Call-ins Radio Broadcast Thursday 03/03/2022

Call-In Classic Christianity Radio – Bob George P713 (03-03-22)

Saved by the Baptism of The Holy Spirit Not Water Baptism – You Must Repent of Your Unbelief and Believe in Christ Jesus

In today’s Classic Christianity Radio program Bob discusses baptism of the Holy Spirit vs water baptism. Only baptism by the Holy Spirit, making a person born again of the Spirit, is the only way salvation takes place. Water baptism doesn’t do anything for you except get you wet.

Another caller called in about forgiveness of sins and the fellowship issue. Fellowship is always in the fellowship saved or out of the fellowship lost.

Then there was another caller that wondered about Acts 18:24-28 in regards to being saved by baptism vs baptism of the Holy Spirit and altar calls. Bob’s answer brings additional insights on to what was happening in the book of Acts at that point in time, in that some had not even heard of baptism of the Holy Spirit. They only had heard of John the Baptist, water baptism, pointing toward the One that would take away all their sins on the cross. They were unaware of the baptism of the believer by the Holy Spirit when they placed faith in Christ Jesus.

The last caller was questioning his salvation and his understanding of repentance. Many believe you have to repent of all of your sins. However, that is not repentance. Repentance is a change of mind and turning to Christ Jesus for our righteousness.

Listen in as Bob shares his insights into the word of God.

The first caller was Edwin from Hercules, California. He wanted to know the differences between water baptism and baptism of the Holy Spirit.

Bob mentions the following: John baptized with water, but one coming after me, who is Jesus, whose sandals I’m not worthy to untie will baptize with the Holy Spirit and with fire which means judgment. And so we’re told you have a baptism done by man, and you have baptism done by God. Now, which one of those two do you think saves you? God. There is nothing that man could do to save you. So it’s only as we are indwelt by the Holy Spirit, indwelt by the Holy Spirit of God, and then placed into the body of Christ. Not only God can do that, no man can place you and me into the body of Christ. That’s because it’s His body. Not ours. We baptize people so that you’ll join our church. That’s placing people into our body, but it didn’t place people into Christ’s body because nobody comes into Christ’s body through getting dunked in water. So the only way that we come in contact with the body of Christ, is when Christ does, the Word is coming to live in us and then placing us into his body with Him as the head. And we are the individual parts of the body here on earth and all over the world at the same time. And so the only salvation, is the only baptism that saves us, is being placed into His body and head.

What we have done is to say, who cares about us being placed into His body. I’m going to use baptism to place you into my body. And that’s why churches, some will say, you must be baptized in our church in order to be saved. Well, that would be saying God’s baptism doesn’t mean anything. Only mine means something. I got news for you. Your baptism can’t do anything except get people wet. Man’s, anything man does cannot save anybody. There’s nothing that we can do to save anybody. Salvation is from God, and God alone. And so what we’ve done is substitute, and this is a this passage we were just talking about the perfect passage of that being John’s baptism would be the equivalent to getting baptized in water, but he said, if you haven’t received the Holy Spirit that baptism of water doesn’t mean anything and obviously being baptized in water didn’t create the Holy Spirit to come live in you. That has to be done by faith in His resurrection.

And so we miss the dynamic of the gospel at one by ignoring the truth of the resurrection, which is where the Holy Spirit comes to indwell us. After we have come to him for the fullness of the gospel. I don’t think anyone is saved with a partial gospel any more than these people were saved with being baptized for repentance by John the Baptist. They’re the indicator there is, they hadn’t received the Holy Spirit yet. And that meant they weren’t saved without the Spirit of God living in you, and you don’t belong to Him. So had they not received the Spirit, they weren’t born again. Sincere, obviously sincere they went into the baptismal waters with John the Baptist for the remission of sins, obviously sincere people, but they said they were not complete yet until they came to the resurrection and were baptized by the Holy Spirit.

The second caller, Glenn called from Detroit, Michigan. He had a question in regards to many denominations are teaching falsehoods as to forgiveness and being out of fellowship when you sin.

