Being Filled With the Spirit — Hans R. Waldvogel

Very interesting to me to watch the development of the twins. Of course, we all know the twins by this time. Yesterday, one was complaining about the other. The girl was complaining about the boy. She said, you know, he's getting to use that word all the time.

I said, what word? She said, ugly, told her she was ugly. And so I reminded them of something they forgot, how they used to have cribs and springy mattresses, and before they could walk, they could stand on that springy mattress and get hold of the railing and jump.

And they would do that, I suppose, for hours, just jump up and jump up and down and sing. And they'd sing, heavenly sunshine in their baby talk. And then when they got tired of that, they would sing, heavenly grandma, heavenly grandma.

Spiritual Growth Through God's Transforming Work

I often think of that now, why there's more truth than poetry in that. There ought to be enough development in all of us by this time so that God could say, holy brethren. Of course, as the color preacher said, the brethren embrace the sistering.

When he talks about brethren, it means the sisters too. Holy brethren, holy brethren, holy brethren, holy brethren, partakers of the heavenly calling. Really, there ought to be a tremendous improvement and growth and change in us.

There is, if God makes the change. There was a long time when we tried to change ourselves, and it just didn't work. But oh, it's such a different thing when you come to be changed by this master changer who makes a new creation out of you.

And that's the lesson that God is striving to bring to our hearts. I think one of the best textbooks we have is Ephesians. You remember how Paul came to a Baptist church in Ephesus? And they thought they were good Baptists.

We thought so too. We were taught to say, ein Baptist ist ein Christ, und ein Christ ist ein Baptist. Und wer eins von beiden nicht ist, der ist keins von beiden. And my, we were big, we were holy, we were the best.

I knew for years, I was positively sure that the Baptist church was the only church in the world. All the others might have a slim chance to get into heaven, but the Baptists, they were the ones. Until I woke up, till Paul came, till the Lord came.

Receiving and Knowing the Holy Spirit

Have you received the Holy Ghost since you believed? Why, we didn't know there was a Holy Ghost. You know how many people don't know there is a Holy Ghost? And how many people in Pentecost don't know who the Holy Ghost is?

He is the Lord. He is the King. He is our salvation, praise God. He is the light and the life of the church of Jesus Christ. He is the resurrected Son of God. He is the only potentate, the King of kings, and Lord of lords.

He is the only one that can save you. Have you received the hope? Why, we haven't even heard. There was a Holy Ghost. And what happened next? Unto what then were you baptized? Whose banner did you swear to?

What country did you join? Where is your citizenship? Who did you swear allegiance to? Who is your King? Who is it that controls your mind and your heart? Who is it that saves you? Well, they said we were baptized unto John the Baptist, and Baptistus and Christ, and then Christus and Baptistus.

They knew that by memory. They had memorized that very well. Paul said, that's no good. You've got to be married to him that's risen from the dead. You've got to be filled with the Holy Spirit. You're in the flesh.

You can be baptized as Baptists a million times over unless you're baptized with the Holy Ghost. Why, that's the great job God Almighty charged Jesus Christ with doing. He had to die that he might bring life and immortality to life through the gospel.

That he might be purchasing the gift of the Holy Ghost. That he might lead many sons unto glory. That he might accomplish that which the law could not do because it was weak through the flesh. That he might destroy the body of death.

That might raise the body of resurrection, the new body. Glory to God. That we might receive the adoption of sons. Have you received the Holy Ghost since you believed? Why, we have not so much heard as that there was a Holy Ghost.

But when they had been baptized into Jesus Christ and Paul laid his hands, these authoritative hands upon them in the name of Jesus, something happened to these Baptists. Then they became real Baptists.

I never was a real Baptist until I was baptized both in the name of Jesus Christ and in the Holy Ghost. And Jesus did it. I used to look askance on the Pentecostal people. I didn't like it when they tried to baptize me.

