Jeremiah Nortier: Is the Doctrine of the Second Baptism of the Holy Spirit Biblical?

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Introduction to the Episode and Guest

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We had Jeremiah Nortier, the apologetic doggone. And we kind of went in-depth on the doctrine of the baptism in the Holy Spirit. Because over the last four years, obviously, if you've listened for any length of time, I've touched on this and said, you know, grew up in that, changed my view in my mid -20s.

And I didn't really get into kind of some of the point-counterpoint. You know, we went over looking at Acts chapter 8, which would be, you know, most Pentecostals and Charismatics would say, look, right there, it's clear as day.

And I decided to have Jeremiah. I met him in Tullahoma last year at the Jeffrey Rice Conference. And he does a lot of debates. He has a ministry called the Apologetic Dog, which I love that name. And I told him as much.

What a great name for a YouTube channel. But he's got a YouTube channel, podcasts, all that good stuff, and does debates around the country. So we had him on, and we wanted to discuss this actual doctrine, how we interpret these verses that looks like it kind of supports it.

What are some verses that we may need to look at to say, well, no, this is how you'd interpret Acts 8. What's the greater meaning of baptism? So we kind of walked through that. We didn't spend too much time on it.

I mean, it may be a 30, 40-minute episode, I think, by the time it was all said and done. But Jeremiah is a great friend, great brother in the Lord. And he did a really good job because I messaged him yesterday, said, hey, can you come on today?

Didn't give many bullet points, said, hey, we might get to Acts 8. Want to talk about this doctrine?

Go.

And he was like, yeah, let's do it. So he came prepared, which for those of you who listen to, it's kind of, you know, one of the reasons why I have guests on is I love talking to other people. I just don't want you guys just listening to me for 45 minutes.

Sometimes I do that, maybe once or twice a year. But one, it's so great to get other perspectives, have other brothers and sisters of the Lord on and kind of talk. But also, too, it is such a blessing to me when I have a busy week or busy couple weeks with, you know, the family, homeschool, covenant, real estate, all that stuff to where I have a guy that comes on prepared, did all his work, knows his text, has the Bible open and just goes.

And, you know, I kind of throw in my points and counterpoints. But for the most part, I mean, he is carrying the heavy load of the episode. So what an absolute blessing to have someone come in. And it really is, you know, light lifting for me.

It's a little selfish sometimes to have a guest on because I get to sit back and go, OK, shine, brother. Tell us what you think. And it was an awesome episode. I think we really dove into it. He explained himself very clearly on where he stood.

I don't know. You might disagree. You might be one of our charismatic or Pentecostal listeners and going, nope, that is a secondary issue. And I disagree. And look, we can be charitable on that. But if you ever have any questions on that, I'd be more than happy to talk to anyone offline.

I was raised in that, that and even went to a church for a little bit in my early 20s where it was like, you have to have your tongues or your salvation is on the line. And really made it a salvific issue, which I'm reading through the Bible.

I went, I don't see that anywhere in Scripture. And there is eighteen hundred years of church history that supports not seeing that in Scripture, not understanding it that way. So with that being said, we're going to drop you right into Jeremiah Nortier, the apologetic dog.

Go check him out. Everything's linked up below. You can click through on his stuff. I want to get this brother in the Lord exposure and get you following him because he just has some really great content.

So here we go. Jeremiah Nortier. Yeah. So Jeremiah, thanks for being on the podcast. Appreciate it, brother. I know you're busy just to actually watch the debate review you had James White, Dr. James White on.

And I think he was debating Jared Longshore on baptism. And, you know, as a Presbyterian rooting for Jared Longshore over there. But it's hard to root against Dr. James White as well, too, because I've told the story many times.

So, you know, for any new listeners, his book, Debating Calvinism, which I bought on Dave Hunt's suggestion, which Dave Hunt was taking the opposite side of that. I got halfway through the book and I went, oh, my gosh, this Dr. James White guy is actually making sense.

I think this is in the Bible and started my journey into kind of reformed and doctrines and grace and things like that. So he's been on the podcast a few times. And so I have a special place in my heart for Dr. James White as well.

But I was watching. I go, man, you do such a good job just explaining things, how you bring stuff up. And anyone who's listening, apologetic dog, go go check it out. Pause this. Go subscribe to the podcast.

