We’re here in Jerusalem to remember the beginnings of the Church. The root of the Church is in the Acts of the Apostles, not in the ceremony of the Old Testament. The Church I want to be part of is the Church of the New Testament which began on the Day of Pentecost.
Jesus appeared to His disciples after the resurrection and in Acts 1:4 He said, “Wait in Jerusalem for the promise of the Father which you have heard from Me.
For John truly baptised in water…” Let me remind you that this baptism of John in water is a baptism of repentance by total immersion. Why? Paul explains in Romans and Colossians that we are buried with Christ in baptism – death!
Christ went into the grave and He rose from the dead! We are baptised into water, symbolic of death with Christ, and we rise from the water into new life!
Jesus continued, “John baptised with water, but you shall be baptised in the Holy Ghost… You shall receive POWER after the Holy Ghost has come upon you and you shall be My WITNESSES in Jerusalem, in Judea, in Samaria, and in the rest of the world!”
The importance of the Holy Spirit is twofold. First, He is the endowment of the baptism of POWER. Scripture is clear: after you receive the Holy Spirit you receive power, literally the power and the energy that motivated Jesus comes into us! But secondly, the purpose of this baptism is that we must be WITNESSES!
Under law, you can only be a witness if you have personally seen, heard or experienced something. Not because of what someone else has experienced. But YOU! YOU must be a witness of what YOU have experienced.
Many years ago I was a pastor. But one day God challenged me and said, “Stop talking, I’m tired of listening to you!” I was an evangelist, a preacher, ordained, degrees… But God said, “Forget all that. Go out and do everything you tell other people to do! And only come back when you have done it!”
For fifty years I’ve been ‘out there’ doing it! Now I’m the witness of what God has done! It has to begin with a personal experience! When YOU receive the Holy Spirit, it will revolutionise your life until YOU become the witness of all that God has done!
Under law, you can only be a witness if you have personally seen, heard or experienced something. Not because of what someone else has experienced. But YOU! YOU must be a witness of what YOU have experienced.
Many years ago I was a pastor. But one day God challenged me and said, “Stop talking, I’m tired of listening to you!” I was an evangelist, a preacher, ordained, degrees… But God said, “Forget all that. Go out and do everything you tell other people to do! And only come back when you have done it!”
For fifty years I’ve been ‘out there’ doing it! Now I’m the witness of what God has done! It has to begin with a personal experience! When YOU receive the Holy Spirit, it will revolutionise your life until YOU become the witness of all that God has done!
What is my ambition? I’m an evangelist. In the fivefold ministry, the evangelist is the last. And in the Kingdom, I’ll be the last one to get in, because I’m so busy looking for the lost. My one desire as an evangelist, having received the Holy Spirit, is to win the lost sheep! That is the burden of my heart!
When I entered the communist prison in 1972, everything was taken from me. You are STRIPPED, your clothes, everything. You are left with absolutely nothing. Naked.
That is a powerful experience. You have NOTHING. Spiritually there has to come a time when we go through that experience before we can go forward. Stripped of EVERYTHING.
I found myself with the worst criminals. My best friend was a murderer. Without his help, I wouldn’t have survived. I shared a cell with drug smugglers, every kind of criminal.
Then I understood the Gospel, that for God to love you and me, He had to send His Son, STRIPPED of everything – divested – STRIPPED like I was in that prison! He came with no extra power.
Eighteen months ago I was in prayer, walking around a lake in Austria, saying, “Oh God, I want to live like Jesus, I want to do what He did!”
Now, before Jesus went to the cross He said to US, “YOU will do everything I have done, and more!” Come on! How many of us are doing what Jesus did?!
Let alone the greater things! I was walking around this lake, talking with the Lord. To me, praying is not reciting set prayers, it’s a conversation with an intimate friend who knows all your inner faults, who doesn’t see you just from the outside…
My family do not see me as an evangelist – I’m their dad! They know the real me! God doesn’t look on your bishop’s trappings, He doesn’t see the clothes you wear, He sees inside your heart!
My experience with God is a very personal one. I wouldn’t have survived in the prison for one month, let alone a year, if I didn’t have a very close relationship with the Lord. It was only 18 months ago, walking around that lake in Austria, that I was saying to Him, “Father, I want to do more than Jesus did!”
It was then that I realised, Jesus did not come with all the glory of Heaven. He came as a baby, born of a woman. But don’t believe the pictures you see in some churches! He didn’t stay like that, as a baby.
My Jesus is a man, with power and authority, who could bind and defeat the devil, who could fight every battle, a strong man, who died and rose as the Son of God. But He came in humility, with NOTHING!
Everything that Jesus had on earth He received through His relationship with His Father through the Holy Spirit! Everything that I have MUST come from HIM! Not from my birth, not from my education. I don’t care if you are born poor, an orphan, a reject. Or born a king, a prince.
What you are is NOTHING to do with your clothes, or your office, NOTHING to do with your position. All you have when you go out into the world is what you have and receive in your heart! That’s all. It’s a very personal relationship.
Jesus said the Kingdom is not filled with the holy, the righteous! He said the invited guests never come into the Kingdom!
Jesus said the Kingdom is filled with the people from ‘out there’, the rejects, the outcasts – they are the ones we have to bring in. My first desire is to bring the lost into the Kingdom… …My other desire is this: to KNOW who God is. The Church doesn’t know Him!
