Baptism of the Holy Spirit

26 May 2019

Dear Phyllis,

I'm komaru (a problem) again. This time it isn't because I don't have anything to write about, but this time there are so many things clamoring for attention in my mind it is difficult to pick one to discuss.

Last week end we were out of town. We went up in the mountains about 100 km from Chiang Mai to spend the weekend with some Lahu minority people. That would take three or four letters to talk about. Last Sunday I spoke in a Lahu church on the Inverted Kingdom. The Lord gave me more liberty and light on that subject than I have ever had. I would love to share that message with you. A friend wrote me asking that I share more about the Back to Jerusalem movement. There is no subject that interests me more than BTJ. And I got a surprising response from last weeks letter on the filling on the Holy Spirit. In responding to one letter I got from a friend I got so inspired that I thought maybe I should discuss that subject more.

There are few topics that are more controversial and divisive than the Baptism of the Holy Spirit. This experience has caused me more agony than any other issue in my Christian life. Now at 83 I could not be more comfortable. Time is a wonderful revealer of truth. The Lord told Moses that this would be one of the proofs of authenticity. If you don't know whether or not a prophet is of the Lord, watch him. If what he says comes to pass, he is real. If it doesn't, he is a phony (Deut. 18:21,22). Thirty, forty, and fifty years ago there were several messages that looked really good. I bought into some of it. Most of that proved to be the fizz in a Coke can. Very little of it actually came to pass and today most of the loudest proponents are silent. There are several events or movements that are really hard to call at the time. Wheat and tares look a lot alike at one point, but time will tell which one is real.

A sister wrote me sharing her testimony of the baptism of the Holy Spirit. I wrote back saying, “I love that testimony. Would to God that every conservative Christian had a similar experience.” Falling in love with Jesus; having an intense craving for the Word of God; wanting to tell everybody you meet how wonderful Jesus is – what's wrong with that?! But then when someone experiences a spiritual gift that I don't have, I have to denounce them and say that is of the devil? My goodness, you have to take your hat off to the devil and marvel that he can cause such horrific disruption in the Body of Christ because of a variance in Christian experiences. But the blame is not singular. Both sides have serious errors. The sister who wrote me sharing her experience with being filled with the Holy Spirit was amazingly honest and added a vital confession. She said, “I leaked.” I wrote back saying that is a subject that you hear very little about and that is just as important as the initial experience. One of the most tragic features of Pentecostalism is a disgusting multitude of Christians who are very anxious to tell you how the got filled with the Holy Ghost ten years ago, but, obviously, are filled with themselves today; many living in sin, and anything but an animation of Jesus living in a human heart. Small wonder so many conservatives are turned off by that message. It doesn't matter what happened ten years ago, the vital question is are you living for Jesus today?

The verse that is the key stone of the Pentecostal message is Eph. 5:18 – be ye filled with he Holy Spirit – is not presented accurately in our KJV. The verb in that verse is not in the definitive tense in Greek but in the continuative tense. It could be better translated, Be ye BEING filled with the Holy Spirit. The best example is blowing up a balloon. You take a breath and blow. Is the balloon filled? Yes. You take another breath and blow. Is the balloon filled? Yes. You take anther breath and blow. The balloon is continually being filled. According to Acts 2:4; 4: 8,31, there are multiple fillings. The event of the new-birth is a singular experience. (And it may not be an experience that you can point to.) The baptism of the Holy Spirit may be a singular experience. (And it may not be an experience you can point to.) But the being filled with the Holy Spirit should be a daily event.

The sister who shared with me her experience with the Holy Spirit, wrote, “I craved worship time. At times I couldn't sing but just stood there weeping”. Amen. I have never had a Baptism experience that would satisfy any Pentecostal, but I do know what our sister is talking about by being overwhelmed with the presence of the Lord. I have had a few times when my legs wouldn't hold me up. We were standing singing, but I just had to sit down and weep. I have had a few times when I hit the limit of what I could physically handle and had to ask the Lord to keep it down.

When I cut the fingers off of my left hand, seventeen years ago, the pain was terrific. For a week it felt just like I had placed my hand on a hot frying pan and couldn't get it off. Every night the nurse would come in and ask if I wanted a pain killer or a sleeping pill. I replied, “No thank you, I can handle this”. But I spent a lot of time walking the halls of the hospital at night because I couldn't sleep for the pain. The doctor got mad at me. I never took one pain killer pill the entire time I was in the hospital. But during some of those long intense nights the Lord let me hear the choirs of heaven singing. The volume was scarcely above a whisper but I had to plead with the Lord to turn the volume down. I feared if it got any louder my heart would burst. The director of NLL was out of the country at the time of the accident. When he got back a week later the first place he went was straight to the hospital to cheer me up. I said, “Roald, that isn't the problem. The problem is that Jesus has so presenced Himself with me that I can't talk about it.” Every time I tried to share with someone what I was seeing and hearing I would burst into tears. It was six months before I could talk about it without breaking down.

Today Jesus has never been more real or wonderful. On a fairly regular basis my times with the Lord are marked by the Lord meeting with me at a level that is right at the physical limit of what I can handle. AB Simpson wrote the finest thesis on this subject that I have ever read when he gave us that classical hymn, “Once it Was the Blessing”. I don't have time or space to share it here. If you want to hear it, it is in Goggle. That is where I am now. Once it was the blessing now it is the Lord. Once the gift I wanted, now the Giver own, once it was the feeling now it is His Word. Hang experience! I'm not interested. I want Jesus to have me. If He will take me that is all the heaven I need. I make no pretense of being a Spirit filled believer. I have such a gaping hole in the bottom of my bucket and leak so fast Jesus would have to use a fire hose to keep me filled half way.

A brother wrote me a letter thanking me for what I said in PB last week. He said he had been in a quandary having read the experience of many great men of God. All I can say about this brother is that, by my observation, he is so filled with Christ, I believe if you would prick him with a pin, the only thing that would flow from that wound would be Jesus. But he is concerned that he doesn't have a proper Baptism experience. Forget it, Brother! Hang tough for Jesus. If God wants to give us gifts – fine – I'm all for it. But my goodness, which is better, having a gift or having the Giver? Gifts are such a minor topic I don't even like to talk about them.

Dear Phyllis, what can I say? Oh, to think that God thinks we are so important that He sent His Son to do what was necessary to bring us to Himself. If the historical Jesus is all we had that would be mind blowing, but to think that He has come by His Spirit to live with us now, that is more than I can handle. The end.

                                                bill

PS: To be filled with the Holy Spirit, the name-of-the-game is not how much of Jesus can I have but how much of me does He have. The objective is not to become a super star, super Christian, but to be a lowly, unknown, servant.