Sound from Heaven and the Celestial Fire - the sound of true Christianity

Holy Ghost (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Early, then, on the second Lord’s day after the Ascension, is the entire company met, with one heart, to renew their oft-repeated prayer. We cannot go to the house where was that upper room; nor to the site where it stood. These points are left unnoticed, after the mode of Christianity, which is in nothing a religion of circumstances, in everything a religion of principles.

We know not how long they had that morning urged their prayer, nor whose voice was then crying to Him who had promised, nor what word of the Master he was pleading, nor what feelings of closer expectation and more vivid faith were warming the breasts of the disciples. But “suddenly there came a sound from heaven, as of a rushing mighty wind.” Not, mark you, a wind; no gale sweeping over the city struck the sides of the house and rustled round it. But “from heaven,” directly downward, fell “a sound,” without shape, or step, or movement to account for it—a sound as if a mighty wind were rushing, not along the ground, but straight from on high, like showers in a dead calm. Yet no wind stirred. As to motion, the air of the room was still as death; as to sound, it was awful as a hurricane.

Mysterious sound, whence comest thou? Is it the Lord again breathing upon them, but this time from His throne? Is it the wind of Ezekiel preparing to blow? Shaken by this supernatural sign, we may see each head bow low. Then, timidly turning upward, John sees Peter’s head crowned with fire; Peter sees James crowned with fire; James sees Nathanael crowned with fire; Nathanael sees Mary crowned with fire; and round and round the fire sits “on each of them.” The Lord has been mindful of His promise. The word of the Lord is tried. John was a faithful witness. Jesus was a faithful Redeemer. He is now glorified; for the Holy Ghost is given. Jesus “being by the right hand of God exalted, and having received of the Father the promise of the Holy Ghost, He hath shed forth this.”

The instant effect of the descent of the Spirit on the first Gentile converts in the house of Cornelius was, that they began to “magnify God.”* The effect would be the same in this first case. That bosom has yet to learn what is the feeling of moral sublimity, which never has been suddenly heaved with an emotion of uncontrollable adoration to God and the Lamb—an emotion which, though no voice told whence it came, by its movement in the depths of the soul, further down than ordinary feelings reach, did indicate somehow that the touch of the Creator was traceable in it.

They only who have felt such unearthly joy need attempt to conceive the outburst of that burning moment. Body, soul, and spirit, glowing with one celestial fire, would blend, and pour out their powers in a rapturous “Glory be to God!” or “Blessed be the Lord God!” Modern believers—not those who never unite in simple and fervent supplications at the throne of grace, but those who meet and urge with long-repeated entreaty their requests to God—can recall times which help them to imagine what must have been the peal of praise that burst from the hearts of the hundred and twenty when the baptism fell upon their souls; times when they and their friends have felt as if the place where they met was filled with the glory of the Lord.

One word as to the mode of this baptism. In this case we have the one perfectly clear account contained in Scripture of the mode wherein the baptizing element was applied to the person of the baptized. The element here is fire; the mode is shedding down—“hath shed forth this.” “It sat upon each of them.” Did baptism mean immersion, they would have been plunged into the fire, not the fire shed upon them. The only other case in which the mode of contact between the baptizing element and the baptized persons is indicated, is this: “And were all baptized to Moses in the cloud and in the sea.”

They were not dipped in the cloud, but the cloud descended upon them; they were not plunged in the sea, but the sea sprinkled them as they passed. The Spirit signified by the water is never once promised under the idea of dipping. Such an expression as, “I will immerse you in My Spirit,” “I will plunge you in My Spirit,” or, “I will dip you in clean water,” is unknown to the Scripture. But, “I will pour out My Spirit upon you,” “I will sprinkle clean water upon you,” is language and thought familiar to all readers of the Bible. The word “dip,” or “dipped,” does not often occur in the New Testament, but when it does, the original is never “baptize,” or “baptized.”*

Arthur, W. (1900). The Tongue of Fire or, The True Power of Christianity (pp. 33–37). New York; London: Harper & Brothers Publishers.