TRUE PENTECOST

TRUE PENTECOST
by Gary Wilkerson

In Acts 11, we read of a historic change in the church that came
through unnamed, Spirit-empowered believers. These were the
first to take the good news of Jesus beyond the barriers of
Judaism to the Gentiles: "There were some of them . . . who
on coming to Antioch spoke to the Hellenists also, preaching
the Lord Jesus" (Acts 11:20). I love the phrase "some of them"
used here. These faithful, unnamed believers had no idea
of the crucial part they played in history.

Pentecost isn´t just an event that occurred 2,000 years ago
but a living phenomenon still happening around the world.
Somewhere at this moment small groups of people are
crying out to God-and His Spirit is falling on them,
empowering them to be His witnesses to an unsaved
world.

Pentecost is happening right now in Varanasi, a city in
northern India I visited not long ago. Less than one
percent of the population had been churched when a
young Christian woman arrived there a few years ago.
She began leading people to Jesus one by one, and
those converts began leading others to the Lord. This
young woman didn´t keep Pentecost to herself and
now there are thousands of dynamic believers in the
region with a powerful witness for Christ. There are
others just like her all over the world-Christians who
cry out to the Spirit to take the Father´s love further.

On several occasions my father, David Wilkerson, told me
about what grieved him most when he pastored a small
Pennsylvania church in the 1950s. It was a Pentecostal church,
so the services followed a certain course. Sister So-and-So
played the organ and the congregation sang some traditional
songs. Someone stood up and delivered a message in tongues,
followed by another who provided the interpretation. Dad then
preached. Afterward, he offered a prayer and people came to
the altar crying for the Holy Spirit to come down. Then everyone
went home.

This church had no outreach, no ministry of mercy. Very few
people were brought to Christ during the few years my father
pastored there. These were Christians who sought Pentecost
for themselves but never knew the Pentecost God had in mind
for them. My father´s heartbroken prayer said it all: "Lord, if this
is Pentecost, I don´t want it. If it´s about having a `bless me´
club week after week, I´ll have nothing to do with it."

It was out of his desire for true Pentecost that Dad stopped
watching television and spent time praying instead. The rest
is history. These decades later, his book The Cross and the
Switchblade has sold multiple millions, with over 1,000 Teen
Challenge Centers around the world working to rescue the lost
and broken. All of these works proclaim God´s active power
today through the Holy Spirit.

-Source-

http://sermons.worldchallenge.org/en/node/25058

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