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1.5 Azusa Street & ACOP Legacy
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Both of the quotes focus on Jesus. In Andrew Argue's quote, he speaks of the waiting on the Lord and the wonderful vision of Jesus that he had – it wasn't until after 21 days of focusing on Jesus that he was filled with the Holy Ghost. Jesus was his focus and subsequent to that, the Holy Spirit manifested.
In Frank Bartleman's quote, he also speaks of keeping Jesus as "the central theme" and further says that, "The work of Calvary, the atonement, must be the center of our consideration."
We can glean from both that Jesus should be our primary focus and the gifts of the Spirit are secondary to that.
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For both of these men the experience of the Holy Spirit leads them back to Jesus – back to God’s best. The hunger of the Holy Spirit in these quotes is for one purpose: a fuller knowledge and revelation of God and of Jesus. The piece of pneumatology that we can derive from these quotes is that the Holy Spirit and the gifts of the spirit should always point us back to Jesus and relationship with God. The gifts of the spirit play a role in furthering our ultimate goal which should be relationship with Jesus. They should not, in and of themselves, become the goal.
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I am so glad that I received the Gift of the Holy Spirit with the evidence of speaking in other tongues because I believe it gives me a greater intimacy with God and it causes me to want to have a deeper and more meaningful relationship with my creator.
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The two quotes share a common theme of the supremacy and glory of the person of Christ Jesus himself that outshines every other thing. I was moved by Bartleman’s quote, that the work of atonement is our greatest consideration–that the work of atonement is not a concept, but it is a man on a cross; Jesus crucified for our sins, resurrected and seated at the right hand of God. God’s Holy Spirit has been poured out to bear witness to Jesus, to direct our gaze to the cross, to the empty tomb, and like Colossians says, to the reality of heaven, where Christ is alive and reigning. The freedom, breakthrough, healing, and deliverance that we seek in the ministry of the Holy Spirit, is found there because the Holy Spirit alights upon to see and encounter and become one with Christ, where all of this freedom and wholeness dwells.
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