I want to begin this morning with a story. I can’t tell you the exact year. Somewhere in the late 70s, I want to say maybe 78, 1979, I was leading a church in London, Ontario.
We actually planted that church, and the thing swelled, and it was a wonderful thing that happened. We had people get saved every Sunday morning, two services in a row. Every Sunday night people got saved.
And every Wednesday night at the Bible study, every Wednesday people got saved. First Sunday of the month in the evening was always water baptism, always. And it was always a joyful, wondrous time.
And so on this one particular Sunday morning, we had a service not unlike here this morning, but then there came this beautiful lull. I like the lull. I love it when we go from praise.
Praise is thanking God for what he’s done, thanking him for all of the things that he’s done. Worship is not about us. Worship is 100% about him.
When we’re saying, I love you, Lord. I worship you. I adore you.
So we’ve gone through that journey in our worship service from praise and celebration, remembering what he has done. And then we moved into not about us and what he’s done but who he is. And we worshiped him.
And then we went into a quiet time. Our congregation was very happy just to sit there and just allow the Holy Spirit to just breathe among us. And someone would start singing in the Spirit and then another one and another one.
It would just pick up until it would flow like Niagara. And there was not one voice above the others. It just flowed.
And throughout that entire time, usually I was sitting on the front seat. I would just bask in all of it. And I remember I was in the pulpit at some point during that time and someone gave a message in tongues.
Now, if you’re listening on the internet and that’s a strange terminology, it’ll make some sense in a few moments. But someone spoke in a language that normally we would not understand. And then it’s required by Scripture.
It’s totally Scriptural that when there’s anyone in church that speaks in tongues, when we’re together worshipping, you should not be singing in the Spirit in tongues. Because if we all started doing that, it would turn into a foreign land. And if somebody’s visiting, wouldn’t understand what’s going on.
And so there’s times when it’s appropriate. And so at any rate, there was this beautiful sense of just singing, just a song of the Lord just came out of people as they were making up words, making up songs. It was absolutely gorgeous.
And then there was this message in tongues and I didn’t respond. I just stood there waiting. And then there was a reply.
There was someone in English interpreted what had been said. And this was the long and the short of it. And just to let you know, the message in tongues was this long and the interpretation was this long.
So that throws some people off. An interpretation is not a verbatim interpretation. The interpretation is the summation.
It’s the summation of that which was spoken. So at any rate, the interpretation was this. The Lord is calling you.
You came here looking for Him and He’s here. You need to respond now. And I never moved.
I bowed my head and I closed my eyes and I thought, okay, where’s this going to go? I mean, you just leave it wide open. I just stood there, my eyes closed. And after a bit, I dared to open my eyes to see if anyone had come forward.
And it was a platform different than this. It was totally rounded. Okay, so it was like half of an orange.
It was rounded. And the people were lined up from this side to this side. I think it was a total of 23, 24 people were standing there, many of them just weeping, gently weeping.
I was blown away. And we shouldn’t be surprised. And so I spoke up and I said, altar workers, come now.
And so I had this team of people that would come and speak to these who would come. Now we had a rule, by the way. I had to give this rule to the altar workers.
If you’re praying with somebody at the altar and you lead them to the Lord and you give them scriptures and you counsel them for a few moments, then you will ask, how is it that you came to this church today? They’re liable to say, my sister brought me. Your question then is, is your sister here? Yes. Well, way better.
Get her to come forward. Then when that person comes, you will inquire, do you go to church somewhere? Well, yes, I go to First Baptist, whatever. And your response is, good.
Now take your sister there. You did well to bring her here, but you can’t stay. That was my rule.
People can get saved, but they can’t stay. Why? I couldn’t pastor any more people. We were packed to capacity.
I said, they can’t stay. Go to a church where, take your sister to a church where they will get counseled, where the pastor will disciple them and share with them the word of God. On one occasion, I got a call from the Salvation Army on Commissioner’s Road.
Are you David Forrest? Yes. What’s going on in your church? I said, I don’t know what you mean. Well, you’re dumping your people over here on me, and I want to know why.
Are these troubled people? I said, no, they must be people who got saved maybe a Sunday ago or two Sundays ago. But why are they at my church? I said, this is a soul-saving station. You should understand that, Salvation Army.
You’re the army. We’re the caregivers. We’re running a hospital here.
