RESISTING THE HOLY SPIRIT ACTS 7.51

Reply to the request of S. A. H., on page 199.

Not with a self-reliant or egotistic presumption that we are capable of solving all mysteries or expounding all the scriptures. Nor yet with an intention to draw the mind of any one of us, and away from God, as the only efficient and infallible teacher, do we attempt a reply to the earnest appeal of our unknown correspondent for our understanding of this much-perverted portion of the Sacred Scriptures? But with a deep sense of our own weakness and utter inability to speak or write so as to edify, instruct, comfort, or satisfy the craving desire of such as are not advanced so far in the knowledge of the truth, as to have no need of the feebler gifts which God has given for the perfecting of the Saints for the work of the ministry and for the edifying of the body of Christ. Such light and understanding as we hope God has given us on any part of His sacred word, we dare not withhold from those who ask for our views. But we desire none to accept them only so far as they shall find them, sustained by the unerring scriptures of truth.

The cutting rebuke in our text was addressed by Steven to the high priest and murderous Jews who were about to stone him to death. Professing to be the people of God. And the most zealous and devout people on earth. Pretending to be shocked at the blasphemy which suborn men had testified. That they had heard Stephen Utter. Arrested and having. A mock trial, and arraigned as a prisoner before them, he was permitted to make his defense, at the conclusion of which he addressed to them the words of art text. And when they heard these things which he charged on them, they were cut to the heart. Not like those who on the day of Pentecost were pricked in their hearts, and completely subdued and made to cry. Men and brethren, what shall we do? Theirs was a death wound. Their rage and violence were checked, their hearts and ears were circumcised, their resistance to the Holy Spirit was overcome, and their circumcised ears were anxious to be informed of God's salvation of helpless sinners by and through Jesus whom they had rejected and crucified. But these were only cut to their heart. It was but a flesh wound. They were not slain nor circumcised in either heart or ears, but the deep and deadly malice of their heart was excited and became more violent and frenzied with rage and violence. And they gnashed on him with their teeth. 

The question has often been agitated. In what sense did these murderous Jews resist the Holy Spirit? It could not be that they were resisting the Holy Spirit as existing in their own hearts, therefore, for if the Holy Spirit had dwelt in them, their hearts would. Have been circumcised, and their ears as ready to listen to the preaching of Stephen as were those at Pentecost to Peter and the rest of the Apostles. But their hearts were controlled by an opposite spirit. The Holy Spirit which they were resisting was in Steven, but not in them. In the preceding chapter, in the fifth verse, we are told that Stephen was full of faith and of the Holy Spirit, while his murderers were full of the spirit of Him who was a murderer from the beginning, and his spirit in them was manifested by their resistance of what the Holy Spirit inspired Stephen to say and do. It was not Steven as a man they felt so much enraged against. For if Stephen had not been moved by the Holy Spirit, he would not have incurred their wrath. It was only those who by the Holy Spirit called Jesus Lord, that they persecuted unto the death. Nor was it alone on this particular occasion that their resistance to the Holy Spirit was demonstrated. It was the general and constant disposition of the carnal hearts, of those whose circumcision was only outward in the flesh, but not the circumcision of the heart and ears, which is made without hands. The circumcision on which the carnal Jews relied was outward, and in their flesh was made with hands, and its praise was of men, and not of God. It did not, therefore, circumcise their hearts to make them love God. Nor their ears to hear, love, or obey the truth. But left them in all the enmity of their carnal minds to resist the Holy Spirit by stoning the prophets and killing those whom God had sent to them. The prophets were sent to the Jewish nation with the message of the Lord, whose peculiar people they professed to be. And the prophets spoke as they were moved by the Holy Spirit. So their opposition to the prophets only manifested the turpitude of their hearts, their love of sin, and their hatred of truth and righteousness.

You do always resist the Holy Spirit. In the same way and manner in which their fathers did by killing the prophets and stoning them. Jesus said to those carnal Jews, you also outwardly appear righteous unto men, but within you are full of hypocrisy and iniquity. Warren to you scribes and Pharisees, Hypocrites! Because you build the tombs of the prophets and garnish the sepulchers of the righteous, and say, if we had been in the days of our fathers, we would not have been partakers with them in the blood of the prophets. "Wherefore, behold, I send unto you prophets and wise men and scribes. And some of them you shall kill and crucify, and some of them you shall scourge in your synagogues, and persecute them from city to city, That upon you may come all the righteous blood shed upon the earth, from the blood of righteous able, until the blood of Zacharias. The son of Barakas, whom you slew between the temple and the altar. Verily I say unto you, All these sins shall come upon this generation." Matthew 23.28, 36. How terribly was this declaration fulfilled in that generation? Not only in the tempest of divine wrath and the overthrow of Jerusalem but in the filling up of the measure of their iniquities. God has set bounds. Which serpents and Vipers, as these workers of iniquity are called, cannot go but to the full measure of which they are doomed to go. And in filling up this measure by that generation, Stephen, who was one of the numbers that Jesus said he would send to them and they should kill, was sent with a message from God, which cut them to their heart and made them gnash on him with their teeth. But it was not Steven, but the Holy Spirit in Stephen that enraged them. Stephen, being full of the Holy Spirit, spoke by that Spirit. And as they were filled with an opposite spirit, and acted as moved by the spirit of the world and of Satan. They not only resisted Stephen as the messenger but God who sent him and whose words he declared to them.

We know of no other way in which men ever resisted the Holy Spirit. Steven testifies that this was always the manner. As your fathers did, so do you, and not only now, but it was always by persecuting and slaying those who were sent by him to declare his messages.

