The text we found in the 24th chapter
of Luke, and in Acts 1, familiar passages.
Our Lord says, Behold, I send the promise
of my Father upon you, that tarry ye
in the city of Jerusalem, until ye be
imbued with power from on high.
In Acts 1 it says, He showed himself
alive after his passion, and being assembled together
with the disciples, commanded them that they should
not depart from Jerusalem, but wait for the
promise of the Father, which, saith he, ye
shall ye have heard of me.
For John truly baptized with water, but ye
shall be baptized with the Holy Ghost not
many days hence.
Now last Sunday I attempted to show who
the Holy Spirit is, and reverently and imperfectly
what he is.
I tried to show that he is a
real being and not an abstraction, that he
is a person and not a thing, that
he is very God, having all the powers
and attributes of the deity, that he is
in one essence, of one essence, with the
Father and the Son.
Now, granted that this is true, what has
this to do with you and me?
I never like to preach in a vacuum.
I never like to have anybody hear a
sermon and then go home and say, I
might as well be somewhere else and so
might you, unless there is some moral imperative,
some obligation lying upon us as a result
of what we know, some privilege which is
ours as a result of what we can
find out.
So now what's the practical effect of the
person of the Holy Spirit?
What are we to expect and what are
we to do?
I can't answer this all tonight, but over
the next weeks.
And how does it or how should it
affect my outlook as a Christian?
And how should it affect the outlook of
this church?
Because I expect this church to go along
with this preacher.
Now, the Father promised the Spirit as a
gift to his children.
And I don't know whether this is right
or not, but I think maybe God had
in mind the love people have for their
children.
He did say, if you being evil know
how to give good gifts to your children,
how much more will your Heavenly Father give
the Holy Spirit to them that ask him?
And in making the Spirit the promise of
the Father, I wonder if he didn't want
to show that you don't have to be
afraid of the Holy Spirit.
This is one thing that it's very difficult
to get an audience over, to get a
Christian over, the fear of the Holy Spirit.
By that I don't mean reverence for him.
You cannot reverence the Holy Spirit too much,
but you can be afraid of him.
And I am sure that a lot of
people are afraid of the Holy Spirit.
But if you could remember that he is
the Father's promise, he is given to us
as the Father's promised gift, just as a
man offers or promises his son a bicycle
for Christmas, or whatever the boy wants.
And the boy remembers, I know they remember.
And they come back and remind you, sometimes
in an embarrassing time, that you've promised.
And nobody is ever afraid of a promise
made by a Father who loves him.
Now, the members of the Redeemed Church should
be bound in the bundle of love with
the Holy Spirit.
The truth is that God never thought of
his Church apart from the Holy Spirit.
We were born of the Spirit, we are
baptized into the body of Christ by the
Spirit, we should be anointed with the Spirit,
we are led of the Spirit, or should
be, we are taught of the Spirit.
And the Spirit, then, is the, what should
I say, the medium, the divine solution in
which God holds his Church and has his
Church.
The Holy Spirit is the essence of the
Godhead uncreate, I think the hymnist said.
Now, God never dreamed of his people, I
say.
Apart from the Holy Spirit.
And he made a lot of promises to
them.
Let's note some of the promises that he
made.
He said, for instance, this.
Until the Spirit be poured upon us from
on high, and the wilderness be a fruitful
field, and the fruitful field be counted for
us, then judgment shall dwell in the wilderness,
and righteousness remain in the fruitful field.
And the work of righteousness shall be peace,
and the effect of righteousness, quietness and assurance
forever.
Then, further on in Isaiah, he says, I
will pour water upon him that is thirsty,
and floods upon the dry ground.
I will pour my Spirit upon thy seed,
and my blessing upon thine offspring.
Then there is that famous passage in Joel.
It shall come to pass afterward that I
will pour out my Spirit upon all flesh.
Your sons and your daughters shall prophesy.
Your old men shall dream dreams.
Your young men shall see visions.
Also upon my servants, or upon the servants,
and upon the handmaids in those days, will
I pour out my Spirit.
Now, those are the words of the Father.
And Jesus interpreted these words and called them
the promise of the Father.
