Like A Mighty Wind

by Mel Tari

When the Holy Spirit is truly in control, there is balance, and there is order.

God had given many people in Indonesia the gift of visions. We just go to them and ask them to watch God's "television."

Before I tell you about the Indonesian revival and how it happened, I'd like to share with you Romans 15:16: "That I should be the minister of Jesus Christ to the Gentiles, ministering the gospel of God, that the offering up of the Gentiles might be acceptable, being sanctified by the Holy Ghost." In this verse, Paul not only told about the definite calling that God had given him, but also about his ministry. He ministered to the Gentiles not only by words, but also through mighty signs and wonders by the power of the Holy Spirit (Rom. 15:18 - 19).

I believe this is the way the Holy Spirit wants to work through the life of a servant of God today.

In our church in Indonesia, we knew about God the Spirit, God the Father, and His Son, Jesus Christ. We knew our Bible really well. We memorized Bible verses. But we never experienced the moving of the Holy Spirit in the way Paul described. Paul explained very clearly that by the words and deeds and mighty wonders, Paul went from village to village and place to place preaching the gospel of Jesus. He not only shared the living ...

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 l...

I believe the only way we Christians today can fight these demonic powers is by the power of the Spirit of God. The only hope for the Church is that we let the spiritual gifts move again.

For many years, our preachers had fooled us. They said, "You must depend on the experience of people who lived 2,000 years ago." 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.

There are so many people who refused to bring their sins into the light and ask the Lord to forgive them. In the Indonesian revival, confession was one of the characteristics, for the Lord wanted us to be set free from demonic power and to cleanse our hearts so we could live holy lives. 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 characteristics of the Indonesian revival is that before we go out to preach, the Lord gives us all the details of what we should do. We write it down on paper and follow it exactly as it is. If He

tells us to stop at this place or minister in that place, we do just what the Lord tells us.

"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."

There are so many people in these last days who try to figure out everything in the Word of God until the...

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.

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.

Many Christians have the Lord Jesus, but their Jesus is the 2,000 - years ago Jesus.

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. More than 60 times He has performed this miracle. Again, my Bible is true when it says, "My God shall supply all your needs according to his riches in Glory" (Phil. 4:19).

We read in Deuteronomy 18:10 - 13: "There shall not be found among you any one who maketh his son or his daughter pass through the fire, or that useth divination, or an observer of times, or an enchanter, or a witch, or a charmer, or a consulter with familiar spirits, or a wizard, or a necromancer. For all that do these things are an abomination unto the LORD, and because of these abominations the LORD thy God doth drive them out from before thee. Thou shalt be perfect with the LORD thy

Two things happen when people read the horoscopes. First, they have committed sin because God said, "Don't do it!" Second, a demon binds them. For this bondage, they don't need forgiveness, they need deliverance. These two things are totally different.

The Lord told us during the Indonesian revival that He never would allow us to tell anyone that we needed money. "If you need money, you must tell Me, and only Me," God told us.

Galatians 1:6 says, "I marvel that ye are so soon removed from him that called you into the grace of Christ unto another gospel."

"Lord, I don't only want the well of water springing up to everlasting life, but I want the rivers of living water out of my belly - even though I don't understand what that is. Please reveal it to me."

I believe there are two different experiences when you accept Jesus. First, you have a relationship with God, a peace with God, and you know one day you will go to heaven. Second, when I came into the experience of the infilling of the Holy Spirit, that was the time when God dealt with me in such a way that He used my life to overflow and reach others.

Jesus told us to go and preach the gospel. He promised that these signs would follow them that go. The reason that God cannot move in many churches today is that we stay in our churches and do not want to go out.

Jesus said, "Go out unto the world," and we stay in our churches. We have stayed there while the world has waited for us and we never went to them.

Why didn't we go out before this? Because we never had the rivers of living water - we never had experienced the power of the Holy Spirit as rivers of living water going out from our lives.

But I want to tell you, to know your Bible and to believe it all the way through is not the same as to put your Bible into practice.

is one thing, but to apply it to your heart and everyday life is another thing.

"Don't ever use your experience as a standard. If you have never experienced it, it doesn't mean that you can't."

Let me ask you a question. Have you been to heaven? No, you haven't been there. Nor have I been there. Not one of us has been there. Yet we call heaven our home. But if we used our experience as a standard, we would have to forget about heaven, because no one has been there. What is our standard? The Bible is our standard. Why do we believe in heaven? Because the Bible says so.

The important thing is to be foolish enough to believe God.

By this biblical promise, we can know that our Christian life is not built simply upon experiences, but upon the Word of God.

person must receive the baptism of the Holy Spirit by faith and not on the basis of his experience of speaking in tongues whatsoever.

It is my feeling that the Christian will speak in tongues in private as in 3a, as part of his development after he receives the baptism of the Holy Spirit. To the uninitiated observer who questions the need for tongue-speaking, David DuPlessis, well-known Bible teacher and author, answers: "You must not, but you will. Why? The Holy Spirit will cause you to grow - not only in the area of love and of power but in the area of worship. If we grow in the area of worship, it will mean that sooner or later we will speak in tongues." I am persuaded that this is the place of tongues according to biblical sequence.

It is the pagan custom for people to gather together many times to dance and to give sacrifices. If these people can do so much for the devil, and only get to go to hell, how much more Christians should together worship their Jesus.

In Mark 6, we read how Jesus fed the 5,000. After that, the disciples went out to the Sea of Galilee with their boats. Oh, how they were tested. From a miracle to a testing, all in one day.

God said to me, "The place of humility and lowliness is the real place of blessing."