“Clouds of Concealment“
Clouds of Concealment
Pastor and author A.W. Tozer
March 3, 1957
Now you have been listening to me over these last weeks, and again we ask, what is the pastor advocating? What is this that he’s preaching? Well, I’m concerned that it be nothing else but Christ, because anything anybody offers you that is not just more of Christ is false. I am concerned that in doctrinal foundation it be the Scripture, and in its whole spiritual mood it be apostolic, and that it be in harmony with the best in the historic church, the best in devotional literature, the best in hymnody, and the best in biography. And yet, why does this preaching sound different? Why does it sound strange when compared with much so-called, and true, gospel preaching?
Well, I want to tell you this before I enter in really to the message for tonight, but I want to tell you that about a generation ago, textualism captured the gospel church. By the gospel church, I mean the fundamentalist church, the gospel church, those who believe in Christ as Savior and accept Him as such. And the scribes and the lawyers took over and set up a hierarchy in schools and Bible conferences and churches, and they all went over to it, and the rule became a rigid adherence to words.
Now, it so happens that I believe and have never believed anything else in my entire life, but in the plenary, that means full, verbal inspiration of the Scriptures as originally given. Now, you’ll be honest with me, and if you have reason to quote me, quote this, that I believe and have always believed as a responsible Christian teacher and believer in the plenary, verbal inspiration of the Scriptures as originally given.
But the problem was, and still is, that by school I don’t mean any particular school, I mean a school of thought. The verbal inspiration, the doctrine of verbal inspiration; rigor mortis set into it, and with the result that the religious imagination was stultified, the religious yearning was choked down, the religious aspirations slapped down, and the longing, aspiring wings of the children of God were clipped like a hen in a hen coop, and we were told to shut up and like what we had, that this was it.
Brethren, do you know what happened to this? The result of this thing, with the language of the New Testament persisting and the spirit of the New Testament grieved, do you know what happened? Well, I’ll tell you. There came about a revolt, a revolt against the scribes in two directions. The masses of evangelicals revolted without knowing they were revolting. They didn’t know it. It was the gasping of a fish in a bowl where there’s no oxygen.
The masses revolted into religious entertainment until the gospel churches are now camping on the doorstep of the theater, and then over against that and on the opposite side, some of the more intelligent fundamentalists and evangelicals revolted into evangelical rationalism, which is already busy making its peace with liberalism, and the result is that we just don’t hear what this that I’m speaking about.
It sounds strange to hear anyone preaching as I preach because on one side we have the masses saying, I’ve accepted Jesus, whoop-dee-doo, let’s go and have fun, and on the other side, serious reverent men thinking their way perilously near to the borders of liberalism. And the New Testament message, objectives, and methods have been allowed to lie dormant, and in the name of the lordship of Jesus, which is lordship in name only, we have introduced our own message, our own objectives, and then have thought out our own methods for achieving those objectives, which are in many cases not scriptural at all.
Now, my brethren, I want to ask you, is it heresy to yearn and pray and long after God? Is it heresy? Does it constitute a radical mind to yearn and pray and fight? Do you remember what I read the first night? The great prayer in the “Cloud of Unknowing,” God, I beseech thee so for to cleanse the intent of mine heart with the unspeakable gift of thy grace that I may perfectly love thee and worthily praise thee.
To long perfectly to love God and worthily to praise Him, and to mean more than words when you say it, mean if it costs you everything, is that heresy? Should they put a man in jail for it? Should he be ostracized for it? In the light of our hymnody, in the light of our devotional books back to Paul, in the light of the biography of the saints? No, I think not.
Now, I want to read to you just a brief little thing here from Nicephorus, from a book called the “Philokalia.” He starts out, he wants to help us Christians forward to know God, to do what “The Cloud” called being one with God, united with God. Now, I want you Bible Christians to ask yourself the question, could I go along with this?
