THIS IS THAT
"But this is that which was spoken by the prophet Joel;
and it shall come to pass in the last days, saith God, I will pour out of my
Spirit upon all flesh: and your sons and your daughters shall prophesy, and
your young men shall see visions, and your old men shall dream dreams: and on
my servants and on my handmaidens I will pour out in those days of my Spirit;
and they shall prophesy" (Acts iii 16-18.)
These are the words of the Apostle of Pentecost, repeating
the prophecy of Joel, which foretold the wonderful event of Pentecost.
Especially do we call attention this afternoon to the fact that the descent of
the Holy Spirit, the advent of the third Person of the Trinity into this world,
results immediately in the preaching of the gospel of the Son of God. As a
result of the outpouring of the Spirit, the sons and daughters and servants and
handmaidens prophesied. That word "prophesy" is very frequently
misunderstood. The original word means "to bubble " or "to
shout" or "to run over like an artesian well." Prophecy is
referred to in the text we have read, as something to which all of God's people
are called, for a careful study of the Word of God reveals the fact that it
covers all phases of practical gospel preaching. Preaching is not preaching
that does not "bubble"; that does not "spring up."
Preaching is not preaching that is worked up; it must bubble up or spring up
like an artesian well, to meet the New Testament standard.
We have searched the Word of God in vain to find a single
trace of what is known as modern sermonizing. We can find where men, women and
sons and daughters preached, but we find no trace of an attempt at sermonizing,
a systematic presentation of what some people call "truth." The greatest
sermons the apostles ever preached were very largely from their own experience.
From the day of Pentecost to this hour, when men have preached "with the
Holy Ghost sent down from heaven," it has been with a holy recklessness
and freedom from any sort of manmade or human system that would put a man in
bondage.
The fact is, God has called all of His children in these
days to prophesy in some way, and Pentecostal preaching is that reckless, free
expression of what God has done in the heart, that cannot be put under bands
and will not work in harness. There were one hundred and twenty men and women,
but they all began to speak, they all began to prophesy; the sons and the
daughters and the handmaidens and the servants began to prophesy; they told out
or let out what God had put in. That is all Paul did when he was arraigned
before the council; he just turned the faucet and let the thing flow. There are
a great many people who have a very false idea of what it is to preach, and
there are many people sitting back and excusing themselves, saying they are not
called to preach, or they are not called to talk, who ought to be up and at
it.
I have a concern in my soul for the sisters in the church.
Thousands are making a most lamentable mistake in waiting for some human
recognition. Beloved, when we swing back to Pentecost we can not wait for the
ordination of any man. We can not wait for human recognition. We can not wait
for the backslidden church to get ready to ordain us. We have got to preach because
God puts it in us and we must give expression to it.
What are we to preach? Beloved, if we are going to preach,
we must preach that which God bids us. We are not called upon to preach science
or philosophy, nor are we called to advance social schemes or theories about
higher education. We are not called to do a thousand and one things that the
Church has turned aside to do, but we are called to preach the gospel of the
Son of God, regeneration for sinners, the baptism with the Holy Ghost and fire
for believers, that men may know holiness of heart and holiness of life: that
men may be redeemed from sin and be brought to a place where they can know God
and enjoy Him forever. God save us from modern preaching and swing us back to
Pentecost!
The average preacher is preaching his way to hell, and
thousands of church members hold church membership, and it will do them no more
good than simply to give them a passport to the regions of the damned. All over
this country people are calling for and receiving something that is human;
something that is concocted in the study, something that comes upon the plane
of human intellection, when God has commanded us to preach the gospel of Jesus
Christ "with the Holy Ghost sent down from heaven." It is an appalling
fact that some awful stuff is poured forth from the pulpits of many of our
churches. No one who knows me can properly understand me to tirade or abuse any
one; but, sir, if to know the facts is to be oppressed with a great burden, I
dare to tell the facts that our people may get under a living concern and that
the Church may be redeemed from the fallacy of this latter-day preaching. Lord,
give us something out of the skies that will save men from an endless
hell.
What do we want to preach? We do not want to preach
ourselves; we want to stop that sort of thing, every one of us. It would be a
good thing if we would stop testifying with a perpendicular pronoun
"I" six and a half feet high at the head of our testimony. It would
be a good thing if we would change things and put the Son of God to the front,
and instead of saying "I am sanctified," and "I am this and I am
that," if we would say "He sanctifies me wholly." If we would
keep Him to the front, people would understand things better. The tendency
everywhere in these days is to relegate God to the rear and promote man and
bring him to the front, and the devil is helping us to do it. He wants
preachers and laymen and everyone else to keep themselves to the front and leave
God out. We can't afford to do that. We must preach Jesus.
