Saturday, October 11, 2008

John the Baptizer ...not a Baptist? ...a Pentecostal?

i've been reading up on John the Baptizer this week getting ready for Sundays message, and in Barclay's commentary i read something that changes some ideals. in Matthew's gospel he quotes John the Baptizer saying, "I baptize you with/in water... he [speaking of the coming Messiah] will baptize with the holy spirit and fire." its interesting to note that whenever he said "holy spirit" he was not thinking about the third person in the trinity. rather as a Jew he was thinking of ruach (Hebrew word for spirit, breath, and wind). ruach is the Breath of life. ruach is the power of God. ruach was present at the work of creation.


Or as Barclay puts it,

"It was the Spirit of God who moved upon the face of the waters and made the chaos into cosmos, turned disorder into order, and made a world out of the uncreated mists… When the Spirit of God enters into a man the disorder of human nature becomes the order of God; our dishevelled, disorderly, uncontrolled lives are moulded by the Spirit into the harmony of God."

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