Now, this Nicephorus Nicephorus was a Greek Christian. That is, he was over on the Greek side. He wasn’t a Protestant, and he wasn’t a Roman Catholic and he wasn’t a Martoma and he wasn’t a Coptic nor a Nestor. He belonged to over on the Greek side, but he was a saint. And he wrote a little book to help people to go on with God. And he said, you who desire to capture the wondrous divine illumination of our Savior, Jesus Christ. Do you believe in this, and who seek to feel the divine fire in your heart?
Now, here was a scholar and a saint and he wrote it into a book in the, I think, 16th century, which is a classic and is recognized as such. And he dared to use the word, who seek to feel the divine fire in your heart and strive to sense and experience the feeling of reconciliation with God. Who, in order to unearth the treasure buried in the field of your heart and to gain possession of it, have renounced everything worldly. Who desire the candles of your soul to burn brightly, even now, not in the future.
We have become so dispensationalistic-minded that we’ve pushed everything into the future, everything into the future. But this man says, you who desire the candles of your soul to burn brightly, even now. And Peter said, in this present world, and who for this purpose have renounced all this world, who wish by conscious experience, conscious experience, you’d think he was a modern psychologist, to know and to receive the kingdom of heaven existing within you. He said what I’m teaching all the time, that Christ dwells in the heart of every believer. Know ye not that Christ is in you except ye be reprobate. And if a man have not the Spirit of Christ, he’s none of his. And the riches of the minds lie potentially there.
But we have been forbidden to believe it or forbidden to say so. And we have been choked down and the oxygen cut off and our wings clipped and our longings chilled. And that’s why when I say sounds different and strange and people say what is this new doctrine, it’s no new doctrine at all.
Now my brother, I want to talk a little bit tonight about the cloud of concealment. Now Christ has made full atonement for us. Let’s start there. Christ has made full atonement. Christ has for sin atonement made, what a wonderful Savior.
Would you like to hear it said for you by somebody else that could say it better than the theologians? Little Lady Julian, here’s what she said. The precious amends or satisfaction our Lord hath made for man’s sin, turning all our blame into endless honor. Could it be said sweeter than that? The precious amends our Lord hath made for man’s sin, turning all our blame into endless honor. Paul said a little differently. He said where sin abounded, grace does much more abound, turning all our blame into endless honor.
Now God’s face is turned toward us. I want you to think like that tonight. Don’t let the devil cheat you. Don’t let doubt assail you. Don’t let anything I say or anybody has ever said cheat you from this glorious knowledge, that the face of God is turned toward you, and as a Christian the smiling face of God is turned toward you.
Why then do we not enjoy, now to use these words again, why then do we as Christians not capture the wondrous divine illumination of the Savior Jesus Christ? Why do we not feel the divine fire in our hearts? Why do we not strive to sense and experience, or why do we not sense and experience the feeling of reconciliation with God as well as the knowledge of it? And why do we not gain possession of it? Oh, I know they dismiss it by saying it, your position and your possession, but that can get so cold as dry ice.
Why is it that the candles of our soul do not burn more brightly even now? Why is it that we do not have the conscious experience and know and receive the Kingdom existing within us? Well, I’ll tell you why. Because there is between us and the smiling face of God a cloud of concealment.
Now my friends, there is never such a thing as a day when the sun doesn’t shine. In some of the cities, I think it’s Atlanta, Georgia, maybe I’m wrong, but one of the southern cities offers, a newspaper offers, that they will give all of that run, that day’s run to the newspaper free of charge if the sun doesn’t shine somewhere. Is it Atlanta? St. Petersburg? Well now let me tell you something, that the sun shines every day and there never has been a day from the hour God said, let the sun rule the day that the sun hasn’t shone. But there are dark days and misty days and cloudy days and days that get so dark you have to light the lights and days that get so dark that in the country the chickens go to roost. I’ve seen it.
