Testimonies of Apostle Austin Debourg of Trinidad

And Pandita Ramabai of India

"We must be baptized with fire. The Holy Ghost is going to baptize you in fire and then He is going to fill you, and He’s going to remain in you, and through you He will go and He will evangelize. He will do great works, He will do mighty works. And that is what needs to happen to the Church today. Our bodies are to become temples for the Holy Ghost. We too must be baptized not just with the Holy Ghost but also with the fire of God to come and burn away self, to get self out of the way. So that He can come and fill us and remain in us. And now we will be filled with the fire that will continue to burn and burn and burn until we are refined, until we are cleansed and made ready for the Master’s use.

This is what the Church needs. The baptism in fire will be more than a heat. It will destroy the chaff, remember that. It will burn will the chaff, and that individual will begin to talk like Jesus, he will begin to act like Jesus. He will begin to take on the image of Christ in His life. He will have no trouble loving His enemies. He will have no trouble walking in a humble way. And the Lord will the one to exalt him. Fire have a two-fold purpose, fire destroys and fire purifies. Not only will it destroy burn away all the chaff but it will bring refinement in the life of the individual and that is what happened on the day of Pentecost. And that is what must happen to the Church.

I have not met any body who has the baptism in fire, not that they do not exist, it just that I have never met them. Jesus said if you love me. You must love. I had entered into that type of relation with the Lord Jesus Christ. I and should say the Holy Spirit brought me into that kind of relationship where it was intimate. And I mean intimate. I had an intimate relationship with Christ that was more intimate than any two human beings. I know what it is to live in the Spirit. I am not there now. But I am on my way back there. I am not there now. But I have been there. And I experienced on three occasions, a whirlwind of fire leaving the throne room of God in the form of a tornado. A whirlwind and coming through the top of the house into the apartment and landing on my head on my bed. And that fire did not just rest on the top of my head, but it went on the inside and it began to burn and it was like high tension voltage that was sparking inside of my head and inside of my being. And what was it doing? it was burning away chaff. Things that I didn’t know were there. Until that experience if anyone had asked me " is there any known sin in your life? The answer would have been, no. Because I lived according to the Word, the Word had first place in my life. Whatever the Word said that is what I did to depth of my ability and knowledge.

It brought me into a relationship with Jesus Christ that was so intimate, that during the course of the day as I would think about the Lord tears would just flow from my eyes because I just wanted to be in that place of meeting with Him. There’s a particular place I would go to pray. When I would step into that place it would be like going under a shower, under a shower and the rain will come upon you. And you would be washed and you would be in that presence. And He would open my eyes and I would things that would happen the next day, the week, the next month. I would see things; I would know what was going to happen. Before I would preached I could tell you who would be healed of cancer. I would tell you everything before hand. That is what happened in that intimate experience with Christ. I was conscious of His presence twenty-four hours a day. As long as I was awake He was in my heart, He was in my mind. We talked together, I loved Him.

I could not live without Him. And I would go to bed worshipping Him. I would get up in the night and I would worship Him. He was there constantly on my heart. I was anestized, and I worshipped Him. You know what it is when you’re having an operation when they first give you an injection, and how you just drift away in a calm sleep. That’s what happened, that’s when I saw this whirlwind coming. And it came and it started to burn. And I lay in my bed in a pool of fire. And it burned and it burned and it burned away the bulk of the chaff on the fringes.

You know like as a fire is burning, and it burns away the main part of the trash just from the sides, and it just burn away the remains of the trash. That was how the fire was burning inside of me. And when it was all finished I just saw like a smoke, and I was changed. I got out of my bed a different man I was refined. I felt clean. I felt refined, I was purged. I was so different, I was not the same man. From that moment on if people would get close to me, they would fall under the power of God. So there is a real baptism with fire, that awaits us to work the works of God. John did not say that we would receive just the baptism of the Holy Ghost, but we have settled just for the baptism. Can I tell you something about this baptism of fire, you can not pray to receive it, you can fast and pray to receive it. He says you must love me. He says that the requirement. You have too…love Me. And He will test you to see if the love is real or not.

