THE BAPTISM OF THE HOLY GHOST
By John G. Lake
THE Baptism of the Holy Ghost is the greatest event in Christian history. Greater
than the Crucifixion, of greater import than the Resurrection, greater than the Ascension,
greater than the glorification. It was the end and finality of Crucifixion and Resurrection,
Ascension and glorification.
If Jesus Christ had been crucified, and there had been no resurrection, His death
would have been without avail, in so far as the salvation of mankind is concerned. Or if
He had risen from the grave in resurrection, and failed to reach the throne of God, and
receive from the Father the Gift of the Holy Ghost, the purpose for which He died, and
for which He arose, would have been missed.
It is because there was no failure. It is because Jesus went to the ultimate, to the very
Throne and heart of God, and secured right out of the heavenly treasury of the Eternal
Soul, the Almighty Spirit, and poured it forth upon the world in divine baptism that we
are here tonight.
BIRTHDAY OF CHRISTIANITY
The day of Pentecost was the birthday of Christianity. Christianity never existed until
the Holy Ghost came from heaven. The ministry of Jesus in the world was His own
divine preparation of the world for His ultimate and final ministry. His ultimate and final
ministry was to be BY THE SPIRIT.
The ministry of Jesus during His earth life was localized by His humanity. Localized
again in that His message was only given to Israel. But the descent of the Holy Ghost
brought to the souls of men a UNIVERSAL ministry of Jesus to every man, right from
the heart of God.
Heavenly contact with the eternal God in power, set their nature all aflame for God
and with God, exalted their natures into God, and made the recipient GOD-LIKE. Man
became God-like!
HOLY GROUND
There is no subject in all the Word of God that seems to me should be approached
with so much holy reverence, as the subject of the Baptism of the Holy Ghost. Beloved,
my heart bleeds every day of my life when I hear the flippancy with which Christians
discuss the Baptism of the Holy Ghost.
When Moses entered into the presence of God at the burning bush, God said, "Put off
thy shoes from off thy feet; for the place whereon thou standest is holy ground" [Exodus
3:51. How much more so when the individual comes into the presence of God, looking
for the Baptism of the Holy Ghost, and remembers that in order to obtain this gift, Jesus
Christ lived in the world, bled on the cross, entered into the darkness of death and hell
and the grave, grappled with and strangled that accursed power, came forth again, and
finally ascended to heaven in order to secure it for you and me. If there is anything
under heaven that ought to command our reverence, our Holy reverence, our reverence
beyond anything else in the world, it surely is the subject of the Baptism of the Holy
Ghost.
My! Sometimes my soul is jarred when I hear people flippantly say: "Have you got
your baptism?" Supposing that Jesus was on the cross, and we were privileged tonight to
look into His face at this hour, I wonder what the feeling of our soul would be?
Supposing we were to follow tonight behind the weeping company that bore His dead
body and laid it in the tomb, what would our feelings be? Supposing we were to meet
Him in the garden, as Mary did, in the glory of His resurrection or supposing that God in
His goodness would let us look into that scene of scenes at the Throne of God, when the
heavens lifted up their gates and the Lord of Glory came in. Oh, if we could, beloved,
we would have a better comprehension of the Baptism of the Holy Ghost.
THE BAPTISM OF THE HOLY GHOST
I love that dear old word "Ghost." The Anglo-Saxon is "Ghost" a spiritual guest,
heavenly visitor, spiritual presence, the Angel One. And that Angel One that comes to
you and me, comes right out of the heart of the Eternal God, breathed through the soul
of Jesus Christ! When it came upon a man originally, as it did upon the hundred and
twenty at Jerusalem, no one went around saying: "Brother, have you got your baptism?"
They were walking with their shoes off, with uncovered heads and uncovered hearts
before the Eternal God!
I believe that the first essential in a real Holy Ghost church and a real Holy Ghost
work, is to begin to surround the Baptism of the Holy Ghost with that due reverence of
God with which an experience so sacred, and that cost such an awful price, should be
surrounded.