They tried it. Oh, there's so much stupidity exercised even among Holy Ghost people. I always say, if we could raise the tax for stupidity, boy, we wouldn't have such a big national debt. But I said, Jesus Christ says that he will baptize with the Holy Ghost and fire.

That was my first real meeting with Almighty God. When he baptized me with fire, I was surrounded by flames of fire and my whole body was charged with the power of an endless life. I was made to drink of the water that Jesus gives and it became within me a well of living water, springing up into everlasting life.

My life has been marvelously changed from that moment on, but it's continually being changed by that spirit that dwells within. That's important. We need to know the Holy Ghost because he's our life. We need to drink of that fountain of life.

Walking in the Spirit Rather Than the Flesh

It isn't sufficient to be baptized with the Holy Ghost, but now to walk in the spirit, he has translated you out of the kingdom of darkness. How many people claim to be baptized with the Holy Ghost and they're satisfied to still live in the flesh and they're satisfied to still be governed by the flesh.

That's where our frowns come from. But beloved, that the Bible says is dangerous. If you live in the flesh, we shall die. We shall die. But if you live in the spirit, do you know the spirit? Do you know the Holy Ghost?

Is he your habitation? Is he your realm? Is he the ocean of life and of light and of grace and of love and of joy and of peace into which you've been sunk, deeply sunk so that your whole being has been transformed into this ocean of love.

Have you received the Holy Ghost? Yes, they received the Holy Ghost. And now the Apostle Paul, writing to the Ephesians church, tells them of the blessing they couldn't possibly understand in the beginning when they spoke in tongues and prophesied what it all meant.

They had just begun to taste of the powers of the world to come. But now he writes to them and he says, God, oh, how he has blessed us with all spiritual blessings in heavenly places in Christ, according as he has chosen us in him before the foundation of the world that we should be holy and without blame before him in love.

Oh, that's the result of being filled with the spirit, of walking in the spirit. Beloved, we need Ephesians. We need these words of life. They never meant much to me until the Holy Spirit had come and he illumined my understanding.

Oh, how differently I read Ephesians. I had given to me an English Bible when I was a boy and it was always new until that thing happened, until God came to me. And in three months time, that thing came apart.

And Ephesians stuck out from among the other pages because I wept over it, I laughed over it, I rejoiced in it. I read it until I had memorized it without trying to memorize it. It had gone into my heart that you should be holy and without blame before him in love.

Beloved, we don't know the Holy Ghost unless we have accepted that call of God, unless we have made a vow, we've taken a vow of allegiance. Christ is my Lord, the Holy Ghost is my Lord. Beloved, we're not filled with the spirit unless we're submitting ourselves to the Holy Ghost, unless we allow him to reign.

And when he reigns, something wonderful happens and it happens every day. Every day his blessings new fall around me like a dew. Every day he gives me his living bread. Every day he meets me. Every day he instructs me.

Every day he talks to me. Every day he chastens me by his word. Every day he deals with me as with a son that I might be partaker of his holiness. Every day he walks with me. He doesn't let me get away one inch from him.

He keeps such a careful watch over me. He that keepeth Israel shall neither slumber nor sleep. But beloved, this is the Israel of God. They're not born of the flesh, but they're born of the will of God.

They're begotten of the spirit. They're sons of Abraham by merit of the cross of Christ and the resurrection of the Son of God. Have you received the Holy Ghost since you believed? Why, after that you believed, he says, ye were sealed with that Holy Spirit of promise, which is the earnest of our inheritance until the redemption of the purchased possession of God.

Why, that's the rapture. That's the rapid Jacobi lagunta by parazono. That's the moment for which Jesus Christ bled on the cross for which he cried with great cries and tears unto him that was able to save him from death.

That's what he died for, that you and I might be gifted with a resurrection body, that we might be like unto him, that we might be sons of God without rebuke in the midst of a crooked and perverse generation and then rise to reign with him forever and forever.

