Transcription
[Music] Woohoo! All right, wow, so kind. Thank you. How's everybody doing today?
Just as I got up, my document switched to a different one. So let me, um, you know, Don, you know this, that, uh, I was supposed to be in Israel. We were supposed to be in Israel right now, and God, of course, has other plans. Had other plans. And I got a call from your pastor saying, "Could, you know, could we have this Sunday, uh, to come?" So I was honored to say yes. And so good to be back with you friends here at Bradington.
A quick update on the Passion Translation. I don't know where the book table is. Somewhere over there. You're the first church on Earth to get the book of Jeremiah. It's, it's, you can't get it yet on Amazon, even. It's, you can only pre-order it. But, uh, they shipped me a, a case. So I brought a few and some other things. So I hope you'll go back and check out the table. Make sure you grab a copy. Pastor Don, I want, I wanted to give you one. So I forgot to pull one out of the box for you. So save a copy. Whoever's running the book table, please save a copy for Pastor Don.
This has just, uh, recently come in from Israel. An entire Muslim family has come to Jesus. Because, yeah, the entire family had the same exact dream of Jesus Christ the same night. Amir, Amir had recently been searching for truth about Islam and religion. And in desperation, he cried out to God, "God, if you're alive, reveal yourself to me." He was unprepared for what would happen next. Seven days later, he had a dream of Jesus Christ. When he woke up, he found out his mother and sister had the same exact dream about Jesus.
I didn't even know who Jesus was. In Islam, you learn that Jesus was a prophet. We said, "God, what do you want us? What do you want to show us?" We didn't have a Bible. We can't find Bibles in Iran. As an Iranian family, five hours later, a man knocked at our door. Put a Bible on our table. He, he said, "God told me to come and bring you this Bible." He said, "Jesus is, is not merely a prophet. He is the Word of God who became flesh. He came, he left heaven, he died on the cross for you and I, for those who would come to him. Whoever believes in him will be forgiven."
My mother told him that we had all had a dream of Jesus at 5:00 AM this morning. The man started to weep for half an hour. He said, "It was exactly at 5:00 AM that I heard the voice of Jesus in my room that said, 'My son, get up, take my word to Amir's house. They are ready to hear my word.'" Today is that beautiful. Amir went on to say, "Jesus is alive. He is the Living God. He came to give us life." Even, even in the countries that Jesus Christ is forbidden, Jesus is real. Worship him.
[Music] And then it, it has a picture of Amir. That's on my Facebook wall, actually. I got it from you, darling. My wife, Candace, uh, shared it with me today. So thank you for that. Wow. God is moving, my friends. We've got to have right vision in this hour. We're in difficult, troublesome times. You don't need to be a prophet to know that the world is in turmoil. We're in a Psalm 2 period of time where the nations are raging against the Lord and His Christ. But we know who wins. There is no reason for fear or confusion. God has got this. And He has a bride that He's preparing from among the nations, a radiant, lookalike partner for Jesus Christ, Christ that will be everything He bled to death to have. So take heart. Let's close in prayer. Amen.
No, I'm kidding. That, that's really, I mean, what else is there? Father, we ask, we come before you and ask for the baptism of fire to hit this house. As we've prayed in unison with our hearts, Lord, and our mouths, that you would indeed baptize us with fire and send your fullness of the Spirit, Lord, in greater measure. Consume us until we become lookalikes of Jesus, until we radiate His presence, power, and glory for 50 miles around us, Lord. I ask for unusual signs and wonders in this house today. I ask that you would confirm this word with signs and miracles following. I ask, God, that you would stir our hearts, Lord. Move us out of the refrigerator into the fireplace, Lord. Get us out of the deep freeze into the white-hot flame. Divine, bring us into the sacred embers of divine love until Jesus alone is our magnificent obsession. We ask, Lord, that you would even now begin to open the heavens above this house. Cascade into this building with your glorious presence. Fill us, Lord. Fill us more.
