Peter was filled with power on the day of Pentecost; but
evidently the purifying effect of the baptism made a deeper and
more lasting impression upon his mind than the empowering effect;
for years after, in that first Council in Jerusalem, recorded in
the fifteenth chapter of Acts, he stood up and told about the
spiritual baptism of Cornelius, the Roman centurion, and his
household, and he said: "And God, which knoweth the hearts, bare
them witness, giving them the Holy Ghost, even as He did unto us;
and put no difference between us and them, purifying their hearts
by faith." Here he calls attention not to power, but to purity,
as the effect of the baptism. When the Holy Ghost comes in to
abide, "the old man" goes out. Praise the Lord!
This destruction of inbred sin is made perfectly plain in that
wonderful Old Testament type of the baptism with the Holy Ghost
and fire recorded in the sixth chapter of Isaiah. The prophet was
a most earnest preacher of righteousness (see Isaiah i. 10-20),
yet he was not sanctified wholly. But he had a vision of the Lord
upon His Throne, and the seraphims crying one to another: "Holy,
holy, holy is the Lord of Hosts: the whole earth is full of His
glory." And the very "posts of the door moved at the voice of him
that cried"; and how much more should the heart of the prophet be
moved! And so it was; and he cried out: "Woe is me! for I am
undone; because I am a man of unclean lips, and I dwell in the
midst of a people of unclean lips: for mine eyes have seen the
King, the Lord of Hosts.
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