The Holy Spirit as the Source of Righteousness and New Life

Why, we didn't know there was a Holy Ghost. Listen, if you don't know there is a Holy Ghost, if you don't know the Holy Ghost who is with you all the time, who's within you, who reigns within you, who governs you, who controls your mind, who controls your tongue, who controls your feet and your hands, your body, soul, and spirit, beloved, we'll never be presented spotless before the presence of his glory.

Moses can't do it. You can be the choice Pharisee in the world. You can graduate from every school of learning of the Jews and the Buddhists and the Confucianists of Christian science and unity and father divine and whatever you call it.

And you'll never, beloved, there must come to me a righteousness which Jesus Christ himself lives out within me. Oh, when he lives within me. But we didn't know there was a Holy Ghost. Do you know there's a Holy Ghost?

Do you know who he is? Do you know what a powerful being? And you, Paul is looking upon a gang of robbers and adulterers and murderers and thieves and liars. That's what they were. He says, such were some of you, but you're washed.

You're sanctified. You're justified. And you, and today he would say, you dumpers, you jealous folks, you carnal Christians, you hath he quickened. He's made you alive. Oh, beloved, I'm not quickened until I let Jesus Christ live out his life within me.

This morning, I wrote a letter to someone in Germany and I quoted a text, draw night to God and he will draw night to you. And there flashed into my soul a light. And I said, why, is there a Christian in the world who doesn't consider it a great privilege to draw night to God?

Draw night to God and he will draw night to you. And Paul says, it's good for you that I'm locked up in jail. You took too much stock in me. You had too much confidence in the flesh. Today we know no man after the flesh.

Draw night to God and he will draw night to you. What a privilege, what a call. Abide in me and I in you. What a call. Why is it not so real to us that he grips every atom of our being so that we count everything but refuse, but dung for the excellency of the knowledge of Christ Jesus, our Lord.

Why is it that we question? But beloved, there ought to be no question about it. There shouldn't be. Why, we didn't know there was. Oh, is there a Holy Ghost? Listen, is there a fire burning within you that consumes the man of sin, that consumes the works of the flesh, that re-habajo, re-kambajo, that puts some real pep into you?

When I see people go to sleep on the job. We used to have a lot of trouble with people that always came late to meeting. They come in too spate and then hemmel. If it was a coffee clutch, they'd be here way ahead of time to get the best cup of coffee and the best donut.

But to come to church and especially to a prayer meeting, beloved, Paul says, I count everything but refuse. Oh, the excellency, the excellency. I die daily. We talk about death as if it were somewhere in the future.

Someday, someday maybe we'll die to the flesh. Someday maybe we'll bear the cross. Today we sing about it. The way of the cross leads home, but we're hesitating, we're really. But Paul says, I tell you the truth, I die daily.

I bear in my body the dying of the Lord Jesus and he didn't do it with a frown, but he did it with great happiness, great Philippians. That epistle that's written from jail where their feet were made fast in the stocks and their bodies were bleeding and they were lying in the muck and mire among rats and bedbugs and fleas and they were praising God, hallelujah.

They were praising so loud that the prisoners outside the wall in other cells heard them, but God heard them. And as someone said, God said, amen with a mighty earthquake. God will say that to you and to me.

When you know the Holy Ghost, when you know who the Holy Ghost is. Beloved, in Ephesians 1, the apostle Paul says, you've received that earnest of your inheritance and now I pray that you might know the Holy Ghost.

Prayer, Praise, and the Spirit's Quickening Power

Oh, beloved, we've been learning to know the Holy Ghost, haven't we? Last night's meeting was another revelation, a German meeting, but oh, how God came. And it was sort of a lazy meeting. Well, we get tired, I was tired myself.

I'm glad when I can get up to preach, then I wake up. I stir myself, praise the Lord. But oh, how God came. You know, at the end of the meeting when everybody was tired and wanted to go home, God quickened us.