Religious ceremony is NOTHING to do with God. I HATE religion with a passion, because religion turns people away from God. The world out there does not like what it sees, and I don’t like it, because my God is not like this.
The God I know is a God of power, of love, authority, a God who answers prayer, works miracles – that’s my God! My desire is to show THIS God to an unbelieving world! I challenge you, YOU have to show an unbelieving world who our God is!
What kind of a God is He? Is He the God people see in religion? All dressed up – and empty inside?! That’s NOT my God! I have a burning passion to show the world who God is really is. To show His power.
That’s why I want to see miracles of healing! How else will the world out there know?! What does the Bible say about Jesus? It says He was a man like you and me. But anointed of God. By miracles, by signs, by wonders.
We have to show a world that sees God as a religious figure – that He is a God of love, power, forgiveness, a God of miracles! I’m emotional about it! But you can never do it because of your clothes, your universities, your colleges, your religious education, your status…
I have seen university destroy the faith of some of my friends, including former pastors.
Born again, strong Bible Believing Christians! Baptised in water, baptised in the Holy Spirt, went to Bible College, entered into full time ministry. But they let religion take over. It destroyed everything they had and left them with only the formality. Oh God deliver us from that kind of religion.
Oh God, give us Jesus! The whole of everything you can have and everything you can want is only Jesus. There is no other name under Heaven whereby men can be saved, only Jesus! No other name, no other power. I only live because He lives!
I want to show the unbelieving world out there – whether it’s Israel, Russia, wherever it is – I want to show them the Son of God, Jesus, in reality! In my life! And YOU have to live like that, until they see Jesus – in YOU. Not religion. Not empty words.
Oh God, shake us, change us! We need a baptism of FIRE! The Holy Ghost and FIRE! Until we burn up and explode with the Fire!
I first started preaching in the church when I was 13 years old. I printed flyers, invited the people in, got the musicians, preached the Word – and nobody repented. The only purpose of my preaching was to bring men to Christ. Can you tell me any other reason for preaching?! I went home disillusioned.
My father, a great man of God, converted in the Welsh revival, sat me down and said: “When the Holy Spirit is come, He – not you David, not you Bishops – He, the Holy Spirit, He will convict the world of sin, of righteousness, and of judgement. Shut up until you have received the Holy Spirit.”
From that moment I fasted, I prayed – for three months. I learnt the biggest lesson of my life: In the early days of my going to Russia, the milk cart would arrive in the street, the housewife would take her own jug, and they would fill it up. What did she take?
She emptied the dirty water out of the jug, cleaned it, so that when it was filled, it was filled with pure milk. If you want the Holy Spirit, empty everything out! If you want the same baptism of Fire that I have, don’t come half full of the world, the flesh!
Clean yourself up first! Then God will fill you. It will transform your life! I came here to Jerusalem in 1961 because I still wasn’t satisfied.
I was a pastor, an evangelist, baptised in the Holy Spirit when I was 13. But I wanted more! Another baptism of Fire! And why do I pray now? – Because I still want more Fire! Prayer is no formality to me. I look at the desperate world out there and I want more authority, more of the Fire and the Power of God.
Now look at the Church. The Church is the Body of Christ – and the Bride of Christ! God help you if a man gets married to a girl unless he’s in love with her! When I married my wife, she was in love with me.
There used to be a beautiful song, ‘The Bride sees not her garment, but her dear Bridegroom’s face!’ Yes, the Bride is beautifully dressed, but she’s only got eyes for the Groom! – That’s how it should be with the Church and Christ! The Greek word for Church, ecclesia, means ‘called out and chosen’.
The Bride of Christ will not be the Catholic or Orthodox Church, or the Lutheran or Charismatic Church – the Bride of Christ is called OUT! Out of the world, out of religion… I don’t want to go back. I want to go forward – to meet Jesus! And if you have met Jesus, you will want to introduce Him to everybody else!
You need to have a very personal relationship with Him! It’s not Church, it’s not religion, it’s Jesus! The only thing that is important is not how you dress up, it’s not your office or your position, it’s your relationship with Jesus, and how you share Him with others!
My life and my ministry is to show who the real Jesus is. I didn’t like the image I saw in the church here in Jerusalem – a woman, ‘Queen of Heaven’, with a small baby on her lap, saints gazing adoringly up at HER – do you realise the idolatry? Mary more important than Jesus?!
Who called the disciples, healed the sick, raised the dead, died and rose again? Who said He would baptise them with the Holy Ghost and Fire?! No I do not pray to saints and images, I only want to know the MAN Christ Jesus, Son of the Living God, who is the only Lord of my life! Nothing, no one else!
As I flew in to Israel yesterday for this summit, I had a song in my heart, ‘In robes of white I don’t deserve, I live to serve Your Majesty.’ Let’s live to serve Him and show the world who He is!
The secret of my evangelism (we are drawing the largest crowds of unbelievers in Europe) is that they want what I have – my Jesus! I love Him! I live to serve Him. And in serving Him I shall preach the Gospel.
The coming of Christ is sooner than any of you realise. I want you to be ready when He comes! I charge you with the simplicity of the Gospel.
The Gospel Jesus preached was so simple. Not theology. Not religion. I only want to preach Jesus. I’m an evangelist, I don’t wear fancy
Message of David Hathway to the Jerusalem Summit of Conservative Apostolic Bishops 1.11.2015. From the Prophetic Vision Magazine
Image Credit: Faithfulnews.com