It is preposterous to contend that the Holy Spirit was, is, or can be successfully resisted in its work upon the hearts of those who are quickened by it. Those who are quickened and made alive from the dead by the Holy Spirit were not consulted as to whether they were willing to be made alive. Whether we consider the work of the Spirit as agreeing with the figure of a resurrection from the dead or a birth, both illustrations alike forbid the idea that the subjects of this work can either resist or facilitate the work. Jesus says "the dead shall hear the voice of the Son of God and they that hear shall live." John 5.25. And Jesus has condescended graciously to inform us how or in what manner he will perform his work. "For as the Father raises up the dead and quickens them even so (or exactly so,) the Son quickens whom he will verse 21. Can any rational beings suppose that in God's manner of raising up the dead, he strives with them to consent and allow him to raise them up? Or that he proposes terms and conditions for them to perform on the performance of which he will raise them from the dead. Or that he by his spirit woos, pleads, implores, and beseeches him to allow or consent to be raised up. And that he thus pleads and strives with all the dead, and in a greater number of cases fails to get their consent, after laboring to the full extent of his power, and patience, leaves them sorrowfully to remain in death. Can anyone who knows the true God and eternal life entertain such a view of him? Equally absurd and blasphemous is a thought that either in the generation of mankind or regeneration or the new birth, those who are the subjects have any volition or agency in bringing themselves into existence? Surely all who are held under such chains of darkness do greatly err, not knowing the Scriptures, nor the power of God.

The Scriptures affirm the power of God that He raises up the dead and quickens them, not that He tries and in most cases fails, and that in some manner the sun quickens whom He will. And those who know by happy experience these Scriptures, and have experienced that translation from darkness to light by the exceeding greatness of the mighty power of the Father of glory, know the Scriptures and the power of God. "The eyes of their understanding, being enlightened, that they may know what is the hope of his calling and what the riches of the glory of his inheritance in the saints." Ephesians 1.16-20.

Since the day that sin entered the world. Man has manifested an aversion to when shrinking from the presence of the supreme and omnipotent God. And in their aversion and alienation from him have shown their preference for gods, which they could hold in subjection to their own control. Gods that they can carry on their shoulders and use to subserve their own purposes. This being the idolatrous condition of the world, we are told by an inspired apostle of many false prophets which are going out into the world, and the saints are commanded to try the spirits, whether they be of God. He says of these false prophets. "They are of the world. Therefore speak they of the world, and the world hears them. We are of God. He that knows God hears us, hereby know we the Spirit of truth and the Spirit of error." I John 4.5, 6. The spirit of truth is a spirit that Jesus says the world cannot receive because it sees him not nor knows him. John 14.17. But the spirit of error and delusion is a spirit of the world, and the world is in love with it. It is as easily attained as they who are led by it and do represent it to be, And they affirm that it requires no more effort to receive than it does to turn one's hand over. Indeed, man, his fallen, depraved state, is under its power already, and the spirit of error which already possesses them makes them as hungry for error as the spirit of truth in the children of God makes them to be fed upon the truth as it is in Jesus. No grace is required to qualify a man to embrace any error or to worship any idol. But the God of our salvation is a spirit, and only they can worship Him acceptably, who worship Him in spirit and in truth.

Eve required no superhuman or supernatural power to enable her to receive the forbidden fruit from the beguiling spirit of the serpent. Adam asked for no divine aid to follow his bride and the transgression. Cain, unaided by the spirit of truth, drank in a spirit of delusion, false religion, unity, and murder. But Abel requires that faith, which is the fruit, the Spirit of truth, to qualify him. to offer a lamb and sacrifice to God. To which offering God had respect. Cain resisted the spirit of truth, indeed his opposition to Abel. But not as existing in himself, striving to obtain his consent to be converted. If the spirit of God had been in Cain, he would not have entertained a desire to murder his brother. If God the Spirit had ever failed to accomplish any work by Him undertaken, what assurance could any poor sinner have that he might not fail in his attempt to bring us unto glory? The Antediluvians who in Noah's days resisted the Holy Spirit, resisted it, as manifested in Noah as a preacher of righteousness. By adhering to the spirit of unrighteousness which had full possession of themselves. So, Steven could say truly that the development of that murderous spirit and those wicked Jews who were about to murder him was the development of nothing new, it was that which always had been in the world since sin entered. And these more modern Jews were doing what their fathers before them had always been doing, in killing the prophets and stoning all who were led by the Holy Spirit.

Men do always resist the Holy Spirit when they pervert the Scriptures which are inspired by the Holy Spirit. When they teach for doctrines the commandments of men when they oppose and persecute those who are called of God and qualified by the Spirit to proclaim among the Gentiles the unsearchable riches of Christ, and especially when they preached salvation by any other name than that of Christ, or when they pretend to preach Christ by any other Spirit than that which is from above. No man can preach the doctrine of free will, free agency, or any other doctrine of men without resisting or opposing the Spirit of truth which is the Holy Spirit. But we have a great reason to rejoice that their resistance cannot prevail. While they, like raging waves of the sea, foam out their own shame, although the world may applaud and lavish their encomiums upon them and their wealth, and called them rabbi, still, their resistance of the truth of God and of the Spirit of holiness will ultimately clothe them with everlasting shame and infamy. No person can preach or believe that the Holy Ghost has ever failed to fully accomplish all that he ever attempted or designed without impeaching the wisdom, power, and truth of God and thereby resisting the Holy Spirit. But their resistance can never prevent or hinder the complete and perfect accomplishment of all his pleasure. Nor can any give encouragement to those who do thus preach, by attending on their ministry or contributing of their substance, to sustain them in their opposition to the Spirit of Truth without resisting the Holy Spirit. 

It will be well to remember that the Holy Spirit is God. And although man, in his deep depravity, may resist his government and oppose his power, he can only by no means thwart his purpose.

Elder Gilbert Beebe

Editorial, September 1, 1880

Signs of the Times