Pandita Ramabai of India

Testimony of The Baptism of Fire

Pandita is low key about this this remarkable revival at Mukti and beyond. She was encourage by news of the 1904 Welsh Revival to start the prayer circle she mentions. She requested supporting prayer of the annual Keswick convention in England, and in 1905, the praying girls and women sparked a genuine Spirit-filled revival with signs, wonders, tongues, miracles, visions, deep repentance, and thousands of conversion between 1905-1907. One of the most well known events is the episode went one of the young girls in the dormitory went to bed after kneeling and asking the Lord to baptize her in the Holy Spirit. The matron of the dorm reported that she was awakened at 3:30 am, by the girls, who saw, the ‘fire coming down upon her.’ The matron recounted that she too, saw the fire, and ran across the room for a pail of water. And I was about to pour it on her when I discovered that she was not on fire.

Fire kindles more fire. In 1904 one of the most significant revivals of the modern Church age swept through Wales. News of the Welsh revival quickly encircled the globe, bringing with it sparks of hope and expectation. Soon revival fires were burning in India, China, Korea and America. Instrumental in the revival in India was a young woman by the name of Pandita Ramabai.

Pandita established a center for young widows and orphans called "Mukti" meaning - salvation or deliverance. She longed to see a powerful revival among the neglected and helpless widows of India. In December 1904, after receiving word of the Welsh revival, her hunger for an outpouring of the Spirit intensified, "she started prayer circles of ten girls each, urging them to pray for the salvation of all nominal Christians in India and across the world. At first there were seventy in her prayer circles. She sent out a call for other prayer circles to be formed among friends and supporters, giving each a list of ten unsaved girls or women for whom to pray. Within six months there were 550 at Mukti who met twice a day to pray for revival." On June 29, 1905 the Spirit fell upon a large group of girls, with weeping, confession of sin and prayers for empowerment. The next day, June 30, while Ramabai taught from John 8, the Spirit came in power. All the women and girls began to weep and confess their sins. Many were stricken down under conviction of sin while attending to their daily studies and household duties.

Lessons were suspended and the women gave themselves to continual prayer. During these days of heart-searching repentance many girls had visions of the "body of sin" within themselves. They testified that the Holy Spirit came into them with holy burning, which they called a baptism of fire, that was almost unbearable.

Another reporter of these revival incidents stated, "the girls in India so wonderfully wrought upon and baptized with the Spirit, began by terrifically beating themselves, under pungent conviction of their need. Great light was given them. When delivered they jumped up and down for joy for hours without fatigue. They cried out with the burning that came into and upon them, while the fire of God burned the members of the body of sin, pride, anger, love of the world, selfishness, uncleanness, etc. They neither ate nor slept until the victory was won. Then the joy was so great that for two or three days after receiving the baptism of the Holy Spirit they did not care for food." In such times of true revival the most basic dealings of the Holy Spirit suddenly became powerfully intensified. Both the conviction of sin and the joy of salvation are seemingly greatly exaggerated.

G. H. Lang after spending some time at Mukti observing the revival wrote, "little girls were lost for hours in the transport of loving Jesus and praising Him. Young Christians were counting it a rare privilege to spend many successive hours in intercessory prayer for strangers never seen or known . . . In one meeting we were seventeen hours together; the following day more than fifteen hours passed before the meeting broke up with great joy." "Dr. Nicol MacNicol, the scholarly biographer of Pandita Ramabai reported that these who seemed to have such emotional blessings at the time of the revival were still living steadfast, godly lives twenty years later."

The life of Pandita Ramabai is a strong encouragement for us to apply ourselves diligently to the word of hope. This precious young woman armed only with a God given vision and the news of Christ's fresh work in Wales took heart and set herself to pray like never before. In light of what God has done in the past for His Church have we not reason to hope? The Church is too often hopeless and prayerless because it has forgotten God's mighty acts. "Seek the LORD and His strength, seek His face continually. Remember His marvelous works which He has done, His wonders, and the judgments of His mouth; . . ." (1 Chron. 16:11,12).