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The Voice of the Holy Spirit

Pastor and author A.W. Tozer

June 14, 1953

I would speak tonight on the Voice of the Spirit. I want to read some Scripture, John 16: 7 down to 11. Nevertheless, I tell you the truth. It is expedient for you that I go away. For if I go not away, the Comforter will not come unto you. But if I depart, I will send him unto you. And when He is come, He will reprove the world of sin and of righteousness and of judgment, of sin because they believe not on Me, of righteousness because I go to my Father and ye see Me no more, or of judgment because the prince of this world is judged.

In Revelation 2 and 3, I’ll not read them, seven times the text is repeated. He that hath an ear, let him hear what the Spirit is saying unto the churches. Then in the last chapter of Revelation, verse 17, the Spirit and the Bride say, come. And let him that heareth say, come. And let him that is athirst, come. And whosoever will, let him take of the water of life freely.

Let us pray. Our Father, in us, in our flesh dwelleth no good thing. In our minds dwell no power of persuasion. Without Thee we can do nothing, but with thee we can do all things. So now, Father, we turn away, as though we were taking an axe away from a little boy and giving it to a man. As though we were shoving aside an amateur and letting a master sit down to the instrument. We shove aside the man that men know, and we invite the man Christ Jesus to speak and to effectively confirm the word by the Holy Ghost. Help us tonight, Lord. Tomorrow may be too late. We ask it in Jesus’ name. Amen.

Now, let me say again that the world we inhabit is a lost world. And the inhabitants of the world are lost. The inhabitants of the world are lost, not in any poetic sense of the word, but they are lost by a mighty, calamitous visitation of woe too grave, too terrible to describe.

And to make it worse still, this lostness is inside the heart. You see, there are two ways of getting lost down here. There is the way that a child may sometimes get lost in the city, go around the block and cross the street and forget where it is. It is geographically lost or physically lost, but it knows it’s lost, and its lostness is external.

Then there is the confirmed amnesia victim that is lost in his mind. He does not remember who he is, how old he is, where he was born, what he did, does not remember anything up to a given moment yesterday or the day before.

That is a worse kind of lostness than the lostness of a child that wanders down the street and can’t find his way home. For a dozen policemen will help with the child, and the child will advertise to high heaven that it’s lost. But the amnesia victim doesn’t know that he’s lost. And his closest and dearest friends, his own wife, can come and speak to him, and he’s courteous but completely detached and indifferent. He’s lost inside. And to add still to the terror of this situation, the inhabitants of the world are not only lost, and not only lost inwardly, but worst of all is that they scarcely know that they are lost.

Now, that’s the state we’re in. And yet there are voices that are entreating us, and it gives me great pleasure to say, and this is basic to the Christian message, that while the world is a lost world, it is not yet a forsaken world. God is speaking in many voices, and there are voices that entreat us because God has not forsaken His lost world. He said, and cried, Adam, where art thou?

You’ll find all through the Bible the voices of entreaty, of invitation, of alarm. Ho, every one that is thirsty, come ye to the waters. And he that hath no money, come ye, buy. Wine and milk without money and without price. Come unto me, all ye that labor and are heavy laden. And I will give you rest.

Now, those are only samples of the many hundreds of verses that are sounding and echoing through the Scriptures. But the clearest, loudest, most easily distinguishable voice is the voice of the Spirit. And His voice gives grave and serious meaning to any other and to all other voices.

For if it were not for the presence of the Spirit uttering His voice through the consciences of the world, no other voice would have any significance whatsoever. It would all be sounding brass and tinkling cymbal, giving forth no meaning, for Jesus our Lord, tells us here of the Holy Spirit’s work in the world.

And He says in the text, when He is come, when He is come. When the writer wrote the song, The Comforter is Come, he set in fairly good hymnody one of the great facts of the world, that the Comforter is here. And the Comforter came to confirm Christ’s words and Christ’s works and Christ’s person.

Now, the words of the Lord Jesus Christ were words so lofty and so astounding as those of no other religious teacher. Christ was not the only religious teacher. We have had the great religious teachers of the East and we have them still on down to Mrs. Eddy and Father Divine.

There have been christs saying, Lo here and lo there. There have been men saying, I have the voice of God, I am speaking for God. And they have established their religion, some major, some minor, some long forgotten, some still going strong throughout the earth.

But the words of Jesus were in a class by themselves. The claims that He made, brand Him immediately as being God or an idiot. The claims that He made outclassed and outstripped the claims of all the other religious teachers in the world. Destroy this temple and in three days I will raise it up, He said, of His own body.

I saw Satan as lightning fall from heaven. Before Abraham was, I am. Then shall they see the Son of Man coming in the clouds of heaven and before Him shall be gathered all nations. And He shall separate them as the sheep from the goats.

Those are but a sampling of the astounding words of Jesus and the claims that He made. If you believe not that I am He, you shall die in your sins. And God has given all judgment into My hand. Marvel not at this, for the day will come when they that are in the graves shall hear My voice and shall come forth.

Now nobody ever talked like that. And many who heard Him did not believe Him. But He said when the Holy Ghost is come and the Holy Ghost came as a silent, penetrating, immediate witness.

Now there is no contradiction here when I say that the Holy Spirit’s voice entreats us. And then I also say He came as a silent, penetrating, immediate witness. For silence is sometimes more eloquent than sound. And the penetrating stillness of the Holy Ghost is more terrible than the loudest shout from the housetop.

And the Holy Ghost is here confirming the words of Jesus. That is why the critics are all in confusion. That is why when a man becomes a doubter and begins to pull the Word of God apart, God makes a fool of him immediately, puts long, hairy ears on him and turns him out to pasture. And he writes himself some books. And standing solemn faced as a barn owl, he says things to students in his classes that would bring hell down in roars of laughter.

And yet he doesn’t know that he’s being funny. For God has withdrawn from him the inner light and he is speaking as a fool speaks. Because the silent, penetrating voice of the Holy Ghost is not heard in his words. He hears it no more.

But the Holy Spirit is here to confirm to the consciences of men the truth of the words of Jesus. And the works of Jesus. There was no denying that a mighty miracle worker had been there. He did raise the dead. He did heal the sick. He did cleanse the leper. He did turn the water into wine. He did make the bread, a few pieces of bread to feed the multitude.

He did do these wonderful things and there was no denying it. The Pharisees didn’t try to deny it. They could not, seeing the man that was healed standing among them. They couldn’t say anything. You cannot deny a fact that stands and stares you in the face, that you can touch and feel and push around and investigate.

You can’t possibly deny such a fact and they didn’t try it. They simply said, He does His works in the power of the devil. Somebody was doing miracle works there and when He has come, the Holy Ghost came that He might confirm and verify the divine quality of the works of Jesus and prove Him not to be one more miracle peddler but indeed the very God who had made the world and could make it do what He pleased for it to do.

And then there was the person of the Lord Jesus Christ. The most significant, the most telling person that ever lived in the world was Jesus. I think that could generally be agreed among all peoples of the world. Even the Mohammedans might admit that. And certainly the great religions of the East would admit it. That He was, that He stands out in history. Head and shoulders as above all the great.

And now how are we to dispose of Him? What’s the world to do with Him? What are religious minded people to do with this mighty person that stood taller than the tall pine tree at the beginning of the Christian era?

Well, the Holy Ghost came to do a confirmatory work, and He raised Him from the dead. And now since the Spirit has come, this mysterious witness has come. Christ is no longer on trial. And it’s no longer a question of was Jesus the Son of God? All that is beside the point and irrelevant.

And there’s never any such thing anymore as a sincere question, was Jesus the Son of God? The Holy Ghost has taken out of the realm of polemics the idea of Christ’s deity and has put it in the realm of morals. And this silent, immediate witness, this penetrating voice in the consciences of men tell us that this person was indeed the very Son of God.

It was very noticeable, wasn’t it, that as soon as Peter was filled with the Holy Ghost, he immediately rose and preached what he had never preached before. Namely, that this man whom ye crucified is the Christ of God.

That God raised Him from the dead and He is the Lord and the Christ of God. And as soon as Paul was filled with the Holy Ghost, you will find that Paul in the ninth chapter of Acts went doing exactly the same thing. He reasoned and proved from the Scriptures that Jesus was the Son of God. That the coming Messiah was to be the Son of God and that that man was Jesus. So that the Holy Spirit’s witness is a witness to the lordship and deity of the Son of God.

So my friends, remember this, that Jesus Christ needs no more of your defense. Jesus Christ needs no more books written to prove that he was God. Jesus Christ is no longer on trial. He needs no advocate pleading His cause before the unfriendly court of the world. He needs no witness to rise and say, I know He was the Son of God. He needs no reasoner with his fine logic to prove it by history that Jesus Christ was the Son of God. The proof of the Sonship of Jesus has been removed from the realm of the intellect and placed where it always has belonged in the realm of morals.

And the Holy Ghost has put it there. When He has come, when He has come and He came and He is here and He may be grieved and He may have to withdraw Himself partly from some places, but He is here and He is here as a silent Holy Witness, more eloquent than all the noise of the world, saying this Man was indeed the Son of God. I say that Jesus Christ is no longer on trial before men, but men are now on trial before Him.

And strange and wonderful as it may be, He who once stood before Pilate now makes Pilate to stand before Him. And He who pleaded His cause before the unfriendly world now sits and judges that same world. And He’s transferred the religious question to the heart.

There is a throne where one sits where never a man can come. And there is on that throne a Man–wonderful paradox. The long claws that stretched out to get Him and take Him to the cross can never reach as high as that throne where He sits.

And yet He sits there in the form of a man so that we would recognize Him instantly in the shape of a man and know that this is a Man and He’s there invested with full authority and full power and with full right of judgment. And there is a holy witness present Who in all things speaks for this Man who sits on the throne. It is expedient for you that I go away. For if I go not away, He will not come. But if I go, I will send Him unto you. And when He is come, He will convince the world concerning sin and righteousness and judgment.

And now I think that we ought to remember that however we treat the Holy Spirit’s warnings, we treat Jesus Christ himself. However we treat the Spirit’s presence, we treat the Lord Himself. We ought to get that in mind. Christ the Lord is not some faraway being, but He is mysteriously, wondrously present now in our midst in the person of the Holy Spirit. When He is come, He will convince the world concerning. And He is here now convincing the world.

And the fate of the individual man does not depend upon historic evidence. Now with all my heart, I believe in the historicity of the Gospels. This is not a subterfuge to hide away from the belief in the historicity of the Gospels. I believe they’re historically correct. I believe that they can be confirmed in the format of history. I believe everything that’s here is historically true.

But let me point out something to you, my friends. If faith depended upon a man knowing enough history in its right and proper context and being familiar enough with the writings of the historians of the world to arrive at a scholarly belief in the deity of Jesus, then there could only be a relatively few people anywhere in the world saved.

If in order to believe in Jesus Christ, I had to know the historic facts of Rome and Greece and Palestine and Syria and Egypt, and if I had to be able to go to the great tomes and search for myself and discover the historic truth, and then having discovered that historic truth, I had to know enough of the laws of evidence to know whether it proved him to be the Son of God or not, then I would have to be a scholar, a logician, and a lawyer to arrive at belief in the deity of the Lord Jesus Christ.

But the Holy Ghost came to take the deity of Christ out of the hands of the scholars and put it in the consciences of men. The Holy Ghost came to lift it out of the history books and put it on the fleshy tablets of the human heart. So you can go to the jungles where men cannot read and write, where they wear nothing but a G-string, and you can begin to preach Jesus Christ and sin, and the Holy Ghost will witness to sin and righteousness and judgment, and He will confirm the truth of Christ’s words and works and Person to the most ignorant jungle heathen. And that heathen never heard of Rome, never heard of Greece, never heard of Pilate, never heard of Caesar, never knew the city of Rome ever existed, doesn’t know that Palestine exists, doesn’t know where Jerusalem is, never heard of David, never heard of Abraham, knows nothing about the Reformation.

And yet you can go, a missionary and simply tell the story, and they’ll begin to tremble and sweat with the knowledge that they’re sinners, and they’ll believe in Jesus Christ. And having believed, they’ll be transformed and turned inside out, and made honest and good and clean and humble and right, and they’ll learn to read and they’ll begin to sing the simple Gospels, they’ll form themselves into a church.

And the great, strong, elemental fellows born of the jungle and the wild winds and the stars will become deacons and elders and preachers in that church. And they have no scholarship, no knowledge of history, no ability to weigh evidences. They know nothing about relevance and irrelevance and the laws of evidence.

No, when He came, He took polemics away from the scholars and gave it back to the human soul, so that now my faith in the deity of Jesus does not rest upon my ability to comb through history and arrive at logical conclusions concerning historic facts. The Holy Ghost blazes in on me like a lightning flash, blinds me with the wonder of it. If ye are willing to do His will, ye shall know the doctrine whether I speak of God or not, said Jesus our Lord, when the Holy Ghost has come. And He is here. I think that this is one of the most important truths that can be taught in the world today.

And yet, so far as I know, I’m the one single lone individual who is preaching. There may be others, and certainly in the spirit of it and in the whole weight and drift of it, my friend Ravenhill agrees with me on this. We’ve talked over these things and we’re one in it. But we’re one or two or three at most in the midst of a vast cloud and sea of witnesses that are prepared to make the deity of Christ rest upon historical evidence when the Holy Ghost has taken it away from that realm altogether and has put it as a burning point in the human conscience.

So the problem today is a moral problem altogether. It’s not an intellectual problem at all. Now don’t let’s be too humble here. Don’t let’s, like a lot of poor misguided people do, admit with a wry face that we’re a bunch of dumbbells and barely know our letters. Augustine was not a dumbbell. Luther wrote his theses first in Latin and then in German. He wrote to the Pope, and wrote it first in Latin for the Pope and then wrote it in German to give to the people.

No, no, you don’t have to pump your head out so it’s a blessed vacuum in order to be a Christian. And there’s much use for the human mind, so keep yours. There’s much use for the human brain, so take care of it, keep it cool and educate it all you can. There’s lots of use for it.

But I repeat, the use for it will not be in the realm of divine evidence. The Holy Ghost takes care of that. And the Holy Ghost is here to confirm the person of Jesus. And whatever the Holy Ghost says, stands forever. And whatever He does now, the judgment will approve and confirm.

We come into a church like this, oh, we get here some way. If we got here, maybe got here to meet a girl or a boy. Maybe we came here hoping we would. Maybe we came here to get our parents off our neck. Maybe we were just wandering by and wondered what it was all about. Maybe it’s just a habit. Any one of the 25 reasons might be dredged up out of our memory right now. And we think we can just come in and go away again and there’ll be no harm done, like going to a PTA meeting. Well, I’m a little bored, but I’ll sit through it. What’s it all about? And when it’s all over, you go neither better nor worse.

My friends, a concept like that ignores one of the most vitally important facts in the world. And that is that wherever the Lord’s people meet, the Holy Ghost is there, confirming the Word and the work and the person of Jesus and demanding moral action, so that a man never knows when he goes to a gospel meeting. He never knows when the last shred of excuse will be stripped from his naked, trembling conscience forever. For the Holy Ghost is not fooling. Sometimes preachers are.

I heard this terrible thing recently, this terrible thing. A man, and I think he was a minister; he had a good sense of humor. And he, knowing the Bible, he learned how to make the Scriptures always say the right thing. Payoff line, as we say.mAnd when there’d be a conversation on, he’d turn it around so that a flip of the verbal tail that made people laugh was always a Scripture quotation.

One day, he came to die. And they said to him, well, you must find great comfort in the Scriptures. And they began to quote the Scriptures to him. And he said, don’t, don’t, don’t quote it, don’t quote it, don’t quote it. There isn’t a verse you can quote that I haven’t made the subject of a joke. And now, when I need it, it means nothing to me.

The Holy Ghost isn’t joking. People may be, and it’s gotten in this country now, in evangelical circles, where a man without a sense of humor can’t get to first base. He’s got to be funny. Let’s go hear that jaybird, he’s funny as a crutch. The very fact, said Dr. Buswell, you can call a preacher a jaybird proves he’s lost his character.

And men may play, but the Holy Ghost is in dead earnest. Jesus Christ went away in dead earnest. And He sat down in utter, solemn sincerity by the presence of the Majesty on High. And He sent that wave of silvery light, containing in Himself all the essence of the Father and the Son. Down He came in the form of a dove.

And then as fire sat upon each of them, and they knew that Jesus was the Son of God, they knew it instantly. They didn’t know it while He was among them, but they knew it then. They didn’t know it for sure, but they knew it now. And the Scripture says that when He has come, He will convince men concerning.

Now, the Holy Spirit will not witness to minor matters. Another important thing I’m saying here tonight, that you can’t get the Holy Ghost involved in minor things. Let’s reach up and pull out a grotesque illustration out of the air. And let’s put it like this. Let’s imagine last fall when two great and good men were running for the presidency. I insist upon them both as great and good men, Stevenson and Eisenhower.

And these two men were running against each other for the presidency. Suppose that in their speeches, suppose that Eisenhower had insisted upon attacking Stevenson’s baldness. And let us suppose that Stevenson, paying thousands of dollars for time on the air, would get up and in his brilliant witty way, would have spent a whole half hour talking about Eisenhower’s wretched taste in ties. Neither man could have been elected. They would have elected at Chinaman by a write-in vote.

