The Holy Ghost before Pentecost

John 7:37-39: In the last day, that great day of the feast, Jesus stood and cried, saying, If any man thirst, let him come unto me, and drink. He that believeth on me, as the scripture hath said, out of his belly shall flow rivers of living water. (But this spake he of the Spirit, which they that believe on him should receive: for the Holy Ghost was not yet given; because that Jesus was not yet glorified.)

In the Old Testament, and up to the Day of Pentecost in Acts chapter 2, a small measure of the Holy Ghost was always available to the saints and resided in their souls because they were able to receive and believe upon the Word for the age in which they lived. But in John 7:39 we have a future reference to the giving of the Holy Ghost in a measure like never before, which could only be made available by Jesus’ sacrifice on the cross for us, in order that a way might be made for the full potential of what Adam had to be legally available to the Church.

Adam was the original son of God and had the fullness of the Holy Ghost in him. He could not under any circumstances be deceived because the Spirit of God in him would not accept anything that was not pure and absolute truth. Everybody who came after Adam was born by sex and would receive a measure of the Spirit in their soul if the seed of God was in them. For Enoch to have walked with God and been raptured into Heaven, or for Elijah to be taken up into Heaven by a chariot of fire, could only have happened if the Spirit was in them to begin with.

One may ask as to the need for the sacrificial offering of animal blood if the Spirit of Christ in a small measure already resided in the hearts of believers before Pentecost. It is because the sin question had not been fully dealt with until the perfect blood of the Lamb of God had been shed. Before that time came, the Holy Spirit in the believers would convict them of sin, which then needed to be atoned for by animal blood. Then when Jesus came in the flesh, He shed His blood as a permanent once-and-for-all atonement.

Until Jesus gave His life on the cross as the perfect sacrifice for sin, man had been offering the blood of bulls and goats to temporarily atone or cover his sin. Even in the Book of Job, which is the oldest book in the Bible, we find Job offering sacrifices well before the Law was given to Moses. It was by virtue of Christ’s death on the cross that the way back was opened for a man to come into a full relationship with God like what Adam had in the beginning before he fell. The blood of bulls and goats in the Old Testament could never achieve this and bring the worshipper back to that level of fellowship, even though the saints under the blood of bulls and goats had a portion of the Holy Ghost according to the level of the Word that was in them.

The blood of bulls and goats was never a perfect sacrifice, for it could not erase sin, nor could the life of the animal come back on the offeror. The person that offered a sacrifice for whatever transgression would walk away with his sin covered by the atonement of animal blood, but it would take the perfect blood of the Lamb of God to forever erase all the sin that had been heaped up in the heavenly sanctuary, and by this, the very life of Christ could come back onto the believer and bring them into a relationship with God like what had not been known since before the Fall of man.

Understanding that man did have a portion of the Holy Ghost in His soul before Pentecost is very important to grasp, because when we read the Old Testament and the Gospel accounts, the scriptures make it very plain that man did have the indwelling. Let us look at some of those scriptures which clearly show how the Holy Ghost indwelt the soul of man before Pentecost. Of Moses it is said in Isaiah 63:11: Then he remembered the days of old, Moses, and his people, saying, Where is he that brought them up out of the sea with the shepherd of his flock? where is he that put his holy Spirit within him? Of Bezaleel it is said in Exodus 31:2-3: See, I have called by name Bezaleel the son of Uri, the son of Hur, of the tribe of Judah: And I have filled him with the spirit of God, in wisdom, and in understanding, and in knowledge, and in all manner of workmanship, Of Joshua it is said in Numbers 27:18: And the LORD said unto Moses, Take thee Joshua the son of Nun, a man in whom is the spirit, and lay thine hand upon him; David said in Psalm 51:11: Cast me not away from thy presence; and take not thy holy spirit from me. Of the prophets it is written in 1 Peter 1:11: Searching what, or what manner of time the Spirit of Christ which was in them did signify, when it testified beforehand the sufferings of Christ, and the glory that should follow.

In the New Testament, we have a series of episodes regarding the infilling of the Holy Ghost leading up to Pentecost. Of John the Baptist it is said in Luke 1:15: For he shall be great in the sight of the Lord, and shall drink neither wine nor strong drink; and he shall be filled with the Holy Ghost, even from his mother’s womb. Of Elisabeth it is said in Luke 1:41: And it came to pass, that, when Elisabeth heard the salutation of Mary, the babe leaped in her womb; and Elisabeth was filled with the Holy Ghost: Of Zacharias it is said in Luke 1:67: And his father Zacharias was filled with the Holy Ghost, and prophesied, saying, And of Mary it is said in Luke 1:35: And the angel answered and said unto her, The Holy Ghost shall come upon thee, and the power of the Highest shall overshadow thee: therefore also that holy thing which shall be born of thee shall be called the Son of God. These scriptures (and others) reveal that the Holy Ghost had already been given like a trickling stream in comparison to the opening of the floodgates at Pentecost.

