Christ only when he puts the “down payment” of the Spirit in you (2Cor. 1:22, 5:5; Eph. 1:14)! Paul said, “The Lord is the Spirit” (2Cor. 3:17), but when someone claims that he received the Lord (“got saved”) before he received the Spirit, he is “denying the Lord that bought him.” And most of God’s New Testament people are doing just that.
The holy Ghost is what gives us hope of being raised from the dead (Rom. 8:11); the holy Ghost is what washes your sins away, and sanctifies, and justifies you (1 Cor. 6:11); and without it, you do not belong to the family of God (Rom. 8:9b). But almost none of God’s children in this covenant know that, for they have been taught to claim to have been spiritually cleansed before God bore them witness, baptizing them with the holy Ghost into the body of Christ (Acts 15:8; 1Cor. 12:13). They give more honor to the spirit under which they “got saved” than to the Spirit that comes from God and truly cleanses the soul.
Now you can shake your head.