And you has he quickened, he's made you alive. Listen, it's your privilege to be alive. Your privilege to be alive, not with natural life, not with vitamins X, Y, Z, but with the life of Jesus Christ pulsating within you, in your very body, in your very vessels, blood vessels, your very nervous system to be quickened.

Oh, Jesus, Jesus Christ for this body and this body for Jesus Christ. Oh, that we might know the Holy Ghost. We can, we ought to, we should. And when we talk about being changed into his image, let's remember who makes the change.

It's the Holy Ghost. And as we pray in the Holy Ghost, and you've got to learn that lesson. That's why the Lord insists on our living lives of praise. That's the mightiest prayer in the Holy Ghost you can pray.

Praise the Lord, hallelujah, glory be to God. Why, we didn't know there was a Holy Ghost until we began praising the Lord, and he gripped us, and he quickened us, and he breathed upon us his breath of life.

And we began to learn how to walk in the strength of the Son of God. You come to meeting dead tired. God doesn't blame you for that. He says, my strength is made perfect in weakness. And you look to him and, the dynamo begins to hum within you.

Glory to God, and every member of your body is quickened and electrified. What is it? You ought to say, who is it? Oh, that you might receive the spirit of wisdom and revelation in the knowledge of him.

Beloved, we have hardly begun. God gives us a little taste of it. And then we run away and grow careless. When I began seeking the Lord, every once in a while, there was a flash of light. I wrote to Elder Brooks one day, and I said, he's looked at me through the lattice.

You know, the Venetian blinds. And then after a while, you lose that vision. And then after a while, it comes again. And then it comes again, the face at the window. But oh, what a face. But beloved, he wants me to get up, to become hungry for him.

Knowing Christ Through the Holy Spirit's Revelation

Oh, once you've come under the spell of the beauty of Jesus, your Jesus, your bridegroom, your king, the lover of your soul, the only one that has power to rescue from death, to save you, the only one that has power to do what the law could not do, to deliver you from the flesh, to deliver you from every bondage, and to rid you of the slightest discrepancy, of the least infirmity and fault, and to present you faultless.

Oh, beloved, you'll cease running after anything else. You'll get up and you'll run after him until you find him and you'll hold him and you won't let him go. Oh, that spirit of wisdom and revelation and the knowledge of him will make you be a goner.

Absolutely. I have seen the face of Jesus. Tell me not of what beside. You know, you can quickly recognize Christians that really have met the Lord. Oh, you don't have to make any laws for them. You don't.

You don't have to tell them what to do and what not to do. Love compels them. If any man loved me, and you can't help but love him when you see him. Oh, beloved, do you know the Holy Ghost? Do you know there is a Holy Ghost?

Is he at home with you? Or do you grieve him by careless talking and foolishness and by talking too much or living in the flesh or careless thoughts? Beloved, the Holy Ghost is life. And outside of that life, everything is dead.

I have not found your works perfect before my God. I counsel thee, be zealous therefore and repent. Strengthen the things that remain that are ready to die. Beloved, these things can be talked about. And I've often marveled at the things God gives us to say in this place, mysteries.

Like Paul says, we speak wisdom in a mystery, not the wisdom of this world, not of the princes of this world that come to know, but we speak the hidden wisdom, which God has ordained before the world unto our glory, which none of the princes of this world knew.

But beloved, it can be spoken a thousand times, and unless your heart's prepared to receive it, unless you receive it by the spirit that searches the deep things of God, why we didn't know there was a Holy Ghost.

The Renewed Mind and Quietness Before God

No, you won't know until he becomes the life-giving portion, until he becomes the driving force of your life, until your mind has been transformed and renewed by the spirit of God. You'll think differently.

We ought to be able to register a change in our mind. We do. When we started these meetings three weeks ago, they were different from the way they are now. Have you noticed how quiet they've become, how still?