All the saints up till Pentecost experienced the indwelling of the Holy Spirit in their lives, for no person can continue on in the faith unless the Holy Spirit is present in them to keep them moving forward. Without the Holy Spirit continually at work in our lives, we will go into apostasy. Every Israelite who had ever submitted to God’s Word and pleased Him did so by the Spirit of Christ that was in them. Romans 8:7-9 makes all of this abundantly clear: Because the carnal mind is enmity against God: for it is not subject to the law of God, neither indeed can be. So then they that are in the flesh cannot please God. But ye are not in the flesh, but in the Spirit, if so be that the Spirit of God dwell in you. Now if any man have not the Spirit of Christ, he is none of his.

In the Dispensation of the Father, from the Fall in the Garden of Eden to the conception of Jesus, the full measure of the Holy Ghost was always above the people and would anoint them from time to time to do a specific work (to write, to speak and do many other mighty deeds). The Old Testament saints who lived under this dispensation had the seed of God in their soul, and that seed was quickened by the Spirit, but it would not be until Pentecost that the full measure of the Spirit would come and divide Itself up in a multi-membered Church body.

In the Dispensation of the Son, the fullness of the Holy Ghost was with the people in the person of Jesus Christ (John 3:34: For he whom God hath sent speaketh the words of God: for God giveth not the Spirit by measure unto him.), and whilst Jesus was with us, He promised that after His ascension the fullness of the Spirit that was in Him would come back upon the Church body of believers that they might do the same works as the Son and display the same nature that He had. This was indeed accomplished from Pentecost onward and is why the blood of bulls and goats was no longer needed, because Jesus’ perfect blood had been shed, and His life had now come back upon those whom His blood was shed for.

The Spirit’s indwelling before Pentecost was like a continual dropping of a little water into the heart of man, but after Pentecost, the Spirit’s indwelling was like a great deluge pouring down from above, soaking into, filling up, and spilling over. When John wrote that the Holy Spirit had not yet been given (John 7:39), he is saying that the Spirit had not yet been given in this way; in other words, the Spirit had not yet come as the overflowing rivers of living water that Jesus spoke of.

The believers’ experience of the Spirit up till Pentecost, being like a continual dropping of a little water, was just enough to sustain them whereby they would be spiritually alive and fruitful, but not so much that their spiritual life overflowed into the lives of others. But when the floodgates of Heaven opened at Pentecost, not only did It fill up the believers in the Upper Room, but It quickly spilled over in every direction and impacted the lives of millions all around the world throughout the seven church ages. This was the rivers of living water that Jesus had prophesied would come after He had been glorified.

This tremendous outpouring of the Spirit could only have happened after Jesus was glorified, because prior to the New Testament, the Spirit had relatively little truth to work with, for the Old Testament scriptures were only shadows that looked forward to the reality in Christ. But when Jesus died, resurrected, and ascended to Heaven, then the Spirit had so much more Truth to work with; It could now work with the substance of the shadow! When the fullness of God’s revelation of Christ had come in the flesh, then the fullness of the Spirit that was in the Person of Christ could be poured out on the Church. So from Pentecost onward, we see a new and mighty move of the Holy Spirit, so powerful and pervasive that we witness the Spirit’s work in a much more intensive and extensive way, unlike ever before. The prepared hearts of the elect would be so filled with the Spirit of Christ until It spilled over and flowed into all the nations of the world.

From all of this we learn that the reason for the much more limited experience of the Spirit’s indwelling before Pentecost was because of the limited knowledge of Christ’s person and work. But once Christ’s person and work had reached its apex of revelation, then the Holy Spirit could be fully manifested in overflowing power. Furthermore, the more that we are filled with Christ by the unfolding revelation of the Word, then the more we will be filled with His Spirit, and the more His Spirit will overflow forth from us into the lives of others, in witness and evangelism, and by a life that is lived reflecting Him.

Let us look briefly at what happened to Jesus at His baptism in the River Jordan. Luke 4:1 states the following: And Jesus being full of the Holy Ghost returned from Jordan, and was led by the Spirit into the wilderness, Next we shall look at Acts 10:38 which says: How God anointed Jesus of Nazareth with the Holy Ghost and with power: who went about doing good, and healing all that were oppressed of the devil; for God was with him. Jesus was born with the fulness of the Holy Ghost, but when He went to the River Jordan to be baptized, He received the Baptism of the Holy Ghost, or the anointing for His ministry. Thus when the Bible states that Jesus was full of the Holy Ghost following His baptism, it has to do with Jesus being full of POWER to carry out His ministry (Luke 24:49; Acts 1:8), for it was after His baptism and subsequent anointing that Jesus went about doing all kinds of miracles that would ultimately lead Him to the cross, whereas beforehand we have no record of Him doing those things.

We have therefore learned that the saints of God up till Pentecost had the seed of God in their hearts and that they had a small measure of the Spirit to quicken that seed. David himself would say in Psalm 119:11: Thy word have I hid in mine heart, that I might not sin against thee. The Word seed was in David’s heart (and the hearts of all the saints up till Pentecost for that matter), and the Spirit of God had activated the seed in Him, but the great outpouring of the Spirit and its power to bring a people to spiritual adoption whereby they would come into the full image of Christ could not happen until after the cross, for only then could the seed bloom out in its fullest way, to perfectly display the life of Jesus Christ in the believer by the full revelation of the Word.