John answered and said, A man can receive
nothing except it be given him from heaven.
A man can receive nothing except it be
given him from heaven.
Now this text states two things.
It states that we have not the ability
to apprehend divine things.
And it states that the ability is, can
be given to us from heaven.
Now I want those two thoughts to lie
in your mind while I talk.
That we have not by nature the ability
to apprehend divine things, but that the ability
to some is given from heaven.
Now let's begin by saying that the realm
of the spirit is closed to the intellect.
I wish that I might have an opportunity
to talk to all the teachers.
I'm going to be able to talk to
the teachers of Ontario one of these times
forgotten when, somewhere here in the city.
As many as will be attending of the
public school teachers.
But I wish that all of the church
people might hear this.
That the realm of the spirit is closed
to the intellect.
And it's not difficult to understand why.
Because you see, the spirit is the organ
by which we apprehend divine things.
And the human spirit has died.
It's dead because of sin.
You see, when I say that the human
intellect is not the organ by which we
apprehend divine things, I'm not saying anything very
profound.
But I'm saying that which can be understood
easily.
For instance, if there were a symphony being
played just now.
You don't hear that symphony or you wouldn't
hear that symphony with your eye.
Because God didn't give you your eye to
hear with.
He gave you your eye to see with.
If there were a beautiful sunset in as
there no doubt is about here at the
time of the going down of the sun,
you wouldn't enjoy that with your ear.
Because God didn't give you your ear to
hear sunsets with.
He gave you your ear to hear music,
and the voices of your friends, and the
laughter of children, and bird songs, and all
things beautiful and good.
He gave your ear to hear all things
that can be heard, and he gave you
your eye to see what can be seen.
But he never confuses the two.
You do not hear with your eye nor
see with your ear.
Therefore, if a man stands up and says,
the realm of nature, visible nature, cannot be
apprehended by the ear, nobody wonders, nobody jumps
up and says, that man's a mystic.
That's just common sense, it's ordinary scientific fact.
So when I say that God did not
give you your intellect to apprehend him with,
the divine being with, but that he gave
you another organ altogether, then there's certainly nothing
profoundly queer about it.
Let me read to you from the word
of God.
Sometimes when you've heard a thing explained, and
you read the scripture, scripture come alive to
you.
Never read this passage.
For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither
are your ways my ways, says the Lord.
For as the heavens are higher than the
earth, so are my ways higher than your
ways, and my thoughts than your thoughts.
In 1 Corinthians 2, But the natural man
receiveth not the things of the Spirit of
God, for they are foolishness unto him, neither
can he know them, because they are spiritually
discerned.
Now hear that.
The natural man, that is the psychical man,
the man of mind, the man of intellect,
he cannot understand or receive the things of
the Spirit of God.
They are foolishness to him, and he cannot
know them, because they are spiritually discerned.
God gave a spirit to apprehend him with,
an intellect to apprehend theology with.
There's a difference.
Then in John 16, Jesus said, I have
yet many things to say to you, but
ye cannot bear them now.
But when he, the Spirit of truth, is
come, he will guide you into all truth,
for he shall not speak from himself, but
whatsoever he shall hear, that shall he speak,
and he will show you things to come.
He will glorify me, for he shall receive
of mine, and shall show it unto you.
Now that's perfectly plain, that the Spirit of
God is the one who reveals God to
us, who reveals Christ to us.
In 1 Corinthians 2, we have a passage
there also that tells us.
Now I'll read quite a little Scripture tonight,
because I don't want you to go away
trusting in the words of man's wisdom, but
rather in the wisdom of the Scriptures and
the power of God.
Howbeit, he says, we speak wisdom among them
that are perfect, yet not the wisdom of
this world, nor of the princes of this
world that come to naught.
But we speak the wisdom of God in
a mystery, even the hidden wisdom which God
ordained before the world and unto our glory.
But as it is written, eye hath not
seen, nor ear heard, neither hath entered into
the heart of man the things which God
hath prepared for them that love him.
Isn't it strange how many times we stop
when we should go on, and go on
when we should stop?
Here's one of the places where people stop.
We memorize that verse and put a full
stop after the word to him.
God hath prepared for them that love him.
Then we stop there.
But the Bible doesn't stop there.
It has a little conjunctive but there.
It says, but God hath revealed them unto
us by his Spirit.
Eye hath not seen, nor ear heard, nor
the heart of man understood, but God hath
revealed it by the Spirit.
