The Baptism with the Holy Spirit

By R. A. Torrey

Introduction

 

It was a great turning point in my ministry when, after much thought and study and meditation, I became satisfied that the Baptism with the Holy Spirit was an experience for to-day and for me, and set myself about obtaining it. Such blessing came to me personally, that I began giving Bible readings on the subject, and with increasing frequency as the years have passed. God in his wondrous grace has so greatly blessed these readings, and so many have asked for them in printed form, convenient for circulation among their friends, that I have decided to write them out in full for publication. It is an occasion of great joy that so many and such excellent books on the person and work of the Holy Spirit have appeared of late. I wish to call especial attention to two of these: ''Through the Eternal Spirit," by James Elder Gumming and "The Spirit of Christ," by Andrew Murray.

In the following pages I speak uniformly of the Holy Spirit, but in the quotations from the Bible retain the less desirable phraseology there used —"The Holy Ghost"— except in those instances where the translators themselves varied their usage. Probably most of the readers of this book already know that "the Holy Spirit" and ''the Holy Ghost" are simply two different translations of precisely the same Greek words. It seems very unfortunate, and almost unaccountable, that the English revisors did not follow the suggestion of the American Committee and for ''Holy Ghost" adopt uniformly the rendering "Holy Spirit."