The Obvious Slips by me Again

I am often surprised to see that I have failed to notice something obvious about God. It has happened again.

Before Jesus received the baptism with the Holy Spirit and started his ministry, God sent John the Baptist out and told him to baptize people with water. This was a baptism of repentance. People were supposed to renounce their evil ways.

John’s ministry was strange and successful, so it made people curious, and they asked him about himself. In the book of Luke, he says this:

“I indeed baptize you with water; but One mightier than I is coming, whose sandal strap I am not worthy to loose. He will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and fire. His winnowing fan is in His hand, and He will thoroughly clean out His threshing floor, and gather the wheat into His barn; but the chaff He will burn with unquenchable fire.”

Winnowing is the process of separating useful grain from chaff, which includes stems and debris. A winnowing fan is a tool used to throw harvested grain and chaff into the air. The idea is that the wind will catch the chaff and blow it to the side, and the grain will fall straight down, where it can be gathered. In ancient times, chaff was gathered after winnowing, and it was burned.

The Bible uses wheat and barley to symbolize human beings. The seeds are useful, and they represent people who belong to God. The chaff is useless, and it represents people who refuse to submit. The burning of chaff symbolizes the flames of hell.

Nearly all Christians know about the first baptism, which is water baptism. The ancient Jews practiced it as a purification ritual. When you are water baptized, you are supposed to be immersed, not sprinkled, and it doesn’t work if you don’t know what’s happening. It won’t work on a baby.

The second baptism is the baptism with the Holy Spirit. Some fortunate people receive this at the same time as the water baptism, but many don’t. The baptism with the Holy Spirit causes the Holy Spirit to rest in you permanently, to the extent that you allow him, and it gives you access to the gifts and fruit of the Spirit.

What about the third baptism? That’s the one that got by me. John said Jesus would baptize us with fire, but when you go to church, pastors don’t invite people to come up for fire baptisms. They baptize with water, and some baptize with the Holy Spirit, but have you ever seen a preacher offer people a fire baptism? I haven’t.

If Jesus offers three baptisms, clearly, we should pursue all three. Fire baptism has to be important, or else John wouldn’t have mentioned it.

Last week, if memory serves, I started asking God for the baptism with fire. I thought it had to be some kind of supernatural thing that increased a person’s zeal. Whatever it was, I wanted it, and I didn’t think I had it.

This week, I have had a very unpleasant time. I will spare you the details. I don’t want people bothering me about it and prying. I got a very nasty surprise caused by my own character flaws, and it came at a time when I was in need of rest, not another gut punch.

Of course, I prayed and asked for help. I used all my supernatural tools. I wondered what was going on. Why did I get hit by a big wave right after increasing my prayer life and throwing out big bags of secular CD’s? I thought that if I strengthened my commitment, things would get better, not worse.

Night before last, a thought came to me. I had been asking for the baptism with fire.

What does fire represent in the Bible? God’s wrath. The fire of hell, which is currently burning many people you and I know, is God’s anger. The fire that destroyed Sodom and Gomorrah was God’s anger.

The temple used fire to roast sacrificial animals. The fire represented God’s anger, and the animals took the place of sinful people. In movies, we see the temple as a nice clean place full of people in neat robes, but in real life, it was like a barbecue joint in some ways. Blood was everywhere, and the smell of burning meat was always in the air. They had to change the temple veil periodically because it got caked with blood.

Depending on your willingness to submit, the fire of God will either consume you or cleanse you.

I think the baptism with fire may be a time of having your sins and iniquities exposed to you so you can repent and take action against them. Maybe God uses it to burn away the parts of you that are chaff.

Last night, I saw a very interesting parallel. God has baptized the entire world with water, the Holy Spirit, and fire. I don’t mean he has baptized every individual. Just that he has provided the world, generally, with these baptisms.

The flood was a baptism by water. It drowned the wicked people who hated God and left one righteous man and seven individuals who were spared because they were related to him.

When Jesus died on the cross, he opened the door to the baptism with the Holy Spirit. On Pentecost, the Spirit came down and fell on the believers in the upper room, and since then, he has been available to all of us.

The Bible says God will not destroy the world with water again. It says that he will use fire the next time. A global baptism with fire.

The Bible tells us there was no rain before the flood. Where there is no rain, there are no rainbows. After the flood, God put a rainbow in the sky to mark his promise that he would never destroy the world with water again.

Homosexuals use the rainbow as their symbol now. Why? Rainbows have nothing to do with sex, and homosexuals are the same color as the rest of us. They use it because it’s Satan’s way of taunting God. “Look what we’re doing. Your hands are tied. You can’t drown us again.”