For in serious and important matters, you deal with basic principles. And they both tried to do it. And they dealt with domestic problems, foreign relations, taxes. They dealt with problems that go to the roots of American living.

Do you suppose the Holy Ghost is any less wise than politicians? And yet we want the Holy Spirit to help us while we talk about trivialities.

That’s why I scorn to debate over things that don’t matter. That’s why they’ll never get me concerned with the little niceties of prophecy. And that is why though we have baptized by immersion, we’ll never condemn those who don’t believe in that mode of baptism. That is why I will not engage in controversy over eternal security. And that is why you cannot get me involved because I want the Holy Ghost to help me, and He won’t help me fool. He’ll only help me when I’m serious. And the Spirit of God is here.

Now a lot of people try to escape by pretending. They pretend that they are seekers. They say, I’m a seeker after light. Could you look in the glass and say, I’m a seeker after light? When He has come, He will convince. And then you say, I’m a seeker after light. Your problem is not lack of light. Your problem is a moral problem.

And yet men try to hide and escape by pretending. They say, I don’t know which form of baptism. He did not say when the Holy Ghost has come, He will convince that the Baptists are right. Nor did he say when the Holy Ghost has come, He will convince the world that infant baptism is correct. He said when the Holy Ghost has come, He’ll talk about three vital things, sin and righteousness and judgment. And he insists on moral sincerity.

As I rode along tonight on the bus coming up here, I thought this radical thing to myself. Modified it a little, even in my own head. But I thought, I’m not sure that God hasn’t got more respect for a sincere devil than he has for an insincere religionist. If a devil is a devil and he hates God and loves sin, and he’s sincere about it, God will reject him forever from His presence, but He’ll say, there goes somebody at least I can respect. He means what He says. I would thou art hot or cold, because thou art lukewarm, and neither hot or cold, I’ll spew thee out of my mouth.

I say a sincere devil stands higher in moral things than an insincere Christian or religious person. I’m not sure about baptism. When I’ve settled on what mode of baptism I want to be baptized with, I’ll become a Christian. Liar. You might as well know it. That’s insincere. That’s hypocrisy. That’s pharisaism. That’s dodging the issue. There’s no truth there.

Some say if I knew what church was, which church is it, Mr. Tozer. Tell me now. Write me a letter. Write me a letter and say, now Mr. Tozer, which church is it? The Roman church, Greek church, Protestant church, Baptist, Methodist, Presbyterian, Nazarene, Pentecostal, what church is it? Have they never heard the Voice? Have they never been still enough to hear the mysterious witness that penetrates to their conscience and says, sin and righteousness and judgment? If they had ever heard the Voice and had ever been sincere in response to it, they’d never have any reason to ask such questions.

Now, these three vital things, He presses them home, for they’re critical and they’re eternal and they’re important. These three vital things, sin and righteousness and judgment, and sinned because they believe not on Me. The one belief is the sign and the proof of sin.

Now let me say this again from a little different angle, that faith is also a moral thing. I’ve said this before and you that know me will have heard me say it before and probably wonder why I’m saying it now. But if you wonder why I’m saying it now, then you didn’t know what I meant when I said it before.

I believe that we are where we are in evangelical circles because of a basic misunderstanding of faith. We think that faith is a conclusion drawn from a fact. And out in the world that is so, but in the realm of the Spirit it is not so. Saving faith is not a conclusion drawn from facts presented. Saving faith is a gift of God to a penitent man.

And there’s where we are. The young fellow will get down on his knees, anybody will do that. Go anywhere and you can get them on their knees. Go down among the rattlesnake handlers in the mountains and you’ll find them there. Go over to Arabia and you’ll find them down five times a day on a prayer mat. Anybody will go to his knees if you don’t make any demands of him. It’s a simple matter to get people forward, it’s a simple matter to get them to their knees.

So while they’re on their knees, somebody rushes in with a marked testament and sticks a text under their nose and says, who said it? He says, God. Do you believe God? Yes. Well then do you believe the text? Yes, I must because I believe God. Well then get up and testify. And he gets up with an intellectual faith that has not saving in it or any saving quality. That’s where we are now. It takes three works of grace to put a man in this day where the first beginnings of salvation used to put him in olden times.

Well, He’ll convince the world concerning sin. When I was growing up, they were telling me this little thing. Oh, how I thank God I’ve been a rebel all my life and a skeptic all my life. If I hadn’t been, I might have been pastor of a big church and no heart in it. I could have been. You know, I don’t hurt anybody and I don’t make any moral demands on them, kiss the babies, pat everybody, eat cake with them, drink a proper amount of English tea and don’t hurt anybody’s feelings and thunder against modernism.

And take a man dead 50 years and rip him to pieces and prove that he was a scoundrel because he didn’t believe the margins of the Schofield Bible. I could have had a big church, brother, ridden in a caddy. Sure, I had sense enough to know that way back there. But I thank God I’ve been a rebel all my life and still am. And I’m in rebellion against that kind of teaching that would pick chickens out of their shell and let them die and against that kind of practice that would take over the work of the Holy Ghost and crowd Him out and retire Him.

This is the age of the superannuated Holy Ghost. We’ve retired Him and said, thanks, we have our Bible, a good King James translation, and we won’t need You till the millennium. And the Holy Spirit is a marginal annotation and is taken care of by a few proof texts and forgotten. But He won’t be forgotten like that. He holds your faith in His hand.

They used to say, the problem today is not that sin question, the problem is the Son question. And if you will believe in the Son, why the matter of sin is all taken care of.

I heard one man who had better been doing something else the time, I recommend hoeing in the garden. But he said this, he said sin has no more meaning to God. On Calvary, sin beat itself to death and perished. And now sin has no meaning to God since Calvary. He ought to have been raising tulips, and not preaching the gospel. For he was a good man talking like a blooming idiot.

The problem never has been the Son question. The problem has been the sin question from the day he stretched forth her hand in an evil hour and gave also to her husband and he did eat. And when the sin question is settled, the Son question comes leaping in, happily solved. And if you will be willing to do the will of God, you shall know that Jesus is the son of God. And you won’t have to read long books to prove it. It’s all there.

Now, not only sin but righteousness, the voice of the Holy Spirit. Righteousness because I go to my Father. And the fact that He went to His Father is conspicuous proof of the world’s condition. For there was one righteous Man in the world and He couldn’t stay. There was one righteous Man and He had to leave. He was too good to stay. They hounded Him out of the world.

And today, the more we become like Him, the less welcome we are in society. To make Christianity socially acceptable is an effort that’s worse than wasted. To make out of the cross a symbol and relegate its nails and thorns and blood and terror and ostracism back to the hill above Jerusalem and forget that that same cross is alive today wherever the Gospels preach is to commit a theological error as deadly as Russellism. And yet it’s what we hear most of the time. After all, believe me, we know better now; they don’t crucify people now.

They don’t crucify people now because they can get along with them too easily. There’s too much collaboration between men who claim to follow the Crucified One and the people who don’t believe in the Crucified One. Wherever they can catch a Christ-like man, they’ll run for the nails and the hammer.

And what we need, I don’t pray for it. I haven’t the courage to pray for it. But I’m here and I’m at God’s disposal. But what we need in our day is to have some more Christians crucified. We need more persecution. We need a social situation that makes it dangerous to be a Christian. But it isn’t dangerous now. It’s quite the popular thing.

They use a preacher now for almost anything. They can’t cut a tape. They ought to have a preacher there to cut the tape. They can’t break ground for anything. The latest dog pound at what reverend has to be there to say a prayer and break the first shovel full while he looks up, smirks at the camera. The ladies can’t begin their campaign to drive all the ground moles out of Cook County except they have a pastor there. He’s got to be there to mumble a few words, smile, and look religious. But nobody crucifies the old boy. They get along with him, get along with him.

But there was one righteous Man, and He couldn’t stay. Their faces went as black as canes, and their countenance fell. And they said, we won’t be made moral fools of by this man. And they nailed Him on the cross.

And the Holy Ghost is here to convince the world concerning that unpardoned act, that act of crucifying the world’s only holy Man, that is, holy in the final absolute sense of the word who was holy without being made holy. There may be holy men now, and there may be righteous men now. But they’re righteous men because they were made righteous by the One who never was made righteous. Jesus Christ never was any less righteous than He is now. He never had to be washed nor cleansed, and His baptism was never a baptism for cleansing.

And when the Holy Ghost came upon Him, He came upon Him as a dove and not as fire. And there was no need for purgation. And the Bible never says Christ was baptized with the Holy Ghost. It says He was anointed. Baptism was symbolic of cleansing. Anointing was symbolic of office. He was anointed without cleansing, for He never was anything but clean, the spotless Lamb of God.

And He was the one spotless Man, and He was the man that couldn’t stay. They hounded Him out of the world. Jesus said to the Pharisees when He lived among them, ye have killed the prophets. Now you build their monuments, but you’re still guilty of killing them.

And so we’re now talking nice about Jesus, painting His pictures, saying nice things about Him. We have His blood on our hands as a race. He will convince the world of sin and righteousness and judgment. Now the prince of this world is judged, Jesus said. And the voice of the Spirit speaks of a day of reckoning.

I was thinking how much better it would be if we could have a choice. If God could give us a choice and say, now you’re going to die within the next 12 hours, I’ll give you your choice. Do you want to rise again, or do you want to stay forever in the state of blessed unconsciousness and never rise again? That’s sheer imagination. That could never happen. For God has ordained that all men should rise, some to righteousness and some to everlasting condemnation.

But if a man could have a choice, every once in a while, we read of somebody in a fit of self-pity and a variety of other sins, will get a gun, kill his wife and two or three children, then kill himself. They can’t get at him. Police can’t get at him. You can’t punish him. A coward ten times over. So cowardly that probably hell won’t even admit him until he’s washed a bit.

But if you could give that man an opportunity and say, listen, do you want to rise, or shall we fix it so you’ll never need to wake while millenniums spend themselves? Oh, what a relief for that man. What a relief for that man. My God, my God, he’d cry. I died with the sound of the gaspings of my wife and children in my ears. I died fleeing from it, and I haven’t been able to get away from it. And I hear it yet and hear the sighings and see the blood. Please, please let me go to sleep and never wake again.

It would be a mighty convenient thing if sinners never had to rise from the dead. If they had all, Hitler and Caligula and Mussolini and some more of them had it in their power to stay dead, it would be convenient for them. But they that are in the graves shall hear the voice of the Son of Man.

There’s a judgment. I believe in that judgment. I believe it. They have taken it away from us in the hour in which we live, and they’ve said it’s ridiculous, that God isn’t a bookkeeper, and we can’t conceive of God putting entries in a book like a common clerk. John Jones, 321 West 44th Place, June 14th, 1953, did commit the below-mentioned sins. They say God’s no clerk. God isn’t writing books, debit books.

Oh, how ignorant can we get and still not drop dead? Of course, God isn’t keeping that kind of books. Of course, God isn’t a clerk. But every deed that ever has been committed or ever will be committed from the beginning to the world till the last man is instantly now present before the eyes of God.

And God needs no clerks and no pens. The omniscient God sees perfectly all that ever was and all that is and all that ever will be. And without raising his eyebrows, He knows every man’s heartbeat and every man’s thought and every man’s deed.

So, judgment will be very easy for God. Judgment won’t be difficult for God. Of course, He puts it for us to understand that books were opened, and the dead were brought forth and so on. All that’s to convince men. But God doesn’t need any help like that. God already knows, judgment, sin, and righteousness.

Now the Spirit of God will persist. He’ll keep on. That penetrating, silent, eloquent Voice until the Voice can no longer be heard or until we listen and return. And you know it still works. A man who hears the gospel message and believes it, really believes it, really turns to the Lord Jesus Christ, there’s still transforming power in it. You don’t see much of it, but you see some of it.

I won’t mention names, but I’m thinking of a young fellow. I think he may be present here tonight. He was this morning. You know, nobody looked at him twice. He was just one more boy, young fellow, all good-looking and all that, but just one more young fellow in the millions. Trotted down the aisle here some, maybe two months ago, and something happened to that boy. And the whole life is transformed. His whole life is transformed. His face looks different, better looking than ever. The tone of his voice is different. Everything is different.

Now he says, I’m going to quit my job and get a job where I can be at church. My job’s all right, but it takes me out of church. I’m going to get a job where I can be at church. What happened to the fellow? Only what could happen to everybody that listens and hears the Voice and believes and turns.

Jesus Christ is still the miracle worker. He still raises the dead Lazaruses out of the grave. He still raises the consciences of men out of the deep mud of their past. He still converts. He still regenerates. He still transforms. He still makes Christians out of dead clods. He still does it.

It’s tragic that He doesn’t do it more frequently. It’s tragic that we hide from Him in the caves and dens of the earth. It’s tragic that we hide among the trees of the garden. It’s tragic that we keep our hearts so hard we can’t feel and so deaf that we can’t hear. It’s tragic that there aren’t more.

But wherever the gospel is really tried out, it has its own transforming power still. And you need not apologize for the word of God or the message of the cross. It’s still the same old message. And somehow, we short-circuit it by making out faith to be an intellectual exercise. And we have not converts, but proselytes.

Then comes the death of the heart. You know, dying isn’t a very pleasant business. I read of old Socrates drinking the hemlock when they compelled him to do it because they’re a way of killing him in Greece, in Athens. And he lay down on the bench, his friends around him in tears. He’d taken a long, deep draught of the poison hemlock. And he kept talking. He was in possession of himself, very calm. He kept saying to Crito and the other friends around him, kept describing how he was dying.

Well, he said, my feet are getting cold. He said, they’re so cold. And he tapped them. He said, I have no feeling now in my feet. He said that cold feeling is creeping up my legs now. He lay there and felt himself die and intelligently explained how it was going on.

Brethren, there are people, and you don’t have to be a hundred years old. Some of you are very young. You have poisoned your conscience. You have drunk of the poison of sin so deeply that you’re dying. You’re dying. There’s still some feeling left in you. But for the most part, you’re insensitive and insensible. There’s no feeling there. Little by little, you’re dying.

I’ve seen them come up in this church, stay around a while, listen, maybe make an experimental trip to the altar once or twice, and then slowly lose interest, and then go. And way out there in the world someplace, disappointed, sulky, sullen, bitter, they wait for the Grim Reaper. But they died a little at a time before they ever left the church.

He that hath ears to hear, says the entreating Voice, he that hath ears to hear, let him hear. And the Spirit and the Bride say, come and whosoever will, let him come and drink of the water of life freely. Humble thyself, and the Lord will draw near thee. Humble thyself, and his presence will cheer thee. God will not walk with the proud nor the scornful. Humble thyself to walk with God.

Now the Holy Spirit is entreating you. God’s love entreats. The blood of Jesus Christ eloquently entreats. The Spirit of God entreats. The world is lost, but the world is not forsaken.

The voice of Jesus Christ calls now, and He calls you. Are you hearing Him at all? Have you been hearing Him tonight at all? Are you listening? Have you heard? Will you do something about it? You say, I wish it could be made easier. I wouldn’t make it easier if I could. I wouldn’t make it easier.

Listen, friends. If hell is what God says it is, if sin is what God says it is, if Jesus Christ had to die to save the sinner from hell, and you can’t as much as rise and let a congregation know you’re turning from sin, it’s a strangely mixed-up business. Jesus Christ never taught that His people would sneak in an easy way. Never taught that they would creep in like vermin into the kingdom of God, crawl unobtrusively through the cracks. Never.

He said, if ye deny Me before men, I will deny you before My Father which art in heaven. And he that will come after Me, let him deny himself and take up his cross daily and follow Me.

We cannot crawl like a thief into the kingdom of God. Jesus Christ, if He’s your Savior, He has a right to your bold and fearless witness. And if you will not dare to rise and say, I’ll follow Jesus, I’ll follow Jesus. Here I come, Lord Jesus. If you’re not willing to do that, you’re too big a coward to go to heaven. For the fearful and the unbelieving shall have their part in the lake that burns with fire.

The man who’s afraid to rise and say, I will follow Jesus, is too big a coward to escape hell. God doesn’t make it easy. On sinking ships and burning buildings, etiquette is forgotten. It’s not made easy. The word of the Lord is not easy, but it saves. Let us pray.

O God, our Father, God, our Father, this night, the world has grown old, and the judgment draws near. Kingdoms have risen and waned. Nation has risen against nation, kingdom against kingdom. And as it was in the days of Noah, so is it now in this day. These are solemn times.

We appeal to Thee, O Lord, we appeal to Thee. Help us in this hour. Help us now. We beseech Thee, O Lord, for the cringing sinner, for the frightened, cowering sinner who hasn’t the courage to get up and follow the Lamb, but who’s trying to get in, somehow, through some window or back door.