The Baptism of the Holy Ghost is peculiar to the Lord Jesus Christ. "I indeed," said
John, "baptize you with water unto repentance: but HE. .. shall baptize you with the
Holy Ghost and with fire: Whose fan is in his hand, and he will thoroughly purge his
floor, and gather his wheat into the garner; but he will burn up the chaff with
unquenchable fire" [Matthew 3:11-12]. Jesus Christ, the Glorified, must lay His hands
on you and on me and bestow upon us all His own nature, the outflow of God, the
substance of His soul, the quality of His mind, the very being of God Himself. "Know
ye not that your body is the temple of the Holy Ghost, which is in you? [1 Corinthians 6:
19]." A temple of God, a house of God in which God lives!
A HABITATION OF GOD
Sometimes I have tried to get it clear before my soul that God LIVES IN ME. I have
tried to note the incoming influence and power of that pure, sweet, living Spirit of the
Eternal God. I have tried to realize His presence in my spirit, in my soul, in my hands, in
my feet, in my person and being--a habitation of God, a habitation of God! God
equipping the soul to minister Himself, God, to the world. God equipping the soul of
man that he may live forever in harmony of mind with God. God furnishing to the soul
of man the POWER of His personality, by which man is made as God. For all the God-
like qualities of your heart is due to the fact that God by the Spirit dwells in you. What is
it that you look for in another? It is God. You look into the eyes of another to see God.
If you fail to see God in the other life, your heart is troubled. You were looking for God.
I am not interested in the form or the figure or the name of an individual. I am
interested in seeing God. Is God there? Is God in that man? Is God in that woman? Is it
God that speaks? Is it God that moves? Are you seeing God?
YOU MAY HAVE GOD
The Baptism of the Holy Ghost was the incoming of God in personality, in order that
the man, through this force, might be moved by God. God lives in him, God speaks
through him, God is the impulse of his soul, God has his dwelling place in him.
You may have God! That is the wonder of the Baptism of the Holy Ghost. It is not a
work of grace, it is God possessing you. Oh, your heart may have been as sinful as the
heart of man ever was sinful. But Christ comes to your soul. That spirit of darkness that
possessed you goes, and in its stead, a new Spirit comes in, the Spirit of Christ. YOU
have become a new creature, a saved man, a God-filled man.
A TRANSFORMATION
Sin manifests itself in three ways, in thought, in acts, in nature. Salvation is a complete
transformation. God takes possession of man, changes his thoughts, and in consequence
his acts change, his nature is new. A Christian is not a reformed man. A Christian is a
man renewed, remade by the Spirit of God. A Christian is a man indwelt by God-the
house of God, the tabernacle of the Most High! Man, indwelt by God, becomes the
hands, and the heart, and the feet, and the mind of Jesus Christ. God descends into
man, man ascends into God! That is the purpose and power of the Baptism in the Holy
Ghost. A soul is saved. How does Jesus reach them? Through your hands, through your
heart, through your faith. When God baptizes you in the Holy Ghost, He gives you the
biggest gift that heaven or earth ever possessed. He gives you Himself! He joins you by
the one Spirit to Himself forever.
THE REQUIREMENT
The requirement is a surrendered heart, a surrendered mind, a surrendered life. From
the day that a man becomes a child of God, baptized in the Holy Ghost, it was God's
intention through Jesus Christ that that man should be a revelation of Jesus, not of
himself any more. From that time on the Christian should be a revelation of Jesus.
If you were looking to know whether a man was baptized in the Holy Ghost or not,
what would you look for? You would look for God in him. You would look for a
revelation of the personality of God. God moving in him, God speaking in him, God
speaking through him, God using his hands, God using his feet, a mind in harmony with
God, a soul in touch with heaven, a spirit united and unified with and in Jesus Christ.
GOD'S GREAT PURPOSE NOT COMPREHENDED
It is not in my heart to discourage any man, or to make you disbelieve for one minute
in the trueness of your own baptism in the Holy Ghost. I believe that God by the Spirit
has baptized many in the Holy Ghost. Hundreds and hundreds of people have been
baptized in the Holy Ghost during the life of this Church in the last six years. But
beloved, we have not comprehended the greatness of God's intent. Not that we have not
received the Spirit, but our lives have not been sufficiently surrendered to God. We must
keep on ascending right to the throne, right into the heart of God, right into the soul of
the Glorified.
