Sermon 10
RESISTING THE HOLY GHOST
Sermon by A. M.
HIlls, President of Texas Holiness University, delivered at Salvation
Park Camp-meeting, Carthage, O., Sunday morning, June 26, 1905.
(Scripture
lesson, Acts 7:51, 60.)
The words of my
text are found in that 51st verse: "Ye stiffnecked and uncircumcised in
heart and ears, ye do always resist the Holy Ghost: as your fathers
did, so do ye." This was the
climax utterance of a sermon which brought to the preacher a martyr's
crown. It was a simple
discourse. It was simply a resume of the history of the children of
Israel, and while the preacher
preached it the Holy Ghost sent it home. (Oh, will Christians pray this
morning that the Holy Ghost
will send the message home!) He began away back with the story of
Abraham called out from Ur
of the Chaldees, then came down to Jacob and his children, and he
showed that the brothers were
moved with envy against Joseph. That was sin against the Holy Ghost.
These brothers had not knelt
for years at Jacob's family altar and been acquainted with Isaac and
the story of Abraham in vain.
They knew better.
The spirit of
brotherhood taught them that they ought not to treat beautiful,
innocent Joseph
that way. God spoke to their hearts while they were doing it, but they
resisted the Holy Ghost.
Then he mentioned Moses, to whom the fathers refused to be obedient,
but thrust him from them.
They knew better. God was leading Moses and they had every evidence of
the fact, but their
wicked hearts were unwilling to do the will of God, and they thrust
Moses from them and refused
to be obedient, in the very spirit of the carnal heart always. It was a
sin against the Holy Ghost.
Then he says they made a golden calf. Ah, they knew better! They had
heard just a few days before,
the voice of God thundering from the summits of Sinai amidst smoke and
fire, saying, "Thou shalt
have no other gods before me." They knew better, but made a golden
calf, and in doing it they
sinned against the Holy Ghost.
I suppose we
have only a little synopsis of his wonderful sermon, but I dare to say
the
preacher pointed to Isaiah, who was sawn asunder for being true to God
and delivering the
messages of the Most High. I dare say he mentioned Jeremiah, thrust
into a dark dungeon and
nearly starved, because he would be the faithful mouthpiece of God
Almighty. I dare say he
mentioned Zechariah, slain between the porch and the altar because he
would be true to God.
Coming on down he mentioned Jesus, whom they had taken, he says, and
with wicked hands had
crucified and slain, and when he got so far along he turned to them and
made a personal
application. A sermon does not amount to much that has not in it a
personal application. Stephen
turned to his audience and said in the words of my text, "Ye
stiffnecked and uncircumcised in heart
and ears, ye do always resist the Holy Ghost: as your fathers did, so
do ye." Then it was that they
shut their ears and hustled him out of the city and stoned him to
death, while his face sh one like an
angel, and he was looking up into Heaven and seeing the face of his
God. Ah, what resistance to
the Holy Ghost!
I want to call your
attention, in the first place, to the fact that the Holy Ghost comes to
us
and reveals the truth just as He did to Joseph's brethren; just as He
did to the people in Moses' day;
just as He did in Isaiah's day; just as He did in Jeremiah's day, in
Zechariah's day, in Christ's day,
in Paul's day. He is revealing the truth today. That is His mission;
that is why Jesus called Him the
"Spirit of truth." Why? Because truth is the means which God uses to
move human hearts. He does
not touch us with physical omnipotence to force us into Heaven. No,
sir! He just touches our hearts
with the illumination of Divine truth, and leaves us to choose whether
we will follow God or not.
Secondly, I want you to
notice that sometimes people are "stiffnecked, uncircumcised in
heart and in ears." What does that mean? O, this is a double figure.
Sometimes when cattle are
being driven under the yoke, as I have driven cattle by the month
myself in my early life, they
stiffen their necks and do not want to do what they are told to do. And
then that other expression --
"uncircumcised." -- That had a world of meaning to the Jew. To him it
meant to be cut off from the
covenant privileges of his nation; to be cut off from the privileges of
salvation. When this
preacher, Deacon Stephen, looked at these people and said, "Ye
stiffnecked and uncircumcised in
heart and ears, ye do always resist the Holy Ghost: as your fathers did
so do ye," they gnashed
their teeth.
