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Show #16, p. 2 Hello, there ••••• It's a bit overwhelming to find myself the major contributor to this Message, but Father felt my belated piece for the last Message was worth sharing with you, which put me in a very humble frame of mind. So, for your careful, loving and, I beg of you, prayerful, consideration, here 'tis. It is now twelve years since I entered the domestic missions' field, and in that time I have been privileged to -see the sacrificial work of missionaries on the Navajo Reservation; I have rejoiced with them when we have seen evidences of the impact of the Gospel on the hearts and in the lives of those to whom they have been ministering. But far more often I have wanted to weep (and frequently have) at the relatively meagre returns for such a great • deal of loving work. And I couldn't help asking, "What 's wrong~' Why do people almost have to be coaxed into being baptized? Why aren't they clamor- . ing at the door begging to be born anew into the life_ of Christ? What do they need that we are somehow failing to provide?" Well, tears, prayers and a profound personal experience prodljc-ed -·the answer--and I found it was all there, plain as a pikestaff, in the book recounting the Acts of the Apostles-the growth of the young church was due to the tremendous surge of life given to believers--the Body of Christ--by the operation within each one of them and within the community of the Giver of Life, OUr Lord the Holy Spirit. "You must wait .. , the Lord Jesus warned his followers before his ascension, "for the promise made by my Father, about which you have heard me speak. · John, as you know, baptized with water, but you will be baptized with the Holy sp±~it, and within the next few days ••••• you will receive power when the Holy Spirlt comes upon you; and you will bear witness for me in Jerusalem, and allover Judaea and Samaria, and away to the ends of the earth." And it all happened, just as he said, for "when the day of Pentecost was fully come ••• " the church was born, the evangelizing church, the church that was heard by Jews and Gentiles, the church that swept the known world in a fantastically short period of time. We've all been hypnotized to some extent by the modernistic philosophers, the demythologizers, the existentialists and the Devil-knows-whatists, but in spite of them we know that Jesus is Lord, the Word of -God is a lamp unto our feet, and we can all rejoice in Peter's wonderful prophecy. after he had quoted Joel's great prophecy to the crowd assembled round the house on that day of Pentecost, he himself prophesied. "For the promise is to you, and to your children, and to all who are far away , everyone whom the Lord our God may call." And, praise God, you and I are the ones who are "far away" (in time, that is), and I pray that everyone of us is among those whom the Lord our God is calling. Yes, the full blessing of Pentecost is for us. And at this stage of the world's history we surely need it. "Save yourselves, " Peter said, "from this crooked age." He might have been speaking today. NOW, the "Pentecostal movement .. , or "the Baptism-in the Holy Spirit" claims to be the fulfillment in this e r a of the Joel/peter prophecies, and I think that sooner or later we 'll all be forced either to accept or reject this claim. It's hardly possible for Christians to be neutral about it. In 1946 the late Anglican Benedictine monk, Dom Gregory Dix, delivered a somewhat startling lecture, later published under the title "The Theology of Confirmation in Relation to Baptism", (Unhappily, it seems to be now out of print). Here are a few excerpts. " •••• it seems difficult to exaggerate the importance of the fact that for the Christian as for the Church, Baptism into the death and resurrection of Christ and the Pentecostal Baptism of the Spirit are not one thing but two, both of them necessary and inseparably connected, but not the same. It is after our Lord's own Baptism in the Jordan ••• that the Messianic Spirit descends upon Him. It is after Jesus is 'glorified' in death and resurrection ••• that the Spirit is given, first to the Apostles and then to the Church corporately as associated with them ••• it is a more Scriptural as well as a more dynamic notion of 'salvation' which insists that it cannot be passively received, that it is in fact radically incomplete until the full power of operation of the new divine life from within the Christiam has been bestowed." |