And whenever you have Jesus, our Lord, interpreting
the Old Testament, you stay close by his
interpretation.
Don't depend too much or lean too hard
on the interpretations of man, because we can
be wrong, but our Lord, the man Christ
Jesus, never was.
And he called this the promise of the
Father.
That is, the Father, through the Old Testament,
through the years, had promised, and now Jesus
sums it up and calls it the promise
of the Father.
And he says, then in the text which
I read tonight, tarry ye until ye be
endued with power, and I will send the
promise of the Father upon you.
Now, I say Jesus interpreted this, and I'm
not going to read it tonight, because it
takes too long and you are too familiar
with it.
But in John 14 and 16, 14, 15,
and 16, you will find our Lord talking
about the Holy Spirit and his coming to
the Church.
And now I notice that in the Church,
in the Gospels and Acts, and over into
the epistles, there are three periods that are
discernible.
Do you want to jot them down, or
at least in your memory?
With respect to the Holy Spirit and his
work in the Church, there are three periods
discernible.
There is what we call the period of
the promise.
That is, from John the Baptist to the
resurrection of Christ.
Now, the marks of this period, this three
-year period, the disciples were called and they
were commissioned and they were taught.
Do you know, my dear friends, that if
we could get together a congregation that was
as spiritual as the disciples were before Pentecost,
we would consider that we had a very
spiritual Church.
We'd make bishops out of those boys, we
would.
We'd elect them to the boards and we'd
write their lives and name churches after them.
If we could find somebody just as spiritual
as they were before the Holy Ghost came
at Pentecost, just even that spiritual, well, they
were getting ready, you see.
The disciples were called, there's no question, they
were called, and they were commissioned and they
were taught of the Lord.
We talk about these ignorant disciples.
Do you know that these disciples had three
years in the best Bible school in the
world?
There isn't a seminary on earth that can
equal the seminary with Jesus as the whole
faculty.
He was teaching them and instructing them and
sitting with them.
You know, they used to say a university
consisted of Mark Hopkins on one end of
the log and a boy on the other.
Put a young fellow on one end of
the log and Mark Hopkins on the other.
If the log wasn't too long, you had
a university.
And a Bible school, a seminary, consists of
our Lord Jesus Christ and a willing student.
And they went to the best Bible school
in the world.
Now, they didn't get a degree which they
could frame and put on their study wall,
but they had a degree inside of them.
And they loved Christ our Lord, these disciples
did.
They loved him living, they loved him dead,
and they loved him living again.
That was the period of the promise, you
see.
When they hadn't received anything yet, they'd only
been promised something.
And all this time until his death and
even after, Jesus was creating expectation in them.
He was telling them that there was a
new kind of life coming to them, that
it wasn't to be a poetic life, it
wasn't to be psychic, it wasn't to be
physical.
It was to be an athletics from above.
It was to be something that was to
come to them out of the world, beyond
them, over the threshold of their beings, into
the sanctum sanctorum, into the penetralia, into the
deep of their spirit, and live there and
teach them and instruct them and lead them
and make them holy and give them power.
Jesus taught that all the way through.
Wherever he could find time and the people
were about him, the circumstances were good, he
would tell them these things.
And as they came nearer to the end
of his life, that is, the end of
his earthly life, he intensified this teaching, as
is indicated in John 14, 15, and 16.
He told them that there was a new
and superior kind of life coming.
And he told them it was to be
an effusion, an outpouring of spiritual energy.
And then he left them.
Then there was a second period, and put
that down.
That's the period of the preparation.
Now, of course, in some measure they were
being prepared while he walked with them.
But after he had gone, then they began
to prepare.
They stopped their activities.
And you know what's the matter with us
in our day?
We're the busiest bunch of eager beavers that
I have ever known or have ever been,
probably, in the religious world.
The idea is that if you're not running
in a circle, if you're not breathing down
the back of your own neck, you're not
pleasing God.
When the fact is, the Lord said, Don't
go yet, you're not ready to go.
You know, Peter leaped to his feet when
the Lord said, Go ye into all the
world and preach the gospel to every creature.
Peter leaped to his feet, and I doubt,
grabbed, scooped up his hat on the way
out.
