"They delivered Paul … to a centurion." Acts xxvii. 1.
"From henceforth let no man trouble me: for I bear branded on my body the marks of Jesus." Gal. vi. 17.
All this makes lively reading in this peaceful, easy-going day of ours; and yet the world has not changed in its attitude or feeling towards God and the things of God. But a most palpable change has taken place somewhere. The change, alas! is in us, in the people of God; a change that is not for the better. We have lost that which brought these men into direct collision with the world, and with its ways, even the Fullness of the Spirit. Only let a man in our day seek and obtain the blessing that made these men mighty for God, and he will soon find that the world has not changed, and that the "Pharisees" have not changed either; the Fullness of the Holy Ghost makes a man the uncompromising friend of God, and that certainly involves the enmity of the world. "Therefore the world hateth you" (John xv. 19). It behooves those who are seeking the "Fullness of the Spirit" to remember these facts, and to count the cost, for the persecution may come from the most unlikely, unlooked-for quarters. To be forewarned is to be forearmed. "In the world ye have tribulation: but be of good cheer; I have overcome the world" (John xvi. 33).
CHAPTER XVI.
MAY ONE KNOW THAT HE IS FILLED?
The question is often asked—How am I to know when I am filled with the
Holy Ghost?
1. You may know it from the testimony of the written Word.
"All things whatsoever ye pray and ask for, believe that ye have received them, and ye shall have them" (Mark xi. 24). From this you know, that if you have, up to your light, fulfilled the conditions necessary to the filling of the Holy Ghost, on praying and asking for the Fullness, it is your privilege to believe that you have received what you have asked for; nay, it is your bounden duty, in compliance with Christ's express command, so to believe. If God gives, and you really receive, you may then give thanks, and that proves that you possess, for you cannot truly give thanks for what you do not possess! It will be noted that this answer is precisely similar to the answer that would be given to the question—How am I to know that I am saved? By simple faith on the testimony of the Word. As multitudes have accepted salvation without any emotion, without any feeling whatever, so many a one has accepted by faith the "Fullness of the Holy Ghost," without any wave of emotion or feeling bearing witness to the fact of the filling. But this is not to say that there is never any feeling, that the emotions are never stirred; not so, for the feelings will come in due course, in God's own time.
2. Witness of the Spirit.
Again, one may know that the Fullness has come by the witness of the infilling Spirit. Just as in multitudes of cases the blessed Spirit bears witness with the Blood when it is applied at the moment of conversion, so many a one knows in his inner consciousness the moment when the Fullness of the Spirit was bestowed; they felt the Incoming and can date their Baptism, as others have felt the regenerating change and can date their conversion.