THE HOLY GHOST NOT A GIFT OF POWER BUT OF GOD HIMSELF
The common teaching that my heart these days is endeavoring to combat is that God
comes to present the individual with a gift of power, and the individual is then supposed
to go out and manifest some certain characteristic of power. No! God comes to present
you with HIMSELF"Ye shall receive power, after that the Holy Ghost is come upon
you" [Acts 1:81].
Jesus went to heaven in order that the very treasury of the heart of the eternal God
might be unlocked for your benefit, and that out of the very soul of the eternal God, the
streams of His life and nature would possess you from the crown of your head to the
soles of your feet, and that there would be just as much of the eternal God in your toe
nails and in your brain as each are capable of containing. In other words, from the very
soles of your feet to the last hair on the top of your head, every cell of your being,
would be a residence of the Spirit of the living God. Man is made alive by God and with
God, by the Spirit. And in the truest sense man is the dwelling place of God, the house
of God, the tabernacle of the Most High.
Listen! "The words that I speak ...I speak not of myself but the Father that
DWELLETH in Me" [John 14:10], "but the Father that dwelleth IN ME." Where did the
Eternal Father dwell in Jesus Christ? Why in every part of His being, within and without-
in the spirit of Him, in the soul of Him, in the brain of Him, in the body of Him, in the
blood of Him, in the bones of Him! Every single, solitary cell of His structure was the
dwelling place of God, of God, OF GOD!
When you look for God you do not look on the surface. You look within. When you
discern a man to see whether God is in him, you look into the spirit of him, into the soul
of him, into the depth of him, and there you see God.
How trifling are the controversies that surround the Baptism of the Holy Ghost. Men
are debating such trifling issues. For instance, does a man speak in tongues, or does he
not? Do not think for a moment that I am discounting the value of tongues. I am not.
But beloved, I will tell you what my heart is straining for. Down there at Jerusalem they
not only spoke in tongues, but they spoke the languages of the NATIONS. If it was
possible for old Peter and old Paul, or for the Jewish nation, then it is possible to every
last one. Not to speak in tongues alone, as we ordinarily understand that phase, but to
speak because God dwells in you and speaks to whomsoever He will in whatever
language He desires. And if our present experience in tongues is not satisfying, God bless
you, go on into languages, as God meant that you should.
Dear ones, I feel the need of that, and I feel it away down in my heart to a depth that
hurts. I lived in South Africa for a number of years, where it is commonly said that there
are a hundred thousand tribes of native people. Every last one of the hundred thousand
speaks a different dialect. These tribes number sometimes as low as ten thousand people
and sometimes as high as hundreds of thousands even millions of people.
Supposing we were going to undertake to evangelize Africa rapidly. It would be
necessary to have a hundred thousand different missionaries, and have them all at one
time, master one particular language, for there are a hundred thousand of them. No sir! I
believe before high heaven that when the Spirit of the Eternal God is poured out upon all
flesh, that out of the real Christian body will arise a hundred thousand men and women
in Africa that will speak in the language of every separate tribe by the power of God.
The unknown tongue of the Spirit was to teach you of God, to be a faith builder in
your soul, to take you out into God's big practical endeavor to save the world. And that
is the reason, dear ones, that I bring this issue to your soul tonight. In the matter of the
Baptism of the Holy Ghost we are in a state of the merest infancy of understanding, the
merest infancy of divine control, the merest infancy in ability to assimilate our
environment, including languages.
When we go to a school we see classes arranged for every grade. I was talking to a
young school teacher, who teaches out in the country in a little public school. I said:
"How many children have you in your school?"
She said: "Eight grades." Fifteen scholars divided into eight grades.
The Christian church is God's big school. What student in the eighth grade would think
of saying to the child learning its ABC's, "You haven't anything. Why don't you have the
eighth grade understanding?" Well in due time he will have it. That is the reason the
student does not say it. It is because he knows the child will have it. One day that boy
will understand just the same as he does. A weak Christianity always wants to drop to
the imperfect, and adjust itself to the popular mind. But a real Christianity ever seeks to
be made perfect in God, both in character and gifts.
