This was the fourth annual seminar held at Stapleford Methodist Church, near Nottingham. Cliff Richmond chaired the afternoon and Michael Penny undertook the teaching, which many found most enlightening, especially the last session.

The first session concentrated on the work of the Spirit in the Old Testament and the Gospels. Here we saw that the Spirit came upon few people, and generally for a relatively short period of time. This enabled to them do whatever work God wanted them to do; e.g. skilled craft work, leading, teaching / prophesying. We were reminded that a prophet did not necessarily inform of the future. A prophet spoke about God; what He had done in the past, or what He was doing in the present, or what He would do in the future. However, when that work was complete, or should they commit certain sins, as King Saul did, then the Spirit would depart.

Turning to the Gospels, we found that when the Lord was on earth we, again, see little activity by the Spirit but Christ revealed something new. He spoke of a time when all who believed would receive the Spirit and that the Spirit would dwell with them permanently.

The second session concentrated on the Acts of the Apostles and the Letters written during that time. Then the Spirit was extremely active overtly, enabling believers to do many miraculous works, but they were told such miraculous powers would cease; e.g. 1 Corinthians 13:8-10. But what was the purpose of all these miracles? A useful and detailed resource for this session is the book The Miracles of the Apostles, which explains the significance of each type of miracles performed by the believers of the Acts period.

The third session showed that these miraculous signs began to cease at the end of Acts, when, because of their hardness of heart towards Jesus Christ, Israel rendered themselves blind and deaf. As a result God’s salvation was then sent to the Gentiles (Acts 28:25-28). After this Paul wrote seven more letters; Ephesians, Philippians, Colossians, 1 & 2 Timothy, Titus and Philemon. In these we see none of the overtly miraculous signs seen earlier. In fact we see clearly that Paul no longer healed (e.g. 1 Timothy 5:23; 2 Timothy 4:20).

However, we saw from Scripture that the Spirit was still very much at work, but in a different ways. For example, internally, in the hearts of believers, enabling and empowering them to love others. A useful resource for this session was the booklet The Work of the Holy Spirit in an Age of Grace by Michael Penny which considers every reference to the Spirit in Paul’s last seven letters.

The three talks, plus one other on The Person of the Holy Spirit, are available on 3 CDs costing £6.00 (See under CDs The Person and Work of the Holy Spirit). The Powerpoint slides, which illustrated the seminars, are also available as a print out for £2.00.