If ye love me, keep my commandments, and
I will pray the Father, and he shall
give you another Comforter, that he may abide
with you forever.
Even the Spirit of truth, whom the world
cannot receive, because it seeth him not, neither
knoweth him, that ye know him, for he
dwelleth with you, and shall be in you.
Verse 26, But the Comforter, which is the
Holy Ghost, whom the Father will send in
my name, he shall teach you all things,
and bring all things to your remembrance, whatsoever
I have said unto you.
Now in this series of sermons, sometimes I
will use the words the Holy Spirit, sometimes
I will use the words the Holy Ghost.
They mean exactly and precisely the same thing.
The old Anglo-Saxon word geist has been
turned into our English ghost, and it means
spirit.
So when we say the Holy Ghost, we're
saying in the old Elizabethan and pre-Elizabethan
English, the Holy Geist, the Holy Spirit.
So it makes no difference which I say,
I mean the same thing.
Let me start by reminding you that about
a half a century ago, the liberals committed
a great blunder.
And that blunder was the neglect or the
denial of the deity of Jesus.
They either didn't talk about it at all,
or else they explained the deity of Jesus
away.
They denied or explained away or neglected to
mention his lordship over the Church.
This was a stupid and a dangerous blunder,
and it brought in her blindness the thousands
and spiritual decay and death to greater thousands.
Now, in more recent times, oh, say within
forty years back, the evangelical Christians.
I suppose you know what I mean when
I say evangelical Christians.
I mean the gospel Christians, such as you
and I, people who believe the Bible, Bible
Christians.
That's what I mean by the evangelical Christians.
I mentioned the word evangelical Christian down in
the convention of doctors in Wheaton last week.
And afterward, a fine, distinguished-looking gentleman came
down to the front.
He said, I am a Methodist, and I
don't know what you mean by evangelical.
Would you tell me what you mean?
So I explained to this good Methodist brother
who didn't know the difference between an evangelical
and a Modernist, what the difference was and
what I meant by what I had said.
He thanked me, and was very courteously, and
walked away.
Now, evangelical Christianity has committed a great blunder
over the last years.
It has been the neglect for the denial
of the deity of the Holy Spirit.
I think I ought to modify that, for
I doubt very much whether any evangelical ever
denied the deity of the Holy Spirit, but
we certainly neglect him.
And, of course, we have neglected his lordship
within the Church.
Now, the result of this, of course, has
been, this failure to honor the Holy Spirit,
has been many.
The results have been many.
For one has been that the fellowship of
the Church has degenerated into a social fellowship
with a mild religious flavor.
Now, I want you to know something about
me.
It isn't important, but I just want to
say it while I'm here, while I have
the time, that I either want God or
I don't want anything at all to do
with religion.
You never get me interested in the old
-maid social club with a little bit of
Christianity thrown in to give it respectability.
I either want it all or I don't
want any.
I want God or I am perfectly happy
to go out and be something else.
I think the Lord had something like that
in mind when he said, I wish thou
were not hot or cold, because thou art
neither hot or cold, I will spew thee
out of my mouth.
Another result of the failure to honor the
Holy Ghost is that so many non-spiritual
and unspiritual and anti-spiritual features have been
brought into the Church.
If the average Church couldn't run on a
hymn book and a Bible, we just wouldn't
be able to do it.
You know, the Church started out with a
Bible, and then it got a hymn book,
and for years they had a hymn book
and a Bible.
Now we have to have all kinds of
trucks, a lot of people, and they couldn't
serve God at all without at least one
van load of equipment to keep them happy.
And all this stuff, this fellowship.
Now, the attraction that we have to win
people and keep them coming, it may be
fine, it may be elevated, it may be
cheap, it may be degrading, it may be
coarse, it may be artistic, it all depends
upon who is running the show.
But because the Holy Spirit is not the
center of attraction and the Lord is not
the one who is in charge, we bring
in all sorts of anti-scriptural and unscriptural
claptrap to keep the people happy and keep
them coming.