Would you stand, please? And let's engage in this. Feel the spirit of intercession on me right now, Lord. Just, yeah, just open your heart. Open your heart. Get ready, Lord. Put a bullseye on every, every heart here today. Let the alpha male get smacked by Jehovah. Smack you, Lord. I ask that every tenderhearted woman would be renewed and refreshed, Lord. Lord, every man and woman in this house under a hundred would get lit on fire today, Lord. Ignite us with something more than we've ever tasted before, Lord. Give us what the prophets prophesied would come. You would pour out your Spirit upon all flesh, and the women of God would prophesy, young men would have visions, and old men, because they nap a lot, would have dreams. God, give us the dreams that you gave Amir and his beautiful family, Lord. Invade our space at night. Let our pillow become a pillar of glory, Lord. Bring the spirit of revival into Florida, into this very region. Let the flaming sword of the Commander of the Host of Heaven, let that flaming sword meet us in our way today, that we would not ever take sides. We would let you take charge. In Jesus' name, we ask it, Lord. We ask for the spirit of burning. We ask for the raging presence of God taking a people out of their comfort zone. Do it here, Lord. Do it, God. Consume us in that flame. More, Lord. We ask for Pentecost at any [Applause] cost, Lord. Let our heart be a sacred chamber today. Let the threshing floor bring us into purification, cleansing, repentance, a metanoia, a new transcendent thought life, God, that we would engage with eternity. We'd lay hold of eternal life. We'd step into that sacred trysting place where lovers meet. We'd come into the cloud-filled chamber with you, Lord. Do it, God. Remove distractions and disruptions from our lives. Let us be singly focused, wholeheartedly devoted to the cause of Jesus Christ, Lord. The sacred blood of Jesus that cleanses us, renews us, let that be our passion, Lord. And we pray for the team going out Tuesday that they would experience something they've never seen before as the Holy Spirit falls. Lord, do it. Do it. Do it. We pray. Oh my. And Lord, we pray for the pastors and the team, the staff here in this house. Stretch your hands out to this glow-in-the-dark couple down here, Lord. We ask that you would ignite their hearts in a fresh, powerful way. Let the fragrance, I smell the fragrance of Jesus coming out of their lives. Increase it, Lord. More, more, more. Thank you, Father. Let Trisha's intercession release Heaven's glory into the house. Let Dawn's preaching and teaching and and love increase to new measures. God, do it. Do it. Do it. Thank you, Father. Who's in charge of the prayer ministry here in the house? Who is it? Who's? Okay, come on up here. You're about to go to heaven. You've always wanted to go. So if you're part of the intercessory prayer team, uh, leadership, or you're just part of that team, you know who you are because you've, you've laid your life down for these things. Thank you, Father. Thank you, God. Thank you, Lord. Stretch your hands out to them. Thank you, Lord. Ignite them. Empower them. Most of all, encourage them, God. Let them know that their ministry is not in vain in the Lord. That you are hearing their cry. You're responding, Lord, to the whispers of the night. You're hearing them, Lord. You're speaking to them with dreams and visions, revelations and visitations. More, Lord. More. More. More. Let them and her have full access. The PIN code. Ha! Let her have the PIN code into the eternal realm. Praise! Lord, give her, yeah, let her enter the gates with praise and the courts with Thanksgiving. More, more, more, more. Jesus, uh, is a shoulder. You have shoulder pain. Who is it? Got shoulder pain up here? Anybody wants shoulder pain? No. Nobody wants shoulder pain. Okay. We're going to lift your hands up. We're just going to be like Aaron and her and just lift their hands up. Father, increase their, their prayer power as they intercede. Lord, let them not be afraid to scream when you come upon them like that 12-year-old girl, Lord, inside. Let them experience you in ways they never have before. Let it be radical. Let the fire be radical in this house, Lord. We're tired of status quo, boring Christianity, Lord. We ask for miracles, signs, and wonders. Let their intercession go to new heights. Thank you, Father. Candace, come and lay hands on them. She, she has seven dreams a night. She's going to release that anointing over them. You, you don't want that. You want to sleep. But I'm telling you, it's amazing. Thank you, Father God. She even had a dream for you all. I'm going to be my six-hour sermon. I'll be making sure I cover that. Thank you, Jesus. This is the power of a church right here. The prayer ministry. This is what moves the house. We had, uh, our, our church went from like 45 people to 3,500 people because of one reason. I called them my living creatures. They were wild. I mean, they had the faces of a lion, an eagle, and depending on what mood they're in. I had such wild intercessors that most people, including you all, and I don't mean this in any insulting way, but most people couldn't live 10 minutes in the prayer room with them because they were wild. I mean, with a capital W. Seers. So, Lord, bless them. Bless them, Lord. How many of you like the spirit of intercession to come upon you today? Look out. Raise your right hand. Say, "Lord, baptize me." Baptize me with the spirit of prayer. Spirit of prayer. Spirit of intercession. Spirit of intercession. That I would be burning hot for you. That I'd be burning hot for you night and day for the rest of my life. For the rest of my life. Consume me, God. Consume me, God. Take over my distractions. Take my free time, my me time, my very being, and put inside of me the spirit of prayer. Pray in Jesus' name. Amen. Amen. Thank you, everybody. You know, uh, you can be seated in the heavenly realm. But David, in the Book of Psalms, he says, "I'm a man of prayer." I think that's Psalm, uh, 104. He says, "I am a man of prayer." But this is what other translators won't tell you. "Man of" is not in the Hebrew text at all. David said, "I am, I am prayer." That's powerful. That his life became a prayer. And I've, you know, walked with my wife for 52 years, and I've seen the spirit of the Lord upon her and the spirit of prayer that's upon her life, how she prays, you know, constantly. And it so encouraged and anointed me to have some of that prayer, prayer power. I don't want to keep telling you more about her because you won't want to listen to me. You'll just, it's good to be back. Thank you. I want to see how fast I can do this. I promised our church that I would quit when I was tired or hungry. And all I had was a little bit of oatmeal this morning. So I'm, you're going to be okay.
