Dost Thou Intend Harm To Yon Peak?

Dost Thou Intend Harm To Yon Peak?

by Tommy Tyson

Transcribed from the original recording; may contain errors.

I want to talk about the baptism with the Holy Ghost. I’ll be using several different scriptures. One fallacy that I want to eradicate is that the baptism with the Holy Spirit is an optional relationship for the periphery few.

That is a liar out of the pit. I’m serious about this, dear friends. Because we as a church have acted as if Calvary had to do with forgiveness, period. But the Word of God teaches us that one reason Jesus went away was not only that He might be identified with us in our sins. That’s one aspect of Calvary. Is the identification He made with us in sin. But just as effective and essential, a work of Calvary is opening the door for us to be identified with Him in glory. And if you just take forgiveness of sins as the work of Calvary, the cleansing of guilt as the work of Calvary, you are missing out on the gospel as recorded by John. Other parts of the gospel talk about forgiveness of sin, the Lamb slain from the foundation of the world. But in the gospel of John, you get another emphasis. Jesus said to these disciples, “It is expedient for you that I go away. For if I do not go away, the Paraclete, the Comforter, the other One cannot come. But I am going to my Father. I’m going to receive the promised gift of the Father. And when I have received, I will send Him to you. He will not speak of Himself, but He will take that which is mine and will bring it to you.”

“For all things are mine. And in that day, the day that He has come, you will know that I am in the Father and He in me and I in you.” Jesus died that you might be baptized with the Holy Ghost. Please know that it is based in Calvary love and is a part of the work of Calvary. Now, if you believe in the cross, go on and claim the full benefit. See the poured out life of the Holy Spirit as a part of the purpose of Calvary. Another thing that I have found here in the scriptures that refutes the idea of being an optional experience is the very command of Jesus Christ. Nowhere does He tell these disciples that if they want to take an alternate and miss some of the traffic, they can. But He says to them, “You are not ready to be witnesses to me yet. You’re not prepared.” Now, these fellows certainly had gone through great preparation. They had met Jesus face to face. They had come under the influence of His magnetic, tremendous power of personal love. They had heard Him say, “Come and follow me.” They had left their normal pursuits and in their society had taken on the scandal of being identified with this itinerant Nazarene.

They had certainly suffered the rebuke and scorn of sometimes their own household, especially their spiritual household. They had also learned from Him something about the ministry. They could heal the sick, a lot of it, some of it they couldn’t. But they could heal a lot of the sick because they learned so much from Him. They could cast out devils without throwing the people out. That’s pretty good.

Devils were subject to them in His name. That was glorious. They certainly had learned that He was the One who had come from the Father, the Messiah, the fulfillment of their hopes. Though they did not understand what was taking place, they somehow knew that He was the Lamb slain even while they saw cruel hands laid upon Him. They had seen the empty tomb. They didn’t have an argument about the empty tomb. They didn’t understand it. But they knew that He wasn’t there. They had had these appearances in the post-resurrection period, and they knew that He was alive. But this wasn’t enough. Jesus said to them after this, you see, “You stay in Jerusalem until you are endued with power from on high. After that, the Holy Ghost has come upon you. You shall have power and you shall be witnesses unto me.” What is this coming upon us? Well, as John baptized with water, you are to be baptized in the Holy Ghost. So you stay and wait until you come into this relationship. Now, they were cleansed before this. Jesus said, “Now are you cleansed through the words which I’ve spoken unto you.” It wasn’t a matter of just being cleansed of sin. It wasn’t a matter of just being identified with Jesus in terms of family relationship.

He had already prayed, as recorded by John, “These thou hast given me.” They belong to Him. And nothing would take them out of His hand. They were His. And He prayed the prayer of sanctification for them. I see. So He’s not just talking about something of removing guilt or sanctifying them unto the Father. He’s talking about something new here in terms of the baptism of the Holy Ghost. And He’s talking about it for every one of them and those who would believe through them because of their ministry. And that means you. That means me. For Jesus Christ is instructing us that He desires that we be baptized with the Holy Ghost. Completely possessed with the Holy Spirit. Now, so I think we must be sincere at this point and recognize it is our heritage as professing Christians. And if you are not yet in the relationship of a baptized person in the Spirit, let me ask to seriously consider why you aren’t.