When is a person
uncircumcised in ears? Why, sir, folks who do not want to hear the truth
of Almighty God. A world of people go to church and do not want to hear
the truth; they are
determined they will not hear the truth, and if the preacher is there
to preach the truth, they will not
be slow in declaring that they have had enough of that preacher and his
messages and will have no
more of it. When the ten spies came back and brought their report,
saying. "Let us go up at once and
possess it; for we are well able to overcome it," the people raved and
stormed and fumed, and
wanted to kill Moses and Joshua and Caleb; they were simply
uncircumcised in ears. When the
Jews led Jesus to the brow of the hill in Nazareth after He had
delivered to them that precious
message, and told them that the Spirit of the Lord was upon Him, and
that He was anointed to
preach the Gospel to the poor, and bring deliverance to the captives
and sight to the blind, and to
set at liberty those that were bruised, and preach the acceptable year
of the Lord; O, it is so strange
they did not receive the precious message in the spirit in which it was
given! But they stopped their
ears and hustled Him out on the brow of the hill to cast Him down
headlong. They resisted the
Holy Ghost. They were uncircumcised in ears.
When the apostle Paul stood
on the stairway of a castle in the city of Jerusalem, and went
so far as to say God had called him to preach to the Gentiles, the very
fact that the Gospel message
was to be offered to the Gentiles so enraged them that they stopped
their ears and threw dust in the
air, and tore their garments, and would have killed him. They were
"uncircumcised in ears." We
see lots of that kind of people in our churches. I want to tell you
that there are people sitting in the
pews of all our big, wealthy churches who have declared in their hearts
that they will not hear
Gospel messages and no preacher of theirs shall preach them, and if
they do preach them there is a
storm. Dr. Gunsaulus, of Chicago, said one day, and it went all over
the nation, that if the clergy of
Chicago should preach the truth one single Sunday, every pulpit in
Chicago would be vacant of
preachers the next morning. I declare to you if I was a pastor in that
city and had the genius and
power and eloquence and standing that God Almighty has given that man I
would have preached
the truth one Sunday anyway, if I had to give up the job the next day.
Today the churches are dying
for the want of the Gospel, just because rich, worldly, selfish,
criminal, sensual church members
are daring the preacher to preach the truth; and when a man stands up
and preaches the real Gospel
he does it at the peril of his position, if not his life.
Who are the
people who are uncircumcised in heart? I will tell you who they are.
They are
the people who have heard the truth and then would not put it in
practice. Then he gets down from
the ears to the heart and shows that your heart is just as bad as your
ears. Some of you will hear the
truth, but if you do not put it in practice you will go storming out
with the very spirit of Hell in your
souls. You watch this audience this morning. If any folks go out when
it gets hot you will know
what is the matter. They have heard just a little more than they want
to hear. Their hearts and their
ears are uncircumcised and they will go storming out with the very
spirit of the pit. God help us to
understand that He saves men by the truth, and the man who preaches the
truth is not to be muzzled.
He comes from the secret chamber where he meets Almighty God, and he
has a God-given
message. Woe be to the man or woman who muzzles the preacher and
refuses to let him preach the
truth!
Thirdly, let us
now specially consider who are the people who resist the Holy Ghost. Let
us make this very definite, so we will know what we are talking about.
I do not want this audience
to say I preached a very eloquent sermon against the people who lived a
couple of thousand years
ago. I want this to be a personal message to each one of you.
In the first
place, people resist the Holy Ghost when they are out of Christ, and
the Spirit
convicts them of sin, and they refuse to be converted. That is the
message and mission of the Holy
Ghost. Jesus said, "And when He is come He will convince the world of
sin, of righteousness and
of judgment." Why, when the Apostle Paul, or Saul as he was called, got
his conviction on the way
to Damascus, and Jesus of Nazareth unmistakably spoke to him, if he had
put His message off, he
would have sealed his destiny. He had either to go forward and bow to
Jesus, or simply be a
rejected old Jew, doomed and damned. God is going to speak to some of
you this morning, just
such a message. Woe be unto you if you resist the Holy Ghost!
There was Felix;
Paul reasoned with him one morning of sin, of righteousness and of
judgment to come. There stood Drusilla, the accomplice of his crimes,
the woman he had stolen
from her lawful husband; he did not want to forsake her; he did not
want to turn from his avarice
and ungodliness; his knees smote together; he trembled, but said to
Paul, "Go thy way for this time;
when I have a convenient season I will call for thee." The Apostle Paul
went back to his quiet
room, but the Holy Ghost went with him, and never gave Felix another
call. He settled it that day.
He resisted, fatally, the Holy Ghost.