The spiritual things are not apprehended by the
eye, they're not apprehended by the ear, and
they're not apprehended even by the intellect, but
they are revealed by the Spirit.
For the Spirit searches all things, yea, the
deep things of God, and he uses an
illustration.
And he says, what man knows the things
of a man save the spirit of man
which is in him.
Now you see that's what we call intuition.
There's a word we oughtn't to be afraid
of.
I'm not afraid of words.
Stuart Chase wrote a book called The Tyranny
of Words, and I read the book and
along with that and the help of God
and a few other things, I'm not afraid
of words.
I don't run from words.
I'm not afraid of the word intuition and
into it because that's how you know you're
you and not somebody else.
You do ever think of this, now this
is kind of silly, but I'll put it
in here.
You ever stop to think, you ever think
that you never dream you're somebody else, no
matter how weird the dream is and how
upset everything is and how all mixed up
you are, you never dream you're somebody else.
A man said once that he dreamed he
was a butterfly, and then he woke up
and now he said he's all mixed up,
he doesn't know whether he's a butterfly dreaming
he's a man, or a man dreaming he's
a butterfly.
That all sounds very cute, but the simple
fact is no man ever dreamed he was
a butterfly.
Always you maintain your individuality, your ego, your
id, your you.
You're always you in your dream.
How do you know you're you and not
somebody else?
If you were to walk up to 14
other men who looked exactly like you it
wouldn't stun you at all, you'd grin and
you'd say isn't this an amazing coincidence that
14 other men look exactly like me and
my wife wouldn't know the difference, it would
be, but you wouldn't wonder which one you
were.
You wouldn't suddenly begin to drool and your
hair go wild and they'd send for the
man in the cap, uh-uh.
You'd maintain your individuality because you intuit your
individuality.
You don't run to the old family Bible
to find out who you are, you know
who you are.
Now of course if you're left an orphan
you might not know who your parents are,
but as far as your individual self is
concerned, you know who you are by intuition.
Mark Twain said once that he got a
young fellow aside and by logic, by making
him say yes and no to questions in
the Socratic method he finally succeeded in proving
to the young fellow that he was his
own grandmother but that of course was Mark
Twain.
But the truth is you can't do that
because, listen to this what man knoweth the
things of the man save the spirit of
the man which is in him.
You know what you are and who you
are and even if you didn't know your
name and even if you were visited with
what's the disease that takes away your memory?
You would still know you were you.
You intuit it.
You know you're alive.
You don't reason that you're alive.
Well Rene Descartes said I think therefore I
am.
But that was silly because he knew he
was long before he ever reasoned to it.
He knew he was by an intuition.
Now that's what's the matter with the church
in our day.
We forget that there's something that you can't
get a hold of with your head.
We run around with our heads always trying
to lay hold of things with our minds.
Now the mind is good.
God put it there.
He gave you a head and he didn't
give it to you so your glasses could
be on it and your hat.
He gave it to you, put brains in
your head.
And the organ we call the intellect has
a work to do.
But that work is not apprehending divine things.
That's of the Holy Ghost.
That's why you can take a fellow and
get him converted, really converted, and after that
you can't argue him out of it.
Well the world stands.
He knows he's converted.
He intuits it.
The Holy Ghost tells him within deep in
his heart.
He doesn't have to have three or four
fellows beat him on the back and stick
a marked New Testament under his nose.
He knows he's converted by the in-working
of the Holy Ghost that intuits it.
He knows it.
And now he said even so the things
of God knoweth no man but the Spirit
of God.
God knows himself and the Holy Ghost knows
God because the Holy Ghost is God.
And no man can know God except by
the Holy Ghost.
Those are the words of the man Paul.
I see that I'm a field here and
I'll never get through this tonight.
But I'll do my best.
I got material enough here for a book,
a hundred and fifty pages, and I'm trying
to pack it into forty minutes.
But we'll do our best.
Trust God.
Now to disregard what I'm talking about is
to shut out spiritual things entirely from our
understanding.
Spiritual things are hidden behind a veil, according
to this, and the Son of Earth can't
get hold of them.
He comes up against a blank wall.
He takes doctrine and text and proofs and
creeds and theology and he lays them up
like a wall but he can't find a
gate and he can't find any light.
He stands in the darkness and all around
about him is the intellectual knowledge of God.
But not the knowledge of God.
There's a difference now.
The intellectual knowledge of God.