God, have mercy, we pray Thee, this hour, through Jesus Christ, help us in this moment of decision. We ask it in Jesus’ name. Amen

Categories
Messages

Tozer Talks

The Knowledge of God IV”

The Knowledge of God IV

Pastor and author A.W. Tozer

July 15, 1956

Now this will be the last of four sermons on three degrees of divine knowledge. And I have used the same text for all of them. And just briefly to refresh your memory, I said that there were three degrees of divine knowledge corresponding to the three divisions of the tabernacle in the Old Testament ritual: the outer court, which corresponds to reason. And the text I read was Romans 1:19 and 20. Because that which may be known of God is manifest in them. For God hath showed it unto them. For the invisible things of Him from the creation of the world are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made, even His eternal power and Godhead.

Then there is a second degree of knowledge, superior to the first, and that is, the knowledge that comes to faith. And I took for a text, though there are very many I might have chosen, Hebrews 11:3. Through faith we understand that the worlds were framed by the word of God. And then. there is another degree of Christian knowledge which is the knowledge the Spirit imparts. And that corresponds to the Holy of Holies in the temple. And I read the Scripture, 1 Corinthians 1:9-14. I won’t read it all now, but only read this part. Now we have received not the spirit of the world, but the Spirit which is of God. That we might know the things that are freely given to us of God. 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’re spiritually discerned.

Now on three previous talks I have treated it like this. I’ve talked first about the knowledge of God. Then in my second sermon, two weeks ago, I spoke about what the old writers called natural theology, the knowledge that we may gain about God and heavenly things from nature itself; reason working on data furnished by reason. Then last Sunday morning, I talked about revealed theology, the knowledge received by faith through divine inspiration. Now today, I must talk about a knowledge that’s still more excellent, and that is the knowledge which Paul says, the Spirit reveals to our spirits. And this is so excellent that it belongs to heaven rather than earth. And is only given here as a little earnest of what will come.

Now, there are some things that God gives us that He just gives all of it to us, and there isn’t anything that He doesn’t give. But there are other things that he gives only in veiled measure and degree. And to this knowledge which is the more excellent knowledge, it is a heavenly knowledge and will be perfected and completed in heaven. And it belongs in heaven and is of heaven, but it is given here in small measure. And of course, the degree that we receive of it depends upon our response and our meeting the condition.

Now, it is so excellent this knowledge, this further-in knowledge revealed by the Spirit, that nothing more excellent awaits us in heaven than this knowledge, except that there it will be given in perfection, and here we have it only up to our imperfect capacity. There we will be enlarged and perfected to receive in full degree this knowledge of God. And John says, we shall be like Him and shall know Him. And the Revelator says that we shall look on His face and His name shall be on our forehead.

Now, this knowledge, this more excellent knowledge which I speak this morning, does not contradict the other two. Nothing ever contradicts anything else in the kingdom of God if we could only know it. It is only that we think it contradicts. Nothing in God ever contradicts anything else in God. There are no contradictions in God, so that when I say there are three degrees of knowledge, the knowledge given to reason, the knowledge given to the faith and the knowledge revealed by the Spirit, I do not mean that one contradicts the other, for they do not contradict each other and neither does one make the other unnecessary.

This last degree of knowledge of which I speak, the knowledge that flashed across the human heart by an afflatus of the Holy Spirit does not make the knowledge of reason unnecessary, for we are reasonable creatures. We’re logical beings though we don’t always live like it. And therefore, we cannot cancel out our reason. I do not believe that anything that comes by the Spirit will contradict reason, because reason is an attribute of God. And God can’t contradict Himself. Therefore, anything God reveals to us in our deep heart is bound to be according to reason, though it may go way beyond reason. And neither does it contradict faith. Now, there is nothing that the Spirit of God will reveal to the inner life of a man that will contradict faith. It will be according to faith and not contrary to faith. But it sets a crown upon reason and faith and leads them on to their perfection, but it does not contradict them, cancel them out, or make them unnecessary.

Now, what kind of knowledge is this? Well, this knowledge is by direct spiritual experience. You see, Paul very clearly mentions this here. He says, It is written in the Old Testament that eye hath not seen nor ear heard, neither have entered into the heart of man the things which God hath prepared for them that love Him. But God hath revealed them unto us by His Spirit, for the Spirit searcheth all things, yea, the deep things of God. And thus, these things are divinely revealed by inward spiritual experience. An impartation of divine knowledge by a direct afflatus of the Spirit of God.

And this is what you don’t hear much about these days though it’s the common teaching of the New Testament, and it was the common teaching of the church fathers. And it is not heresy of any degree or kind. It is not a cult or a teaching of any cult, but the common traditional teaching of the fathers and the reformers and the martyrs and the mystics and the revivalists and the church leaders and the hymnists, all down the years. And I can take you to any hymnbook, be it Presbyterian or Methodist or Baptist or Moravian or Episcopalian or whatever, and I can show you everything that I’m saying this morning. We sing them, but we don’t believe them. Or, if we try to believe them, we don’t understand them. And so we sing truths which are scriptural truths, traditional truths, truths which have been believed by the fathers and written into the great books of devotion. We sing them and don’t know what we’re singing about, because we are so languorous and take things so for granted. But this impartation of spiritual knowledge by a direct afflatus of the Holy Ghost, is not contrary to reason I say, but it is immediate knowledge, not mediated knowledge.

Now, those are philosophical terms and I’m going to break them down for the young people. You older people know what I mean. But you know the difference between mediated and immediate, a thing that is immediate and the thing that’s mediated, that is direct or indirect.

Now, there is a knowledge of reason which is mediated to us. The heavens declare the glory of God and the firmament showeth His handiwork. What mediates that knowledge to us? Two things, the heavens and the firmament and our reason, so that we know the heaven and the earth and the firmament, mediated to us by the firmament and by reason. So that the knowledge we get of the heaven and the earth, all of natural theology, all that comes by reason and the human intellect is a mediated knowledge. It is not immediate, it is mediated. It comes to us more or less by gadgets and by means of faculties and organs.

Then, the knowledge that we receive by revelation is mediated to us through faith. The resurrection, for instance, who here knows anything about the resurrection? You know absolutely nothing by immediate experience of the resurrection. There was only one or two men that ever lived, that knew anything about the resurrection by immediate experience, and that would be Lazarus maybe, and the widow’s son maybe, and the little girl. They were raised from the dead, so they’d had an immediate experience of resurrection. But all you and I know about resurrection is what the Bible tells us, and that’s mediated to us through faith.

Did you ever sit down and try to visualize the resurrection? What would happen to you when you rose again from the dead? It’s an impossible task. You can’t do it, because you have not had immediate experience. But there will be a time when you can do it. You can tell the archangel Gabriel all about it, he won’t know anything about it except by faith. Gabriel never died to rise again. So that he only knows by faith about the resurrection, Christ knows by immediate experience, because He rose from the dead. You and I know by faith. It’s mediated to us by faith. And so our poor minds stagger along under the burden of a gorgeous and glorious truth too much for us. And we say, I believe in the resurrection of the dead, and so we do. And we stand at the graveside and look down as our loved ones are being lowered into their quiet sleep and we say to ourselves, I believe I’ll see him again. I shall see her again. We say I know that my Redeemer liveth and I shall see Him in that day. But that is a knowledge given to us by faith and mediated to us through faith.

And now let’s look at another kind of knowledge. How do you know you’re alive? No, I’m not trying to be humorous. I’m serious. How do you know you’re alive? That is an immediate knowledge. Reason hasn’t anything to do with it and neither has faith. You know you’re alive, and maybe some of you never thought about that. Have you ever thought about it? Sit down sometime turn the radio and the television off and fold the newspaper, and all of them, all the newspapers, fold them all up. Put Time Magazine under the desk and see whether you can’t think a little about this. How do you know you’re alive? Well, you know because your mother told you. Some of you never saw your mother. Maybe she died when you were born. Do you know because you read it in a book? How foolish to go to the library and get a book to discover and learn that you are alive. The knowledge that we are alive is not mediated to us through reason or faith. It is an intuition that is immediate and direct.

Then, how do you know you are yourself and not somebody else? Now, am I being silly? Not the slightest, my brethren. How do you know you are yourself and not somebody else? You know it by immediate intuition. If there were some friends of yours, were to pull a little hoax on you and in your asleep were to carefully transport you to somebody else’s bedroom, take all of your clothes and all, everything that belongs to you away and put you there and then put another man’s identification card in your wallet and in every way possible try to make you out to be somebody else. You’d wake up and you’d be confused and irritated, but you wouldn’t in anywise believe you were the other man. Because nobody can prove you’re another man and nobody can disprove who you are, because you have it without mediation, by argument or reason or faith or knowledge. You have it by direct awareness.

Now, that’s exactly what I mean by this higher degree of knowledge. This knowledge which is not by reason, and while it is by faith, it is the perfection and crown of faith in that it comes by direct knowledge. The Holy Spirit illuminates the human spirit and brings it into conscious experience of God. Do you know that Methodism taught that for 100 years in this country? Do you know that? Do you know that Baptists by the hundreds of thousands taught it on our continent? Did you know it? Do you know that Presbyterians used to preach that? Do you know the Salvation Army still does? Do you know that practically every holiness group and every deeper life group teaches it, so that I am not fanatical, neither have I suddenly gone berserk theologically. This is ordinary teaching, but it just happens that the kind of textualism which is in the harness right now, or which is in the saddle and riding a high right now, ignores all this. And I’m trying to restore it to you, not to teach something new, but to joyfully point to something that’s been hidden.

When I was a boy out on the farm in Pennsylvania among the hills, we had snow in those days, real snow. Nowadays, we get a spotty effort at it, and then it disappears in no time at all. I don’t know whether it’s the administration or whether it’s the atom bomb or what it is. But we don’t have the old snows we used to have. We used to get the snow there and would lie there all winter. And then, it would begin to melt away. And as the poet William Wordsworth said, the snow would fair ill on the top of the bare hill and the ploughboy would be shouting anon–anon.

Well, then I as a lad would begin to find things that I lost last fall. Did you ever have that experience any of you? I’d begin to find things that I had lost last fall, a toy, a ball, a toy gun, or some little thing that I liked, a little wagon that had gone down under the snow that had come maybe when I was asleep and buried everything, I’d begin to find those things. And for a while thereafter the snow got off the ground, I was a rich boy. Same old things, but I had forgotten about them and didn’t know where they were. And maybe I had asked for them and couldn’t find them and nobody knew where they were. They’d been covered all winter by the snow. Nothing fanatical, nothing heretical about that. They were the same old treasures, boys’ treasures not worth five cents in the market, but worth two million to me. And I would find them under the snow and I’d walk on air for a few days discovering my old treasures.

Now that’s all I’m doing here today; I am telling you that which has been snowed under by the deep cold snows of textualism over the last years in our circles. And I’m reminding you only of that which now the snow is beginning to melt and we’re seeing again. They belong to you. They’re your treasures. And they’re worth a million dollars to you. The Holy Spirit illuminates the human spirit and brings it into conscious experience of God and of spiritual realities, so you don’t have to ask somebody do you think I’m saved? Neither do you have to read a book on seven ways you can know your converted. You know by the impartation of knowledge immediately without mediation. It’s not contrary to reason. It is in line with faith. But it is so to speak when the altar flames and when the fire comes.

Now, I’m afraid to a great many people, God is simply the sum of what the Bible teaches about Him plus what we’ve heard about it, what evangelists stories, evangelists have told and tracts that we’ve read. And so we add God up and get a sum at the bottom of the column. And that is what God is to us. He’s the sum of what we’ve learned about Him.

Now, suppose, young lady, that you are just married. Suppose you’ve been married a month. And I don’t know your husband, never met him at all, and you come to me and begin to talk to me about your husband. And usually, it is a pleasant experience when they’ve only been married a month. And you tell me about him, and you show me his picture. And you tell me about his background, how many years he spent in service and where he was and all about him, and you give me his height and his weight and his characteristics, eye color and hair color and all the rest? Well, I add him up. And then you tell me about various facial features and his ears. Now, I couldn’t do it. But a good artist could draw a picture of that man. A good artist could do it. And particularly, he could do it if three or four people came and confirmed each other’s description and added a few details the other one had forgotten. Police reporters do that, police artists, after they’ve had four or five witnesses tell what a criminal looks like. They can draw a picture of the criminal that’s simply astonishingly like the man.

Now, that is the way God is to most people. He is the picture they’ve drawn in their minds as a result of various descriptions they’ve heard about God from other people. But they simply don’t know God himself. But now young lady, let me still address myself to you. You know him in a way that I couldn’t possibly know him. All I know about him is what you’ve told me and what I’ve added up. And your husband, your young husband, is to me the sum at the bottom of the column. But what is he to you? You don’t have to tell me. You don’t have to reply. He is somebody you know. You know him immediately. And I know him only mediated to me through description and conversation and talk and reason.

Now, that’s about all most people know of God, and almost all church people know of God. God is simply a sum at the bottom of the column. They learned from one evangelist that God one time got mad and killed the baby because the father wouldn’t go to the mission field. Well, they put that down. Then they learn from another one that God made a dog bark under somebody when Uncle Peter died in Keokuk and they put that on the column. And then they learned also that the Lord answered prayer for a fellow one time that wanted to beat another fellow out of a business deal. And they put that down. And then they learn maybe that God is very holy, and they put that down inconsistently enough. And after they have learned about all he can know about God from books and songs and sermons and illustrations, and superstition, they add that up and they’ve got their God at the bottom, and they call Him Father.

I wonder if we ought not to send some missionaries from the Baliem Valley to Chicago to tell us Christian peoples want what God is like. I wonder if this God of the rank-and-file church member, this God that has been mediated through bits of information, true and untrue. I wonder if that God isn’t as wrong a god and as surely an idol as the old bulls of Egypt, or the cats that they mummified and worshipped.

My brother, there’s something better than that. In the first place, you can have a proper theological knowledge of God from the Scriptures. And the second place, you can have a direct knowledge of God through the Holy Ghost. Our God is not the sum of what the Bible teaches about Him. God is a great reality Himself. And just as you and I must be satisfied to know that young man by description, and his young wife can know him by warm, living, personal contact and fellowship, so the church people seem contended to know God by description. And you and I can know God by acquaintance, if we only will.

Now, that corresponds to the last degree of knowledge in the last department or compartment of the court in that holy place, there is not even a candlestick. In that holy place, there’s only the Skekinah glory, that awful holy fire between the wings of the cherubim. Thou that dwellest between the wings of the cherubim said the old Psalmist. And the Jews of olden days worshipped Him. They worshipped not a fire, but they worship Him who dwelt there.

And when the high priest once a year went into that place, he knew that fire by its warmth and by its light. And he could look at his hands and see them illuminated by that mysterious fire that had no origin on earth at all. It was not the sun or the moon or stars, for they were shut out. It was totally dark in there. It was not a candlestick, for that was in the compartment they called the Holy Place. This is the Holy of Holies, beyond the second veil. And there only, the light of God shines out. He is light, and in Him is no darkness at all. And they knew God, the priest could know God, the shining out of God by direct experience. Do you think those priests were anything but awestruck. Do you think those priests ever came out of there with their chins down and gloomy? Never! They came out of there with faces shining and with eyes like stars. They had looked upon God, the awful, glorious God that fills heaven and earth, and yet, would shine out of the Shekinah between the wings of the cherubim.

Now, what are the conditions? I suppose I should break this up really, and make it a fifth sermon, but I won’t do it. I have kept you this far and I won’t push my luck, as they say. So I’ll talk about, about conditions and in 10 minutes be through. What are the conditions for thus knowing God? Well, of course, the first condition is to repent and be born anew. That’s the first condition. You cannot arrive at any such a deep knowledge of God by nature. The natural man does not know the things of the Spirit of God and to him they are foolishness. There must be a repentance from sin and a turning to God through Jesus Christ, and a believing on Jesus Christ so that your soul is renewed. That’s variously called regeneration, renewal, the new birth, but it’s all the same thing.

Then there must be a renunciation. As long as you try to carry water on both shoulders and walk the fence between heaven and hell, and pleasing God and mammon, and be half in and half out, you will never know anything about God except that which you reason to by logical conclusions. There must be a renunciation of everything that displeases God. There must be a turning to God in fullness of determination, to walk with Him and be His. And then there must be a separation from and a separation unto. We’re separated from everything that is unlike God, and we’re separated unto God Himself, and God must be all in all. Now am I teaching anything that’s too high? Flip your hymnbook open after I pronounce the benediction. Flip your hymn book open and go through the hymns and see whether you don’t sing it there and don’t know what you’re singing about. See if it isn’t there. Sure it’s there.

And then there must be complete confidence in the mediator. Now, there is no approaching into that holy place without the blood of the Mediator. You could approach into the first place by the light of nature. Into the second, only if there had been a sacrifice and into the third only with blood of atonement. So, there must be complete confidence in Jesus Christ, the Mediator. And there must be an anointing of the Spirit of God to illuminate us, and then a waiting on God with our open Bible. The Spirit can sometimes shine upon the Word and bring the truth to light. To cite precepts and promises afford a sanctifying life. That verse precedes the one we sang. Her glory gilds the sacred page. And who was that man? William Cooper, one of the greatest of the English poets, a great Calvinist, a great, I don’t know, Presbyterian, or maybe a Episcopalian, but a great teacher, a man who’s never been considered to be anything but sound in his theology. And he says that the Spirit of God shines upon the Word to bring the truth to light.