I want to share with you about a baptism of fire. The seven expressions of the baptism of fire. You know, the whole thing called Church started with fire. It started with what we call Pentecost. What the Jews call Pentecost. It was not the upper room. Okay? So let me pop a bubble real quick. The, the Holy Spirit did not fall in the upper room. That's not where they were. It was Pentecost. Every male had to present themselves before God at 9:00 in the morning in the temple courts. The verse says the, the wind and the sound filled the house. And because of that, people think it was the upper room. But if you look carefully, it's the house is the temple, the house of God, the house of the Lord. So 3,120 believers on that day experienced the fire of God. It's like a birthday party for the church. And God, you know, instead of putting candles on a cake, he put them on everybody's head. And you couldn't blow it out. You know, those candles that come back up? You know, and that's, you know, can you imagine the disciples looking at each other with flame shooting out of their head and go, "Bro, you got fired." "So do you, man." And God wants fire. The, the pillar of fire that led Israel reappeared in the temple courts and split into 120 pieces. And every believer had their individual pillar of fire to lighten their night, to brighten their, their day, to anoint their thoughts on their heads. God needs to burn up some heads here today. You can tell I've had a little bit of fire on top of mine. Our thoughts need to be consumed in the fire of God. I hate to be the one to break this to you, but every one of you are destined for fire. You get to pick which one. God wants a church on fire. Amen. There's no biblical place for a lukewarm or a complacent or a church that is not flaming with the fire of God. Any soul that doesn't burn with love for Jesus is affected by the spirit of religion. In other words, it is religious stuff that puts out the fire that tries to limit. Now, don't get too carried away. Now, come on, son. Don't, I mean, they told me that since I accepted Jesus at the age of 20, I've had them tell me that. They're still telling me. Here I am, 40. But God has baptized me in His flame. I have seen revival. The only people that fight it or deny it or want to say, "Oh no, we got this talk of revival is silly. We have the Holy Spirit." We, we don't. The only people that say that have never seen it, never been in one, never experienced what I've experienced. I shared last time I was with you about repenting to our village where we were tribal missionaries. And I asked every person in the tribe to forgive me for a lack of love. And as I did, the Holy Spirit fell in power. I mean, power. Guys knocking people down. People couldn't stand up. They'd come out of their hut and fall right down into the dirt. The Spirit of the Lord moved in such mighty power. The whole atmosphere of the village shimmered. It was like there was something tangible in the air. And from that day forward, a totally lost, pagan people group that had no scripture in their language, they didn't even have a written language, experienced the flame of God. And they were born in revival. And I'm told that that fire is still burning as they gather every morning and every evening, seven days a week, 14 times a week, they gather to worship the God of glory, Jesus Christ, His Son. So God wants to light you up in this city. Bradenton, Sarasota is about to experience two things: a phenomenal growth spurt economically and, um, with people moving in. And God is going to match that with a move of the Spirit. I see a flaming sword striking right in the middle of Bradenton, Sarasota, this region, and bringing a spirit of revival, which I believe is the spirit of the fear of the Lord. And when, if you think back with me to Pentecost, when the Holy Spirit fell, let's think through what happened. First of all, it had manifestations. There was something otherworldly, something supernatural invaded the space. And it was tongues, and it was, uh, people understanding languages and speaking languages they'd never learned. And, and, uh, apparently there must have been staggering because they thought they were drunk. So there had to be like a manifestation of hardly being able to stand or walk. Maybe they were falling over. Probably so. And then there was prophecy because Peter got up and began to prophesy and quoting Joel and preaching this message of repentance. So there was repentance. So what you can expect as a move of God hits, maybe today, what you can expect is fiery preaching, cutting to the heart. No more fluff, no more hamburger helper. It's going to be boom, right out of the can, undiluted God. God and His presence is going to consume people. It's going to have different manifestations. I've been hit with laughter. I've been hit with weeping. I've been, I've just been hit where I'm on my face before God for an hour or more, unable to move, just hoping I can live through an encounter. But there's going to be the supernatural dimension. But what about us? What's, what do we do? Is there something we can do? Of course, repent. And I want to bring that, you know, word back into dust it off a little bit. And it's not a four-letter word. It, it's a word that, that needs to be heard in this day, in this hour. And if anytime you feel led to say an amen, please do so. There's a need to repent. Some of the stuff that we have thought and said and posted and argued about and our, our attitudes. I mean, don't make me go there. But whenever the Spirit of God falls, there is the first of the seven expressions of a baptism of fire, and it's cleansing. It's purifying. So number one, the fire of purity. The seven expressions of the baptism of fire. Jesus said, "I have come to set fire on the earth. How I long for every heart to be ablaze with this fiery passion for God." That's Luke 12:49. I'm going to read it again. "I have come," Jesus said, "I have come to set the earth on fire, and how I long for every heart