And now, the horrible part about that isn't
that that is true, but the horrible part
about it is that it needs to be
at all.
That the great woe is not the presence
of religious toys and trifles, but the necessity
for them that the presence of the Eternal
Spirit is not in our midst.
The most important one that could possibly be
here tonight is the Holy Spirit.
And the tragedy and woe of the hour
is that we neglect him, and then in
order to make up for his absence, we
have to do something to keep our own
spirits up.
I said in Chicago over, I talk this
way wherever I go, you know.
I preach this way at Moody Church and
everywhere I go.
Some like it, some don't, but they come
back.
And I said this in our church in
the south side of Chicago.
Suddenly in an impulse I said, There are
churches so completely out of the hands of
God that if the Holy Ghost withdrew from
them, they wouldn't find it out for three
months.
And then the next day or so afterward,
a telephone rang and a woman's voice said,
Mr. Tozer, I am not a member of
your church, I am a member of a
church on the north side.
If you know anything about that great city,
you know that being on the north side
is like being in another state.
It's almost like being in Buffalo from here,
just way off there.
She said, I was down to your church
last night, and I heard you say that
there are churches where the Holy Spirit should
desert them, they'd never find it out.
She said, Mr. Tozer, I want you to
know that that's what happened in our church.
Her voice was very tender and broken and
there was no criticism or censoriousness at all.
And I tried to console her.
I said, well, maybe it's just that he
is grieved, or maybe that he is not
given the place.
No, she said, it's past that, Mr. Tozer.
She said, we have so consistently rejected him
in our church, and it's a gospel church,
we have so consistently rejected him that he
is gone, he's no longer there.
Now, I don't know whether she's right, I
doubt whether she is right.
I don't believe the Spirit of God ever
leaves a church completely, but he can, like
the Savior who is asleep on the behinder
part of the ship, he can go, so
to speak, to sleep and not make himself
known and to let us get along without
him for years.
Now I want to ask, who is the
Holy Spirit?
That's the subject for tonight.
First of all, what is the Holy Spirit?
Here I'm going to ask you to shake
your head real hard and wake up some
of the cells that haven't had a good
workout since you got out of college or
high school, because I'm going to ask you
to think with me about something that's a
little bit off the beaten track.
You know how trouble is.
A fellow came to church one time, a
fine-looking fellow, but obviously wasn't too well
educated.
He said, Father Tozer, he said, I'm a
fundamentalist evangelical Christian, but he said, I confess
I'm getting sick and weary of all these
religious cliches that I hear.
He meant cliches, of course.
And these religious cliches that we have, these
cliches, just repeating the same old cliché over
and over again.
Well, one of the things I do is
not do that.
And some people are startled and run and
never come back, but others come to see
this great sight and wonder how it is
you can say something and not sound like
a preacher in saying it.
Well, I've worked on that all my life.
I've been a preacher since I was eighteen,
but I sure tried hard not to sound
like one.
Well, what is the Holy Spirit?
Well, first place, Spirit is another mode of
being.
Now shake your head real hard on that.
Spirit is another mode of being than matter.
You know, we'd bump this pulpit.
I won't do it because it would spoil
the tape, but you can pick a thing
up and bounce it around.
That matter, you're a composite of matter.
That head you have on there and that
body, that matter.
But you know, that's only one mode of
existence.
There's another, and that's at least another, and
that's Spirit.
And the difference between matter and Spirit is
that matter possesses weight and size and color
and extension in space.
It can be measured and weighed and it
has form.
But the Holy Spirit is not material, therefore
he does not have weight nor dimension nor
shape nor extension in space.
One power of Spirit is to penetrate matter,
to penetrate things, all substances.
Your Spirit, for instance, dwells in your body
somewhere, and it penetrates your body and doesn't
hurt the body.
It's in there penetrating because it's another form.