So many churches teach that when one does sin that they fall out of fellowship with the Lord and they can’t get back into fellowship with him until they confess their sins to God. Is that true? No. Where do you go to find that in the Bible? There isn’t any place in the Bible with falling in and out of fellowship. Glenn, you’re either in the fellowship saved or out of the fellowship lost. I laughingly say that fellowship in a Bible is two fellas in the same ship. Nobody is bouncing in and out of fellowship. But that teaching is very prevalent in evangelical churches. Glad that they said, no, no you can’t lose your salvation will grant you that, but you could lose your fellowship. So I say in other words God’s hacked at you. So if you know, I don’t care whether he’s hacked at me and kick me out or hacked that man doesn’t want to talk to Him. He’s hacked at me now, how are you going to put that into place with a Jesus, who said, I came and took your sins away from the eyes of God, and then tell me that my sins cause me to be out of fellowship with God, when my sins have been taken away? You see, there’s no logic to any of this Glenn. It’s all gobbly. Its theological gobbly, gook.

You have James, who says, confess your sins one to another. What does that mean? If I had insulted you I should be able to go back and say Glenn. I’m sorry. I acted like a fool, didn’t even the Lord and ask you to forgive me, that is absolutely the lifestyle of a Christian. But for a Christian to ask God to do what He’s claimed to have already done is not faith. It’s presumption. And the Bible says that, anyone who continues in that sin, and the sin that is being talked about is the sin of the rejection of the truth of the word of God. It says, all he has to look forward to is a raging fire that consumes the enemies of God. The only thing that pleases God is faith. And I cannot say I’m walking by faith by continuing to ask God to do what He’s already accomplished, that’s presumption. But you see we would rather stay in and sit at the feet of our traditions, then we would have to walk by faith in the fact that Christ cried out from across, It’s finished. He wants us to quit dealing with sin. He said, I’m not dealing with it anymore. I want you to quit dealing with it. In other words. You say well, Lord. I still said, I said I know, but it is not taken into account anymore. What I’m dealing with is how you behave, as a new creature in Christ. If any man be in Christ, he is a new creation, old things are passed away. And behold, all things have become new. I want to teach you Glenn.

That’s the root of every sin that you deal with today. The root of it is unbelief in Me (Jesus) and I want you to deal with that. I don’t want you to deal with the fruit. I want you to deal with the root, and when you do that, your comeback to say, Lord Jesus, here, I was again, ole dummy, not trusting You. He says, I know Bob and I want you to start trusting Me. I tell people you can either spend all your life pulling weeds or growing grass. Do you want to grow grass? If you do, it’s going to be healthy grass. It’s going to choke out the weeds. If you want to spend your whole life pulling weeds, you’re going to spend your whole life pulling weeds.

This is something that the evangelical world along with others, they absolutely refuse to believe they refuse to come to the conclusion when Jesus said I have taken away sins, they still call Jesus’ death on the cross atonement, that irritates the daylights out of me. Jesus didn’t come to atone for sin, the blood of bulls, and goats atoned for sins. Atonement was covering. He didn’t come to cover your sin. He came to take them away from the eyes of God. He’s dealt with your sin. It isn’t that your sin was not going to be dealt with, he said, no, I’m going to deal with it. It’s going to cost Me My life to deal with it. But I’m going to deal with it. And there, hanging on that cross, suspended between God and man, I who knew no sin, I’m going to become sin for you, so that you Glenn can become the righteousness of God, in My resurrection. That’s what I’m going to do for you. I’m taking away your sins. I’m dealing with it. I’m judging it. The verdict is guilty. The punishment is death, and I’m taking that death upon Myself for you so that I can now offer you life. My life living in you, which is your hope of glory. And now I’m going to be dealing with you in accordance with life, that as a child of God, Glenn was what you did is that now consistent? Because we carry a lot of baggage with us when we’re saved. We got a lot of old flesh baggage. And that is going to take time to get that renewed and are thinking straight in regard to our thinking patterns. But he says, I’m patient with you. And that’s what I’m there to do. And we keep wanting to make a formula out of this. It’s not a formula. It’s a new life.

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Larry was the next caller, listening in Santa Fe Springs, California. He had a question about Acts chapter 19, particularly verse 1 through 7, especially verse 2 when did you receive the Holy Spirit when you believed? He wanted to know when they received the Holy Spirit. He wanted to know Bob’s explanation on that and they were laying a hand on them.

