THE HOLY GHOST - Part 2

  Remembering that Eve was from Adam’s “flesh” (not specifically s “rib” but his side, take into account that Jesus was from God’s “right side,” as it is written. As “the right hand of God, it comes that Isaiah was writing about Jesus when he wrote, “I will help thee; yea, I will uphold thee with the right hand of my righteousness” (Isa 41:10).
  “Hand” therein is as much “side” and comes from the Hebrew “yamiyn.” As Eve was taken from the side of Adam, perhaps the left side, Jesus was taken from the right side of God, leaving it to be the left side of Mary. Eve was “woman” – of man. Jesus was Son of God — of Yah. 
  Jesus is the physical manifestation of God. The Holy Ghost is the spiritual manifestation of God. Jesus is as much God as the Father, and as much the Holy Ghost as well.  The point is that the Holy Spirit is the universal “substance” of God’s Spirit, and the Holy Ghost specific to Jesus. The two differences are in nomenclature. The Holy Spirit is ultimate Existence, and the Holy Ghost is a distinct Existence. The Holy Spirit has the “experience” of Being, but the Holy Ghost the “experience” of dying.
  God transformed Himself — from the Intelligence to the Spiritual, then from the Spiritual to the Flesh, then from the Flesh to the “Ghost” of the flesh. Indeed, a “ghost” is “a disembodied soul,” but also “the seat of intelligence” (Merriam-Webster Dictionary.) Therefore, intelligence is not of the brain, but of the soul. Cognition (thinking) remains with the soul before and after death. Paul wrote, “He (God) hath chosen us in Him before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and without blame” (Ephes 1:4).
  God is the Immortal God, and as God, Jesus was with God and was God at the creation (John 1). Jesus is the Alpha and Omega… the Beginning and the End. Man was made in the image of God — in our image. (Gen 1:25-26). Jesus was Holy Spirit. Why not Holy Ghost?  “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” (John 7:39).
   It seems that before living, Jesus as God, by experience was the all-encompassing Holy Spirit. After Jesus experienced physical life, His Spirit was distinct to His body, and when his Holy Spirit experienced death, that experience transformed His Flesh into the Holy Ghost.
  Don’t think of the Spirit of Jesus as either universal or specific to Him; it was only a difference in experience!

With all lowliness and meekness, with longsuffering, forbearing one another in love; endeavouring to keep the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace. There is one body, and one Spirit, even as ye are called in one hope of your calling; one Lord, one faith, one baptism. (Ephes 4:2-5)

  There are many verses that identify ONLY one spirit. Every Christian has the same spirit, and that is the Spirit of God, and is the distinct Spirit who experienced death on the cross. The death of Jesus transformed God’s Holy Spirit into God’s Holy Ghost in that God had experienced disembodiment. The “Sacred Three-in-One” experienced death on the cross. God’s Mind is omnipresent. The Father was in heaven and in earth at the same time.
  Don’t think of heaven and earth as separate places, but the same place in different realms. Calvary was the Kingdom of David and Paradise is that same Kingdom in another realm. Jesus traveled freely from one realm to the other, and it took no time to do so! I have written on that before, but there are at least three examples of that; one that he merely appeared to the eleven apostles in a locked room (Luke 24:36). How did God in Mind and Spirit experience death on the cross while at the same time was elsewhere? Because physical barriers did not contain Him, as was found out when Jesus, as the Angel of God, merely left the tomb through rock walls, and rolled back His own stone, not to escape, but that others would see that He was not there (Mat 28:2)!
  Now examine the birth of Jesus again:

And the angel answered and said unto her (Mary), The Holy Ghost shall come UPON thee, and the power of the Highest shall overshadow thee. (Luke 1:35a)

