In Luke 3:16 John the Baptist said, “I baptize you with water, but a mightier one than I is coming and He shall baptize you with the Holy Spirit and fire.”

Many believers do not recognize some very key things that Jesus told His disciples in John chapters 14, 15 and 16. He knew that He was to be killed, that He would be resurrected and come back. He also knew that He would leave a second time and that He would send the Holy Spirit to take His place.

He said the following knowing how we could feel fatherless if we could not experience His presence. “I will not leave you as orphans [fatherless]; I will come to you” (John 14:18).

He told His disciples before he ascended that they would be immersed into the Holy Spirit. “For John baptised with water, but in a few days you will be baptised with the Holy Spirit” (Acts 1:5). “But you will receive power when the Holy Spirit comes on you; and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth” (Acts 1:8).

He told them not to worry after He left. He explained that the Holy Spirit would take His place and make Him (Jesus, God) real to them. Read what Jesus told them in John 14:16-26.

Jesus told them that the Holy Spirit would make Him real to them. “When the Counsellor comes, whom I will send to you from the Father, the Spirit of truth who goes out from the Father, he will testify about me” (John 15:26).

“But I tell you the truth: It is for your good that I am going away. Unless I go away, the Counsellor will not come to you; but if I go, I will send him to you” (John 16:7).

Jesus told His men that he would come back soon. He did! He came back in the form of the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit and Jesus are not different people, they are the same, but in different form. The Holy Spirit can actually dwell inside humans, where Jesus was restricted to one human body.

The disciples had two experiences with the Holy Spirit. The original disciples received the Holy Spirit of the resurrected Christ in John 20:22. However these same men had no visible change of character until they received the Holy Spirit of the ascended Christ on the day of Pentecost in Acts chapter 2.

A. Resurrection Sunday, John 20:22.
            Resurrected Christ.
            In-breathed Spirit.
            Result was life.

B. Pentecost Sunday, Acts 2:4.
            Ascended and Glorified Christ.
            Outpoured Spirit.
            Result was power.

The group of 120 in Acts chapter 2 abandoned themselves, they became lost in the presence of God. They spent time and invested words for intimacy. They received power that transformed their lives, power to witness, power to have all their needs supplied, power to expand their influence in other lands and power to experience intimacy and fellowship with the Glorified Christ on a daily basis.

Jesus is no longer the man walking the Sea of Galilee, nor the man suffering on the Cross, nor the man who was simply resurrected. He is now different! No human being saw Jesus in this state, except John on the Isle of Patmos as recorded in the Book of Revelation. Look at Revelation chapter 1.

Notice, His disciples did not mourn in Acts chapters 1-3 as they did in the Book of John when He was crucified. This time, when He left, they took Him at His word of promise that He was coming back soon in another form. Not too many days after He left, He did come back as the Holy Spirit, and they were filled. Then, they proceeded to live their life in fellowship with Jesus just as if He were there with them (He was).

Baptised means to be immersed. First we are baptised with water and now with fire. The fire is His presence. When we are baptised in water we are (in type) dead, we are humiliated, but the water does not go into us and totally kill us. It is exterior. Baptism in the Holy Spirit is the fire of God going inside us. It is our choice. We can choose our pride over His presence and control over us. He wants to kill our old nature by fire. God promised Noah there would be no more water, but only fire. Demons are destroyed by fire not water.

Do we need to be filled more than once? Some denominations argue about this and miss the whole point. We are not independent containers filled with an outside source, as water from a pitcher being poured into a glass. If this were true, then perhaps we would need to be filled again and again because we have the possibility of leaking.

John 15 says that we are connected to our source like a branch on a vine. It is not a matter of being re-filled, but a matter of staying connected to the vine. The sap in the vine represents the Holy Spirit, Jesus is the vine and we are the branches. We need to abide in the vine. Jesus says that obedience to His Word is what keeps us abiding. The Baptism in the Holy Spirit is being flooded with God when we are connected to Him as the vine and the branch. His sap flows into us, and we stay connected if we abide.

