[*]John the Baptist baptized with water. Jesus baptizes with the Holy Spirit. Jesus alone has the authority and power to baptize with the Holy Spirit. But even He did not give this baptism until after He was glorified (John 7:39). He first received the promised Gift of the Holy Spirit and from then until now He gives the Gift to the measure of our receptivity and response (Acts 2:33).
As much of the Holy Spirit as was received by the 120 at Pentecost, still more will be received when we are ready to receive more. Our need is greater than was theirs. Because of the accumulated Glory that is in Heaven, more is ready to be given now than then, and this must continue to be true until the fullness of His Manifestation and Triumph. The gift of the Holy Spirit is not for a few only but for all who believe, and as, and obey. In the last days of the Holy Spirit is to be poured out upon all flesh, upon all nations, all colors and all classes.
What is the Gift of the Holy Spirit? The Gift or the Baptism of the Holy Spirit is the entire, free possession, control, and use of us by Jesus Christ through the Holy Spirit. This Gift comes to each of us in terms of our present and eternal best capacity for use in the full Will of God as members of the Body of Christ.
When we are born of the Spirit, we are born of His Nature and capability to grow and become like Him. Jesus must have the whole of everyone He baptizes, his whole spirit, mind, soul and body. At the point of entire yieldingness and response on our part, He is always ready to take the entire free possession of us and give us as much of His Gift of the Holy Spirit as we are capable of receiving. This is the Baptism.
Some insist that the control and use of the tongue should be in a language other than one’s own. In my experience, I preferred for the control and use to be in English and told Him so, but also I told Him if the baptism could not be without the speaking in other tongues to baptize me this way.
One day I heard Samuel Chadwick of England preach on the baptism of the Holy Spirit. He said this baptism is so glorious that if you do not know you have received it the inference is that you have not. He called for those who would like to receive this baptism to come forward and give him their hand. I was the first and only one who responded. I told him I wanted God’s best, and if the gift or the baptism of the Holy Spirit was His best I wanted it. Later, when I asked the Lord I told Him I wanted the best He had and all He had.
A little later I definitely sought and tarried for the Holy Spirit, saying to the Lord, “If this is Your best, I want it and if You have a better, give me this.” He had brought me to the place of a happy willingness to receive anything and especially the best He had to give.
New light and wonder was given concerning the Wonder of Jesus. There was also given a deeper conviction of sin as being so much unlikeness to Him. The body began to feel the life and quickening of Spirit with the consciousness that the body is for the Lord and the Lord for the body.
It was made known that Jesus under the greatest temptation to be unloving was utterly loving. He was LOVE itself. He was COURAGE itself. He was TRUTH itself. The Christ or the Divine Word or Logos by becoming man bridged heaven and earth and heaven and hell. He so obeyed the Spirit that he manifested Spirit as person. He was Love as person; He was Courage as person; He was Truth and Light as person.
All heaven is worshipping at this coming forth of the fullness of Divinity as personality. Earth will join in the worship as earth understands.
I wanted and chose to be led by the Spirit, to be utterly truthful, genuine, courageous and loving. When I sought to carry out my longing in deed, I found those about me could stand more of Love than they could of Truth. I had to learn that the Truth has to be told in Love and Wisdom and Grace. But the effort to be like Jesus brought me to the place where I somehow knew that in order to be like Jesus I would need, if possible, to have the glorified Jesus within me as well as with me. So I asked Him if He could come within me to do so, and to be in me the Life and Principle of His own good life that I had found to be true.
Quickly He made known to me that He wanted me to stop seeking and go to living and giving His Love at the bottom of the world’s need. Jesus, because of His great love, went to the bottom of need and we are sure to find Him if we look for Him and join Him there.
I was set free from responsibility except to give His Love, leaving results to Him. When we come to Him, He makes us free like children, and the yoke He gives is not a burden but the easy way.
This occurred about ten o’clock at night, March 21, 1910. I resolved that early next morning I would go to my friends and tell them my quest had resulted in being made certain that Jesus lived right and taught right and if we want to know Him we will have to follow Him by going His way of Love, Genuineness, and Courage, and be led by the Spirit of Truth and not by any public or group opinion. I wanted to go to them at once, but this would have been unloving.