My brethren today, there must be, there must be an advance beyond this textualism that looks upon the cold text and says, I believe it. There must be an advance past that that says I believe it, and then moves on to a knowledge of God by the flash of divine light from God, so that I know within my heart and nobody can shake me. If you can be reasoned into salvation, a stronger reasoner can reason you back out of it again. If you know you belong to God by a reasonable conclusion, stronger reasons can cause you to conclude the opposite. But if by faith in the Mediator and the blood that He shed, you come to God and put away everything that’s unlike him and look into His faith with expectation, He will give you a knowledge of Himself and heavenly realities that nobody reasons you into and nobody can reason you out of.

And that’s what we’re missing today. That’s why we’ve got imitators instead of initiators. That’s why we’ve got men and women who follow like sheep instead of men and women who lead like shepherds. And God help us take our Christianity seriously. For me, as far as I’m concerned, it’s either a burning bush or I’ll walk out on the whole thing. No hodgepodge compound of Norman Vincent Peale and David for me. It’s either God everything or God nothing. And God turns around and says to us, either I must be your all or I won’t be your anything. Christ must be Lord all of all, or He will not be Lord at all. Think it over, brethren. It’s a serious thing.

Categories
Messages

Tozer Talks

Abiding Elements of Pentecost”

Abiding Elements of Pentecost

Pastor and author A.W. Tozer

Speaking at the American Keswick Conference at Moody Church in Chicago, 1960

My topic tonight is the abiding element in Pentecost, and I want to read from the Book of Acts, Chapter 2. A very familiar passage, a very controversial passage, but I don’t intend to treat it controversially. Second chapter of Acts, when the day of Pentecost had fully come, they were all with one accord in one place. And suddenly there came a sound from heaven as of a rushing mighty wind, and it filled all the house where they were sitting.

And there appeared unto them cloven tongues like as of fire and sat upon each of them. And they were all filled with the Holy Ghost, and began to speak with other tongues as the Spirit gave them utterance. And there were dwelling in Jerusalem, Jews, devout men out of every nation unto heaven.

Now when this was noised abroad, the multitude came together and were confounded because that every man heard them speak in his own language. And they were all amazed and marveled, saying one to another, Behold, are not all these which speak Galilean, so how hear we every man in our own tongue, for in we were born? Then skipping over the list of seventeen nations to verse 11, they said, we do hear them speak in our languages, the wonderful works of God.

Now here in this experience, as in every, or almost every, probably every valid religious experience, there are these elements present. There is first the external element, and because it is external it is variable. Then there is the internal element, which is of the Spirit, and so tremendously important. And then there is the incidental elements, which are of relative importance. And the fundamental elements, which are vital and eternal.

Now I want you to bring this analysis to what took place here on that day called “the Fifty Days,” Pentecost, and I want to point out some things that can never be repeated, although my sermon, I’ll break it down and toss it out to tell you in case I don’t finish it, you’ll know what I started to say. There are elements which can never be repeated, and some which, according to my knowledge of history, never have been repeated. And then there are elements which are eternal, and while they are not repeated, they are perpetuated. For I’d like to say this, that I do not believe in the repetition of Pentecost, but I believe in the perpetuation of Pentecost.

Now, what can never be repeated? Well, the physical presence of all the Church in one place. The members remained together in Jerusalem. They were all there and that never happened after that, because Saul made havoc of the church, and they were scattered abroad. And they have never been all together since. I started to say, thank God, I mean by that, that there are so many of them that there’s no building and no town that could house them, so many of the people of God. So that could never be repeated. You never can get all God’s people together outside of heaven, and that in itself may be a blessing.

Now, the second thing is that there are elements, there are things that occurred here that, in addition to one I’ve named, that never have been repeated, according to my knowledge of Church history.

A friend of mine said to me one time, when I get up and talk at conference, why don’t they listen to me? He said, because you have a habit of speaking ex cathedra, and sometimes there’s more ex than cathedra.

So, it is entirely possible that I could be wrong here, though I never am deliberately so, but what has never been repeated, so far as I know, is the sound from heaven as of a rushing mighty wind. Now, I’ve never heard that that happened. I’ve heard all sorts of things that were supposed to take place, but nobody ever said the whole house was full of a sound like wind.

Then I have never heard that the appearance of a great body of fire was seen by a company of people, dividing itself into flames like little tongues and resting upon the foreheads of each one. That seemed to be peculiar to that first coming of the Holy Ghost.

Then I have never heard that they all began, all the company present, began to speak languages which did not need to be interpreted, but which were understood by everybody present. Seventeen different languages of people there, and they understood it without an interpreter.

Now there’s a good logic back of all this, my friends. If these things had been necessary to the life of the Church, then they would have had to be repeated every time the Spirit filled anybody, or there was a company of people that was Spirit-filled. The Church couldn’t have continued without them. But if they were never repeated, then the Church must have ceased the day it was born, or at least ceased when the one who first composed the Church died.

Now those are the passing elements, the noise, the wind, the presence of everybody in one place, the sudden visitation of God in fire, visible fire that separated and sat visibly upon them, the out bursting of a joyous testimony in languages that couldn’t be understood by everybody without an interpreter. Now all this was there, but this is not the abiding element in this Pentecostal visitation.

What was, or what were the abiding elements? Well, we can discover them by going to the New Testament and finding what the Lord had promised that would come. He said, He shall send you another Comforter. And He said, when the Comforter is come, He will take the things of mine and will show them unto you. And He said, I tell you the truth, that I go away, and I send Him, and when He comes will convince the world of sin and righteousness and judgment.

And He said that ye shall receive power, and as every student knows, power means a moral ability to do. Now that, those are the vital elements in the Pentecostal outpouring, and these have been perpetuated to the Church and are ours, available to us as certainly as to them.

Now I want to illustrate this thing by showing you how when our Lord came there were certain phenomena which occurred, but which were never repeated in the ministry of our Lord.

You remember when Jesus was born in Bethlehem in the days of Herod the King, there came wise men from the east, and there was a star, and there were angels that chanted over the fields of Bethlehem, and there were the wise men, and there was the inn where the Lord was born, and the excitement, and later on the flight into Egypt.

Now, all these were external phenomena which surrounded the birth of the Lord Jesus, but they all passed because they were incidental and not fundamental, they were external and not internal, they were visible and audible and of the flesh, and not the invisible and inaudible deep workings of the Holy Ghost. There was a star out there, and there were angels, and there were wise men, and there was the inn, and there were donkeys, and there was the flight into Egypt, and all that.

But when all that was gone, the Lord Jesus Christ was still there, because the abiding element in Bethlehem was the presence of the Word to become flesh to dwell among us. After the wise men had gone back east again, and the shepherds had gone back to their flocks, and the star had gone wherever it went, and the inn had been forgotten, and the flight into Egypt was a memory, He was still there. He abode. He remained, and all that He came to do was perpetuated through his entire ministry and still continues.

That is an illustration, and I believe a valid one, of how it was when the Holy Ghost, the third person of the Trinity, came at Pentecost as the second person had come at Bethlehem. There were external and dramatic, colorful phenomena that surrounded the coming of the Holy Spirit, as there had been surrounding the birth of Christ. But when those external phenomena passed, the thing that God had wanted to do and had succeeded in doing, still abodes, still remains forever the same.

Now, what did God do there, as recorded in that passage which I read to you? Well, the Holy Ghost had come to dwell among men and had come to dwell in the hearts of His people to make His Church one and to forever inhabit the redeemed bosoms of those who believed on God’s eternal Son. Wouldn’t it have been a ridiculous thing if the people had heard about the phenomena that surrounded the birth of Jesus, and nobody would have believed that he was healed unless there was a star and a donkey and a hymn and a wise man and all of the external things?

The point is, God used all those things to get His eternal Son into human flesh, to get Him here. That was God incarnating His Son, and these things were external manifestations. But they all passed, and the Lord remained and healed the sick and gave eyes to the blind and unstopped the ears and drove out the devils and forgave sin and blessed mankind.

Now the Holy Ghost came as the Second Person came, and He came upon them in visible fire. He sat upon their foreheads; they broke out into languages that could be understood without an interpreter. It was a wind, or like a wind, that filled the building. But those, I repeat, were the external elements. The eternal element was that the Holy Ghost had come, the Comforter has come, we sing, and that’s what had happened there. That was the mighty truth.

Now, the meaning of it all is that the Holy Ghost now inhabits His Church in power. I’d like to point out that the word power there is ability, and it’s the ability to be and ability to do.

All the religions of the world that I know anything about, and I have made myself acquainted by reading the holy books, so-called, of most of the great religions of the world, and never could quite wade through the Book of Mormon. That was always a little too heavy for me, I began to nod about page 3. But most of the great religions of the East, I have read at least some of their books, and they are practically all the same in that they talk about what you do and don’t have very much to say about what you be. But the Scriptures talk about our being first and our doing second, and we do what we be.

Back in Pennsylvania where I grew up, they used the word be for do, and it’s a good word, it’s the verb I be, I am. God says that He was to give us ability to be, and because we have ability to be, of course it’s quite normal that we do. A bird has ability to sing because he’s a bird, and a Christian has ability to live like a Christian because He is a Christian. God has given him the power.

I want to analyze the power a little bit. We’re suffering in the day in which we live from two extremes. We’re suffering from the extremes of those who take the external phenomena of Pentecost and try to repeat it 19th centuries later, and nothing but trouble can come from this and nothing but trouble ever has; divisions and all sorts of things.

And then we’re suffering from another extreme just as bad, and that is that we’ve all gone into our holes and frozen over the entrance and sit back there blowing on our hands, afraid of the Holy Spirit. We’re afraid to preach about him and talk about him and pray to be filled with him, because some have gone to extremes.

They have misunderstood and they thought that the wise man and the star and the shepherds and the inn and we have to have all that. No. I don’t believe on a star to be converted. I don’t believe on a shepherd to be saved. I don’t believe on an inn or a donkey in order to be blessed. I believe on the One who came into the middle of all that and remains in mortal flesh.

So, I don’t believe on tongues, and I don’t believe on flaming fire on foreheads. I don’t believe on winds that fill buildings. I believe on Jesus Christ, and I receive the one who came in that hurricane of blessing to remain forever in the breasts of his people.

Now, I don’t hear any amens, but I love my own preaching, you know, I do. I enjoy preaching the truth, and if anybody says amen, he’s on, it’s all right. And if he doesn’t say amen, he’s either asleep or else he’s wrong.

Let’s break this down a little bit, keeping within our time. What is this power to be and this power to do? Well, there’s love, joy, peace. We talk about love. A fellow like I am, I couldn’t love anybody. Now, Stephen Olford, who will follow me, he could love anybody. He was born that way. He’s a lovable fellow, but nobody loves me for myself because there’s nothing here to love. And I couldn’t love anybody. But God gives you power to be and to do, and He gives me power. He can give me power to love people that just aren’t lovable.

And then there’s joy. Now, a fellow like I am, again I’m born gloomy. I see the dark side of everything. My friend McAfee, if you’re here, knows that. And if it is clears as a bell in the morning, I say that’s probably a weather breeder, it likely to rain by noon. I’m naturally pessimistic. And for me to have anything like joy and peace takes a power that isn’t in human nature, at least it isn’t in mine. But I enjoy quite a little bit of peace and joy because I have been given ability to be and ability to do.

Then there’s long-suffering. Now, long-suffering, of course, is the ability to suffer a long time. Everybody’s willing to suffer a little while but suffering a long time just to put up with things and ride them out and live them down and hope for the best and go on, it’s not natural, it’s not natural to me. I don’t think it’s natural to any American, really.

A Chinese person might because they’re a very quiet, slower people, but an American wouldn’t. And an American complains if he misses one section of a revolving door. So long-suffering, it takes something out of heaven to make a man suffer long and be kind, a disposition to bear injuries patiently.

Then there’s gentleness, which is the opposite of harshness and severity. Then there’s goodness. Now, I’m quoting, of course, from Galatians. There’s goodness, which is morally good. Now, here again we’re a victim of extremes because none is good save God. We’re unwilling to say he was a good man and full of the Holy Ghost. We’re afraid of the Bible itself. We run and hide from the words of the Scripture. We say nobody is good, nobody is good.

A friend of mine preached one time on righteousness. He preached that people ought to be righteous, and an old fellow came down the aisle walking fast, and he said, why do you preach goodness? Don’t you know there’s only one good and that’s God? You’re preaching legalism. He said, people can’t be good, they aren’t good.

This dear old brother was hurt so badly by the criticism, and I called him aside and I said, don’t worry, Doctor, God has his treasures in earthen vessels and some of the vessels are cracked. Don’t let it bother you at all. Some people are afraid of goodness, just sheer downright goodness.

Do you want me to say a radical thing? If all of you listening to me now were just ordinary, plain, downright good people, your testimony would be stepped up a hundred percent. Goodness is a virtue given by God to the human heart.

Then faithfulness, that’s ability to keep right on being faithful, opposite of instability, fidelity to a trust. And meekness, which is the opposite of arrogance and temperance, which is the opposite of intemperance.

I had hoped I might be able, while I’m here, to preach on discipleship, but it didn’t fall in the scheme of things that I should. But I believe that the Lord wants us to be disciples and learn from him and learn by the power of the indwelling Holy Ghost. He gives the power, and we give the willingness and the determination to be Christlike, and temperance is one of the virtues, living temperately, to be strong and masterful in control of ourselves.

Now, the will of God for us is that we should have all these virtues, that is, this power which God offered, this power which the Holy Ghost brought, this power which the Holy Ghost is. For I’d like to make it very clear that God never gives anything away. When God gives, He still retains what He has given, and He gives Himself along with His gifts.

It would be a tragedy from the highest, farthest out celestial body down to Moody Church; it would be a moral tragedy that would be vast and cosmic if God should shuffle off gifts and throw them to his people like Rockefeller used to throw dimes. Never does God separate the gift from Himself.

When God gives you a gift, He gives you Himself. When God gave us these precious virtues, He gave us the Holy Ghost who brought these virtues to us, and so it is the indwelling Holy Spirit that brings these virtues.

Don’t think for a minute tonight that I’ve read the Keswick program and that I’m preaching this because Keswick believes it. I preached this before Keswick ever reached Chicago. I preached it for years and continue to preach it because I believe it’s biblical, that it’s the indwelling Holy Ghost who came at Pentecost and enables all of His people in whom He dwells to be virtuous, to have love and joy and peace and gentleness and goodness and faithfulness and meekness and temperance. I believe that this is the secret of godliness and the secret of the victorious life.

Now this, I say, can only be done by divine indwelling. It’s impossible that this should ever be given to us from the outside. You can’t take a gorilla and put up a sign and say, Be human. In the first place, he couldn’t read. In the second place, if he did read, he wouldn’t know how to go about it. How could a gorilla be human? He can’t. He belongs to another world of life. He’s not. He can’t be human.

And so, you can’t say to a sinner, Be holy. That’s an impossibility.

A sinner can’t be holy any more than that gorilla can be a man. But if we had the power to say to the gorilla, I can extract the spirit of a good man from him and I can fill you with him, that would take care of the gorilla. Just as soon as the spirit of a good man entered the gorilla, say the spirit of Eisenhower entered the gorilla, he’d be a kindly gentleman and a man you’re proud of when he stands up. He’d be a man.

But as long as you can’t give the Spirit, the power to be and to do, you’ll still be a gorilla. You can put a bib on around him and put pants on him and teach him to eat with a knife and a fork. But when he begets his kind, they’ll be little gorillas. And he’ll be a gorilla until he dies. And when he dies, you’re putting him down in a gorilla grave, because gorilla he is, gorilla he’ll be forever, as long as gorillas last.

And I say now, my friend, you can’t take a sinner, no matter how well he’s an educated sinner. A Ph.D., for instance, a Ph.D., that’s a Doctor of Philosophy. You take a Doctor of Philosophy and say to him, Be holy, be Christlike, and he’ll look at you and he’ll be nice and friendly, because he’s educated, but he won’t know what to do. He just won’t know what to do, and it’s impossible that he would know what to do.

The flesh of Adam can’t produce holiness. The flesh of Adam cannot produce love and joy and peace and longsuffering and gentleness. It can produce all sorts of imitations and write books and sell books. And if you write a book on how to be loved and have longsuffering and gentleness and be good, you can sell them by the millions; people want to know.

But nobody has ever been able to produce Christ’s character in Adam’s flesh. The nearest thing is Stoicism, I suppose. I’ve been a great lover of the Stoics. But some people think the “stoic” is the bird that brings the baby. But they said the Stoic. But the Stoic was an old philosopher. But it’s no use, brother, you can’t do it. All it did was make zombies out of them. And they walked around hard and stiff.

When Socrates was dying in the prison at Athens of hemlock, they brought his wife in. She came in sniffling, and he didn’t even kiss her good-bye, he said, take her away. He was in control of himself, it was self-control, and they controlled themselves by becoming as stiff as icicles and just as unattractive and as cold.

And then there’s the contemplative religions of the East. You hear a lot about it now, Zen Buddhism and Yoga. Don’t waste a dime on it, but you hear a lot about it. But they haven’t done anything for anybody much, really. And if anybody does get any help from them, it’s because they’re pretty good people to start with. You know, as Adam counts people good.

