The day I was baptised in the Holy Spirit

Update: Although I have not practised the deadly sins named by the Lord and in the Pauline letters, I quite certainly have made many errors and failed in many ways to keep the words of the Lord Jesus.

I wish to clarify too that although I continue to believe that God Almighty has formed the Bible (the 27 NT books and approximately 51 books of the Old Testament in the Ancient Greek Septuagint witness), I no longer believe that all the words have the same authority. Please see my Translator's Preface to The Christ Family Bible.

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The Almighty Lord Jesus accepted me as a disciple on 21 April 2013, the day when I completely repented from Satan and all rebellion against Almighty God, and when I gave thanks that I could become a disciple of Christ Jesus. I know this, because I experienced an amazing thing that day (like pure radiating energy that suddenly began radiating onto me and into my body) and because from that day on, I have been a walking confirmation of 1 John 3, “Whosoever is born of God does not commit sin; for His seed remains in him: and he cannot sin, because he is born of God”.

Before 21 April 2013, I was a fornicator, a drunkard, a person involved in rages, abusiveness, selfish schemes, falsehood, cowardice, murder (through an abortion), covetousness, envy, idolatry, uncleanness, licentiousness, theft, pharmakeia (use of artificial chemicals as medicines, also sorcery), heresies, revelries, a practicer of carnal works that drag a human being into Hellfire (1 Corinthians 6:9-10, Ephesians 5:3-5, Galatians 5:19-21, Revelation 21:8, 22:15).

But after 21 April 2013? Have I practised any of the carnal works the Holy Bible names? Not one. I’ve been tempted a few times, but now another thing happens. Somehow my mind is awakened to the terror of committing a carnal work, the shame it brings to Christ, the Holy Spirit, and my Father in the Heavens, and the punishments and torments that I will suffer if I commit that carnal work: “For if we sin wilfully after that we have received the knowledge of the truth, there remains no more sacrifice for sins, but a certain fearful looking for of judgment and fiery indignation, which shall devour the adversaries” (Hebrews 10:26-27).

The day of my baptism in the Holy Spirit was like how I am kept from carnal works ever since: amazing things happened to lead me to the right confession at the right time in the right place.

(1) For the first time in my life, I had returned from a Sunday church service feeling low. I had always come home feeling elated, hopeful, joyful. This Sunday: shocked and saddened and despondent, after experiencing the coldness of two seminary friends at the church coffee, and lacking much hope in that church fellowship after seeing its dry, formulaic preaching and singing for several weeks.

(2) But I had an inspiration: I could go to an international Bible fellowship, held in the cafeteria of a church, that a student-friend of mine (from environmental studies) had led me to visit to some years beforehand. It would be easy, because my neighbours downstairs from me attended that fellowship. And so I went and asked them to bring me along. They said yes.

(3) When I walked into the cafeteria, before the meeting had begun, suddenly I gave a confession in my heart, without planning to do so. “The whole Bible is written by God, and it convicts me as a sinner. I need a saviour.”

I was 40 then. I had grown up in a culture of great scepticism to the testimony of the Bible: our homes, our schools, our churches, our politicians, our artists, our intellectuals, our scientists, walked in scepticism to the Bible, and so I did too.

How God led me out of that wicked dark pit, is a story to tell!
The 4 major steps were
(a) I tried to keep Jesus’s words;
(b) So I experienced miraculous coincidences, just like Jesus promises (John 14);
(c) I read the Bible and saw its amazing, intelligent design;
(d) I read John Lennox’s book God’s Undertaker—Has Science Buried God? that describes how Science does not contradict the Bible and how instead, Science witnesses to the Bible, and that atheist scientists are forced by the evidence they see in the Universe to accept that there is a divine creator as described in the Bible. 

Shortly after I finished reading Lennox’s book, at the end of 2012, and a few months before the day of my baptism, I had accepted that the Bible was almost certainly inspired in every respect by Almighty God.

(4) The preacher that day was focused on explaining to us the importance of being baptised in the Holy Spirit! She urged us to come forward and kneel and receive hands and the baptism of the Holy Spirit.

(5) I risked my career as a minister in a church, by answering the call to be baptised that day. I had trained for nearly 4 years full-time, taking loans, to minister in a church that looks with great scepticism on the Bible and Holy Spirit baptism beyond the original first water-sprinkling baptism. Why did I risk it? After I began working as a trainee minister in that church, I developed a belief that I was no longer on my way to eternal life with God. So I was scared!

I didn’t feel anything happen when people laid their hands on me, and prayed for me to receive the Holy Spirit. I went back to my chair and began to pray. All I remember is talking to Jesus, saying thank You, thank You that I can be a disciple of Yours. This went on for many minutes.

And then something did happen! Right there as I sat in that chair. The feeling was so unlike anything I had felt before, and it was so powerful, that I knew it was from God. My first reaction was joy, joy that God was not abandoning me! I was so relieved that I laughed for a moment out of joyful relief!

I don’t remember much more about that day. But I remember that for the next several days, I was a man on a mission, cleaning out my home of anything that could be offensive to God (like a Buddhist book, or books sceptical about the Bible from seminary courses). Hour after hour, I purified my home.