Bob explains to him. Well, if you’ll go into the 18th chapter and you’ll read there in verse 24,

Acts 18:24-27
²⁴ Meanwhile a Jew named Apollos, a native of Alexandria, came to Ephesus. He was a learned man, with a thorough knowledge of the Scriptures. ²⁵ He had been instructed in the way of the Lord, and he spoke with great fervor and taught about Jesus accurately, though he knew only the baptism of John. ²⁶ He began to speak boldly in the synagogue. When Priscilla and Aquila heard him, they invited him to their home and explained to him the way of God more adequately. ²⁷ When Apollos wanted to go to Achaia, the brothers and sisters encouraged him and wrote to the disciples there to welcome him. When he arrived, he was a great help to those who by grace had believed.

Meanwhile a Jew named Apollos a native at Alexandria came to Ephesus. He was a learned man, with a thorough knowledge of the scriptures. He had been instructed in the way of the Lord and he spoke with great fervor and taught about Jesus accurately, though he knew only the baptism of John. He began to speak boldly in the synagogue. When Priscilla and Aquila heard him, they invited him to their home and explained to him the way of God more adequately.

So Apollo’s he was a man with thorough knowledge of the scriptures instructed in the way of the Lord, but he needed to have the explanation of, of the way of God, more adequately. And so evidently that was explained to him so that he was able then, when he was at Corinth, that Paul took the road through the interior and arrived at Ephesus, and they found some disciples and asked them, did you receive the Holy Spirit when you believed? And their answer was, no, we’ve never even heard of the Holy Spirit. So Paul asked them, what baptism did you receive? John’s baptism? Well, John’s baptism is a baptism of repentance Larry and it would be that, that preceded, the death burial and resurrection of Christ Jesus to come and to be baptized for the remission of your sins, by the One who is coming, the Messiah. But they had not heard evidently that Jesus had come and had been raised from the dead in order to impart life to us. And that was obviously a missed understanding for Apollos. And after it was explained to him, why then he was able to, he and Paul, to ask the same question.

So it wasn’t that these people were not believers in Jesus, who went to the cross. But they were people who were not born again yet. In other words because they had not heard of His resurrection and how the Spirit of God comes to indwell us at the time of spiritual birth and places us into the body of Christ and makes us alive in Christ. So I think all of your statements were correct there.

Then Larry wanted to know in regards to altar calls in regards to this understanding of the Holy Spirit, saying we’ll call him for believers to receive the Holy Spirit.

Bob continues on. If you’re talking about a person who has never accepted the Life of Christ and all they have accepted is Christ’s death for them. Why then it’s not that they’re not a believer in Christ. They just have not been taught more adequately and they’re not born again. They may believe in Christ, but they haven’t yet been born again by His life.

You can’t say I want all you, all you who are born again Christians to come forward and receive a Spirit, that’s nonsense, that cannot be true. Because if the Spirit does not live in you, you don’t belong to Him. Again, when you use the word Christian Larry, that’s the problem with that word. It doesn’t have any meaning to it anymore. If you threw out the word Christian, why you’d have people like myself, we were sitting there for 36 years, not knowing the Lord from an apple tree, but I’m going to call myself a Christian. Okay, so you have to say, all of you born again, people, if that’s what you’re meaning. All you people who are born again to come and receive the Holy Spirit. That is nonsense. That’s right. It’s false teaching and that’s what I think was going on. John, the Baptist was ministered to people a long time before Jesus Christ, death burial and resurrection. And and so he, but he was the foreshadowing of Christ Jesus. In other words, he was there to announce the fact that the Messiah had come to Israel and to repent and change your mind and come to the Messiah and for your forgiveness of sins. And that’s what the baptism was for a cleansing. And so that’s all the baptism they knew. That’s all they knew. How many people do we have today, sitting in the pews that that’s all they believe about Jesus, is He died for our sins? I mean, an area when we were over in Russia, and we met with this Russian pastor and we ministered to people over there, and on the way back to the airport the wife of the pastor was saying to Amy, all you have to do to come to Jesus is come and believe He died for your sins.

That message is going out all over Christendom today. And that is totally ignoring the passage that says, while we were yet enemies, we were reconciled to God, through the death of his Son, how much more having been reconciled, shall we be saved, by His life. You don’t come forward to get forgiven. You’re already forgiven. You come forward to get life. And that message is not given. So, you have to wonder sometimes, how many people are literally sitting there thinking they’re saved and they will never come to Christ for life.

