After listening to “A Man of God: An Interview with Leonard Ravenhill,” a video that I’ve watched several times over the course of my Christian life, I came to see once again, how he took most of his inspiration from the early Salvation Army, especially from stories about William Booth. This caused me to do a little bit of researching in my free time on the Salvation Army and I found out about Samuel Brengle. He was a prominent early Army preacher that described his experience of “entire sanctification.” He had a similar understanding to an Assembly of God “baptism in the Holy Spirit,” without the tongues aspect, which is essentially a feeling of the presence of God, a feeling of entire devotion to God, or a desire to hunger and thirst after righteousness, but it is not to be understood as attaining a state of perfect sinlessness (Matthew 5:6; John 7:37-38; Philippians 3:12). This is where a lot of confusion comes in, where Baptists are listening to the terminology, phraseology, and semantics of the holiness people. It is a desire. It is a desire! And it is a divine presence. It is a hungering and thirsting of righteousness and being filled with the presence of God in a momentary, temporary experience…that eventually wears off and has to be sought again a second time, a third time, a fourth time, etc. But it bends the will in the right direction. Here is Brengle’s experience described:

I awoke that morning hungering and thirsting just to live this life of fellowship with God, never again to sin in thought or word or deed against Him, with an unmeasureable desire to be a holy man, acceptable unto God…In that hour I knew Jesus, and I loved Him till it seemed my heart would break with love. I was filled with love for all His creatures (“Full Salvation–My Personal Testimony”).

Think about that next time someone criticizes your evangelistic zeal for souls. When they say that all you care about is fame, and self-promotion, and “saving the world” like Superman. “What do you think you’re Superman? Trying to save the world?” Such expressions are agnostic blasphemies against the Gospel and the Great Commission. Successful evangelism is still a far cry from the Forbes billionaire. Don’t tell me that my sorry obedience to Jesus Christ means that I think I’m Superman. No, he’s the Superman. I’m just Jimmy the camera guy.