(Billy Wilson:)  Welcome to World Impact and welcome to Jerusalem, Israel. I’m Billy Wilson and today on this program we’re going to be talking about Pentecost and the fire of God. Today I believe the Holy Spirit’s going to minister to you right where you live. We’ll be in the traditional site of the upper room here in Jerusalem. We're going to be talking about what happened to the early church almost 2000 years ago, how that the Holy Spirit filled the room and tongues of fire set upon each of them. John the Baptist had said of Jesus, “He’s going to baptize you in the Holy Spirit and in fire.” Today we’re going to be talking about what that means. What does it mean to be baptized, immersed, in the fire of God, how that His passion, his purity and power become ours through the Holy Spirit. Now as I share on this program today if you want to know more about the Holy Spirit or how to receive Him into your life I want you to call me at the number that’s on the screen or go to our website, WorldImpact.tv. People from around the world contact us every week. We hear from people in Europe, in Asia, in South America and the United States and even right here in the Middle East. Now today as God speaks to your heart why don’t you write me on our website WorldImpact.tv, tell me what the Holy Spirit’s doing in your life, in your family, in your city and even in your nation and then tell me what you need the Holy Spirit to do in your life. I believe that during this program the fire of God is going to touch you right where you live. I want you to stay with me now and I’ll be back in just a minute from the upper room right here in Jerusalem, Israel, talking about God’s fire falling.

(Announcer:)  For many, the Holy Spirit is the most mysterious person in the Godhead. Scripture does not describe His physical aspect nor detail. Yet the Bible uses many symbols to reflect on the nature of the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit is like a dove, a gentle symbol of peace. The Spirit is like rain, refreshing and life-giving. He is like a river, continuous and unstoppable. The Holy Spirit is like the wind, unseen, dynamic and full of power. He is like wine, replacing the world’s pleasures. He is like oil, anointing, protecting and sanctifying, and the Holy Spirit is like fire. Fire, since ancient times has served to light and protect homes. It is used to cook food and purify water. In the summer it can bring pleasure and in the coldest days of winter fire can provide a barrier between life and death. The heat of fire is an incredibly strong force. Jewelers use fire to purify metals by drawing off impurities, then they shape and mold the precious metal into items of great beauty. Iron and steel are not known for beauty but for strength. The intense heat of the fire tempers the metal and reduces the likelihood that it will break under pressure. The higher the fire’s temperature the more resilient the steel becomes. Therefore fire may be the element the gave man greatest dominion over his environment. The Holy Spirit is like fire, heating, lighting, protecting, refining, strengthening and empowering.

