Many present-day believers have embraced the concept of the baptism of the Holy Spirit and fire, but very few actually know what it is about. The Pentecostal movement did not understand the baptism of fire at all, but even those who have come into greater revelation seem to have no more than a glimmer of it. God has something to say to us that is revolutionary. A solemn principle is involved in the fire of Pentecost.
The second chapter of Acts tells us that when the day of Pentecost had fully come and the believers were keeping the feast, the Holy Spirit fell upon them. Cloven tongues of fire sat upon each one of them, and they all began to speak with other tongues as the Spirit gave them utterance. Some said, “These are drunk with new wine.” But Peter gave the scriptural explanation of what was happening, that it was a fulfillment of Joel’s prophecy. In quoting the prophecy of Joel, he said, “This is that,” or we might say, “of that,” for I do not think he meant that the prophecy was exhaustive.
He spoke about the devastations in the earth, about the sun being turned into darkness and the moon into blood; and he linked all of that with what was happening in the outpouring of the Holy Spirit.
Peter knew from Joel’s prophecy that a whole new epoch had begun and that the present age would culminate in judgment, the prophecy continues in Joel 3:1–2a: “For behold, in those days and at that time, when I restore the fortunes of Judah and Jerusalem, I will gather all the nations, and bring them down to the valley of Jehoshaphat.”
The eyes of the world are focused upon the Israelis, and already we find many nations being drawn to do battle with them. It is incredible that such a small nation, after having gained its independence only a few years ago, should be challenged by other nations who want to blot it out.
The reason for the contention over Jerusalem is that Satan wants to delay. But he cannot delay; it has already happened. “Jerusalem will be trodden down of the Gentiles until the time of the Gentiles be fulfilled” is the prophecy of Luke 21:24. The time of the Gentiles ended when the Israelis regained control of Jerusalem. The nations of the Gentiles are living on borrowed time. The corruption and the stench of it has already begun.
Many governments in the world have already toppled. No one can stay in power long, whether prime minister or king or president. All are falling. Vacuums are being created. There are no statesmen or answers to fill the gaps. A particular and unique capacity seems to be given to men to riot and destroy property, to destroy governments, and even to destroy themselves. No one seems to have anything constructive to offer.
We realize that this is the time for all these things to happen according to the first chapter of Joel. Verses 5-6: Awake, drunkards, and weep; and wail, all you wine drinkers, on account of the sweet wine that is cut off from your mouth. For a nation has invaded my land…. Joel goes on to describe it. Verse 8: Wail like a virgin girded with sackcloth…. Verse 12b: Indeed, rejoicing dries up from the sons of men. Verse 13: Gird yourselves with sackcloth…. Verse 15: Alas for the day! for the day of the Lord is near, and it will come as destruction from the Almighty.
A careful study of the Scriptures reveals that every passage dealing with the day of the Lord speaks of it as a day of clouds, a day of darkness, a day of doom, a day of destruction. This means that it cannot be anything else for us either. The nations are going to be gathered to destruction.
The second chapter of Joel describes the day of the Lord. Notice verses 1b–3: For the day of the Lord is coming; surely it is near, a day of darkness and gloom, a day of clouds and thick darkness. As the dawn is spread over the mountains, so there is a great and mighty people…. A fire consumes before them, and behind them a flame burns (referring to the army of the Lord). Verse 11: And the Lord utters His voice before His army; surely His camp is very great, for strong is He who carries out His word. The day of the Lord is indeed great and very awesome, and who can endure it?
What about God’s people? Verses 12-17: “Yet even now,” declares the Lord, “return to Me with all your heart, and with fasting, weeping, and mourning; and rend your heart and not your garments.” Now return to the Lord your God, for He is gracious and compassionate, slow to anger, abounding in lovingkindness, and relenting of evil. Who knows whether He will not turn and relent, and leave a blessing behind Him, even a grain offering and a libation for the Lord your God?
Blow a trumpet in Zion, consecrate a fast, proclaim a solemn assembly, gather the people, sanctify the congregation, assemble the elders, gather the children and the nursing infants. Let the bridegroom come out of his room and the bride out of her bridal chamber. Let the priests, the Lord’s ministers, weep between the porch and the altar, and let them say, “Spare Thy people, O Lord, and do not make Thine inheritance a reproach, a byword among the nations. Why should they among the peoples say, ‘Where is their God?’ ” Remember that this passage precedes the prophecy of the outpouring of the Holy Spirit.
Verse 21: Do not fear, O land, rejoice and be glad, for the Lord has done great things. Verses 28-32a: “…I will pour out My Spirit on all mankind; and your sons and daughters will prophesy, your old men will dream dreams, your young men will see visions. And even on the male and female servants I will pour out My Spirit in those days. And I will display wonders in the sky and on the earth, blood, fire, and columns of smoke. The sun will be turned into darkness, and the moon into blood, before the great and awesome day of the Lord comes. And it will come about that whoever calls on the name of the Lord will be delivered.”