to be ablaze with this fiery passion for God." John the Baptist, Jesus' prophetic cousin, says, "There is one coming mightier than I. He is supreme. I'm not worthy of even being his slave. I can only, only baptize you in this river, but he will baptize you into the Spirit of Holiness and into his raging fire. He has in his hands the authority to judge your heart and the power to sift and cleanse you. He will separate the valuable within you from that which is worthless. The valuable he will store up for use in his kingdom, but he will burn the worthless in a fire that no one can ever put out." So a fire is going to burn. The cleansing move of God must touch our lives where things that we thought we could, you know, didn't matter to God, suddenly we realize our words matter, our thoughts matter, our use of time and money matters. Every aspect of our life. There's no off-limits to the Holy Spirit. Somebody told me once, and I agree with him, that to, there is no such thing as something too small for the, the Holy Spirit. If He deals with you about it, if He's touching your heart about something, yield. We say we're following. We're going to yield. This is the time to yield to that fire, the flame of God, to cleanse our heart. How we need it. How we need a cleansing. I hope somebody can give me an amen here in this Lutheran Church. And by the way, it's not Halloween. It's Reformation Day. We need to redeem that. I got, you know, I like, I need controversy, you know. But we put out the Passion Translation on October 31st, and people said, "Oh, see, that's the proof that they're devil." You know, this was 2017 when I completed the New Testament and it published. Release date was October 31st. Well, we picked that day because it was exactly 500 years, 1517, exactly 500 years after Martin Luther, you know, nailed the thesis, his protest, onto the Wittenberg Chapel door, and it sparked, or actually became the bonfire of the Reformation. So we're going to redeem October 31st. A cleansing fire. Anybody need cleansing today? Don't be shy. And don't be, uh, proud. Anybody need a cleansing flow of Holy Spirit fire today? Yes, Lord. Burn it up. Burn up the dross. Separate the dross from the silver, the, the chaff from the wheat, the impure from what is holy, that we could differentiate between sacred and worthless. Make it so, Lord. The spirit of fire is also called the spirit of burning. Secondly, fire of passion. When this baptism of, when fire comes upon you, you're going to have a new passion. You're going to have a new calling on your life. And it's to become a flame of fire. God makes all of His messengers flames of fire, right? Not ice cubes. "I make my servants flames of fire." I want to look out here and see the fire burning upon your soul today. That burning heart that the disciples had on the road to Emmaus. The passion. You know, you know what the definition of a legalist is, right? Anybody more passionate for God than you are? God wants to fill us with a zeal for His house. Joel's Army has fire in front and fire behind. Oh, I'd love to take you through a survey of the Book of Joel. The mighty army of God. It's, these are not Assyrian invaders of chapter 2 of Joel. These are flamethrowers. That reminds me, I spoke at a church, uh, in Alabama. I'm actually going there next. And after the service, the pastor said, "Hey, okay, this is Alabama. All right. Says, I got something I want to show you. You got to come out to the parking lot." I said, "Okay, what is it?" He had a flamethrower. I said, "Bro, is this legal?" And so he got, excuse me, I don't mean to point it that way. So here I am. And he took a video of it. I went, "I liked it." Jason Hooper is the pastor. Yeah. Some of you may know him. So Joel's army, they had fire in front and fire behind. There's something like never before God wants to do in this generation. The army of Joel says, "Never before and never after will there be an army like this army." They are so mighty, they don't wait for the new day. They are the new day. They bring a dawn. Their presence releases a dawning. They're like the dawn coming down the mountain. As the highest peaks get the first light of the dawn, so will this army of God, these mighty awakeners, Gen Z, come on, they're going to catch this flame. And they come from the high place, racing down, running into the city, you know, coming through the walls and the windows. And of churches too hot to handle. Young people coming. You think the Jesus movement, all us tie-dyed hippie freaks, you think that was wild? You wait until some of these people come from the brothel. From the, I'm telling you, they're coming radical. Woo! Going to make us look kind of lukewarm. They're on their way. Too hot to handle. Young people are headed. They're coming, friends. God is going to ignite a generation for His glory. He's going to stir the hearts like never before. Holy awakeners are on their way. The third expression of a baptism of fire is fire power. My, we need some of that fire power. There you go. Okay, come up here while I take a drink and tell them, tell them about that. I got, I got more stories about fire than you could handle. So whenever we hear a fire engine or we see one, I mean, they follow us around. When fire alarms go off in the hotels, fire alarms go off in the, the malls. But of course, we always pray for the firemen whenever that happens. But we usually know it's going to be a really good meeting if we see fire trucks. Sometimes we'll see four or five. And, and like I said, we pray for the firemen that, you know, won't be a bad fire, whatever. But, uh, yeah, so I, people start giving me fire trucks. So our church, they'd see fire coming out of our church, out of the roof, and the firemen would come. No church, no fire there, you know, things like that all the time. So, uh, we love the fire. Thank you. I can't count how many times after a meeting we are taken back to the hotel. And I step into the hotel and the fire alarm goes off. I cannot tell you how