We wonder why it's possible to grow up
in a church and learn the catechism and
get all done to you that they do
to you.
We like churches.
They like to serve and to please.
That's our motto.
And we do everything from sprinkling the baby
on down to the last rites.
And we'll do anything that's in reason for
a fellow.
But after you've done all that you may
not know God at all.
You may not know him at all because
God isn't known by those external things.
You're blind, you can't see because the things
of God knoweth no man but the spirit
of God.
Now there's been a great blunder in modern
orthodoxy and it is the erroneous assumption that
spiritual truths can be intellectually perceived.
And of course there has been very far
-reaching conditions that has resulted from this, very
far-reaching.
It has shown itself in our preaching and
in our praying and in our singing and
in our activity and in our thinking.
But it's an error to believe that Bible
study can remove the veil.
When we go to Bible school we want
to learn theology.
New Testament introduction, Old Testament introduction, New Testament
synthesis and Old Testament synthesis.
They name them long names and I suppose
the kids that study it think they've got
something.
And they could have something provided they had
the divine illumination of the Holy Ghost.
But until they receive that illumination, that inward
enlightenment, they don't have anything.
Because Bible study does not of itself lift
the veil and penetrate it.
For it doesn't say that no man knoweth
the things of God save the man who
studies his Bible.
It says no man knows the things of
God except the Holy Ghost.
So it is the Spirit who wrote the
Bible who must inspire the Bible.
Let me give you a little motto.
I've been around so long now and written
so much that I can't recall sometimes whether
I said it or whether I'm quoting.
So if I said this, why it's all
right.
But if I didn't say it, why I
will give a little wave of recognition to
whoever did so not to plagiarize.
But here's the thing, here's the thing I
want you to get.
That it takes an act of the Holy
Ghost before I can understand a text it
takes an act of the Holy Ghost equal
to the act that inspired the text.
Now I mixed that one up.
I'll back out and try again.
It's a snowy weather and the wheels don't
hold.
But here's what I'm trying to say.
That to understand a Bible text takes an
act of the Holy Spirit equal to the
act that inspired the text in the first
place.
I don't know where I got that or
whether I thought it up myself, but it's
true.
You will find two texts here.
Listen, 2 Timothy 3.16 which says that
all scripture is given by inspiration of God
and is profitable.
John 3.27 which says no man can
receive anything from heaven except God, anything except
God reveal it to him from heaven.
But we're in a state of error.
We're in a state where we believe we
can talk each other up.
And we put things down on a level
with man and we say that a preacher
is a salesman.
He's outselling the gospel.
And I've even heard people talking about gossiping
the gospel.
Gossip the gospel.
I think that's hideous.
I wouldn't use it in a graveyard for
stray dogs.
But they do anyhow.
They say gossip the gospel.
I don't believe them.
I don't like that at all.
And don't tell me that the method of
God in winning men is the same method
that a fuller brush salesman uses in selling
a back scratcher.
Don't tell me that, brother, because I don't
believe it.
The Holy Spirit operates on another realm all
together.
And the method of winning a man according
to God is a divine method and not
a human one.
But we can make proselytes and church members
and get people over on our side joining
our class and going to our summer camp
and have done nothing to him but make
a proselyte out of him.
But when the Holy Spirit works in a
man, then that man, God does the work.
And what God does, the scripture says, is
forever.
But we imagine that we can handle it
by the flesh, and so we do handle
it by the flesh, and the Lord lets
us do it.
We can hold the Christian creed and not
know God and know the doctrine of the
alliance and not know spiritual things at all.
Other fearful consequences, I say.
And one of the consequences is that many
people know about God but don't know God.
There's a difference between knowing about God and
knowing God.
I remember saying that once before here, so
I'll go easy on it, not be too
repetitious.
But the difference between knowing about and knowing
and know, there's a vast difference.
I can know about your relative in Saskatchewan,
but not know him.
Never have met him, never know the touch
of his hand or the look of his
eyes or the smile of his face or
the sound of his voice.
Only know about him.
You can even show me his picture and
tell me, describe the man to me.
And still I don't know the man, I
just know about the man.
You know, a scientist, say Faber for instance,
knows bugs.
He knew bugs.
He wrote books on bees and worms and
other bugs and various kind of creatures.
A bee isn't a bug, is it?
But it'll do for night.
And yet, Faber never knew about never.
He never could get through to them, you
see.
You can know all about your dog and
never know your dog.
