Transcription
Brethren, journey with me to the city of Zurich, Switzerland in the spring of 1920. I had been invited to minister in a large meeting hall, a fine building full of educated, respectable people. And on the second evening, a man was carried in. I can see him still. He was folded over in his chair like a broken hinge. His body so contorted by demonic power that his knees were pressed against his chest and his face was twisted to one side. He had not walked in years. His family sat nearby, their faces gray with the kind of exhaustion that only comes from watching someone you love suffer for a long, long time.
Now, I had seen affliction before. I had prayed for hundreds of sick and tormented souls across England, America, Australia, and beyond. But something about this man stopped me cold because as I looked at him, I felt something rise within me. Something that was not my compassion, not my faith, not my courage. It was something altogether different, something I had learned through years of failure and surrender and being broken before God was the only thing that actually worked. And what happened next in that hall in Zurich is something I have never been able to explain in purely human terms. But I can tell you this. Before that meeting was over, the people in that room saw something that had nothing to do with Smith Wigglesworth. What God showed me about the true purpose of Pentecost and what it meant for that man in the chair is what I must preach to you today. Let me tell you what happened.
Now church, before I tell you what God did in Zurich that night, I must take you somewhere far more important. I must take you inside, inside the man who was praying. Not the man in the chair. Because what I have learned through the years, what has cost me more than I can describe, is this. You are not going to oppose devils if you cannot first master yourself. And the moment you discover that truth, really discover it in the furnace of experience, not merely as a neat idea, it will change everything about how you understand Pentecost.
Let me tell you about a season in my own life that I do not speak of often. There was a time, early in my ministry in Bradford, when I was a plumber who preached on street corners and believed sincerely that desire alone was sufficient. I wanted God's power. I prayed for it. I preached about it. I shouted for it at open-air meetings in the cold Bradford streets until my voice gave out and I saw very little. There were moments, glimpses, small things, but nothing like what I had read in the book of Acts. And I could not understand why. I was sincere. I was willing. I worked harder than any man I knew. But there was one problem and it was the problem I could not see because it was me. You see, I had given God my effort. I had given God my time. I had given God my voice and my sweat and my ambition for his kingdom, but I had not given God myself. There is a vast difference between those two things, beloved, vast. And what God was waiting for was not more of my activity. He was waiting for the surrender of the man behind the activity. Because here is what I want you to understand. And this is the most important thing I will say today. It is only when you are conquered by Christ that he is enthroned. >> [clears throat] >> And it is only when he is enthroned within you that the power you have been straining after begins to flow. Not from your effort, but from his presence.
But wait, that's not the most staggering part because what God showed me next will reframe everything you think you know about why the Holy Spirit came. Most people, when they think about Pentecost, think about tongues. They think about fire sitting on heads, about a rushing, mighty wind, about 120 people suddenly speaking in languages they had never learned. And all of that is true and glorious and I would not diminish it for a moment. But beloved, that was not the purpose. That was the sign. The sign points to something and what it points to is this. God, through the Holy Spirit, came to reestablish himself in human flesh. Say that slowly. Let it settle. God reestablished in human flesh.
You might be wondering, what does that mean? Has God not always been present? Yes. But when Jesus walked this earth, God was in a body. He was manifest in a frame. He could walk into a room and every demon in that room had to reckon with his presence. He could stand before a man possessed with a legion of evil spirits and before a word was spoken, those spirits were already crying out because the presence of the most high God in bodily form was unbearable to them. And then, Jesus was crucified, buried, raised, and ascended. And for a moment, it might have seemed as though God had withdrawn from the earth in bodily form. But that is exactly what Jesus was talking about when he said in John 16:7, "Nevertheless, I tell you the truth. It is to your advantage that I go away, for if I do not go away, the helper will not come to you. But if I depart, I will send him to you." And then, in verse 8, he tells us precisely what the Holy Spirit came to do. "And when he has come, he will convict the world of sin and of righteousness and of judgment."
The Holy Spirit came to judge. He came to confront. He came to manifest the holy presence of God in human frames, not just one body this time as in Jesus, but in every yielded, spirit-filled believer on the face of the earth. Little did the disciples know, standing on the day of Pentecost, that they were not merely receiving a gift for themselves. They were becoming the ongoing bodily presence of God in the world. This is exactly what Paul declares in 2 Corinthians 4:10, "That we carry about in our bodies the dying of the Lord Jesus that the life of Jesus also may be manifested in our mortal flesh." In our mortal flesh, church, not in some glorious future resurrection body, right now, in these weak, ordinary clay vessels, the life of Jesus is to be manifested, displayed, made visible. And where the life of Jesus is manifested, what must happen to everything that is unlike him? It must depart. It has no other option. Just as darkness does not negotiate with light, it simply ceases to exist where light enters. So every power of evil, every spirit of infirmity, every chain of sin and unbelief must yield where Christ is truly manifested in a yielded human vessel.
Now, here is where it gets glorious, beloved. And here is where that man in Zurich comes back into the story. I stood before that contorted man in the chair and I felt the Holy Spirit rise within me with a certainty that I can only describe as the presence of another. Not my authority, his. Not my compassion for the man, his. Not my faith in the moment, his. In that instant, I was not conscious of Smith Wigglesworth at all. I was conscious only of Christ. His holiness, his absolute supremacy over every demon, his sovereign right to inhabit and liberate that broken body. And I spoke not with volume, not with great theatrical display, but with the quiet, settled authority of a man who knows the king is at home within him. The transformation was not gradual. It was not a slow improvement over several weeks of prayer and fasting, though I believe in both. The man in that chair, folded and contorted and bound for years, straightened just like that. The people in the hall did not cheer immediately. They could not. Some of them wept. Some of them sat in stunned silence, their mouths open, unable to process what their eyes had just witnessed. His family, that gray-faced, exhausted family, broke. Completely broke. Because what they saw was not a clever minister performing a technique. What they saw was God reestablished in human flesh doing what he always does when he is truly present, making broken things whole.
