The Baptism with the Holy Spirit

But ye shall receive power, after that the Holy Ghost is come upon you: and ye shall be witnesses unto me both in Jerusalem, and in all Judæa, and in Samaria, and unto the uttermost part of the earth. ACTS 1:8

No subject is more closely tied to Torrey’s name than this one. He wrote a small book on it, Baptism with the Holy Spirit, gave it a chapter in How to Bring Men to Christ and another in The Person and Work of the Holy Spirit, and preached it in almost every campaign. It is also the part of his teaching that has been most argued over. This chapter sets out what he taught. The next two follow him into how the blessing is received and how it is kept, and all three say where he needs to be weighed.

What it is not

The baptism with the Spirit, he said, is not regeneration. The apostles were already clean through the word Christ had spoken to them, and yet He told them they would be baptised with the Holy Ghost not many days hence. The believers at Samaria had received the word of God and been baptised in water, and still Peter and John prayed for them that they might receive the Holy Ghost.

Who, when they were come down, prayed for them, that they might receive the Holy Ghost: (For as yet he was fallen upon none of them: only they were baptized in the name of the Lord Jesus.) ACTS 8:15–16

From passages like these Torrey concluded that a person may be truly born again and not yet baptised with the Spirit. The Spirit dwells in every believer, he insisted — without Him no one belongs to Christ at all — but the baptism is something further.

Nor, and this is important, is it the removal of the sinful nature. Here Torrey parted company with some of the holiness teachers of his day, who taught that a second blessing after conversion eradicates inbred sin. He agreed that there is a further experience and that it may be received at once, but he flatly denied that it cleanses the heart from sin. “The Baptism with the Holy Spirit is not to cleanse from sin,” he wrote, “but to empower for service.” Victory over sin is indeed the Spirit’s work, but it is a daily walk, maintained moment by moment, not a single crisis.

What it is

Positively, Torrey defined the baptism in terms of Acts 1:8. It is power for witness and service. Every passage in which it is mentioned, he argued, connects it with testimony and work. His own summary is careful and worth quoting whole: “The Baptism with the Holy Spirit is the Spirit of God coming upon the believer, taking possession of his faculties, imparting to him gifts not naturally his own, but which qualify him for the service to which God has called him.”

And, behold, I send the promise of my Father upon you: but tarry ye in the city of Jerusalem, until ye be endued with power from on high. LUKE 24:49

He held that it is a definite experience, one of which a person can say yes or no. Paul asked the disciples at Ephesus whether they had received the Holy Ghost since they believed, and he expected a plain answer.

He said unto them, Have ye received the Holy Ghost since ye believed? And they said unto him, We have not so much as heard whether there be any Holy Ghost. ACTS 19:2

And he held that it is for every believer. Peter said the promise was for his hearers, for their children, and for all that are afar off. Torrey took that as reaching down to his own day and to every reader.

Not the same in everyone

One of the wisest parts of Torrey’s teaching is his insistence that the power does not look the same in every life. He confessed that in his early study he had wondered whether everyone baptised with the Spirit would speak in tongues, and was set right by Paul’s question, do all speak with tongues? Then he fell into a second error, supposing that the baptism would make everyone a preacher or evangelist. First Corinthians 12 cured him of that too.

Now there are diversities of gifts, but the same Spirit. 1 CORINTHIANS 12:4

He named three evils that come from the mistake. The first is disappointment: people seek power as evangelists when God has not called them to be evangelists, and are left in despair. The second is presumption: a man rushes into preaching because he thinks the Spirit is all he needs, when he also needs a call and a knowledge of the Word. The third, and worst, is indifference: the mother of a large family concludes that since she is not called to preach, the whole matter is nothing to her. But she, Torrey said, needs the Spirit’s power for the holy work of bringing up her children as much as any preacher needs it for the pulpit. He told of a mother who, after receiving this blessing, found she could reach her children’s hearts as never before.

The necessity

Torrey pressed the necessity of this blessing in the strongest terms. The apostles had been with Christ for three years, had heard His teaching and seen His resurrection, and still they were told to wait. Jesus Himself did not begin His public ministry until the Spirit had come upon Him at the Jordan.

How God anointed Jesus of Nazareth with the Holy Ghost and with power: who went about doing good, and healing all that were oppressed of the devil; for God was with him. ACTS 10:38

If that was so for them, Torrey argued, what is it for us to go on without it? There is nothing more deadly, he wrote, than the gospel without the Spirit’s power. A preacher can say every true thing and say it in the energy of the flesh.

And my speech and my preaching was not with enticing words of man’s wisdom, but in demonstration of the Spirit and of power. 1 CORINTHIANS 2:4

Weighing it

Here the reader must think carefully, because good Christians have disagreed.

Much of what Torrey taught is plainly right. Service for Christ needs the power of the Spirit and not merely training. The Spirit is sovereign in His gifts. Many Christians are working in their own strength, and they ought to ask God for His. None of that depends on Torrey’s particular scheme.

What is disputed is the scheme itself: that there is one definite experience, called the baptism, which normally comes after conversion and which a believer may lack for years. Many careful readers point out that Paul uses the language of baptism for what happens to every Christian at the start.

For by one Spirit are we all baptized into one body, whether we be Jews or Gentiles, whether we be bond or free; and have been all made to drink into one Spirit. 1 CORINTHIANS 12:13

On this reading, the Samaritan and Ephesian cases in Acts belong to a unique moment in the spread of the gospel, and what believers need afterwards is not a second baptism but to be filled with the Spirit again and again, as Ephesians 5:18 commands. Torrey himself insisted on repeated fillings, as the next chapters will show, so the two views are nearer in practice than in vocabulary.

It should also be said that Torrey’s language was later taken up by movements whose teaching he did not share, especially on tongues as the necessary sign. His own book is clear that tongues are not the sign, and that the power shows itself as the Spirit wills.

The safest course is to hold firmly what is certain and lightly what is argued. It is certain that we need the Spirit’s power, that God gives the Spirit to them that ask Him, and that the power is for witness. Whether you call your own experience of that power a baptism or a filling matters much less than whether you have sought it.

FOR REFLECTION AND ACTION

1. Ask yourself honestly whether your Christian service — at home, at work, in church — is being done in your own strength or in the Spirit’s.

2. Reflect on the three evils Torrey named. Which of them — disappointment, presumption or indifference — is nearest to you?

3. Put yourself deliberately at the Spirit’s disposal for whatever service He chooses, rather than asking Him to bless the service you have chosen.

4. Read 1 Corinthians 12 slowly this week and note the variety of the Spirit’s gifts.

5. Read the first chapter of Torrey’s Baptism with the Holy Spirit in the Ochorus library, and weigh it against 1 Corinthians 12:13 and Ephesians 5:18.

A PRAYER

Father, Your Son promised that His disciples would receive power when the Holy Ghost came upon them. I confess how much of my service has been done without that power.

I do not ask for a gift of my own choosing or a field of my own planning. I put myself at Your disposal.

Fill me with Your Spirit, that I may witness to Jesus Christ in the place where You have set me, with the gifts You choose to give.

Keep me from pride if You use me, and from despair if You use me differently than I hoped. Amen.