We must preach the cross. I know there is some reproach
connected with it, but I know that for a man who shares the reproach without
complaint there is a tremendous reward. There is some persecution, but it is little
compared with the glory that shall be revealed in us. We are called to preach
"Jesus Christ and Him crucified"; salvation for the sinner from his
record and salvation for the saint from what he is that he may be filled with
the Holy Ghost.
The fulfillment of the words of our text gives us victory;
gives us success; insures success. How is it that all over this country men are
complaining of defeat? How is it that men are mortified and say they are deeply
pained that they can not have a revival? Do you know it is just as easy to have
a revival this afternoon as it was eighteen centuries ago? Do you know a
revival is sure to follow certain conditions, as surely as God is God, and
truth is truth?
The reason we do not have a revival is because we do not
preach with the Holy Ghost sent down from heaven. We need a regular Mississippi
to sweep over us and carry away a whole lot of trash and give us an eternal
victory. Many a man "preaches well." He is "logical," he is
a "systematic thinker," he has a "delightful delivery," the
people are "held in admiration," and they are free to express it, but
no one gets saved! Another man comes along with no new truth, very little
system and a great many objectionable features in the way he presents the unvarnished
truth, and the fastidious are offended, but they get converted, and the
backslidden church members are enraged, but they are shown that they are out of
harmony with God, and the result is that a great and lasting revival breaks
out! What is the difference? One man preached and he depended on brains
and human education, and the other man preached the truth and depended on the
Holy Ghost. A very popular evangelist said some time ago at the close of a
fruitless series of meetings: "I can not understand it. I preached this
same series of sermons in a certain city in the very same order, and there were
two hundred converted." He ought to know that the Holy Ghost does not go
according to order. He does not go by rule! One time the man preached and
depended on the Spirit, and the Spirit honored the truth. The other time he
depended on a systematic presentation of the truth he had preached somewhere
else, and the Holy Ghost retired and did not honor it. Many a time He retires
and does not honor our efforts because we try to repeat something we have
preached somewhere else.
Many a preacher preaches well. He is entirely orthodox, but
he does no good. Why? Well, because he is so immersed in his own ideas that my
text fulfilled would fill him with dismay. Do you know that we have fallen upon
times when things that can not be understood are not only denounced and
decried, but people are afraid of anything like the supernatural. They are
afraid of being fanatical. God in heaven help us!
The valley of the Nile has been famous for its fertility for
thousands of years. This fertility is owing to the annual overflow. If it
stayed within its banks it would serve for all the purposes of navigation, but
the soil would not bring forth food, and a famine would follow. A man can not
go through a round of duties simply, and yet accomplish much for God. But if he
could have a freshet in his soul men could get bread from him; there would be
food in God's house for the people. Lord, run us over!
The freedom from excitement that is so complimented by the
world, and is so generally characteristic of the church, will never bring us a
harvest of souls. We must get more reckless and more ready to preach and pray
and sing and shout, regardless of what people say about us. When we get there,
it will make but little difference whether people have been
"ordained" or not. It will make but little difference whether you
have ever had a bishop's hands on your head or not, if you get the Holy Ghost
on you. If you receive the unction of the Holy One you will preach and have converts
and victory, and God's name will be glorified, and Pentecost will return.
When people receive the Holy Ghost a little child can have a
revival. A little child has a revival many a time when the preacher can not.
Many a revival comes to a church when it is not the preacher who is to blame
for it. It is some child or some "cranky old woman" who shouts her bonnet
clear over to the wrong side of her head, but who knows how to pray and wait on
God until the skies part and victory comes. There is going to be a great change
after a while, and many a tall fellow is coming down and many an insignificant
person is going up. When the judgment is set there will be such a changing of
things as will astonish many a tall-hatted preacher and many an elder, and many
obscure souls who are God's valiants but who will not even remember when they did
anything extraordinary. It was all recorded, and they remember it up
there.
O, the blessed results of the pouring out of the Spirit. The
man of weakness becomes a man of power; the woman of timidity and bashfulness
becomes a steady-voiced witness to the work of God in her heart. Do you
remember the account of the sanctification of Jacob? Do you recall how the
blessing the Lord bestowed upon him on the bank of the brook Jabbok transformed
his whole nature and life?
Years before there had been estrangement between Jacob and
his brother Esau, and now as Jacob starts home from his sojourn with Laban, his
father-in-law, he learns that his angry brother is coming to meet him with an
armed host. Ah, how fearful is the heart of Jacob! How his courage flees! In
his desperation he calls earnestly upon God: "Deliver me, I pray thee,
from the hand of my brother, from the hand of Esau: for I fear lest he will
come and smite the mother with the children." Then the Lord comes and
seeks to break his will and get him to a place of complete consecration. At
last he yields and confesses that his name is Jacob (Supplanter). Now the
blessing comes, and the Lord says, "Thy name shall be called no more
Jacob, but Israel (a Prince of God), for as a prince hast thou power with God
and with men and hast prevailed."
