I Came to Kindle a Fire on the Earth — Hans R. Waldvogel

Christ Came to Save and Transform Humanity

Jesus says, I am come. Now we know that he has come. What did you come here for? We used to sing a song in Sunday school, what am I in this old world for? There must be a reason why God let me come to this world.

Evidently not to live like an animal and not to fulfill the lusts of the flesh and then go to hell. God put me upon this earth for another purpose and Jesus says, I am come. Dear Lord, what did you come to do?

Did you have anything in mind toward me when you came to this world? Dear Lord Jesus Christ, I'd like to know whether you really did something for me, whether you came to save me, to bring me out of my bondage, sorrow, and night into thy freedom, gladness, and light.

It is such a wonderful study to go to the New Testament and find out how much God has willed toward us. Some time ago a young man in Germany who received a letter from the government of the United States and when he was asked to pay one mark and twenty penny, he sent it back.

He said, that evidently comes from an uncle in America and he, I've never had anything to do with him. Mark and twenty penny, that's about thirty cents for that letter. So he didn't. But twenty years later he found out that that letter was an official letter offering him an inheritance of more than one hundred million dollars, which his uncle had left and he was found to be the only heir, the sole heir to that vast fortune.

It was closer to a hundred fifty million than one hundred million. And he lost all, not willing to pay one mark and twenty penny for that letter. And you don't know your loss. You don't, you positively don't know your loss.

Whether, whether you prefer softball or television or the lust of the flesh or the lust of the eyes, you're preferring Satan. You're preferring the devil. You are. And there's a fire prepared for the devil and for his angels and whosoever was not found written in the book of life was cast into the lake of fire, the Bible says.

Now the Lord hasn't come to fool us. He hasn't come down from heaven and humbled himself and took upon himself the form of a servant. He did not go to the cross in order to fool humanity and tell you, after a while it'll be okay.

You can live as you please. You can do as you please. It'll be all right. Yes, you can do as you please. You can serve the devil. You can serve the flesh. You can be blinded by the God of this world. You can swim in every desire of your heart.

You can let Satan blind your eyes. You can rise up in pride like all these unbelievers and all these agnostics too. You can do that if you please. God somehow allows man to make his own choice between heaven and hell, between light and darkness.

And what is the world doing today? Why, just a few weeks ago I said this morning they discovered another skull. They stick their nose into every mud hole they can find upon this earth in order to get away from the light that shines from this wonderful book.

One of them has confessed upon his death that the reason I wrote against God is because I was scared stiff. He knew there was a hell. He knew there was a God. Everybody knows that. The Bible says they will out-excuse everybody in the world if you'll just have one fraction of an ounce of brain to know that in Him we live and move and have our being.

Glory to God. But the Bible says when they did not like to retain God in their memory, and they did not worship God, and they did not glorify Him as God, my humanity ought to be so happy today. All of humanity ought to be serving God, ought to rejoice in the fact that we have such a wonderful God, and that today we can call Him our Father, who is in heaven, instead of that.

They're digging holes. They're trying to find all these skeletons. And so they found a skull that's 200 million years old, and now they're happy. They found many other skulls, but they had to discard them, because after a while they found out they were fools.

But here's another skull, another link between a monkey and a professor of biology. My goodness, what a discovery. What a different thing it is when you discover a testament, when you discover that your name is at the top, when you find out that He that was rich, this unspeakably wonderful, marvelous God, this King eternal, immortal, invisible, the only wise God, has fought upon me, and He saw me plunged into His thread, and He closed to my relief.

We think that man has fallen into terrible judgment because of the war. When I came to Germany the first time, there was a lump rising in my throat when I saw the bombed-out cities, and when I saw the prisoners coming back from Russia, hollow cheeks like skeletons, I said, and when I met the ministers, and when I came into their homes, and I saw the poverty, and when I came into the meeting, and I found out that the people didn't have Cadillacs and Lincolns with power steering to come to church with, or they wouldn't go to church.

I saw old ladies in slippers walking for five miles through the snow to get to meetings, come to a hall where there was no heat at all, and maybe no benches, where they had to stand up all through the meeting.

I had hundreds of people standing in front of me in the rain there in Stuttgart, listening to the preaching of the gospel, and nobody made a move to move out. I said, well, these are the happy people, in these bombed-out cities.

God saw them, plunged in deep distress, and He filled to their relief, and my God saved me tonight, and He knows what He created me for, in His own image, thank God. Although some people look like mongers, and they act worse than mongers, that's because of sin.

But beloved, we're going to be like Him. And Jesus says, I am calm. God showed He that was rich, became poor. He humbled Himself. He became obedient unto death. When the devil came along and fooled Eve, and she said, You shall be as God, pride got into that heart.

