The Holy Ghost is manifested to men and women on the earth both as the power and as the gift of the Holy Ghost. The power can come upon a person before baptism; it is the convincing witness that Jesus Christ is our Savior and Redeemer.
I was raised Catholic. Not just a little bit Catholic, like my wife, Catherine. When she was young, many Catholics in France already barely went to church, except for the big three: baptism, marriage, and funeral. And only the middle one was by choic...
When my children were born, I didn't have them baptized because I felt baptism was about erasing Original Sin - something the Church said children got from their mother - and I absolutely refused to believe women carry Original Sin.
The great question that will be with us throughout this entire book: What did Jesus actually bring, if not world peace, universal prosperity, and a better world? What has he brought? The answer is very simple: God.... He has brought God, and now we k...
Christ hath instituted Baptism as a bath, to wash away the anger, and hath put into us the Noble Stone, viz. the water of eternal life, for an earnest-penny, so that instantly in our childhood we might be able to escape the wrath.
If you accept the belief that baptism incorporates us in the mystical body of Christ, into the divine DNA, then you might say that the Holy Spirit is present in each of us, and thus we have the capacity for the fullness of redemption, of transformati...
But by virtue of our baptism, Peter Akinola and I are brothers in Christ and one day we are going to be in heaven together, so we might as well learn to get along here because we will have to get along there. God won't have it any other way.
As however the ancients say that in case of necessity any Christian lay person can administer the sacrament of Baptism, so Luther says the same thing about absolution in case of necessity, where no priest is present.
Thomas Pynchon surely inaugurated or crystallized a new genre in 1963 when he published 'V.' The seriocomic mystery or thriller with one foot set in the present and one in various historical eras received its postmodern baptism from Pynchon.
The spirit of revelation is available to every person who receives by proper priesthood authority the saving ordinances of baptism by immersion for the remission of sins and the laying on of hands for the gift of the Holy Ghost - and who is acting in...
The feeling of longing for home is born into us. That wonderful dream cannot become real without great faith - enough for the Holy Ghost to lead us to repentance, baptism, and the making and keeping of sacred covenants with God. This faith requires e...
In any case how many took the oath and are now licking the toes of the whiteman?No, you take an oath to confirm a choice already made. The decision to lay or not lay your life for the people lies in the heart. The oath is the water sprinkled on a man...
Every time a new record started, people exhaled with pleasure, or their bodies moved automatically. I really started getting high off of the euphoric exclamations. Every record I put on was like a baptism.
The Church does not dispense the sacrament of baptism in order to acquire for herself an increase in membership but in order to consecrate a human being to God and to communicate to that person the divine gift of birth from God.
There is one body, and one Spirit, even as ye are called in one hope of your calling; One Lord, one faith, one baptism, One God and Father of all, who is above all, and through all, and in you all.” Ephesians 4:4-6 (King James Version)
Very occasionally, a simplified form of communion and of adult baptism for new members of the church would be enacted but no Separatist was ever married in church, because there is no hint of a marriage ceremony in scripture and the primitive church ...
I called it a baptism in flaming ink that forced me to shed my shyness about recognizing myself as a poet and to accept the fact that life had never given me any choice in the matter. And then I had to discover exactly what that meant.
Because of the Resurrection, our natural reaction must be to get past our emotional reactions as quickly as possible and reflect on what happened in light of the cross and the resurrection and our own baptisms into that defining reality – to the li...
Writing novels is much the same. You gather up bones and make your gate, but no matter how wonderful the gate might be, that alone doesn't make it a living breathing novel. A story is not something of this world. A real story requires a kind of magic...
In spite of our sinfulness, in spite of the darkness surrounding our souls, the Grace of the Holy Spirit, conferred by baptism in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit, still shines in our hearts with the inextinguishable light of Ch...
True baptism allows us to reframe, and contain, the reality of evil, without needing to blame anyone else, without any need for shame or vengeance. We are all in this together, and our common wound shows itself in different ways.
