The Great Experience
The Holy Ghost is our Sanctifier, and when He sanctifies He takes up His abode in the heart. His sanctifying baptism purifies the heart and He comes to dwell therein.
He is the abiding Comforter. He does not come and go occasionally, but remains; and once being filled with God, it is the believer's privilege to keep filled without a break.
Many of the true saints of God have had years of continued sanctified experience without a lapse. It may take years to learn how to keep one's self in the love and blessing of God, but it is blessedly possible, and an experience of that kind is greatly to be desired and sought after.
The secret is being kept "moment by moment" for "He is able to keep you from stumbling." John says "that the anointing which ye have received of Him abideth in you" (1 John 2: 27, KJV).
He says nothing about receding, cessation, or lapsing, but he does say that there is an anointing which abides.
One which sanctifies wholly, purifies completely, and keeps sanctified and purified with the anointing continually upon the soul.
Don't look around you to see who has it and who has it not, but look steadily into the face of Jesus until that anointing which abides comes upon you in full measure.
Many take it by faith, which of course is the only way to receive it; yet they have it by faith only. The Holy Ghost sanctifies you not so much by faith as through your faith. Your faith is the connecting link. It is not the faith which sanctifies, but the Holy Ghost in answer to your faith.
We have no evidence that the apostles ever lost the filling, the anointing which they received on the day of Pentecost. No evidence that they ever needed to be re-baptized with the Holy Ghost, or re-sanctified.
The baptism which they received was abiding. It stayed with them in all their trials and persecutions and successes.
The Word says they were all filled, and to all accounts, the filling was abiding. There are only five passages where the word "filled" is used in reference to the Apostles:
Acts 2:4 is the historic statement, “They were all filled with the Holy Ghost,” referring to all of the Apostles who were in the upper room on that great day of Pentecostal power.
Acts 4:31: "They were all filled with the Holy Ghost, and they spake the word of God with boldness." This was not a new filling or a new anointing, but a filling for the first time of some new disciples who were not present at Pentecost, and of course, the recording of the filling would take in all who were present.
Acts 9:17 and 13:9 use the word "filled" to refer to Paul who was not present at Pentecost, and no other passage concerning Paul's experience is given. His once receiving the baptism was sufficient for it to abide with him.
Acts 13:52: "the disciples were filled" has reference to the occasion when the envious Jews broke up a meeting in which Paul and Barnabas were present and drove them away from their coasts. As a result of this persecution, through prayer, they were filled with joy and with the Holy Ghost.
The baptism which Jesus sends into the heart in answer to prayer, faith, and complete consecration, not only purifies and sanctifies the heart. Furthermore, it is the anointing, the sealing, the earnest, and the unction which teaches us all things, leads into all truth, testifies of Jesus, strengthens us, establishes us in the divine life, prepares us for holy living and loyal service. Best of all, it abides.
None ever ought to rest satisfied without the blessed assurance, the divine reality that the Comforter really does abide in the heart.
C. V. La Fontaine, excerpted from The Nazarene Messenger, November 15th, 1906.
Used with permission from Nazarene Archives for devotions with Holiness Today.
Please note: This article was originally published in 1906. All facts, figures, and titles were accurate to the best of our knowledge at that time but may have since changed. All scripture references are from the KJV.