How much filling is enough? Luke 6:45b says, “for of the abundance of the heart his mouth speaketh.” Personally, I like the idea that the Holy Spirit flows out of my mouth telling me that I am full!

There has been much confusion and controversy about the Baptism in the Holy Sprit. Some talk about the gifts of the Spirit being the main issue and some talk about tongues being the main issue. Some say baptism is for service, that if we really desire to serve Jesus and witness with power, we need to be filled with the Holy Spirit. They are not wrong, they all have merit, but I do not believe that they touch the primary purpose of the fullness of the Holy Spirit.

I feel that we need to leave the giving of gifts to the giver. I have personally had many of the gifts operate in my life from time to time, but not all of them.

I believe in speaking in tongues as a valuable and powerful gift. God uses it not only in public ministry, but more importantly He uses it to take control of our mind for His benefit. James said that the tongue is the rudder that guides the entire ship. If you want to give Jesus the rudder of your life, you should give Him your tongue. There is a full teaching on this in the ISOB curriculum called “The Holy Spirit and the tongue.”

I do not feel it is proper for people who have received the gifts to make those who have not received them feel as if there is something wrong with them. Neither is it proper for those who have not received the gifts to condemn those who have. Jesus, in Matthew 12:31, said that speaking against what the Holy Spirit is doing is a sure way to never receive those benefits in your own life. Blasphemy of the Holy Spirit is saying something is not of the Holy Spirit when it really is. If you are not sure, that is fine, but be careful never to speak against it unless you are truly sure and have confirmation that it is a counterfeit of Satan. It is better to be safe than sorry!

God’s wants to set us free from different kinds of slavery. However, the freedom is not the end purpose. The end purpose is to give us freedom so that we may enter into His presence and fellowship with Him, which will result in bearing fruit for our lives and for the Kingdom of God.

Jesus quoted Isaiah 61 in Luke 4:18 when He announced His purpose for His ministry. Isaiah 61 starts out with Jesus saying that the Spirit of the Lord has anointed Him to bring good news to the poor, afflicted and broken hearted. Jesus proclaims liberty to the captives, opens prisons for those who are bound, binds up the broken hearted and proclaims the “Acceptable year of the Lord” or “Year of Jubilee” (the time when slaves would go free). He goes on to list many other things that His ministry would accomplish.

He says that these prisoners and poor people would be changed and that they would be trees of righteousness, strong and in right standing with God. He said that they would no longer be heavy with sadness and mourning, but that they would be filled with joy.

Then He said that they would rebuild the waste places. In other words, their wasted lives would be rebuilt, like Nehemiah (whose name means the comforter or the Holy Spirit) rebuilding the broken down walls of Jerusalem. In addition, He said that all their needs would be taken care of and they would become priests of God, or His personal representatives. They would then, in turn, become deliverers and set others free.

Isaiah 61 summarized is that Jesus would convert people from prisoners to priests through the Holy Spirit. This is what we spoke about in Chapter 1 in this book, that we would bear fruit in all three areas of our lives; our character, our needs and our ministry to others. From prisoner to priest.

“The Spirit of the Lord God is on Me; because the LORD has anointed Me to:

  1. preach the Gospel to the poor;
  2. He has sent Me to bind up the broken-hearted,
  3. to proclaim liberty to the captives,
  4. and the opening of the prison to those who are bound” (Isaiah 61:1).
  5. “to preach the acceptable year of the LORD and
  6. the day of vengeance of our God;
  7. to comfort all who mourn;” (Isaiah 61:2).
  8. “to appoint to those who mourn in Zion, to give to them beauty for ashes,
  9. the oil of joy for mourning,
10. the mantle of praise for the spirit of heaviness;
11. so that they might be called trees of righteousness, the planting of the LORD, that He might be glorified” (Isaiah 61:3).
12. “And they will build the old wastes, they will raise up the ruins of former times. And they will repair the waste cities, the ruins of many generations” (Isaiah 61:4).
13. “And strangers will stand and feed your flocks, and the sons of the stranger will be your plowmen and your vinedressers” (Isaiah 61:5).
14. “But you will be named the priests of the LORD; it will be said of you, Ministers of our God; you will eat the riches of the nations, and you will revel in their glory” (Isaiah 61:6).
15. “For your shame you will have double; and for disgrace they will rejoice in their portion; therefore in their own land they will possess double; everlasting joy will be theirs” (Isaiah 61:7).