Some years ago
while holding a revival meeting near Mansfield, this state, at the
close of
the service a man named Tom Taylor came to me and related the following
circumstance as an
illustration: "During the war when I was a soldier I came to D_____,
Ohio, and while there had a
tent-mate by the name of Charlie Austin, whom I loved very much. One
Friday night we went to a
mission chapel in the edge of the city of Cincinnati, and heard the
preacher preach a faithful
sermon. The Holy Ghost came to Charlie Austin and convicted him of his
sins and moved him to
give his heart to Jesus. He trembled all over, and was on the verge of
yielding. I said, Charlie, this
is God's call; this is your time. He thought he would go forward and
accept Jesus, then he
bethought himself, "Oh, I have bought a ticket for the masquerade ball
next Tuesday night, and it is
in my pocket. I want to go to that ball first, then I will bow at the
altar and give my heart to Jesus."
Mr. Taylor said, "Oh, Charlie, don't say that, it might be fatal to
your soul." But he answered,
"Yes, I will go to the ball; next Tuesday night I will be in a royal
banquet." A few moments after
they rose up and left the chapel. As they passed out the door it came
to with a sharp report, as it
closed with a spring. Charlie said, "What's that?" His friend answered,
"Oh, nothing but the door
coming to;" but turning around to him, Charlie said, "Tom, the bang of
that chapel door was the
death knell of my soul." "Oh, don't say that, Charlie." "Yes, that was
the death knell of my soul; I
knew it when I heard it. I want you to write to my mother and tell her
I swam through her tears and
prayers, and have gone to Hell." Mr. Taylor said, "Oh, don't say that,
Charlie; don't say that." But
that night Charlie could not sleep, and the next day he was in a raging
fever; he could not sleep all
day; there was no rest for him. He said, "Tell mother I have gone to
Hell." The next morning the
chaplain of the regiment came and visited him, but all to no purpose.
He was a raving maniac, and
at 12 o'clock Tuesday night his soul passed out into eternity to meet
his God. The only "royal
banquet" he attended on Tuesday night was the banquet of the damned.
Oh, how much it means to
resist the Holy Ghost! Hear me! Every soul that is ever damned, some
time resists the Holy Ghost
for the last time, and it is all over. No one but God Almighty knows
but some man or some woman,
or many of them, are getting their last call by the Holy Ghost this
morning. If we knew who it was,
we would go down these aisles on our knees, if need be, and weep over
you and beg you to give
yourselves to God; but God hides it from our eyes. You will think of
this sermon, many of you, a
million years from this morning in eternity. Mark it!
Second, when people refuse
to give up some evil habit or course of action, or set of
opinions when God brings light to the soul, they resist the Holy Ghost.
The opinions we cherish,
the views we entertain, the theological ideas that influence our
political actions -- all these have a
world more to do with the Holy Ghost than people dream of. He is abroad
in the earth. This is the
Holy Ghost day; this is His administration, and He is dealing with
human hearts everywhere. You
cannot get away from the Third Person of the Trinity if you want to.
President Finney tells us in
his autobiography of the marvelous revival of 1857 that swept
over the northern part of this country and New England; from Boston to
Omaha. It was the most
marvelous work of grace that this world, up to that time, had ever
seen. Fifty thousand souls were
converted each week for ten weeks running. There was no great leader,
but it was the work of
prayer, and the marvelous and matchless outpouring of the Holy Ghost.
He says very gently that
another section of the country that was committed to the great national
evil was barren. While one
section was being swayed and swept by this great movement, another
section was utterly left, as
though God had said for the time being, "You are joined to your idols;
I will leave you alone." We
learn from this that we want to be careful what opinions we cherish
about national affairs, lest we
resist the Holy Ghost. President Finney says in his autobiography, also
President Mahan in his, that
the great revivals that swept over the land between 1830 and 1840 were
pulling along certain lines
of theological opinion; and that there was an old school of theology
that practically threw on God
the responsibility for all the sin, and all the dearth of harvest of
souls, and all the wickedness of
the world; they limited the atonement to a few of the elect, asserting
that all the rest of the human
race were created on purpose to be damned. He said the preachers who
held to that doctrine did
not have any revivals, while the preachers who belonged to the new
school that believed in the
universal atonement, and the willingness of God to save all who would
repent and meet His
conditions, had revivals that were sweeping the country like prairie
fires, and the Holy Ghost was
with them everywhere, and crowned their labors with an abundant harvest
and marvelous
outpourings of the Spirit of God. We learn from that that God had grown
tired of having His name
and character defamed by the teaching of such awful theology. He may
have blessed such
preachers in times pa st, but it is too late; He will bless them no
more. Better be careful what
theology you hold. Take the Unitarian or Universalist theology. I
challenge any man or woman in
this house to tell me of a genuine, soul-saving revival of religion
under any of their preachers.
