Baptism in the Holy Spirit by Derek Prince

Author:Derek Prince
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub, pdf
Published: 2012-01-03T16:45:01+00:00

The Purposes of the Experience

I have been negative in order to be positive, if I may put it that way. There are a number of important purposes that the baptism in the Holy Spirit is intended by God to accomplish in the life of the believer. How much it will accomplish depends on the believer, however.

Gateway to the Supernatural

The following passage contains a great promise if you read it with discernment:

4 For it is impossible for those who were once enlightened, and have tasted of the heavenly gift, and were made partakers of the Holy Ghost,

5 and have tasted the good word of God, and the powers of the age to come. (Hebrews 6:4-5)

The "partakers of the Holy Ghost" have tasted the powers of the world to come. They have been brought into contact with a power that belongs to the next age, but it is available to them in this age. In this way, the baptism in the Holy Spirit is intended to be the gateway into the supernatural. It is not a goal; it is a gateway. It is intended by

God that thereafter the Spirit-baptized believer should walk in the supernatural. In fact, if I may put it this way, the supernatural should become natural.

If you take the book of Acts as a picture of the Christian church, you will see a supernatural description as you read it. If you are intellectually honest, I offer this as a challenge to you: find one chapter out of the twenty-eight in Acts which would be left untouched if all references to the supernatural were removed. My answer is that not one of them, not one, would be left intact.

We cannot refer to New Testament Christianity without including the supernatural. At the very least, we can talk about it, but we cannot truly experience it.

I love Acts 19:11 in particular, which says, "And God wrought special miracles by the hands of Paul." Do you know what I like? I like the word special. In the original Greek, it means the kind of miracles that do not happen every day. In other words, miracles were an everyday occurrence in the early church, but these were something extraordinary. Even the early church turned around to pay attention to these.

Again, let me say that we can theorize all we want to about the New Testament church, but we cannot experience it without the supernatural. Be honest.

For Witnessing

8 But ye shall receive power, after that the Holy Ghost is come upon you: and ye shall be witnesses unto me... (Acts 1:8)

The baptism in the Holy Spirit is intended to clothe us with supernatural power from on high so that we can be witnesses. Notice that witnesses are unto Jesus Christ. They are not unto a doctrine and not primarily unto an experience but unto Jesus Himself. Many of us in the Pentecostal movement have gone astray through becoming witnesses to a denomination, a church, or an experience. However, the true purpose is to witness to Jesus Christ.

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