Jesus promised to do this for all of us, but He is not here on Earth any longer. He sent another comforter, the Holy Spirit, to take His place. The Holy Spirit is the one who now administers this promise to us. We cannot partake of all of these advantages if we are not in touch with Jesus through the Holy Spirit.

We need Jesus to be real to us. We need to be vitally linked with Him in order to experience all that is promised in Isaiah 61. When things are going bad in our lives, if we can hear Jesus speak to us, everything will be all right!

If we are prisoners, if we are poor, broken hearted and beat down, we do not need to wait to go to Heaven for help; we need it NOW! We can have it now in this life, but we need to be in touch with God. He needs to be real to us. He needs to be more than a religion, more than the doctrine of our denomination, more than the words of Scripture (as important as they are). We need to be in touch with the living Jesus in the same way as His disciples were when He was on Earth, and in the same way they were after He left Earth, as in the Book of Acts.

Ephesians 3:18-19 says, “That you may have the power and be strong to apprehend and grasp with all the saints, the experience of that love, what is the breadth and length and height and depth of it, That you may really come to know practically, through experience for yourselves, the love of Christ, which far surpasses mere knowledge without experience: that you may be filled through all your being unto all the fullness of God, may have the richest measure of the divine Presence, and become a body wholly filled and flooded with God Himself.”

God became real to Jacob in Genesis chapter 28. Jacob got a taste of God’s presence and then could not do without it! Genesis chapter 28 verses 10-17 tells about Jacob’s experience with God’s presence when he dreamed about the ladder connecting heaven and earth. Jacob arose the next morning early and built an altar there and called it Bethel, the House of God. He was completely captured by intimacy with God. God was real to him. Jacob was like you and me. He needed a lot of change. His flesh nature was corrupt. The only way God could change him, was to lure Jacob to fall in love with Him. God revealed Himself to Jacob. Jacob fell head over heels in love with God, and followed Him the rest of his life. Later, as they walked together, Jacob was finally changed from Jacob to Israel.

When Jesus came into my life, I was truly a spiritual prisoner. There were demons controlling my life. When I saw Jesus in the Book of Revelation as the ascended Christ, the victor and deliverer, I became a man wholly filled with the Holy Spirit. This occurred on the 26th day of August, 1979. Jesus became as real to me as the man next door. He spoke to me and listened to me. He was with me in my pain and troubles. When people made fun of me, He comforted me. When people tried to keep me captive, He would teach me truths that set me free. Pretty soon, as Isaiah in chapter 10:27 puts it, the anointing made my “neck” so thick that the yoke of oppression could no longer fit on me.

Little by little, Jesus not only set me free from the demons that were influencing me and holding me, but also from the demons that had gained a “home” in me. As I would fellowship with Jesus in the Word and prayer, I would cry uncontrollably, and masses of water and mucus would come out of my body. Luke 11:24 says that the demons come out of a man and wander in dry places, wanting to gain entry in the “wet” place again. The wet place, their original home, is man who is made up mostly of water. This deliverance continued weekly over a period of several months, maybe years, I cannot remember.

As time went on, I became free from the demons that used to hold me captive. My character began conforming to the image of Jesus. My needs began to be provided for. God gave me His choice for a wife and family.