many times. The recent one was in Calgary, where we had a number of signs and wonders. You're not going to have the real ministry of Jesus without miracles, healings, signs, and wonders following. Raise your expectation. Raise expect. Every time you come here at Kingdom Life, there's going to be a demonstration. There's going to be something that's going to happen. Like in Rhode Island. Did I tell you about that? That I prophesied, "God's going to send a coal of fire to the church." And it, it manifested over my head and actually lit the building on fire. About this high of a ceiling. I never saw it. Every, you know, 300 people saw it, or 299 people saw it. I did not. The pastor got up and said, "There's fire." I said, "Amen. It's about time." Pastor's wife realized I was the only one that didn't see it. She got up and said, "Run!" Everybody vacated the building. People to this day still ask me, "Was it real fire?" Hey, quit asking the 12 firemen that put it out. God wants to send fire. Blew up the sound system, melted the wires. The worship team loves me because they got all new equipment. Yeah, no kidding. The insurance got all new stuff. They invited me back. I said, "Well, make sure you pay your li-, your, you know, your premium." I'm serious, guys. This is a word from the Lord. Power for evangelism. Acts chapter 2. The whole purpose of the Pentecost feast being fulfilled was to release power for evangelism. "The Spirit of the Lord will come upon you, you'll be witnesses." Right? In Jerusalem, Judea, Samaria, the uttermost, wildest outreach places of the world. And so when the fire of God comes on you, you will be a witness. I wish I had time to tell you about Charles Grattis Finney. But he was the great awakener of the mid-1800s of the Second Great Awakening that hit our land. And he was an attorney. It's always good to see an attorney catch fire for God. He was an attorney in Upstate New York, North Adams, New York, to be exact. And he had a divine encounter. He was troubled over his soul. He went out into the woods and prayed and interceded. And snow melted all around him because of his intense prayer. And he went back to his office. It started to get dark. He went back to his office, shut the door. And characteristic mid-1800 language, he said, "No sooner did I shut the door to my office that it was as though Jesus himself stood before me and released over me a baptism of fire." He pulsated. He surged. He had such fire going through him that he asked God to stop. He said, "I can't, can't take anymore." I've had an experience like that. We'll just talk about Finney, and I'll tell you mine some other day. But Finney got so ignited by this divine encounter that he went through about a, a 17-year period of what he calls his years of burning. And for 17 years, there was a fire and a glory radiated around him at times for miles, lots of miles, 50 miles. Just near him, people would fall on their face under God's presence and say, "I think I want Jesus today. I want my sins to be gone. I want to be clean." He converted virtually the entire town of Rochester, New York. And up until the 1930s, it was, it was, uh, classified as, as the most desirable place in America to live in. I don't think it would be that case right now. Maybe Bradenton, I don't know. But, uh, Rochester, New York experienced the fire of God. Trains would come up from Penn Station, New York, loaded with people wanting the presence of God, the fire of God, revival. They would come to Upstate New York because Finney was there. And they would ask the same silly question to the conductor as they got on the train, "How will I know where Finney's revival is?" Conductor would laugh. He says, "Don't worry. You'll feel it before you get there. And just go with the crowd. Just go with the crowd. You'll find where he's at." And the, the magnetic pull, a tractor beam of God's glory rested on a man who is inflamed with God. This brilliant, uh, revivalist released fire throughout the Northeast, throughout the regions of our state where we live, many years in Connecticut. He's actually was born in Connecticut. And most of the revivalists were, and changed the, the entire complexion of the religious, um, impressions of America. A US president, and forgive me, I've forgotten which one, but a US president attended his funeral when he passed and said, "There's never been a man in America that has shaped the spirituality of America for God than Charles Finney." Every revivalist, every evangelist that has been used of God significantly can trace their lineage back to Charles Grison Finney, including Billy Graham, including some of the revivalists of today. That flame was ignited. A man. And I say here, "Lord, send me. I want not just a coal of fire, I want a volcano. I want, I want something so powerful that you get all the glory. Make me invisible. Make me a forgotten person as long as you are famous. Let my life be a billboard to advertise the power and glory of Jesus Christ until campuses, colleges, grammar schools, middle schools, high schools come to know Jesus, and and the entire school becomes a house of prayer." Fourth, the fire of His presence. Moses had it. Finney had it. Moses was so much in the glory of God. I, it's probably one of the big things, I, big takeaways from translating the book of Exodus, which I can't wait for you to read, was that at least seven times Moses went into the glory cloud of heaven. And three of those seven, minimum, at least three, it was 40 days and 40 nights without food or water. So this dude was in the glory all the time. His face shined. If you Google, uh, ancient artwork of Moses, you'll see horns coming out of his head because the Hebrew word for, uh, flashes of fire and horns is the same word. So the ancient, you know, artist, even Michelangelo, they all depicted Moses with horns because of the scripture that says fire was, was upon him. He shined. He had to put a veil over his face because nobody would talk to him. They were all afraid. He'd come