"Teach me to do your will, for you are my God! Let your good Spirit lead me on level ground!"--NIV
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I would say that the Holy Spirit was recognized as active in the Old Testament by His role in creation (noted as early as Genesis 1:2); through functions such as empowering people for service to God (where numerous individuals are described as having the Spirit of God come upon them in order to perform extraordinary or miraculous acts); granting faith to people to believe in God and His promises (as He continued to do in the New Testament (Ephesians 2:8-9)); restraining the growth of sin to conform to God's timing of events; and inspiring prophecy of future events. In my opinion, the main distinction between the Old Testament and New Testament with respect to the Holy Spirit's activity would be that, although He was always present in the Old Testament, His manifestations there were occasional and temporary, whereas, beginning in the New Testament, He now indwells believers in Christ permanently and personally.
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