Repentance and Cleansing Through Christ

He taught her to fall with all humanity into the mud and mire. How is it that man is not ashamed of himself? How is it that men don't repent? How is it that they don't run to the arms of Him who says, Come, let us praise Him together.

Though your sins be as scarlet, they shall be as white as snow. It cost my God something to make that offer to me. Tell me, have you come to Him? Have you washed your robes and made them white in the blood of the Lamb?

I fear that most people today who claim their faith are not saved at all. Ask them, What do you save from? They smoke and chew tobacco and chew gum. They love their fancy dress. And some have wronged their fellow men, refusing to confess.

And all behind the door, not only behind the door, but in the heart. And like the Athenians in Athens, the Bible says, Paul went about and he saw them so religious, and there was one little corner devoted to the living God.

And isn't that the condition of many hearts? But Jesus came with a very definite purpose to save you and me to the end. And does He do it? Have you gotten acquainted with the power of salvation? I mean, it's salvation that goes with you into your shop and office and kitchen, into your home, that makes everybody in your house and everybody in your shop know that you're a saint, that you're saved, that you're following God.

Not only that, but you enjoy religion. You enjoy Jesus. I'm interested in a religion that I can't enjoy. But I tell you, the joy of the Lord fills me so. I never envy the people in this world. Never. They have to bow to what they have to stoop to.

You can't look into a newspaper and you can't look into any of their magazines, but you find out what slaves they are. What slaves? They're worse than pigs. In Switzerland, my neighbor had a pig's pen.

The pen didn't smell very good. Fifty-two years after, when I came to that town, it was still the same, except that the pig's pen had a new coat of paint, but they smelled the same way. And that's what's the matter with civilization.

They just put on a coat of paint, but they stink the same way. I looked into a paper today, the New York Times. I bought it because I wanted the radio program. And I saw the advertisement of the books.

Books. Today, people are not satisfied to read decent reading matters. It's got to be sex. Is that the stuff you read? Why does a pig wallow in the mire? Because it's a hog. Why do men swallow that stuff?

Why, they have to. They have no appetite for the bread of heaven. They're corroded by Satan, by the devil. God has given them up to a reprobate mind to defile their own bodies. And that's exactly what humanity is doing today.

And the very church is letting down the bars. And the very preachers preach adultery and fornication and whoredom today instead of purity. And Jesus says, I hate something that comes down from heaven, or I'll never get into heaven.

Never. Jesus Christ has gone for you. He said, I must be baptized. I must go through. And when Peter says, don't let them do that to you. He said, get behind me, Satan. That's what I came for. Thank God.

I came not to fill the churches with hypocrites and above all, not to fill heaven with hypocrites, but to win for myself a dry and spotless, without grace, without defilement. I came to purify unto myself a people zealous of good works.

The Cost of Salvation and the Call to Choose

Jesus, did you really come? Did you really finish the church? He says, I must be baptized with a baptism. And you haven't any idea the price that my Lord paid. But listen, he paid it. Whether you accept it or not, I told you, you can go to the devil if you like.

You can live in sin. You can let your heart be hardened by the deceitfulness of sin. Or you can come to Jesus and receive the New Testament blessing and be partaker of his divine nature. The choice is entirely yours.

Jesus Christ has absolutely paid the price. Thank God he is able to save to the uttermost of salvation. When testimonies are called for and you sit there like a bump on a log, I know there's something wrong.

The fire isn't burning. Why not? Listen, you're making your choice tonight. Somebody this morning said how it was 40 years ago. I don't like that. You love it? It's different now with me. It's better.

It's better. Day by day it's getting better. Why? Because I've chosen Jesus Christ. Because I make my choice every day. And like my sister said, I had to make my choice when I was a boy, when I had to work 10 and 12 hours a day.

I had to make my choice to get up an hour ahead of time in the morning. I had to be baptized with the baptism of the Holy Ghost. Don't you have to? Jesus Christ had to do it. And unless that Holy Most is upon your soul, I fear that God's going to give you up to a reprobate mind.

Or you'll be a church member, sure. And if you don't like it here, there are a dozen other churches where they'll welcome you with open arms. You'll show your nose there one time, and they'll elect you to be assistant vice president of the athlete foot league.

And you'll give them a proclamation. Jesus Christ says, I've chosen you. I've chosen him. Oh my Lord Jesus. This wonder of the New Testament blessing that offers me the unfathomable riches of Christ. I know people complain about hard preaching, but you should have heard Apostle Paul.

He says, for three and a half years, I warned every one of you night and day with tears. I crossed an old photograph this evening just before coming to church, where a group of us young fellows were together in the Baptist church.

I was about 17 or 18 years old, just been saved. And that's a picture of a young fellow. He has his eyes closed. I guess it was a flashlight picture. And as I looked at him, I thought, oh dear Adolf, that was his name.