Well, let’s think about this idea for a minute Larry. We’re discussing this. Let’s say that there are many people like we’re talking about that all they’ve ever accepted and you were preaching the gospel. And you were saying if the only thing that you’ve done is accept Jesus’ death for you, that is different than accepting John’s baptism. That was what that was about. But have you yet received the Holy Spirit? In other words, have you come to him for life? And so if that’s where you are, because I’ve led numerous people to Christ by just asking the question, what was your understanding of the gospel, the gospel is, what saves you? And it comes back nine times out of ten, Jesus died for my sins. And that’s it. And I’ll tend to go ahead and explore and explain to them the fullness of the gospel and then ask them to come and receive Christ. If that’s what would be taking place in services you’re talking about. Well, at least they’re coming to him for Life. Maybe that was the first time they ever came alive.

Larry wanted to know about the laying on of hands. He said, Acts 10, I believe it actually, obviously the Holy Spirit came without the laying on of hands. What was the thing here? When, when they receive the Spirit by laying on of hands, and showing a kind of authority or did this is the Spirit and you actually receive the Spirit by the means of a hand?

Absolutely not there, anything that happens laying hands and later on, it talks about the right in the middle of one of Peter’s speeches or Paul’s speeches, they came to Christ and talk about laying on the hands there. So again in the book of Acts, you got all kinds of things. One place laying on hands. Another place not laying on hands. That’s why you can’t take the book of Acts as doctrinal. It’s not doctrinal,iIt’s just explaining what happened. Paul placing his hands on and the Holy Spirit came on them, and they spoke in tongues and prophesied. Well, Paul had to be there, Paul or Peter had to be there to verify the fact that these people have truly been saved and one of the ways back then, was because the tongues is for the unbelieving Jew. And one of the only ways that they could have known whether or not that took place was because of this speaking in other languages and prophesying. And so that was back then. But that is not now.

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The last caller, John, called from Augusta, Georgia. His question is this, “I’ve been plagued by doubts about my salvation and I think the plague of doubt comes from the word repentance and and I wonder a lot of times if I haven’t been sincere enough when I was saved? So I don’t understand repentance and how it fits into salvation necessarily? I know that in my heart I trusted the Lord Jesus, as my savior and all of a sudden I had another…”

Bob: Hold on, hold on. Let’s stop. Let’s stop right there. Stop right there. Prior to the day you trusted Christ as your Lord and Savior, had you trusted Christ as your Lord and Savior?

John: No, sir.

Bob: So, what did you do when you trusted him? You repented. That’s what repentance is John. That’s what you did, that’s what took place when you were saved? You were not born a believer. On the day that you made up your mind that whatever I believed in, including nothing, I am changing my mind and I’m believing and putting my trust in Christ Jesus as my Lord and Savior. I’m trusting Him for the fact that he took away my sins from the eyes Of God, never to see them again. I’m trusting Him with the fact that He entered into my spiritual death with me so that I could enter into His resurrection with Him. And I am now a new creature in Christ. I’m repented. I’m changing my mind. You’ve already repented.

John: Repented from this sin or from that sin and all of your sins?

Bob: If all of your sins have been taken away at the cross, never see them again what’s the big turning point that you’re talking about? In other words, whether you turn away or you don’t, God has already taken away your sins.

John: Right. Just by simply exercising faith in His shed blood.

Bob: Absolutely. That’s what He’s there for. Okay, brother, buh-bye.

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The last caller was Jim calling from Los Angeles, California. His question: I was listening to a very well-known pastor through a radio and television ministry and he said that the Christian today cannot commit the unpardonable sin because that offense was particular, to those people who are criticizing Jesus for casting out demons. What do you have there?

Bob: There’s a degree in which that is true, Jim. But the unpardonable sin would be the rejection of Christ Jesus. Jesus said, the world’s sin singular is unbelief in Me. The sins of the entire world were placed upon Christ at the cross and there, He who knew no sin became sin for us so that we could become the righteousness of God in Him. So no man will ever go to hell because of his sins, only the sin of the rejection of the Son of God, who provided that for, so that is the unpardonable sin. And so some people attribute that only to those who are physically in the presence of God and therefore denying his deity, but I believe that it carries on today where people are still denying his deity, which is the unpardonable sin. That sin Jim, can’t be pardoned. That’s it has to be repented of. It’s the only sin that he was unable to forgive is the rejection of Himself and that has to be repetitive of and quite frankly, that’s what the word repentance is you used in the scripture is only in regard to salvation of changing your mind, totally in regard to your relationship with Christ. Right. Does that help Jim?

Jim: Yes it does.

Bob: God bless you, my friend. Bye bye.