MY PERSONAL EXPERIENCE
Dear ones, I want to repeat to you tonight a little of my own personal history on the
subject of the Baptism of the Spirit, for I know it will clarify your soul.
MY CONVERSION
I knelt under a tree when about sixteen years of age, in repentance and prayer, and
God came into my soul. I was saved from my sins, and from that day I knew Jesus
Christ as a living Savior. There never was a single moment of question about the reality
of His incoming into my life as a Savior, for He saved me from my sins. My friends
said, "You are baptized in the Holy Ghost."
SANCTIFIED
Sometime later, I think when I was yet under twenty, or there-about, I met a Christian
farmer, Melvin Pratt, who sat down on his plow handles and taught me the subject of
sanctification, and God let me enter into that experience. My friends said: "Now surely
you are baptized in the Holy Ghost." Later in my life I came under the ministry of
George B. Watson, of the Christian & Missionary Alliance, who taught with more
clearness and better distinction between the Baptism of the Holy Ghost and
sanctification, and I entered into a richer life and a better experience. A beautiful
anointing of the Spirit was upon my life.
MINISTRY OF HEALING
Then the ministry of Healing was opened to me, and I ministered for ten years in the
power of God. Hundreds and hundreds of people were healed by the power of God
during this ten years, and I could feel the conscious flow of the Holy Spirit through my
soul and my hands.
But at the end of that ten years I believe I was the hungriest man for God that ever
lived. There was such a hunger for God that as I left my offices in Chicago and walked
down the street, my soul would break out, and I would cry, "Oh God!" I have had
people stop and look at me in wonder. It was the yearning passion of my soul, asking for
God in a greater measure than I then knew. But my friends would say: "Mr. Lake, you
have a beautiful baptism in the Holy Ghost." Yes, it was nice as far as it went, but it was
not answering the cry of my heart. I was growing up into a larger understanding of God
and my own soul's need. My soul was demanding a greater entrance into God, His love,
presence and power.
MY BAPTISM IN THE HOLY GHOST
And then one day an old man strolled into my office, sat down, and in the next half
hour he revealed more of the knowledge of God to my soul than I had ever known
before. And when he passed out I said: "God bless that old gray head. That man knows
more of God than any man I ever met. By the grace of God, if that is what the Baptism
of the Holy Ghost with tongues does, I am going to possess it." Oh, the wonder of God
that was then revealed to my heart!
I went into fasting and prayer and waiting on God for nine months. And one day the
glory of God in a new manifestation and a new incoming came to my life. And when the
phenomena had passed, and the glory of it remained in my soul, I found that my life
began to manifest in the varied range of the gifts of the Spirit. And I spoke in tongues by
the power of God, and God flowed through me with a new force. Healings were of a
more powerful order. Oh, God lived in me, God manifested in me, God spoke through
me. My spirit was deified, and I had a new comprehension of God's will, new
discernment of spirit, new revelation of God in me. For nine months everything that I
looked at framed itself into poetic verse. I could not look at the trees without it framing
itself into a glory poem of praise. I preached to audiences of thousands night after night
and day after day. People came from all over the world to study me. They could not
understand. Everything I said was a stream of poetry. It rolled from my soul in that
form. My spirit had become a fountain of poetic truth.
Then a new wonder was manifested. My nature became so sensitized that I could lay
my hands on any man or woman and tell what organ was diseased, and to what extent,
and all about it. I tested it. I went to hospitals where physicians could not diagnose a
case, touched a patient and instantly I knew the organ that was diseased, its extent and
condition and location. And one day it passed away. A child gets to playing with a toy,
and his joy is so wonderful he sometimes forgets to eat.
Oh say, don't you remember when you were first baptized in the Holy Ghost, and you
first spoke in tongues, how you bubbled and babbled, it was so wonderful, so amazing?
We just wanted to be babies and go on bubbling and exhilarating. And now we are
wondering what is the matter. The effervescence seems to have passed away. My! It is
a good thing that it did. God is letting your soul down, beloved, into the bedrock-right
down where your mind is not occupied any more with the manifestation of God. God is
trying to get your mind occupied with HIMSELF. God has come into you, now He is
drawing you into Himself.