And I said, when people get saved, we tell them, go to a church where you can get cared for. He said, well, somebody should have alerted me. I said, just figure it out.
Now, this is the interesting thing. Somebody came up to me after the service and said, I think you want to follow those people up yourself. A group of, it was a husband and wife, a son, two daughters, a family of five.
And they said, you ought to go. They had an address for me. So I went to the house one evening and I wanted to sit with them.
They were all excited when the pastor came to see us. And they didn’t have church background, none whatsoever, as far as I recall, that they weren’t church people in any way, shape, or form. And as we sat there and we visited, one of them spoke up and said, you’ve got to help us understand something.
And I said, well, that’s why I’m here. How did you get that sweet perfumey smell floating around in the auditorium? I said, I don’t know what you mean. Oh, we think you do.
We’ve been discussing it here. She says, my husband says, that pastor’s a crafty guy. He’s got somebody downstairs.
We had air flowing, you know, the central air, central heating. He’s got a perfume bottle down. Somebody’s misting the as it’s floating up, coming up through the, and I said, no, no, no, nothing like that.
And then, so they discussed this with me and I don’t remember all the details, but each one of them of the five was saying on the way home in the car, wasn’t that a beautiful aroma? Who was wearing what kind of cologne? And the three ladies, mama and the two daughters, they were in the beauty business. You know, they did hair and your nails and all the rest. I mean, and so they were saying, no, that’s not a regular perfume.
And so they wanted to know, how did that happen? And I said, I haven’t got an explanation. Nobody was doing anything like you’re talking about. And then he spoke up and said, that was the sweet fragrance of his presence.
And I said, I can’t argue with that. I can’t validate it. I can’t tell you for sure, for sure, for sure.
But those five people were absolutely convinced we sensed his presence, that beautiful fragrance. And so one of them said, well, pastor, you’ve got to tell the whole church about this. And I said, no, that’s our secret, yours and mine.
We should tell the whole church about this. I said, no. Why? I said, because they will start telling their friends and people will be coming to our church.
They’re already coming to get saved. I don’t want them coming to smell the smell. This happens.
There’s some nutcase of a pastor some years ago said that he saw feathers floating down in the church. It was angelic feather. I just heard this again recently recounted.
And so people started driving for hundreds of miles to go to this church to see if there were feathers falling. Another one believed that there was angel dust, that people were getting gold dust in their hair and people were going to the services to see. I said, it’s stupidity.
No, no, no. I said, we’re here to share the good news that Jesus saves, not that he produces feathers or gold dust or anything else. And especially not to give you a smell like you’ve never smelled a smell like that smell smells.
We don’t want to be known for that. We want to be known for people getting healed in response to faithful prayer. We want to be known as the church where families got reunited at the altar.
We want to be known as a church where God is moving. If you want to get somebody in your family in touch with God, you take them to that church. And that’s how we got to be known.
What’s that all about? What are you trying to tell us, pastor? I’m trying to tell you, I’m going to read from the gospel according to John chapter one. And I’m going to start reading at verse 29. John, the next day, John saw Jesus coming unto him and he says, behold, or look, the lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world.
This is he of whom I said, after me is coming a man who is preferred more important to myself for he was before me. Interesting, just stop there for a moment. Who was born first, John or Jesus? John was, we know that from the story of Mary who races to her her cousin’s house to tell her I’m with child and the baby John leaped in the cousin’s womb as soon as Mary walked in the door.
But John announces he was before me. He’s saying Jesus is the great I am. He’s the alpha and the omega, the beginning and the end.
Now here’s something unique. John and Jesus were second cousins. Mary and her cousin, Elizabeth, thank you.
I’m being a senior moment. It happens about every 30 seconds. These women were cousins, therefore John and Jesus were cousins.
And if Mary was able to make that journey to Elizabeth’s house without a great deal of effort, we don’t know a town for town. I don’t, it’s probably there somewhere in the scriptures. But there’s no doubt whatsoever that Jesus and John must have at times played with their dinky toys in the sandbox.
They knew each other. They were, they were relatives, family get-togethers. But John says in verse 31, I did not know him.
What’s he saying? I knew Jesus, but I didn’t know that Jesus. He was just one of us. He was my cousin.
He didn’t spit out gold nickels. He didn’t walk on the water when we were at the neighbor’s swimming pool. He was just Jesus.
