Is the Holy Spirit the same as as Holy Ghost?

Is the “Holy Spirit” the same as the “Holy Ghost”?

I was watching a popular Ghanaian pastor on TV one afternoon. He was doing a live program in which he was taking questions from his audience and responding to the questions live on TV. After some time they took phone calls and one caller asked why some pastors say Holy Ghost instead of Holy Spirit. She wanted to know whether or not the names referred to the same person. The pastor’s response was that “Ghost” refers to the spirit of the dead and for that reason, it was wrong to refer to the Spirit of God as one who belongs to the dead. Of course, he was wrong but it satisfied those who assert that most pastors are occultists and have used human beings as sacrifices to get spiritual powers to perform miracles and raise larger congregations.

I really had to find out if his response was true because I was frequently using the phrase “Holy Ghost” in my prayers. My research came out that among all the versions of the Bible, it is the King James Bible that mostly uses the phrase “Holy Ghost”. In fact, some versions do not use that phrase at all bat ut the King James Version of the Bible uses the phrase “Holy Ghost” 90 times throughout but uses “Holy Spirit” just 7 times.

It is important to note that the King James Version is the oldest version of the English Bible and it was published in 1611. The simple explanation is that during that time (1611), Ghost and Spirit referred to the same thing. In fact, “ghost” was used more than spirit and it referred to anything that was immaterial. Language is dynamic and the English language has gone through a number of changes. In the current English language, people prefer to use the term spirit more than Ghost. And “ghost” in modern English refers to the spirit of a dead person.

It can be concluded that using the term “Holy Ghost” does not refer to a dead person. But for a fact the terms “Holy Ghost” and “Holy Spirit” refer to the same person- the term person of the trinity.