Now, I know many reasons why we aren’t is because we have seen the limited testimony of some of those who testify or some of us who testify. You’ve seen failures in us, and our failures have loomed large in your eyes. And so you have said, well, they’ve testified the baptism. They don’t seem to have any more than I have. So why should I go through an experience like that? You’ve seen some of us have experiences that were foreign to your present state of being, and if you think it would make you look foolish if you had these experiences and you’re not about to put yourself in a position where you look foolish for God’s sake.

Because you think God is worried about His reputation. He really isn’t. It’s amazing you see how the devil throws us. We want really to defend the Lord. I’ll never forget this story. I tell it every once in a while. It was told by this wonderful preacher at Central Methodist Church in Detroit, Michigan. Oh, what’s his name? Wayne… Oh, the great… Henry Hitt Crane. Henry Hitt Crane’s father was a minister up in Colorado. And as Henry grew up, he said every once in a while he would take them up in the mountains just to have an outing. And one day he was taking the family up on the horse and buggy of the Surrey, it was, and they were all riding along up this little mountain road. All of a sudden they came to an improvised roadblock. And standing by the roadblock was a self-appointed prophet. And as Brother Crane and the family came up, the old prophet held out his hand and said, “Halt.” So Brother Crane brought the horses to a halt. And the prophet said, “Friend or foe?” And Brother Crane said, “I come as a friend.” Said, “Where art thou going, friend?” Said, “Well, I’m going up in the mountain there to have an outing with my family.” The old prophet looked up toward that great peak.

Then looked back at Brother Crane and said, “Dost thou intend harm to yon peak?” He said, “I intend no harm.” So he pulled his roadblock and said, “Pass on, friend.” And so we have seen people having queer experiences in the name of Jesus. And we have thought that they hurt the reputation of Jesus. And since we are concerned about protecting Him, we have put the roadblocks in. I think sometimes Jesus might be more pleased with those who are willing to be made fools for His sake than He is with those of us who are so dedicated to respectable religion. I believe this is a serious block in the minds of a lot of people. The failures in the lives of those who are being baptized. Will you please be helped by something that has helped me? And that is, I can never judge my walk with the Lord by what you are or are not. Because I am different and you are different. It’s not a matter do I have more than have or less than have. It’s a question of are what are supposed to be in Jesus? And are letting Jesus fulfill His calling for you? And His calling for you, my brother, my sister, is to be baptized with the Holy Ghost.

And if you are baptized, it’s to stay baptized, and to continue in it, to grow in it. So let’s do away with any kind of thought that it is for just a particular personality group. Thank you. Now, since we would dismiss that, really, seriously, what is this business of the Holy Spirit? Why was it that Jesus Christ had to die in order for us to come into this relationship? If it were just to empower us to do a work, I don’t think He’d have to die. I mean, because I haven’t found many of us surpassing the work of these early apostles before the crucifixion. In fact, most of us, to a great degree, haven’t even come up to it, have we?

We’re making excuses why there aren’t any devils. We’re not casting out any. You see, we’ve called them complexes. And we’ve got the whole bit rationalized. We aren’t on that level. We aren’t on the level of holy love to the degree that many of us have really committed all, left all, and followed Him. We really aren’t on the level where we want to be ostracized for His namesake. We have hardly come to the incarnational relationship, much less the resurrected relationship. So it’s not just to empower them to do some work, though it includes that. But these apostles were doing the work in relationship to Jesus. Neither was it just that we might have gifts. You find that the old prophets had gifts. Before the incarnation, God could give gifts by the Spirit before Pentecost. Please realize that. And if you’ve studied your Bible, you know it’s true. These boys had eyes to see. They had visions. Elijah said, “Lord, touch my servant that he might see.” The Lord touched the servant. Eyes opened up and he saw that the heavens were filled with chariots. They had all kinds of perception. Miracles happened on top of miracles. Even resurrection from the dead. Elijah laid on the bones of the boy. And the boy was raised from the dead.