Go on YouTube. Apologetic dog. You do such a visually, too. You know, you can listen to it, obviously. But if you watch any of your videos, it's very obviously preacher, but also teacher, which I tend to gravitate towards teaching.

I like that. You know what I mean? How you kind of show things and we go to the root word and we're explaining the Greek. And, you know, Dr. James White's on there saying things and you're highlighting stuff.

And I just want to give you that compliment up front. I really appreciate your channel and what you're doing there. So when I saw that, I said, man, we should have him back on because I know you were when we were down in Tullahoma.

You were on for a few minutes, but wanted to kind of have you on for a longer episode just to pick apart the doctrine of the second baptism in the Holy Spirit. And really the reason why is I've mentioned this in passing on the four years on the podcast.

And anyone who's listened for any length of time knows where I stand on it, but really never dove into kind of both sides of it. What are some of the proof texts that your Pentecostals and Charismatics will use for?

Hey, man, there's a second baptism. It's the Holy Spirit. And on the very far end of that, the extreme end of that, I would say, in Pentecostalism is, look it, if you're not speaking in tongues, then you're not into it with the Holy Spirit, right?

Can you kind of give us a broad overview of what that second, well, I guess I kind of did, but you give us your version of the doctrine of that second baptism in the Holy Spirit, maybe a little history of it too, and we can bounce off of each other, because I know we're coming from the same camp here on this.

So this isn't a debate. This is something you and I probably full hardly agree on, same biblical texts and proofs we would agree on. So give us your version of that. Stay with us. We'll be right back.

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The Baptism of the Holy Spirit and Church History

Yeah, so I believe kind of the talks more about the Holy Spirit's role in salvation and the life of God's people really started to up in the 19th century with the charismatic movement. And it seemed like that then bled over into the denominations kind of in the 20th century.

And so now you have all the different charismania. And I'll say that to be mean. I'm just saying the charismatic movement that has come in all of its different shapes and sizes. And I want to recommend your audience, if people have not seen Cessationism, the film that came out last year, that is a deep dive into the history of how the Pentecostal movement came about, along with the other versions of charismatic movement.

You've been touching on something that is actually disputed within the Pentecostal charismatic world. But it's the baptism of the Holy Spirit. I believe what started was you had believers at conversion, right?

They identified as Christians and had their sins washed away, so on and so forth, by faith. The baptism of the Spirit was something of the second work of grace or the second blessing that came later in a believer's life.

And this is where the doctrine of perfectionism came to be of saying, like, you could attain holiness to such a degree that you would receive another outpouring of the Holy Spirit that wasn't present at conversion.

And that could come later in life. And this was kind of historically known as the baptism of the Holy Spirit.

Charles, Charles on perfectionism.

Yeah, yep, yep, yep.

And so there's been a dispute within the Pentecostal world because a lot of pushback against the perfectionism mindset, the second work of grace. And so, well, no, really, the baptism of the Holy Spirit, this is delayed, but it's just giving evidence of tongues.

And so the idea was you could be converted, you'd be in Christ, but the second outpouring of the Holy Spirit was going to be when you manifest tongues. And then now there's even more splinter groups that say, well, if you don't get, when you're baptized, if you're not coming out speaking in tongues, then you're not even in the faith at all.

But that's kind of my rough sketch of kind of studying the doctrine of how Pentecostals, what they mean by baptism of the Holy Spirit is usually something distinct and apart from the moment of conversion.

Okay, and you're kind of showing there's two or three different kind of splinters in that, each one getting a little more particular, and I would say extreme. I'm not saying that negatively. I'm saying, you know, the ditches are getting closer together there as we keep moving down the line.

So what is your position and what you believe the biblical position of that is? What is baptism and what happens there?

Yes, so as we consider Acts chapter 2, Acts chapter 8, we're always going to interpret the narrative books, the descriptive books, in light of the letters that Paul wrote to the churches. We're going to go to the clear didactic text.

And so just in short, Paul makes this abundantly clear in 1 Corinthians 12. But everyone who is in Christ, that have been immersed into Christ, they have the fullness of the Holy Spirit indwelling them, and it's the Holy Spirit that gives gifts to the body.

And so I believe what we see at Pentecost, what we see when we're studying the doctrine of baptism of the Holy Spirit, is this is something that happens positionally before God. We have the Holy Spirit regenerating a dead man's heart.