When Jesus had risen from the dead and
he was no more mere matter, he came
into a locked door where it was locked
and shut, and he came evidently through the
wall somehow, and he managed to penetrate and
get into that room without unlocking it.
Now, he couldn't have done that before he
died, but he did it afterward.
And Spirit, then, is another kind of substance.
It's different from material things, and it can
penetrate personality.
Your Spirit can penetrate your personality.
One personality can penetrate another personality.
The Holy Spirit can penetrate your personality, your
Spirit.
The Bible talks in 1 Corinthians about the
no man knowing the things of God save
the Spirit of the man.
No man knoweth the things of a man
save the Spirit of the man that's in
him.
No man knows the Spirit things of God
except the Spirit of God which reveals them.
So the Spirit of God can the Spirit
of man.
Now, I want to just say what the
Holy Spirit is not.
The Holy Spirit is not enthusiasm.
Some people get enthusiasm, they imagine it's the
Holy Spirit.
Why, we have people down in our part
of the country that can get worked up
over a song until they are actually sent.
You know, they say they get sent just
by a song, and they imagine that's the
Spirit.
Not necessarily, because those same people, a lot
of them, go out and live just like
the world.
And the Holy Spirit never enters a man
and then lets him live like the world.
You can be sure of that.
And incidentally, that's the reason most people don't
want to be filled with the Holy Spirit.
They want to live the way they want
to live and have the Holy Spirit as
a bit of something extra, as you might
have a diamond stick pin or something very
beautiful on your clothing.
They want the Holy Ghost to be added,
but the Holy Spirit will not be an
addition.
The Holy Spirit must be Lord, or he
won't come at all.
But that's for another sermon.
Now, the Holy Spirit is a person.
I want you to get that.
You can spell that with capital letters if
you want to.
The Holy Spirit is a person.
He's not enthusiasm.
He's not courage, nor energy, nor the personification
of all good qualities, like Jack Frost is
the personification of cold weather and Santa Claus
the personification of wanting to give somebody Thai.
That's a personification.
But the Holy Spirit is not a personification
of anything.
The Holy Spirit is a person, just the
same as you're a person.
And he has all the qualities of a
person.
The Holy Spirit has substance, but not material
substance.
He has individuality.
He is one being and not another.
He has will, and he has intelligence, and
he has feeling, and he has knowledge, and
sympathy, and ability to love, and see, and
think, and hear, and speak, and desire, and
grieve, and rejoice.
He is a person, this Holy Spirit.
And Jesus said, I will send him unto
you, and I will not leave you comfortless,
but he will come, and when he has
come, he will take the things of mine
and show them unto you.
And the most important thing in the world
is that this blessed Holy Spirit is now
present here in this church tonight.
Jesus, you know, in his body, is at
the right hand of God the Father Almighty,
interceding for us, and he will be there
until he comes again.
But he said, I will send another comforter,
the Holy Ghost, the Spirit, and he will
be my representative, and he will be all
that I am.
Now, who is the Holy Spirit?
I have spoken briefly on what is the
Holy Spirit, and I have said he is
spirit and not matter.
He is personality, he is individuality, he has
intelligence, and love, and memory, and he can
communicate with you, and he can love you,
and he can be grieved when you grieve
him.
He can be quenched, as any friend can
be shut up if you turn on him.
And if he is in your home as
a guest, and you suddenly turn on him,
of course you will be hushed into hurt
silence, because you have wounded him.
And so we can wound the Holy Spirit.
Now that is what he is.
But who is the Holy Spirit?
Well, the historic Church said that the Holy
Spirit is God.
Some of you who attended some of the
denominations remember the Nicene Creed.
That is quoted every so often.
If I recall, it runs something like this,
I believe in one God, the Father Almighty,
maker of heaven and earth, and of all
things visible and invisible, and in one Lord
Jesus Christ, the Son of the Father, begotten
of him before all ages.