Here was the widow’s son just raised from the dead. The axe handles. I mean, the axe itself being raised up out of the water. All kinds of miracles happening here on the level of the Old Testament. So it’s not merely to have gifts that we are to be baptized. Neither is it just to have the Holy Spirit come within us. I’ll pick this up sometime, that the Holy Spirit couldn’t come within until Jesus left. No. John was filled with the Holy Ghost from his mother’s womb. John was born about six months before Jesus.

See, so it wasn’t a matter of just having the Holy Spirit come within us. Well, what is the baptism of the Holy Spirit? Well, I’ll tell you what it is as I understand. And that is, it is the way whereby Jesus Christ shares with us the achievement of the resurrection and brings us to the level where He can reproduce in us, through us, and as us as the new humanity. See, in the resurrection, the newness of the resurrection, as Agnes indicated, is that Jesus Christ came forth as a man. He came forth mind, spirit, and body. God had already manifested His perfect spirit. Nothing new about that. That’s true from the beginning of the ages. Perfect spirit already here doing His work as spirit. God is spirit. “They that worship Him must worship in spirit and in truth.” But in the newness of the Christian revelation is that Jesus Christ became the means whereby God changed the species of mankind. He brought forth a new humanity, brought it forth in terms of the incarnation. When the Holy Ghost hovered over Mary, and here even in the incarnation, is a synthesis of process and miracle. There was the miracle of divine conception, but the process of nine months prenatal development, both biological and supernatural, married together in terms of the coming into the world of this new man.

Not only was He a new man or the new man in terms of His birth, He was that. No one else has the birth. You see, I run across these fancy, fine, precious intellectuals who say every religion has their story of the virgin birth. No, they don’t. They really don’t. There’s no other religion in the world that has a story of the virgin birth. They have the story of immorality among gods.

You see, these other religions have stories about how this god united with this god and how the gods brought forth. But here, this is obnoxious to the glorious revelation of the incarnation. It’s not a matter of any kind of sexual relationship God had with man. It’s a matter of the Holy Ghost becoming the supernatural means whereby Mary, the virgin, conceived and without sex conceived and brought forth. You see, that’s the virgin story. It’s not a story of the other religions so called. Please know that difference because college professors take our youth and they play havoc in the hands of the devil. And I’ve heard this over and over again how smart professors discredit the virgin birth by the use of these other stories. And they aren’t virgin at all. So tell you young people that. The Bible makes sense if we had sense enough to see it. Glory to God. Well, hallelujah. This is true. This is true. And anytime you really, anytime we sit in judgment on the Word of God, I think we come under that judgment. Let’s handle holy things reverently before God. And so this glorious story is how the Holy Spirit brought forth, and here in His birth a new species comes forth. But He was not merely a new man in terms of His birth.

He was also a new man in terms of His obedience. Made the captain of our salvation by the things that He suffered. Now, when I tell this story, some of us get the idea, as I used to have, that if He was born of a virgin and born supernaturally, that meant He wasn’t fully human.

No, here’s the glory. He was and is fully human as well as being fully God. Not half man, half God, but whole man and whole God. And He’s the only real human the world’s ever seen. Everything else is sort of subhuman. You see, this is what God means by man. It is Jesus Christ. This is God’s idea of man. You aren’t.

My goodness, and I sure am not. Jesus is God’s idea of man. And when Jesus comes into the world, we see the pleasure of the creative heart of God, and seeing here is man with a capital M. And as man, Jesus Christ said, “I have not come to destroy the law, but I have come to fulfill it.” Jesus gives Himself on the manward side in union with His Father, and He shows us that the operation of this walk of life that we have here now, right where we are, is not an operation through instinct, as wonderful as instinct is. It’s not merely an operation through the captivity of the mind, as wonderful as mind is. But the way of life, in terms of the right here, right now, is a walk of faith, moment by moment. When I say faith, I mean receptivity and response from within to the Father. Jesus Christ, in everything that He did, though He was tempted to come up in the realm of the intellect, He was tempted to come out in the realm of works, Jesus Christ, in every confrontation with the challenge of Satan and man, chose to stay in a faith relationship and do things only because that’s what His Father told Him to do. I hear some people saying that Jesus performed miracles to prove He was divine.