into the room and every one of you would run out of here and go, "Oh, no way." So he had to put a veil just to talk to the elders of Israel as that glory light began to fade. You know, he'd go back into the presence and it would come on again. Whoop, flip the switch. The presence of God is a fire. He's an all-consuming fire. Can I get a Lutheran amen? Episcopalian amen here? Everything about God burns. There's not a, a cold, static, ham, boring particle in this transcendent, mysterious, other than and me, God, this glorious King, King of Glory, the Glory King himself. Just to be in His presence changes you. Your wife will like you if you get into His presence. She may stay with you a few more years. Your kids may call and want to see you again if you started walking in this flame. Divine, the sacred love of God. The presence of the Lord is absorbed. Holiness is absorbed. It's not behavior. It's not what you do. Jesus is our holiness, right? So we absorb Him. I like to use that word. We absorb holiness. Moses absorbed it before the flame of God, the fire of the shrub, the shrub on fire, and he set a million people free from one divine encounter. You get one divine encounter, it will set many people free, including you. It'll change your trajectory. It'll change your future and your present. To be in His presence until you ignite, until you flame on. We, we burn. You're, you're highly flammable in the presence of God. You're meant to burn. You're meant to burn for Him, not with lust and vice and greed and and self-centered ambition, but a fire of purity and holiness that marks those who have been with Jesus. And no matter if you're unlearned, unlettered, you don't have lots of PhDs in your background, people will know you have been with Jesus. Not because of your brilliance, not because of your mastery of the English language, but because of something other than humanity is upon you. They're feeling the presence. They know the presence. When Jesus came into my room, melted my wall, and set me free, I was pastoring. We, at that time, had, I don't know, 1500 people. We have, I have a wonderful friend, Mark, here. He and his wife were part of our ministry at one time. Thanks for coming, Mark, driving all the way from Connecticut just to. No, but I, in this encounter, I was sitting on the edge of my bed. I said, "Lord, every time I say this now that I think about it, every time I pray this prayer, He comes." All right. I was saying, "Lord, I don't love the people the way I need to love the people. Would you baptize me with Your love? Would you baptize me with Your fire?" To my left, the wall melts. I, I go back into this encounter every time I talk about it because you go from glory back into glory. And He came into my room and stood in front of me, a ball of fire and light with faint outline of someone inside of it. And my whole being got turned inside out. Like you, due to your pocket, you know, you turn your pocket, the lint in your pocket, the lint in my heart, everything, every pocket corner piece of me suddenly went inside out. I was undone. I streaked. I screamed. I put my face down, and I was on the edge of my bed. I put my face down onto my bed. I mean, pushed my face down. And the light was still blinding me. And I was screaming so loud I could hear the window rattle in my bedroom. Nobody else was at home. My wife was at Yale at the time, working at Yale. And I was pastoring. And I do not know how long that fiery presence was there. But it just got hotter, brighter, stronger. I'm shaking. I'm undone. I feel like everything's, every bone coming out of joint. My whole being being discombobulated. Is that a word? And all I could think about was, "I'm going to become ashes. My wife's going to come home from work. I wonder where I am and see a pile of ashes on the floor and sweep me up and not realize it's me." And I said, "What Finney said, 'And so will you.' What you going to do when He comes for you?" I said, "I can't take this. You have to lift this. I'm going to die. I will die. I don't think I'm supposed to die yet." Very slowly, He left. Wall went back where it was. Everything normal, except not. And I'm just trembling. I feel it even now, shaking in His presence. And of all the things I remembered, I had to go to the grocery store to buy some milk. That was my job for the day. I'll make this real short. But I went to the grocery store. People falling out everywhere. I realized I, I was really dumb. I thought, "How can people have so many heart attacks at one time?" I back out of the store, get in my car, Honda Accord. Sat there in the parking lot. Then I remembered I was supposed to go speak at chapel. We had a, a school connected to our church and had a whole bunch of beautiful little kids, first five grades, waiting for me, Pastor Brian, to come and speak in chapel. I come into the chapel about like this, and the kids immediately fall over. They all start falling down. The teacher, she fell down. The principal, and the kids were shaking. They were crying. Some were laughing. Some went on chariot rides, as they told me later. And the sweet fragrance of Jesus filled the [Music] room until it was time for the parents to come. And I still remember to this day, the first mom that came to pick up her, her kid, you know, wondering where, cuz we weren't out at the pickup place, you know. She comes in the door and sees all these kids laid out. And here I am, sitting on the platform. Oh, I could see the steam coming out of her. She comes down about like this aisle. She comes about halfway down. Boom! She became a nice mom. The Lord gripped her from there. The church grew and grew. That's a little history. I don't know if, if you knew all that story, Mark, but it may have, that was before you and, uh, yeah, you and your wife joined us. But, uh, we'd have services where bodies, you could not come into the sanctuary, the atrium. It's like firewood stacked up. Bodies laying out in the atrium. Couldn't even come in the sanctuary. They actually