Pontius Pilate, obviously a student of Plato in a Greek oriented society, asked Jesus as He was about to be crucified, “What is truth?” (John 18:38). Without going into esoteric reasons, Jesus showed Pilate what was truth; His death revealed God in Jesus as Jesus gave up the Ghost (Mark 15:37).
The ‘Ghost’ that left Jesus was a
Phantom, the very Image of God from the beginning. As it turned out,
Pilate was shown the truth in a very Platonian manner; the Holy Ghost of Jesus
was a ’fragment’ of the physical Image of God. The truth was revealed to Pilate
that Jesus was as much God as was the Spirit dwelling within Him, and vice-versa.
The truth is that God is who He
says He is without regard to appearances. Some still reject that truth. That is
the prerogative of everyone; God does not force His Image, neither Jesus nor
the Holy Ghost on anyone. With that said, the man, Jesus, pleases people.
However, the Holy Ghost scares them. That God is with them all the time does
not make them feel safe but insecure.
There is a Holy Ghost, and He is
the One that keeps you safe in the world until the end. Jesus said, “He (the
Father) shall give you another Comforter, that He may abide with you forever”
(John 14:16). Christians have on them a ‘Comforter’ in much the same manner as
Adam and Eve had on a ‘Garment’ from God (Gen 3:17).
That was the truth in what Jesus
said. That ‘Comforter’ is the One Thing that Jesus gave up for your safety. The
Holy Ghost, Pilate realized, was as much God as Jesus. Pilate saw that Jesus
was God regardless of His Substance. Jesus was God on the outside as well as within.
Literally the ‘Comforter” (Greek; parakletos) is one who pleads for you in a High Court. The Comforter advocates on your behalf and as such is your defender against the prosecution led by Satan. Indeed, that Christians have someone to plead their cause on the judgment day is comforting. There is hope so long as the Comforter is with you, but like anything given by God by grace, He does not force Himself on you, and as a free agent, the Christian can refuse to have anyone act on his or her behalf. The Comforter can be rejected at the soul discretion of the Christian, but there are consequences. Jesus said:
Verily, (truly) I say
unto you, “All sins shall be forgiven unto the sons of men, and blasphemies
wherewith soever they shall blaspheme, but he that shall blaspheme against the
Holy Ghost has never forgiveness but is in danger of eternal damnation.” (Mark 3:28-29)
With the Advocate there on your
behalf, Jesus said that all sins will be forgiven. We must believe in the Advocate
whether we see Him or not. We must believe that the Ghost of Jesus is working
on behalf of all serious Christians, and pro bono (“for good,” by grace).
As a young man, the thought of
the Holy Ghost intimidated me at best. When a sincere Christian said to me, “The
Holy Ghost was here today!” she in excitement, I was dumbfounded. I thought, I
did not see the Holy Ghost, and felt like I belonged to some zealot
organization with a bunch of religious fanatics. In time, I too became a fan
for both Jesus, whether it was His Person or His Ghost. I nearly lost my Advocate
at an early age because He was so mysterious.
Jesus was speaking to Christians
when He warned them about “blasphemy” — speaking without piety for the invisible
Image of God — the Holy Ghost.
Pilate found out that Jesus was
the visible Image of the Invisible God, and there was within Jesus another
Image that few shall ever see. Pilate was privileged to see the Holy Ghost —
the invisible Image of God — remove Himself from the visible Image. Pilate saw
that both Images were God regardless of substances.
Holy rollers still scare
Christians! A ‘Holy Roller’ is anyone who takes the Holy Ghost seriously. They
feel comfortable speaking of the Holy Spirit but very uncomfortable even saying
“Holy Ghost.” Either way, in the Greek, both ghost and spirit are pneuma, sort
of a dynamic ‘wind,’ but the specific Spirit of Jesus frightens even
Christians.
A ‘spirit’ is simply an unseen
essence attributed to God by Christians and Jews. A ‘ghost’ is a specific and
peculiar essence attributed to God that has resided in the body of a dead
person. That Jesus has a Ghost is a scary proposition, hence the “Holy Ghost”
as the name suggests is the ‘Agios Pneuma,’ in the Greek, literally “An Awful
Spirit.” That may be the case for some, but for true Christians, the Ghost in
Jesus is an “Awesome God.” Whether awful or awesome now depends
on context about how the person sees God.
To those who reject the Holy
Ghost of Jesus as Advocate, He is awful; to those who depend on the
Advocate, see the Holy Ghost as awesome. It is the same Ghost of Jesus,
but His awesome or awfulness depends on the viewpoint of the beholder.
Those who reject the Holy Ghost,
in a spiritual sense, reject God as much as those who reject Jesus are rejecting
God. The man, Jesus, is easy to accept because He was visible. The Ghost of
Jesus is difficult to accept because He can only be sensed as being there as ‘God
With Us’ (Emmanuel). If that is rejected, then so is the truth that Pilate
accepted.
Proof is impossible in
inferential statistics. Jesus was the evidence that God is real, and it
was, and still is, rejected by many.
In inferential statistics, failure
to reject the null is not absolute proof but reliable to a certain
degree.
The hypothesis was that Jesus
was who He said He was. The man said that He was God. That was impossible
to prove even though He performed miracles — doing things beyond the science. Even
that was rejected as proof that Jesus is God. Simon the Sorcerer levitated and
said that he was the Savior. That did not prove that he was God either.
Jesus was the positive Image
of God but was rejected. To be accepted as true, the null must be
disproved. The Holy Ghost was the null of the hypothesis. Failure to
disprove that the Holy Ghost was not God was the evidence that the positive
hypothesis was true.
Pilate accepted that the Holy
Ghost was God because even though on the Cross in the Body of Jesus, the Spirit
did not die. Truly the Holy Ghost was God as Pilate was surely convinced. Since
the Holy Ghost was the null ‘fragment’ of the Person, Jesus, then Pilate
accepted the premise that Jesus, the Person, was in fact God.
You may not understand
inferential statistics but when Pilate saw the null of Jesus leaving Him,
that was reliable proof for him. There was little doubt to Pilate that Jesus
was who He said He was, and Pilate accepted Jesus was God as the truth!
You did not see what Pilate saw,
so since God is graceful, He allowed others to see the truth after it was
finished. Many people saw Jesus alive and well after His death. The lively Spirit
that God had breathed unto Him at His baptism returned. Jesus got His Ghost
back.
Pilate was revealed the truth because
He saw it. There was no degree of doubt, so he washed his hands of the test
even before the test was completed. He accepted the evidence that Jesus was God,
but then God revealed to Pilate that he was correct in his belief; Pilate found
no fault in Jesus. Jesus had not come short of the Glory of God since the Holy
Ghost glorified Him (John 7:39) to substantiate Pilate’s conclusion.
Before I ever recognized the Holy
Ghost was as much as God as Jesus, I did recognize Jesus as God. On the other
hand, the Holy Ghost comforts me in times of duress. Now I understand that the
Holy Ghost is God because he is the Presence of Jesus that remains with us.
With all that said, I am not a Pentecostal.
However, Christians should never fear the Holy Ghost. The Holy Ghost is no
longer a threat to my comfort but is the True God who still comforts me.
If I reject the Holy Ghost, I am rejecting God as much as if I rejected Jesus as God. Likewise, Jews, if you reject Jesus as God, then you are rejecting the Holy Spirit of God that was revealed to Moses! And so it goes.
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