No, He didn’t. The devil tried to get Him to do it on that level. Please understand that if you think Jesus was proving His divinity, you’re over in Satan’s school. I’m serious about this. Satan said to Him, “Now that you’re the Son of God, come on, perform for us.” And he’ll tell you that. So much of this life of the Spirit is a temptation of Satan trying to get us to do something spectacular. They say, just for the sake of proving that we belong to God. If you really are baptized in the Holy Ghost, if you really believe, then prove it. If you really think you see that God heals, why don’t they empty these hospitals? See? As if you go in and mash a button and immediately all disease is done away with. You see, that’s operating in the devil’s household. Jesus refused to be manipulated by principle. He refused to be manipulated by law. But He gave Himself to walk moment by moment in faith and paid the price of staying in union with His Father, both consciously and subconsciously. For the key to the subconscious mind, regardless of what’s put there, the key to it is your conscious mind. Now, you may have some influences that were given to you in a prenatal relationship.

You may have something that you can blame on Uncle John or Aunt Jane. And you may just be going around blaming your father. But there’s a lot of it that you could have overcome if you had faith in God. You say, you mean thing, you.

So I’m not going to let you blame everybody for your meanness. The key to the subconscious is the conscious. And if you will consciously choose to be identified with the Lord Jesus Christ, and stay in that place of yea and amen before the living Lord, He’ll assume responsibility for cleaning you up in the deeper depths. So Jesus Christ not only had the subconscious of the Father through the birth, but He kept the subconscious and the conscious related through His choice. And He said, “I choose to do the will of Him that sent me. My joy,” He said, “is to do the will of Him that sent me. What I hear my Father say, that’s what I say, not what I hear everybody else say. What I hear my Father say.” And that made Him different. It makes you different. It makes us all different. What we hear our Father say from within. And that’s what I repeat. You can tell your wife anything you want to, if it’s what Jesus told you. You can just give her a piece of your mind if it’s what you heard the Lord say. Say, “Darling, the Lord told me this about you.” Let her have it.

You see? So this is as Jesus operated on the level of the incarnation. He operated in terms of personal response to His Father. He healed as His Father said heal. He delivered as His Father said deliver. And He stayed alone with His Father. Moment by moment, His eyes, His ears attuned and brought His own mind in subjection to the inward relationship between Him and His Father, which was a relationship of love. And this is the only permanent relationship. It’s the only satisfying relationship. That when you are so bathed in love from within, that your will really is lost in your desire to be wholly given over to the object of love. This is what the Holy Spirit enabled Jesus to do, was to sustain this love relationship in a union of holy marriage between God and man on the level of the incarnation. And so process by process, as well as miracle by miracle, Jesus Christ brought forth in the setting of time and space, in this world order, in history, if you please, caught up all previous history and change the course of all subsequent history in the context of time and space, not for one race of people, not for one element of people, but for all people everywhere. This is why the preaching of brotherhood in terms of transcending race and culture is so essential to Christianity.

And for Christians who talk about being baptized in the Holy Spirit to have consciousness of color in terms of human beings is pure ignorance. Really it is. I don’t know why we’ve yielded to such pressures of Satan that brings us into ignorance when we realize the love of God for all of His people everywhere. Oh, this work of Jesus Christ in bringing forth the laws of creative process was done for every person. It was done for the Red Chinese, regardless of what the UN does or does not do. Jesus Christ had them in mind. Every little baby that’s being born in India, Jesus had them in mind. For every precious child that runs up and down in Africa, Jesus had them in mind. For every one of these young teenagers running up and down in the ghettos and streets of America, Jesus had them in mind. For your own family, Jesus had you in mind. It was a universal work for all people, not merely for those who were brought up in the church, so-called. It was for us too. But Jesus had in mind men, all the world, not merely something that we called a denomination and labeled it a church. The church of Jesus Christ is so much greater than anything we’ve yet seen.