He was going to go right now, maybe
found something, you know, and start something.
But the Lord said, Peter, he came back,
he said, Tarry ye in the city of
Jerusalem until ye be endued with power from
on high.
I think one of the biggest mistakes we
make with our young people is to get
them born again and then start them out
right away.
My brethren, we're not prepared to do the
work of the Lord when we're just born
again.
The priests were born priests, but they had
to be anointed priests before they could serve.
They were born priests.
They had to be born of the tribe
of Levi, of the family of Aaron, and
Kohath, Mererai, and what was the other fellow's
name?
They had to be of those lines.
They had to be born into the priesthood,
or they couldn't be priests.
But they didn't serve even though they were
born priests.
They didn't serve as priests until they had
been anointed.
Blood was put on their ears, on their
thumbs, on their toes, and then on the
blood was put oil, fragrant, sweet oil, the
type of the Holy Ghost.
Then after they had been anointed for the
priesthood, they went and served in the Old
Testament priesthood.
But you and I, just as soon as
we get a fellow born into the tribe
of Levi, we give him a bunch of
tracts and say, Now, bud, get going.
And the result is Christianity has taken on
amateurism.
I heard the former president of Wheaton College
one time say that we are suffering from
a rash of amateurism in Christian circles, and
we surely are.
Christianity has leveled down and down and down.
And the high quality and the specific gravity,
you know, the weight of it is gone.
We're light as butterflies.
We flip, flip, flip around in the sunshine
and imagine that we're eagles flapping our broad
wings above the rocks of God.
But instead of that, we're butterflies.
We're trying to work when we're not prepared
to work.
And so there needs to be some preparation,
some getting ready.
They stopped their activities.
I have said, you know, I say lots
of radical things, but I don't apologize because
I'd have too much time.
But among the things that I've said, and
I think I stand for it, is that
I believe the Church would be better off
if we'd call a moratorium on activity for
about six weeks and just wait on God
to see what he would do for us.
Just wait on God.
They did that very thing.
They cleaned up the loose ends and they
got united.
You know, we pray, Oh God, send thy
Holy Spirit upon us so we'll be united.
We might just as well repeat the three
blind mice because God doesn't hear that kind
of prayer because it's got no sense in
it.
The Holy Ghost did not come upon the
disciples to unite them.
The Holy Spirit came upon the disciples because
they were already united.
Being of one accord in one place.
Now the scholars tell me, I'm just a
boy that picked up a little as I
went along, but those who are supposed to
know tell me that it's a musical term.
That being in one accord, it's a musical
term.
It means harmony.
And they already were one.
They were in harmony with each other.
And then when they were all together in
one place, you know if you could get
God's people all together in one place.
The trouble is with some of you, you're
here but you're not here at all.
Your mind is wandering around all over Ontario.
But you're here in your body.
But they were all together in one place.
Somebody said that we have yet to see
what God can do with a man if
he can get him all together in one
place.
If he can just get him together, get
him in one place and get him focused
and get him together.
And now they were there.
And then came the third period, the period
of the realization.
The Holy Ghost came upon them suddenly.
It wasn't until just lately, just this last
week, that I saw a word here in
the book of Acts.
And I found that word occurring quite often
through the scriptures.
And that is the word suddenly.
And suddenly there came a sound from heaven
of a rushing mighty wind and it filled
all the house where they were sitting.
And I rather smile to myself because that
word suddenly there.
God's people are so afraid of suddenly.
They always want things to slip up on
them a little bit at a time, slowly.
Everybody is willing to be filled with the
Holy Spirit provided God does it very gingerly
and very slowly and doesn't take away their
faith or embarrass them any and doesn't frighten
them.
But the scripture says suddenly they were filled
with the Holy Ghost.
It even says suddenly there was with the
angel the multitude of the heavenly host.
Now I think I'm going to look it
up, but I think you will find that
word suddenly occurring pretty near whenever God did
a wonderful thing.
He did it suddenly.
But we're afraid of that.
We want to grow in grace.
We want to grow because you know you
can grow and you're not embarrassed.