I had already received my first definite commission to live and minister in love at the bottom of human need. At the time I was in South Macon and walked a long way to where I had a room on Georgia Avenue at the Old Dannenburg place, then owned by Professor and Mrs. E. L. Martin. I must have reached there about eleven o’clock.
On the way it had been made clear to me that one of the mistakes of my life had been in trying to find the best religion when I should have been seeking for the Will of God.
In the afternoon there was so much Power of the Holy Spirit upon my body, my shoulders were placed in a seemingly perfect position by the direct action of the Holy Spirit without any volition on my part. This taught me the Spirit has power to take charge of the body and the material universe, and He is more pleased when the shoulders are straight and the body healthy than when the shoulders are round and the body diseased.
By wise providence, as well as by direct leading, He had emptied the big house so He and I could have it alone. It is understandable that He knew only too well the need of getting me alone in order to take free possession of me and baptize me with such almost unbelievable bliss and glory.
More considerate than mothers are on Christmas eve of their children, He desired to prepare me for what was coming with a few hours of refreshing sleep. I woke with something so precious I was impelled to record it for a friend. When I started to write there seemed to be no end of the things given that were so good that so far as possible they must be captured and recorded. The revelation concerned the wonder of Jesus as He now is. It was made known the chief concern during His incarnation was for Him to be known as The Christ, while the chief concern now is for us to know that the Jesus of the Incarnation and the Cross is the Jesus of the Throne. In the incarnation the Divine became human; in the Resurrection and Ascension the human became Divine, or was caught up on the Throne of the Divine. Since then whenever He is manifested He makes Himself known as Jesus. The One who yielded completely to the Divine is later manifested as the highest achievement and availability in the universe. Whenever He appears, He appears as the Glorified Jesus.
It is precisely the whole movement of divine history for the self-offered human to be lifted up upon the Throne and glorified, and to be the beginning of the Kingdom of Heaven in which the heavenly is victorious in the human and the human is victorious in the heavenly. In Jesus the human and the divine have become one. In Him, the human is as Divine as the Divine and the body is as immortal as the Soul. No human value has been lost. In submitting happily to the Divine, the human has become divine. Thus far this is the highest achievement of all. Jesus of the Incarnation and the Cross bridged the chasm between God and man, between Heaven and earth, and between Soul and body. Everything that can make a contribution He has brought into perfect and indissoluble union (greatly to the enrichment of everything making a contribution). In this achievement God becomes entirely lovable and understandable, and man finds precisely what he really wants. Everything else appears to be preparation for this very thing. It is in this perfect union and marriage of God and man, of Heaven and earth, Soul and body, and of all seeming opposite contributing factors that God is satisfied, that we are satisfied, and the creation will be satisfied.
While this revelation was being given, I was so completely satisfied I asked for nothing. To use a fine phrase of Ibsen, it was “thanks for everything.” The last thing I tried to capture on paper was that Heaven is as sincerely anxious to come to earth as we claim to want to go to Heaven. What He really wants, and what we want, is for Heaven to come to earth, for the kingdoms of this world to become His, for all things to be brought together in co-operative and contributing synthesis. Here it is seen that heaven will be precisely what we always would have wanted if we had been enlightened, and what He has had in mind from the beginning.
Suddenly and unexpectedly, a Presence, Power, and Glory, not of me, descended upon me and apparently had full possession and use of me. The whole body, as well as mind and soul, shared in the wonder, but the greatest wonder and bliss was upon my lips and tongue. These were seemingly wholly His and He, the Spirit, was singing with my lips:
“JESUS, JESUS, HOW I LOVE YOU; INTERPOSED HIS PRECIOUS BLOOD.”
My arms began to go out and my body began slowly to rise, and while I did not realize it at first my body was becoming or taking the form of the Cross, a cross of life, of honor, of bliss, and of glory. The higher I arose the greater the bliss and glory.
