Jesus also, that he might sanctify the people with his own blood, suffered outside the gate. Therefore, let us go forth to him outside the camp, bearing his reproach. For we have no continuing city here, but we seek one to come.
Select a thought to read by choosing a collection, the month, and then the day:
"I indeed baptize you with water, but one mightier than I is coming,
the latchet of whose shoes I am not worthy to loose. He shall baptize you with
the holy Ghost and with fire."
John the Baptizer, in Luke 3:16
When John the Baptist was anointed by God to prepare Israel for the Messiah, he came preaching that the Messiah would baptize people "with the holy Ghost and fire". John had no idea what being "baptized with the holy Ghost and fire" meant; nobody had ever received such an experience from God. John was simply repeating words that God spoke to him. God told him that the Messiah would baptize people with the holy Ghost. Still, even though he did not understand what God meant by the phrase "baptize with the holy Ghost and fire", John believed God. He believed so much in God's promise of a "holy Ghost baptism" that when Jesus came to the Jordan River, John asked Jesus to baptize him with it, whatever it was (Mt. 3:14). But Jesus could not.
Jesus could not baptize anyone with the holy Ghost while he was here on earth because his death and ascension to the Father had to be accomplished before the baptism of the holy Ghost would be given to men.
When I was young in the Lord, I pondered over the failure to point out that Jesus did not baptize anyone with the holy Ghost; therefore, he could not be the Messiah of whom John spoke. The reason is clear: they didn't understand what "baptism with the holy Ghost and fire" meant any more than John did. They didn't know whether Jesus had baptized his followers with the holy Ghost and fire or not. They remembered that John said the Messiah would do it, but how were they to argue that Jesus had not done it when they didn't know what it was?
Neither they nor anyone else knew that when people receive the holy Ghost, as they began to do in Acts 2, those people would speak in tongues as the Spirit gave them utterance (Acts 2:1-4). If they had known that, they would have been able to argue their case that Jesus had not done what John said he would do, for while he walked on earth, Jesus never provided the one incomparable, irrefutable mark of the Messiah: the holy Ghost baptism. But no one understood that at the time, whether he was Jesus' friend or foe.
Throughout New Testament history, religious teachers have argued about the meaning of "the mark of the Beast", foretold in Revelation 13:16: "And he causeth all, both small and great, both rich and poor, bond and free, to receive a mark in their right hand or in their forehead." Books are still being written on the subject. But that is a small thing compared to the mark of the Messiah. The mark of God's true Messiah is the baptism of the holy Ghost and fire. Jesus is the one who gives it, and everyone without it is still without "hope, and without God in the world" (Eph. 2:12).