After many years of discipline, He has made me a minister of God, as is promised in Isaiah 61. The agency that God used in this transformation was the Holy Spirit, who made Jesus real to me. Jesus did the work, the Holy Spirit was the agent inside me driving out everything not of God.

Notice that the theme Scripture for this Section, Hebrews 12 talks about running the race, but it also talks about getting rid of every weight and sin. “Therefore since we also are surrounded with so great a cloud of witnesses, let us lay aside every weight and the sin which so easily besets us, and let us run with patience the race that is set before us” (Hebrews 12:1).

The chapter goes on to talk about the reality of Heavenly Jerusalem, called Mt. Zion the city of the living God (the Kingdom of God). Apparently, getting rid of sin and weights, and going through the rest of the process described in Hebrews 12 has a lot to do with making the Kingdom of God real in our lives.

Let’s examine what the writer of Hebrews was saying to these people about running the race, getting free from weights and sin, and the Kingdom of God becoming real to us.

1. In Hebrews 12:2-4 we are told that we must stand with endurance. We must endure criticism, being misunderstood, persecution and standing in patience while Jesus is growing the seed in our heart for fruit.

2. In Hebrews 12:5-11 we are told that God will chastise us, not beat us up, but correct us as sons and daughters with love for our benefit. We truly need the chastisement of God. We have blind spots that we cannot see.

Jacob was a selfish and unruly person. God truly chastised him through circumstances until God changed his name from Jacob to Israel, from trickster to one who prevails with God.

We need to see our circumstances as re-engineered by God so that as we work through them, our character is changed into His likeness. This does not mean that God brings bad circumstances into our life. He does not; Satan does. You can be sure, however, that God uses those circumstances to grow us into His image. God uses His Word to chastise us, but there are areas of our old flesh nature that just have to go through trials to be burned off.

3. In Hebrews 12:12 and 13 we are encouraged to keep going when situations are looking bad.

4. In Hebrews 12:14 we are told to pursue peace and holiness, without which we will not see the Lord, or the Lord will not become real to us.

5. We are told in Hebrews 12:15 to pursue grace and avoid bitterness. We are also told to not be like Esau who lost his birthright and could no longer repent.

6. Now, here is the reward. Read Hebrews 12:18-29. You are come (past tense) to Mt. Zion, a spiritual kingdom, The Kingdom of God. It is in the now, not only in the hereafter. God wants us to live in the heavenly realm, right now, while we are still on Earth. We can actually live in the “next age,” the Kingdom Age (Hebrews 6:5), but we need to be filled with the Holy Spirit to experience this. He mentions that Mt. Zion, or the Kingdom of God, has several attributes.

a. First, is the living God. The Holy Spirit enables us to fellowship with the Living God now because He is here with us.

b. Next, is the Heavenly Jerusalem. The Holy Spirit enables us to live in the Kingdom of God, as a reality, now.

c. Then, angels are mentioned. We are not to get too focused on angels, but we need to know that they are here to do battle for us and they move at the Word of God.

d. We have come to the Church of the Firstborn, Jesus, those who are citizens of Heaven. This infers we are to be plugged into a good Bible believing, Spirit filled church.

e. God the Judge is mentioned in verse 23. I am glad that God is my judge, because that makes my savior my judge! He does not condemn, He convicts so that we can repent and win. God is also the judge of our enemy, Satan. He has judged him a loser. God will judge you righteous and judge Satan a loser in every trial of life.

f. Hebrews 12:23 mentions the spirits of the redeemed who have gone to Heaven. I do not believe in contacting the spirits of the saints gone before us, but I do believe that they see us. We are viewed and cheered on by the cloud of witnesses. Their testimony of faith is what we see.

g. Hebrews 12:24 tells us that we have Jesus as the Mediator of the blood covenant. Thank God for this. Jesus not only makes the blood covenant with us, but He was raised from the dead to become the mediator, the guarantee of the covenant. When we make mistakes, Jesus takes over until He can get to us to repent and confess our sin. He is our mediator, our advocate. He makes sure we win.

h. In Hebrews 12:25 we are warned to take this process very seriously, for if we neglect or reject this offer we end up in bad shape.

i. In Hebrews 12:26-28 we are told that God is shaking everything in Heaven and Earth, so that those things that need to be removed will be, and those things that are firm and stable, based upon God’s Kingdom, will stand the test and stand firm.

j. Finally Hebrews 12:29 tells us that God is a consuming fire. The consuming fire is the Holy Spirit. He comes to deliver us from all that can be shaken, from everything and every residue of the old creation, our flesh and sin nature.

