Deedat is clearly confused about the Holy Spirit and His work with mankind

It is only natural that Deedat would not understand. As Paul wrote in 1 Corinthians 2:14 “The person without the Spirit does not accept the things that come from the Spirit of God but considers them foolishness, and cannot understand them because they are discerned only through the Spirit.”

Also in John 3 we can read about Jesus’ conversation with Nicodemus, where Nicodemus fails to understand what Jesus means by the term “You must be born again” and Jesus explains why this is by saying “I have spoken to you of earthly things and you do not believe; how then will you believe if I speak of heavenly things? (John 3:12)” (I advise reading the whole of chapter 3 of the Gospel of John for a fuller picture).

To put it in simple terms, Deedat is confusing two of the many works of the Holy Spirit here (maybe could be argued three works in this example). When someone gives their life to Jesus and trust him for salvation by faith, then Jesus sends the Holy Spirit to indwell them. This is known as being born again – there is more to been born again than this but I will just look at the work of the Spirit. The Holy Spirit then begins a life long work of changing that person from a person who serves the flesh into someone who is more like Jesus. Someone could only be indwelt by the Spirit in this manner after Jesus had died and then risen from the dead. Previous to that, then the Holy Spirit would come upon people as in the examples that Deedat gave of Elizabeth, Zacharias and John the Baptist. Incidentally, that the Spirit can indwell millions of people simultaneously is evidence from the Bible of his deity.

This filling of the Spirit can be for a time as long or as short as God desires. We see this with John the Baptist been filled from the moment of birth until his death while his parents only had the infilling for a short length of time while they declared the wonderful works of God. The infilling can happen with anybody that God wills should have it as He wills. An example is the Godless false prophet Balaam who God put his words in his mouth and forced him to prophecy blessing upon Israel when he had actually been hired by King Balak to curse them. With the born again experience, it only happens to those who have given their lives to Christ and no one else. A significant difference between the two works of the Spirit is with the Old Testament filling, people always had a fear they could lose the anointing, but in contrast when someone is born again, then they don’t have this fear because God is long suffering of us and our failures.

 

Above I mentioned that they might be three ways that the Spirit works in the life of people and that might be that the infilling of born again believers. Even though the Spirit may be indwelling they will still need an infilling (often called baptism of the Spirit) to do work for God with any real power. There are many testimonies of Christians receiving this infilling and their ministries then taking off. As Deedat pointed out Jesus didn’t receive the power of the Holy Spirit until he started his ministry. The reason for this that Jesus who had emptied himself of all his heavenly power and had chosen to come and live as a normal human (but without the sin) needed supernatural power just the same as Christians need it. It is funny that it never crosses Deedat’s mind that this is not the way that the New Testament would have written it, if it was fake. It is normal human practice to boost the image of our heroes – just like the Quran does in its accounts of Jesus.

 

A few other points on Deedat’s comments. The gift of the “Holy Ghost” in the sense of being born again is certainly not cheap. The only way that it could be made possible was by Jesus dying on the cross. That is not cheap.

On the question of numbers of “born again believers” in the US, it is probably something like 27 million which is pretty good when compared to Europe but still no where near Deedat’s 75 million.

 

Final point. Blaspheming the Holy Spirit can not be forgiven but blaspheming the Father and the Son can be – what does this mean? Sadly it is very likely that Deedat has blasphemed the Spirit. This is where a person repeatedly rejects the approach of the Spirit to them. Every time someone hears about the Gospel and what God has done for them, the Spirit draws along side of them and whispers in their ear, that this is the truth. If that person keeps rejecting this message then eventually the Spirit will leave you to it. Then there is no going back – this is blaspheming the Holy Spirit.

We are told in John 16:8 when it is speaking of the Holy Spirit “And when he comes, he will convict the world concerning sin and righteousness and judgment:” It is the work of the Holy Spirit to make the unbeliever aware of our need for forgiveness for our sin, our unrighteousness, and the coming judgement. If someone completely reject that prompting and basically says I am not interested and I really don’t care, then the Spirit will say okay then and go away and never come back, and without the Spirit’s revelation it is totally impossible for someone to see their need.

It is important that anybody reading this does not do that. You can ask questions. You can go away to do more research, but if you repeatedly reject out of hand without any honest searching over some unknown length of time then you will reach a point of no return. Take care not to do that.