A POWERFUL CHURCH
"Ye shall receive power after that the Holy Ghost is
come upon you." There can be no success without power. Power is the very
condition of success. It is the all-important need of the people of God, for
by its presence failure is placed beyond the range of possibility. The word translated
in our Authorized Version as "power" is the word from which the term
"dynamite" is taken. Indeed, no violence whatsoever is done to the
text if we read: "Ye shall receive dynamite after that the Holy Ghost is
come upon you." "Behold I have given you dynamite above all the dynamite
of the enemy." Thus we see that Pentecostal power is, in the spiritual
world, what dynamite is in the material. Consider its explosive, overturning
effects in the ministry of the Apostles. " These that have turned the
world upside down have come hither also. "To the carnally minded, the
world appears right side up though in reality it is upside down, and in need of
there versive dynamite of the Holy Ghost.
This power is promised to us, and with it success is sure.
Not only is its possession a privilege, but a positive duty. We are as
certainly commanded to "be strong in the Lord and in the power of his
might as we are commanded not to steal. It would, therefore, be just as proper
for you, a Christian, to get up in class or testimony meeting, and talk about
your tendency to steal, to lust, or to lie, as to talk about your
"weakness," "shortcomings," "crooked paths," or
"feeble remarks." Weakness is a spreading malady. Strength is a
spreading energy. I can not afford to be weak, for it is not merely a
misfortune to fail -- it is a crime in the sight of high heaven.
If a man may be as strong financially as his financial backing,
why may we not be as strong spiritually as our spiritual backing? We ought
never to think of failing until the resources of heaven are completely
exhausted. We should make no arrangements for defeat until we are certain that
heaven is bankrupt. If we are cabled to the throne we may expect to fall only
when the white throne itself crumbles, totters and goes down. Glory! Most of
Christians are looking out for a soft place to fall. They make preparations to
tumble. They are like the sister who said she could" never give up the
blessed old doctrine of falling from grace." They believe so thoroughly in
backsliding that they indulge in it frequently.
No one says that it is impossible to backslide; but
certainly it is not necessary to sin. We are not preaching impeccability, but
we are magnifying the grace of God in its ability and power to save from sin
and make the human heart victorious. "All things are possible with
God" and "All things are possible to him that believeth." Faith
is the alchemy which changes fear to courage, "crooked paths" to
king's highways, and "feeble efforts" to glorious
"exploits." If we fear a fear it will come upon us. He who indulges
in talk about "crooked paths" will have plenty of "crooked paths"
to talk about. He who refers to his public communications as "feeble
remarks" in general describes the true nature of what he says; if he
thinks they are "feeble," they are "feeble," so great is
the importance of faith. If a man has a message from God and delivers it "with
the Holy Ghost sent down from heaven" he will have no occasion to speak of
his ministry as an "effort" or "endeavor." Mere endeavorers
do nothing but endeavor, and are satisfied with simply endeavoring. They do not
talk of success. Victory is not expected. They anticipate but little, and are
never disappointed.
Let us repeat: The Pentecostal Church is a powerful church.
This power is not the power of numbers. Israel was often weakest as a matter
of fact when she numbered the most; while Gideon's three hundred were more
mighty than his thirty-two thousand. Many a church of six hundred members is
filled with pygmies, dwarfs, and stunted babies. "New-born babes desiring
the sincere milk of the Word" they have not, neither would they know what
to do with them if they had them, for they have not had a convert in five
years. These stunted weaklings are "whiney," finicky, hard to
please; they must be petted and coddled and put up in scented cotton, requiring
the nursing of two hard-working pastors continually.
Many a church-society with a large membership is struggling
along, scarcely maintaining an existence, using almost every questionable means
to eke out the money necessary to keep the thing going, while some little
Holiness mission with no earthly backing whatsoever is having hundreds of souls
saved. We know a small Holiness mission in New York City which average done
hundred and thirty-five converts a month. Thus we see God is not so particular
about quantity as he is about quality. Israel always made a mistake when she
began to consider numbers and enumerate the people. God was all she needed.
The tendency of all ages is to count noses and trust in a crowd. The effort
today is to make a greater showing. Ministers make a grave mistake in bending
every energy to increase the membership; we need to stop and clean up what we
have. We may carry the report of large numbers to Conference or our annual
gatherings, but when the judgment day has cut our bloated statistics down to
the real count we may be unable to recognize our congregations. We would
rather have a dozen men and women separated from the world and filled with
condensed lightning from the upper skies than to have a huge convocation of timeserving
ecclesiastics. The writer knows men who have been fished out of the slums,
saved, wholly sanctified, healed, and charged with chain-lightning until he
would rather have them sit near the pulpit and pray while he preaches than to
be backed by a whole bench of bishops.