He was a little younger than I. And just about that time, the Holy Ghost came upon me and made me go to his house and plead with him to give his heart to God. I didn't know why the Lord did that, but it just pleased me.

I couldn't stay home. I had to go and talk to Adolf. He was such a nice young fellow, intelligent, good looking. The girls ran after him. What more did he want? I was pleading with him to give his heart to God and get right with God.

Oh, he was a Sunday school boy, yes. But I knew he wasn't born again. And I'm so glad when I saw that picture, I was so glad that I did that because a few weeks later he was dead. Sunday school, he was always late.

Church, he was always late. That didn't matter. But when they had a picnic and they had an outing, his shop, he belonged to, he worked for the Western Electric Company in Chicago. And they hired, they chartered a few boats to take them across Lake Michigan.

He was the first one there. He was about an hour ahead of time. He was in the bowels of the ship there, shaving himself or doing something when the ship tipped over and in 15 minutes time, more than 800 people had lost their lives.

I crossed the river just after it happened. I had no idea that Adolf was there until his sister called me and said, Adolf was on that ship. Strange, strange. He got there on time. He got there ahead of time.

He couldn't go to meeting ahead of time. He didn't like meeting. He didn't like Sunday school. Oh, listen, Jesus Christ has a fire that will make you passionately in love with Jesus. He must be baptized.

Jesus Christ had to shed his precious blood. Tonight the fire is burning. Tonight, thank God, that fire is burning for you and for me. And if you will, you can be set on fire for God. Oh, how different it is.

Holy Spirit Baptism and Abundant Life

And beloved, today Jesus has more really baptized, filled saints in the world than any time through the, in the whole history of the world. And I fear sometimes that other denominations are going way ahead of us.

They're really filled with the Holy Ghost. I know young men and young women that are wholly dedicated to God. And we both, like our brother said, it isn't Saul's fault. It isn't anything like that. The Bible says all these things shall be added unto you if Jesus is turned.

...anytime, because this is what happens in this meeting. In every meeting a miracle happens. He says, I will walk with them. I will speak to them. And he does. And either you open your heart to the word of God and you're circumcised with a circumcision, not made with hands, or come hard and the light becomes dark.

...unto him that hath shall be given, and he shall have abundance. And from him that hath not shall be taken away even that which he receiveth to have. You know that we're responsible for this meeting tonight.

We are so used to it that it doesn't touch us anymore. ...somebody was feeding them. And suddenly there was a noise, a crack of some kind, a growl of crows that used to perch on a church roof in Germany.

When the bells started ringing, there was no danger and now they could go to sleep there. The bells ring, don't bother them anymore. ...fire upon the earth, Jesus. And when I found out that you came for me, you're this wonderful light of victory and of overcoming was for me, I came to Jesus.

That's what makes it a certain sign. You'll know when you're born again. You'll become a new creature. ...with the Holy Ghost. You'll love. You'll make hair your first business. Worshiping God in spirit and in truth will become your nature.

You will draw an eye to God and he will draw an eye to you. Let me ask you, have you received imitated in yourself? ...by breaking it off and shaking it. You can't create the baptism in the Holy Ghost by speaking in tongues or imitating it.

The light will possess you. Where sin reigns, where flesh enslaves you, where the devil had his way, where the works of the flesh were mantled, which are these adultery, fornication, uncleanness, inarticipation, evil concupiscence, idolatry, variance, emulation, wrath, strife, division, heresy, envy, murderous, drunkenness and the like, of which I told you that day that Jude said, They shall not inherit the kingdom of God.

There will come a law. Peace. Law. Do the bells ring? Good. Faith. Me, I like the way he went about it. He didn't feed people with a slick hammer and say, Now you got to get saved. Like Lucky Baldwin.

He punched a fellow in the jaw because he wouldn't get saved. No, Jesus says, No man cometh unto me except the Father, which is set in drawing. Oh, the drawing power of God. Oh, the blessed opportunity God gives us.

Hunger, Prayer, and the Fire of God

Prayer. And we found out the secret of prayer. Oh, I don't mean something false. But above ye gave God your beloved, for a child clamoring, My Father, who art in heaven, shall your heavenly Father give the whole world to them that have enough hunger.

There's not enough desire. Our meetings would be so different if there were a real desire, a real hunger. You wouldn't have to be patted on the back and told to come to the altar. You'd come. You wouldn't have to be told to pray.

You'd pray. You'd cry. You'd call on God. And the fire would begin burning. And God said, Now go. I'm going to let rain fall. And he gathered all Israel. And here were the prophets of Baal in their robes.

