September 2

Biblical Evidence of the Baptism

Part One

Did you receive the Holy Spirit when you believed?
—Acts 19:2

Scripture reading: Acts 19:1-20

Let me tell you about my own experience of being baptized with the Holy Spirit. It had to be something that was based on solid facts in order to move me. I was certain that I had received the Holy Spirit and absolutely rigid in this conviction. Many years ago, a man came to me and said, “Wigglesworth, do you know what is happening in Sunderland, England? People are being baptized in the Holy Spirit exactly the same way that the disciples were on the Day of Pentecost.” I said, “I would like to go.”

Immediately, I took a train, went to Sunderland, and met with the people who had assembled for the purpose of receiving the Holy Spirit. Continuously, I caused disturbances, until the people wished I had never come. They said that I was disrupting the conditions for people to receive the baptism. But I was hungry and thirsty for God, and had gone to Sunderland because I had heard that God was pouring out His Spirit in a new way. I had heard that God had now visited His people and manifested His power, and that people were speaking in tongues as on the Day of Pentecost.

Therefore, when I first got to Sunderland, I said to the people, “I cannot understand this meeting. I have left a meeting in Bradford all on fire for God. The fire fell last night, and we were all laid out under the power of God. I have come here for tongues, and I don’t hear them – I don‘t hear anything.”

“Oh!” they said. “When you get baptized with the Holy Spirit, you will speak in tongues.”

“Oh, is that it?” I said. “When the presence of God came upon me, my tongue was loosened, and when I went in the open air to preach, I really felt that I had a new tongue.”

“Ah, no,” they said, “that is not it.”

“What is it, then?” I asked.

“When you get baptized in the Holy Spirit —”

“I am baptized,” I interjected, “and there is no one here who can persuade me that I am not baptized.” So I was up against them, and they were up against me.

I remember a man getting up and saying, “You know, brothers and sisters, I was here three weeks and then the Lord baptized me with the Holy Spirit, and I began to speak with tongues.”

I said, “Let us hear it. That’s what I’m here for.”

But he could not speak in tongues at will; he could only speak as the Spirit gave him the ability, and so my curiosity was not satisfied. I was doing what others are doing today, confusing the twelfth chapter of 1 Corinthians with the second chapter of Acts. These two chapters deal with different things; one deals with the gifts of the Spirit, and the other deals with the baptism of the Spirit with the accompanying sign of tongues.

I saw that these people were very earnest, and I became quite hungry for tongues. I was eager to see this new manifestation of the Spirit, and, as I said, I would be questioning all the time and spoiling a lot of the meetings. One man said to me, “I am a missionary, and I have come here to seek the baptism in the Holy Spirit. I am waiting on the Lord, but you have come in and are spoiling everything with your questions.” I began to argue with him; the argument became so heated that when we walked home, he walked on one side of the road, and I walked on the other.

That night, there was to be another meeting, and I purposed to go. I changed my clothes and left my key in the clothes I had taken off. As we came from the meeting in the middle of the night, I found that I did not have my key with me, and this missionary brother said, “You will have to come and stay with me.” But do you

think we went to sleep that night? Oh, no, we spent the night in prayer. We received a precious shower from above. The breakfast bell rang, but that was nothing to me. For four days, I wanted nothing but God.

Thought for today: If you only knew the unspeakably wonderful blessing of being filled with the third person of the Trinity, you would set aside everything else to wait for this infilling.

Smith Wigglesworth Devotional: 365 Day Devotional
By Whitaker House

Smith Wigglesworth was a man who took God at his word, and God used his faith as a model for others. Explore these daily truths from Scripture and the writings of the Apostle of Faith, and you’ll quench your spiritual thirst, conquer defeating fears, be an effective soul winner, and see impossibilities turn into realities. 558 pages.

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More Daily Devotions for September 2

Streams in the Desert by Mrs. Charles E. Cowman
Morning & Evening by Charles Spurgeon