UPDATE: heykate, I think you misunderstand what I was writing. I did not touch or intend to touch on the subject of why God allows suffering. If you want to see my response to that, go on the weblist called 'Spiritual questions' (Donovan's). I was trying to praise God here and show everyone how good He has been to me and to convey the vast importance of the Holy Spirit. Not to complain about suffering or how bad authority can be. I was talking about my past experience with authority to show that God is more trustworthy then anyone else in existance. If God can help someone like me, He can help anyone else! If you read my full comment, you will see that I was actually giving praise to Him. ORIGINAL: This is absolutely true, and the Holy Spirit is also known as the Spirit of Christ. So when Jesus said in John that when He goes, the Holy Spirit will come, but if He doesn't go, the Holy Spirit won't come, He was right. The Holy Spirit basically carries on where Jesus left off in a way. Jesus comforted, loved, strengthened, worked with, warned and disciplined the disciples, so that is what Jesus is doing now with all believers. This is a beautiful truth, that one of the major functions of the Holy Spirit is to comfort and to counsel. We need the Holy Spirit just as much as we need forgiveness because it was funny how when Jesus died, most of the disciples abandoned Him and started to live as if Jesus had never came. Peter disowned Jesus, and most of the disciples stopped believing. Jesus even said that they will be scattered when He died. But once Jesus came back again, it was like blood rushing into a lifeless body, they started believing and became united in love and became good again. But if Jesus never sent the Holy Spirit, in a way, Jesus' death and forgiveness would be in vain. Jesus would keep on forgiving us, but we would keep on sinning as if we never knew God, we would always stay the same and we would always fail when we tried to improve, and we would even betray Jesus and not have much faith. We wouldn't be able to spread the Gospel to the ends of the earth, and we wouldn't have much power or influence, and the Word of God would always be a mystery to us. But with the Holy Spirit in our lives, He cleans us up, changes our hearts, gives us faith, comforts and strengthens us, helps us to understand the Word of God, reveals truths and mysteries to us, and gives us power and influence. There is no way we could get to Heaven without the Holy Spirit. The verse in 1John where it says that if you continue to sin, you don't have the light in you explains exactly why we need the Holy Spirit. Once Jesus saves us, He expects us to be obedient. But we can't without the Holy Spirit. So the Spirit helps us to be obedient and to sin no more. There is no way we can defeat sin without the Holy Spirit. Without Him, we wouldn't be going to Heaven. In my own personal life, I have felt such love, and beauty and comfort from the Holy Spirit. His wonderful Presence has helped me to love and trust God. I never used to trust God much because I've had such bad experiences with authority figures. But the Holy Spirit's beauty and faithfulness and love has helped me to trust God and to love Him and to want to be intimate with Him. His work is amazing. I have had the most wonderful and joyful experiences in my life when I felt the Presence of the Spirit. The Spirit is so precious that Him coming into our lives is an expression of the Fathers love. He is so good, that He is a gift and a blessing. God is so beautiful and lovable. With Him, I know that I have hope of being able to love and obey God.