Now there are dark days and yet the sun is shining just as brightly as on the brightest clearest day in June. Why then does it not shine on the earth? Because there is between the sun and the earth a cloud of concealment. The sun is all right, the sun is up there grinning broadly and just as bright and just as hot and just as radiant as ever. But he doesn’t get through to the earth because there is a cloud of concealment.
Now what is this cloud my brother? You know what it is from the standpoint of the weather but what is it as applied to Christians? Why? What’s the matter? Well it’s the cloud of concealment, a cloud that we allow to be over us as Christians.
And what is this cloud? Atonement has been made, there’s nothing to do for it’s all been done. Not a drop of blood needs to be shed, not a spear needs to enter a holy heart, not a tear nor a groan nor a drop of sweat, not a moment in agony. Death hath no more dominion over Him, it is done, it is finished, it is forever done.
And the face of God shines down upon us. And even upon Christians there’s that cloud, or above Christians there’s that cloud of concealment betwixt thee and thy God as the Brother says. Now what is that cloud? Well, it’s a cloud, it may be one thing, it may be many things.
There is the cloud of pride for instance. You are your father’s child and heaven is your home. And yet for a lifetime you may go without the wondrous divine illumination of the Savior Jesus Christ, without feeling the divine fire in your heart, or sensing or experience the feeling of reconciliation with God, and without the candles of your soul burning brightly, because you allow a cloud of pride to be over your head. And the devil says, well God hates you, God has turned His back; the devil lies. The back of God has never been turned to a child of God nor to a repentant sinner since the hour Jesus groaned and died and said, it is finished.
The face of God has turned our way. But we allow this cloud of pride and the cloud of stubbornness. There are some people that are just plain stubborn. They will not bend, they will not yield, neither to man or God or to anybody except the law and death, they will not. And so this cloud of stubbornness, God complained about Israel. He said your neck is brass and your forehead is hard, and He couldn’t get them to yield.
And then there is the cloud of self-will. Now self-will is a very religious thing, and it may become religious and get converted and enter right with you into the church when you join and with you with the chamber when you pray. Yet it’s self-will, and self-will, you’ll note, is good-natured only when it’s getting its own way. And it’s grouchy and ill-tempered when it is crossed. Now you think about that. Is your surrender to God sufficient so that you can be spiritual even when you’re cross?
And then there’s ambition. And you know there’s even religious ambitions. There are people that are religiously ambitious for something perhaps that isn’t in the will of God or that’s for self-aggrandizement. And the result is that it’s a cloud above them between them and their God.
Now there’s a little proverb, and in the Knox translation it reads like this. It rather amuses me because it’s so true and it is such a perfect picture of the human heart. He says, tripped by his own folly, a man eats his heart out, finding fault even with God. And you find Christians like that. Tripped by their own folly, they eat their heart out, finding fault even with God, having what God calls, a controversy with Me.
And then everything I claim for myself. Now this is the one thing I’ve been preaching I suppose that’s hard to grasp. That I’ve got to give up everything, that this pastorate that I have here, must go on the block, and I must be ready at any moment to give it up and let it ride away on any sermon I preach or any position I take. I dare not stick to it. My job as editor of the weekly, my position in the religious world, everything has to be on the block and ready to go.
If I own it, it is a cloud over my head and it becomes a cloud of obscurity that nothing will penetrate. And people try to pray through it, but you can’t pray through it, nothing can penetrate it. You try to fast through it. There are people that fast for days out of nothing but stubbornness. You know that. The history, I won’t go into politics, but over the world in the last 25 years, you remember that there were some who fasted and died for political reasons, just sheer downright stubbornness.
And there are those who try to fast their way through. You can’t do it, brother. The cloud of concealment, if it is something that you say is yours and you won’t give up, you think you do, but you don’t, it’ll put a veil over it. And if there’s any sun, it will not be very bright. It’ll be a cloud, and you can’t pray through it, this idea that if you pray long enough, everything will be all right.