Someone rang the doorbell. Even to listen to it for a moment brought the warning that I had an engagement with heaven and no time for doorbells. The wonder and the glory increased and when my body was apparently in the form of a perfect cross the glorified Jesus manifested Himself immediately in front of me, seemingly in fulfillment of His promise of the last night as recorded in the Gospel of John, “He that hath my commandments and keepeth them, he it is that loveth me; and he that loveth me will be loved of my Father, and I will manifest myself to Him,” (John 14:21) and, “If a man love Me, he will keep my words, and my Father will love him and we will come and make our abode with Him” (John 14:23).
Quickly He inbreathed or infused Himself within. I was aware at once and said to myself this is the fulfillment of John 14:20, “At that day (when He gives the other Comforter) ye shall know that I am in my Father and ye in Me and I in you.”
It also appeared that what occurred on the night after His resurrection had occurred with me from the plane of His glorification. It was made known that the kind of union that Jesus has with the Father is precisely the kind of union that He is seeking for us to have with Him.
I fell at His feet as one dead but never before so much alive.
The Truth About the Cross
I had asked for the truth about the cross when a very orthodox man had told me first to become orthodox and then seek for the Holy Spirit. My reply was, “The promise is not to the orthodox, but to those who believe and ask and yield.”
It was apparent that there was a glory side to the Cross that had been almost unseen in most of Christian history. In this experience in answer to my question, I was put upon a cross of life, while He went to a cross of shame. I had been put upon a cross of bliss, while He had been put upon a cross of agony. I had been put upon a cross of heavenly manifestation, even where the glorified Jesus had manifested Himself. He was put upon a cross of desertion, where it appeared that even God Himself did not care, or had forsaken Him. While I was upon the cross, I received the Holy Ghost; while He was upon the cross, He gave up the Holy Ghost or Holy Breath.
The Cross has done the almost unbelievable for us.
This is the first aspect of the Cross. The second aspect of the Cross is a way of life; the way of Love meeting all hate with Love, all evil with good, all negatives with positives. The first aspect of the Cross puts us in ineffable union and bliss, where we are to abide. The second aspect is His call and opportunity to us to join in filling all that is lacking to make all men loving and the whole of life loving. Through union with Him and His victory, it is far easier for us to accept the Cross as a way of life than it was for Him to accept it as the Way of Redemption.
Both aspects of the Cross are gloriously true. Historical orthodoxy has had a weakness for seeking to have the benefits of the Cross, rather than entering into ineffable union with Him and from that union become an outpouring of His Life and Love and Healing to the whole earth. Modern liberalism has upon the whole failed to see the glory of the Cross and enter into ineffable union through the Cross, and has contented itself with seeing and accepting in part the Cross as a way of life. Most recent books on the Cross deal almost entirely with the Cross as a way of Life.
Heretofore, those who have reported the gift of the Holy Spirit have done so in terms of the manifestations of the Spirit. Jesus on the last night spoke of the Gift of the Holy Spirit in terms of ineffable union with Him, of His manifesting Himself, and of Life in terms of loving one another as He loves us.
He baptized me in terms of what He promised on the last night, as reported in John 14:15-23.
My feeling is that the Holy Spirit will be given more and more in fulfillment of Jesus’ promises on the last night as reported in John’s gospel. I also have the feeling that those who have been prejudiced against the manifestation of the Spirit, especially the speaking in tongues, and those who have had considerable zeal in contending that the speaking in tongues is the evidence of the baptism, will both see what is most needed is this glorious union promised by Jesus accompanied with a life in terms of loving one another as He loves us, and of loving our enemies until we make them friends, as He loved and loves His.
When those who have differed as to the manifestations of the Spirit come together in the quest for perfect union and perfect love, a greater Pentecost than that at Jerusalem should occur over the whole earth.
As Frank Laubach has well put it, “It’s either a Planetary Pentecost or planetary destruction.” It must be the Pentecost.
Footnotes / Endnotes:
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- * [Note, footnote is on the Subtitle word Baptism*.] For fuller treatment see Manifest Victory, pp. 69-90 and 248-251. (↩)