Will you speak in tongues when you are baptized in the Holy Ghost? Yes, you will,
but you will do an awful lot more than that, bless God. An awful lot more than that!
You will speak with the soul of Jesus Christ. You will feel with the heart of the Son of
God. Your heart will beat with a heavenly desire to bless the world, because it is the
pulse of Jesus that is throbbing in your soul. And I do not believe there will be a bit of
inclination in your heart to turn around another child of God and say: "You are not in
my class. I am baptized with the Holy Ghost." That is as foreign to the Spirit of the Son
of God as night is from day.
Beloved, if you are baptized in the Holy Ghost, there will be a tenderness in your soul
so deep that you will never crush the aspiration of another by a single suggestion, but
your soul will throb and beat and pulse in love, and your heart will be under that one to
lift it up to God and push it out as far into the glory as your faith can send it.
I want to talk with the utmost frankness, and say to you that tongues have been to me
the making of my ministry. It is that peculiar communication with God when God
reveals to my soul the truth I utter to you day by day in my ministry. But that time of
communication, with me, is mostly in the night. Many a time I climb out of bed, take
my pencil and pad and jot down the beautiful things of God, the wonderful things of
God, that He talks out in my spirit and reveals to my heart.
Many Christians do not understand the significance of tongues, any more than the
other man understands the experience of your soul when you are saved from sin. It has
taken place in you. It is in your heart, it is in your mind, it is in your being. The man
who tries to make you doubt the reality of your touch with God when He saved you out
of your sin is foolish. It is established IN you. The old Methodists could not explain the
experience, but they said: "It is better felt than told." They knew it by internal
knowledge. So it is in a real Baptism of the Holy Ghost. So it is in prophecy. So it is in
healing. So it is in tongues. Do not throw away what you have. Go on to perfection.
THE LANGUAGE OF THE SPIRIT
The spirit of man has a voice. Do you get that? The spirit of man has a voice. The
action of God in your spirit causes your spirit to speak by its voice. In order to make it
intelligent to your understanding, it has to be repeated in the language that your brain
knows. Why? Because there is a language common to the spirit of man, and it is not
English, and it is not German, and it is not French, and it is not Italian, or any other of
the languages of Earth. It is a language of the spirit of man. And, oh, what a joy it was
when that pent-up, bursting, struggling spirit of yours found it's voice and "spake in
tongues."
Many a time I have talked to others in the Spirit, by the Spirit, through the medium of
tongues, and knew everything that was said to me, but I did not know it with this ear. It
was not the soul of their words. It was that undefinable something that made it
intelligent. Spirit speaks to spirit, just as mouth speaks to mouth, or as man speaks to
man. Your spirit speaks to God. God is Spirit. He answers back. Bless God. And I
believe with all my heart that is what Paul had in mind when he talked about the
"unknown" tongue. The unknown tongue, that medium of internal revelation of God to
you. The common language of the spirit of man, by which God communicates with your
spirit.
INTERNAL REVELATION
But if you want to make that medium of internal revelation of God intelligent to other
folks, then it must be translated into the language that they know. That is the reason the
apostle says: "Let him that speaketh in an unknown tongue pray that he may interpret"
[1 Corinthians 14:13], that the church may receive edifying. Paul says: "In the church I
had rather speak five words with my understanding, that by my voice I might teach
others also, than ten thousand words in an unknown tongue" [1 Corinthians 14:19].
Your revelation from God is given to you in tongues, but you give it forth in the
language the people understand.
Beloved, settle it. It is one of the divine mediums and methods of communication
between your spirit and God's. And as long as you live, when you talk about
TONGUES, speak with reverence, for it is God. When you talk about healing, speak
with reverence, for it is God. When you talk about prophecy, remember it is God.
AN ILLUSTRATION
A German woman came to the healing rooms one day and a brother prayed for her.
