Nor is it correct to say that there are "many baptisms" of the Spirit.
The Holy Ghost baptism is received by the consecrated believer once
for all, and is never repeated unless by unfaithfulness or backsliding
he falls from the precious grace which this baptism confers upon him,
from Christ through the Spirit, and again comes in repentance and
confession to do his first works, and again to be filled with the
Spirit and cleansed from all sin. And even in that case the Holy Ghost
seldom or never repeats Himself, by giving the same emotional
experience as at first, but may and must be received and retained by
faith, and the amount of feeling and the kind of feeling which He will
arouse must be left to Himself entirely, I mean to say that the
experience may be lost and may be regained, but seldom with the same
phenomena of consciousness as at the first. Do not speak, then, of
having had many baptisms of the Spirit, but seek and find the one
baptism with the Holy Ghost and fire. Do not say that you are desiring
or that you have had a fresh baptism with the Holy Ghost, but let your
thoughts and prayers be directed to the one baptism which cleanseth
and endueth and anointeth.
But I would not be misunderstood on this point. The Psalmist says, "I
shall be anointed with fresh oil," and to every sanctified child of
God, there may and do come seasons of refreshing, also of girding and
filling, and fresh anointing for particular services, which are
sometimes called fresh baptisms, but which are not to be confounded
with the one true abiding Pentecostal experience. These blessings are
not to be undervalued or lightly esteemed, but they come because we
already have the Blesser Himself as a personal indwelling Presence and
Power.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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