God of God, light of light, very God
of very God, begotten, not made, being of
one substance with the Father, by whom all
things were made.
And I believe in the Holy Ghost, the
Lord and giver of life, who with the
Father and Son together is worshiped and glorified.
Now there is what the Creed said way
back there 1,600 years ago.
And then there is another Creed that was,
oh, about 1,300 years ago, maybe 1
,400, and that is called the Athanasian Creed.
That came into being way back there when
a man named Arias stood up and said
that Jesus was a good man and a
great man, but he wasn't God, he wasn't
really divine, he was not any second person
of the Trinity, and there was a man
named Athanasius.
He said, No, the Bible teaches that Jesus
is God, and they had all kinds of
controversy about it there.
But he came to Athanasius and said, Athanasius,
the whole world is against you on this.
He said, All right then, I'm against the
whole world.
He didn't mind having them against him, but
they had that great gathering at Nice, and
there they formed the, out of it came
the Athanasian Creed.
The Nicene Creed is supposed to have been
born there, but the Church Fathers got together
and they thought out what the Bible had
to say about the three persons of the
Trinity.
You know, most of us, we're so busy
reading religious fiction we never get around to
it.
So I thought it might be nice tonight
if I let you, if I took you
back about, oh, 1,300 years and listened
to our Fathers tell about who Jesus is.
Well, here's what it says.
There is one person of the Father and
another of the Son and another of the
Holy Ghost.
But the Godhead of the Father and of
the Son and of the Holy Ghost is
but one.
The glory is equal and the majesty coeternal,
such as the Father is, such is the
Son, and such is the Holy Ghost.
Now, this is what they said back in
the days of Athanasius.
They said the Father is uncreated, the Son
is uncreated, and the Holy Ghost is uncreated.
The Father is infinite, the Son is infinite,
and the Holy Ghost is infinite.
The Father is eternal, the Son is eternal,
and the Holy Ghost is eternal.
And yet there are not three eternals, but
one eternal.
So there are not three uncreated nor three
infinite, but one uncreated and one infinite.
So also the Father is almighty, and the
Son is almighty, and the Holy Spirit is
almighty.
Yet there are not three allmighties, but one
almighty.
The Father is God, the Son is God,
and the Holy Ghost is God.
Yet there are not three Gods, but one
God.
The Father is Lord, the Son is Lord,
and the Holy Ghost is Lord.
Yet there are not three Lords, but one
Lord.
So the Father is God and the Son
is God, and so the Father is Lord
and the Son is Lord, and the Holy
Ghost is also these things.
The Father is made of none, neither created
nor begotten.
The Son is of the Father alone, not
made nor created.
And the Holy Ghost is of the Father
and the Son, not made nor created nor
begotten, but proceeding.
Oh, brother, I don't know what that does
to you, but that's just like a chicken
dinner to my soul to hear that you
know that this has come down the years,
that this is what our fathers believed.
And do you know what?
When that company of Christians met and declared
this kind of thing, they tell us that
when they met and gathered there, that some
of them had their tongues pulled out, some
of them had their ears burned off, some
of them had their arms torn off, some
of them had lost a leg, all because
they stood for this thing, that Jesus was
Lord to the glory of God the Father,
and the Romans had persecuted them under Diocletian
and Caligula and the rest of them.
And these men were martyrs who hadn't quite
died, but were maimed horribly.
But old saints of God and learned scholars
who knew the truth, and they came there
and they wrote these things up and gave
it to us for the for the world
and for the ages, and I thank God
on my knees for them.
Well, now not only do the historic Church
say that the Holy Spirit is God, but
the Scriptures say that the Holy Spirit is
God.
And I might say this to you, that
if the Church said it and the Scripture
didn't say it, I'd reject it.
I wouldn't believe an archangel if he came
to Toronto with a wing spread at 12
feet, shining like an atom bomb, just at
the moment it goes off, if he couldn't
give me chapter and verse.
I want to know what's here in the
book.