Why, God got some people up off their knees and told them to quit. Two different instances, the Lord stopped prayer meetings. Did you know that? He said, it’s no use. There was the man Samuel, l and he was praying and praying. God came and put His hand over his mouth and said, Samuel, don’t pray anymore for Saul. He’s through. He said, don’t pray for him and shut him up.
And then there was another instance where Joshua was lying face down praying. We’d have written a tract about him. We’d have said, oh, what a saint. But God says, what’s the use of lying there on your stomach? I don’t honor a man for lying on his belly. Get up off your feet and deal with the situation in your crowd and then I’ll bless you and save all that lying around groaning.
So, remember, that this modern idea that if you pray long enough, everything will be okay. It’s not right, brother. The saint of God loves these long seasons of prayer and God gives an answer to prayer and prayer is the soul’s sincere desire and the breath of the saint and all that I believe, and I think practice in some measure. But the idea that I can hang on to things and then pray the cloud away while I’m hanging on to the cloud. No, no, you can’t do it. And that’s the trouble, so nothing will get through it.
And then there is fear. Fear is always a child of unbelief. No matter what you’re scared about, whether you’ve got cancer or whether your child’s likely to have polio or whether you’re likely to lose your job or whether Russia will send a guided missile and destroy Chicago, remember always that fear is a child of unbelief. And fear over your head is a cloud of obscurity and hides that smiling face from you. It doesn’t turn the face away for the blood of atonement keeps His face forever turned toward his people and toward repentant sinners.
And then there is self-love, self-love. We make a joke out of this, but we never should make a joke out of it, because self-love is a cloud of concealment, a cloud of obscurity. And even the Christian who has offered himself to Christ and has believed and is converted, that Christian can keep a cloud of concealment over him simply by loving himself. And to fall out of love with yourself is an accident. That is, I mean a hurt. It hurts you like falling off of something.
And then self-gratulation and self-admiration. These self-sins, they’re there and as long as they remain there, and then, the odd thing about it is that the scribes have excused these and proved that they should be there, and you can’t do anything about it. And yet we cry within us, oh, that the candles of my soul might burn brightly even now.
Oh, that I might know the divine illumination of my Savior Jesus Christ. And we groan with the groan that goes back to Paul in Philippians, it goes back to David in the Psalms, that we might come into a warm, personal, present, lasting fellowship with Jesus Christ that lifts us and irradiates our hearts. And yet we can’t because we admire ourselves and we’re not going to have anybody disturb us. And we congratulate ourselves or we love ourselves.
And then there’s money. Money these days gets between, betwixt thee and thy God, as the Brother [in Cloud of Unknowing] calls it, gets betwixt thee and thy God.
Some evangelist years ago in my hearing pointed out that you can take two dimes and shut out a landscape. You can take two dimes with you to the Great Smoky Mountains and go clear to the top knob of the Great Smokies and with two dimes shut out all the glorious, green, rolling, blue-capped vista of the Great Smokies. Just put them in front of your eyes and put them close enough. That’s all it takes. The mountains are still there smiling in the sun, but you don’t see them because there’s a dime in front of each eye. It doesn’t take much money.
We who don’t have much money are always taking snide remarks at the rich man. But brother, you can be rich and only have ten dollars, because if it is between you and your God, then that cloud is concealing God from you.
And then there’s people, just plain people. The Lord tells us that we shouldn’t be afraid of man with his breath in his nostrils. And yet there are people who are Christians, who have a cloud of fear above them, constantly a cloud of fear. They want to fit in, gear into society. And the sociologists tell us we must do this, that we must adjust to society. And the schools are busy instead of teaching the history and writing and reading and arithmetic and all the rest, they’re teaching the children to adjust so as not to be queer and to get along well. Well, if you’ve got that as your goal, you have a cloud over your heart, my Christian friend.