But the fruits of the Spirit are only the fruits of the Holy Spirit and cannot possibly grow in unblessed, uncleansed and unfilled and unregenerated human nature.

So, most Christians, I think, and most Christianity; it’s only Adam at his best, really. You go to the average church now, even good churches, and it’s just Adam at his best. Everybody comes dressed up, looking out over his collar with a narrow tie on. And he looks all right, and he smiles and bobs his head, but you don’t know what he’d been doing the week before. He’s not necessarily a holy man because he’s in church. But as for being holy, that’s another matter.

When Pentecost was fully come, the Holy Ghost came into human nature to make people holy and to keep them holy, that they might live holy lives and reproduce in human beings the character that had been and is in Christ. That’s the abiding element in Pentecost.

It is not to be repeated, it is to be perpetuated. It is to be carried on from generation to generation, but we must tell the truth to the people and not let them down. Some people don’t believe in the Holy Ghost, nor believe they ever ought to be filled with the Holy Ghost at all. Some people say it’s just an ideal. He is not an ideal. No, no.

He’s no more an ideal now than Christ was an ideal when He walked around on earth. He was born in that dramatic setting, but when the dramatic setting was passed, He was still there healing the sick and raising the dead. The Holy Ghost came in that dramatic setting at Pentecost, but when the dramatic setting passed, He still remained and still remains, and He’s here now.

All He needs and wants is that His people should want Him bad enough and that they should yield to Him and let Him have His way, and He will reproduce all the essential spiritual and everlasting elements in us now that He produced on that historic day of Pentecost.

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Messages

Tozer Talks

The Enabling Power Of The Holy Spirit In Our Lives”

The Enabling Power of the Holy Spirit in our Lives

Pastor and author A.W. Tozer

April 1, 1956

Summary

A.W. Tozer’s sermon, “The Enabling Power of the Holy Spirit in Our Lives,” emphasizes the essential role of the Holy Spirit in empowering believers and the church to live effective, spiritually vibrant lives. Mr. Tozer outlines three distinct periods in the lives of Jesus’s disciples: before the cross, after the resurrection but before Pentecost, and after Pentecost. He parallels these periods with the current state of the church, arguing that many are stuck in a phase of instruction without power, characterized by aimless activity, intermittent fellowship with Christ, and a lack of spiritual vitality. He urges believers to seek personal and collective repentance, purity, and the fullness of the Spirit to move beyond mere religious activity and into a life of true spiritual power and purpose.

Message

After these things, Jesus showed himself again to the disciples at the Sea of Tiberias. And on this wise showed he himself. There were together Simon Peter, Thomas called Didymus, Nathanael of Cana and Galilee, the sons of Zebedee, and two other of his disciples.

And Simon Peter saith unto them, I go fishing. They say unto him, well, we’ll go with you. So they went forth and entered into a ship immediately, and that night they caught nothing.

But when the morning was now come, Jesus stood on the shore, but the disciples knew not that it was Jesus. Then Jesus said to them, Children, have you any meat? And they answered him, no, no, we haven’t. So, He said, cast your net over on the other side, and they did, and they got fish.

Now, I want to talk tonight about these opening verses here, and with this we’ll bring the talks on John to an end. The seventeenth chapter of John was considered some two years ago, quite at length in a series of sermons, so naturally we’ll not repeat that. And the story found in John 18, 19, 20, and 21 have occupied our thoughts over the last weeks, the arrest of Jesus and the death and the resurrection, so that there scarcely it would not be proper to continue through these chapters, having been dealt with quite extensively. So, with this tonight, we will leave this blessed book of John, often, often to come back to it, but not to preach any longer in this series.

Now, this has to do tonight with the forty days in Tyrium, which is covered in Acts 1:1-8. The former treatise, said Luke, the former treatise have I made, O Theophilus, of all that Jesus began to do and teach, until the day in which He was taken up after He had, through the Holy Ghost, given commandments unto the apostles whom He had chosen, to whom also He showed Himself alive after His passion by many infallible proofs, being seen of them forty days, and speaking of the things pertaining to the kingdom of God, and being assembled together with them, commanded them they should not depart from Jerusalem, but wait for the promise of the Father, which, saith He, ye have heard of Me.

For John truly baptized with water, but ye shall be baptized with the Holy Ghost not many days hence. When they therefore were come together, they asked of Him, saying, Lord, wilt thou at this time restore again the kingdom to Israel? And He said to them, It is not for you to know the times or the seasons which the Father hath put in his own power. But ye shall receive power after that the Holy Ghost has come upon you, and ye shall be witnesses unto Me both in Jerusalem, and in all Judea, and in Samaria, and unto the uttermost part of the earth. And when He had spoken these things, while they beheld, He was taken up, and a cloud received Him out of their sight.

That is Luke’s story that parallels John’s story here in the twenty-first chapter of his book, the closing chapter of his book. Now, this forty-day interim period after Jesus had been raised from the dead, but before He had sent the Holy Ghost, it was a time of instruction without power.

Now, there was power in the Instructor, but there was not power in the one instructed. And it is an axiom, I think, of theology that it takes the same degree of power to understand truth as it does to preach truth. So that Jesus was instructing the minds of His disciples, but they had not the power to grasp it fully. And it was a time of intermittent fellowship with Jesus our Lord. He had risen from the grave, but they were with Him only part of the time. At one place, Thomas was not present at all. And at another time, there would only be one. At another time, there would be two or three. In another case, five hundred. And James at one time saw Him, and Peter saw Him. And the fellowship with Jesus was real, but it was intermittent. And it was a period of considerable uncertainty for these disciples.

They were uncertain about exactly what they should do. They reached a period that was something of a vacuum. It was quite empty, because it was between the death and resurrection of Jesus and the coming down of the Holy Spirit. And it was a time of fruitless activity. You will notice in 21:2 that they were together aimlessly. It says here almost nonchalantly, aimlessly.

They were together, Simon Peter and Thomas called Didymus, Nathaniel of Canaan in Galilee and the sons of Zebedee, and two others of his disciples. Now, they were not together by the Lord’s appointment. They were just together. They were there rather aimlessly. And being aimlessly together, naturally they had to do something, so the strongest one of them suggested they do something. He said, I’m going fishing.

He had forgotten that he had left his fishing boat to follow his Lord three years before. But now his Lord was coming and going. He was there, and then He was gone. He was present, and then He was absent. He was visible, and then He disappeared. And Peter, being an active, strong, aggressive type of man, couldn’t take this inactivity and particularly this uncertainty.

So, he said, I’m going fishing. And naturally what he suggested doing was patterned after the old life. And the strongest one, having suggested something for them to do, the ones not so strong followed their leader. So, they went along with him. And of course, it was a waste of effort and time. Verse 3, they caught nothing. And when He asked them if they had anything, they said no.

Now, I want to talk to you a little about three periods in the lives of these disciples, and three corresponding periods in churches and in individuals. There was the period before the cross and the resurrection, after they had become disciples, but before Jesus had died. That was a period of our Lord’s flesh. They went about with Him. They heard Him teach, and He was preparing them, mentally at least, for His passion, as they call it, His death and resurrection, and for the coming of the Spirit. But He was the Lord after the flesh to them. That period, after they had become disciples, but before Christ had died and risen again, we call the first period.

Then there was a second period after the cross and the resurrection, but before Pentecost. That’s the period we’re dealing with tonight, Acts 1:1-8, and John 21:1-8, or for that matter, to the end of the chapter. Then there was a third period after Pentecost, when there came to them a power and a radiance and an enthusiasm and a success that they had never known before. Now those three periods, any church or individual may be in any one of these three periods.

The first one, knowing Christ after the flesh as those disciples did. They never quite understood Jesus. They knew Him after the flesh, but they never quite understood Him. He was telling them things always that they couldn’t grasp, and He said they couldn’t grasp it. He said these things that I’m telling you, you don’t understand now, but you’ll understand when the Holy Spirit has come. We can have this same kind of situation today as individuals and as churches. Know Christ after the flesh. Know about the rest, historically, of course. But put the emphasis on the manger and on good deeds and on moral teaching, but not experiencing the cross, not experiencing the resurrection or the triumph of our Savior.

Now there are churches that are in that condition. They know Christ after the flesh. I wish I never had to rebuke or protest. I wish that always that I could avoid that, but how can you avoid it? How can you possibly avoid it, when it’s perfectly obvious that churches know Christ after the flesh, but never seem to be able to grasp the Christ, the risen Christ, the Christ who had risen and been glorified and who had sent the Holy Ghost down, never grasp that Savior at all, never experience his cross, talk about it, put it on top of the steeple, wear it around the neck, but never experience that cross in their lives at all, and never experience the power of the resurrection, then smell the Easter lily, and go through all that we do to celebrate the resurrection, but still the only Christ we know is the Christ after the flesh.

Now that can be true of a church, I say. It can also be true of an individual. Then there’s that second period, which the disciples went through back there, and which we may go through now as churches or as individuals, to know Christ and know the cross and the resurrection, and believe in the finished atonement, and know the peace of sins forgiven, and believe in the bodily resurrection, and believe His promise to return, but never experience Pentecost.

Then there’s the third period that any church can go through, or any individual can go through, when they pass on through to the other period, when the promise of the Father is fulfilled in the hearts of individuals, and they are filled with the Spirit of God. A congregation of Christian believers can also know this.

Now I want to ask the question, where are we? Which period do we find ourselves in as individuals and as a church? I would first eliminate one period and say that the situation that the average fundamentalist church finds itself in does not accord with what we call that period between Christ’s death and resurrection and the coming of the Holy Ghost.

It accords not with that first period before Christ died, but with that second period after the resurrection. Let me explain it like this now. I said that that period, that interim period, before the Holy Spirit came, but after our Lord had risen from the dead, was a time of instruction without a power.

And we have that almost everywhere these days, theological instruction without power. In the case of Jesus, there was power in the Instructor, but no power in the listener. But in the case of many churches today, and I would say the majority of them, there’s neither power in the instructor nor in the hearer, but there is an effort to rationalize the gospel of Christ and to teach it.

I hear it sometimes on the radio, and I listen here and there where I go, instructing, but no power in the instruction. Nobody’s angry, nobody’s glad, nobody’s mad, nobody’s helped, nobody’s transformed, but it’s simply instruction without power and of intermittent fellowship with Christ.

Now I want to ask you if that does not describe the present situation–intermittent fellowship with Christ. The average Christian in our time does not have an unbroken fellowship with the Savior, but an intermittent fellowship. They’re with Him today and tomorrow they’re not, and tonight it’s very sweet and wonderful, tomorrow morning it’s gone, and two days later there is some sort of an experience, and then three days later that has evaporated. So, the experience, the fellowship, is intermittent. And then in the church of Christ today there’s considerable personal uncertainty.

I find this astonishing thing, that there are hundreds of people, hundreds, I suppose it runs into the hundreds of thousands if the truth were known, but my experience doesn’t cover that many, of persons who have had theological training but don’t know what to do. They don’t know what to do with themselves. They have gone to this or that Bible school, they hold a diploma from this or that theological institution, but they don’t know what to do with themselves. They’re in a state of personal uncertainty. They’re where the disciples were after Christ had risen from the dead, but before the Holy Ghost had come at Pentecost, and therefore they are running with other Christians, and much of their meeting together is aimless.

Now there were together Simon Peter, and Thomas called Didymus, and Nathanael of Cana in Galilee, and the sons of Zebedee, and two other of His disciples. There was a little meeting going on. I suppose strong Peter called that meeting together, and there they were anyway. I hear the announcements, let’s come and have a good time in the Lord.

We’re all going to meet at such and such a time, and such and such a place, and a good deal of our religious activity today consists of gathering all the sheep in one place, and then later, next week or next month, gathering all the sheep somewhere else. But never anybody quite knowing what it’s all about, personal uncertainty and fruitless activity.

Coming together aimlessly is the weakness of a lot of us Protestant Christians. We don’t know why we come together. We’re here, and we like it in a way, but just what’s it all about? And so the strongest one suggested they do something, but he hadn’t any orders from the Lord about what to do, so he scratched his fisherman’s head and said, now let me see.

The Lord’s here today and gone tomorrow. He appears now, and then He’s gone, and we’re not certain of anything, and we’re in this vacuum. We ought to be active, Christians ought to be active. We’re followers of the Lord. Let’s do something. But what was there to do? Well, naturally, he drew upon his experience of the time before he knew the Lord and said, let’s go fishing. And these weaker ones gathered around him.

Brethren, I’m describing fundamentalism today. I’m describing evangelicalism. It is where we’re unsure of ourselves. We have no afflatus. No voice has spoken. Nobody’s hearing anything. And so, the strong-willed ones are saying, let’s do so-and-so.

So, we gather over here, and we do that. And then a strong-willed one over here will say, well, I think we ought to do this. But the whole thing is uncertain. There’s no prophet to say this is the way we should go. This is what we should be doing. This is why we come together. This is the meaning of it all.

But we subscribe to magazines. We read books, and we go about here and there to conventions and Bible conferences. And usually some strong-willed fellow has said, let’s start this, or let’s do that. What do you say that we begin this?

And so, fundamentalism is a world of wheels within wheels within wheels within wheels. Ezekiel saw a wheel in the middle of a wheel. But Protestantism has not only one wheel in the middle of a big wheel, but has wheels within wheels within wheels, world without end.

But there seems to be a lack of specific direction in the thing. We turn out students from our schools, give them their diploma. They don’t know. Most of them don’t know what they went there for. A lot of them go to escape. Some parents send them there because they want to have them somewhere where they’re safe. And some of them go because their friends have gone. And some go because it’s romantic to do it. And some go to get out of the army. And some go because they’re lazy.

I heard Dr. Mosley say one time to a group of the students, if we learn, if we learn of one man who has come to this school to get out of the army, we’ll throw him out on his ear. But nevertheless, that does happen, and it’s because of the period we’re in spiritually.

We’re in a period after Christ has risen from the dead, but before the Holy Ghost has come. And we know He’s alive. We know He’s risen. We talk about Him on His throne. We expound Romans and Colossians and Ephesians. We know the truth all right. Historically, we know He’s at the right hand of God the Father Almighty and we repeat the creed and believe it, but our fellowship is uncertain. And today we see Him and tomorrow He’s gone. And we are not sure what we’re to do.

And so, we’re looking around, waiting for some strong-voiced fisherman who doesn’t know either, but who has a strong personality to say, I think we ought to do this. So, we form an organization and get a letterhead and a magazine and an office and a secretary, and we do this. I go fishing, said Peter, I go fishing.

The Lord had delivered Peter from the fisherman’s boat three years before, but there wasn’t anything to do. So, Peter normally did what there was to do. He did what he knew how to do. He went back to fishing. When the Lord God Almighty had called him to catch men, but there was a pocket there. They had reached a vacuum, and nothing was happening, and that kills some people. If they’re not busy at something, they’re not spiritual.

Brother Maxey told me about a dear woman down here somewhere. He preached about their tarrying and waiting and being filled with the Spirit. And a woman said afterward, Mr. Maxey, I have never heard this before. She said, I thought that the more active you are, the more spiritual you are. She said, honestly, that was my belief, that the more active you are, the more spiritual you are. She was perfectly willing to accept a change of viewpoint, but she was honest enough to say, that’s what I believed up to now.

Well, that seems to be the general belief, that inactivity, it’s unspeakable, it’s awful, it’s like those ten seconds with nothing going on the radio that Peter Joshua told us about, that awful dead ten seconds with nobody yelling and nobody running and nobody selling. And Peter, being a fisherman, couldn’t stand that. Well, he said, I go fishing.

Now, there wasn’t any sin in that. It was simply uninspired, undirected, and it turned out to be fruitless activity. Now, does that describe us or not, brethren? Does that describe us or not? Do we know why we’re saved? Do we know why we’re here? Do we know what it’s all about? Why is it necessary to hold all these discussions? Why is it necessary to put five ignorant people around a table and each pump the other one?

Why is it necessary for ten people to gather around a board, none of which knows anything about the guidance of the Holy Ghost, and then pool their ignorance in order to find out what to do? And of course, naturally, when they pool their ignorance, not having any divine gleam, not any divine call or upward tug or direction of the Spirit, they will pattern what they do religiously after what they have done out in the secular world.

And so we have a multitude of wheels within wheels, all patterned after the secular world, because Christ has risen, but the Holy Ghost has not come, because they know He’s alive, but they’re not able to keep contact with Him, and they’re afraid not to be active.

So, we have the religious jitters, and this is where we seem to be today, I’m afraid. We certainly don’t fit into that first period, when they knew Christ after the flesh and knew Him no other way. Certainly, we know Him in some other way. Surely, we don’t make the mistake in this church of putting the emphasis upon the manger. Surely, we don’t make the mistake in this church of laying the emphasis upon the moral teachings of Jesus or the good deeds of Jesus or the example of Jesus. Certainly, our Jesus is more than a human being, more than a man in the flesh. We’re not there. And surely, we are over into the Book of Acts, where they were all filled with the Holy Ghost and got up and went out to speak the word of God with power.