I didn’t know who he was. I just knew that he should be made manifest to Israel. He means I was looking for the one who was to be revealed to Israel, but I didn’t know who he was.
So John the Baptist was someone who’d been appointed by God to introduce someone that he didn’t really fully recognize. God had called John to introduce his cousin, Jesus, and he didn’t know who Jesus was except he was the son of Joseph and Mary. Therefore, he said, I’ve come baptizing with water.
Let’s take a moment and look at that word baptism. The original Hebrew is baptizo, the original Greek that is. Baptizo.
Baptize literally means fully immersed. When you hard boil an egg, it means you immerse it in water. Baptizo means fully immersed.
So that’s why we have baptismal services where they’re fully immersed. We don’t sprinkle. That’s why we don’t baptize little babies.
We don’t know that they would survive under the water. Certainly, I hold you down until I see bubbles, and so you don’t want me baptizing you. But baptism means immersed.
Totally, totally immersed. So he said, I’ve come baptizing with water. Then verse 32, John Bear Record saying, I saw the Spirit descending from heaven like a dove, and it abode upon him.
And I did not know him, but he that sent me to baptize with water, the same one said to me, upon whom you see the Spirit descending and remaining on him, the same as he which baptizes with the Holy Ghost. Interesting, upon whom you see the Spirit descending and remaining. The Spirit never remained on anyone in the Old Testament.
The Spirit of God never continuously rested upon anyone. The Spirit of the Lord came upon David, and he danced before the Lord. The Spirit of the Lord came upon David, and he played his harp.
The Spirit of the Lord came upon Saul, and he prophesied. The Spirit of God came upon the elders during Moses’ time, and they prophesied. So the Lord came, and there were visitations.
But upon whom you see the Spirit descending and remaining on him. So something unique happened that John literally saw with his eyes. He saw the Spirit resting on Jesus, the same as he who immerses with the Holy Ghost.
So John was consistently apologizing to the people he was baptizing. I can only baptize you with water, but one mightier than I is coming, and he will immerse you with the Holy Ghost and with fire. That’s recorded in Matthew.
That’s recorded in Luke. That’s recorded in John. One mightier than I, he will immerse you.
So I just want to, I want to throw you a curve this morning. We know as John the Baptist, because he baptized people in water. But his message was, I can only baptize you with water, but I’m here on a mission.
I’m here to explain that another is coming, and he will baptize you with the Holy Ghost and fire. I want to bring out this little point as well. Behold the Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world.
But when John talks about his calling, his calling, he sent me to announce, to present, to introduce the one who will baptize with the Holy Ghost and fire. So I see, I see in Scripture the concept of the Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world, I see that as secondary to the primary message of John who said, he sent me to introduce the one who will baptize with the Holy Ghost and fire. It’s not enough that the church would be baptized with water.
It is absolutely essential that there’s a follow-through of the baptism with the Holy Ghost and the fire. It’s a complete package. I want to mention to you that the baptism of the Holy Spirit is not an afterthought.
It’s not an add-on. It’s part of the redemptive purpose. And that’s something I want to speak on for a few Sundays.
Not next Sunday, next Sunday’s Father’s Day. And so the topic next Sunday will be Father’s, but I want to drill down on this somewhat and share with you what I believe are principles in the Scriptures to do with the baptism of the Holy Ghost. By the way, I got up at the last General Conference, I think I scared everybody half to death.
I got up at the General Conference and I called upon the chairman to allow me to say something. He didn’t want to allow me. He said, we’ve already gone through this.
So I said, no David, you got to let me tell. I have to say something. And so I began with this.
He finally relented and said, well okay. I’m the old guy, so I used my age card. And I said, some years ago I was at a General Conference of the PAOC in New Brunswick, St. John.
I said, the most of you in this conference weren’t there. You were still in your underpants. You weren’t there.
I said, I’m an old guy. I said, I were there. And I said, as I walked down the hallway, I heard the voice of an old, very old man.
And I said, he was calling out my name. His name was James Montgomery. And I said, if you don’t know who he is, you need to find out.
I said, James Montgomery was as much a founder of the Pentecostal Semites of Canada as anybody else. I said, he was a Trojan. He was a powerful man.
He was a man of God. And he knew what Pentecost meant. And he was calling upon me.