She had been a school teacher, but had to give up her profession because of her eye
sight. She came back some weeks later, after having been alone for three weeks. She
had never been in a religious service in her life where they speak in tongues, and had not
knowledge of the Scriptures on that line. She came back to me with a volume of written
material that God had given her. When she had been prayed for to receive healing, the
Spirit of God came upon her and she was baptized in the Holy Ghost. And now God
had commenced to reveal Himself to her, teach her of His Word, and of His will, until
she filled a volume with written material of her conversations with God. She communed
with God in tongues, her spirit speaking to God, but when she came to me I receive it in
English.
The man that sits along side of you cannot understand that. He never talked to God.
He does not understand anything about getting up in the middle of the night to write
down what God has said to him. Well, he needs something else to convince him that
there is a God.
Tongues are for a sign, NOT to them that believe, but to them that believe not. But
prophecy, the outspeaking for God is for all. Therefore, Paul does not want them to
crush a man who is speaking in tongues, but to keep their hands off and stand back.
Leave him alone with God. Let him travel away out in His love and power, and come
back with messages in his soul.
But he must not monopolize the time of hundreds of people in the church with a
private communication of God to his soul. But when he has completed his interview
with God, he gives forth his knowledge as interpretation or prophecy.
There have been so many controversies over the various gifts of the Spirit as they
appeared one after another. Twenty-five or thirty years ago when we began in the
ministry of healing [this was preached in 1921], we had to fight to keep from being
submerged by our opposing brethren in Jesus Christ, who thought you were insane
because you suggested that the Lord Jesus Christ could still heal. In the state of
Michigan, I had to go into the courts to keep some of my friends out of the insane
asylum, because they believed God could heal without taking pills or some other material
stuff.
It was because they did not understand the eternal and invisible nature of God. They
had no idea God could be ministered through a man's hands and soul, fill a sick man's
body, take possession of and make him whole. The world has had to learn this. It is a
science far in advance of so-called material or physical science.
Then that marvelous wave of God came over the country from 1900 to 1906, when
hundreds of thousands of people were baptized in the Holy Ghost and spoke in tongues.
But listen! Old John Alexander Dowie, riding on the wave of that wonderful
manifestation of healing power, wanted to build a church and stamp it with healing only,
and his church practically did that, and died.
Other churches branded theirs with holiness only, and died. Others with an anointing
of the Holy Ghost, called "baptism", and they died in power also. Later on we wanted to
build a great structure and stamp it with tongues. After a while the tongues got dry.
Somehow the glory and the glow had gone out of them. They became rattly and did not
sound right. What was the matter? Nothing wrong with the experience. God had not
departed from the life, but was hidden from our view. We were absorbed in phenomena
of God, and not in God Himself.
Now we must go on. Now beloved, I can see as my spirit discerns the future and
reaches out to touch the heart of mankind, and the desire of God, that there is coming
from heaven a new manifestation of the Holy Ghost in power, and that new
manifestation will be in sweetness, in love, in tenderness, in the power of the Spirit
beyond anything your heart or mine ever saw. The very lightning of God will flash
through men's souls. The sons of God will meet the sons of darkness and prevail. Jesus
Christ will destroy anti-Christ.
In 1908, I preached at Pretoria, South Africa, when one night God came over my life
in such power, in such streams of liquid glory and power, that it flowed consciously off
my hands like streams of electricity. I would point my finger at a man, and that stream
would strike him. When a man interrupted the meeting, I would point my finger at him
and say: "Sit down!" He fell as if struck, and lay for three hours. When he became
normal they asked him what happened, and he said, "Something struck me that went
straight through me. I thought I was shot."
At two o'clock in the morning I ministered to sixty-five sick who were present, and the
streams of God that were pouring through my hands were so powerful the people would
fall as though they were hit. I was troubled because they fell with such violence. And the
Spirit said: "You do not need to put your hands on them. Keep your hands a distance
away." And when I held my hands a foot from their heads they would crumple and fall
in a heap on the floor. They were healed almost every one.
That was the outward manifestation. That was what the people saw. But beloved,
something transpired in my heart that made my soul like the soul of Jesus Christ. On,
there was such a tenderness, a new-born tenderness of God, that was so wonderful that
my heart reached out and cried and wept over men in sin. I could gather them in my
arms and love them, and Jesus Christ flowed out of me and delivered them. Drunkards
were saved and healed as they stood transfixed looking at me.