They do not have revivals. Their churches are as free from revivals as
buried Nineveh. Why?
Because they are clinging to error, and the truth of God and the Spirit
of God will not indorse it.
They are bankrupt. God help you to see you cannot question the divinity
of Jesus; you cannot play
fast and loose with issues of the eternal world, and have the backing
of the Spirit of God. It cannot
be done.
Finney mentions another thing. He
says there was a time when ministers could be utterly
indifferent to the temperance question and have the blessing of God
with them. They did not have
the light and knowledge, and God did not hold them very much
responsible, and still He would use
and bless their ministry; but he says, "I challenge you to name a
preacher now whom God
wondrously uses in saving souls who is silent on this question of
intemperance." Why, you cannot
find one in the country. Sam Jones says: "I have never seen a true,
genuine, second blessing,
holiness Christian who was not a Prohibitionist from his hat to his
heels." It means something to
get such statements from such men; it means that men who expect to be
soul-winners and mightily
owned and used of God must be careful about their political opinions;
they must find God's side
and get over on it. They have to be where the Spirit of God is. Yes,
sir; this is what it means.
And then there are our amusements.
Oh, how much they mean! Our customs of living. Do
you know that our great fashionable churches are being swept over an
awful precipice into an
abyss of hopeless worldliness and ruin on this question? That great,
Spirit-anointed soul,
Katharine Booth, the mother of the Salvation Army, said in her sermon
one day, speaking to the
women of her congregation, "You may think you must follow the fashions
set by the harlots of
Paris, and you may think you are the children of God; but you will find
that you will never be the
bride of Christ. You may think you must have wine on the table because
it is fashionable, and you
may have it; but I challenge you that you shall never have the wine of
the Kingdom." Oh, these
fashionable amusements! How they are engulfing our churches! So much so
that at the last General
Conference of the M. E. Church, in Los Angeles, it was believed that
over one-third, about
three-eighths, of all the church delegates to the Conference actually
voted to remove from the
church discipline the clause prohibiting worldly amusements. God have
mercy! It did not pass, but
came so near passing that it plainly showed where the church is
drifting. Church members may run
after theatres, and ministers may run after plays where they represent
a harlot coming up out of
Hell, the flames coming up after her, and announcing that there is no
room in Hell, making a joke of
the whole thing, until God says it is enough, and Hell fire opens up,
as it were, and consumes them.
You may indulge in these things if you will, but the Spirit of God is
not in these things. You may
play progressive euchre, and, as Sam Jones says, "progress hellward a
mile a minute." You may
dance and dance and dance, but the time is coming when you will circle
and swing for the last
time, and will waltz into Hell. The dance is lecherous in its very
nature. "It is essentially unclean,"
Gail Hamilton said, "and it cannot be washed." Mrs. General Sherman
said: "Virtuous women
ought to blush at the very mention of the dance." Prof. A. G. Sullivan,
an ex-dancing master, says:
"Waltzing is the spur to lust." Mr. T. A. Faulkner, a converted dancing
master, tells us that 163 out
of 200 fallen women in a single city told the city mission worker that
they fell through the dance;
over 80 per cent. Some of you people train your children to dance, and
then expect them to get to
Heaven. God have mercy on you. T he whole thing is from the bottomless
pit.
Third.
People resist the Holy Ghost when they refuse to give up evil
associates. Don't you
know that is the way the devil is entrapping thousands of our young
converts in all our churches?
While boys and girls are sinners they are associating with the unclean,
with the children of Hell;
they get converted and at once the question arises, "Will you give up
your evil associates?" and in
all probability it will be fatal to a soul that does not do it. A girl
came to the Texas Holiness
University, who was converted at home before she came. She leaped up
from the altar and poured
forth a stream of eloquence upon the people, and the evangelist said,
"There is a new preacher." It
seemed that her very soul was aglow with the love and power of God; but
she came to our school
and went to corresponding with the unclean young lepers she used to
associate with, and her heart
began to go out after them, and before she knew it, almost, she had
lost her sanctification. God
brought her down on the floor one day, where she l ay for an hour, just
screaming in agony of soul,
and crying to God for mercy. I stooped down, and whispered in her ear,
"Mary, will you give up
your evil associates?" and just left her. Pretty soon she leaped to her
feet with the joy of salvation
restored, and again poured out a perfect stream of eloquence, saying,
"Girls, you have to give up
your evil companions if you keep God with you." Would you believe it?
that girl went back and
married one of them, and just lost everything.