But we’re in an interim, and there’s a pocket in there, and there’s where most of the people are today. And brethren, much of the evangelism today does not lead people out of that uncertainty in a period of activity without leadership. It only creates more activity but doesn’t lead people into the fullness of the Holy Spirit.

And that’s why I can’t get all steamed up about making more converts to an effete Christianity. That’s why I can’t get all steamed up about going all around the world making converts to something that is only halfway in, and not all the way in. Jaffray and Glover and others went to South China, established their work in Wuzhou. They had this strange experience. They made converts, but they couldn’t get anybody to go on beyond that first initial conversion. And they multiplied their converts. Many people believed in Christ and accepted the Lord, as we say. And they became converts. They were baptized, and they joined the little churches there in China.

But Dr. Jaffray was not satisfied. He said, this won’t do. This won’t do. There’s something wrong here. Our Christians are carnal. They’re fleshly. They live after the flesh. Their fellowship with Christ is intermittent and spotty. They live aimlessly. They need something more from God.

And so those men of God got on their knees and prayed. And in those little churches, one church after the other, there came a mighty baptism of the Holy Ghost upon those Chinese Christians, and took them from this period, this interim period, this halfway-in period, took them on into the mighty fullness of the Spirit of God.

And I’m perfectly prepared to say, and base my conclusions upon the Scriptures, and believe that there is historic proof of it, that there would not be one shred nor trace of Christianity left in China today if they had not done that thing. There would not be one trace of Christianity left in China if Dr. Sung and the rest of them had not preached the word of God and had gone on to teach them that they ought to be filled with the mighty Spirit of God. But here we are.

What about you? What about your personal relation to the Lord? Now, I don’t think you’d be in this church if you only believed in Christ after the flesh. The newspapers only know Christ after the flesh. They publish the story of Jesus on the front page around Easter or Christmas, and they’re very sympathetic, and we’re glad they are, and it does help a little, but it’s Jesus after the flesh.

And Paul scornfully said, once I knew Christ after the flesh, but hence I know Him no more. Jesus that walked in Galilee is not the Christ that we have to do with now. That Jesus died on a cross. That Christ died and rose, and He’s the same Jesus, of course, but He’s a Jesus now in an altogether different position. That in Him which could die, died, And God raised Him from the dead, and He sits now at the right hand of the Father. And from there He sends down the blessed Holy Ghost.

I’m glad there are some people listening—not too many in this church, I suppose, but there are those listening—and we’re disturbed, greatly disturbed.

Somebody handed me this morning a magazine, a tear sheet from a magazine. I think the magazine’s a liberal magazine. But in it there was an article. What’s the matter with religion in our time? What’s the matter with this thing? And this young man, whose name happened to be Stanley Lowell—two of my boys’ names—Stanley Lowell, pastor of the Methodist Church. And this fellow with trenching analysis, says the trouble with religion now, the trouble with all this wave of religion that we’ve got is that there is no protest, that God sent the churches to stand as a fiery protest against wickedness and iniquity. But the churches have lost their power to protest. There’s no protest anymore.

But the great leaders are busy trying to be as smooth and suave as they can and stand against nobody and try to get along with everybody. And have friends among the big and the great and the very important persons.

This Methodist preacher, God bless the memory of John and Charles and Fletcher and Taylor and the rest of them. He’s got enough fire left in him, this young preacher, to cry and say, when is our prophet coming and from whence is he coming to teach the church not to get along with the world but to contest with the world and protest against the world; and to stand as followers of Jesus Christ the Lord and take the consequences.

The Methodist church would wake up and listen to this young man. They won’t. But if they’d listen to this young man, brothers and sisters, how wonderful it would be to go out not to try to find a common ground of agreement, not to prove that we’re just like the world, only a little bit better because we believe in Jesus, but to go boldly out declaring what we’ve seen and heard and take the consequences. And if they didn’t like it, let them persecute us.

The best thing that could happen to the church would be fiery persecution. If there had been a penalty attached to going to church, the churches in Chicago would not have been crowded to the doors this Easter morning with people with new hats. If there had been a penalty attached to going to church, they’d have stayed away in vast numbers.

I am not praying for persecution, but I’m not going for one second to pray that there shall not be persecution. For whenever the church dares to take the cross of Jesus, always remember this, brethren, that the cross is an instrument of death and negation. The cross is a denunciatory, accusative thing. And when we follow Christ and take up His cross, we can’t possibly go along with the rest. They can’t possibly ride along on the popularity of presidents and kings and the great of the world.

Not one of the world’s great would walk down the street with Jesus while he lived. And as soon as Paul was converted to Jesus, not one of the world’s great would dare to line up with him. And when Luther nailed his theses on the door of the church in Wittenberg, scarcely one of the great would dare to line up with him at first. They did later, but scarcely at first.

But because we’re afraid to protest, we’re afraid to be different, we’re busy trying to—I go fishing, we say. We don’t know what to do because the Holy Ghost has not come to our hearts, and all we have is the text of the Scripture and tradition. And so, there’s fruitless activity, personal uncertainty, intermittent fellowship, a gathering together without knowing why. And the strong leader says, well, let’s do it this way. And then the weak ones all say, all right, let’s do it that way.

And so, they go fishing. Children, have you any meat? No, we have numbers and names and offices and literature and printing presses and mimeograph machines and talk, but we don’t have any meat. Well, he said, they haven’t had any leadership, that’s why. You’re gathering together aimlessly. And this is the condition that we’re in today. I tell you this now, this is the situation that we’re in, and we’re waiting.

What is the further step? Well, let me read it to you. He shall receive power after the Holy Ghost has come upon you. You shall be witnesses unto me both in Jerusalem and in all Judea and in Samaria and unto the outermost part of the earth. And when the day of Pentecost was fully come, they were all with one accord in one place. And suddenly there came a sound from heaven as a rushing mighty wind, and it filled all the house where they were sitting. And there appeared unto them cloven tongues like as a fire, and it sat upon each of them. And they were all filled with the Holy Ghost, began to speak with other tongues as the Spirit gave them utterance. And they were dwelling at Jerusalem, Jews, devout men out of every nation under heaven.

And from there a fiery church went forth, filled with fire. She was like a flamethrower. She burst forth in a blaze of light. Nothing could stand before her. She stood in sharp contrast to the world in which she was. She was as separated from the world as Noah’s Ark was separated from the floodwaters upon which it rose.

She had two messages. She had a message of denunciation and protest, or protest, and she had a message of salvation and forgiveness through the blood of the Lamb. And for the first, they put her in jail. And for the second, after a while, with tears and sorrow, they turned in numbers and were converted to Jesus, Christ the Lord.

What is the greatest need in this church? That we should have a $45,000 missionary offering this year? No, I hope we get that. But that isn’t the greatest need. The greatest need in this church is that we as individuals and as members of a spiritual, social unit become so right individually and so right harmoniously toward each other that God can, without violating his nature, trust us with the baptism of the Holy Ghost. Brethren, that’s what we need.

I talked to Brother Parris Reidhead. I don’t know any man in the modern day that has a more penetrating, prophetic insight than Parris Reidhead. We sat and talked. I told him about the 102 missionaries the Alliance was going to send out this year. And this man himself, a missionary blazing with missionary fire, said, in a way, Brother Tozer, I’m sorry about that. And I said, why, Brother Paris, why are you sorry? We’re going to send out 102 new missionaries. He said, If we succeed in sending out 102 new missionaries and boost our personnel well over 800, it will set back for years any repentance, any rethinking, any reexamination of our position, and we will travel on our numerical success.

He said, that isn’t what we need the most right now. What we need the most right now is a heart-searching repentance and penitence, a revival within the individuals, a getting right and getting straightened out, and opening our hearts to the mighty down coming of the Holy Ghost. And he said, if we succeed in our present state of sending out 102 new missionaries without a corresponding spiritual rise of the tide, he said, I’m afraid that it’s going to do us harm and not good.

That was not said by a man who doesn’t believe in missions. That was said by a missionary who preaches missions in a way that I scarcely ever heard anybody preach missions. But he’s too wise to be taken in by numbers.

And brethren, what we need in this Church is not greater numbers. What we need in this Church is individual house cleanings, the gossiping, the criticizing, the carnality, the flesh, the selfishness, the extravagance, the cruel waste of life and money and time, the hardness toward each other, the flippancy, I’ll go fishing, I’ll go with you–the aimlessness. What we need is to get that all straightened out.

Don’t say, When the Holy Ghost comes, that’ll straighten out. No, no. The Holy Ghost will never come until it is straightened out. It’s a great mistake to believe that the Spirit of God came to make the people one. They had to be one before He came, being of one accord in one place. Brother McAfee, you know from the Greek that that oneness of accord is a musical term. It comes from music. It means a piano in tune.

Last week the piano was out of tune, and everybody said, What raucous sounds. And then a master came here last Thursday and crawled over the painting things and put it back in tune. Did you notice the difference Friday night? Harmony, harmony, the tune, the things in tune. And it says that they were all together in tune and then suddenly they were all filled with the Holy Ghost.

Don’t pray, oh, send the Holy Ghost to take the gossip out of us. Send the Holy Ghost to take away the bitterness. Send the Holy Ghost to make us one. Never waste your prayers until we get straightened out, the Holy Ghost can never come in any measure upon us.

The greatest evangelist whose feet ever touched the shores of America was Charles Grandison Finney. And Charles G. Finney said bluntly, don’t try to love each other. Don’t try to love each other. The Bible says love everybody. He said, don’t try to love everybody. You can’t love that which is unlovable. He said, get people right with God so they can be loved, and then we’ll love each other normally and naturally. He said, how can you love carnal men, gossips? How can you love critics and bitter fault finders? How can we love without hypocrisy? This great evangelist said, Let’s get straightened out. Come on, confess your sins. Get so people can love you, and you’ll be loved.

Now, that’s exactly backwards from all of this soft, old-maidish palaver that we hear these days. But that man proved that he was right by the fact that he had hundreds of thousands of converts, and the largest percentage of them stood with any man that’s preached since that time—more than Moody, more than any other man.

So, brethren, what we need is revival. What we need is a personal housekeeping. What we need is to use Easter as a ramp to take off from, something to bump us a bit, maybe, and get us started, and then go to our rooms with our Bible and with God. I have this to say to you, that I have read for more than forty years with great avidity.

There is hardly any field except higher mathematics in which I have not read and into which I am a stranger. But everything that God has ever used in me to help others, he has given me on my knees with my open Bible. God has been pleased to use the book, The Pursuit of God, far beyond the borders of the Christian and Missionary Alliance, selling now at the same rate it sold eight years ago when it came out. It is now translated into Chinese. I’ve seen it, some of it.

In almost every chapter, I got on my knees with God alone, seeking cleansing and power and purity and righteousness in my own spirit. Then with a notebook, taking down notes from that writing. Brethren, that’s what we need, more than we need anything else in the wide world. I hope we get forty-five thousand for missions this year, but if we get it at the cost of repentance and housecleaning and righteousness and the fullness of the Holy Ghost. If we get it only by the techniques of men, pressure methods, we’re better off without it.

I want God to give us spiritual ability to sustain anything He does for us, any increase in Sunday school, any increase in giving, anything. I want Him to give us spiritual power and ability to sustain it, stand up under it. Gifts without grace can be deadly, but for every gift I want grace to sustain that gift. That’s what I want for this church. That’s why I often preach to empty seats, as you know, because I will not fool. One of these times, nobody knows when it’ll be, I may fool you.

I talked to some fellow over the radio, and he said, oh, Brother Tozer said, we don’t want you to overdo, we want to keep you. Some preachers from the northwest side, oh, I said, I’ll probably be pallbearer for some of you fellows that are praying for me so hard. I don’t expect to die right away, but I don’t know, but I may. And you don’t know, but you may. Virus can hit you like that, and you’re gone. Brethren, we can’t afford to fool around.

Where are we in our spiritual lives? We’re not back there with the liberal friends talking about a Jesus after the flesh, or back there with our Catholic friends, talking about a Jesus baby in a manger. But surely, we’re not out with our Moravian friends, filled with power and the Holy Ghost, going forth as the greatest missionary impetus since Paul. Remember it, that what gave the impulse to modern missions was not a lot of fellows getting together and saying, I think we ought to go to the heathen, not telling touching stories about the heathen. Not looking at maps or consulting statistics.

What gave the impetus to modern missions and caused such societies like ours to be born were seventy-five Moravians present in a church at once, when they had confessed to each other and gotten right and gotten straightened out, and everybody was expectant, and suddenly there fell upon them a loving nearness of the Savior, instantaneously bestowed.

And they went out of that church hardly knowing whether they were on earth or had already died and gone to heaven. And under the leadership of that great Zinzendorf, they did more in twenty years than the whole church had done in two hundred. And out of it was born the Methodism, Salvation Army, Christian Missionary Alliance, China Inland Mission, you can name all the missionary activities, date their spiritual lineage back to that mighty hour, when only seventy-five people met God.

And they went out from there a happy people. Zinzendorf said, the happiest people in the world are these Moravians. He said, I don’t know anybody, there so happy that it’s wonderful. And they blazed forth. They didn’t do it after the technique of Peter, let’s go fishing. They didn’t meet together a half a dozen of them, and some fellow looked at a map and said, I think we ought to go over here.

But the mighty Holy Ghost came on them, and they went because they couldn’t stay in any place. They went because they had to go. They went led by the fire and the cloud by day and by night. They went all around the world. And they made converts of John Wesley and Charles Wesley. And out of that was born the great movements that have made America Christian.

Brethren, where are we? Where are you? Think about it, will you? Don’t get mad at me. Don’t say he’s getting gloomier as he gets older. I’m not. But I’m just wanting to be honest and wanting God to do something for us. Would you bow your heads in prayer?

O Lord, our Lord, thou knowest we are thy sheep in the mountain. We are thy little band of soldiers surrounded by the enemy. And we don’t want to waste our lives. We don’t want to waste our money. We don’t want to waste our time.

We don’t want to waste our gifts. Oh, we don’t want to be as Peter and Didymus and the rest of them were there, sympathetic, friendly, believing in Thee, believing that Thou art risen, but not knowing what to do, because the Holy Ghost had not yet come. We don’t want to simply follow some tall fellow who doesn’t know what to do either, but because he’s got a strong personality and good leadership, he said, let’s go do this.

We don’t want to waste our time and money and give up our precious, precious days following a man who’s doing something he hasn’t been sent to do. Lord, we’d rather join some little band of unheard-of strange people somewhere and live right and follow thee and be filled and be right, to ride in on the crest of popular religion. Bless these friends, Lord, who listen tonight. They’re here. They must want something. They wouldn’t have come. God bless them. Jesus, take each one by the hand and lead us knee deep, we pray, knee deep into succulent, juicy pastures. Lead us, we pray thee, to the still waters. Lead us, we pray thee, on to the fulfillment of thy promise, the promise of the Father.

Now, Lord, search us, search us. What we were, what we were yesterday or last year, that isn’t anything, Lord. We’ll start now. We’ll start clean now. We’ll confess to thee now. We’ll ask thee to pardon us now. Lord, thou hast heard today, criticism. Thou hast heard today, whispered things. Thou hast seen today, tight mouths and set jaws as people pass each other. Thou hast heard today and seen and beheld the pride and the carnality. O Lord Jesus, we don’t hide behind anything, and we don’t deny anything. We confess it. As a people, as a church, we would confess. We would ask thee to forgive.

We would ask thee to wash us whiter than the snow. And oh, that cleansing stream our sister sang about. That, that cleansing, that fountain, that overwhelming flood of cleansing power. Let it come to one after another of us.

Save us, we pray, from the suave, smooth get-along-with-everybody spirit. And help us to stand, we pray, with shiny eyes and with full understanding of what it means to be a follower of Jesus.

Bless thy people, O Lord, in this great city. Bless every good man of God who stands to declare the truth. Bless him up to the light he has. Bless all the churches up to the light they have. And for everyone, we thank Thee. For every poor sheep, we thank Thee. For every struggling, lame little lamb, we thank Thee. For everybody, Lord, that has looked longingly in Thy direction, we thank Thee, O Lord Jesus. But O Christ, thou knowest the endless rat race, the constant wheel in the middle of a wheel, the buzzing, everlasting squirrel cage of empty activity.

Come, Holy Spirit, heavenly dove. Come with all Thy quickening power. Come, shed abroad a Savior’s love, that it may quicken ours.

If we are not lovable, forgive us, help us to become lovable. Help us to become so people can love us without straining. Help us, Lord, so they won’t have to be hypocrites to say they love us. Bring us into a place where meekness and humility and tenderness and kindness and long-suffering shall prevail. Bring us into the thirteenth of First Corinthians, Lord. It may cost us a lot. It’s hard on the flesh. It’s humbling. But there we know the mighty Holy Ghost will come. There we know he’ll fall and keep falling and keep flowing down and in and out.

Gracious Lord, send us out of here tonight. Don’t let anybody crack a joke at the door. Don’t let anybody be so full of levity that they’ll forget anything’s been said. Send us out, we pray thee, to wonder about our responsibility to this very critical week that lies ahead of us. Mighty Lord, Mighty Lord, the end of the ages are upon us.

