If you, my brother, my sister, will look unto Jesus just now, trusting the merits of His blood, and receive the Holy Spirit into your heart, you shall be “made free from sin”; it “shall not have dominion over you.” Hallelujah! Under the fiery touch of His holy presence, your iniquity shall be taken away, and your sin shall be purged. And you yourself shall burn as did the bush on the mount of God which Moses saw; yet you, like the bush, shall not be consumed; and by this holy fire, this flame of love, that consumes sin, you shall be made proof against that unquenchable fire that consumes sinners.
“Come, Holy Ghost, Thy mighty aid bestowing;
Destroy the works of sin, the self, the pride;
Burn, burn in me, my idols overthrowing:
Prepare my heart for Him, for my Lord crucified.”
“Have ye received the Holy Ghost since ye believed?”
VI.
Power
“Ye shall receive power after that the Holy Ghost is come upon you.”
Just before His ascension, Jesus met His disciples for the last time, and repeated His command that they should “not depart from Jerusalem, but wait for the promise of the Father,” and reiterated His promise that they should be “baptised with the Holy Ghost not many days hence.”
Then “they asked of Him, saying, Lord, wilt Thou at this time restore again the kingdom to Israel?” They were still eager for an earthly kingdom. But “He said unto them, It is not for you to know the time or the seasons, which the Father hath put in His own power,” or authority. And then He added, “But ye shall receive power after that the Holy Ghost is come upon you.”
They wanted power, and He assured them that they should have it, but said nothing of its nature, or the work and activities into which it would thrust them, and for which it would equip them, beyond the fact that they should be witnesses unto Him “in Jerusalem and Samaria, and unto the uttermost parts of the earth.” After that the Holy Ghost Himself was henceforth to be their Teacher.