  The Holy Ghost, that specific entity of God that was creating a specific Glorious Being, was experiencing life. A “ghost” is much more than a “disembodied soul” but also a “seat of intelligence.” God was fulfilling His Plan for mankind, hence the experience of that was of the “Holy Ghost.” I am not certain that the KJV translators had exactly the same notions that I do, but perhaps since so many scholars arrived at the same wordage, that God was inspiring them. Am I spot on? Perhaps… perhaps not. You evaluate yourselves.
  The distinction that I want to make is that the Holy Ghost came upon Mary. She was not filled with the Holy Ghost, and perhaps she came late to that relationship, as there is no evidence that she was born again until later. It seems that the Holy Ghost used her as a pure vessel, but the “vessel” was a clean but empty “cup,” (as Jesus called His own soul) (Mat 20:23).
  On the other hand, God had an immediate spiritual purpose for John. He was filled with the Holy Ghost from the beginning, as is written:

He (John) shall be filled with the Holy Ghost, even from his mother's womb. (Luke 1:15)

  "Filled" is pimplemi in the Greek. In that passage, wherein for “upon” when the Holy Ghost encompassed Mary, she was overshadowed by the Holy Ghost who came “upon” (epi) her.” Epi is superimposition by overshadowing Mary. Pimplini could be “imbued,” “influenced,” or “filled.” Perhaps “satiated” is a better definition. John was certainly “influenced” but is it something more profound than that? The Holy Spirit dwells within Christians as the “Ghost” of Jesus; not a phantasm, but God’s experienced Holy Spirit. The exact same portion of God that was in Jesus as he died, and who He gave up when it was finished (John 19:30).
  In the Old Testament, the patriarchs “gave up the ghost” as well. Jesus had yet to die, but the patriarchs depended upon Jesus’s eminent death for salvation of their souls. They too were in one spirit with God. Abraham for instance, “gave up the ghost” (gava’) because he indicated that he depended on Jesus’s death for salvation. His body “breathed out” God’s “wind” so to speak (Strong’s Dictionary.)
  God’s “spirit” would not always be with men (ruwach). That “wind” that God breathed unto Adam and Abraham to make them living souls. Their souls before that were spiritual existence. Life came when God animated them with His Spirit. God’s “Spirit” (ruwach) created everything (Gen 1:2). God breathed life unto everything with a specific Spirit to Adam and Abraham, for instances. Coming, in the “wind,” in the Hebrew was ruwach, coming out, it was gava’. It was the same “wind” from God but the wind coming out had experienced life. When life was over, God’s “wind” was transformed by experience. Abraham’s thoughts were breathed out with his personal gava’.
  Thus, even in patriarchal times, the nomenclature for God’s “wind” was based on experience. As such, Mary experienced the Holy Ghost – a specific experience – upon her, and John within him. As a probable Nazarite, John was cleansed from the hint of contamination (wine, death, etc) whereas Mary very well could have drank wine. John was consecrated before birth for reception of the Holy Ghost whereas Mary was a clean “vessel” for God’s Flesh. Jesus was apparently born in the Flesh, and received the Holy Spirit when He was baptized. John recounted that:

And the Holy Ghost descended in a bodily shape like a dove UPON him (Jesus), and a voice came from heaven, which said, Thou art my beloved Son; in thee I am well pleased. (Luke 33:22)