The world has grown old, and the judgment draws near, and kingdoms rising against kingdom and nation against nation, and evil men and seducers wax worse and worse, and the love of many waxes cold. And thousands say, Lord, Lord, but do not the things that thou sayest. Save this people, we pray thee, from that quagmire.

Save us, we pray thee, from that hole in the swamp. And float us above it like Noah in the ark, riding above the storm. We ask this in Jesus’ name, Amen.

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Messages

Tozer Talks

” Take Heed How Ye Hear “

June 16, 1957

Now, in the book of Luke, the book of Luke, verses 16-18 of the eighth chapter. Luke 8:16-18. No man, when he hath lighted a candle, covered it with a vessel or putteth it under a bed, but setted it upon a candlestick that they which enter in may see the light. For nothing is secret that shall not be made manifest. Neither anything hid that shall not be known and come abroad. Take heed therefore how you hear. For whosoever hath to him shall be given, and whosoever hath not from him shall be taken even that which he seems to have. Now, verse 18, the first sentence, Take heed, Take heed how you hear. I want to talk a little word about that. Now, the text says, take heed how ye hear.

Now, when the great God would bring salvation to us, He let it ride on a voice. He let it ride on a sound. And salvation was to begin now, where we are, and continue through successive stages of progression until we are glorified. For always remember, that you don’t have full salvation till you’re glorified.

I’m a little shy. I just learned the other day that a president of a well-known Bible Institute or seminary said I was a legalistic, that is Tozer was a legalistic sanctificationist.  I thought that was nice. And I appreciate that. If I were keeping a diary, I’d write that in for my grandchildren. But, I may in some people’s eyes be a legalistic sanctificationist, but I shy away from a lot of the terms that are used even in our own society. I shy away from the term “fourfold gospel.” The God I know isn’t satisfied with four-foldness or five-foldness nor ten-foldness nor twelve-foldness or one hundred-foldness, but He multiplies Himself and magnifies His glory, and surprises us with new and wondrous revelations of Himself that far exceed our little fourfold.

And then I don’t like the word Full Gospel. I suppose I should, but I don’t. I like it when you mean it in it’s great, emotional flow, full salvation, full salvation. Yes, I like that. But to put a word before the gospel, a word of man’s choosing, I don’t quite like it–Full Gospel. You see my brethren, you don’t have full salvation really, until you’re glorified.

Now, it is the will of God that we should be saved by hearing it. And that we should begin to hear now and that we should obey and follow and go on, until we pass through, stage after stage and finally, be glorified at last. And God, in doing all this, proceeds after a known law of life. It is, that man can change. Change and decay in all around I see. And that’s one of the saddest things in the world, that we change so. We change, change and decay, but it’s also one of the most comforting things that I know.

I want to ask a question, now just ask a question and trust to your humility and realism to answer it. Would you like to have a visitation from an angel? Or would you like to have a messenger from heaven, or the messenger of the Annunciation, an angel of the Annunciation, to come to you and say, Mr. McAfee and others, and I could name all of you. I have a message from the Most High God. It is that you remain, and it is so decreed by the Everlasting Father, that as you are at this moment, you shall be eternally, period. You have been, this is the judgment of God, and the decision of the Most High. There’ll be no change from here on. It seems to me, that that alone would be cause enough for one hundred days mourning and thirty days fasting to be told you’ll never change. You’ll remain as you are.

I say, this would be an annunciation so terrible, a declaration so frightening, that I think that instead of it’s bringing happiness to us, it would drive us into despair. For it is the hope of every man who has named the holy name of Jesus, that he’s going to be better tomorrow than he was today. That if he lives through fifty-seven, it will add up to something better than fifty-six. And if he lives through fifty-eight, it will be better than fifty-seven. Not more money, not more prosperity, not better weather, not more health, not that, but that it’ll be a better man in God.

That I say is our hope brethren, that we can change; that we are not fixed, that God Almighty hasn’t cast us in and fixed us by an eternal changeless fire. It’s predicated, this message that we hear from God, this message through the Word, it’s predicated upon our ability to change. If you’ve got a temper tonight like the very devil, it’s possible for you to be so delivered, that the change will be noticed by everybody that knows you near and afar. And no matter what habits you have, or what mental habits or what vices you may have, there is power in the gospel of Jesus Christ to change you so completely, that it’s like changing a beast into an angel.

There is power, there is potential in man to change. You don’t have to continue to be what you are. And it seems to me that’s the first message the world ought to know. You can be different. That’s the first message the world ought to know. And the Gospel should follow that message, for preaching any gospel without that basic knowledge, that I can change, that God can change me. That I am not fixed like concrete, but pliable like clay. And this is a known law of life, and God takes advantage of it. I don’t know, but what the angels that sinned and kept not their first estate may have been fixed eternally, unable to change. At least there’s no hope for them, but for you and me there’s hope. Man can change.

And not only change, but learn. And so there’s the sounding of a voice through the Word, the Living Voice when you open this book. When you open this book, don’t read it as you would read a newspaper or a classic. Expect to hear something in it. Expect it to speak to you, and expect the Voice to vibrate. Expect it to be alive. For the words that I speak unto you, they are Spirit, and they are life. And this book is a live book. It’s only dead to the dead and to the hopelessly, dead. To all others, it’s a live book.

You see my brethren there’s a difference between redemption and salvation. Jesus Christ died on the cross and provided redemption there. And there isn’t anything that can be added to redemption. Redemption is the finished work of Christ on the tree. The finished work that is, He finished that part, of the dying on the cross. That part was done. When Christ said it is finished, He didn’t mean redemption was finished. He meant that part of redemption was finished. The rest of redemption was, that He had to rise again and go to the right hand of the Father. For He saved us by his death, but justifies us by His resurrection. Let’s not bear down too hard on that single phrase, “it is finished.” For when He said, it is finished, He meant the giving out of His life, the pouring out of His life, the atonement, the the sacrifice was made, the Lamb was dying. But if God had not received the Lamb, salvation would never have been, redemption would never have been accomplished.

But God accepted the Lamb, raised Him from the dead, sealed Him and put it on high, and made him Lord and Christ, and thus affected redemption; so, the redemption is all Jesus Christ did for us. From the time He picked up His cross until the time He sat down at the Father’s right hand, that’s redemption. And that’s done and there’s nothing we can add to it. Not the keeping of the Sabbath, not the eating of certain meats, not the long periods of fasting, not even prayer can add anything to that. Long before you existed, when you were only a forethought in the mind of God, it was all done, it was all done and there’s nothing to be added; nothing, nothing to be added.

There are cults, adventism, and others. They are cults that say that there’s something we must add, that it was not finished, not done. There’s something we must add. I believe that to be blasphemy, that there’s anything we must add. Nothing more is to be added. This Man, when he had made one sacrifice for sin, forever sat down on the right hand of God. From henceforth expecting until His enemies be made His footstool. Nothing can be added and any attempt to add is to insult the Savior, who gave His all. That’s redemption. Salvation is something else.

Salvation is redemption applied to the individual life. Redemption is objective. It’s that which is done. It is that which was done before you were born, before America was a nation, before the Crusades, before the fall of Rome. It was that which was done, in that relatively short period of time, redemption, the Lamb was led out to die. He died, rose and sat down, in what the old theologians call, His session, His seating for God. Now that’s redemption.

But, the application of that objective truth to me subjectively, that’s salvation. And so, salvation is both a human and the divine thing. Salvation is divine, in that God did that which man could not do, and redemption is 100% divine. And there’s nothing that any man can do, or angel can do. That’s divine. But salvation has a human element and a human side to it. It means that I’ve got to make a response to that redemptive message. That I have to make a response to it, otherwise it does not become saving to me.

Christ died for Englewood, and redemption was provided for Englewood. But Englewood is not saved. Why? Because Englewood made no response. And the sinners that we know that die every day, are sinners and die in sin, not because they were not redeemed by the blood of Christ, but because they do not respond, they do not hear. Now, it is our part to understand and to hear, to hear and to understand and to respond. Remember that we can sit and hear truth and be none the better for it. Remember that it is the response to truth.

Suppose that you’re ill with a certain kind of disease for which there has been a specific cure discovered. And say, the yaws, is that the name of that disease in the Valley, the yaws. It’s a disease that eats the fingers off and eats the nose off and eats the ears. It’s a terrible thing. And what I can learn, one or two injections of penicillin will cure it. And they are having difficulty over there making the heathen understand they’re not gods. And that this is not a Jesus needle, and it’s not a miraculous thing.

But suppose we had a terrible disease here and suppose you had it. And there was a specific that was discovered that would cure it in twenty-four hours. And suppose that a man got up before you and for forty-five minutes, lectured on that medicine, and told what it would do, the cure it would affect, and then suppose that he threw the meeting open and twenty-five people got up and said, I want to testify that what that man said is true. I had that disease, I took that medicine, and look at me now. I can do a day’s work and feel good and sleep, as my father used to say, like a top. Well, has anything been done for you yet? No, you’re sitting down there. You’re hearing a man tell of the merits of a certain medicine. You’re hearing people testify that that medicine cured them, but nothing’s happened to you. You still have your disease.

What are you supposed to do? You’re supposed to hear it, believe in it, and do something about it. That’s exactly what it is in salvation. The blood of Jesus Christ is the medicine of immortality. And the dying and rising and living and pleading of the Savior is redemption without anything man can add. It is God Almighty’s universal panacea. But you’ve heard that talked about until it’s old stuff to you. And until you have heard with faith, and then risen to do something about it, and apply it to your own self by obedient faith, it doesn’t mean anything. It’s all objective, all outside of you. It must become subjective and get inside of you. No confirmatory work has to be done. We need to look for nobody, to nobody for confirmation. It’s all been done.

In the beginning was the Word, and there’s a speaking word. And because in the beginning was the Word and you were created in the image of the Word, you can understand the Word. And even though fallen like the man, the young man far from home in that fire country among the swine, it’s still because you were made in the image of God, and in the beginning was the Word and all things were made by the Word and without Him was not anything made that was made. You have in you the ability to hear the Word. Take heed, how ye hear, for redemption is yonder. Salvation is when redemption that is yonder becomes present and within us by obedience and faith. So, there is a Voice, and it sounds living and vibrant all through the Word. But you know, there are different kinds of hearers. I’ve looked through the Scriptures to notice the different kinds of hearers. Don’t get braced for long sermon, I’m going to be brief.

There are a number of a number of hearers, perhaps there are six or seven of them here and enough for each one for a sermon. But I’m going to condense them and point out what what kind of hearers we may be. For instance, here’s a faithless hearer, a hearer without faith. Israel had the gospel preached unto them, said Paul, but it did not help them because it was not mixed with faith. There was no faith in the hearts of the people that heard it. So, it’s possible to be a hearer without any faith at all.

And then, here’s a dull hearer. A dull hearer is a bored hearer. Do you know that if you could take all the dullness that there is in Protestant religion and bottle it, and if you could burn it, you could heat the whole United States all the winter of 1957, and if it was like gasoline, you could run all the trucks on the highways for the next five years with it. Because boredom is one thing that is pretty present in the church of Christ.

And somebody will say immediately, well, you preachers make it so and there’s a lot of truth in that, a lot of truth in that. We do. We do. We talk about things the most important in a tone of voice that has no interest whatever, no vibrancy. We give the impression of, so what. I know that boredom is partly the result of the pulpit. But also, boredom is partly the result of people trying to feed people who aren’t hungry, and trying to get people to seek God, who don’t want God. And trying to get people to get their life insured, who don’t think they’re going to die. And trying to get people to get ready for our second world when they don’t believe there’s any more than one, or they live as if they believed in only one world. A lot of that boredom, that dullness, is a result of hearing and hearing and not doing anything about it.

Then, there’s the critical hearer. I find him in the Bible, too. He’s the fellow that wants to know about the grammar and if it isn’t quite what it should be. He won’t listen, and he wants to know about the delivery, and is it, is it forceful? When I go anywhere and I’m advertised as a forceful preacher. I always remember what they said about the egg that’s fairly fresh. Is there anybody that wants to eat a fairly fresh egg? It’s what you call damning with faint praise. But there’s the critical hearer. Is the preacher forceful? And how are his illustrations? Do you know what? If you knew that at 12 o’clock tonight, the sound of the trumpet should echo through the land. And all the old forgotten graveyards of our Puritan fathers should be visited by the Holy Ghost, and the dead should rise and the living changed, the poorest preacher in Chicago would be an orator in your ears, and you’d be glad to hear any little thing, critical hearers.

Then, there’s the forgetful hearer; and Satan steals the seed. And there’s the neglectful hearer, who has good intentions and his good intentions are always put for his deeds. He never, he’s always intending to do it. Did you ever stop to think how much you’d have done if you had done what you had intended to do? Did you ever think how far you’d be out along on the highway toward heaven if you had done all that you intended to do? If you had sought God as you intended to seek Him? No. Hell is paved with good intentions, our Fathers said.

Then, I read in my Bible of the trembling hearers, when that jailer trembled and fell down and said, what shall we do? Oh, what shall we do? He said, believe on the Lord Jesus Christ and thou shalt be saved. And there’s a submissive hearer as we read about matters in Cornelius’s household. There’s a congregation that anybody could have preached to.  It wouldn’t have cost you one dollar; do you know it? It would have cost you a dollar,

Now, the price of souls is going up these days. Peter preached and 3,000 were converted, and the overhead was exactly nothing. It didn’t cost anybody a dime, not a dime. But it’s been going up now in recent times. And so, it takes thousands and thousands of dollars to rescue one sinner, because we’re not submissive. Cornelius’s household didn’t cost anything to get them converted, because they said, here we are Lord, ready to hear whatever Thou has to say to us. So, Peter preached the gospel and while he was speaking to them, the Holy Ghost fell on them. That’s because they were ready for it. They were a people submissive and prepared and ready to hear what God the Lord will speak.

Ah, how precious is the little time that we’ve got left, how precious is the little time.  And how vital is this little time, to the long, long future that lies before us. Take heed how you hear. Some of you have had the good fortune, and the misfortune, to be brought up in Christian homes where you heard the Word from the time you were born. They say that preacher’s children are sometimes the very hardest to reach and the ones that go the farthest astray.

That isn’t always true and history will show that it isn’t true. I once saw a chart of how many of the presidents of the United States and vice presidents and the leaders everywhere who were preacher’s children; and great leaders, college presidents, great missionary statesman, preacher’s children. So, they’re not as bad as they’re said to be, but I think I know why they sometimes hear in a bored way because they’ve just have it from the time they can remember, just from the time they can remember and sometimes not much life in them, they’re dull, routine, routine religion is like a routine kiss–who wants that? I ask you now, who wants that? And who wants routine religion? If it isn’t involuntary and impulsive, it isn’t religion at all.

And we grind it out sometimes, and make the poor little fellows sit. Mrs. Dietz used to say, God says to the little children squirm and we say to the little children, now sit still. That’s in Sunday school class, God says squirm, and we say, now sit still. And we make them sit still and listen to that which they don’t understand and wonder why they’re bored. And yet my friend, if we only knew it, we only knew it, that boy, that Word, that dual message, for it is a dual message. It’s a message of reproof and a declaration of intention. The reproof is, repent ye, and the intention is to save you through the gospel of Jesus Christ.

So, if you will hear that message, now dig at your heart and dig up your fallow ground, and get free from the dull boredom of it all. And shake yourself and say, am I a faithful is hearer, or do I believe what I’m hearing? Am I hearing interestedly, or am I a dull, bored hearer? Am I a critical hearer? Am I a humble, submissive hearer, ready to hear what God the Lord will speak. It’s going to mean a tremendous lot to you in that great Day, which can’t be very far away.

It’s going to mean everything in that great Day. You can change. You’re not frozen, fixed by fiat of God, to be what you are now, but you can be changed. The power of the gospel is a transforming, recreating in power. And it can change characters. It can change dispositions. Somebody says, Mr. Tozer, my disposition is so bad that I would poison heaven if I went there; and wouldn’t we all. But there’s deliverance, there’s change, there’s possibility lying here. The Book tells us, hear the voice, come unto me. Hear the voice. It says lo, I stand at the door and knock. Any man who hears and opens, I will come in. And all such passages, both in Old and New Testaments, they ring with invitation and warn and console and plead, hear the Voice. Take heed to how you hear!

Some of you young people have been reared on the Sunday school. You’ve been brought-up, you were brought here when you’re still in your first year and dedicated. You can likely to become dull; I want to warn you. You had better ask God Almighty to put life and the nerve inside your soul and don’t let it die, by the grace of God. What about it tonight? What about you young fellow? What about it?

Somebody wrote me about a young child, Tommy their son, I guess maybe five years old, a son of one of the teachers at Nyack. And they said, let’s go down to the Alliance church in Nyack and hear Mr. Tozer. And Tommy said, oh, I heard that man once. And I wonder how many little Tommy’s there are who feel the same way about it? I heard him.

Well, I admit that sometimes it’s pretty the same and some time it’s pretty dull. But, it’s a thrilling, thrilling wondrous life-giving fact that however poor the preacher, God is calling men to Himself. And if we will but listen. What about you?