If an altar call is given and you
go to the prayer room, get down on
your knees and seek Almighty God and God
comes and fills you and you get up
and get your handkerchief out and rub your
eyes and say, Thank God the Comforter has
come.
It's embarrassing, you know.
And it takes a little bit away from
your reputation.
You've got a feeling, well, look at me.
I used to be the chairman of the
board and I taught an adult Sunday school
class in my home church.
And now for me to suddenly be filled
with the Spirit and maybe even break down
and cry or say praise the Lord would
be awful.
And the result, of course, is we go
on year after year and learn to live
with death.
We learn to live with a spiritual corpse.
We learn to live, our breath is frosty
and our cheeks are pale and our toes
are frostbitten and we haven't spirituality, yet we
learn to live with that.
And we imagine that's normal and we write
books to prove that that's normal.
It's not normal at all.
It's subnormal.
It's abnormal.
It's below normal.
The Holy Ghost isn't on us and that's
our trouble.
But the period of the realization came suddenly
and the Father fulfilled his promise and the
expectations were fully met and more.
Always remember this, that God is always bigger
than anything God can say because words are
inadequate to express God and what God can
do.
Any promise that God ever made God has
to over-fulfill it.
The reason being that God is so great
and his heart is so kind and his
desire is so intense and tremendous that language
doesn't express it.
Not the Greek, not the English.
No language expresses God.
It can't.
If language could contain God then language would
be equal to God.
So everything God says in the Bible must
be understood to be a little greater than
what he says even as God is greater
than language.
So when God promised them that they should
receive power that that power should be an
athletics from heaven above which should come upon
them should cross the threshold of their spirits
and enter into the deeps of their soul
and dwell there forever and should work within
them to lead them, purify them, instruct them
and teach them we've got to believe that
the fulfillment will be greater than the promise
because the fulfillment of God and the promise
is words.
God is always greater than words.
Don't forget that.
I was at a convention one time over
in New York State and there was a
beautiful little Italian woman married woman and I
didn't talk about this.
What did I talk about that night?
I talked about this.
Maybe I'll preach it here sometime.
It was that text from the Old Testament
that says every man shall know the plague
of his own heart.
And I preached on the plague of a
man's heart.
She heard it.
And then I told them that there was
deliverance.
There was a balm in Gilead and there
was a fountain opened in the house of
David that delivers from the plague of our
own heart.
Well she along with some others came down
to the altar and she was there and
suddenly she leaped to her feet.
There was no wildness, no wild and woolly
stuff.
It was God.
And that lovely dark face of hers literally
shone.
And she walked around saying like somebody oh
that she'd heard her family had been killed
and then suddenly she'd heard it was a
mistake.
They were all well and happy.
She just couldn't believe it and she kept
saying oh I didn't know it could happen
to me.
I didn't know it could happen to me.
And there was a man considerably older than
she and she made a dash for him.
Threw her arms around him and hugged him
hard.
And had a little word together and then
she turned away all tears and smiles.
And I learned afterwards it was her father
-in-law.
And they'd had a little row and she
was just hugging the old man making up
with him which was perfectly normal and right.
She'd made up in her heart but she
got to him afterwards.
Well now that's the fulfillment.
Now she said I didn't know this could
be.
Now she had read it in the text
and she'd heard it preached.
But what happened to her was so much
greater than anything she had dreamed of that
she couldn't believe it was happening.
But it happened all right.
Now there's a great modern error abroad and
you'll find out if you listen to me
for any length of time that I'm not
one of these positive preachers.
You know they say that you're supposed to
be positive.
You're to accent the positive and underplay the
negative.
But everybody that knows how to screw in
a light bulb knows there's two poles in
an electric circuit.
The positive and the negative and you can't
have a light burning on one.
It takes both.
Everybody knows there's two sides to a Canadian
half dollar.
On one side it says oh I can't
read this.
It's Latin.
And the other side it says something else.
But you split that down the middle and
there isn't a store in Toronto that would
take it.
Both sides have to be there.
The positive and the negative.
In the newer coins they have the queen
lovely outline on there.
And then something on the outside takes both.
One won't do.
And so there's got to be the negative.