Again, the power of the ideal Pentecostal Church is not that
of intellect or brains. We are told that knowledge is power, and yet many who
stuff their heads and starve their hearts grow weaker every day. This power of
which we speak is not the product of seminaries, colleges and universities. It
does not come by metaphysical research or philosophical reflection. The
ancient Greeks were cultured and oftentimes refined, but utterly destitute of
this power. The musty records of the Chinese show a keen appreciation of
scientific methods and brains fertile in the production of philosophies, yet
the Celestials, even in the palmy days of Confucius, knew nothing of this power.
Corinth, noted for her rhetoricians, famed for her learning, a sort of modern
Oxford, Edinburgh or Boston, was notorious for vice and crime. Many of the
brainiest congregations incultured, hyper-refined New England have not
spiritual power enough to withstand the most consumptive, the sallowest, the
silliest, the puniest devil that hell ever turned out. Some of Boston's
"four hundred" want nothing better than the childish, effete religion
of the heathen Burmese. Even though it is dubbed "Christian
Science," that does not conceal its real character, for it is neither
Christian nor scientific. We place no premium on ignorance. Thank God, we
have a few scholarly, representative men who know the power of spirituality and
who are sufficiently wise as to refrain from depending on their learning,
eloquence or erudition, but put their confidence in the Holy Ghost himself.
But, alas! many a poor preacher who is a D. D., LL. D., Ph.D., should add N.
G.
Moreover, this power is not the power of wealth. It does not
consist in flocks and herds, in broad acres of verdant land, in heaps of gold and
silver, in stocks and bonds, nor in any form of material substance. The
members of the Pentecostal Church had but little, and they sold what they did
have and flung it cheerfully into the treasury of the Lord. In the world,
congregations are often measured by their financial standing. Not so above.
God is not after money. He is no beggar. "The cattle on a thousand hills
are his." In the hollow of his hand he holds the wealth of the universe.
He hath need of nothing in the economic line.
In the early church money was a secondary matter, if it was
a matter at all. To be poor did not disconcert the preachers of primitive
days. "Silver and gold have I none," said Peter, as, in company with
John, he met the cripple at the temple gate. In these days we hear of little
else in the meetings of committees, boards of stewards, Ladies' Aid Societies, etc.,
but the threadbare cry of "Money! money! How shall we raise it?"
"Where will we get the money?" is the first question when anything is
to be undertaken in the church. Socials, entertainments, fairs, bazaars,
festivals, broom-drills, kissing-parties, Mother Goose parties, poverty
suppers, clam bakes, bean suppers, oyster stews (with few oysters), and every
other devilish clap-trap that hell can invent are resorted to for the purpose
of raising money to carry on God's holy work! What a shame that we are so poor
that we must gull sinners out of their money by selling them ten cents worth of
oysters for twenty-five cents! Our God is not a beggar.
When Christ commissioned his preachers, nothing was said
about money except that a prohibition was made to the taking of much of it on
their journeys. As the church has grown wealthy she has always lost her power
to convict and convert sinners. Some monks were busily engaged in counting
over huge piles of shining gold when Thomas Aquinas entered the room.
"The time is no more when the church is compelled to say, 'Silver and gold
have I none,' " remarked one of the counters. After a moment of grave
thought the "Doctor Angelicus" replied, "True, and the time is
no more when she can say, 'In the name of Jesus of Nazareth, rise up and walk.'
" It is the general rule that the more expensive the church edifice, the
less spirituality in the society; the higher the church steeple, the lower the
real piety.
We make a great mistake in catering to moneyed men. The
writer has often been surprised and pained to see a man in "poor
raiment" come into the congregation, look in vain for a seat, and finally
forced to be content with an inconvenient one by the door. But let the man in
"fine raiment" and "gold ring" appear, and instantly a
half-dozen people are on their feet motioning the visitor forward, pew-doors
fly open as if by magic; all that the "moneyed man" may have a
seat. The strength of the church does not consist of brains, or
numbers, or culture, or rhetoric, or schools. It does not reside in dignities,
titles, scepters, thrones, stocks or bonds. The strength of the ideal Pentecostal
Church is the Holy Ghost himself. He and no other is the power of this great army
of the Lord. He is not a mere influence; he is not the breath of God, he is
not an emanation from Deity ; he is not the abstract power of God. He is God
himself, the third Person in the trinity. He comes into the church by coming
into the individual members, and thus by his omnipotent energy he purifies,
electrifies and endues her with power.