I told this conference sitting before me now, 1,200 people. I said, I don’t ever remember meeting the Reverend James Montgomery. We were not friends.
I don’t ever remember ever encountering him in any kind of a conversation, none whatsoever. So I said, I don’t know where he got my name. And I don’t know why he was picking on me.
He called me. He was a decrepit old fellow. He had a little cane with him.
He was shaking. He was very thin, very weak. He patted the chair beside him and said, sit down, son.
I need to talk to you. Then he took a hold of my hand, and he started to cry. He said, David, I’m about to leave this old world.
But he said, I don’t like what I see happening in this Pentecostal Semites of Canada. We’re losing our way. He said, we need to continue to preach on the baptism of the Holy Spirit.
We need to proclaim the gospel of Jesus Christ and not back off. I said to him, sir, why are you saying this is what I do? He said, I’ve heard about you, and I’ve heard that’s what you do. But he said, I’m not going to be around.
I’m not going to have the voice any longer. And he clasped my hand, and he squeezed it tight with tears. And he said, David, the day is going to come when God’s going to prompt you.
You’ve got to promise me right now, you will stand up, you will speak out with a powerful voice, and you will call the Pentecostal Semites of Canada to renew their commitment to the Pentecostal message. Will you promise me, David, you’ll do it? I’m sitting there thinking, why me? I said, yes, sir, I promise you. So I said, all of that looking at the chairman, David Wells, I stood there saying all of that to him.
Then I turned my back on him, and I turned to this conference. I said, so I’m here to fulfill a promise I made. I said, you may not like what I’m going to say, but I said, I’m a man of my word.
I’m here to fulfill a promise. I said, for the last two or three years, you guys have been studying this book. I said, you’ve taken it apart, and you put it back together again.
You have rewrote now for the fifth time what we believe about the Trinity, about the second coming, about all of it. And I said, you can really reconsider what we believe about the baptism of the Holy Spirit. You just eliminated the wording, initial evidence.
I said, I have issues with that, but I said, you’re smarter. You did it. But I said, here’s the problem.
I said, you’ve been addressing this topic like one who wants to be totally objective. So I said, you’ve taken this message, the baptism of the Holy Spirit, and I said, you studied it. You studied it from the bottom.
You studied it from the top. You looked at it within. You looked at it without.
I said, that’s called objectivity. You tried not to let your emotions get carried away. You didn’t want to let your historical facts, anything historical about that.
You just wanted to get down to the plain truth. I said, you looked at it objectively. I said, well, congratulations.
Now you’ve got a challenge, young man. When are you going to face this biblical topic that you’ve rewrote and face it subjectively? When are you going to preach it again? When are you going to call out to your young people and mention to them? It’s in the book. It’s in the book, and it’s not an add-on.
You need to be filled with the Spirit if you’re going to do work for God. I said, I’m finished, and I think I really was. I wandered down the aisle.
I didn’t get applause. I mean, I wasn’t looking for applause, and David Wells leaned into the microphone and said, well, that was worth the price of admission all by itself. I don’t know.
I don’t know if that was a kind word or if he was slapping me. Jimmy cracked corn, and I don’t care. I fulfilled my mission.
We are the Pentecostal of Canada, and we believe it’s in the book. It’s in the book, and John the Baptist’s message was this. I baptize with water, but he is the baptizer of the Holy Ghost, and in those Gospels, it’s recorded the Holy Ghost and fire.
Holy Ghost and fire. Do you know what that fire to me represents? It means fire in the hold, fire in the heart, fire in your belly. It’s not enough to believe it.
We must proclaim it, and we must live it, and I can tell you this is not braggadocious. I’ve preached in I’ve got my passports, 37 countries, and what I’m sharing with you this morning, not the story about the PAOC, but about Jesus being the baptized. I’ve preached it in 37 countries.
I have seen how many? Thousands. I preached outdoors in Ethiopia. It was a cow pasture.
People just when they wandered in to this big open area that I had to climb mountains. I had to go across a stream. I had to walk for an afternoon just to get to this village.
We couldn’t get there by car. They’d never seen a Ferengi before. The Belgians were the first to go to Ethiopia having white skin.
Everybody believed that if you are white, you’re from Belgium, and you speak French. Ferengi. The kids would run at me, Ferengi, Ferengi.