John
Hatfield, the Hoosier evangelist, tells of two young women in his
meetings. One of
them came to the altar for sanctification. She wept and cried, and for
six days and nights she kept
coming, but did not get the blessing. Finally she said, "Brother
Hatfield, I am engaged to marry a
wicked young man; I love him as I love my life." Brother Hatfield said,
"Give him up! give him up!
give him up! or God will withdraw His Spirit from you." She did give
him up, and the Holy Ghost
came upon her and made her a flaming evangelist, and she has won
hundreds and hundreds of souls
to God.
The other
girl, a Christian, who had great power in exhortation, and who led the
service of
song in his meetings and sang the Gospel into hearts with her beautiful
solos, came to him one day
and said, "Brother Hatfield, I am going to marry an unsaved young man.
Mr. Hatfield threw up his
hands and said, "Oh, Anna! Anna! Don't you do it; if you do, you will
disobey God and grieve His
Spirit, and it may be at the risk of your soul's salvation." "O," she
said, "I think I can win him
over." She went on and married him, and Brother Hatfield says that
husband is today a low down,
drunken sot, and that girl is living in a domestic Hell, without hope
and without God in the world.
She said to Mr. Hatfield, "I would like to invite you home to take a
meal with me, but I do not dare
to ask you; my husband might do violence to you." Think of a sanctified
girl going down to such a
Hell as that, because she resisted the Holy Ghost! I warn you as a
father, as a teacher and
instructor, who has the care of young people by the hundred in his
hands: I tell you before God,
when you want Jesus, you cannot take some miserable, Christless leper
along with you.
A girl
went to the altar and got sanctified, and went out in the audience
filled with Holy
Ghost power, the radiance of it shining in her face. She led some
others to the altar, and then went
out and backslid in an hour. How do you suppose she did it? After the
meeting was over she
locked arms with a son of Belial, and when they got outside of the
church he began to sneer, and
said, "You made a pretty gump of yourself, didn't you." She wilted, and
the Spirit of God left her. I
ask of you, what right had a girl who had become the bride of Christ to
go out of the room arm in
arm with an emissary of Hell? I tell you young people, if you do not
give up your evil, worldly
companions you will lose your religion and lose your souls as sure as
God lives.
This has a bearing on
lodges. I want you lodge men to hear, now. I want to tell you that
some lodges have oaths that are a disgrace to cannibal heathen, for the
immorality that is in them.
Some of the lodges Christians cannot remain in and have any sort of
relation to the Holy Ghost.
You lodge men would better read over on your knees the oaths that you
took, and think of the men
with whom you associate. My God, what oaths! Blasphemous oaths that
commit you to shield
criminals and be partakers in crime. Just now the whole labor world is
trying to combine in these
labor unions. They just had a labor strike in Chicago which only
represented one union, and
sixteen men were killed in that strike, and hundreds have received
injuries from which they will
never recover. Oh, the sin, and the crime, and the hate, and the
revenge, and the lust, and the
wickedness that was represented by that strike and that union! You rage
at these great trusts that are
trying to take the people by the throat and make every man in h is
poverty pay tribute to their
avarice, but I want to tell you that the underlying spirit of these
labor unions is precisely the same,
and is born of avarice and has the spirit and passions of Hell. No man
can be a full, fair
representative of Christ and His salvation and yoke himself in these
awful institutions. (Now is the
time to go out if anybody is hurt. God help you.)
Well, fourthly, when people
refuse to walk in the light and follow the calling God asks of
them, they resist the Holy Ghost. What do you suppose God calls you
into His kingdom for? Do
you think He calls you into His Kingdom to sit down in a palace car
with a through ticket in your
pocket, to be petted and fanned and coddled by Pullman car service
while you ride home to glory?