These are the days when He gathers all the nations down to the valley of Jehoshaphat. These are the days when He will display wonders in the sky and on the earth—blood, fire, and columns of smoke. Let this truth dawn upon you; the day of the Lord will be the same for you, a believer, as for those who are visited in judgment. The only difference is that it will come upon the world in judgment, and it will come upon you in an experience of fire by your own invitation. You will most likely have to live through it.
Be reminded that the world will see no joy, no happiness, no peace. The only joy to be found will not be on a human level; it will be a fruit of the Spirit. In these coming days of darkness, when men will curse God, the only existing love and peace will be that which is a fruit of the Spirit. At a time when joy is withered away from the sons of men, God’s remnant will sing joyfully with a joy in the Lord.
God is bringing His people to the end of human resources. This is a common experience. Some who walk with God find that life has become a burden, and they have no inner resource to meet it from day to day. A few have been pressed beyond what they can handle or control. Others have been broken in heart beyond what ordinary men can endure. Some have been deeply disillusioned on the human level. Such experiences give a true picture of a walk with God.
Walking with God is difficult. If you want it, you will have to experience a judgment on your life that the world will later experience. You will have to come to the end of the self life. As you do, you will throw everything in God’s lap. As long as your walk is sustained by the human element, by your ability to work out your life until it is a pleasant experience that you can manipulate and plan as an individual, you are not yet walking with the Lord.
God’s end-time walk involves the sovereign preparation of a remnant of people who will walk with Him, who will be totally immune from the normal, human instinct of self-preservation.
The Lord says of a disciple, “If he would save his life, he will lose it. If he loses his life for My sake, he is going to find it” (Matthew 10:39). You must come to such total discipleship that you are willing to lay yourself before God and no longer regard your life as being your own. You say that you belong to Jesus, but that is not really true until you die out to the interest in yourself, to the claim and the rights that you have to yourself.
For those who walk with God, God makes one demand after another, and it can become very unpleasant. If you do not believe this is true, then you do not know anything about walking with God.
Why, then, do people in a walk with God rejoice? A man can rejoice in doing the will of God, even when all the human level of satisfaction, every ambition, and every joy of the flesh is gone. He lives for the Lord and for Him alone.
Paul said, “I am crucified with Christ.” This will be our experience also as we walk with God. This sounds extreme, but it actually is not. It has been a very real experience to many who are walking with God.
You will never fulfill a ministry out of a human ambition or drive. That will die before you see any real ministry accomplished.
God brings forth a ministry on a level of revelation. After He has given a man revelation, he becomes excited: “Oh, hallelujah! I am going to prophesy. I will heal the sick. I am going to do a lot of wonderful things!”
Then God starts putting him through the fire. Meanwhile he struggles to move in a gift, but he becomes frustrated to the point of giving up. Finally he says, “O God, forget all the gifts. There is just one thing I want, Lord, with all my heart. I just want to love You.”
Then his ministry begins. First, human ability in a man has to die. Everything that God does follows the pattern of Jesus’ experience: death, burial, resurrection, glory.
“Come, let us return to the Lord. For He has torn us, but He will heal us; He has wounded us, but He will bandage us. He will revive us after two days; He will raise us up on the third day that we may live before Him. So let us know, let us press on to know the Lord. His going forth is as certain as the dawn; and He will come to us like the rain, like the spring rain watering the earth.” Hosea 6:1–3.
This is a prophecy of the latter rain. But what happens first? The dealings of the Lord come. It is at the end of the second day that He resurrects us, and not until the third day do we live in His sight. A man will always have a world-consciousness, a human-consciousness, a family-consciousness that will wipe out the divine-consciousness—the deep awareness of the Lord—until the Lord causes him to die out to them. When he dies out to them and they are buried, the Lord will begin to deal with that man’s heart; and then he can follow on to know the Lord.
Do you want to walk in revelation until spiritual perception is very real to you? Do you want to see on the spiritual plane? Then die out to your vital human awareness to other things! This is the purpose of the Holy Spirit and fire. The disciples had to have it. Before the day of Pentecost, they were concerned about their own lives.
The Shepherd had been smitten and the sheep were scattered (Zechariah 13:7). Before the crucifixion, when the mob came after Jesus, He said, “I am the one you want. Let these others go their way. Let them be free.” The disciples scurried off. While Jesus was in the tomb, they were behind locked doors for fear of the Jews, crying, “They’re going to get us next.” Was that real discipleship? It would appear that a real disciple would be out there, saying boldly, “Kill me, too.”
Peter said that and thought he meant it, but the idea of saving his own skin was still in his heart. He could go out and weep bitterly because he had denied the Lord, but he still had saved his own life.