would fall out of their car in the parking lot. And the neighbors called Hazmat, 911, saying there's a chemical spill next door. We have all these people on the ground. Cops come. We have to explain it. And they get start to laugh. Okay, get back in their car and laugh. And church exploded. The glory hit. That has still marked my life. You can mark your life by the encounters you have with God. And everyone becomes a growth spurt, miracle grow. It, it changes you. It's like a booster. You go to another place. Just being in His presence. Number five, the fire of Holiness. I got to, I'm getting hungry, so we'll wrap it up. Fire of Holiness. Isaiah 6. "Who will go for us? Who will I send?" God has an answer. It's in a coal of fire. And I want you to get a picture of a prophet with blistered lips, can't hardly talk because he got sizzled with a coal of fire. You see, until you get the fire of God, all you have to say is, "Woe to everybody. You've got, you're against this, and you're against that, and you're going to woe to this." Isaiah had six woes in five chapters until chapter six comes, and he gets his seventh woe, and it's, "Woe is me." And from that moment on, it was no longer, "Woe to everybody else." And until you get in the throne room and see the Lord high and lifted up, and you get the coal of fire applied to your soul, all you have is a one-eyed vision of "The whole earth is full of darkness." But Isaiah heard it differently. "The whole earth is full of His glory." And I could say to you today, the same words, "No matter what it looks like to you, the whole earth is full of His glory." By the way, what are you made of? The whole earth. Everybody put your hand on your heart. Say, "My whole earth is full of His glory." Hara! That'll make anybody have glossia. Shaba! Hah! It's number six, prophetic fire. He makes His messengers flames of fire. It's the atmosphere of fire. The prophecy, the prophetic word is a, is a sharpened sword. You know, the Bible says that the word of God is, is like a two-edged sword, right? Wrong translation. It's not a two-edged sword. It's, it's a two-mouth sword. Oh, man, you missed a good amen spot. The word of God is a two-mouth sword. When it comes from His mouth through your mouth, it becomes a sword to defeat the enemy. A two-mouth sword. The word "edge" is not there. You'll get that in my footnote. Jeremiah said, and you can read it for yourself in the translation that we brought with us, "I will not make mention of God anymore, speak anymore in His name." He was so full of angst, pain, and weeping for his people. He says, "I'm quit. I'm not going to be a prophet anymore. I'm not going to speak." But his word was in my heart like a burning fire shut up inside of my bone marrow. So the burning bones of the prophet was released through his message, and it, it pierced through the darkness, the moral darkness, the, the false prophetic lies that had been spoken. And Jeremiah's truth was stronger, greater, and more powerful than the lies of false prophets, the lying prophets. And I'll end with this, and then we'll all go have Italian. Baptism of fire is the fire of His love. Many Christians are concerned about the mark of the beast instead of the seal of God over their heart. The two different words. If I had a whiteboard and wrote the Greek word for mark of the beast, mark, put the Greek word, what that word "mark" is, you would look at it and it looks like the word "character." Some of you have had that mark on you a long time. So anyway, when I grow up, I'll come back and teach Revelation. But you're not quite ready for that. You, you got to give me a few more amens before I dare open that can of doves. The seal of God is different. It's a seal that comes over us. And for every mark of the beast scripture, there's 1.5 verses for the seal of God. And you don't heal, you don't hear teachings or sermons on the seal of God. If I told you this is not a time of judgment, and judgment's not coming to the earth until the seal of God comes on your forehead, you would call me a heretic. But it's found in Revelation, chapter 7. You have four mighty angels that are holding back the winds of judgment. Nothing is to be harmed until the seal of God comes upon the forehead of His lovers. That is the mind of Christ. That's the seal of God on the forehead. So the, the, the believer, we get a twofold seal. We get a seal on our forehead, and we get a seal of fire over our heart. Song of Songs, chapter 8, verse, "Place me, Jesus says, place me as a seal of fire over your heart." A fiery, burning seal that rivers cannot extinguish. Rivers of pain, of persecution, of rejection, rivers of misunderstanding, slander, cannot put out that fire. A solar flare of divine love that burns upon the heart. The flaming heart of Jesus. God wants to give a generation of lovers. He wants to give a generation of lovers the fiery heart that He has. He says, "I will be over your heart. Take me now as a seal, a protection of favor, of acceptance, a seal to keep you intact in a time of trouble. Put me as a seal of fire." And it's jealousy. It will burn. It's stronger than death in the grave. More powerful than any force of this world is the fire of His love. Death is powerful. I've done enough funerals. I can tell you, people don't jump out of coffins. All right. Once you're there, you're there. And so it is with the fire of His love. You'll never get out of it. You'll never, never escape the fire of burning love. When Jesus seals you with fire over your heart, you're ruined. We need a warning label on that verse. Caution: You'll never be the same again. Because you can't go back to distracted living, to ambivalence, to double-minded. You just can't. You, you're wholeheartedly after one pursuit. And it's the magnificent obsession of giving Jesus more of your heart, more of your love. "Put me as a seal of fire." Friends, that's the seven seals, the seven expressions of the baptism of fire. Thanks for letting me share it with you today. Would you stand?