He'll smile at you, he'll stick your red
tongue out and pant, and he seems to
be intelligent, but he is a dog.
And you have no organ, no technique for
getting into his world.
Externally you can comb him and wash him
and feed him and trim his ears and
you can know him externally, but you never
can know your dog.
And your dog can never know you.
He can know about you, he can know
when you're glad and when you're angry with
him.
He can know when he's done the right
thing and done the wrong thing.
And sometimes I think dogs have a conscience
almost as good as people.
But still the dog dies and never knows
the man.
They say the great English Sir Isaac Newton,
who wrote his great works, you know, on
mathematics and astronomy and all the rest, that
he had a little dog that was with
him everywhere all the time.
His little dog was always with him.
And he had a very great manuscript that
he had spent labored years on, this Isaac
Newton.
He had it there and of course he
had a can, not a candle, with oil
in it for the days of electric light.
And the little dog got to bouncing around
on the table when he was out for
a moment, spilled the oil and his manuscript
burned up.
Now, Newton came over, they said, patted the
dog on the head, I think I had
to chase him up an alley, but he
patted the dog on the head and he
said, little dost thou know the damage thou
hast done.
Let the little fell off.
And the little dost thou know the damage
thou hast done.
And he wrote the book over again.
The little dog couldn't know that manuscript.
He didn't know anything human, he only knew
things canine.
So you can know about God and you
can know about Christ dying for you and
you can even write songs and sell them
to Rodeheaver Company.
All about by his grace I'll see his
face upon the tree he died for me,
you know.
Anybody can write them.
I could write a yard of hymns between
now and midnight after church service and sell
them.
But I wouldn't do it or I'd be
caught dead doing it.
Too many people are doing it now.
But you can write hymns, you can write
books, you can head this and be the
president of that and found this religious thing
and still never know God at all because
only by the Holy Ghost can we know
God.
It's possible I say to know about him
and not know him.
And then a second consequence of this error
of which I spoke is that we have
two Christs.
The Christ of history and of creed and
story and song.
The Christ we sing about, the man upstairs
or the baby Jesus or what have you.
And then there is the Christ which the
Spirit reveals.
You see, you never can piece Jesus together
out of historic knowledge.
You never can do it.
You can read your New Testament and still
never find Christ in it.
You can be convinced that he is the
Son of God and still never find Christ.
Christ is revealed by the Holy Ghost.
No man knows the things of God but
by the Holy Ghost.
Jesus said, I have lots of things to
say but I can't say them now.
But when he, the Spirit of truth, has
come, he will take the things of mine
and reveal them unto you.
And I'd like to say this to you,
brethren and sisters in Christ, that a revelation
of the Holy Spirit in one glorious flash
of inward illumination will teach you more of
Jesus than five years in a theological seminary.
Though I believe in the seminary, as you
know.
You say seminary and keep it right and
don't misunderstand and think it says seminary.
Keep it right and it will be all
right.
But you can learn about Jesus in the
seminary and you can learn lots about him.
And we ought to learn lots about him.
We ought to read everything we can read
about him.
For reading about him is legitimate and good
and a part of Christianity.
But the final flash that introduces your heart
to Jesus must be done by the Holy
Spirit or it isn't done at all.
Remember this, you only know Jesus as well
as the Holy Spirit is pleased to reveal
him to you.
For he cannot be revealed any other way.
Even Paul said now know we Christ no
longer after the flesh.
The church cannot know Christ except as the
Spirit reveals him.
Now a third thing is that the Christian
life, a third consequence, evil consequence of the
blunder that modern orthodoxy, modern fundamentalism, that we
know God with our minds, the Christian life
is conceived to be much like the natural
life, only jollier and cleaner and more fun.
So the faith of our fathers has been
identified with a number of questionable things.
One is philosophy.
The modern evangelical church, oh I speak for
them.
I was up at Minneapolis as you know
and talked for them up there.
And I say the same thing to them
as I say about them so I think
that's fair and Christian.
But I think that this modern neo-intellectual
movement that is trying to resurrect the church
by means of learning is about as far
off the track as it's possible to be.
Because you don't go to philosophy to find
out about the Lord Jesus.
Now Paul happens to be, happened to be,
one of the most intellectual men that ever
lived.
I read once a book somewhere or a
chapter in a book or something where it
was said that a consensus among a great
many learned scholars was that Saint Paul was
one of the six greatest intellects that ever
lived.