And then there are our friends. And then there’s the position we hold, whatever it may be. And then there’s loved ones. And this is the tenderest and perhaps the hardest. But that’s all got to go. You say, then what do I do with this? If this cloud is over my head as a cloud of concealment and my Father is smiling at me and I can’t see His face, what shall I do? Well, the old Brother suggests, and I borrow it and suggest to you as a beautiful illustration, he calls it, a cloud of forgetting. He said, put this cloud that’s above you under your feet as a cloud of forgetting.
And Paul said exactly the same thing, forgetting those things which are behind and reaching forth under those things which are before. You see, the things which were behind Paul were a cloud. And if they’d been in front of him, they’d have shut out God, but he put them behind him. His defeats, his mistakes, his blunders, his errors, his wrongs, the times he’d fallen on his face and the time the Lord had to rebuke him for his pride and all this, he put them behind him and under his feet as a cloud of forgetting.
And the old man of God says, put them under you and have them not betwixt thee and thy God. Right so put a cloud of forgetting beneath thee, betwixt thee and all the creatures that ever God made. We’ve got to get that cloud of forgetting under our feet. And of course, that’s the job of the Christian.
And that’s why I’m preaching like this. And some are understanding and are going to do something about it. Others are not. Others have come up to Kadesh Barnea once a week for years and have turned back into the wilderness and wonder why there’s sand in their shoes. It’s because you would not go on at Kadesh Barnea. Right so put a cloud of forgetting beneath thee. And all this that had been a cloud of concealment now becomes a cloud of forgetting.
Now the face of God I repeat is smiling still and not all the clouds I’ve mentioned and not all the clouds the devil can blow up there, and the devil can blow up a storm and put it between you or betwixt you and the face of your God experientially. But remember that God is waiting within the veil or to change the figure he’s waiting for you to move up, to move up.
I remember getting on a plane at LaGuardia Field in New York some years ago. It was about I would say three o’clock in the afternoon. And the smiling, relaxed, friendly pilot came out and made a little speech. He knew that old duffers like me would worry about because it was a raining miserable day like as we get here sometime, just plain miserable. And he said, now we are leaving in a moment. And he said the situation is this, friends, in 15 minutes we’ll be in the sunlight. In 15 minutes, we’ll be in the sunlight. And he says the weather reports show that it will be clear from here to Chicago, and sure enough it was.
You had experiences like that. And so we got into that plane almost feeling our way there through the smog and the mist. And in 15 minutes we’d put the cloud under our feet and the bright shining sun above. And as we rose even the cloud became white beneath us.
You who’ve flown a lot have had the experience of seeing that gray, great billows of whipped cream that are underneath you, white as whipped egg. And when you were underneath them and looked up they were a misty, miserable, smoggy thing that shut out the sun. But in 15 minutes you put them under your feet. And oh, brother, isn’t it nice to take off in the smoke and rain and fly all the way 900 miles in the sunshine.
Now that’s what I mean. You’re going to have to put this under your feet. You’re going to have to get busy about it and do something about this. And more than sit and take in some more, you’re going to have to work on yourself. And yet I wonder if you are? I wonder if I’m not contradicting myself.
For he says, he wills thou do but look on him and let him work. I wonder if it isn’t better more accurate to say that if you’ll consent to put the clouds under you, he’ll put the clouds under you.
What does a man do in an airplane? Now I, being of the nervous type, I help the pilot. I keep balancing the thing as we turn. Now really, I do. But what help am I giving to the pilot that great big, good-natured fellow sitting up there grinning. What does he care about a little fellow weighing 159 in the summer and a little less in the winter. What can I do to that great big four-engine monster. Not at all, but I help him the best I can.
But he gets you up there into the sunshine. Look on him and let him alone. That’s all.
But you’ve got to be willing that cloud get under your feet. I know a lot of people that’ll never go up. A lot of them. Oh, they have every excuse in the wide world but they’re just not going up. They’d rather stay right down here in the smog. And they do. The sun shines brightly and they think the sun isn’t shining when it is.