I am not a traditionalist, and anybody comes
to me and says, it's traditional, I say,
all right, very nice, interesting if true, but
is it true?
Give me verse and chapter.
So I want to know now, were these
old brethren, when they said all this, were
they telling the truth?
Well, listen to what the Scriptures have to
say.
The Scripture says he's God, gives to him
the attributes that belong to God and the
Son and the Father.
For instance, 139th Psalm, it says there, that
whither shall I go from thy spirit, and
whither shall I hide from thy presence?
That is omnipresence.
Not even the devil is omnipresent, only God
can claim omnipresence.
And the psalmist attributed omnipresence to the Holy
Spirit.
Then in Job, he is given the power
to create.
Job 26 and so on, 33, says, By
his spirit he garnished the heavens and made
the crooked serpent.
He said, The Spirit of God hath made
me, and the breath of the Almighty has
given me life.
And there we have the breath, the ghost,
the spirit of the Almighty has given me
life.
So the Holy Spirit is here, said to
be creator.
He issues commands, thus saith the Spirit, and
only God can do that.
He is called Lord in 2 Corinthians 3.
Then there's a baptismal formula, I baptize you
in the name of the Father and of
the Son and of the Holy Ghost.
There's the benediction, the love of God and
the grace of Christ, the love of God
and the communion of the Holy Ghost.
Now, I want to ask you something.
This is going to be a little shocking,
maybe.
But I want to ask you, if the
Spirit of God was not God, if he
was not God but something less, if he
was a man or an angel or something
else, if he just wasn't God, as some
people say, then I want to ask you,
if the scriptures don't teach that he's God,
I want to ask you how it would
sound if I introduced here the name of,
say, the Archangel Gabriel or somebody.
Suppose that I said, I baptize you in
the name of the Father and of the
Son and St. Paul.
Wouldn't that be a shocking, horrible thing?
If I said, I baptize you in the
name of the Father and the Son and
the Virgin Mary, wouldn't that be a horrible
thing?
For you cannot attribute deity to St. Paul,
you cannot attribute deity to the Virgin, though
we honor her, for she was the mother
of our Lord.
The mother of our Lord's body, not the
mother of the Lord's deity.
For his deity had been before the foundation
of the world.
In the beginning was the Word, and the
Word was with God, and the Word was
God, and all things were made by him,
and without him was nothing made that was
made.
And the very atoms that composed the body
of his mother had been made by the
Holy Lord whom she bore.
But suppose that we introduced her there, or
introduced Gabriel the Archangel there, and we'd say,
the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, the
love of God, and the communion of the
Archangel Gabriel.
Everybody would run for the door, they'd say,
there's heresy in that church.
It would be a horrible thing to introduce
an archangel or an angel or a man
in where the Holy Spirit belongs.
Never, never, my brother, the Holy Spirit is
God.
And the most important thing here tonight is
that the Holy Spirit is present.
There is unseen deity present.
Now I cannot bring him here, I can
only tell you that he is here, that
is all.
I can tell you that he is present
in our midst, a knowing, feeling personality.
He knows how you're reacting to what I'm
saying.
He knows why you came.
He knows what you're going to say as
soon as you get out on the sidewalk.
He knows how you're thinking now.
He knows you're up rising and you're down
sitting and understands your thought afar off.
And you can't hide from him, he's present
in our midst.
I will send another comforter to you, and
he will abide with you.
So he's here among us.
We're here met as Christians in this.
Most of us are Christians here, and there's
an invisible presence here.
And we can't see him, but we know
he's here.
Now he is, as I have said, indivisible
from the Father and the Son, and he
is all God and exercise all the rights
of God.
And he merits all worship and all love
and all obedience.
That's who the Holy Spirit is.
And here's a beautiful thing about the Holy
Spirit.
Being the Spirit of Jesus, you will find
him exactly like Jesus.