Is that your idea? I want to tell you that God calls men and women into
His Kingdom to make them
soldiers. He wants them to take their weapons and fight; to go out and
make conquests for God that
will astonish Heaven and Earth and Hell. There is a mighty conflict
between the powers of light
and the powers of darkness, between Heaven and Hell; and when God
anoints a soul with the Holy
Ghost He does it for a purpose. When a great lieutenant general like
General Grant is in command
of an army he knows just where to place his men. He says, "Sheridan is
for such a place; Sherman,
you are just the fellow for that place; Thomas, that i s your place,
you are just the man for the
place, I can trust you there; Hancock, yonder is your field," and so on
and on, all over the nation. I
want to tell you that the great Commander-in-Chief of the forces of
light, Jesus Christ, knows
where to place His servants, and He says to the Holy Ghost, "Speak to
that girl and tell her I want
her in India; speak to that other girl over there and tell her I want
her in Africa; speak to that young
man over yonder and tell him I want him in Japan; tell that person I
want him in God's Bible
School, Cincinnati." Oh, God is on the fields! He knows just what He
wants and just where He
wants His workmen. Woe be unto us if we say we won't go where God wants
us. We sing,
"I'll go where you want me to go, dear Lord,
Over mountain or plain or sea;
I'll say what you want me to say, dear Lord,
I'll be what you want me to be."
It sounds good in poetry and song,
but the people who practice it are too few.
I was preaching in Finney's old
church at Oberlin, Ohio, one morning, and after I preached
about the Holy Ghost, Father Wright came to me and said, "I want to
give you an illustration." He
was then a feeble old man between 70 and 80 years of age. He said,
"When I was a young man in
Medina, O., there was a certain young man there by the name of McClure,
a Christian, very active,
as bright and talented as any of the early lights of Oberlin. He taught
school and was always
successful; was a member of the church and taught in the Sabbath
school, and was always loved by
the people. His friends urged him to go to Oberlin College and prepare
himself for the ministry.
Then the thought came to his mind, 'If I go to Oberlin I will never be
anything but Rev. Sam
McClure; but if I study law, I may become "Judge," a great politician
and a wealthy man.' He
would study on it for a while, and then go back to his law books.
Finally one night he went into his
office, picked up his law books before him, sat down in a chair,
leaning his face in his hands, and
meditated and meditated until the city clock struck twelve. He then
rose up, and lifted a law book
over his head, slammed it down and said, 'I will have my law, come
Heaven or Hell.' He had not
more than spoken the words until he felt a cold chill run down his back
and go all over him, and he
felt what he had done. He went to the church officers and said, 'Take
my name off the church
record. My soul is utterly hardened and steeled against God. If I
should see as many people as
could kneel between here and Cleveland (a distance of forty-two miles)
kneeling and begging me
to pray for them, my heart would be utterly unmoved.' Oh, the man had
settled it! He had settled it!
He had settled it! He lived to become a judge, 'Honorable Judge
McClure'; he lived to amass two
hundred thousand dollars; he also became profane and drunken, and one
day as he was sitting in
his soft-cushioned carriage, which was drawn up to his residence to
take him to an afternoon
entertainment, an arrow from God Almighty struck his heart, and he died
in an instant. He lost his
soul for $200,000." Who knows but what God wanted him to be some mighty
President Finney,
and like a flaming angel to herald the Gospel until hundreds and
thousands should turn to
righteousness, and receive a crown of fadeless glory, and shine as the
stars forever and ever?
There are multitudes of people
today who are resisting the Holy Ghost in not obeying
God's call. God Almighty help you! Why, sir, when God said to Paul, "I
want you to be a
missionary to the Gentiles," if Paul had drawn back at that moment, we
would never have heard of
him, or just heard of him as the wicked wretch that held the garments
while Deacon Stephen was
stoned. That is all we would ever have heard of that man who stands
away up above every other
character in the roll of the centuries; but he let God have, His way
with Him. Will you? God
Almighty help you! God has His place for every one of us. Woe unto us
if we miss the place!
Fifth. People resist the Holy
Ghost by refusing sanctification when they are called to it.
Jesus baptizes people with the Holy Ghost that they may have purity of
heart and power to do the
will of God. The greatest work God does for souls this side of Heaven
is to take carnality out of
them and fill them with the Holy Ghost, and let them loose on this
wicked world to move things for
God. God is knocking at hearts. Multitudes of people are coming to the
place where they will have
to accept the priceless blessing that will fit them for service, or
resist the Holy Ghost. Oh, how
hard He works to get us; to give us something worth a million worlds!
How we hang back and
refuse to accept this blessed, blood-bought gift of God! You are called
to it. God urges you to it.
There are sixteen commands in the New Testament, and eighteen prayers
that you may have it.
Fourteen passages in the New Testament tell you how you may get it.