  So far, I have contrasted God’s general Spirit to people’s distinct portion from God. I bet the following has gone unnoticed, but Luke validated that: “in bodily shape.” Whose bodily shape? The dove’s?  I believe it was a Jesus-shaped Spirit, and since “it” was specific to Jesus, would be his “Ghost.” I have said before that the Holy Ghost experienced death with Jesus as the Ghostly form of Jesus. However, the Holy Ghost experienced life as Jesus as well. God’s “Wind” within Jesus was breathed specifically into Jesus as he was transformed from only Flesh to a Body and later to Ghost.
  But that passage says, “upon Him!” not filling Him. Jesus had been overshadowed by God’s Spirit in Jesus’s bodily shape. That indicates to me that the soul is a person-shaped “cup” to contain God’s Ghost. Jesus’s “Ghost” looked just like us, in the same image, so it fits within our souls quite well. Not precisely, because Jesus was created perfect and mankind only very good (Gen 1:31).
  What is the difference? Perhaps our free will to accept and contain sin! Jesus’s “Ghost” was different than ours in that respect, since God and sin cannot reside together. We are not gods, and until we are glorified and regenerated into the image of God, some sin can and will inhabit the same soul. Care must be taken, however, to not let resident sin overcome us; we must endure to the end to be saved (Mat 10:22). Endure what? The dualism within us — the war that goes on between a willing spirit and a weak flesh (Mat 26:41).
  That war will be over when our bodies are perfected, the space in the soul removed for sin, and it becomes like Jesus. Glorification is Jesus’s Ghost as Jesus appeared, fitting perfectly into our restored bodies, back to the same image as when they were created, but without the room in our temples for evil!
  Since sin and righteousness endeavor to occupy the same space in our souls, repentance cleans it out, and essentially makes more room for Jesus to live within us. Sin endeavors to crowd Jesus out. Sanctification – setting ourselves apart for Jesus to live within us – is what we do for God. That is a difficult task and the Holy Ghost of Jesus overshadows us to protect from the Evil One. Christians have the Holy Ghost of Jesus upon them!
  Soon after Jesus had the Holy Ghost upon Him, and it remained there (John 1:33), unlike the others, but before he faced the temptations from Satan, he was filled with the Holy Ghost.

And Jesus being FULL of the Holy Ghost returned from Jordan, and was led by the Spirit into the wilderness, being forty days tempted of the devil. (Luke 4:1-2a)

  The Greek therein for “full” is a little different; it is pleres, which is “filled up”, “covered in every part,” or “permeated.” Again, I think “satiated” fits that quite well. That is “fully satisfied.” Jesus had all that he needed to encounter Satan, but his was the “shape” of his body. He was indeed fully satisfied.  In that God will not give us more than we can handle, Christians are “adequately satisfied” with a certain “amount” of “me-shaped” Ghost of Jesus within, hopefully co-existing with very little sin.
  The so-called “spirit-filled” then are not totally without sin, for to say so, it is written, “If we say that we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us” (1John 1:10). (Yes, Jesus is speaking to the righteous, and when sin enters in, even Christians who have the Holy Ghost, must continually pray for cleansing of it.)  
  Christians are not FULL of the Holy Ghost, but they are “adequately satisfied” until they are glorified. Of course, Christians are never to be satisfied with the sin within, and pray for God to consecrate His temple again and again as the Devil continually attacks the walls to gain entrance into God’s Temple.
  Baptism with water covers the flesh. Baptism with the Holy Ghost is covering the flesh with a Jesus “shaped” covering.

I (John) indeed have baptized you with water: but he shall baptize you with the Holy Ghost. (Mark 1:18)

  The veil is no longer required to cover sins, and it was torn asunder because the Ghost of Jesus, when it was finished, was sufficient. The curtain covered God’s Temple; it was not inside the Holy of Holies but in front of it. Jesus’s Holy Ghost covers His “temple” within us to keep sin out, just as with the Holy of Holies. Sin sometimes entered in, and the priest had a cord to be pulled out if he was impure. When Christians are impure, we too have a silver cord that must be tugged. It is the cord that’s there to keep the soul and body together (Ecc 12:6).  Satan never quits tugging on that cord to rip down Jesus’s protective “curtain” of the Holy Ghost.
  I admit that the Holy Trinity is difficult to understand, but this is how I understand God. He, however, is not “God as we understand Him” like the Twelve-Steppers believe, but a God that we don’t fully understand, and that is why all the different doctrines. Personally, whether you believe you are “filled” or “covered” with the Spirit or Ghost is not my concern, but that Jesus has satisfied your every need as he has mine. I did nothing for salvation; He did it all, and that satisfies me.
  “Satisfaction,” for some, is dancing, twirling, hard music, and such; but for me, it is that I am satisfied with contentment. “Joy” for my part is not a demonstration of excitement, but assurance that I shall have eternal life. What a great day that will be!

(photo credit: Today's Christian Woman)