It’s amazing how we restrict the work and purpose and plan of God to little labels coming out of our narrow minds. So Jesus did not merely have in mind something in terms of a denominational program, though He works through that. But He had in mind all of this world, all of these processes, and He brought forth in terms of every man, everywhere, of all time, any place. And as He brought forth, He fulfilled the law in terms of obedience and the natural world. Can you imagine how happy these birds were to see Him? You know, I don’t know, maybe one of them was sitting on His shoulder when He said, “Consider the birds.” You know, I could just think, I picture everywhere Jesus went on the level of the incarnation. Because when Jesus gets a hold of me, even no more than He’s got, the birds come and eat breakfast with me.

I’m serious about this. Francis and I eat breakfast by the window and birds just hop all over the place. And the minute we get up, they leave. It’s amazing. And we sit there and this is, Francis and I are communion time. When the children get off to school, we come back around a cup of coffee and we just sit and have a wonderful time. And it’s just so blessed. And I’ve noticed this about all of life. To the degree that we’re in union with Jesus, everything around us seems to leap for joy. And so when Jesus Christ said, “Consider the birds,” I’m sure they were all around. When He stepped in that boat, you know, that day and said to the disciples, “Cast your net on the other side.” Just the presence of Jesus. I imagine every fish in that whole area, you know, start racing with one another.

I don’t think this is too far-fetched. Because here was the fulfillment of all creation. Everything around Him leaping up and saying, “For this purpose was I made.” And when Jesus said, if they kept quiet, the very stones would cry out. I’m sure almost every stone was saying, “I wish they would hush so I could preach.”

These stones just eager to reveal secrets in His presence. Everything comes alive in the presence of Jesus. It’s just glorious. He is alive. And everything comes alive in His presence. And we see Him bringing this into fulfillment on the level of the incarnation. And there was in, if you want to say, in this aura, in this personal magnetism of holy love, this power of association that He had with the twelve in a more intimate way than He did, apparently did, with anyone else. Unless it was Mary and Martha. But even, I don’t think that they had in terms of the ministry as the twelve. And so Jesus caught up in terms of this fellowship. Yet, though He fulfilled it in His being, and brought man in terms of manhood to flowering fulfillment, He could have kept living that way. It wasn’t him out of age getting the upper hand of Jesus. I love C.S. Lewis. He’s such a helpful writer. I think one of his best maybe is The Great Divorce. If you don’t know C.S. Lewis, let me recommend him to you. But in this Great Divorce, talking about the gulf between hell and heaven, he has a theologian in the underworld writing a discourse on what the mature Christ would have been had He not died ahead of time.

And we get, you know, we get those kind of ideas. We enter into the experience of the passion and come down to the time of the crucifixion and somehow our hearts within us begin to feel sympathy for Jesus. And we are so prone to identify sympathy with love. You see, we can pat Him on the head without getting involved. Poor Jesus. And we see all of that. No, don’t ever feel sorry for Jesus. It wasn’t the devil slipping up on the blind side of Jesus. It wasn’t age or circumstances getting the best of Jesus. Jesus Christ had this life within Himself. And so far as I see the scriptures, something of it came to an apex at the Mount of Transfiguration. When Jesus Christ manifests the fulfillment or mastery of time space, there He is. And you see, we’re spending how many billions a year? Now, we think this is a little problem, time space. But we’re spending billions a year and making heroes out of boys that boil it down to 90 minutes. I think that’s what it takes to run around the world now in the astronaut program, and we’re making quite heroes out of them because they’ve tied this little orbit down to 90 minutes. But here is Jesus standing on a mountain with His feet firmly planted in dirt.