What's the name of this podcast, Dead Men Walking? A dead sinner's heart has the regenerating work of the Holy Spirit taking out that heart of stone and giving us a heart of flesh. And so it's the Holy Spirit that cleanses us spiritually, that causes us to see our need for a Savior because of conviction of sin.

And so I think very specifically the doctrine of regeneration, of being born again, this is what we see in the new covenant of the baptism of the Holy Spirit. And so it's something that happens positionally before God.

It's the moment of justification, the moment of faith in Christ. And so we do see a uniqueness happening in the book of Acts. And as we get into this, this was prophesied to happen, a visible manifestation that the gospel was not meant just for the Jewish people, but all flesh, from the least of these to the greatest of these, that the gospel would go out into all the world, into the Gentile world.

And so baptism of the Holy Spirit, we see that visibly beginning in Acts chapter 2. But does that kind of make sense of how I would understand the baptism of the Holy Spirit as the moment of conversion, not a delay in time for something greater of the manifestation of the Holy Spirit?

Yeah, and I would probably say that that definition is probably historically what the Church has believed the longest. I think you can trace that back farther than Presbyterian infant baptism or Catholicism and Lutheranism.

You can follow that back, and our mutual friend Jeffrey Rice would argue very vehemently for this when talking about the Didache and things like that. That's probably the most popular, widespread, and longest held of that definition.

So you have that in your corner as well. So where did we go off? Because like I said, I was like 23 or 24, and I went, wait a minute. What this whole kind of baptism in the Holy Spirit and speaking in tongues when baptized and things like that, this has only been around for 120 years or 150 years or something like that.

That's why church history is so important, my fellow listeners. Go back and we stand on shoulders of giants. Now, not everything they believe is true. We both know that, right? But at the same time, you have to look at church history and go, why did we believe something for 1 ,800 years?

And now in the last 150 years, we see this huge spike in this belief and widespread, but it's kind of this new doctrine that reinterprets some other things and maybe one or two actors that really caused the wildfire of this doctrine.

So I guess I would say to those listening, this is something that's new. Now, something that's new isn't necessarily wrong or bad in and of itself, but it makes you think that the majority of early church fathers and reformers did not believe this way.

So, I mean, what are your thoughts on that when you see such widespread Pentecostalism, charismatic, and now being exported to other countries and a lot of them not even knowing their own church history?

Yeah, church history is super important because we have a historic faith. Christ has been building his church for 2 ,000 years, and Jesus promised the disciples to give the Holy Spirit that would guide the apostles and the church into all truth.

And it is unthinkable for 1 ,900 years for the Holy Spirit to have misguided the church, especially on the doctrine of the Holy Spirit. Now, when we say things like semper reformanda, I believe doctrine can be clarified.

It can be nuanced. It can be refined. I've often pointed to saying that just as individual believers experience sanctification, well, the church historically is being sanctified over time. So what you rightly said, we look at early church fathers, when we look at the patristics, they're not infallible.

And a lot of times they disagree in their own thinking, and we can look at it now and say, yeah, but we let church history be church history. We let the early church fathers be the early church fathers.

But you're right. When something is unheard of for almost 2 ,000 years, that is a huge red flag because, as Jude tells us, that we have been given the faith once delivered to the body. And so church history is important.

It is valuable. We stand on the shoulders of giants, but ultimately everything goes back to the Word of God. So it's one thing to say, well, that's just unheard of in church history. That throws up red flags.

But then as we're going into church history, we look for those biblical argumentations. We look for the biblical support. That's why we do point people to creeds and confessions because we can back it up with exegesis and context, essentially.

You know what I mean? And so when we get into—I spend a lot of time contending against the church of Christ. And so I've spent a lot of time talking about this ceremonial rite that signifies the forgiveness of sin.

But then, like we're talking about, you've got Pentecostals that kind of will grab on to baptism and kind of twist it, right, especially when it's in relation to the Holy Spirit because I don't want to be accused of saying, well, I don't believe that God doesn't do anything miraculous today at all.

To the contrary, I believe the miracle that we see happening the most here in today's time is the miracle of the rebirth, right?

So here's kind of my issue, too, and what I kind of saw coming out of that, reading through the Bible for the first time in my 20s, like really reading through it, not just memorizing verse for Sunday school each week, right?