You've got to get rid of some things.
I never had any time for these soft
handed cake eating pastors who look more and
more normal with a T balanced on their
knee than they do on their knees in
the study.
I never could see it but they walk
around smooth and sweet hoping never to make
any enemies as long as they live.
Brother of man is known by the enemies
he makes.
Yes he is.
And he's known by the friends he makes.
And I want God's friends to be my
friends.
And I'm not so particular about God's enemies
whether they're my friends or not.
I don't want to be friends of those
that are enemies of God.
So I will sometimes have to tear into
things that I don't believe are right.
I wouldn't do it except that it hinders
the people of God.
That's all.
It hinders them.
And anything that hinders God's people, that's my
business.
So don't say that's none of my business.
That is my business.
I've been anointed of God to make it
my business.
So there's an error abroad and I want
to state it now.
I heard all my life, you know, all
my life, all my life I've taught it.
And I think I'm coming out on top.
Well, the state is like this.
That the individual Christian is not affected by
this promise of the Father.
That this happened to the Church once and
is not to be repeated.
Just as the birth of Christ happened once
and is not to be repeated.
The death of Christ happened once and is
not to be repeated.
The resurrection of Christ happened once and is
not to be repeated.
So Pentecost happened once and that's it now.
The Church no longer is concerned.
That has taken place.
That's a historic fact.
Same as the birth of Jesus.
Same as the death of Jesus.
And so they try to brush us off.
Well, I'll tell you what.
I'm going to ask you some questions now
and let you do your own preaching.
And when you go out you won't have
had it rammed down your throat.
You will have made your own decision about
it.
I've got about nine questions I want to
ask you.
And you answer them and then when we're
through we'll be through.
First question is, was the Father's promise for
the 1st century Christians only?
This promise of the Father that was to
come, was that for the 1st century Christians
only?
Or did that carry over to the 2nd
century and the 3rd century and the 4th
century?
Now, my theological education came out of the
Schofield Bible.
And you know what the Schofield Bible says?
The Schofield Bible says that the period that
Joel had in mind when he said it
shall come to pass in the last days
that I will pour out my Spirit upon
all flesh.
Schofield says that that period in the last
days began with the Pentecost and continues until
Christ returns.
We are living in the period of the
last days when that text of Joel's is
active and efficacious and applicable to you and
me.
And I quote Dr. Schofield because often he
is quoted as not being on the side
of the Spirit-filled life.
But he was an honest man and he
stated that, that we are now living in
those latter days when God will pour out
his Spirit upon all flesh.
That's what he believed.
Dr. Torrey said that when Peter said, Believe
on the Lord Jesus Christ and receive the
gift of the Spirit which is promised is
unto you and to your children and as
many as are far off.
Wasn't that first generation crowd only?
You and your children and as many as
are far off.
How far off is Toronto from Palestine?
I would say, I'd guess 6,000 miles.
I may be wrong there.
I'm a better theologian than I am a
geographer.
But I'd guess at it and say that's
about it.
All right.
As many as are far off.
Now that's the first problem.
Now you settle it, brother.
If I try to make you believe something,
you'll go away and if you meet a
man that's a better arguer than I am,
he'll make you believe the opposite.
That is always the reason I believe in
the witness of the Spirit.
If you can argue a man into believing
he's filled, you'll meet another man that will
argue him out of believing he's filled.
If you can argue a young fellow into
thinking he's born again, you'll meet some fellow
that will argue him out of it.
So I don't ever argue with anybody.
I point to the Lamb of God that
taketh away the sins of the world and
after that God and the man is on
his own.
And if I drop dead or get hit
by a Volkswagen, he'll have the promise of
the Father and he won't have to go
back to me to find out whether it's
so or not.
That's question number one.
Was the Father's promise for the first century
Christians own?
Question number two is, does the new birth
of the first century Christians make my new
birth unnecessary?
Now, the Lord said that we would have
to be born again.
And he said we were to be filled
with the Spirit.
And they come along and tell us that
that meant they were to be filled with
the Spirit back there.
All right, Grant, they were filled with the
Spirit.
But I happen to be born 1897.
That's a few hundred years too late for
that first century.