1. We receive the Holy Spirit by faith. Faith in what? Jesus spoke about the fullness of the Holy Spirit in John 7:38-39, “He who believes on Me, as the Scripture has said, ‘Out of his belly shall flow rivers of living water.’ (But He spoke this about the Spirit, which they who believed on Him should receive; for the Holy Spirit was not yet given, because Jesus was not yet glorified).”

So Jesus needed to be glorified before we can have faith in receiving the Holy Spirit as an overflow of living water. What does glorified mean? Glorify is a word that means for the true thing to be revealed and disclosed. It is like someone taking a drape off of a new statue and revealing it for the first time.

In John 17:4-5 Jesus was praying to the Father and He said, “I have glorified You upon the earth. I have finished the work which You have given Me to do. And now Father, glorify Me with Yourself with the glory which I had with You before the world was.” Jesus revealed the Father to the people with whom He came into contact. Now it was the Father’s turn to show who Jesus really was.

How was Jesus glorified? Remember, glorified means to show the true identity of the person or object. In Luke 24:13-27 Jesus is talking to the two men on the road to Emmaus. He said, “‘Did not the Christ have to suffer these things and then enter his glory?’ And beginning with Moses and all the Prophets, he explained to them what was said in all the Scriptures concerning himself” (Luke 24:26,27). Then these two men got so excited that they found the 11 disciples and they began to tell them what Jesus had just revealed. All of the sudden the resurrected Jesus showed up at this meeting and took over. “He said to them, ‘This is what I told you while I was still with you: Everything must be fulfilled that is written about me in the Law of Moses, the Prophets and the Psalms.’ Then he opened their minds so they could understand the Scriptures. He told them, ‘This is what is written: The Christ will suffer and rise from the dead on the third day’” (Luke 24:44-46).

He gave them revelation or glorified Himself in Moses, Psalms and the Prophets. It says in verse 45 in the Amplified version, “He thoroughly opened up their minds to the Scriptures.” He was speaking about the Five books of Moses, the Books of the Prophets and the Psalms.

Shortly after this, Pentecost took place and the were baptised in the Holy Spirit and fire!

In Genesis as the creator and the seed of woman. He showed Himself to be the propagator of a new race through a blood covenant to replace the fallen race of Adam.

In Exodus, He showed Himself as the lawgiver and as the Passover Lamb for the broken law. He is the one who splits the Red Seas of our lives freeing us from the bondages of the world.

In Leviticus, He is the maker of the blood covenant, and the one who asks that we take up our cross and live in holiness.

In Numbers, He is our provider in the deserts of our life; He is our manna from Heaven and our water from the rock.

In Deuteronomy, He is the one who redeems us from the curse of the law.

In Psalms, He is our shepherd and the one to whom we can pour out all of the troubles of our heart in honesty and without condemnation, like David did.

In Isaiah He is the suffering Saviour who takes our sin and sickness.

In Joel, He shows the promise of the baptism in the Holy Spirit. However, before the promise in Joel chapter 2, He showed the required consecration which precedes the promise.

He also showed them what I saw when I got saved and filled at the same time in the Book of Revelation as it is foreshadowed in Ezekiel and Daniel.

In Ezekiel 37, He is the one who gives our dry bones the new birth with the Holy Spirit. In chapters 38-39, He defeats our enemies. In chapters 40-42, He shows us the temple of God so that we will know that we are invited to get into a close relationship with Him.

