The-Person-and-Work-of-the-Holy-Spirit-by-R.A.-Torrey
The Baptism With the Holy Spirit
mony about Jesus Christ, that our sins were laid upon Him, and thus trusting God to forgive us and justify us. This then is the first step towards receiving the Holy
Spirit. But we must not only receive Jesus as Saviour, we must also receive Him as Lord. Of this we shall speak further in connection with another passage in the fourth step.
2. The second step in the path that leads into the blessing of being baptized with the Holy Spirit is renunciation of sin. Repentance as we have seen is a change of mind about sin as well as a change of mind about Christ ; a change of mind from that attitude of mind that loves sin and indulges sin to that attitude of mind that hates sin and renounces sin. This then is the second step renunciation of sin. The Holy Spirit is a Holy Spirit and we cannot have both Him and sin. We must make our choice between the Holy Spirit and unholy sin. We cannot have both. ^He that will not give up sin cannot have the Holy Spirit'^ ItTis not **""* <'''"' *"* " ' - ,',*.*.' *""- .*". *, ttL ^ enough that we renounce one sin or two sins or three sins or many sins, we must renounce all sin. If we cling to one single known sin, it will shut us out of the blessing. Here we find the cause of failure in many people who are praying for the baptism with the Holy
Spirit, going to conventions and hearing about the baptism with the Holy Spirit, reading books about the baptism with the Holy Spirit, perhaps spending whole nights in prayer for the baptism with the Holy Spirit, and yet obtaining nothing. Why ? Because there is some sin to which they are clinging. People often say to me, or write to me? u I have been praying for the
2i8 The Person and Work of the Holy Spirit baptism with the Holy Spirit for a year (five years, ten years, one man said twenty years). Why do I not receive ? " In many such cases, I feel led to reply, " It is sin, and if I could look down into your heart this moment as God looks into your heart, I could put my finger on the specific sin." It may be what you are pleased to call a small sin, but there are no small sins.
There are sins that concern small things, but every sin is an act of rebellion against God and therefore no sin is a small sin. A controversy with God about the smallest thing is sufficient to shut one out of the blessing. Mr. Finney tells of a woman who was greatly exercised about the baptism with the Holy Spirit.
Every night after the meetings, she would go to her rooms and pray way into the night and her friends were afraid she would go insane, but no blessing came. One night as she prayed, some little matter of head adornment, a matter that would probably not trouble many
Christians to-day, but a matter of controversy between her and God, came up (as it had often come up before) as she knelt in prayer. She put her hand to her head and took the pins out of her hair and threw them across
! " and instantly the Holy Ghost fell upon her. It was not so much the matter tc There go the room and said, of head adornment as the matter of controversy with God that had kept her out of the blessing.
If there is anything that always comes up when you get nearest to God, that is the thing to deal with. Some years ago at a convention in a Southern state, the presiding officer, a minister in the Baptist Church, called my attention to 3man and said, "That man is
the pope of our denomination in ; everything he says goes, but he is not at all with us in this matter, but I am glad to see him here." This minister kept attending the meetings. At the close of the last meeting where I had spoken upon the conditions of receiving the baptism with the Holy Spirit, I found this man awaiting me in the vestibule. He said, " I did not stand up on your invitation to-day." I replied, u I saw you did not." " I thought you said," he continued, a that you only wanted those to stand who could say they had absolutely surrendered to God ? " " That is what I did say," I replied. " Well, I could not say that." " Then you did perfectly right not to stand. I did not want you to lie to God." u Say," he continued, " you hit me pretty hard to-day. You said if there was anything that always comes up when you get nearest to God, that is the thing to deal with. Now there is something that always comes up when I get nearest to God. I am not going to tell you what it is. I think you know." "Yes," I replied. (I could smell it.) "Well, I simply wanted to say this to you." This was on Friday afternoon. I had occasion to go to another city, and returning through that city the following Tuesday morning, the minister who had presided at the meeting was at the station. " I wish you could have been in our Baptist ministers* meeting yesterday morning," he said ; " that man I pointed out to you from the north part of the state was present. He
Brethren, we have got up in our meeting and said, been all wrong about this matter,* and then he told what he had done. He had settled his controversy