And as He stands, eternity collapses and becomes one. Time and eternity, both heaven and earth are one. And here are Moses and Elijah standing there with Him. And all time, all space caught up in terms of mastery right here at His feet in terms of achievement because of His obedience to His Father. And Peter catches this, and Peter as he sees this and with the other two, and then the clouds come and as they part they see only Jesus. I love this precious apostle Peter. He’s so perceptive. And he said to Jesus Christ, “Jesus, this is what every prophet has come for. This is the purpose of all of the aspirations in the heart of man, is to bring us to this place of true selfhood where we can master all of these laws as You’ve mastered them and finally be at one with heaven even while we’re in earth.”

So he said, let’s don’t run off and leave folks. Let’s stay here. “Let’s build these three tabernacles. Let’s build one for the law and one for the prophet. And You as the divine synthesis. And Lord, let’s stay here at this level. Until we bring everybody else.” You know, it’s really, does Peter such a disfavor to say, Peter didn’t want to go back down into the valley and serve, but you can’t stay on the mountaintop forever.

That’s so beside the point. You see, Peter was really catching the essence of this thing. And so he didn’t realize that in order to bring it to pass, Jesus had to move from a Mount of Transfiguration to a mount called Calvary. And in this step is perhaps the greatest step because all human history begins to turn and be reversed in its movement as Jesus moved from transfiguration to a mount called Calvary. It is a reversal in the movement of history, for no longer is it man reaching, striving, coming up as Henri Bergson would say, the élan vital. No longer that. That’s been fulfilled. That divine urge within you has been fulfilled. No longer is Browning appropriate. “A man’s reach should exceed his grasp, or what’s a heaven for?” That’s Plato. That’s Wordsworthian. That’s this transcendentalist of a pre-Christian revelation. You see the movement has changed because when Jesus came to the fulfillment of that thrust upward at Mount of Transfiguration, and from the top He went to the bottom at Calvary and identified at the feet of mankind, and through death identified, as Agnes was saying, with the whole subconscious of the human race and the hell of sin, but could not hold Him, for He came forth, and He came forth as a man.

This same man Jesus is the one who came forth, and in the coming forth He comes as the fulfillment of all law, and this is essentially the power to reproduce, a sign of maturity. The true sign of maturity is the ability to reproduce. This is true in all of life. Well, now, Jesus could bless people. Jesus could forgive people. Jesus could heal people. Jesus Christ could set them free from the devil. Jesus Christ could actually bring them into a relationship of the family by association. But Jesus Christ could not share with us the achievement of His own new humanity and reproduce Himself in us apart from His death. So His death was essential not to give us a few good gifts, not merely, though it includes cleansing, but in order to bring Him forth on the level where He could reproduce all that He was. And He hadn’t lost a thing in His resurrection. He didn’t lose a hair on His head.

Please know that. He brought forth in His resurrection everything He was. Left His blood here and filled with light, I guess. Our new kind of protoplasm. But His blood is the only thing that was left on the ground. In everything else comes forth flesh and bones. And comes forth hands and feet and eyes and sides. And comes forth. And now, from the realm of glory, the throne of the universe, receiving this promised gift of the Father, He makes Himself available. And this is the newness of Pentecost. It is the content of the Holy Ghost. See, the Pentecostal experience, the Pentecostal relationship, is coming into union with Jesus. You might have a great spiritual relationship just by getting a lot of love. You may have a great spiritual relationship by having gifts. You might have a great spiritual relationship. You see, by getting joy and all of that. But the Pentecostal relationship is coming into union with the glorified Jesus in such a way that He can begin this life of reproduction within us. And He becomes our righteousness. We’re not struggling, you see, to become good anymore. That’s why I say, the thrust has changed. We’re not striving to reach God. God has reached us. We’re not striving to become a little better each day.

I mean, I love the song because we exercise it, but it doesn’t say a thing to me theologically. We are climbing Jacob’s ladder. I ain’t. Not that. I’m not striving to be a little better. I am striving in the sense of wanting to be more yielded to Jesus. But Jesus is our righteousness, you see.

