Like A Mighty Wind

by Mel Tari

The Bible, however, explains the will of God and tells us about the heart of the Father, His love, and His power. When we believe the Bible as it is, we will see the power of God move in our lives and in our community as it did centuries ago in Bible times.

The Holy Spirit uses the Holy Word to reach people today. But He also wants to use us. He wants us to live it, and He wants to work through our lives with miracles and signs and wonders.

But there are many churches and people throughout the world today who do not believe that the spiritual gifts can operate in our midst any longer. How sad. Since the Indonesian revival began in 1965, the Lord has restored the spiritual gifts in our churches, and I thank God for that.

The Bible says the Spirit of God is the Spirit of power, love, and order. The Holy Spirit works in all three ways.

Our pastor often said to us, "Since God gave the Holy Spirit to the church 2,000 years ago, if you are a member of the church, automatically you receive the baptism of the Holy Spirit." That night the Lord began to open our eyes that it isn't an automatic thing.

We read in John 3:16 that "God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten son." God gave His Son to the whole world. Even so, it doesn't mean that all the people who are in the world will go to heaven. Though He gave His Son to the world, every person who will go to heaven must come to the Son for salvation.

The same is true for the infilling of the Holy Spirit. Jesus has given the Holy Spirit to everyone who has accepted Jesus as his own personal Savior and has become a member of the body of Christ. However, he still must come to the end of himself and have a personal experience with Jesus for the infilling of ...

That night, the Lord spoke to our hearts that Christianity isn't depending on the experience of others. It is a personal experience with a living God. I thank Jesus for that.

Many people don't realize the power, love, and joy they are missing by not being filled with the Holy Spirit.

I believe now that this is what we have missed in our churches. And I think this is where we have gone wrong. We sit for years trying to figure out everything, completely missing the simplicity of the Word, and so we don't do anything.

Denial Brings Death One of the brothers was told he had liquor hidden in his house. "No, I don't have any there," he said, and refused to repent. The Lord told the people that were ministering to him that if he didn't repent, he would die in 24 hours. So they told him that he had only 24 hours to confess this, or he would die. The next day when the man came to the meeting, he was told that he had only one hour left to repent. "If you don't repent, you'll die," the people said. "I don't care; I don't have any liquor," he said. "Now you have only a half an hour," they told him. "Ah, you're crazy. I have more than that," he replied. When they got within five minutes of the time, they tried to help him, but he still said, "No, I don't have any secret sin." "Please," they begged him, "confess your sin." Then there were only thirty seconds left, and he said, "Nah, don't tell me that stuff. You're crazy." Finally, they pleaded as others counted: 9, 8, 7, 6, 5, 4, 3, 2, 1. Then the man fell down and died.

First the Lord would bring all of our sins to light. Then we would ask Him to forgive us and heal our broken hearts. We would renounce all demonic relationships of the past. After this, God enabled us to preach the gospel. When we went out, we could see the power of God moving.

One of the greatest tragedies is that many people want the power of God, but they still want to live in sin. One night a man asked that I pray so he could have the power of God. But I knew he was still smoking.

"My God is a Holy God, and your body is His temple. If the Holy Spirit is going to dwell in your body in fullness, He doesn't want to be choked to death by your smoke."

Now, in the name of Jesus, we bind and cast out all demonic power that has ruled these villages and people for these many generations. Because of Christ's blood shed on Calvary, we command them to leave in the name of Jesus."

It's simple, you know, this Christian life. If the Christian life were complicated, we in the heathen country could never have become Christians. When the Bible says something, we just take it as it is, believe it, rest, smile, and let God do the job.

we want to win the battle and win people to Christ, we need God's power right now, even more than people needed it 2,000 years ago.

praise God that, by confidence in the Lord Jesus Christ, we have had this authority restored to us.

If the scorpion bites us, we just pray in the name of Jesus and the pain disappears. The scorpion and the animal are not supposed to bother us, because we are the highest creation of God.

"If we die, we die because God told us to go there," we said. But we were really scared in our hearts.

Sometimes Christians try to preach to you a nice sermon, but it isn't always from the Lord; sometimes the devil preaches even better than we do, but he doesn't preach the gospel.

With the first step the water came between his ankle and knee. The second step, it was the same place. The third, fourth, fifth and with the sixth - the water never came above his knee. When he came to the middle of the river, where it was supposed to be 30 feet deep, the water never came higher than his knee.

"When you shall cross the river, it shall not overflow you" (Isa. 43:2).

