The-Person-and-Work-of-the-Holy-Spirit-by-R.A.-Torrey (continued)
The Holy Spirit In Prophets and Apostles 251 been announced unto you through them that preached the Gospel unto you by the Holy Ghost sent forth from heaven ; which things angels desire to look into." These words make it plain that a Person in the prophets, and independent of the prophets, and that Person the Holy Spirit, revealed truth which was independent of their own thinking, which they did not altogether understand themselves, and regarding which it was necessary that they make diligent search and study. Another Person than themselves was thinking and speaking and they were seeking to comprehend what He said.
4. No prophefs utterance was of the prophet's own will, but he spoke from Q-od, and the prophet was carried along in his utterance by the Holy Spirit. We read in 2 Peter i. 21, R. V., " For no prophecy ever came by the will of man : but men spake from God, being moved by the Holy Ghost'
9 Clearly then, the prophet was simply an instrument in the hands of another, as the Spirit of God carried him along, so he spoke.
5. It was the Holy Spirit who spoke in the prophetic utterances. It was His word that was upon the prophefs tongue. We read in Heb. iii. 7, "Wherefore as the Holy Ghost saith To-day if ye will hear His voice." Again we read in Heb. x. 15, 16, "Whereof the Holy Ghost also is a witness to us : for after that He had said before, This is the covenant that I will make with them after those days, saith the Lord. I will put My laws into their hearts, and in their minds will I write them."
We read again in Acts xxviii. 25, R. V., " And when they agreed not among themselves, they departed, after c Well spake the Holy that Paul had spoken the word, Ghost by Isaiah the prophet unto your fathers saying, etc.' " Still again we read in 2 Sam. xxiii. 2, R. V., " The Spirit of the Lord spake by me and His word was upon my tongue." Over and over again in these passages we are told that it was the Holy Spirit who was the speaker in the prophetic utterances and that it was His word, not theirs, that was upon the prophet's tongue. The prophet was simply the mouth by which the Holy Spirit spoke. As a man, that is except as the Spirit taught him and used him, the prophet might be as fallible as other men are but when the Spirit was upon him and he was taken up and borne along by the Holy
Spirit, he was infallible in his teachings j for his teachings in that case were not his own, but the teachings of the Holy Spirit. When thus borne along by the Holy
Spirit it was God who was speaking and not the prophet. For example, there can be little doubt that Paul had many mistaken notions about many things but when he taught as an Apostle in the Spirit's power, he was infallible or rather the Spirit, who taught through him was infallible and the consequent teaching was infallibleas infallible as God Himself. We do well therefore to carefully distinguish what Paul may have thought as a man and what he actually did teach as an Apostle, In the Bible we have the record of what he taught as an Apostle. There are those who think that in i Cor. vii. 6, 25, " But I speak this by permission, not of commandment . . . yet I give my judgment