Many have looked at the promise of power when the Holy Ghost is come, the energy of Peter’s preaching on the day of Pentecost, and the marvelous results which followed, and they have hastily and erroneously jumped to the conclusion that the baptism with the Holy Ghost is for work and service only.
It does bring power—the power of God, and it does fit for service, probably the most important service to which any created beings are commissioned, the proclamation of salvation and the conditions of peace to a lost world; but not that alone, nor primarily. The primary, the basal work of the baptism, is that of cleansing.
You may turn a flood into your millrace, but until it sweeps away the logs and brushwood and dirt that obstruct the course, you cannot get power to turn the wheels of your mill. The flood first washes out the obstructions, and then you have power.
The great hindrance in the hearts of God’s children to the power of the Holy Ghost is inbred sin—that dark, defiant, evil something within that struggles for the mastery of the soul, and will not submit to be meek and lowly, and patient and forbearing and holy, as was Jesus; and when the Holy Spirit comes, His first work is to sweep away that something, that carnal principle, and make free and clean all the channels of the soul.
Peter was filled with power on the day of Pentecost; but evidently the purifying effect of the baptism made a deeper and more lasting impression upon his mind than the empowering effect; for years after, in that first Council in Jerusalem, recorded in the fifteenth chapter of Acts, he stood up and told about the spiritual baptism of Cornelius, the Roman centurion, and his household, and he said: “And God, which knoweth the hearts, bare them witness, giving them the Holy Ghost, even as He did unto us; and put no difference between us and them, purifying their hearts by faith.” Here he calls attention not to power, but to purity, as the effect of the baptism. When the Holy Ghost comes in to abide, “the old man” goes out. Praise the Lord!
Excerpted from When the Holy Ghost is Come by Samuel Logan Brengle. Public domain.
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