Now put it under you, my friend. Put it under you. What is it? Well, I’ve said money, people, friends, position, loved ones, fear, all that I claim and call my own, ambitions, pride, stubbornness, self-will, and anything else the Holy Ghost may point to in your life, only you know what it is. He is a jealous lover and he suffereth no rival. And whatever rival there is, is a cloud between thee and thy God.
Now, I don’t say that that you’re not joined to Him. I do not say that you are not read justified. I say that this we’ve talked about, this wondrous divine illumination, this ability perfectly to love Him and worthily to praise Him, that has been choked out and smitten down and taught out of us for a generation.
This, this we lack, and we lack it because we will not put under our feet the cloud of obscurity. We let it rise between us and our God. My brethren, if you will put it underneath you, why you will find that it hides all the past and all that has bothered you and that that shames you and worries you and grieves you. It’s down there and it’s out and it’s gone and there’s nothing but the clear sky above. But if you have put the cloud under you, then he wills thou do but look on him and let him alone.
Simpson wrote a song that nobody ever sings anymore for two or three reasons. One is the tune’s bad, the second is nobody experiences it much. It is, I take the hand of love divine, I count each precious promise mine, with this eternal counter sign, I take, he undertakes. I take thee, blessed God, I give myself to thee, and thou according to thy word dost undertake for me.
Christ doesn’t have to die again. No cross needs ever to be erected again. No value needs to be added to the atonement. The face of God smiles on His people, but the cloud’s hiding Him. Your cloud, my cloud. But you say that’s true of sinners, that’s true of backsliders, but that couldn’t be true of good gospel people. It is true of the masses of the people.
And because that cloud has been above them, and because they’ve been taught they can’t rise, they’ve rushed to get a little heartbeat from the theater, rushed to get a little bit of warmth, the feeling from hillbilly ballad singing, religious songs, and theatrics, and all the rest. I don’t blame them. They’ve been cheated, and the lawyers [textualists] have wronged them, as in the days of Jesus. Jesus walked among men in that day with His eyes bright and His vision keen, and He said to them, whatever they tell you, do because they’re theologically right, but don’t be like them. And they said, we’ll kill that man, and they did kill that Man. But He rose the third day and sent down the Holy Ghost into the world, and He’s mine and yours, our sweet possession. And don’t you let anybody tell you how much you can have of Him. Only God can tell you how much you can have of Him.
Don’t you let anybody take you aside and tell you now not to get excited, and not to get fanatical, that you’ve got all that there is. And brethren, don’t you let any of that happen to you. Just as sure as God lives, now hear me, just as sure as God lives, if we continue in the direction we’ve been moving in evangelical circles, gospel circles, that which is now fundamentalism will be liberalism in a short time.
We’ve got to have the Holy Ghost back, and we’ve got to have the face of God shining down, and the candles of our souls burning bright, and to sense and feel and know the wondrous divine illumination of Him who said, I’m the Light of the World.
Now does that make a fanatic out of you. Come on, let’s us little fanatics just go and be joyful in the Lord. If that’s fanaticism, what a sweet fanatic it makes out of a man. What a happy wonder it is to be a fanatic.
No, no, that’s not fanaticism. It’s fanaticism when you revolt against the Scriptures, imagine things, go do weird things, and misinterpret the Word of God, but you can’t show where one line of the Word of God has been misinterpreted by what I say. Not one line. It’s all here. The doctrines of the faith, the faith of our Father’s living still.
Well, what about it? I take, He undertakes. Now, if you put in, if you’re willing tonight to put that cloud of self and cloud of self-love and cloud of fear and cloud of stubbornness and cloud of pride and cloud of greed and cloud of ambition under your feet, then there’s nothing for you to do. Nothing.