A lot of people have been frightened by
people claiming to be filled with the Spirit
and acting any way else but like the
Spirit.
Some people, when they say they're filled with
the Spirit, they are very stern and harsh
and abusive.
And others do weird things, and they say
that's the Holy Spirit.
Well, the Holy Spirit is exactly like Jesus,
just as Jesus is exactly like the Father.
He that has seen me has seen the
Father, said Jesus.
And I will send you another comforter, and
he will take the things of mine, and
he will show them to you.
He will demonstrate me to you.
Now, what does the Holy Spirit think of
babies?
Well, what did Jesus think of babies?
He thought of babies just like the Father
did.
And the Father must think wonderfully well of
babies, because the Son took a baby in
his arms and put his hand on his
little bald head and said, God bless you,
and blessed the baby.
Maybe theologians don't know why I did it,
but I think I do, because there's nothing
sweeter and softer in all the world than
the top of a little bald baby's head.
And Jesus put his hand on that little
soft head and blessed it in the name
of his Father.
Well, now the Holy Spirit is the Spirit
of Jesus.
What does the Spirit think of babies?
Well, the Spirit thinks of babies just exactly
what Jesus did.
What does the Spirit think of sick people?
Well, what did Jesus think of sick people?
What does the Spirit think of sinful people?
What did Jesus think of the woman dragged
into his presence, taken in adultery?
The Spirit feels exactly the way Jesus feels
about everything.
He is the Spirit of Jesus, and he
acts exactly the way Jesus acts.
If Christ Jesus our Lord, we could thank
him here in person.
If he had that old toga on, we're
walking quietly down the aisle, wouldn't be anybody
run from Jesus, nobody.
They came to him, mothers brought their babies,
the sick came, the weary came, the tired
came, the dispossessed came, everybody came, because he
was the most magnetic person that ever lived.
Even old Frederick Nietzsche, that nihilistic German philosopher
that brought on World Wars I and II,
they tell me, he laid the foundation work
for the Nazis.
That old ungodly fellow, he said, I like
Jesus, I love Jesus, but I hate that
man Paul.
He couldn't take Paul, but he said he
loved Jesus.
And you'll not find anybody saying very much
against Jesus personally, because Jesus was the most
winsome, the most loving, the most kindly, the
tenderest, the most beautiful character that ever lived
in all the world.
And you know what he was?
He was demonstrating the Spirit.
He was demonstrating, that's the way the Spirit
is.
So in all these sermons that I'm going
to preach about how to be filled with
the Spirit, how to walk with the Spirit,
what difference does the Spirit make, and what
is the promise of the Father, and how
can we receive him?
In all of this, I want you to
think of the Spirit as cultured, gracious, loving,
kind, gentle, just like our Lord Jesus Christ
himself.
Now, he's friendly, the Holy Spirit's friendly.
We try to make him something else but
friendly, but he's friendly.
And because he's friendly, he may be grieved,
as I said before.
And we can grieve him by ignoring him,
by resisting him, by doubting him, or by
sinning against him, by refusing to obey him,
by turning our backs on him.
We can grieve the Spirit.
But you know, there's one thing.
There must be love present before there can
be grief.
Let me give you an example.
How long can I preach, brother?
I don't want to take all your time.
It's 18 after.
I should be through another five minutes, shouldn't
I?
Well, the Holy Spirit, I said, was friendly.
And he can be grieved, and he can
be grieved because he's loving.
Now, suppose you had a 17-year-old
son, and that son of yours began to
go bad.
I pray this might never happen.
Thank God it didn't happen with our six,
any of them, but I hope it'll never
happen with any you may have or love.
But suppose you had a 17-year-old
boy, and he got to that age, you
know, where he wanted to take things in
his own hand.
And suppose that he joined up with some
boy you didn't know, some stranger from another
part of town, and they got into trouble.
And you were called down to the police
station.
You went down, and here sat your boy
and another boy you'd never seen in handcuffs.
You know how you'd feel about it?