So there I was preaching to a crowd that knew nothing about the baptism of the Holy Spirit. I preached to them, you’ve given your heart to Jesus. Say amen, and they cried out amen.
I said now he that is within you wants to come upon you. Out of your innermost being will flow rivers of living water. I’m inviting you if you want to be baptized in the Holy Ghost, let him baptize you now.
As many as want to be filled with the Spirit, baptized in their Spirit, stand to your feet. Thousands stood to their feet. I turned to Yoneni who was, I mean thousands, it was huge.
The people in the distance like were ants. It was a huge crowd. I turned to Yoneni and I said, what did you say to them? He said, Pastor Dave, I said what you said.
I said, they misunderstood. They’re all standing. I said, tell them to sit down.
He says, Ulamogula, or something like that. I use that word a lot. I don’t even know what it means.
It saved my life once up in an Eskimo settlement. There were about 10 mad dogs coming at me, ready to chew at me, and I thought, what do you do now? Ulamogula, and they turned and ran. So Yoneni says, Ulamogula, and everybody sat down.
I said, now you say exactly what I’m saying. If you’ve given your heart to Jesus and you want to be baptized and filled with the Holy Ghost, then you stand to your feet. They stood.
Even the little children in front of me, a couple of hundred of them, they stood there looking at me. I said, everyone just raise your hands and just begin to say, Jesus, I love you. Tell them how much you love him, and they did it, and these little children started bouncing on the spot.
They got riveted. They got excited. I can’t explain this to you.
This is what is happening. When people are saying, Jesus, I love you. I worship you.
I love you, Jesus. This is what they were doing, and suddenly people started falling on the ground like cordwood, just crash, crash, crash, and they’re shouting. The noise was incredible.
I said to Yoneni, now you see, I don’t know Mharic. That’s the language of that country. I don’t know it.
So when these people are shouting out, you know, verbiage, there’s things coming out. I don’t know what they’re saying. I said, what are they saying? He said, they’re speaking a new language.
I said, how many? He said, everybody, everybody, everybody. He said, even them. There were little children laying on the ground, tears of joy sweeping down over their cheeks, and they were speaking a language that came from heaven.
In that instant, there were thousands instantaneously filled with the Holy Ghost. It was Acts chapter two all over again. Ethiopia is experiencing a Pentecostal wildfire revival.
God’s working there. God’s working. Do you know that in the big Christian universities, there’s one down, I think it’s called, I think it’s in Fuller, I think it’s called Fuller, Fuller.
It’s a place to go to get your seminary degree. Do you know if you go there and you sign up for missions, here’s what they will tell you, unless they’ve changed the curriculum. If you want to be a missionary who’s successful, if you want to be a missionary and your heart is burning within you, you want to see people get saved.
You want to see people get delivered. You want to see people get to know Jesus. You better get the Pentecostal message.
Those Pentecostals are taking the world by storm. That is in the curriculum of Fuller Institute down in California. It’s true.
It’s true. He will baptize you with the Holy Ghost and fire. I want to move on to John chapter 14.
Boy, the time’s gone. If you love me, keep my commandments, and I will ask the Father, and he shall give you another comforter. Jesus is the comforter.
He’s saying, I’ll talk to the Father, and he’ll send you another comforter. They’re going to need comfort because Jesus is leaving. They’re going to be on their own.
He says, don’t worry. I know you don’t want me to go. I have to go, but when I go, I’ll talk to my Father, and he will give you another comforter.
That became the Father’s promise. So Jesus is saying, I’m going to talk to the Father. We already have this arranged.
It’s pre-arranged. The Father is promising to fill you with the Holy Ghost. I’ll talk to him about it.
Watch this. He will give you another comforter that he may abide, be with you forever. Why did he say that? Well, Jesus, we don’t want you to go.
Why do you have to go? Jesus says, don’t worry. Another is coming, and he won’t leave. He will be with you forever.
Holy Ghost descended on the day of Pentecost, and he never left. He’s still with us. Jesus goes on to say about the comforter, the spirit of truth whom the world cannot receive because it doesn’t see him, doesn’t believe in him, wants no part in him.
And there are church denominations not very far from where you’re sitting right now, and they fit in that category. They don’t see him. They don’t understand him.
They don’t believe in him. This congregation was started out of another congregation in this town. Did you know that? We were a bunch of renegades.