He was one of six.
I personally think maybe he was the wisest
and the greatest intellect that ever lived barring
of course our Savior whom we never classify
with other men.
But even the man Paul said when I
came to you I came not with wise
words of men's wisdom but in demonstration of
the spirit and the power.
You see if you have to be reasoned
into Christianity some wise fellow can reason you
out of it.
But if you come to Christ by a
flash of the Holy Ghost so that you
intuit that you're God's child.
You'll know it by the text but you'll
know it also by the inner life, the
inner illumination of the spirit.
Nobody can ever reason you out of it
again.
Up until I was maybe thirty-three or
four years old I read more books on
atheism than I did on Christianity.
I had my Schofield Bible and a hymn
book and a few other books Andrew Murray
and Thomas A.
Kempis and a few others.
But I got myself educated as well as
I could by reading books.
And I read the philosophy of all the
great minds, the great men, all those fellows
many of them didn't believe in God you
know, didn't believe in Christ certainly.
And I used to read books.
I read White's Warfare of Science with Christianity
or Christianity with Science.
And if a man can read that and
still say he's saved, he isn't saved by
his reason.
He's saved by the Holy Ghost in him
telling him he's saved.
Well I used to read those books when
I was a young fellow and didn't know
much and don't yet.
But they'd take away all my reasons and
reduce me to palpitating ignorance.
And I have any other way you know.
A man would just get down on a
walk out and close his Bible, toss it
on the shelf and say now there goes
another one of that goes along with Santa
Claus and Jack Frost and a few other
things he used to believe in.
But you know what I used to do
after reading up on reading a chapter or
two that I couldn't answer and have him
arguments that I couldn't possibly defeat.
I'd get down on my knees and with
tears I'd thank God with joy that no
matter what they say Lord I know Thee
my Savior and my Lord.
I didn't have it in my head, I
had it in my heart.
And there's a difference there you see.
We have it in our head, well then
of course philosophy will help us.
But if we have it in our heart,
there isn't much philosophy can do except stand
reverently hat in hand and say holy, holy,
holy is the Lord God Almighty.
Well then there's science.
Science is called upon to prove Christianity.
We just came through one of those long
tunnels when the evangelical church was running to
science to get some sort of help.
Not knowing that everything that's divine in Christianity
is exactly what science has no technique for
investigating.
The thing that the science can investigate isn't
divine and the thing that's divine science can't
investigate.
Oh, science can make sputniks and science can
make tape recorders.
There's one running through, I'm running backstage here
now taking this wandering sermon down.
Hope they'll anchor it and get it on
tape.
Science can do those things but all of
that's nothing.
Christianity is a miracle, a wonder, something out
of heaven, something let down like Peter's sheep,
not depending upon the world nor being a
part of the world.
It's something from the throne of God like
the waters of Ezekiel's vision.
Science knows nothing about that.
Science stands back and looks it over and
doesn't know what to say.
If we don't have this inner intuition, if
we don't have this miraculous thing, then we
run to science.
And the poor preachers, God help them, they
have tried to prove over the last years
the miracles you know.
They want to believe the miracles, I believe
them all, but I don't believe them because
science permits me, I believe them because God
wrote them in the Bible and if they're
there I believe them.
But you know some fellow finds a fish
washed up on the shore and he majors
it to gullet, gets himself a tape measure
and crawls inside the bony skeleton and majors
it to gullet and he finds out that
it was brought as the shoulders of a
man and he goes out and says see,
Jonah could be swallowed by a great fish.
See, the unbelievers are wrong.
God did make a fish.
Fish are big enough to swallow Jonah.
Well listen brother, why go to tape measures
and fish to find out whether what God
says is true or not?
If God did the thing, I could believe
that Jonah swallowed the whale.
It wouldn't make a bit of difference to
me, not a bit of difference.
A Scotchman I heard about, now I won't
do a Scotch dialect because some of you
have Scottish backgrounds and you'd laugh in my
face if I tried any Braid Scots.
I do it down home where Braid Scots
is not so well known.
But they say there were two scientists talking
walking down the street and one of them
said, you know that we have investigated, we
have searched into and we weighed and measured
and so on and we have found that
the story of Jonah, of Balaam's eye speaking
is all false.
The larynx of a donkey could not possibly
articulate human speech and this Scotchman had all
he could take.
So he went up and he said Mum,
you make a donkey and I'll make him
talk.