And here I am high and dry hanging
on a wire.
And if I didn't live back there, then
I might I don't have any hope at
all.
I won't listen to that kind of teaching,
brethren.
I won't.
Because you can't reason it this way.
Peter was born again.
Does Peter's being born again do for me?
Peter was filled with the Spirit.
Then does Peter being filled with the Spirit
do for me?
I want to ask you this question.
Would a breakfast of ham, not ham and
eggs, but would a breakfast of eggs that
Peter ate in 33 A.D. nourish my
soul and make me living in 1960 A
.D.? No.
Peter ate his eggs and drank his milk
and ate his brown bread and he was
nourished in 33 A.D. I am living
in 1960 and I have to have my
ham and eggs.
I'm not a Jew and therefore I eat
ham.
And I excuse Peter on that because I
figured that being a Jew he wouldn't want
the stuff.
But Peter's breakfast in 33 A.D. won't
do me one thing I have to eat
now if I'm going to be nourished now.
Peter's being born again won't help me in
1960.
I must be born again now as he
was born again then.
Peter's being filled in that day won't help
me now.
I must be filled now as he was
filled then.
Well, are there any difference between that and
the outpouring of the Spirit?
What value, another question I want to ask,
is it true to the Church in Toronto
that the Church in Jerusalem was filled with
the Holy Ghost?
You know, sometimes it seems to me the
Lord's people needed to have somebody gently rub
their heads.
They get such weird ideas.
They need something, I don't know what, maybe
shake their head and get it working because
this idea that the Church being filled with
the Spirit back there in the first century
made it unnecessary for the Church to be
filled with the Spirit now.
How silly can you get?
None of you people were living in the
first century, were you?
I wasn't.
Nobody I know around here was.
We weren't even in the minds of our
great grandfathers yet at that time.
We were great, great grandfathers.
Some of you that are so proud of
your ancestry as the brother said in the
House of Lords in London, you were eating
acorns in the forests of Britain back there
at that time, you know.
And I don't know where my ancestors were
in the black forests of Germany somewhere, I
guess, digging acorns or roots.
But way back to that is the hour
when the Holy Ghost came upon the Church
and the Church went out in a blaze
of fire to preach the gospel to the
known world in the first hundred years.
Then the long lacuna, the long gap.
Now here we are in 1960 and we
have teachers that are so infinitely silly as
to come and tell us that all we
have to do is just go quietly along
until the Lord comes and makes us ruler
over many cities.
They had the spirit back there and all
we have is the echo and the memory
and the hope.
Now, they tell us another thing.
They say that at conversion we receive what
they received back there at Pentecost.
Now I want to ask you, have you
ever seen anybody that received at his conversion
what Peter received in the upper chamber?
Have you ever met anybody like that?
Do you know anybody like that?
And I want to ask you this question.
When you were converted, did you have the
power Peter had when he was these brethren?
You even level it down below Peter, down
to the common folk that were around him,
just the plain people whose names were not
even known except a few of them.
Didn't they have something that we apparently don't
have in this day in which we live?
I don't know.
But I think they did.
Now I want to ask another thing.
Is modern fundamentalism, fundamental believers, is that a
satisfactory fulfillment of expectation raised by the Father
and Christ?
Our Heavenly Father promised a gift to the
Holy Ghost to come upon his children.
Jesus promised that we should have the Spirit.
He should come.
He should take the things of Christ and
make them known unto us.
He should bring all things to our memory.
We should have power over all things.
power when the Spirit came.
He promised all this.
Then I look around at cold, dead, dried
-up fundamentalism, textualism hanging out to dry.
Then they want me to believe that what
they have now is what they had back
there then.
I just can't do it.
We Christians now are a scrub block compared
with those Christians back there.
We're scrubbed.
When I was a boy on the farm
in Pennsylvania, we had scrubbed chickens.
Occasionally my mother would go out and bring
in some buff coachins and Plymouth rocks and
some others and try to improve the strain
a little bit.
But if you just let a hen go
a just let them go for five or
six years and they'll revert back to type
and they'll go back to scrubbing.
You can't figure out what they are.
