* what do you mean by 'distinct phenomenon' ?
Acts 8:12-16 ?
These two lines were added to
your post by an edit AFTER
my response was posted. So no, that is NOT what you had said when I posted the quote from R.A. Torrey.
It was 1.44am when I read this and well I just figured you had got it from something on the internet. (The date 1897 was a dead giveaway. I mean who has a copy that old. Okay, you might have downloaded something from CCEL.)
It's true, I did get it from the Internet. I do not have an 1897 edition of Torrey's book. But what little I know of Torrey, I do know that he believed the baptism with the Holy Spirit to be distinct from conversion. Little wonder his teachings influenced Pentecostalism.
My objection was not to the word distinct, but to coupling it with the world 'phenomenon' : meaning
All I meant by "phenomenon" is "event," which is synonymous. Regeneration also is an "event."
The Baptism with the Holy Spirit is a result of a believing prayer to the Father in Jesus name according to the will of God.
Cornelius and his household had not even heard of baptism with the Holy Spirit, and yet they were baptized with the Holy Spirit,
without asking, because they believed the gospel Peter preached to them (Acts 10:44-48).
To place a particular experience up for scrutiny is to deny the fact that God works with each of us induviduals.
No, rather, it is to deny the idea that every experience is valid and biblically warranted.
As for Acts 8:14-17, which you brought up before, it is instructive to note that the Holy Spirit was received by the Samaritans by the laying on of hands by the Apostles (the same is true also of John's Ephesian disciples, Acts 19:1-7). Now, did you wait to have the Apostles lay hands on you to be baptized with the Holy Spirit? Did Cornelius? Did the 120 in the upper room? Or what about the seven deacons (Acts 6:1-6)? Had they not received the Spirit until the apostles laid hands on them (Hint: check out v. 3!)?
Now there is reason for some of the variations in the book of Acts as to the specifics of being baptized with the Holy Spirit--and the reason has to do with the unique historical situation which Acts describes, the transition from the old dispensation (the Jewish Church) to the new dispensation (the universal, Jewish & Gentile, Church). But it is plain enough that, normatively, baptism in the Holy Spirit belongs to all who believe. As Paul writes, "For by one Spirit we were all baptized into one body, whether Jews or Greeks, whether slaves or free, and we were all made to drink of one Spirit" (I Cor. 12:13). The inspired apostle also writes,
However, you are not in the flesh but in the Spirit, if indeed the Spirit of God dwells in you. But if anyone does not have the Spirit of Christ, he does not belong to Him. If Christ is in you, though the body is dead because of sin, yet the spirit is alive because of righteousness. But if the Spirit of Him who raised Jesus from the dead dwells in you, He who raised Christ Jesus from the dead will also give life to your mortal bodies through His Spirit who dwells in you (Rom. 8:9-11).
No hint of a distinct "baptism with the Holy Spirit" here.
