Pentecost is for Today and for YOU!

I attended an Anglican church this morning with a friend, to celebrate Pentecost Sunday. I had been talking and studying with him about the New Testament teaching that “Pentecost” is an event that is supposed to be a part of EVERY true disciple’s experience, normally at or soon after their baptism. He is still “on the fence” about it.

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“As I mentioned to you this morning, the congregation would be very blessed if John were allowed to preach regularly. His theological depth was very good, and there is a kindness/gentleness in his heart that blessed me.

But John is both an inadvertent perpetrator and a victim of the “experiential disease” that has been afflicting Christendom for many centuries now: the substitution of theologizing ABOUT the Pentecostal Spirit for the much more personally important EXPERIENCING of the Pentecostal Spirit, which is no longer actually being “received” (i.e, EXPERIENCIALLY received, which is the only way He IS received!) In the Episcopal/Anglican churches, the charismatic movement of the 60’s & early 70’s has come and gone, and the churches have returned to their ages-long substitution of TALKING about the Holy Spirit: how the Spirit is also divine and one of the three persons in the Holy Trinity, how the Spirit is at work as He always has been, helping us draw near to God, how the Spirit worked so powerfully to draw people to Christ in the New Testament times, the famous “so and so’s” theology of the Holy Spirit, et cetera. I wrote several twenty-page papers myself in my schools and actually thought I knew what I was talking about!

But you will have perhaps observed today that John did not ONCE mention that, in the New Testament, the coming of the Holy Spirit was always EXPERIENCED, and experienced in a way that you could REMEMBER where and when He “fell” upon you (see Acts: 2, 8, 10, 19 – ESPECIALLY 19!). Until your own Pentecost has happened, you have not yet “received” the Holy Spirit, and – at best – as Jesus said to His dedicated disciples, “He has been WITH you but WILL be IN you.” They were already fully consecrated to Jesus (except Judas), had left all things that make you secure in order to follow Him, were already healing the sick and casting out evil spirits, yet the Spirit was not yet “IN” them. The fact that you can do and feel all kinds of wonderful things connected with God is no proof AT ALL that you have received His Holy Spirit. Is that not obvious?

The desire to see Jesus, and to be united with Him creates a natural desire to have Pentecost become an experienced, remembered, and continually enjoyed Holy Presence. The stronger the first desire, the stronger will become the second (and conversely…).

Bad theology resists enabling that to happen, but good (i.e., Biblically faithful) theology HELPS the commanded Pentecostal experience to happen.

“Christ IN you, the hope of glory” was written to an APOSTOLIC audience, not current members of churches: virtually all of them had EXPERIENTIALLY received His Holy Spirit. The anemic Christianity of modern times is laying claim to a Presence that has not yet been asked for, expected, or received, in the way Peter described when justifying why he baptized Cornelius:

“44 While Peter was still speaking these words, the Holy Spirit fell on all who were hearing the message. 45 Well the believers of the circumcision [Jews] who had come with Peter were astonished, because the gift of the Holy Spirit had also been poured out on the Gentiles, 46 in that they heard them speaking in tongues and magnifying God. Then Peter responded: 47 ‘Surely no one can forbid the water, can he, that these should not be baptized who RECEIVED the Holy Spirit just like we did?’ ” (Acts 10).

The true Holy Spirit of Jesus experientially “FALLS” and “FILLS” and causes Jesus’s promise to be fulfilled quite literally: “4 And being assembled together with them, He commanded them not to depart from Jerusalem, but to wait for the Promise of the Father, ‘which,’ He said, ‘you have heard from Me; 5 for John truly immersed in water, but you shall be immersed in the Holy Spirit not many days from now.”

You will notice that I translated the terms as “immersed in” and not “baptized with.” “Baptize” is a very bad “translation” – actually, not a translation at ALL, but rather a transliteration, and it creates no picture at all within the hearer’s mind. “Immersed in the Holy Spirit” actually sounds so much more experiential than “baptized with,” because it clearly makes the act of the Spirit’s falling be pictured as a parallel to when you experience jumping into the water, immersing ALL of you into the reality and the dimension in which the Spirit of Jesus moves.

The experience of Pentecost is not a one-time “experience” like getting shot, struck by lightning, or graduating from High School. Rather it is like being “regenerated” with a NEW nature, from a purely land-breathing creature into one of those fish that can breathe both air AND water. And the experienced Pentecostal event is like getting thrown into the water for the first (of MANY) times! The Holy Spirit, and Jesus, and the Father are all “FISH.” So that is what you really want to prepare for NOW, no?