How different is the life of the man henceforth. Esau is
conquered by merely meeting his brother. Peace is made at once without a
particle of bloodshed. Henceforth the life of Jacob is changed and made
blessedly powerful.
Peniel corresponds to Pentecost and gives us power with God
and with men. My fellow preacher, do you want your words to have effect when
you preach? Do you want men to quail and tremble and turn to God? Then get
power with God, the baptism with the Holy Ghost, and power with men will
naturally flow from it.
It was this baptism, this anointing, that made Caughey a red
hot revivalist. Before it came he was weak like any ordinary preacher, but no
sooner was the Spirit poured out than he became a messenger from God, whose
words shook men's hearts as the wind shakes the leaves.
Nothing else than this anointing with the Holy Ghost would
ever have made a soul winner out of Sammy Morris, the Kru boy. He was ignorant,
unlearned, and only a short time out of the jungles, but on the night of his
arrival in New York seventeen men were brought to the feet of the Savior
through his instrumentality. It is a wonderful power that can take a poor
heathen lad and make of him a more successful soul saver than white-haired
clergymen who have been in training for scores of years. What is this power? It
is the power of Pentecost; the power of the anointing of which Joel
speaks.
Do you know it is a burning shame the way the Holy Ghost is
neglected in these days? No man is fit to minister God's Word until he has had
this holy anointing with the Holy Ghost. Yet men are seeking every other
equipment but this absolutely necessary one. What is Hebrew? What is elocution?
What is sociology? What is rhetoric? Can these things put a mysterious power on
men's souls and make them yield to God? Can these things make men weep for sin?
No; only the Pentecostal baptism will do this.
It is alarming how men turn away from the ministry. Eight
hundred ministers left the work of preaching last year and went into the
practice of law or the work of journalism or some other work to which God had
not called them.
There is no nobler, more blessed work than that of preaching
for Christ to never dying souls. The reason some men shirk it and forsake it is
because they have not had the preparation for it, viz.: the enduement with the
Spirit. He who has had his Pentecost would rather preach than eat, and he would
preach if he had to hire people to listen to him.
Is there some one here who feels that his or her talents are
small and yet there is a desire in the heart to preach? Let me tell you God is
as glad to get you as he is the college graduate. It was to John, the
untutored, and not to Paul, the pupil of Gamaliel, that the apocalypse was
given, and God will give as much success and as clear a revelation of Himself
to the man of meager gifts as to the one of more extraordinary
talents.
We forget, sir, that if some one receives the Holy Ghost it
means the conversion of sinners, and we forget that if Christians are filled
with the Holy Ghost they can touch a button that will turn on a current from
the upper skies until men will come tottering to the feet of Jesus Christ. If
you receive the Holy Ghost you can preach; you need no man to ordain you. Our
boys and our girl sought to preach, and I am here with a message to tell you to
preach.
At all hazards, preach! You say, "I am nothing, I can
do nothing." Well, God bless you, let the thing go for nothing, and let
God have a chance. All He wants is a shepherd's sling or a ram's horn. All He
needs to confuse the Midianites and have victory is just a three-cent loaf of
barley meal to tumble down into the camp. If God could get a chance at holiness
people here, you would not have to be ashamed of holiness in Cincinnati; it
would go through these streets and through these alleys like the Mississippi
goes through the valley when she is on a tear, clearing away rubbish and
sweeping away obstacles. When you get the Holy Ghost you will not have to apologize
for holiness. It will make its own impression on people. God bless you, it will
defend itself.
The reason we have to "defend holiness" is because
we have not got the pure article on hand. When the fire jumped out of heaven at
Carmel it scattered unbelief, and when fire comes on you unbelief hides its
accursed head in everlasting shame, and God's people take on an air of victory
and courage and strength that frightens the devil. God save us from this
"holiness" that has to be apologized for! You hold a ten days'
meeting and spend all your time apologizing for holiness, and wonder why the
meeting is a failure! I for one am not going to any field and suffer
defeat. Not until I know they are bankrupt in heaven and until there is no more
power in the throne, will I ever suffer defeat on my field. Cincinnati is a
hard enough field, but God stretched people out here on this floor last night
as if they were ready for the coffin. God saved people here at this altar as if
it was an easy field. It is time we got through our talk about "gospel
hardened" fields. There are milk and water surfeited fields. There are
places where they have preached nonsense until people are tired of it, but I
tell you there is an awful dearth of the real gospel. Real Holy Ghost preaching
will succeed anywhere and everywhere.
