Not really, Will didn’t do anything wrong. The saying is an old command, dating back to the days when soldiers loaded and aimed, then fired in unison at the command “fire at will.” The firing of a gun is also a metaphorical image of flames coming out of the barrel of the gun.
Anthropologists believe that learning to make fire and control it were early discoveries. And making fire is done in a variety of ways. The Kewa of Papua New Guinea used a strip of bamboo, which they pulled vigorously back and forth over a hardwood. A small cluster of tinder was directly below where the rubbing took place on the wood and eventually a small wisp of smoke would appear, then enough heat to start the tinder flaming. It took effort, but it always worked.
Another common method is the “hand drill” where a V-shape is cut into the hard wood, then a spindle is rotated quickly with the palms to the hands. The spindle tip will glow red, and an ember will be formed, which is deposited on bark or tinder beneath the wood. Fire results.
Other methods include the two-man friction drill, the fire plough, the pump fire drill, the bow drill, the fire-piston, and flint and steel. All are illustrated on Internet sites.
We cannot live without fire, but matches, and fire lighting devices make it easy to start fires today. With our fancy BBQs for grilling, we don’t realize the labor that it once took for people to get a fire started for cooking. In the village where we lived in Papua New Guinea we used a portable camping stove. It had to be preheated because it depended on the pressure of kerosene pumped up through a tube-like generator to start. Things clogged up and it wasn’t simple to use. The people used the fire-starting method I described above but constantly kept the embers of a fire on hand. We were thankful for the portable stove.
The English language has many idioms dealing with fire, and you might get “fired up” thinking about them. If you do, you’ll have “fire in your belly” and might go after someone with “all guns blazing. That would be “playing with fire,” so don’t do it. You don’t want to “draw fire” and “fan the flames.”
In the KJV of the Bible, we have images of “fire and brimstone,” and it sounds terrible. Brimstone is an archaic word for sulfur, which is a bright yellow solid that has a bad smell. God rained it down on the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah as punishment (Genesis 19:24) and the names of those cities became synonymous for evil deeds of lust and indecency (2 Peter 2:6; Jude 1:7).
Despite the terrible destruction that fire can cause, it is also an agent for testing and cleansing. For example, it is used to test the genuineness of gold, which Peter compares to the testing of our faith to see if it will endure (1 Peter 1:7). Proverbs 17:3 also tells us that “Gold and silver are tested by fire, and a person's heart is tested by the Lord.” (See also Psalm 66.10: “You have put us to the test, God; as silver is purified by fire, so you have tested us.)
In the coming of the Holy Spirit, as recorded in Acts 2:3, “what looked like tongues of fire which spread out and touched each person there.” This fulfills what John said, “I baptize you with water to show that you have repented, but the one who will come after me will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and fire (Matthew 3.11).
James 2:6 compares the power of our tongue to the intensity and destructive nature of a fire: “And the tongue is like a fire. It is a world of wrong, occupying its place in our bodies and spreading evil through our whole being. It sets on fire the entire course of our existence with the fire that comes to it from hell itself.”
However, that destructive power can be reversed. Kurt Kaiser summed it up in 1969, in his short but sacred song (verse one):
It only takes a spark, to get a fire going (going)
And soon all those around, can warm up in glowing (glowing)
That’s how it is with God’s love (A–hh!)
Once you’ve experienced it
You spread his love to everyone;
You want to pass it on (pass it on, pass it on)
Yes, our God is a consuming fire (Hebrews 12.29) and our devotion to him should burn in us like a fire.
Karl Franklin
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