Did you know that? We were all attending another church. I’m not going to mention it now. I don’t want to get everybody all out of sorts.
We were, our original people were a part of a church in this town. Somebody came from Topeka, Kansas, and he pitched a tent down in the valley over here, Jordan Valley, and they had meetings there, and people went from various churches all around Vineland, and in those meetings in the tent down there in that valley, you know where that cute little splat is there, the crick’s running through it, people were baptized with the Holy Ghost. They got all excited.
What do you mean they got baptized in the Holy Ghost? They spoke in tongues just like in Acts chapter 2. So they went back to their pastor, and they’re all excited. They wanted to tell the good news. We went to the tent meeting.
You did what? You didn’t go. Oh, we did. Close the door from the other side.
We were chased out. I can’t tell you exactly how it happened. I just know we were chased out.
You’re not welcome. We don’t want to hear this anymore, and they came together. They started having prayer meetings, and more people joined them, and more people joined them, and people were getting baptized in the Holy Ghost in homes right around here, like within walking distance, maybe two.
I know the house right across the street on this corner. There were prayer meetings in that. People were getting in that white house right across the street.
Walk outside. Look on the right. There’s a store, and on the left, there’s a house on the corner.
There’s an elderly lady lives there all by herself, but in that meeting, people were getting saved and filled with the Holy Ghost, and pretty soon, they looked across, and this was an empty lot, and they said, that’s the promised land. They bought this piece of property. They didn’t have two pennies to pinch together, but God blessed them.
There was a fire that was birthed in them, and as a result of what God did in those meetings and in this little church here, there’s a church over here on Scott Street. They just moved out over the bridge, and it’s called Central Pentecostal Church. It was people that went from this church, and with the leadership of one lady, this church established that church, and that church is running in the thousand.
This church, there was a fire birthed in our hearts, and together, a handful of people went up, and they started the Lake Mount Pentecostal Church. How do I know how that was? I was the first preacher. I was preaching in a Catholic school in Grimsby back in the 1960s.
I was preaching this message about the fire that burns in our hearts. I gave the very first altar call in the Lake Mount Church, and Bill Sterling came forward and gave his heart to Christ. It’s running a couple of thousand people now.
The fire is still burning. Star, the star of the show is Jesus. He said, I’ll give you another, and he will not abandon you.
Jesus wasn’t abandoning them. You know the story. I have to go to my father.
You’re the bride. I’m the groom. I’ve got to prepare a room just for you.
The spirit of truth, they don’t see him. They don’t know him, and then Jesus says something strange. You’ve got to slow down and read this stuff to get it.
He says, another comforter. He identifies him as the spirit of truth. The world doesn’t see him, doesn’t recognize him, but you know him.
You’re a disciple. You’re one of 12, and he just told all 12 of you, another comforter is on the way. The father’s sending him, but you know him already.
I can see them looking at each other. Who’s he talking about? We don’t know him already. Jesus says, yeah, you do.
I and the father are one. Remember the three chairs? If you know the father, you know the son. If you know the son, you know the spirit.
He said, I’m not introducing to you a stranger. You already know him. He and I are one.
He says, I’ll not leave you comfortless, and then he says an amazing thing. I won’t leave you comfortless. I’m going to send another comforter.
In verse 18, he says, I will come to you. When the Holy Spirit descended on the day of Pentecost, and they were baptized, immersed in the Holy Ghost, Jesus was there. The Holy Spirit came, but Jesus said, you already know me.
I’m going away, but I’ll still be here. Our little two by four has a hard time wrapping ourselves around this and trying to, trying in a founding way, trying to put together our theology. You know him, for he’s living with you right now.
He’s saying, he’s right here. He’s right now. He’s right here.
He’s now with you and shall be in you. I’ve been with you for three years. I’ve been with you.
I’ve ate with you. I’ve drank with you. I’ve prayed with you.
But on that day, Acts chapter two, on that day, I won’t be with you. I’ll be in you. The comforter won’t be with you.
He’ll be in you. Jesus on the inside, working on the outside. Oh, what a joy to walk with him.
Brooklyn Tabernacle sings a song like that. It’s actually, it’s very pulsating. Jesus on the inside, working on the outside.
I will be in you. Yet a little while, the world will see me no more, but you’ll see me. Have you seen Jesus? Actually, don’t let this throw you off.