There you have it brother.
If God can make a donkey God can
make him talk.
All of these fellows who, I don't know,
these science films and all that stuff, you
know it's cute alright and it's nice for
high school kids, but it doesn't prove Christianity
Christianity stands or falls on Jesus Christ.
Stands or falls on the illumination of the
Holy Ghost.
Peter could have reasoned until the cows came
home and not known anything, but immediately the
Holy Ghost came on and he jumped up
and said, God has made this man Jesus
whom he crucified, Lord and Christ, and knew
by the Spirit of God.
Well we've passed that over because I can
get awful sarcastic about that because I don't
like the way they're doing it.
And then we, because we haven't inward illumination,
we have not the Holy Spirit we patronize
human greatness, you know.
The whole literature has grown up around the
notion that Christianity may be proved by the
fact that great men believe in Christ.
If we can get a hold of a
politician who believes in Christ, why, we get
him all over our fundamentalist magazines and say,
Senator so-and-so believes in Christ, the
implication is that if he believes in Christ,
then Christ must be alright.
When did Jesus Christ have to ride in
on the coattail of a senator?
You ask me that.
To find some half-converted cowboy out from
that Sodom and Gomorrah called Hollywood, California.
Get him to say a nice thing about
Jesus and go to the microphone and say
everybody ought to go to Sunday school.
Immediately breaks into print and all the poor
dumb fundamentalist print his testimony.
When did Jesus Christ have to come in
on the testimony of a half-converted actor?
No, no, my brother, Jesus hands alone, unique
and supreme, self-validating, and the Holy Ghost
declares him to be God's eternal Son.
And let all the senators and all the
presidents and all the kings and queens and
lords and ladies of the world, along with
all the great athletes and great actors, let
them kneel at his feet and cry, Holy,
Holy, Holy is the Lord God Almighty.
Only the Holy Ghost can do this, my
brethren.
For that reason I don't bow down to
great men.
I bow down to the great man.
And if you've learned to worship one man,
you won't worship other men.
Well, then human propaganda method, but I think
I've said enough about that.
So you see, it's either the Holy Spirit
or darkness.
The Holy Spirit is God's imperative of life.
And if our faith is to be a
New Testament faith, if Christ is to be
the Christ of God rather than the Christ
of history, or to be both, then we
have to enter in past the veil.
We have to push in past the veil
until the illumination of the Spirit tells our
hearts.
And we are learning at the feet of
Jesus, not at the feet of men.
Now this passage over here I'd like to
read.
But the anointing which ye have received of
him abided in you.
And ye need not that any man teach
you, but as the same anointing teacheth you
all things, and is truth, and is no
lie.
What does that mean?
Ye need not that any man teach you,
for that same anointing teacheth you.
Now the man who wrote that was a
teacher.
That didn't mean that God ruled out all
teachers.
For, as I shall show some to you
or two away, the gifts of the Spirit
one of them is a teacher.
So the Bible makes provision for a teacher.
And I'm a teacher.
I wouldn't be standing here by the rules
of a teacher where many of you are
teachers.
So this doesn't rule out teachers.
What it says is that your knowledge of
God is not taught to you from without.
It is received by an inner anointing.
And you don't get your witness from a
man.
You get your witness from an inner anointing.
He said the preaching of the cross is
to them that perish foolishness, but unto you
that are saved, that's the power of God.
For it's written, I will destroy the wise
and will bring to nothing the understanding of
the prudent.
After that, in the wisdom of God, the
world by wisdom knew not God, because the
foolishness of God is wiser than men and
the weakness of God is stronger than men.
But God has chosen the foolish things of
the world to confound the wise.
God has chosen the weak things of the
world to confound the things that are mighty.
And the base things of the world he
has chosen and the things that are not
to bring to nothing are that no flesh
should glory in his presence.
So you see, the Holy Spirit rules out
and excludes all Adam's flesh, all human brightness,
all human personality, all that scintillating personality and
human abilities and human sufficiency.
And it makes Christianity depend upon a perpetual
miracle.
The man of God, the true Spirit-filled
man of God is a perpetual miracle.
He's a man from Mars.
He's somebody that isn't understood by the people
of the world at all.
He's a stranger.
He's a Hebrew from beyond the flood.
He has come into the world by the
wonder of the new birth and the illumination
of the Spirit, and his life is completely
different from the world.
And he lives now, and if you want
text for that, I've gone a long way
around to say what Paul said.