There was their scarlet, their litanies and their liturgies and tongues and tingles and rings on their fingers and bells on their toes and dancing around the image of Baal and around the altar. And Elijah said, Come on, by fire shall be God.

Who is your God? Who is your God? He'll answer by fire. Elijah knew that he would answer by fire. But there was something in the way. Not the prophets of Baal. They were going to be eliminated. But the altar of the Lord was broken down.

You know, that's what's the matter with us. Prepare yourself to seek God. He set his faith to seek by prayer and fasting in sackcloth and ashes. No wonder God said, A man grave, there are men grave by his very people.

Jesus Christ was being crucified again every day by those who claim to be followers of the Son of God. And in works they deny him. Oh, great and beloved. Why? Because when he saw the promise of God, he didn't let go until that promise was fulfilled.

When he saw in the Testament what God had promised to do at that time, he knew it was time. He looked at the Bible and he looked at the calendar and he said, God, it's time to fulfill that promise. I'm going to hang on.

I'm going to raise them up. You know, God has a promise for you. He'll fill you with the Holy Ghost. Not just to give you a good feeling, but it says rivers of living water shall flow from the body of him that believeth in me.

Lord, is that your promise? I ought to test my experience by the Bible. I ought to make sure that this is that and this is that. And if it isn't, then let me do like Daniel. Set my faith unto the Lord my God to seek by prayer and fasting in sackcloth and ashes.

If Jesus Christ set his faith like a thief to create salvation for you and for me, to open heaven, to obtain from the Father that which you now see and hear, I ought to impose upon myself a little mask.

Surrendering Personal Passions to Christ

Taking pictures. That thing had to go into the court. It had to take secondary place. I was willing to develop my pictures. You know how easy it is to love. How easy it is. Some people say they like me.

And then when I say I'm going to Germany, won't you write to me? Yes, I'll write. They'll never write. But we have one. He stayed bed in the morning till the postman rang the bell. He was like a shot out of a gun.

He wanted to be the first to write their life. He didn't. He got married. I did have pity on him. Ah, but you know when you're really in love with Jesus. Why this very body? I beseech you by the mercies of God that you present your body.

Presenting the Body as a Living Sacrifice

Do you know what is meant by the vessels? The foolish virgins took no oil in their vessels. This body, this body is filled with heart lust. They love in your body until you, you're transformed by the renewing of your mind and the little prayer you do.

Who'll do it? It'll take vehement desire. It'll take honest repentance. With God and your rights and your children, your family, first thing in the morning, the last thing at night, worshiping God. Do you think that God's going to answer your prayers?

He does out of great mercy. But do you think that God's going to walk among you and live in you if you have these implements of hell? With your own. That's method under the power of God. One, especially five years old, when he heard the preaching of the gospel, he cried.

I said, what are you crying about? Oh, he said, I want to be like that. I came back, father and mother are in meeting. I said, play a card. The boys have gone to the devil and somebody else. Virgins who have presented their bodies for living sacrifice.

That's what this body is for. Not to be eaten by germs and viruses and stuff. But to be buried with the fire of the presence of God. To be a temple of God. To be a channel through which God can pour his life.

Oh, repair that altar of the Lord tonight. Married some years ago and she complained. He complained. She had one complaint. He had another complaint. He beat her. Listen, I have a wife. You go to the other one and say, come darling, let's praise the Lord.

Glory to God. I think they've done it because they've been getting real blessings. What is the meaning of baptism? That's separation. Come out from among them. You can't come out of Brooklyn or New York, but in your heart you can be separated constantly.

Rejecting Worldly Influences and Preparing the Altar

Monkey business of the devil and the world in the flesh. You can drown. I was interested to see that the government of South Africa has prohibited television in their whole country. They said it might be very useful, but it does more harm to our young people than it'll ever do good.

And so the government has prohibited other governments. Nations that we used to look down on. They prohibit our jazz and our rock and roll. They won't have it in few amounts of poison of hell into other nations that have not been contaminated by it.

It's time that we woke up and prepared the altar of the Lord until the fire falls upon us, until God can send us into every part of the world with this wonderful life-giving fire. That's what God wants.

I've come to cast fire upon this earth. Lord Jesus, why didn't you open Bible schools and universities and cemeteries and stuff? Why didn't you write libraries full of books? But he that hath my commandment, how simple is the sermon on the mount.

How simple are his words. I will manifest my health. Come and make my abode. You can find your God tonight. You can repair that altar of first, last, and always. How many times have I said, oh God, can I say something nice?

I did say something very, very, very nice tonight. I brought you the proposal of the prince of the kings of the earth to your soul. He wants you for himself. He wants you for himself. And in order to make you worthy of himself, he has been baptized with the baptism of blood on Calvary's cross.

He went to the cross in order to deliver you and me from all the fire of the world and the place of the devil.