There are a hundred passages
in the New Testament that point out unmistakably th e second work of
grace. God urges and prays
and promises and commands and entreats, and does everything to get us
to seek and obtain the
blessing. God in this day is flooding all the churches in this whole
country with light. Don't say you
do not know what we are talking about. You do know that we are talking
about the second work of
grace, the baptism with the Holy Ghost that takes the carnal nature out
of the heart and sets you free
and untrammeled. Ah, this is the greatest blessing that was ever
offered to this world. God calls
you to it and wants you to have it. I declare to you the Christian who
hears that call and then
refuses grieves the Holy Ghost; he resists Him, and if he keeps on, he
will do it fatally.
There is a city in Texas
that has, or did have some years ago, an illustration of this truth.
There was a preacher there who was once a mighty power in the hands of
the Holy Ghost. He had
a revival at one time in which more than five hundred souls were
converted. God was wonderfully
using him. But there came a day, as there comes to all of God's real,
true children. when this
blessing was brought to his attention; but he had church honors in
view; he had ambitions and
position and salary in his mind, and he weighed the Blessing against
these pebbles of the earth, and
finally he concluded he could not pay the price, went back on it, and
God left him. I heard a man
say he did not believe that man had had a convert in five years. I
heard a man say, "I believe his
influence in this city is worse than that of any saloon. He is steeped
in tobacco and worldliness,
still running after riches, going to the devil, and yet filling one of
the leading pulpits of the city.
One day his cousin was talking with him, and in the course of the
conversation in order to fix a
date he said. "Yes, I remember the occasion. It was just so many years
ago; it was the year I was
sanctified." The preacher turned pale with rage and said, 'I wish you
would never speak that word
again in my presence. I hate the very word.' " What chance has a man of
getting into Heaven who
hates the word "sanctify," that Jesus used in His intercessory prayer?
What do you think about it?
Oh, sir, the man is bankrupt for time and eternity. It is an awful
thing to turn your back on this great
blessing.
I was holding revival
services down in Texas six years ago this summer, and God
wonderfully poured out His Spirit, until men were actually knocked from
their seats and fell to the
floor as if some giant hand had struck them. It was the power of the
Holy Ghost; a marvelous
meeting. A Baptist minister's brother who was present said no man
living could look on that scene
and not see God in it. But that Baptist minister, whose church was only
fifteen rods from where our
tent was pitched, stayed away from the meeting just as soon as there
were seekers and inquirers
from among his church members, and talked and sneered at that work of
the Holy Ghost. That
Baptist minister died, raving in his sickness and cursing God to His
face. So you tell me he did not
resist the Holy Ghost? The minister who does these things does it at
his eternal peril, and if he
does not stop it, he will land in Hell. It is the most precious work
God does, the work of
sanctifying the soul; and whether you are a preacher or layman, if you
lift your voice or your pen
against such a work of grace, God help you; you resist the Holy Ghost.
Sixth, and lastly. We resist
the Holy Ghost by making fun of holiness, and insulting the
Holy Ghost. A boy went to a holiness meeting in Indiana some years ago
and was deeply
impressed by the Spirit of God, so that he went home and said to his
mother, "I tell you, mother,
there is no use talking, the Spirit of God is there. Some wicked young
men I know so well went to
the altar and turned from their sins and were converted. I tell you,
mother, God is there." That
mother had enough carnality in her heart to hate holiness. She turned
on that boy and began making
fun of him and guying him because he went to the meeting, and kept it
up so persistently that he
yielded and let the meeting pass by without seeking the Lord. In two
weeks that precious boy was
taken sick. The doctor was hastily summoned, and when he came the
mother happened to be out.
He examined the boy, threw up his hands and said, "My boy, you are
awfully sick; you have only a
short time to live." He said, "Is that so? Then call mother." Th e
mother came into the room and
met the eyes of her boy blazing with the hate of Hell, as he said,
"Mother, I have sent for you to
curse you to your face, and I will curse you in Hell forever, for when
I wanted to go to the meeting
and give my heart to God, you laughed me out of it, and now I have got
to die, and I have got to go
to Hell." Oh, it is an awful thing to resist the Holy Ghost.
Dr. Powers, a noble
evangelist of Lincoln, Nebraska, told this in my presence. He said,
"My father was an infidel. He wrote a great book on infidelity which
never was published. My
mother's brother's son imbibed the infidelity of my father, and he
became, at the age of
twenty-seven, a perfect demon, an infidel of the rankest kind. He used
to laugh at me and my
brother because we served the Lord. One day in the harvest field, to
show his great atheistic
daring, he dropped his cradle and rolled up his sleeves and challenged
God. He said, 'I dare God
the Father to come down and fight with me; I dare God the Son to come
down and fight with me.'