In Ezekiel 43, He showed them the glory of the throne and the tabernacle where God meets man as in Revelation 21. In Chapter 44-46, He asks us to consecrate ourselves so that we may be baptised in the Holy Spirit.

In Ezekiel 47, as in Revelation 22, He is the one who baptizes with the Holy Spirit which causes the river to flow out of our innermost beings into the dead sea of humanity so that people can be made alive with God.

In Ezekiel 48:35 His name is “the Lord is there,” in the heavenly Jerusalem dwelling with His people.

In Daniel chapters 1-6, He reveals Himself as the one who asks us to be in the world but not of the world. He is with us in the fiery furnaces and lion dens of our lives.

In Daniel chapter 7, He shows Himself as the Ancient of days who gave kingdom victory to the saints. In chapters 8-9 the battles are likened to the battles in Revelation.

In Daniel 10:5, He shows the ascended victorious Christ as in Revelation. Chapters 10 and 11 shows more war.

Daniel 12 tells about the need to stand, for some will be worn out by the enemy. Now look at Daniel 12:12. For those who stand to the end, there will be victory. This is what I saw when I got saved and filled with the Holy Spirit at the same time in 1979!

In the New Testament, Jesus truly revealed Himself as the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world. He resolved the paradoxes of the Old Testament that said that God is merciful and forgives sin, yet visits the inequities upon the children of up to four generations (Exodus 34:6-7).

He revealed Himself as the Son of God, as the Word of God, as the Truth, the Life and the Way!

He revealed Himself as the Messiah who will come back a second time as a great King on the throne.

In John 14-16, He revealed Himself as the Holy Spirit who would live in His disciples.

In Luke 24 and Acts 1 Jesus told His disciples to consecrate their lives and go and tarry or wait until the promise came. This is our part: obedience, consecration and abandonment.

2. We need to be hungry for God to be real to us. The 120 in the Upper Room were just a small number of people who Jesus had revealed Himself to after the resurrection. There were at least 500. What happened to the others? Perhaps that were not hungry enough. Maybe they were too proud, or too engrossed in their work or their family. Maybe they were too worried what others would think of them. Remember the 120 were criticized and laughed at.

3. We have to be radical in the Word to be victorious. The blood covenant is cut not by blood but by words. The more Word you have the more blood you have, the more character of Jesus you have, the more sin He removes, the less influence demons have, and the more of the Holy Spirit you have. “For the one whom God has sent speaks the words of God, for God gives the Spirit without limit” (John 3:34).

4. We need to be open to Jesus and trust Him. Luke 11:11-12 says, “If a son shall ask bread of any of you that is a father, will he give him a stone, or if he ask a fish, will he for a fish give him a serpent? Or if he shall ask an egg, will he offer him a scorpion? If you then, being evil know how to give good gifts unto your children: how much more shall your heavenly father give the Holy Spirit to them that ask Him?”

5. The Holy Spirit always honors repentance. He seems to show up when we turn from our sin, the ways of the world, our pride and our laziness. Acts 26:18 says, “in order to open their eyes so that they may turn from darkness to light, and from the authority of Satan to God, so that they may receive remission of sins and an inheritance among those who are sanctified by faith in Me.”

Prayer. Lord Jesus, the Word of God says that you have a desire to fill me with your Spirit so that You and I can be more intimate. I am hungry for you and your presence in my life. Jesus, I believe your Word. I confess to you that I want everything you have for me. Come, Jesus, baptise me with the Holy Spirit and fire. I am open and ready for the fire in my life. I renounce and repent from all sin in my life. I forgive everyone who has wronged me. I offer myself to you a living sacrifice. You are sovereign over my life. Have your way. I offer to you all of my members, my mouth, my tongue, my hands, feet, ears and eyes.

ISOB Discipleship Training Manual. Larry Chkoreff Who God is (Baptism Holy Spirit)

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