What is the Baptism of the Holy Spirit?

Benjamin and Jace are joined by Meghan Bailey  for a wonderful discussion about Holy Spirit baptism, the gift of tongues, and the Power needed for the Christian life.

Meghan is an Elder at River House championing prophetic ministry.

Show Notes:

“I’m a little concerned right now. About… your salvation and stuff. How come you have not been baptized?”

-Nacho Libre 

1 John 4

Ephesians 1:13

Luke 24:49

Acts 1:8

Acts chapter 2, chapter 8, chapter 10

Romans chapter 8, chapter 12

1 Corinthians 12

John 3:31

James 1:17

Testimonies of the baptism of the Holy Spirit

Duncan Campbell

“But listen, friends, as I lay there, God the Holy Ghost came upon me. Wave after wave came rolling over me until the love of God swept through me like a mighty river! So much so, that there were moments… now listen, my daughter beside me put her hand on my shoulders and she prayed, ‘Oh God, keep his reason to daddy.’ I was never more sane in my life! But I was so wrought by the Holy Ghost that I cried and I laughed and I prayed.”

Someone asked me, ‘Did you speak in tongues?’ Oh, I was asked that again and again. No, my dear people, I’ve never spoken in tongues nor have I ever been in a meeting where tongues have been practiced… No dear people… mind you, when I say that, don’t think that I’m denying the gifts mentioned in the New Testament, precious gifts when God gives them. But all I can say is that it never came to me!”

“But I say that the baptism of the Holy Ghost came to me… in a mighty cleansing, empowering power!”

(A professor essentially asks him what difference the experience made in his life and he responds):

Well, I think, professor, that the difference must be obvious to you from what has already happened, ‘I said. ‘I went out to preach the same sermons with this difference- that I now saw hundreds converted, hundreds brought savingly to Christ.”

R.A. Torrey

“I had been a minister for some years before I came to the place where I saw that I had no right to preach until I was definitely baptized with the Holy Ghost… Then just as far as I could, I shut myself up alone in my study and spent the time continually on my knees asking God to baptize me with the Holy Spirit… I recall the exact spot where I was kneeling in prayer in my study… It was a very quiet moment, one of the most quiet moments I ever knew… Then God simply said to me, not in any audible voice, but in my heart, ‘It’s yours. Now go and preach.”

Some time after this experience (I do not recall just how long after), while sitting in my room one day, that very same room… suddenly, as near as I can describe it, though it does not exactly describe it, I was struck from my chair onto the floor and I found myself shouting (I was not brought up to shout and I am not of the shouting temperament, but I shouted like the loudest shouting Methodist), ‘Glory to God, glory to God, glory to God,’ and I could not stop. I tried to stop, but it was just as if some other power than my own was moving my jaws. At last, when I had succeeded in pulling myself together, I went downstairs and told my wife what had just happened. But that was not when I was baptized with the Holy Spirit. I was baptized with the Holy Spirit when I took Him by faith in the naked Word of God…”

Jonathan Edwards

Once as I rode out into the woods for my health, in 1737, having alighted from my horse in a retired place, as my manner commonly had been to walk for divine contemplation and prayer, I had a view that for me was extraordinary, of the glory of the Son of God. As near as I can judge, this continued about an hour, and kept me the greater part of the time in a flood of tears and weeping aloud. I felt an ardency of soul to be what I know not otherwise how to express, emptied and annihilated; to love Him with a holy and pure love; to serve and follow Him; to be perfectly sanctified and made pure with a divine and heavenly purity.”