You'd be sorry for the other boy, but
you didn't love the other boy because you
didn't know him.
But with your own boy, your grief would
penetrate your heart like a sword, for only
love can grieve.
And if those two boys were sent off
to prison, you might pity the boy you
didn't know, but you'd grieve over the boy
you didn't know.
A mother can grieve because she loves.
If you don't love, you can't grieve.
So that when the scripture says, grieve not
the Holy Spirit of God, it is telling
us that he loves us so much that
when we insult him, he's grieved.
When we ignore him, he's grieved.
When we resist him, he's grieved.
When we doubt him, he's grieved.
But also we can please him by obeying
and believing, and when we please him, he
responds to us just like a pleased father
responds, just like a mother responds.
He responds to us because he's pleased, because
he loves us.
Now, he that hath an ear, let him
hear what the Spirit saith unto Avenue Road
Church.
The Spirit saith unto the churches, and to
this church, the restoration of the Spirit to
his rightful place in the church, in this
church, in your life, is by all means
the most important thing that could possibly take
place.
If you were to increase the attendance until
there wasn't a place to put them, if
you were to get $10,000 or $20
,000 given to you, if you were to
have anything that they have in churches that
men want and love and put value on,
and you didn't have the Holy Spirit, you
might as well have nothing at all, for
it is not by might nor by power,
but it's by my Spirit.
Not by the eloquence of a man, not
by good music, not by good preaching, if
this might pass for some kind of preaching,
but it is by the Spirit that God
works his mighty work.
I said this morning that we had better
throw ourselves back on God, for there'll be
a day when we'll have nothing but God.
I didn't know when I said that, that
last night around midnight, my friend Cecil Thomas
got to a place suddenly where he has
nothing but God.
Nothing.
He had friends all over the world, he
had a big car, he had lots of
things, but now he has nothing but God,
and his nice little wife, nothing but God.
And we'd better now, while we can, do
something about it, my friends, and bring the
Holy Spirit of God back into the Church,
back by prayer, back by obedience, back by
confession, until he takes over.
Then there will be life and light and
power and victory and joy and fruit, and
it will come to us, and we can
live upon a different level altogether, a level
we never dreamed was possible before.
Do you believe that?
Oh, it's so, my friends.
So I'm going to stop tonight, for all
I've done is taught.
I haven't given any evangelism, I've just taught
tonight.
What is the Spirit?
Who is the Spirit?
How do we know who the Spirit is?
We know by the scriptures, we know because
the Church Fathers knew what the scriptures said.
And he is in our midst.
But unless he is feelingly in our midst,
unless he is consciously in our midst, that
is, we're conscious of it, he might as
well be somewhere else.
Because it's possible to run a Church without
the Holy Spirit, that's the terrible thing.
You organize it, you get a board and
a pastor and a choir and a ladies'
aide and a Sunday school, and you get
all organized.
And I believe in organization, I'm not against
it, I'm for it.
You get organized, and then you get a
pastor to turn the crank, and that's all
there is to it.
The Holy Ghost can leave, and the pastor
goes on turning the crank, and nobody finds
it out for five years.
Oh, what a tragedy, my brethren.
What a horrible tragedy to the Church of
Christ.
But we don't have to have it that
way.
He that hath an ear, let him hear
what the Spirit saith unto the Churches.
Now, to this kind of preaching, having your
own Church is going to do two things.
It's going to bring your action from it,
in which case, as I said to somebody,
I came and I can go again.
Or there is going to be an eager
seeking, and I believe the latter will be
the case.
I believe that there will be an eager
seeking for better things than that we now
have.
So we're going to seek God together these
nights.
Next week, come back and tell the people
about it.
We'll talk about the promise of the Father,
and show how that promise which is for
you has its roots way back into the
early chapters of the scriptures and on down
the years.
We'll go on all night after night to
develop this and show finally how to be
filled.
Taking this down, they want to know when
to start.