Originally posted by @pianoman1
The "Holy Spirit" is an illusion.
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No, the Holy Spirit is not an illusion.
But Jesus did say that some of the world cannot know Him because they do not behold Him.
" ... the Spirit of reality, whom the world cannot receive, because it does not behold Him or know Him; but you know Him, because He abides with you and shall be in you." (John 14:17)
Apparently Pianoman1 has no experience of
"the Spirit of reality [truth]".
But Pianoman1
can enter into the experience.
If you want to believe in it, you will, and you will think it is the greatest proof of Jesus alive.
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Your generosity doesn't effect the matter one way or the other.
It is not only great evidence that Jesus is alive but great evidence that Jesus, as He promised, can come to LIVE in people.
"He who has My commandments and keeps them, he is the one who loves Me; and he who loves Me will be loved by My Father, and I will love him and will manifest Myself to him." (John 14:21)
Through the Holy Spirit Jesus can manifest Himself to His lovers.
Through the Spirit of reality [truth] Jesus with His Father can come and make an organic and living abode with those who love Him.
"Jesus answered and said to him, If anyone loves Me, he will keep My word, and My Father will love him, and We will come to him and make an abode with him." (John 14:23)
The man who will not open his heart and spiritual being to receive Jesus Christ will have no experience of the Holy Spirit. Such lack of experience will lead him to think the Holy Spirit is an illusion.
But he can have a change and enter into the experience that millions have had over the last twenty some centuries.
You will shake and speak in tongues and you will convince yourself how blessed you are to experience this exstacy.
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Excesses of one kind or another do not prove that there is no Holy Spirit.
Over excitement does not prove Christ's promise of the Holy Spirit is false.
Such examples are not a statement on the unreality of the Third of the Trinity - the Holy Spirit. They may be a statement on the over excitement or indulgence of religious people.
Because
everything claimed to be of the Holy Spirit may not be is not evidence that there is no Holy Spirit.
Such is the power of the human brain to self-deceive.
The spirit is YOURS!
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Excesses like this are usually not the result of the human spirit but of the over exertion of the human soul.
See
"The Latent Power of the Soul" or
Collected Works of Watchman Nee, The (Set 1) Vol. 10: The Present Testimony (3)
by Watchman Nee.
https://www.ministrybooks.org/SearchMinBooksDsp.cfm?id=2DCA1DF9D6
The activity of the latent soul power does not mean there is no Holy Spirit.
The joy is YOURS!
Stop persuading yourself it comes from outside of you.
IT DOESN'T.
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Of course the joy of the Holy Spirit is also the joy of the believer. Because when the Holy Spirit comes into a man it comes to blend, mingle in a union with her.
"He who is joined to the Lord is one spirit." (1 Cor. 6:17)
The blending of the Spirit of Christ with the human spirit of course does not prove that there is no Holy Spirit.
A purely self generated happiness also does not prove that there is no Holy Spirit, which is Jesus Christ in His "pneumatic" form.
There is plenty of space given in the Bible to the problem of genuine faith verses human presumption. [Edited]
And instances of excessive human presumption do not prove the unreality of God.
Discernment is needed to be able to detect the difference.