The Lord took everything from me. I was shaking my fist at Him. I wanted nothing to do with Him.

I hated Him.

And He replaced my heart of stone with the heart of flesh. And when I actually started reading through the Bible, I went, wow, there's a lot of traditions. And it's going to sound like we're picking on Charismatics and Pentecostals here, but if you're a listener and you're in that denomination or in that belief, I would just say this is a brother in love just saying this is what I went through, okay?

And I realized, wow, there was a lot of stuff within Pentecostalism, Charismatic, that was really based on like one verse and then really just taken to the extreme, right? And, you know, I've had that accusation as a Calvinistic Reformed Pentecostal, geez, Presbyterian.

Oh, well, predestination. You just take one thing and go, well, we talk, you know, the word predestination is in the Bible 27 times in the New Testament. We have to deal with it. Oh, you're a big sovereignty of God guy.

Well, 48 times the sovereignty of the Lord, just in the Old Testament, another 30 times in the New Testament. We have to deal with these multiple verses. To where when I see event in Pentecostalism where there's a prayer language and there's a, you know, came in a Mazda, left in a Honda type thing, repeat until you have these words, right?

It's like, whoa, we just ignore the fact that it was a physical real language at Pentecost. It says it very clearly that the Ethiopian could understand the Jew and write in their own language. So we kind of throw that aside.

But then even the, the doctrine of being baptized in the Holy Spirit, where there's a, like you said, Jeremiah, where there's a delayed or the first baptism maybe doesn't take, and it's not real until you're baptized in the Holy Spirit.

A lot of them really Pentecostals really point to Acts 8, 14 through 17. And I want to read that really quick and just kind of get your take on it. I know we didn't discuss any of this either beforehand.

So this is all Jeremiah kind of, I'm getting thrown this Adam. So I appreciate you brother. I know you can handle it though. I've seen some of your debates and I watch Apologetic Dog and I know you're on, you know, sound theology and doctrine.

So it says this in 14 through 17. Now, when the apostles at Jerusalem heard that Samaria had received the word of God, and I'm reading from ESV, just happened to pull that up. My daily reader's LSB. They sent to them Peter and John who came down and prayed for them that they might receive the Holy Spirit for he had not yet fallen on any of them, but they had only been baptized in the name of the Lord Jesus.

Then they laid their hands on them and they received the Holy Spirit. So I will talk to a lot of my Pentecostal friends and they will go, Oh, right there. I mean, they had only been baptized in Christ, but the Holy Spirit hadn't baptized them yet.

They need to be rebaptized at second baptism. And that's where kind of they build the doctrine off of. And that's really the only time in the Bible where we see something like this. We see stuff where utterance of the Spirit and things like that.

But the whole doctrine that the Pentecostals use, to me, there's one or two maybe verses. And I know you know about hermeneutics and how we interpret Scripture. And we have, you know, one verse where we go, Huh, that's a little hinky.

That doesn't make sense within the verse above and below. Maybe I should, what, zoom out, right? I'm not telling you anything you don't know. I'm doing this for the sake of the listener. Zoom out and let the chapter and let the whole book and who it's writing to kind of interpret that.

So when you look at that Acts 8 and you have a Pentecostal in front of you and they go, It's very clear right there. I mean, second baptism. What would be your response to that?

Acts 8, Ephesians 2, and One Baptism

Two initial points. And the first is a hermeneutical rule that we've kind of been touching on. I would say the book of Acts is telling us a story. So everything in the story is not exactly meant to be repeated for today.

Now, it's interesting because usually I appeal to Pentecost to let people know, like, we're not always trying to recreate a Pentecostal experience. But when you're talking to a Pentecost, they kind of are, right?

So the conversation kind of shifts a little bit. But another thing, just for your audience, and we're talking about hermeneutical rules, Acts is a narrative book. It is descriptive. And the only way to glean principles that applies to us today is we look to, once you said, like, we scope out a little bit.

We look to the letters written to the church. And so I say that to say we need to take Paul's writings, the books written throughout the rest of the New Testament, with us as we're analyzing Acts. So that's move number one.

And so within that, Ephesians is very clear that the apostles are foundational to the early church. And that's another rule I would say is when we read the book of Acts, we don't just read Peter and John and Paul going out and doing miracles and thinking, okay, that's what I'm supposed to do as a Christian, right?