However, after the day of Pentecost, he stood before the Jews, bold as a lion, and said, “We found a way to the heart of God. You wicked men took the Lord of glory and slew Him. You are the ones who crucified Jesus; but God loves you and He will heal you. He will forgive you.” No longer was he sneaking off. The baptism of the Spirit and fire had done something.
The things in which you have trusted, the things which have given your life any meaning at all on a human level, may still be there and may be very precious to you. When the Lord starts pulling the rug out from under you, only one thing counts, just as Paul said, “That I may know Him and the power of His resurrection, being made conformable unto His death” (Philippians 3:10).
Everything that is counted gain, you will count loss. Be a disciple of Jesus Christ. Let the baptism of fire cut you loose from all other concerns. Dare to be a fanatic. The world will never be moved by conservative, reasonable people. It will be moved by total discipleship.
After you have asked the Lord to put the fire to you, remember that He has a thousand ways of doing it. You can count on it: if anything is still dear to you on the human plane that is where He sends the fire! The Lord knows the tender spots. Because you have so many tender spots, you do not come and submit yourself to the work of the cross. You make the Lord catch you, and then you are willing to die only a little.
Submit yourself to the Lord. Determine to live for the brethren and give yourself to the Body, with no striving for a place. Die to everything except pleasing the Lord. Let Him be everything to you. This is scriptural teaching which you will experience. The Lord will trouble you with it until it happens to you.
Some pastors may fear that this is a way to lose many of their people, but actually it is a good way to hold them. God has already dealt with many people in the churches, and they are completely disillusioned about anything being worthwhile on the human level. They do not want anything that does not involve an absolute, total performance of the will of God in their lives. Nothing of this world holds any interest for them any longer. They will not cling to anything but Him.
You can never go back to the world. There is nothing there. And you cannot go into the fullness of what God wants until you finish dying. Be logical about this. You intend to go on with God, so when you reach an impasse, what should you do? Give up and die? It is not that simple. The fire of the Holy Spirit has to burn out that chaff. Ask the Lord to help you. You cannot love the establishment or the things of the world. Love not the world, neither the things that are in the world. If any man love the world, the love of the Father is not in him. For all that is in the world, the lust of the flesh, and the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life, is not of the Father, but is of the world. And the world passeth away, and the lust thereof (that is what we will see in our time): but he that doeth the will of God abideth for ever. I John 2:15–17.
Paul said, “Henceforth know we no man after the flesh” (II Corinthians 5:16). Love your brother, but do not relate to him on a human plane; relate to him on the plane of the Spirit. When people try to socialize and relate to the Body on a human plane, they find themselves on the outside, unable or unwilling to fellowship in the Spirit. The end of all flesh has come. Does this mean that God’s people will not be close? They will lay their lives down for each other! They will love each other more than ever! Nevertheless, you must die out to relationships on the fleshly plane. The only way to do that is to be filled with the Holy Spirit and fire.
When we die out to human relationships, we do not have to worry about personality clashes and try to harmonize personalities in the ministry or in the churches. Let us just know one another after the Spirit, and go to work. It does not make any difference what anyone has been. It does not make any difference what he needs. There must be a oneness in the Body, and that oneness is entirely dependent upon the work of the cross that is done in us. How long should it take? We might be surprised at how much could be done in seconds.
In years past people had what was called “tarry meetings,” and sometimes they had to tarry for months to receive the Holy Spirit. Most Spirit-filled believers today have the idea that the Holy Spirit is a gift. Would you embrace the fact that the fire is also a gift?
On the day of Pentecost there came the sound of a rushing, mighty wind. They were all filled with the Holy Spirit, cloven tongues of fire sat on them, and they began to speak with other tongues. There was no tarrying to receive the Holy Spirit in the accounts we read in the book of Acts. But we do not see any tarrying for the fire either.
Hebrews 12:18 tells us we have not come to Mount Sinai that could not be touched, but that we have come to Mount Zion. Verse 29 says that our God is a consuming fire. Let us throw ourselves on the mountain of fire and say, “Consume us, Lord. Let it happen to us.”
Believe in the gift of the Holy Spirit and fire. It is a promise and a gift. If the chaff is never exposed to the fire, you may suddenly find in your flesh the seed of future defeat.
All Satan has to do is agitate it a little and the seed of defeat will spring up. Do not lose out with God somewhere down the road. Let God take care of it now. Many a person with a real ministry has found that he was carrying in his heart the potential of defeat which eventually blossomed and destroyed him. Do not be like that. Let the fire take care of it.
Let us not take this truth casually, saying, “Oh, we heard a great truth,” and then walk away from it completely unaware that a dispensation from God has been committed to us. Let us be aware that this is one of the most significant and practical steps of restoration that has come in a thousand years.