They're just little old dried up clucking biddies
that lay little eggs and not too many
of them and don't provide much meat.
We Christians we just reverted back to old
Adamic type.
They were thoroughbreds in those early days.
Thoroughbreds.
They had come from God or something from
God had come to them.
And they blazed with light and power and
life.
And look at us.
Look at us.
And then we try to say we have
the same thing that they have.
Do you think we have?
Now you think it over and answer the
question yourself.
And then I'm going to ask you one
more.
Does your heart personally witness that what you
now enjoy is what our Lord promised to
his people?
Do you now, does your heart now bear
witness that what you now have is all
God meant when he painted that wonderful picture
of the fullness of the Spirit?
Or is there something more for the Church?
Somebody wants to ask the question now.
They say, we don't know this man's culture.
What is this?
Is this Pentecost communism that he's preaching?
No, absolutely not.
It's only what the Christian Missionary Alliance has
always believed, always believed.
It's only what Dr. Torrey believed, it's what
Billy Someday believed, and Billy Graham believed, though
Billy was gifted of God to preach to
sinners, and he doesn't enter this too much
because his gift is a bit different, and
he preaches straight to sinners and wins them.
But it's what Torrey, I insist, believed, it's
what Moody believed, down in the city of
Chicago, out on the south side, there was
a little home, and in the home lived
a little nice old lady, full of the
Holy Ghost named Mother Cook, and a young
fella got converted into the city, and he
was, he would have made a good salesman,
you know, he was a very busy fella,
he loved to run in circles, and he
did.
He went everywhere running in circles, and his
name was Dwight Lyman Moody, and one day
the little old lady Mother Cook saw Dwight,
and she said, son, I'd like to have
you come over to my house sometime, I
want to talk to you.
So Moody went over to her house, and
she sat him down on a chair, and
she said something to this general effect, now,
Dwight, wonderful to see you saved so beautifully,
wonderful to see your results, but you know
what you need, you need to be anointed
with the Holy Ghost.
Well, he said, Mother Cook, I want whatever
God has for me.
All right, she said, get down here, and
she got him down on the linoleum, and
they prayed a while, and she prayed, oh
God, fill this young fellow.
Well, he died out there, and opened his
heart, and brought his vessel, his empty vessel
to the Lord, and took the promise by
faith, but nothing happened.
So, a few days afterward, he was in
the east, I've forgotten whether New York or
Philadelphia, I think New York, and he said,
as I was walking down the street, suddenly,
now there's his word again, suddenly, God fulfilled
the promise he'd made to me in that
kitchen, and down onto him came a horn
of oil, and the Holy Ghost came on
him.
And he said, he crawled up an alley
and raised his hand and said, oh God,
stay your power or I'll die.
Then he said, I went out from there
preaching the same sermons with the same text,
but oh, the difference now, the Holy Ghost
had come.
Now the Holy Ghost had been there, he
had caused him to be born again.
If any of
you
with the same text, you'll know that the
Holy Ghost had stay your power or I'll
die.
And he said, had come on
him Ghost had but oh, never let me
go.
He's after me still.
And he publishes things about me, showing that
I'm confusing the same.
And I wrote him a letter and I
said to him, my dear brother, if the
Lord's people were as eager to be filled
with the Spirit as they are to prove
you can't be, the church would be quite
a different church.
He published that, too.
But it's true, isn't it?
It's true.
I'm not preaching a thing our Baptist brethren
don't believe when you press them.
I'm not preaching a thing that the Methodist
brethren don't believe.
I'm not preaching a thing the Salvation Army
doesn't teach.
I'm not preaching a thing that our Puritan
fathers didn't believe.
So I don't apologize.
It's here.
Set aside time and search the scriptures.
And if the scriptures don't convince you that
the church and the individuals in the church
ought to be living a happy, Spirit-filled
life, then don't listen to me.
Don't listen to me.
Because if I preach for five hours straight,
and I don't preach according to the truth
found in the Bible, I'm wrong, no matter
how eloquent I try to be.
Pray and yield and believe and obey, and
see what God will do for you over
the next weeks.
Shall we?
Will you do that?
See what God will do for you over
the next weeks.
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