God won’t drown us over our new rebellion, but when he comes back to cleanse the world, the people who are still here will wish drowning were still an option. Drowning beats burning alive.

When the believers in the upper room were baptized with the Holy Spirit, flames appeared above their heads. I assume this means they were fortunate enough to be cleansed quickly, without going through what a person might have to go through today. I’m not sure.

It may be that the baptism with fire isn’t a time of purifying through suffering. Maybe it really is a sudden supernatural thing, and we should be trying to receive it, just as the disciples did. Now that I think about it, this seems more likely than my other theory. I don’t think God would give the disciples anything he would not give us. We have everything else he gave them.

In Psalm 104, and again in Hebrews, God is described as the one ‘who makes His angels spirits, His ministers a flame of fire.” “Minister” means “servant.”

It sounds like exposing and destroying sin and iniquity, primarily one’s own, is a very important part of serving God.

I’m learning a lot about my faults. I won’t lie; it’s tiresome. I have a lot of faults, so I’ve been learning about them for a very long time. I corrupted myself very badly, so there are a lot of smelly layers to the onion. I wish this weren’t the case, but it was all my doing, so who do I complain to?

I’ve learned how badly laziness and dread have messed up my life. I’ve also learned the covetousness is a major problem.

To covet means to set your heart on something. It’s good to covet salvation and the other things of God. It’s bad to covet objects, money, sexual partners, fame, glory, food, and so on.

I’m starting to realize how many sins are connected to covetousness.

Consider sexual sin. How do you end up in bed with a woman? You see her. You feel like you have to have her. You talk to her. You persuade. You do whatever it takes. First thing you know, you’re fornicating, bringing curses down on both of you.

What about gluttony? Food doesn’t jump out and attack you, no matter how much it seems like it does. A little voice says, “Pizza would be good right now.” You start thinking about toppings and garlic rolls. You think about beverages. Before long, you’re sitting behind a huge meal, eating 3,000 calories.

I write incredible recipes, or at least I used to. Ideas would pop into my head. “What if I took the bones out of a turkey and filled it with cornbread stuffing flavored with champagne?” “What if I put sour cream in a roti filled with curry?” I would dwell on these things, not realizing what I was doing was stupid and counterproductive, and I ended up with recipes.

I made food that was very hard for people to resist. That’s not what food is supposed to be. It should taste good, but it shouldn’t be meth on a plate.

We covet jobs. We covet houses. We even covet venting our anger on others. We think, “Just wait until I see him. I’ll say this, and I’ll do that, and I’ll fix him.” We look forward to the satisfaction.

When you covet, you set a course. Once the course is set, it’s not easy to change. The easiest way to avoid going somewhere you shouldn’t go is to avoid planning it.

The basic concept of nipping bad thoughts in the bud has been with me for a while. Sometimes when I looked at women, I heard myself think, “If you’re not going to the store, don’t get in the car.” That would put an end to the thoughts. But I didn’t realize I was dealing with covetousness.

Coveting is a type of obsessive thought which comes from demons and the flesh. We should not have obsessive, repetitive thoughts. They block the channel between us and the Holy Spirit. They prevent us from receiving his instruction.

Lust, greed, selfishness, stinginess, cruelty, and gluttony are all types of covetousness.

Coveting gets in the way of peace. Maybe that’s because it makes you feel that you can’t rest until you have what you covet. That’s a delusion. Often the things we covet decrease our peace after we get them.

Coveting seems a lot like worrying. It’s useless obsessing on future outcomes.

I couldn’t have told you these things 6 months ago. They surprise me. I wish I had found a preacher who could have told me these things, back in 1986 when I received the baptism with the Holy Spirit and didn’t know what to do. Preachers were too busy trying to make money. They knew practically nothing that was useful, and they didn’t care about me. That hasn’t changed. I have had to wait for God himself to teach me.

I am going to talk to God about the baptism with fire. If there is any way I can get a supernatural change, without a period of torment, I would like to receive it. I hope this is the way it works, because I have made an Augean stable of myself. The job of cleaning myself up is far too great for me.

Presumably, the third baptism and the resulting sanctification will give me a better life. I should have more peace and more authority. I should get faster and better answers to prayer. I should be healthier, with less involvement with doctors. This is what I hope.

I have never known what was good for me. I grabbed at whatever looked good. I need to get my flesh out of the way so I can see and go after what God has chosen for me.

Whatever happens, I’ll write about it. I hope I come back eventually with a good report that helps other people.