For all has been done, nothing for you to do. You can’t climb to heaven on a rope ladder. There’s nothing for you to do. I take the hand of love divine. I claim each precious promise mine with this eternal countersign. I take, He undertakes. I take thee, blessed Lord, I give myself to thee, and thou according to thy word does undertake for me.
Ah, do you want Him to undertake for you? Some of you dear Christians have been walking around under a cloud for a long time. You can’t get above, you just can’t. Because you’ve tried to pray your way above it, you’ve tried to believe your way above it, but it doesn’t work that way. You can’t. You’ve got to put it under your feet and rise above it and put all these things betwixt thee and all the creatures God ever made. And look away to the sunlight. And then you relax for there’s nothing you can do.
What can a man do? He can’t fill himself with the Holy Ghost. He can’t cleanse his own heart. You can’t crucify yourself. You can’t. God has to do it. And He’ll do it. And He waits to do it. And He waits optimistic and friendly and, on your side, wanting to help you, willing to do it, anxious to do it, if we could use the word anxious as touching God.
But we sit back, and we’re discouraged and we’re blue. And we’ve been to so many altars and we’ve read so many books and we’re all confused. And still the sun shines and still the cloud hovers. And still, God’s poor people won’t crowd it under their feet. Into the sunshine in 15 minutes, said the boy. Into the sunshine in 15 minutes, says the man of God to you tonight, if you’ll put it all under your feet, dare to put it under your feet and look away to the Lord Jesus. Not trying to tell Him what to do nor how to do it, but look on Him and let Him work.
And over the next hours and days and weeks, you will move upward into a place of spiritual restfulness and power, such as you never knew before. And you’ll have a marvelous deliverance from bondage, a marvelous freedom. You’ll believe in the Scriptures. You’ll believe in the Word of God and its verbal inspiration, its full, plenary authority. You believe in it and yet out of it, there will come a fragrance and a radiance and illumination that you never dreamed of before.
Are there those here that can say, amen, that know what I’m talking about? Amen? You know it’s so. But it isn’t talked about very much. And so that’s why we’re where we are.
Now, what about you this evening, dear friend? What about you this evening? Now, I’m not and cannot do the work of the Spirit. And I do not want to intrude any human effort, however reverent, into the work of the Spirit. For it must be the Spirit’s work. But what could be better and nicer and more scriptural and more restful and logical than that a company of believers should pray together about things?
Well, don’t you think that’s all right? You think that, could there be any objection to that raised by anybody? If I thought anybody could raise a valid objection, I wouldn’t ask. But it seems to me the New Testament teaches the Lord’s people met and prayed together, doesn’t it? And they prayed for each other. And the strong ones prayed for the weak ones. And the ones that had fallen, the others prayed for them and helped them. And in one instance they met and prayed together and the place was shaken and they were all filled with the Holy Ghost.
That was in the Book, too. That’s in the Bible. It was until they ruled it away and said it couldn’t be for us. And the blessed Holy Dove was forced to fold his wings and be quiet while the saints that believed it in years gone by, they radiated in the joy of it. But we’ve been slapped down and said, now you shut up. We scribes will tell you what to believe about this. But our hearts tell us the scribes are wrong. And our longing souls tell us that the hymn writers and the devotional writers and the persons whose biographies we read, they were right.
Paul Rader, years ago, preached a sermon on,” Out of His Belly Shall Flow Rivers of Living Water.“ Two men took him aside afterwards and said, Mr. Rader, you’re all wrong. It was a good sermon, but you’re dispensationally incorrect. He sat and listened. And they said, we, we thought you’re, we know you’re a good preacher and you’re a good brother, but you’re wrong in your interpretation.
And they were eating. He said, he noticed one of them bow his head over his meal. Pretty soon he saw the tears come off the end of his nose. His shoulders, big shoulders, shook. He said, Brother Rader, we have the interpretation, but you have the rivers.
You see, stick to your interpretation, brother. But at any cost, some people want God and they want all God wants them to have in this generation, now, right here on this earth. What about it, friends?