(Billy Wilson:)  Today on World Impact we’re talking about Pentecost, specifically we’re talking about the fire of the Holy Spirit falling upon our lives. I’m sitting today in the traditional site of the upper room here in Jerusalem, Israel. This particular site is just over the tomb of David. Somewhere in this vicinity there was a house. The disciples gathered in that house for the Last Supper with Jesus and they came back to that house to seek His face and to look for the promise of the Holy Spirit which He had given them just days before. Now God’s Word records what happened during that time in Acts chapter 2 and verse 1 through 4. Scripture says, “When the day of Pentecost came they were all together in one place. Suddenly a sound like the blowing of a violent wind came from heaven and filled the whole house where they were sitting and saw what seemed to be tongues of fire that separated and came to rest on each of them. All of them were filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak in other tongues as the Spirit enabled them.” Somewhere very close to where I am sitting this occasion in Acts chapter took place. Now John the Baptist had said of Jesus as recorded in Luke chapter 3 verse 16. “John answered them all, ‘I baptize you with water but one who is more powerful than I will come, the straps of whose sandals I am not worthy to untie. He will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and with fire.’” And Hebrews 12 :29 says, “Our God is a consuming fire.” Now there were three great feasts in the life of Israel that called every male Jew to return to Jerusalem and worship. There was the feast of Passover which commemorated the escape from Egypt, the fact that God passed over His people because of the blood of the lamb. Later on there was the Feast of Tabernacles commemorating the journey through the wilderness as people built booths to commemorate that they lived in tents. And then there was the Feast of Pentecost, in Hebrew called Shavuot. This was the Feast of Weeks or the Feast of Harvest. It was a time when they commemorated the first fruits of the harvest in the land, and also a time when God’s people commemorated the giving of the law at Mount Sinai. Today we’re here in the traditional site of the upper room to talk about what happened at Pentecost. Specifically I want to talk about the emblems of the Holy Spirit that were on display that day. Now several things happened in the upper room. First of all there was a wind from heaven that filled all the house where they were sitting. Later on they spoke with other tongues as the Spirit enabled them. But Scripture also says that tongues like fire set up on each of them. Something about the demonstration of the Holy Spirit that day, on the day of Pentecost, was like fire. Now it’s this concept I want to speak to today in this message that I’m calling Fire Fall. God’s Spirit is like fire. But what does that mean to us and what did it mean to the early disciples that had gathered in the upper room that received the power and baptism of the Holy Spirit? Jesus was baptizing them in fire. First of all I believe that fire represents passion. God came to bring His passion into his people. Now let me says to you, there is nothing worse in the entire world than cold, dead, boring, lifeless religion. Now when the disciples gathered in the upper room they were surrounded by religion and religious exercise. The feast of Pentecost was going on. People were ritualized in their celebration. It was cold. It was dead. And in many ways it was lifeless. And yet in the upper room God sends the fire of His life and puts inside of His believers, those who had followed Jesus, a passion that could not be quenched. I believe on that day they received a passion for righteousness. They received a passion for the lost and a passion to give everything they had to God. Most importantly, the Holy Spirit brought a renewed passion for Jesus into their heart. Their master had been carried away into heaven and the Holy Spirit had come to make Him real in the life of those who had believed in Him. They received a passion, a fire, to know Jesus intimately. Count von Zinzendorf said it this way. “I have but one passion. It is He. It is He alone. The world is the field and the field is the world and henceforth that country shall be my home where I can be most used in winning souls for Christ.” The great revivalist Wesley Duewel said it this way. “All other passions build upon or flow from our passion for Jesus. A passion for souls grows out of a passion for Christ. A passion for missions builds upon a passion for Christ. The most crucial danger to a Christian whatever his role is to lack a passion for Jesus. The most direct route to personal renewal and new effectiveness is a new all-consuming passion for Jesus. Lord, give us this passion whatever the cost!”  That’s what happened on the day of Pentecost. They gave their lives and God gave them a passion, a fire, to know Jesus intimately. Now I want you to stay with me. I’ll be back in just a moment from here in Jerusalem, Israel, to talk about the fire of God in your life.

(Sidney Mohede:)  You know in the last six months there has just been this stirring about the presence of God.  I think as a church, a lot of churches in the modern world, we’ve become so technical, you know, with the production of things. You know, to have a great church means to have great lighting, great sound system and the beautiful LED and great multimedia. But there’s just been this stirring in my heart that, just go back to the presence of God because that’s the only thing that sets us apart from the rest of the world. It’s not how good we play. It’s not about how great our multimedia or how great our lighting and stage production can be but it’s when you have the presence of God in your church and for me that’s the message that I want to share to the Christian world. Just go back to seeking that presence of God like Moses did when he said to God, show me Your glory. To show me Your glory because without You, without Your presence I don’t want to go anywhere. That’s what Moses said. Without Your presence I don’t want to go anywhere. And I think we need to go back to that kind of a heart of worship because it’s going to change the whole church when you have that presence of God.

(Robert Morris:)  I am so excited to be a part of Empowered 21. And when Billy Wilson first shared with me the concept, the idea, of asking every pastor in the world to preach on the Holy Spirit, the power of the Holy Spirit, on Pentecost Sunday, I thought what a God-inspired idea. What could happen if we teach and preach, what the Bible says about the power and the person and presence of the Holy Spirit and to do it on the day of Pentecost, the day when the Holy Spirit came and the church was birthed. And that first church in Acts chapter 2, when they received the power and the boldness of the Holy Spirit, it says they turned the world upside down. Well I want to encourage you. Pray about it and to preach and teach your congregation on the power of the Holy Spirit on Pentecost Sunday. And let’s pray again that we could turn the world upside down for the Lord Jesus Christ.