But when you see me, you see Jesus. I scare you. I see Jesus in you.
I see Jesus in you. This is the wonderment of it. We are now called bone of his bone, flesh of his flesh.
The same spirit that walked with Jesus is now walking with us. We are now his voice and we do have power. We do have power.
I’m hearing stories about God doing wonderful things. People are being healed and we’re not always hearing the whole story. There’s a story that we’re checking out.
We just want to make sure we’ve got all the pieces correct. But if this story is half true, it’s an incredible story of divine healing. There’s a story of divine healing right here.
You want to see Jesus? He’s in this little lady sitting on the front. She was consumed with cancer. I’m sure it was her last day on this planet.
When a woman walked in her room, me feeling sorry for myself at the other end of the hall, crying and weeping and asking God, why, why, why? And this woman came out and prayed in the name of Jesus and April was delivered from a cancer the size of an inflated ball. Jesus is here among us. Jesus said, they’ll know that you’re with me because of your love for one another.
There’s a couple that are new to our church. They’re not here this morning. They’re on a journey.
They’re somewhere in Europe. April and I had the wonderful privilege of visiting them in their home just a couple of weeks ago. And here’s the words they said.
We can’t believe the love that we see being expressed in that little church in Vineland. We are absolutely astounded at the love that is moving around among us. Jesus said, they’ll know you belong to me by your love for one another.
Where does that flow come from? Jesus said, drink of me and out of your innermost being will flow rivers of living water. One of those rivers is love, pure love, righteous love, born not out of a desire to love, but born out of a natural. Here’s what’s happened.
Love has flowed in and naturally the love that flowed in when you surrender your life to Jesus and gave yourself over to the Holy Spirit, that love that flowed in is now flowing out. The inflow is now easily compared to the outflow. To whom much is given, much is required.
To whom much love is flowing in, there’s that equal amount of love that can flow out. I’m talking to you. You people have been telling me how the Lord is leading you, how he’s guiding you.
I was in a place of commerce the other day and I started playing my comedy card with her at first. I won’t go into all the details and at one point she said, oh Jesus. I said, don’t bring him into the conversation yet.
I’m not there at that point. She said, wait a minute, who are you? I said, you’re looking at a pastor. You are not.
I said, yeah. I said, I’m too old, but I’m still on it. She said, I got to come to your church.
I said, you better fasten your seatbelt. She said, I’d love to come. She said, I bet it’d be great.
I said, it is. And so we chatted for a few more minutes and there’s all kinds of customers around looking at this, looking at that. And I went to go and she said, okay, you can be on your way.
You go downstairs and do this and so on. I said, I can’t go until I do something. She said, oh boy, what’s coming now? I had her in stitches until now.
There’s something I have to do. What’s that? I said, standing right here, I’m going to pray for you. She looks around at the people all around.
She said, right here? I said, oh yeah, yeah, this is our opportunity. I said, I’m going to pray for you right now. And you know what I said, don’t you? I said, God bless you.
You could have knocked her over with a feather. And I sensed this was a divine appointment. I was there to buy a cabinet for our church.
It’ll be installed this week. I was at Ikea to buy one of their pieces of, apparently there’s some wood in there somewhere. I know there’s a lot of glue.
I can smell the Elmer in it, but it turned out I wasn’t just there to pick up a cabinet. I was there for an appointment. And I’m going to be talking more about this in the coming weeks.
The baptism of the Holy Spirit is not there to make you feel all fuzzy and happy. It’s not to make you feel, it’s not about you at all, Bunky. When you see the Holy Spirit at work, and I’m going to be showing you this in a number of chapters.
The Holy Spirit is all about speaking. The Spirit of God came upon Saul, whose kingship was on the line. I mean, he was in big trouble.
When the Spirit of God came upon him, he prophesied. That didn’t make him a good guy. Beloved, when the Spirit of God comes on, it’s all about the speaking.
Jesus said, don’t leave Jerusalem until you’re empowered by the Holy Spirit and you shall be my spokesman. The fire of the Holy Spirit in the belly gets in the mind. Your fire, your mind’s on fire.
You see somebody, you speak the word, you know it’s an appointment. And when you speak, out of your innermost being flows a mighty river of God. That person sense love of Jesus.
And at times it will be under conviction. You can lead somebody to the Lord in a bus terminal. I did it in Hamilton one evening.