You won't believe what happened in that meeting after. Person after person came forward. The sick were healed. People who had come as skeptics left as worshipers. And in every single case, the pattern was the same. Not a formula, not a method, but the manifested presence of Christ in a surrendered vessel confronting everything unlike himself and compelling it to yield.
Now, beloved, I must bring this to where you live because this is not a history lesson about Zurich in 1920. This is about you right now. And the question that the Holy Spirit is pressing upon every one of us today, the purpose of Pentecost was not to give you an experience to remember. It was not to give you a prayer language for private use. It was not even primarily to give you power over the enemy as wonderful as that is. The purpose of Pentecost was to make you a dwelling place, a living, walking, breathing habitation of the most high God so that wherever you go, Christ goes. Into the hospital ward, into the broken marriage, into the workplace full of cynicism and unbelief, into the meeting where formal religion has taken the place of the living God. Wherever a spirit-filled believer walks, Christ is manifested. And everything unlike him must depart.
But here is where most Christians will never go. Here is the uncomfortable truth that the majority of believers spend their entire lives avoiding. You cannot be that vessel while you are still on the throne of your own life. Self and Christ cannot reign simultaneously. The same space cannot be occupied by two kings. And as long as you are managing your own reputation, protecting your own comfort, insisting on your own agenda, nursing your own offenses, Christ is a guest in your life, not the king. And a guest does not have the authority of a king. I am telling you today from the scripture, from 40 years of ministry, from every scar and every triumph God has brought me through, that the single greatest obstacle to the purpose of Pentecost being fulfilled in your life is not the devil. It is not your past. It is not your weakness or your failures or the prayers God has not yet answered. It is you, the unconquered self. And the challenge I am laying before you today, the challenge that most Christians will spend their whole life side-stepping, is this, get off the throne. Surrender the self completely, not partially, not in the areas that are convenient, completely. And let Christ be enthroned within you in the full demonstration of the Holy Spirit's power.
Paul writes in Galatians 2:20, "I have been crucified with Christ. It is no longer I who live, but Christ lives in me. And the life which I now live in the flesh, I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me." That is not poetry. That is the operating system of a spirit-filled life. Not I, but Christ. Not my agenda, his. Not my strength, his. Not my presence in a room, his presence through me confronting and judging and healing and liberating everything that is not like him. If God could take a rough Bradford plumber, barely educated, his temper and stubbornness broken on the altar of God's dealing, and so fill him with the presence of Christ that evil spirits fled and the dead were raised and the lame walked, then God can use you. The question is not whether God is willing. The question is whether you are willing to be conquered first.
Brothers and sisters, I want to close with the words that have burned in me since the first day I understood the real purpose of Pentecost. God sent the Holy Spirit to reestablish himself in human flesh, not in one body, in many. In every surrendered, spirit-filled, Christ-enthroned believer who walks this earth. And the result when that purpose is truly fulfilled is what Acts 19:17 describes after God moved through Paul in Ephesus. Fear fell on them all and the name of the Lord Jesus was magnified. Not the name of Paul, not the reputation of the ministry, the name of Jesus magnified because that is always what happens when God is truly reestablished in human flesh. He gets the glory. He gets the recognition. And everything unlike him gets out of the way. My cry, the cry of my heart for you today, and the cry I believe the Holy Spirit is releasing over this generation, is that God would make us terrors to evildoers, not because of who we are, not because of our gifting, our training, our theological knowledge, our years of ministry, but because of who is fully, sovereignly, undeniably at home within us. May the devil know your name. May the demons in every room you enter feel the weight of his presence before you open your mouth. May the purpose of Pentecost, God reestablished in human flesh, be fully, gloriously, irreversibly fulfilled in you. This is why the Holy Spirit came. And this is what he is still looking for, a vessel completely his own. Let us pray.
Father, we come to the end of ourselves, and we do it gladly. We have tried long enough in our own strength. We have strained after power while holding onto the self that must be surrendered before power can flow. Today, by the grace of your Holy Spirit, we step off the throne. We yield completely, without reservation, to the Lordship of Jesus Christ. Enthrone him in us. Make his presence in these mortal frames so undeniable that every devil, every darkness, every chain must yield. Fulfill the purpose of Pentecost in us. Reestablish God in human flesh. Make us terrors to evildoers for your glory alone and for the liberation of every captive we encounter. In Jesus' name, amen.
I believe with all my heart that as you've received this truth today, something in you has shifted from seeking an experience to surrendering a life. And that surrender is already opening a door no devil can shut. Comment below with "I surrender the throne" and share one area where you are choosing Christ's reign over your own. Your declaration will strengthen someone else today. Don't forget to like, subscribe, and hit that notification bell for rare, timeless, [clears throat] and anointed teachings that will help you grow spiritually and walk in the authority Christ intended for you. Each morning this week, give God the one thing you have been managing yourself. And watch what he does with a vessel wholly his. You've seen all three movements of Pentecostal power. You've seen the purpose of Pentecost, but what does it mean for the weakness in your body and the defeat in your home right now? What if the least believer in this room is already greater than the mightiest man in the old covenant? Check out this next video to find out.