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Learning From the Master Teacher Sent by Jesus:
The Holy Spirit
By
Norton R. Nowlin, M.A.
The Holy Spirit
By
Norton R. Nowlin, M.A.
The full complete statement about the divine purpose of the Holy Spirit, or the Holy Ghost, is found in the New Testament of the Bible, specifically in John 14:26, where Jesus promises, "But the Advocate, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in my name, will teach you all things and remind you of everything I have said to you.” If the Lord Jesus was then, in the First Century, speaking to his disciples, not merely his Apostles, he was speaking also of all the human beings who would become his disciples in the near and distant future, including the 21st Century. Jesus did not say that the Holy Spirit would teach his disciples just a few things, but all things about his holy gospel. This amazing knowledge about Christian learning seemingly does away with the usefulness of seminaries in the world to teach men and women about the doctrines of the Savior Jesus.
Ever since the death of the last Apostle, ordained by Jesus, unordained and uninspired men have attempted through the centuries to falsely impose their heretical opinions and beliefs on impressionable Christians, claiming to be inspired men of God. The usually older opinionated Christian men who lived men in the early 2nd Century might have been formerly ordained much earlier by truly inspired men, servants of God, such as Titus and Timothy, messengers of the Apostle Paul, but after the deaths of the Apostles Paul, Peter, James, and the elders who were appointed through their authority, these opinionated men began to depose, and detract from, the original teachings and doctrines of Jesus and created, as the Apostle Paul had prophesied in 1 Timothy 4 and 2 Timothy 3, false doctrines and false gospels that heralded the advent of the Roman Catholicism and monasticism in the 4th Century. Monasticism, or a Catholic creation of what they called a spiritual clergy, led to a segregation of Catholic priests into seminaries in order to teach them Catholic doctrine. This is where the seminary concept originated, through Roman Catholicism, which egregiously obfuscated the specific purpose of the Holy Spirit.
Now, what about the last living Apostle, John, who wrote the Book of Revelation on the Isle of Patmos? John left the salt mine imposed on him by the Romans when he was probably in his mid-90s, and this was just around the time of the end of the First Century. The presiding elder of the church at Rome, Clement (probably appointed by a messenger of Pau), who wrote and circulated his own heretical epistle in AD 96, instructed, or ordered, John the Apostle of Jesus to retire from the ministry and go home to Judea, where he later died a natural death. Knowing that Jesus had ordained his Apostles to serve him in the ministry until their own violent deaths, and realizing the audacity and tenaciousness of the Apostle John, it is hard to believe that John, still in control of his body and mind and under the dictates of the Holy Spirit, just freely assented to Clement’s demand without vehement opposition. The full and exact unknown history of the Apostle John has, therefore, unfortunately not been written to date. Yet, common sense and prevailing scripture tell us that he would have kept on preaching and writing until his death, if he had been allowed to do so.
In the USA currently, a man or woman who has successfully completed three or four years of study at a place such as the Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary, in Fort Worth, Texas and has had a doctoral-level degree conferred can be ordained by a committee of Southern Baptist theologians to be a certified minister; and later be hired by an SBC affiliated Baptist Church as a lead pastor or associate pastor with a starting salary of over $90,000.00 per year. Of course, the total cost of a seminary doctoral-level degree is currently over $100,000 at the SBTS, Fort Worth. Amazing, huh?
What do you suppose the Apostle Paul meant in Galatians 1:12, when he said, “"For I did not receive it (the doctrine of the Gospel of Christ) from a human source, nor was it taught to me, but I received it through a revelation of Jesus Christ?" Was he merely bragging, or was he stating that the source from which he got his complete spiritual education, the Holy Spirit sent by Jesus, is the same divine source from which all Christians receive their learning? If you will recall from scriptural history, the gift of the Holy Spirit, the Comforter or Advocate, was not given to the earth by Jesus until after he had left the earth. The Spirit of God was upon the earth but not the specific “gift” of the Holy Spirit, which is sometimes referred to as the further outpouring of the Holy Spirit given on the day of Pentecost. So, Peter, James, John, and the other original Apostles had to learn the gospel of Christ only from the mortal Jesus before he was crucified and resurrected, and before the conferral of the gift of the Holy Spirit. It is interesting to note that the Apostles, even Peter, did not understand some of the most basic elements of Christ’s crucifixion, resurrection, and ascension into heaven until after the gift of the Holy Spirit came upon them, even though they saw miracles performed by Jesus, performed miracles themselves, and witnessed the Lord’s transfiguration.
Hence, the bottom line of this essay is simply that the same rules that the Lord Jesus gave in the First Century about acquiring a complete knowledge about his precious Gospel should apply today. According to the holy scriptures, the Holy Spirit is the source of all knowledge from which all aspiring Christians should acquire their spiritual educations. They should not try to purchase spiritual knowledge from a seminary, when it has been promised freely to them from God almighty. Sadly, the spiritual communication lines from Jesus to mankind have been sorely damaged over the centuries by men and women deviously seeking their own will and not God’s will. The gift of the Holy Spirit continuously speaks in intelligible words to the patient listening Christian, in that Christian’s own language, to reveal the truths of the doctrines of the Gospel of Christ, as that Christian studies the word of God from the Holy Bible. You can say that this still small voice of the Holy Spirit conveys all truth to the listening Christian and reveals what Jesus wants Christians to know. This is the way the Bereans, in Acts 17, learned the truth from the preaching of the Apostle Paul and Silas. The gift of the Holy Spirit was upon the Bereans as they studied earnestly from the scriptures to learn whether Paul was telling them the truth about Jesus. The writer Luke ascribed nobility to the Bereans for their willingness to accept the voice of the Holy Spirit confirming the scriptures that they diligently studied.
In seeking valid research information about the standard accepted biblical authorization for seminaries on the Internet and in currently printed theological literature, it was discovered that the existence and legacy of seminaries are condoned and regaled by modern-day seminary theologians by their simplistic saying that the scriptures of the New Testament “do not directly prohibit seminaries.” Well, when one considers that the use of seminaries did not appear in history under heretical Roman Catholicism until the 5th Century, and that the words of Jesus, in John 14:26, were never regarded by Catholicism as the final decree on Christian learning, there is a vexing problem which arrogant modern man does not want to admit exists. If Catholicism truthfully admits that all things can be learned by a Christian disciple about the Gospel of Christ through direct connection with the gift of the Holy Spirit and without the presence and false intercession of a priest, the doctrines of Catholicism would suddenly and essentially would become negated and moot. This consequence would equally apply to the Protestant and sectarian church practice of cranking-out church pastors from their own ritualistic seminaries around the USA. Simply put, one can’t, or shouldn’t, try to obtain spiritual and scriptural knowledge through the knowledge or intercession of a mortal person or by enrolling in costly courses of seminary instruction. The Holy Spirit just might whisper into the ear of the earnestly inquiring Christian student something totally different.