God the Father and God the Son took the insult; but the next day, with
that awful daring, he laid
down his cradle again, struck up his sleeves and said, 'I dare the Holy
Ghost to come down and
fight with me.' Quicker than a flash the fellow dropped, paralyzed from
his arms down. They
carried him to the house and sent hastily for two doctors, who came and
examined him and
declared they did not know what was the matter with him; they had never
seen anything like it. In
the early part of his sickness he began to groan, 'O eternity,
eternity; how shall I spend eternity!' He
had beautiful, long, curly hair, and for four days he pulled at it
until he had pulled it all out. On the
ninth day, just as the sun was going down, he groaned out, 'O eternity,
eternity; how can I endure
eternity?' and he was gone." I want to tell you, my dear friends, you
would better play with forked
lightning bolts than to insult or resist the Holy Ghost. Oh, the Spirit
of God is speaking to some of
you people this morning and telling you something. You would better
sport with God's thunderbolts
than with the Holy Ghost. What are you going to do about this message?
Are you going to resist the
Holy Ghost, or not?
Bishop Pierce, one of our
most eloquent Southern Bishops, tells us that he was asked to
preach one Sunday morning at a camp-meeting like this. There was in
attendance a courtly
Southern gentleman of the old style, who always went to camp-meeting
out of respect for his wife's
piety, and as the Bishop stood up to preach, this gentleman sat down in
a seat before him. God
spoke to Bishop Pierce and said, "This is the last message that old
sinner is ever going to get; do
your best." God's Spirit came upon him and limbered his tongue, and
gave him the fullest possible
use of every faculty of his being, and he preached the Gospel in the
power of the Holy Ghost, and
from start to finish God sent it like barbed arrows to that man's
heart. He writhed as if he was
sitting on a burning chair, his face turning as pale as if he was in a
coffin; then the blood would
rush to his face again. He went through the sermon, and when it was
over, took that chair and went
to his tent, and pulling down the curtains, threw himself on the floor.
The good, Christian wife
watched it all, went to the tent and knocked. He did not open it, and
she heard a groan. She peeked
through a little crack by the side of the curtain and saw him on his
face in the straw. She said,
"Thank God, he is convicted at last." Dinner time came and she knocked
again; no answer but a
groan. She watched the door until supper time, then tapped again, but
received no answer but a
groan. She watched the tent until eleven o'clock at night, and went
again and tapped on the door; no
answer but a groan. She spent that night in another tent. In the
morning she received the same
response as before. She wept praying and watching until one o'clock on
Monday, when the door
opened, and she rushed forward on the wings of love, hoping to meet a
Christian husband; but
when she got to him there was an awful look of horror upon his face. He
had had a terrible siege.
He had fought the Holy Ghost and driven Him away a t last; but it took
him just twenty-five hours
to do it. But it may be that some of you in the next twenty-five
minutes will fight the Holy Ghost
and resist Him for ever and be a damned soul.
During the war
there was a soldier who had one of his lower limbs shot off by a cannon
ball close up to his body. He was taken into the hospital and cared for
and dressed tenderly. One
day the limb began to bleed profusely. The nurse stepped right up and
put his thumb over the spot
and sent for the surgeon, who came and examined him very carefully and
said, "My dear fellow, it
is a vein, and the artery is close by; if it should bleed from the
artery instead of the vein, you could
not be saved. You would die in three minutes." They partially succeeded
in stopping it, but it broke
out again. The nurse again put his thumb over the place and sent for
the surgeon, who when he
came said, "My dear fellow, I am sorry to tell you it is the artery
this time; now get ready to die,
for if he should take his thumb off you would die in three minutes;
send your messages to your
friends." The man wrote to his far-away wife and attended to some
business matters. Finally the
dear fellow said, "Now, kind nurse, I am ready to die; take your thumb
off." How could he do it? It
would mean instant death; but he could not always stand there with his
thumb on the artery; so he
turned away, and took his thumb off, and the hero was gone.
O sinner, I have
been pleading today for an hour and a quarter for your soul. Your
destiny
is at stake; your eternal destiny is at stake. How can I cease
pleading? I want to know how many in
this audience are going to decide to be led by the Holy Ghost. Oh,
Recording angel, stay thy hand
while these people decide! I want every one of you who decides to be
led by the Holy Ghost, to do
what He bids you to do, to make your way to Heaven, to conquer in the
name of Jesus, to stand up;
everybody who is a Christian, and every one who will decide to be led
by the Holy Ghost. Now,
those who want to be saved or sanctified, come to the altar.
THE END