My aunt then took the bread and broke it. Usually, mathematics will tell you when you break one in half, you get two halves. That is not necessarily so in God's counting. My aunt broke one, and then the half in her right hand became whole again, and as she did this, it made her cry, because she realized that a miracle was taking place in her hand.

Saturday afternoon, a team of children started to walk to a nearby village. Nearby could mean anywhere from 5 to 15 miles through the jungle. This was a weekly thing. And no adult ever went with them. I asked them once if they were afraid. "Why should we be afraid, brother Mel?" they asked. "There is always an angel going ahead of us, and one on the right side of us, and one on the left of us, and one in back. We just follow them through the trails, and they keep us safe."

"You have one message for the people in America: that is the need to get back to the simplicity of the Word of God. Not only back to the Bible, but back to the simplicity of the Word."

But He loves us, as the Father loves Him. He gave himself on the cross, so that you and I could be redeemed. That's love! Jesus said we should love our fellow man; love one another. You cannot love Jesus if you don't love those around you. When you love them with your whole heart, then you really love Jesus. You will never prove to me you love Jesus until you love your husband."

For many years in our churches, we have made our Bible so spiritual we have forgotten that God wants the Word to be practical in our everyday life. Oh, that we can realize that the Bible is our guide and the Word of God. When we take the Bible this way, we can hear the Word of God.

Not that God can't bless himself, but He wants us to bless His name.

The message to Americans today is not only "back to the Bible," but "back to the simplicity of the Bible."

When you are talking about the things concerning God, use your heart and just believe them. Take them as they are and let God perform His Word in you and experience it." The main difference between science and Christianity is this: science we must experience to believe; Christianity we must believe to experience.

In this life, we don't need to understand everything!

We confess that we believe the Bible from Genesis 1:1 to the end of Revelation. But if we come to a part in the Bible that tells us about something we have never experienced ourselves, we just try to explain it away.

That's why we have preachers in America and all over the world who say, "This part of the Bible is not in the original text, this part is only for the Jews, this part is for another dispensation."

Everyone tries to figure out the Bible with his mind. That's why we lose out on the wonderfu...

Most people have never known the reality of the power of the Bible in their lives; therefore, they can't believe the entire Bible. But I praise God that the Holy Spirit can help you to understand the Bible as you r...

Many people go to church and worship God without obedience. We must obey your God. He's a living God and is working today. I like to obey, because I love Him and it's a privilege to obey the living God. I want you to obey God with me. Let's bless the Lord. The Lord made heaven and earth. Let's bless Him.

When a Christian rejoices, heaven comes down and the world rejoices.

It is time we all obey God, believe His Word, and win the battle in our lives. We must return to the simplicity of the Bible.

He began with who is, then who was, and who is to come. Why? I, too, started to wonder why, and the Lord opened my eyes to the truth. The Lord wanted the apostle John to know that He is not only the Lord that lived years ago, a thousand years ago or even a day ago, but that He is a God who is with us today. He is not only a God who has done something yesterday and a God who will do something in days to come. What the Lord Jesus wanted to stress to John was, "I am here today; I am the now God."

But we never experienced Jesus in our life for the present day. That is a sad truth of my church before the outpouring of the Holy Spirit.

I thought that the Christian life was finished at that point, and many people supported my thinking. They thought, just accept Jesus and everything's all right and you'll go to heaven. But I thought, There's more to accepting Jesus than that. He tells us that when we accept Him, we must walk with

this Book has made the king humble himself to become a beggar, because even a king must realize that in the sight of God he is nothing. Like the beggar, the king needs the grace and mercy of the Lord Jesus.

It is easy to know the Word of God, but it is really hard sometimes to trust God all the way through a situation.

God had spoken to us very clearly, but because of our minds, we did not trust Him.

So I just prayed, "Oh Lord, give me a simple heart to believe your word."

The Lord visited with him in his house and Zacchaeus was so happy. He probably had to come down five or six feet out of the tree to find Jesus. But I believe we in this modern age don't need to come down three, four, or six feet because we are not in trees. We only need to come down about a foot - from our minds to our hearts.

We have all the words of God in our minds, and we do all the figuring out there, and we have lost the power of God. If we would only put the Word of God one foot down from our minds to our hearts, I am certain we could see the power of God move in a mighty way today.

Since October of 1967, every time we have communion in our church, we just take water, pray over it, and the Lord turns it into wine.

"My God shall supply all your needs according to his riches in Glory" (Phil. 4:19).