A Clean Church
Purifying their hearts by faith. Acts 15:9
Holiness is a state; entire sanctification is an experience; the Holy Ghost is a person. We come into the state of holiness through the experience of entire sanctification, wrought by the omnipotent energies of the Holy Ghost. This is the “baptism with the Holy Ghost and fire” administered by Christ himself, as John the Baptist declares.
There are some things which the application of water will not cleanse. Water may cleanse the loose dirt on the outside, but fire alone can make inwardly, intrinsically clean.
So the water of regeneration will free the soul from external sin-commission, but the sanctifying process of the Spirit is requisite if the heart is to be holy and sinless.
-Seth C. Rees, The Ideal Pentecostal Church, 1897, p.13-14