During that period men would walk down the isle, and when they came within ten feet
of me, I have seen them fall prostrate, one on top of the other. A preacher who had
sinned, as he looked at me, fell prostrate, was saved, baptized in the Holy Ghost, and
stirred the nation with his message of love.
In eighteen months God raised up one hundred white churches in the land. That
hundred churches was born in my tabernacle at Johannesburg. The multitude of those
who composed that hundred churches were healed or baptized in the Holy Ghost under
my own eyes, as I preached or prayed.
I continued in the ministry of healing until I saw hundreds of thousands healed. At last
I became tired. I went on healing people day after day, as though I were a machine. And
all the time my heart kept asking: "Oh, God, let me know yourself better. I want you,
my heart wants YOU, God." Seeing men saved and healed and baptized in the Holy
Ghost did not satisfy my growing soul. It was crying for a greater consciousness of God,
the withinness of me was yearning for Christ's own life and love. After a while my soul
reached the place where I said: "If I cannot get God into my soul to satisfy the soul of
me, all the rest of this is empty." I had lost interest in it, but if I put my hands on the
sick they continued to be healed by the power of God.
I will never forget Spokane, Washington for during the first six months I was there
God satisfied the cry of my heart, and God came in and my mind opened and my spirit
understood afresh, and I was able to tell of God, and talk out the heart of me like I
never had been able to before. God reached a new depth in my spirit, and revealed new
possibilities in God. So beloved, you pray through. Pray through for this church, pray
through for this work. Oh, God will come! God will come with more tongues than you
have ever heard. God will come with more power than your eyes ever beheld. God will
come with waves of heavenly love and sweetness, and blessed be God, your heart will
be satisfied in Him.
Will a man speak in tongues when he is baptized in the Holy Ghost? Yes, he will, and
he will heal the sick when he is baptized, and he will glorify God out of the spirit of him,
with praises more delightful and heavenly than you ever heard. And he will have a
majestic bearing. He will look like the Lord Jesus Christ, and he will be like Him.
Blessed be God.
The greatest manifestation of the Holy Ghost baptized life ever given to the world,
was not in the preaching of the apostles, it was not in the wonderful manifestations of
God that took place at their hands, it was in the unselfishness manifested by the church.
Think of it! Three thousand Holy Ghost baptized Christians in Jerusalem from the day
of Pentecost onward who loved their neighbor's children as much as their own, who
were so anxious for fear their brethren did not have enough to eat, that they sold their
estates, and brought the money and laid it at the apostle's feet, and said: "Distribute it,
carry the glow and the fire and the wonder of this divine salvation to the whole world."
That showed what God had wrought in their hearts. Oh, I wish we could arrive at that
place where this church was baptized in that degree of unselfishness.
That would be a greater manifestation than healing, greater than conversion, greater
than baptism in the Holy Ghost, greater than tongues. It would be a manifestation of the
LOVE of 1 Corinthians 13, that so many preach about, and do not possess. When a
man sells his all for God, and distributes it for the kingdom's good, it will speak louder of
love than the evangelists who harp about love, and oppose tongues and the other gifts of
the spirit.
That was the same Holy Ghost that came upon them and caused them to speak in
tongues. No more grabbing for themselves. No more bantering for the biggest possible
salary, no more juggling to put themselves and their friends in the most influential
positions. All the old characteristics were gone. They were truly saved. Why their heart
was like the heart of Jesus, their soul was like the soul of God, they loved as God loved,
they loved the world, they loved sinners so that they gave their all to save them.
Do you want Him? You can have Him. Oh, He will come and fill your soul. Oh, the
Holy Ghost will take possession of your life. He will reveal the wonder of heaven and
the glory of God, and the richness and purity of His holiness, and make you sweet and
God-like forever.
Thou art not far away, Oh, God, our souls tonight are enveloped in the eternal God. We
feel Thee round about us. We feel Thy precious loving arm, and the beating of Thy
heart, and the pulsing of Thy heavenly soul, and we are asking Thee, my God, that the
truth of the Eternal shall be breathed into us forever until all our nature is submerged in
God, buried up in God, infilled with God, revealing God. ---Prayer in Tongues and
Interpretation.
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