I'm telling you, He's going to take your breath away. When, so the Chinese saw the, the underground church of China, the leaders somehow saw my interview on Sid Roth. And God told them I was to come and speak to them. But because I couldn't do that kind of fire conference in China, they came as tourists to Israel. So I then would get on a plane and meet them in Israel. There were some years I went four times. I've been to Israel, I think, about 40 times. And half of that was with the Chinese. So I'm in this, uh, Dan Hotel in Jerusalem, if any of you, anybody of you ever stayed there, nice hotel, in the, uh, ballroom conference room downstairs, and, uh, twice the size of this room, packed, probably 1500, 2000 leaders from China. And the spirit of prophecy came upon me. Oh, one thing, I, I saw Chinese letters floating. And I, I wrote them out to the translator. I said, "What's that in Chinese?" He just freaked out. He said, "That's what we pray. That's revival. That's what we pray in China for years, that God would send that revival." I said, "Well, here's proof that He's going to send it. And that you're going to influence Israel. That you're going to help the nation of Israel catch on fire for God." The fire alarm in the building is going to go off 12 times as proof that what I just said was true. See, sometimes you got to prophesy it before you think you, you don't stop. And I said, "I go, oh no, I did not. Did I say that?" Just then, fire went off. I said, "Well, maybe the Lord's in this." Went off again. 12 times. They rushed me. They came at me. I had to rebuke them. The next day, they, my thumb to this day still hurts. They, because they just wanted to touch me. I said, "No, touch Him. He's the one that sends the fire. He's the one that is going to ignite you." So after that meeting, uh, things changed. There's a backstory to it, but things changed politically in China. And now they are fined horribly, like lots and lots of money, if they go to Israel, if they go do that again. So they, you know, the government caught on to what was going on. So I've not been able to speak to them since then. But I know that I know that fire is, is burning. I feel the same thing about Bradenton, and we'll throw in Sarasota because we're nice. But I believe God is going to do something here. I really believe it. I saw a flaming sword during the worship. And I feel like the whole Southeast of the US is getting ignited. There's stories of Georgia, of Mississippi, and we're going next to Alabama. I, I feel like the entire Southeast, Louisiana as well, that this region of country, all the way up into the Carolinas, that God is going to grip this Bible Belt again and put a buckle back on it. Yeah, He's going to restore the buckle to the Bible Belt because it's been slipping. Let's pray. Father God, seven expressions of the baptism of fire. I want cleansing. I want passion. I want Holiness. I want Your presence. I want Your power. And I want the prophetic fire. And I want the seal of fire. If you want the seal of fire over your heart, put your hand over your heart right now. And let me prophesy to you. Jesus is in the room. He's saying, "Take me now. Take me and place me over your heart as a sacred fire. I will be your baptism of fire." There it is. Keep your hand there for just a moment. There it is. See, He's coming through your hand right now, burning up the dross. Burning, burning, burning. Thank you, Lord. Send the fire. Reignite the Salvation Army. Is there anybody here that has Salvation Army in your background? All right. Our intercessor chick. All right. Amen. Sister, excuse me. Lord, ignite her. Just turn around. Pastor Don and Trish, if you don't mind, I just pray for her. She, I, I feel that Salvation Army anointing is going to come upon you. Whoa. Wow. Let it be upon the team going out Tuesday. Let them be a Salvation Army full of fire. Thank you, God. Thank you, Jesus. Send the fire, Lord. Send the fire. We want to take the fire with us up the mountain of sacrifice. Let the fire fall. Let Your glory come down. Burn up a religious spirit, God, that wants to limit the expression of Your sovereignty. More, Lord. Pour it out. Pour it out. Pour it out on the kids, Lord. The youth of this church. Young adults. More young adults like me. Let them burn, Lord. And we thank you, Father, for the miracle stories we're going to hear over the next few weeks as the fire falls in Bradenton. [Applause] Amen. Yeah.