Once again, we're talking about the Pentecostal movement. That's a lot of times people read Acts 2, Acts 8, and then that's kind of the thing we're saying, no, no, no. To rightly handle the word of truth, we have to understand genre.

And so in Ephesians 2, verse 20, this is actually a very helpful principle as we are reading the book of Acts. When we're reading about the members of the household of God, the church, it is built on the foundation of the apostles and the prophets.

I would contend with people. We don't have apostles today. They were foundational to the early church, the apostles, the prophets, and then this is key, Christ Jesus himself being the cornerstone. This is the foundation of the book of Acts and the early church, and we are living in a time where we're building upon the foundation.

So as much as I submit to people, we don't try to go out and just accomplish miracles. We're no longer apostles in the book of Acts since, but we are building upon what is laid. So that's number one. There is a foundation that is unique to the apostles, and the Apostle Paul in 2 Corinthians 12, 12, he says, something that was a sign of apostle was miraculous signs, healing, all of these things.

This was distinct during this apostolic timeline, which once again is first century, and we're reading in the book of Acts. So that is kind of big point number one. We let the didactic clear letters inform us how we are to interpret the narrative books like the Gospels and the book of Acts to see what principles apply to us now.

So you see that's kind of big move number one. Now Acts 8, there are seven chapters that precede this book. You know what I mean? And what I'm getting at is there is an already established understanding about baptism in relation to the Holy Spirit back in Acts 2.

Now before we kind of touch on some principles in Acts 2, there is going to be strong continuity between Acts 2 with the first Pentecost, Acts 8 with Samaria, Acts 10 dealing with Cornelius and the Gentiles receiving the Holy Spirit, and then later in Acts where you have John's disciples with a kind of Pentecostal experience.

Here's what I want to say. They will all agree. You cannot have a factioned church and people receiving the Holy Spirit apart from the apostles differently because if that were the case, if here in Samaria they had received the Holy Spirit and there was an apostolic authority present, well then now the Jews can point at the Samaritans who they already think are dogs in their mind of saying, yeah, yeah, y 'all got something different going on with us.

We actually had Peter that preached and booming tongues that are booming this experience with miraculous signs and fires of tongues coming down. What y 'all had was something a little bit different. You know what I mean?

And it goes back to that principle of unity in Ephesians 2, verse 20 because there is a foundation being laid. And real quick in Ephesians, I believe it's chapter 4. Let me turn there. I want to speak to another principle of unity, Ephesians 4 starting in verse 4.

It won't make sense what we're going to talk about in the immediate context of Acts 8 if we don't understand this major principle, unity, unity, unity. In Ephesians 4, there is one body, one spirit, just as you were called to the one hope that belongs to your call, one Lord, one faith, one baptism, one God the Father of all who is over all and through all and in all.

You cannot have a divided church. The true ecclesia, the called out ones by grace, we see in Acts 2 and the ongoing narrative of Acts of the kingdom of God being expanded is the mystery of Christ revealed that is now Jew and Gentile together in faith alone, in Christ alone.

So that's the principle we have to interpret Acts 8. So when we go back to Acts 8, verse 14, now when the apostles at Jerusalem heard that Samaria had received the word of God, the gospel was being proclaimed to them, they sent to them Peter and John who came down and prayed for them that they might receive the Holy Spirit.

I just want to, well, verse 16 says, for he had not yet fallen on any of them, but they had only been baptized in the name of Jesus Christ. So we know, however we read Acts 8, it has to agree with Acts 2, the true Pentecost experience.

That was fulfilling, Joel 2, that was prophesied that the Holy Spirit, the promise of the Father, would be poured out unto all flesh. All flesh means to the Jew first and also the Gentile, the non-Jews.

And we see the gospel being proclaimed. We see hearts being pricked. We see genuine people saying, brothers, what must we do in light of killing the son of glory? Well, you repent. We understand a repentant faith in Christ alone, by faith alone, is what justifies a person.

And then the call to demonstrate that faith in baptism in the name of Jesus Christ. That means under his authority, the way that he prescribed in the Great Commission in the name of the Father, Son, and the Holy Spirit.

That's what was going on in Acts 2. And so when we look at Acts 8, the gospel was being proclaimed. They were ceremonially baptized by faith in his name, but there's still a missing element to unify the early church, the apostolic authority of Peter and John.