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” The Kingdom Lies Not in Words “

June 16, 1957

I want to read a section from the book of 1 Corinthians, fourth chapter. Let a man says Paul, let a man, so count of us, as of the ministers of Christ, and stewards of the mysteries of God. Moreover, it is required in stewards that a man be found faithful. But with me it is very small thing that I should be judged of you. Yea, I judge not mine own self. For I know nothing by myself; yet am I not hereby justified: but he that judgeth me is the Lord. He said, these charges you bring against me, I don’t know any of them that are true, but he said, I’m not hiding behind that. He that judges me is the Lord. Therefore, judge nothing before the time until the Lord come, who both will bring to light the hidden things of darkness and we’ll make manifest the counsels of the heart. And then shall every man have praise of God. In verse 15, he says, for though he has 10,000 instructors in Christ, yet have you not many fathers, for in Christ Jesus, I have begotten you. Since you believe, said Paul, through my preaching, 10,000 people have instructed you, but don’t forget, I preached the gospel that won you, Wherever I beseech you be ye followers of me. For this cause have I sent unto you Timotheus, who is my beloved son, and faithful in the Lord, who shall bring you into remembrance of my ways which be in Christ, as I teach everywhere in every church. Now some are puffed up, as though I would have not come to you. But I will come to you shortly, if the Lord will. And then I will know not the speech of them, which are puffed up with the power. For the kingdom of God is not in Word, but in power. What will ye? Shall I come unto you with a rod, or in love, and in the spirit of meekness? Or are you going to accept the truth and begin to obey it so that I can come in love and in the spirit of meekness? Now, that’s what Paul said in partly in that fourth chapter of First Corinthians epistle.

Now Paul, had authority, there’s no getting around that. He had the authority of the chief apostle. He was appointed by the Lord for several things, one of them being to receive and shape church truth. The man Paul received the revelation from God which was behind. Jesus said, I have many things to say to you, but you can’t receive them yet. But when the Spirit of God comes, He will reveal these things, and He will take of Mine and will show them unto you. And that Spirit that came entered to Paul when Ananias prayed for him. He was filled with that same Holy Spirit. And he received that which was behind. And he was the mold in which God poured it. And then he was also appointed by the Lord to set up a system and polity for the church, for there was system and there was polity. And he was appointed by the Lord to embody all authority that there was in the meantime. And then, perhaps most important of all, to show by example, the Christian way. He said, I sent to you Timothy, my beloved son and faithful in the Lord, and He will bring to your remembrance my ways, which be in Christ.

See the man of God here was having his authority under cut by schismatic men who came in and taught that Paul was not a real apostle. They said the reason Paul isn’t a real apostle, he never saw the Lord. The other apostles walked with Jesus while he walked among men, but this man Paul was not, is not an apostle. And we can prove it by the fact that he never walked, he came after Jesus died and had risen. That was their argument. They overlooked the vision Paul had of Jesus of one born out of due time.

And these schismatic and dividers of the church had to repudiate Paul’s authority in order to establish their own. And they attacked Paul and as far as Paul was personally concerned, he said, it didn’t matter. He said, it’s a very small thing with me that I should be judged by you. As far as he was concerned, he didn’t care. He said, I don’t even judge my own self, I’m in the hand of God. But he knew that if he was going to have any authority, he was going to have to establish that authority. And so, we sent Timothy, to tell them about Paul and straighten them out. And then finally, he warns them this, he said, now I’m coming in the will of God one of these times to you. And it’s alright for you while I’m not there, to listen to these schismatics and these puffed-up fellows. Isn’t it strange that there isn’t anything new under the sun?

I remember years ago, there used to be a writer for The Daily News. What was his name? He died finally, but a very wonderful writer up on the literary level. And he once went to see the old Greek play Lysistrata. And he came back after seeing it and he reported it in his column. He said, I went to see the old Greek play by Aristophanes. And he said, I came away deeply discouraged. And he said, here’s what discouraged me. Not that it wasn’t well written, not that it wasn’t well done. But he said, I came away convinced that nobody had been able to think of a new joke in 2400 years, that everything old Aristophanes wrote into his funny play, he said, is floating all around here.

Now, that was a worldly man talking about a worldly thing. But the same thing is true in the spiritual life. So many of us imagine that we’re original. There’s nobody original except Adam. And if you find puffer-uppers and men who are puffed up now, Paul wrote in the eighteenth verse, now some are puffed up, and some are puffed up thinking that I won’t come. But when I come, he said, and I’ll do it shortly, I’ll make a test. And I’ll not test the words of these men, but I’ll test their power. For the kingdom of God is not in word, but in power.

Now, here’s what I want particularly to emphasize. The kingdom of God doesn’t lie in words. I am among a few who are trying to tell the church that in this day. I was encouraged Thursday, as you know, I spoke and Brother McAfee sang and we kind of took Wheaton over Thursday. And after the last talk, Dr. Edmond came over and said, well, God bless A.W., keep telling them. There are a few that see it, but not very many yet. But re-see, or see over again, see again what they saw back there, that the kingdom of God is not in words but in power.

You see, the words are the form of truth. They’re the outward image of truth only. And they can never be the inward essence. And words are incidental. They’re incidental. If I were to say, now everybody here that can speak Swedish, bring your New Testament next Sunday. And everybody that speaks German bring yours, Norwegian yours. And so, we have a half a dozen different languages. And I would say now read that fourth of Revelation. It would be quite a revelation or First Corinthians. It would be quite a revelation to us to hear that the words were only incidental. It was the meaning that matters.

Somewhere in the middle of this all there is a meaning, a spiritual meaning. And the six different people embody that meaning in six different set of words. And those words were not alike, or only occasionally alike. We ought to remember that. We ought to know it. The kingdom of God is not in words. They’re only incidental and they never can be fundamental. When fundamentalism ceased to emphasize fundamental meanings and began to emphasize fundamental words, and we shifted from meanings to words and from power to words, we began to go downhill.

Now, there’s an essence of truth. And it may follow the form of words, as the kernel in an English walnut follows the configuration of the shell. But the shell is not the kernel and the kernel is not the shell. And so, while the truth follows the form of words, it sometimes deserts it. A great error is in holding the form to be essence, and putting the kingdom of God in words, so that if you’ve got the words right, you’ve got the whole thing. And if you can get a better set of words, you have more truth. Not necessarily at all.

Now, words deceive even good, honest Christian people. They deceive because we feel that if we mumble words, there’s certain safety in mumbling words, and that there’s a power to frighten off Satan if you mumble certain words. Now, my brethren, if a man is as just as plainly ordinary as I am, and not afraid of words, would you ask me please why the devil should be afraid of words? The devil, who is the very essence, was of ancient created wisdom back there, and had the perfection of beauty and the fullness of wisdom, and whose power lies in his shrewdness and in his intellectual brilliance, can you tell me how that devil should suddenly become so foolish as to be afraid of a word, or afraid of a motion, or afraid of a symbol? To keep the devil away, I put a chain around my neck, or to keep the devil away, I make a motion with my fingers in front of my face. I wonder what a man without any arms would do, an amputee, if the devil came after him, and he couldn’t make the sign of the cross. I hadn’t thought of that till now, but it’s worth considering anyhow.

But the devil isn’t afraid of words and he isn’t afraid of symbols. You can surround yourself with symbols, religious symbols, Protestant or Catholic or Jewish, and you haven’t helped yourself in the slightest, because the devil isn’t afraid of a symbol. He knows better. Do you ever see the little child it’s afraid of a false face? Put a false face on and the little runs and yells. But if the child did that when he’s sixteen, you’d be ashamed of him. We assume as we grow up, we know that false faces don’t mean anything. And words don’t mean anything as words. But if we imagine if we say certain words, we will have power, they have power to bring good. If we say certain other words, they have power to fend off the devil.

And there is safety in mumbling words. And if we fail to mumble the words, we’re in for it. And if we remembered to mumble the words, we’re all right. That’s just paganism under another form. And Paul told them plainly, for these were pagans, recently but only lately converted. And he said, you’ve got a lot of you Greeks, you’re Greek and the Greeks love oratory, and they love fine language and they produce a lot of fine literature. And he said, you Greeks, you love fine words, but he said, I don’t come to you with fine words. I come to you, in this second chapter, I determined not to know anything among you, save Jesus Christ and Him crucified. And my speech and my preaching was not with enticing words of man’s wisdom, but instead a demonstration of Spirit and of power, that your faith should stand in the wisdom, not stand in the wisdom of men, but in the power of God. So, we ought to throw this off. You may feel a little bit mentally naked when you throw all this off. You know, it’s one thing that we do when you strip superstition away from a man, he feels terribly naked for a moment. But until we strip off our superstition, the Lord can’t put on us a cloak of truth.

Now, the Kingdom lies in power. Its essence is in power. The gospel is not the statement that Christ died for our sins, according to the Scriptures. The gospel is the statement that Christ died for our sins, according to the Scriptures plus the Holy Ghost in that statement to give it meaning and power. And just the statement itself, never will do it. Have you wondered at times as I have, why those churches, some of them, who drill their young people from their childhood in the Catechism, and teach them the doctrines so that they’re positively instructed in the word of the Truth, yet somehow strangely failed to get them through to the new birth. Have you noticed that? And we’re not referring by name to any denomination. And I have nothing against the Catechism. I think it’s a fine thing for young people.

But have you noticed that there are whole generations of so called Christians who are drilled in the Catechism, and who know the doctrine, and can recite the gospel as well as the law, and still never manage to break through to the new birth. They never come through to that shining wonder of inward renewal. The reason is, they are taught that the power lies in the words. And if you get the words, you’re all right. Whereas Paul says, the kingdom of God doesn’t lie in words at all. The kingdom of God lies in the power that indwells those words. And you can’t have the power without the words, but you can have the words without the power, and a lot of people do. So that the power of the Spirit operating through the Word, that’s the gospel. It’s the statement of the fact that Christ died for our sins, according to the Scriptures. That He rose again, and that He was seen of many and that He’s at the right hand of God and will forgive those who believe on Him. That’s the gospel in its shell, that’s the shell of the gospel, but the power must lie in there, or there’ll be no life in it.

So Paul appealed away from man given authority. And he appealed away from talk, however eloquent. And he appealed away from even his own position, and appealed direct to the power of the risen Lord who manifest true the Spirit. And he said, I want you to know, and I sent Timothy to try and straighten you out and remind you, that it’s the power of God that talks, not a man’s mouth.

Now, the appeal, I say was to the power of the risen Christ. And my brethren, if this church and the people who compose it, are not living in a constant miracle, they’re not Christians at all, because the Christian life is a miracle. It is what the ark of Noah was in the day of the flood. It is completely separated from that flood and yet floating upon it, completely separated from it. It was what Jesus was when he walked among men, right in the middle of them and yet separate from sinners and higher than the highest heavens. There operates within the true Body of Christ a continual energizing by the Spirit that makes a continual miracle. A Christian is not somebody who’s believed only. A Christian is somebody who has believed in power. And the working of the power is a moral power. It has power to expose sin to the sinner’s heart.

Nobody will ever be truly saved until he knows he’s a sinner. And nobody will ever know he’s a sinner, truly know he’s a sinner by simply threatening him or warning him or telling him. You can go to a man and say you’re a sinner. You swear and lie and you’re wrong. You’re evil. He’ll grin and shake his head and say, I know, I know I shouldn’t do those things. But I guess we’re all human. You haven’t convinced him. You can read Plutarch and Aristotle, and Herbert Spencer and all the rest of the books of ethics, and showing him he’s dead wrong, and he still will never know what it is to be a lost sinner. You can threaten him that if he doesn’t look out and doesn’t straighten out his ways, the atom bomb will get him or Khrushchev will be over. And you’re still haven’t convinced them. You haven’t told him anything he didn’t know.

But when the Holy Ghost is come said Jesus, He will convict the world of sin and of righteousness and of judgment. When Peter preached at Pentecost, the Scripture says, being pricked in their hearts, they cried out and said, what shall we do to be saved? And that word pricked they say, Wayman says, is a word stronger and deeper than the word pierced, where they pierced the heart of Jesus with a spear. The words of Peter in the Holy Ghost, the new, baptized prophet and apostle, the words of Peter penetrated like, like a Donee spear, so deep, deeper than the spear had gone into the heart of Jesus on the cross, when forthwith came water and blood.

So my brethren, the Holy Spirit isn’t something that we can argue about. Or somebody that we can say, well, you believe your way and I believe my way. The Holy Spirit is an absolute necessity in the church, an ungrieved Holy Spirit. Because there’s a power in the Spirit to expose sin and revolutionize and convert and create holy men and women, and nothing else can do it. Words won’t do it. Instructions won’t do it. Line upon line, precept upon precept won’t do it. It takes the power to do it.

And then it’s a persuasive power, convince and persuade and break down resistance. And it’s a worship power, to create reverence and excite ecstasy. If we were to put statues all around this place, and have candles burning here, and have beautiful Italian made glass, colored windows, pictures of shepherds and altars and all that, and I were to come in here in a long black robe, you’d have a sense of, well, I think you, probably you being you, you’d probably have difficulty restraining your mirth. But if you’ve been brought up to it, you wouldn’t. You’d think that reverence.

No Brethren, reverence is not created by beautiful windows, although I like to see them, nor by symbols. Reverence is the astonished awe that comes to the human heart when God is seen. And that, the Holy Ghost can do through the Word, and that nobody else can do. I can imitate holy tones, all I will, and we can try to be just as religious and ecclesiastical as we can and still want when it’s all over, the feeling we get is psychological or aesthetic at best. But when the Holy Ghost came upon the early church, they darest not join themselves to them. And in 1 Corinthians, the sinners fell on their faces and said, God’s in this place of a truth.

So, there’s a power to bring reverence to excite ecstasy, to bring worship. It lies in the Word when it’s given in power. And the power of the Holy Spirit brings a magnetic, is a magnetic power to draw us to Christ. And will exalt Him above all else and above all others. And in this church, we must demand more than correct doctrine, though we dare not have less than correct doctrine. More than right living though, we do not have less than right living. More than a friendly atmosphere, though we dare not have less than a friendly atmosphere. We must demand that the Word of God be preached in power, and that we hear it in power. For in First Thessalonians, you remember, Paul wrote and said to them there that the gospel came not unto you, I know a little better, he said, that you’re the elect of God, and here’s how I know it. Our gospel came not under you in Word only, but also in power, and in the Holy Ghost and in much assurance. That is, not only Paul had the power, but the gospel could run in power, because it was heard by them in power.

And so, when the Spirit of God, the Spirit of God through the Word, preaches in power and it’s heard in power, then the objectives of God are wrought out, and men are made holy, and sins forgiven, and the work of redemption is done.

And briefly now, the way to attain it, is through prayer and faith and surrender, the old-fashioned ways, and I know of none other. Prayer and faith and surrender, pray and as you pray, surrender, and as you surrender, believe, and that’s for all of us. It’s for all of us. You as God’s people have every right in the Scriptures, every scriptural right to demand to hear the Word in power, and if you do not hear the Word and power, you have a right to rise up and ask why. If you’re hearing nothing but teaching, nothing but instruction, if there is no evidence of God in it, then the preacher can’t say I appeal to God, to say whether this is true or not. If this can’t be, then you have a right to demand somebody come that can.

On the other hand, any man who stands here to preach has a right to expect that you believe in power. And that we’re so close to God and so surrendered and so full of faith, and so prayerful that the word of God can work in power. Shall we not believe God for that kind of church here? For the kingdom of God is not in words. The kingdom of God is in power. And you can take the little Alliance manual and read it and sign your name under the bottom of every page. It won’t mean one lonely thing to you. But, if the word of God is in power, it means everything to you.

So, let us trust God for correct doctrine. We dare not have less, but we must have more. Right living, we dare not have less, but we must have more. Let’s be a friendly church, but beware lest it be simply a friendly church. It’s amazing how socio-religious or religio-social atmospheres can permeate a church so that it’s hard to tell which is of the Holy Ghost and which is simply nice social contacts. I believe that both ought to be there, and I believe they can both be there. And I believe that when the early church met and broke bread, they fulfilled both their spiritual communion and their social fellowship. So, there’s no reason why they can’t be fused. There isn’t any reason why the warm, cordiality of social fellowship can’t be made and can exist with the indwelling Holy Ghost, so that when we meet and shake hands and sing and pray and talk together, we’re doing both these things. We’re having social fellowship, plus, the mighty union and communion of the Holy Ghost. Let’s be very careful that it’s both. Not one only, to try to destroy or prevent social contact and social fellowship is to grieve the Spirit for the Spirit made us for each other. And He meant that there should be social fellowship and friendliness together. He meant that we should break bread, not only formally in a church, but be times when we meet. And He meant that we should know each other by our first names and have our social fellowships. He meant it, and the churches that try to destroy that, succeed only in getting a lopsided and fanatical type of church. But be very careful my friends, lest that we don’t mistake the one for the other.

So, let’s have a friendly church, and let’s have a morally right church, and let’s have a church where correct doctrine is taught. But let’s also have a church of which any man can come here, and say when he goes away, I know the entrance I had unto you, that I could preach unto you not in Word only, but also in power and in the Holy Ghost, and in much assurance, because you are the kind of people that could take it. I say this is most important. For the kingdom of God lies not in words, but in power.

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