Perfection can’t get any better. Jesus doesn’t need to get better. And so it’s a matter of letting Him have more complete control of us so that we don’t strive to get better. We yield and obey. And as we yield and obey in terms of His abiding presence, He begins to manifest in areas of our life where He has not brought under productivity. We don’t fight or condemn or live… That’s under the law. We just say, “Lord, here’s an area which I’ve not let You in as yet.” And I always make a mess. You see, so, Lord, that’s nothing new. I need to be proud about that. It’s just a simple fact. I make a mess apart from Jesus. I am a mess, and you are too, apart from Jesus. And so here’s an area, Lord, in which You’ve not had an opportunity to really indwell and reproduce Yourself. Help me to learn how to turn it over to You. And so we yield that to Jesus. And our daily walk, moment by moment, is learning to turn these areas over to the Lord Jesus Christ as He reproduces. Now, just as His birth on the level of the incarnation was both miracle and process, I’m finding that the baptism of the Holy Spirit, or with the Holy Spirit, as Jesus used the term, is both miracle and process.

There is the climactic relationship where you come into a consciousness that you have entered into a new relationship with God through Jesus, and that Jesus has possessed you. There is that. Now, I used to think that once that happened, you would need anything else. You would never need to grow anymore. You’d never have any more temptations. In fact, you wouldn’t be human much anymore. Friends, this is what makes you human. You see, you really are either running from humanity or apologizing for it until you meet Jesus. In union with Jesus through the Holy Ghost is when you come to true humanity. And it’s in contrast with His presence within you and the old man within you. It’s in that contrast that you find the tension. And so, some of us are discovering that we never knew what living tension was until we were baptized with the Holy Ghost. And when I say tension, I don’t mean fear. I don’t mean this is bad. I mean this is good. That we really are beginning to accept ourselves for what we were and say, yes, I am able to see that Jesus. And thank God, that makes me love You all the more. I say, You knew that all the while and You died for me anyhow.

Thank You, Lord. You knew that streak was in me. I didn’t know it, Lord. I blame my wife for it. But You knew it. And You died for me anyhow. And You’ve come to live within me anyhow. And so, Jesus Christ… And we have these experiences where the Lord Jesus actually comes to us and we stand before Him in terms of abandonment to Him and He to us in a love relationship. And He possesses us in this baptism. And it’s a miracle. And there are gifts related to it. There are many gifts of the Spirit. And one of the outstanding gifts in terms of the New Testament described in this experience is the ability of the soul to pray in languages that the mind hasn’t learned. But it’s the Holy Spirit giving utterance. Let me just say a word at this point. Because I think it’s scriptural. And it’s a concern on my heart at least. And that’s this. I never find any scriptural basis for trying to teach somebody else to talk in tongues.

I really don’t find any scriptural basis for that. Now, if you’re led to do that, be sure of your guidance. But I think sometimes it’s our zeal to help folks and we want them to have assurance. And we know the assurance that tongues has given us. So we somehow feel that they already baptized. If we ever get them talking in tongues, they’d have the assurance. So in our zeal, we try to transplant a few words. Well, if that’s priming the pump, call it for what it is. But I believe there’s something more healthy in terms of getting people to accept by faith their relationship to the Lord and yielding themselves to the power of the Holy Ghost and then letting the Holy Spirit bring forth the utterance out of the soul as an act of divine grace. Many of us know this is true and I think most of us do. So a lot of people really become frustrated because they don’t speak in tongues.

I do. I’m sort of like Paul. I wish everybody did. But the fact that you don’t does not mean that you’re to go around worried, being frustrated, and striving to manipulate the Lord at the point of your tongue. No, you stay before Him in faith. You stay before Him in love. These are gifts of the Spirit. And my time’s up and I’ll talk about that some more. But as you stay before the Lord, you don’t have to talk in tongues in order to be baptized. Please know that. You are privileged to talk in tongues because you are baptized. So if you don’t have the wonderful experience, know why. You see, maybe because you’re prejudiced. Maybe because you have a fear. But don’t fight either way, striving, but yield to the Lord by faith and let Him bring it forth. I’ll continue next time, God willing. Lord Jesus, thank You so much for giving us this basis this morning. Let it be just that. And move us on to something greater than we’ve yet known in terms of what it is to be baptized. Thank You, Lord. Amen. Amen.