What did he say here in 1 Corinthians?
I want to quote it correctly if I
can.
He says, "...he that is spiritual judges all
things, yet he himself is judged of no
man."
The spiritual man has a penetration that judges
everything, but he himself can't be judged by
anybody.
"...for who hath known the mind of the
Lord, that he may instruct him?"
But we have the mind of Christ.
That's simple.
What are we going to do now?
Are we going to go home and argue
about this or talk it over and say
it was good and say it wasn't good
and say it was too long or too
short or whatever?
Or are we going to do something about
it?
That's what bothers me.
Are we going to do something about this?
Are you going to open the door of
your personality?
Are you going to swing it wide?
And you don't have to be afraid, as
I've said before.
For the Holy Spirit is an illuminator.
He is light to the inner heart.
And he will show you more of God
in the moment than you can ever learn
in a lifetime without him.
And then when he does come, all that
you've learned and all that you do learn
will have its proper place in your total
personality and total creed and total thinking.
So you won't lose anything by what you've
learned.
And he won't throw out what you've learned
if it's true, but he will set it
on fire, that's all.
He will add fire to the altar.
Now he waits to be honored, the blessed
Holy Spirit.
He waits to be honored.
He will honor Christ as we honor Christ.
He waits.
And if you will throw open your heart
to him, a new sun will rise on
you.
I know that by personal experience.
Sometime maybe I'll tell you the sacred thing,
and I don't often tell it.
But I will tell you my own experience
of being anointed with the Holy Ghost two
years after my conversion.
And if there's anything that God has done
through me, it dates back to that solemn,
awful, wondrous hour when the light that never
was on land or sea, the light that
lighteth every man that cometh into the world,
flashed in on my darkness.
It was not conversion.
I'd been converged, soundly converged.
With subsequent to conversion.
How about you?
I repeat that here and there, there are
some who are finding him.
Some are disappointed because you have your way
of doing things and you think the only
way would be for us to call him
down here to the front and have a
big prayer meeting.
We may be doing that one of these
times, we'll be having all the calls, but
right now I don't feel I want to.
I want you to do me the credit
and do Brother Noel the credit of believing
we know what we're doing in the Lord.
And if we could get the people to
the altar and get them to crying and
get some emotions worked up, we'd say, well,
we're having a revival.
No.
We're having a revival when God's people begin
to obey him, begin to do what the
scripture says.
When they throw their heart door open to
his coming in.
And that could happen tonight while you're sitting
there in your seat.
That could happen now.
I'll tell you this in close.
Once I preached a sermon, just a gospel
sermon it was.
And I gave no altar call as I
remember.
But when the meeting was just about to
end, an old gentleman with a deep bass
voice down to my right got up and
asked to say a word.
He said, I came in to this service,
the wickedest man.
He named the state, I don't remember which.
He said, I go out a Christian.
I've been converted while I sat here.
Somebody brought a nurse from one of the
hospitals in Chicago to our service one night.
It was one of the nights we didn't
give an altar call.
Sometimes we did, sometimes we didn't as we
felt the Lord was leading.
I didn't even preach a gospel sermon.
I preached on something else.
That is, I preached the Bible, but it
wasn't a come to the Lord type of
gospel sermon.
And the people, Mr. and Mrs. Reinhardt, friends
of mine, dear friends of ours, they had
brought this nurse.
Oh, they just were so disappointed with Pastor
Torch.
He didn't preach the gospel tonight and we
wanted this nurse to hear how she could
be saved.
So when they were going downstairs and out
onto the street, this little nurse hunted up
Mr. Reinhardt, my friend.
She said, Mr. Reinhardt, I've got news for
you.
She said, when we stood to sing the
closing hymn tonight, I passed from death unto
life.
I am now a Christian.
And shortly after that I baptized.
She was converted.
Her name was Cora, somebody.
And Cora was converted, standing on her feet,
born again by the Holy Ghost, even though
no appeal had been made at all.
We tend to take the Holy Spirit's work
out of His hand and do it like
a snake oil salesman, you know, or fuller
brash man.
Let's not.
I am counting on the Holy Spirit to
illuminate you, to bless you, to humble you,
to fill you, even while I preach.
Come and tell me when it takes place.
Two men have done it already since this
series started.
Will you come and tell me when it
happens to you?
In the meantime, seek, pray, search the Word.
My brother Newell, let's sing this blood song,
song of cleansing.