(Billy Wilson:)  In the first part of our sermon today I talked about the fire of God falling in the upper room on the early church on the early disciples. This fire of God brought the passion of Jesus into the human heart. The disciples were on fire for Jesus Christ. Now Oswald Chambers, the great devotional writer, said it this way. “Human nature, if it is healthy, demands excitement and if it does not obtain its thrilling excitement in the right way, it will seek it in the wrong. God never makes bloodless stoics. He makes no passionless saints.” So one of the things that happens when Jesus baptizes us in fire and in the Holy Spirit, is we receive a passion, a passion for God, for righteousness, for the lost, and for Jesus. Second, what happens when the Holy Spirit comes upon us, is we receive purity. We receive the power to be pure in an impure world. Now God’s Word says in Galatians 5 verse 16, “I say, walk by the Spirit,” Paul said, “and you will not gratify the desires of the flesh.” A positive movement in God will keep us from negative behavior. In other words, if we’re going to be pure we must learn to walk in the Spirit. You see the Holy Spirit is God’s fire. It has the ability to consume and to burn up impurities. The Holy Spirit is God and God is holy. Thus He is called the Holy Spirit. Now today I want to you to understand that if you need purity in your life in the midst of this impure and corrupt world, one of the best ways is to be filled with the Holy Spirit day and night. The early church was in a world that was corrupt. They were in a world where there was a gay agenda. They were in a world where there was sexual sin all around them, where there was thievery and conniving and ungodliness. And yet they were filled with God’s fire and were able to stay pure. Isaiah, when he heard the angels cry out, “Holy, holy, is the Lord of hosts, the whole earth is full of His glory, he cried, “I’m undone, for I’m a man of unclean lips in the midst of an unclean people.” Scripture says that one of the angels took a coal off the altar of heaven and touched it to Isaiah’s lips and said, “Your sin is purged.” The Holy Spirit has the power to burn up the contaminants that come into our mind, into our spirit and into our life and make us pure before the living God. He is a consuming fire. So where we’re baptized in fire and Holy Spirit we’re baptized into passion. We can live fully and vibrantly. And we’re baptized into purity. We can retain our integrity in a world that has lost theirs. And third, today, when we’re baptized in fire we are baptized in the power of God. Jesus promised that when the Holy Spirit came upon us we would receive power. We would receive dunamis or dynamite, the dynamic of God. I want you to stay with me now. I’ll be back in just a moment to continue this thought that you can have the power of God.

(Werner Nachtigal:)  Well for me the main thing is what Jesus said at the end. “You will receive power and you will be my witness.” So we will receive the power of the Lord and we will reach the world. We will reach the lost. We will pray for the sick and we will heal the sick. So it’s more than only a nice, charismatic feeling. It’s to receive power, even if we are weak so we can be strong. You know, we were at the crusades in the Ukraine. I was burnt out. I was tired. And then the pastor asked me, please pray for these ladies. Three ladies were waiting there. And I asked them, so what was wrong with them. They have AIDS. So I prayed for them and immediately I left. Six months later I met one of these ladies and she was healed. So I believe in the power of God. We need the power of God. But it’s more than, you know, to have goosebumps in a charismatic meeting. It’s we shall receive power and we will be His witness.

(Billy Wilson:)  Acts 1:8 says, “But you will receive power when the Holy Spirit comes on you and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem.” In Acts chapter 2 the early church was filled with the fire of God and the power of the Holy Spirit, and immediately they became God’s witnesses. In fact in just moments Peter was preaching that Jesus is Lord to the inhabitants of Jerusalem. And it spilled over out of the upper room all the way to the temple and people from around the world heard the message of Jesus Christ. God’s Holy Spirit and God’s fire in your life will give you power and authority to speak the name of Jesus in your situation. In many ways God’s Holy Spirit, the fire, is that combustible material that comes into our heart and produces energy. In other words it moves us forward. It gives us inertia to do the will of God. Some of you feel stuck right where you are. What you need is fresh fire from the Holy Spirit in order to make forward progress. The power of God is His dynamic, his dynamite to give us authority against the power of the enemy. Now there’s a principle in Scripture I want to share to conclude this teaching today. It’s the principle of sacrifice and fire. Throughout the Bible in order for there to be fire from heaven there needed to be sacrifice on earth. At the dedication of tabernacle in Leviticus chapter 9 verse 24 it says that fire came out from presence of the Lord and consumed the burnt offering and the fat portions on the altar. When all the people saw it they shouted for joy and fell face down. In second Chronicles chapter 7 and verse 1, at the dedication of temple on Temple Mount just behind me here, the Scripture says that when they gave the sacrifice in Solomon’s temple that the fire of God fell. And of course when Elijah was on Mount Carmel and gave the sacrifice unto God and poured water upon it, God’s fire fell proving that He was God and not Baal. Today the real question is not, does the fire of God still exist or is the Holy Spirit still at work? The real question is, where will the fire fall and where will God find the sacrifice he can consume? I believe in the upper room in Acts chapter 2, God found 120 people who had lain down their entire life. Everything was on the altar. All that they had, their resources, their future, their dreams. They gave everything to Christ. And because of that the fire of God fell and consumed the sacrifice. So the real question today is will you be one of God’s sacrifices? Will you give your life as a living sacrifice? If so, the fire of God will fall upon you and you can have passion, purity and power right in the midst of this world. God’s fire wants to fall on your life.