We demand success of everyone else but preachers and
Christians, and why do we not demand success of them? We have no time, life is
too short, eternity is too long, hell is too awful, and sin is too damning, for
us to employ men who do not have converts. We can have success. A child
preaches and prays and sings in the Holy Ghost and people weep and laugh and
shout and get converted, and no one seems to be responsible for it. Over there is
a man with all logic and eloquence and a system of orthodox truth who does his
very best and every one seems to be interested, but no one is converted; but
yonder is an old man who has not much more than half sense, but he is filled
with the Spirit, and he gets up and utters a few words and the whole audience
takes fire. You have heard some one sing, -- how beautifully they sang! How the
people admired it and how beautiful that voice was, but no one was saved. There
was, however, an old black woman who sang in the Holy Ghost and the whole
audience wept.
God in heaven give us something that will moisten people's
eyes. In these days, when everything is dry, we need something that will touch
people's hearts. The fire of the Holy Ghost will do it. Many a preacher has had
more converts in a single week after he received his Pentecost than he had in
ten years' preaching before. James Caughey was an ordinary preacher until he
was sanctified wholly, and then he ran like a blaze of fire all over England
and all over America, and myriads of people were converted to God. We have lots
of ordinary preachers today who would be extraordinary preachers if they were
filled with the Holy Ghost. We have lots of preachers who are extraordinary in
their own eyes who if sanctified would be very ordinary in their own sight, but
they would have a great deal more success than they are having.
In conclusion, I want to say that the call of God is upon
us. I do not know whether I will ever come to Cincinnati again or not, but if I
do, and find you people sitting around in the same nest you are in now, I will
find you backslidden from God. I might just as well deal plainly with you. We
can not feather our nest and settle down and take care of ourselves, and retain
our experience. We must "preach it and pray it and sing it and shout
it." We must go to every house, we must go to the cellars and garrets; we
must go among the wharves along the river; we must go everywhere and carry the
gospel of the Son of God. You can preach the gospel with your mouth and
with your money and in your business. You can preach it in a great many ways if
you have God with you. I notice when people have received the Holy Ghost they
are looking out for ways to spread the truth. A colored man went from these meetings
to one of the hotels last night and brought a stranger down here, and God
brought him to the altar and saved him. He had come all the way from Detroit
down here on purpose to get this salvation, and he did not know what he had
come for. And the colored man was the means of bringing him to God.
If we get this blessing we will preach it some way. There is
one way in which we can all preach it. When God called me out of a delightful
pastorate and a lovely home and a salary of sixteen hundred dollars, and I laid
it all down without the promise of a dollar, and agreed to live in a trunk from
January to January, He put in my soul the burning desire to get this message to
the greatest possible number of people. So He impressed me that I could preach
it and write it and give it away and circulate it in holiness books and
holiness literature. All over this country He has blessed me in giving away
books and papers and scattering this gospel. Any one can preach the gospel
thus, and yet people sit around and say, "I do not know how I can do
it." You can do it by buying books and giving them away. You can do it by
taking a paper and giving it to other people. You can do it by sending the
gospel to your unsanctified pastor, and your unsanctified brothers and sisters.
The time is coming when we must invest money in things that
will go for something in the upper skies. The time is here when we must give
some thought to things that will never die. If we do not we are going to get
lean in our souls. I know people who are just ready to dry up and blow away
simply because they have failed to keep step with God in spreading the truth.
In fact, until we come to the place where we are ready to give out everything
that God puts in us, we can not hope to prosper. God help us this afternoon to
spread this gospel; to preach it in every way possible. My concern this
afternoon is that people may receive the Holy Ghost. My concern is that people
may receive the Spirit who will make them prophesy. I know of girls, servant
girls, who are prophesying in such a way as to astonish angels.
I know a girl who received the Holy Ghost and she could
hardly speak a word of plain English, and her worldly mistress and her husband
got under awful conviction, and they did not know what they would do. One
morning they were at the breakfast table. There was a lovely breakfast, but
they could not eat it. They did not ordinarily have much use for Mary in the
dining room, but that morning they had to have Mary. They could not think of
any one else who knew how to teach them and they sent for her -- she was frying
batter cakes in the kitchen, and she came in and was enabled to lead those
people to Jesus Christ. You can be so full of salvation when you are frying
batter cakes that folks will send for you. You can be so full of salvation when
you are blacking a man's boots that he will want you to tell him about
salvation. If people had the Holy Ghost they could scatter this fire
everywhere. God help us to receive Him. Cincinnati, O., Afternoon of Dec. 5, 1898