What's happened? Why these rattly minds of ours have been quieted. Only God can do that. Do you know how tremendously important that change is? Someone said to me today, look, so-and-so, so-and-so, nervous breakdown, nervous breakdown, nervous, what in the world's happening?

I'll tell you what's happening. Jesus Christ has been breaking the seals and as he broke the seals, these powers of hell are coming forth to pounce upon the carcass. While the bride of Jesus Christ is getting ready for the wedding.

How is she getting ready? Why, by the works that are righteous by Jesus Christ, the love, the joy, the peace, those things that are despised by an apostate Christianity. Despised, brushed aside, rejoicing evermore.

Christ's Reign as Protection Against Spiritual Powers

Pray without ceasing. I used to work with a minister years ago. We had much praise in the meeting and he despised it. He used to laugh at us. He used to make fun of us. Praise the Lord, praise the Lord.

He was able to preach wonderful sermons, really wonderful sermons. And when we talked about the presence of the Lord, he couldn't feel it. He said, ah, that's emotionalism, that's soulish, that's psychic.

But the day came when he got into a great trial, great darkness came upon him. I recognized it was the devil, but he had stuck out his neck, he had asked for it. And I went to see him, I tried to talk to him.

He said, I can't feel the presence of God anymore. I said, well, you've always been teaching about living by faith and not by feeling. Yes, but he says, I'm crushed by this darkness. Sure you are, beloved, it isn't feeling, it's the kingdom of God, it's the reign of Christ.

And if Christ does not reign within you, if Jesus Christ does not reign, there are a thousand potent states that are just waiting to take over, and they will. Jesus says, when the evil spirit's gone out of a man and the heart has been cleansed and not been occupied by the King of glory, then that demon will come back with seven that are worse than he, and they'll come back into that house.

And that's what happens. Demons can be cast out, but they'll come back en masse. But when Jesus Christ comes in, why, we didn't know there was a Holy Ghost. Listen, do you know there is a Holy Ghost? Jesus Christ has been glorified.

The Bible says the Holy Ghost was not yet because Jesus was not yet glorified. It means he has not yet received his kingdom, but thank God he's been glorified a long time. You don't have to crown him.

He is the King, but you and I can bow to his scepter. What a call! How wonderful that we know the kingdom of God. And beloved, God the Father has been pleased to give that kingdom to us. Do you want it?

If you want it, you'll want the Holy Ghost. If you want that kingdom, you will not stoop to the works of the flesh anymore. He says, put ye on the Lord, Jesus Christ. I like that scripture. He is Lord.

Put on the Lord. What a transformation. What a change. Not I, but Christ. And I may be the weakest of the weak, or like the Apostle Paul, the least of all saints. But he says, the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ was exceeding abundant with faith and love, which is in Christ Jesus.

He laid aside the garment of the Pharisee with all its paraphernalia, with all its Sunday school medals. Clang, clang, clang. There they are in the Eckebesen basins, Eiskebesen. He says, I count it but refuse.

And he put on the Lord, Jesus Christ, hallelujah. And God, my dear God, beloved, God has a salvation for us. How shall we escape if we neglect so great salvation? And here we try to fix up a salvation to fit our flesh.

It fits, doesn't it? Sure, it fits your flesh. Then why did Sabalker fits over the dead dry bones and the horrible stench? I was up in Brant Lake sleeping one night and I woke up at midnight and I thought the skunk had come into my bedroom.

It hadn't. There was a garbage can outside my bedroom and that skunk had gotten into a garbage can. And sometimes you may smell the stuff, but keep it out of your heart. Keep it out of your bedroom. Guard your heart with all diligence.

Your heart. Oh, beloved. We have heard of the Holy Ghost. We've heard of him with the hearing of the ear. But now the spirit will enlighten us. Oh, Jesus, how wonderful thou art. Glory. He is here. Oh, it's much nearer to you than you know.

Come on, get filled with the spirit.