(Denise Graves:)  When you do ministry to touch broken people and you use your gift even outside of the four walls, and you see the power of the anointing that you have to change lives, it’s all you can do is worship. And all you can do is be refreshed because God is close to the broken ones. But I really want to begin to look in Scripture and realize that every person that had an encounter with God fell on their faces. Nobody had to tell them they were messed up. The contrast of His holiness next to their undoneness made them quite aware because they didn’t have it together. But they have this encounter because they worshipped. Then they get up and they changed their sphere of influence. They changed the world.

(Kelanie Gloeckler:)
God of Abraham, God of Isaac, God of Jacob
Elohim, Adonai, God who answers by fire
Glorify Your Son, Jesus Christ, the true Messiah
Breathe on us, send us out, in the spirit of Elijah

Jesus Christ, the same, yesterday, today, forever
King of kings, Lord of lords, only Son of the Living God
Rise up in Your Bride, show Your power, show Your glory
Breathe on us, send us out, in the spirit of Elijah

The sick are healed, the blind can see
The cripples dance, the demons flee
At the name of Jesus, every knee will bow
The dead are raised, the deaf can hear
As we proclaim, “The Kingdom is here”
At the name of Jesus, every tongue will shout

There is no one like our God
There is no one like Jehovah,
You are worthy, forever worthy
There is no one like our God
There is no one like Jehovah,
You are worthy, forever worthy

No one like You,
No one besides you,
No one above you, God.
We want to worship you

God of Abraham, God of Isaac, God of Jacob
Elohim, Adonai, God who answers by fire
Glorify Your Son, Jesus Christ, the true Messiah
Breathe on us, send us out, in the spirit of Elijah

(Billy Wilson:)  Today on World Impact we’ve been talking about the fire of the Holy Spirit and how you can be baptized in God’s fire. We’ve been here in the traditional site of the upper room in Jerusalem, Israel, and also around the city talking about the effect and the power of the Holy Spirit. Now as you’ve watched this show today maybe you know in your own heart that you need a new passion, a new passion for Jesus, a new passion for life. I believe the Holy Spirit can bring that to you, or maybe you need purity today or power to overcome. Whatever you need I believe the Holy Spirit can fill your life with the fire of God. So right where you’re at, whether you’re in your living room, your kitchen, or wherever you’re watching this show, I want you to stop. Stop right now. Lift up your hands and lift up your heart and say this with me. “Holy Spirit I welcome you in my life. Fill me with your fire. Baptize me Jesus and use me for your glory.” I believe that right now the Holy Spirit is coming upon your life and God is filling you with his fire. If you prayed with me today or you want to more about how to receive the baptism of the Holy Spirit you can call the number on your screen. You can go to our website, WorldImpact.tv. Tell me your story. Tell me about your encounter with the Holy Spirit and we’ll rejoice with you and pray for you to be filled with God’s fire, with His passion, purity and power in the 21st century. I’m Billy Wilson. This is World Impact and today we’ve been in Jerusalem, Israel, right here in the upper room sharing Jesus with the world.

(Announcer:)  You will receive power when the Holy Spirit comes upon you and you will be My witnesses in Jerusalem, Judea, Samaria and to the ends of the earth. And from the ends of the earth God is calling us back to celebrate Pentecost from the city of Pentecost. Jerusalem 2015.

(Billy Wilson:) It has been a lifetime honor of mine for the last 15 years to travel the world and share Jesus through World Impact. I really appreciate those of you that join us every week from where you live. I’m so grateful that God allows us to come to places like Jerusalem and preach His Word with the boldness of the Holy Spirit. Today we do need your help. We would appreciate your best donation. You can go to the website WorldImpact.tv and give your very best gift today to help us stay on the air where you live and to help us to continue to preach God’s Word with authority and clarity in our generation. You know if any generation needed truth it’s our generation in the 21st century. And we’re committed here at World Impact to sharing God’s Word with clarity, purpose and authority. And we’re also committed to sharing Jesus with the world and with you every week. So thanks for joining us on this World Impact program. Go to the website right now, WorldImpact.tv. Leave your prayer request and leave a gift to help us continue sharing Jesus with the world.