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VII
THE ADMINISTRATION OF THE SPIRIT
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"The Holy Ghost from the day of Pentecost has occupied an entirely new position. The whole administration of the affairs of the Church of Christ has since that day devolved upon him. . . That day was the installation of the Holy Spirit as the Administrator of the Church in all things, which office he is to exercise according to circumstances at his discretion. It is as vested with such authority that he gives his name to this dispensation. . . There is but one other great event to which the Scripture directs us to look, and that is the second coming of the Lord. Till then we live in the Pentecostal age and under the rule of the Holy Ghost."—James Elder Cumming, D. D.
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VII
THE ADMINISTRATION OF THE SPIRIT
The Holy Spirit, as coming down to fill the place of the ascended Redeemer, has rightly been called "The Vicar of Jesus Christ." To him the entire administration of the church has been committed until the Lord shall return in glory. His oversight extends to the slightest detail in the ordering of God's house, holding all in subjection to the will of the Head, and directing all in harmony with the divine plan. How clearly this comes out in that passage in the twelfth chapter of First Corinthians. As in striking a series of concentric circles there is always one fixed center holding each circumference in defined relation to itself, so here we see all the "diversities of administrations" determined by the one Administrator, the Holy Ghost. "Varieties of gifts, but the same Spirit"; "diversities of working, but the same God"; different words "according to the same Spirit"; "gifts of faith in the same Spirit"; "gifts of healing in the one Spirit"; miracles, prophecies, tongues, interpretations, "but all these worketh the one and the same Spirit, dividing to each one severally as he will." Whether the authority of this one ruling {130} sovereign Holy Ghost be recognized or ignored determines whether the church shall be an anarchy or a unity, a synagogue of lawless ones or the temple of the living God.
Would one desire to find the clue to the great apostasy whose dark eclipse now covers two-thirds of nominal Christendom, here it is—the rule and authority of the Holy Spirit ignored in the church; the servants of the house assuming mastery and encroaching more and more on the prerogatives of the Head, till at last one man sets himself up as the administrator of the church, and daringly usurps the name of "The Vicar of Christ." When the Spirit of the Lord, speaking by Paul, would picture the mystery of lawlessness and the culmination of apostasy, he gives us a description which none should misunderstand: "So that he, as God, sitteth in the temple of God, shewing himself that he is God" (2 Thess. 2: 4). What is the temple of God? The church without a question: "Know ye not that ye are the temple of God, and that the Spirit of God dwelleth in you?" (1 Cor. 3: 16). Whose prerogative is it to sit there? The Holy Ghost's, its ruler and administrator, and his alone.