I led somebody standing outside a bus. We rode in the bus together from Toronto to Hamilton. And before he left the bus terminal, I led him in the sinner’s prayer.
I said, Jesus is going to make a difference in your life. It’s all about speaking. And so I’m troubled that in the Pentecostal Seminaries of Canada, we don’t use the terminology anymore.
They’re saying, well, it’s kind of subliminal. That’s listening to Mark Carney. You ask him a question, you get a word salad.
You don’t get anything like really, really significant. No politics, Dave. But when we say, well, we do believe you speak in tongues when you get the baptism of the Holy Spirit and it’s sort of in there, you just have to kind of dig around and find it.
No, no, no, don’t, don’t get political on me. Put it out there. The baptism of the Holy Spirit is about speaking.
The church today is to be a prophetical voice in the community. That’s our calling, to speak in a prophetic way. It’s time to sound the alarm.
It’s a dark hour. It’s a dark hour in the entire world. And the church is the only light in the tunnel.
We are the light. We’re not a train coming in the tunnel. We’re a light that’s bringing a message of clarity and a message of beauty, salvation, deliverance, and at times, a sweet aroma.
Hallelujah. I’m good until five o’clock. You better do something here.
Say amen or say Jesus, help them. I’ll finish. You’re already finished, David.
Okay, I just, I just have to do this. Verse 20, he said, a little while, not many days hence, the Holy Spirit’s going to come. And he said, on that day, that’s verse 20, at that day, you’ll know where I am.
This is Pentecost. We’re talking about the Holy of Holies. Verse 21, Jesus’ feet left the Mount of Olives, and away he went.
We’re all Jewish. We know that to go into an earthly tabernacle, a priest better be fully prepared, because if he’s not pure and clean, scrubbed with a brillo pad, if he’s not totally clean, he’ll die in the Holy of Holies. He tied a rope on his ankle.
Nobody would dare go in and get his dead body. That’s the ultimate presence of God. But now we see Jesus, and we know that he was dunked in our sin.
Father, forgive me. Father, why have you deserted me? Why have you walked away? Because he was, he was dipped in our sin. He was filled with our sin, but now we see him heading toward heaven.
He’s heading to the Holy of Holies. We don’t know where he is. We haven’t seen him since he left, but on that day, on the day of Pentecost, you’ll know where I am.
I am with my Father, but you’ll know more than that. You’ll know that I’m in you, and you’ll know that you are in me. On that day, they were suddenly filled with Jesus, filled with the Holy Spirit.
They knew where Jesus was. They knew where they were, and they knew what their commission was. Go out to the whole world and tell them the good news.
And the good news is, you shall receive power after that the Holy Ghost comes upon you. The best witnesses are the ones who are filled with the Holy Ghost. Heavenly Father, thank you for your divine truth.
Thank you for this holy book. Thank you for the history of this church. This church has been filled with the Spirit of God, fire birthed in their souls.
And here we are, this humble little group of people on Victoria Avenue, but from your vantage point, there’s thousands of us, 117 years of ministry in this location. How many people have served the Lord as a result of the fire that is burned in this place? And then the churches that we were partially, if not fully responsible for starting in the area. And then there’s the missionary work that we have supported.
Lord, you put a fire in our belly. Lord, help that fire to not go out. Help us to recommit and recommit and recommit again to be filled with the Spirit.
Help us never to try and do anything without the enabling of the Holy Spirit. We ask this in Jesus’ name. I got three amens.
Well, I guess the Lord got three amens. It’s a wonderful opportunity to serve the Lord. Doris, we pray for Bill.
We pray for Annette every day. You’re praying, aren’t you? You’re getting the messages from Jay-Z. She’s sending out messages.
She’s hoping that you’re going to keep track. I don’t know if the one I get sometimes just has three names on it, but there’s a long list. And every once in a while, you’ll send the whole list out, I guess.
And every month, the whole list comes out. And so we want you to pray for Daryl and Elsie and pray for everybody in between and for Donna and for your sister-in-law and for all of these needs. And there are more needs that we’re not sharing as of yet.
We wait for Doctor’s total report before we start splashing things. So there’s other things that are coming about, but we’re trusting in Jesus. Can you say amen? Well, you have a wonderful day and have a wonderful week.
If you have any questions about anything that I said today, ask Tim, the player, who plays the guitar.
