I do not know but what this will be the most controversial of the messages, although my purpose is not to be controversial but helpful. However, I find you cannot please everybody. Some say you go too far, and some say you do not go far enough. Very few are ready to pat your head and say, “I think you about hit it.” Mostly, we are either too far or not far enough. Because you cannot please everybody, I compromise by trying to please nobody. But trying to get the truth out and trust that the Spirit of God will apply it, and that the hungry sheep will come to the pasture field.
I want to try to discover the abiding elements of Pentecost. What came and stayed and what came and went? I do not believe in a repetition of Pentecost, but I believe in a perpetuation of Pentecost. There is a vast difference there.
This does not contradict anything else I have said. I believe Pentecost did not come and go, but Pentecost came and stayed. If we would only get a hold of that. Pentecost came and stayed, and you and I are living in the midst of it, if we only knew it and would do something about it.
It is true here as it is true of all spiritual, or at least, all religious experiences, that there are external elements and so were variable. We ought to let the Holy Ghost teach us that God does not care very much for the external. Therefore, the external may be variable.
Then there are the elements that are internal and of the Spirit, and so, they are permanent and they are always about the same.
Then there are incidental elements, which are of relative importance. I would not say they are not important, but I say they are nor critically important.
Then there are fundamental elements that are of vital and eternal importance.
What did happen that day in that upper room there in Jerusalem?
While they were there, suddenly there was a sound in the room “as of” a rushing mighty wind. It did not say that a rushing wind went through there, blowing everything. Nothing like that happened. It said there was a sound “as of” a rushing mighty wind. Did you ever hear a sound that you got the impression that there was a great wind blowing somewhere? That is in nature. That is what it means. It means it was like a rushing mighty wind, the sound of it.
While they were wondering what it was, suddenly there appeared a great cloud of fire, and it divided into little bits and sat on the foreheads of each one present. This fire was the divine Shekinah presence, and it divided and sat upon the forehead of each of them. It says “tongues of fire.” You light a candle and you will see it takes the shape of tiny tongue, broad at the bottom and tapering up. That is all it means. It has not any reference whatever to language. It says the fire sat upon their foreheads. Then they began to speak in other languages and the people heard them speak in these languages.
Now, what can’t be repeated? What happened there that can never be repeated?
Let me give you some facts.
First, there was the physical presence of all the church together in one place. That could be because there were only about 120 Christians. But it never could be after that, because that day, there were 3,000 more Christians born; and at another time, there were about 5,000 Christians, which made 8,000. I am sure they had no place in Jerusalem that would have seated or even housed 8,000 people. As the gospel went from day to day, the Lord added daily to the church such as should be saved. So finally, it got out of hand and the number of Christians became so large that, no auditorium anywhere would have housed them. No street corner, no open field, no beach, as our Lord sometimes spoke from the boat; no place could they have gotten together.
You hear the words in our time; “ecumenical and ecumenicity.” Do not get scared and run when you hear these big words. Preachers like to toss them around because it gives the impression they are very learned. Ecumenical only means universal. It means all over the world; and the ecumenical church just means all the Christians, or as it used to mean, the representative of all Christians. Therefore, an ecumenical council of Christians would be either all the Christians in the world, or at least official representatives of all the Christians in the world. You could have that, I suppose, I do not think it would ever be; but you might envision a gathering of people where there were representatives from all the church from all over the world. Even that would create such a crowd there is not a place in the whole world that would house them.
So the physical presence of all Christians together in one place never was repeated that I know of again. They went on Solomon’s Porch, but there were only a small number of them because, when those words were spoken, there were running up in the thousands of Christians and you could not have got thousands on Solomon’s Porch. It merely meant that some of them were there.
That was one thing that happened; it never can be repeated again. As far as my knowledge of history goes the sound from heaven was never repeated again. That is, I have not read it anywhere among the Methodists, among the Moravians, among the Presbyterians, or Anglicans. Nowhere have I read of any gathering of Christians where there was sound of a rushing mighty wind.
I have heard that when D. L. Moody called the Christians to gather, he took them out under the pine trees in the eastern part of the United States and kept them there several days and nothing happened.
One day he got up before them and said, “Now the meeting closes tomorrow and we can’t go home without being filled with the Holy Ghost.” So, he said, “Let’s go up and try it once more and wait on God.”
They went up among the pine trees and the mighty Holy Ghost came down on them. They went back the next morning and took trains in all directions, and historians record that wherever they went they went, like Samson’s foxes going through the fields setting fires everyplace they went. The Holy Ghost had come, but He had not come with the sound of a wind. So that was not repeated.
Then, I do not read anywhere in Christian history where there was the appearance of a great body of fire. You can get some Christians who are just a little bit off beam to say anything. I am talking about trustworthy and reputable Christians who would not overstate things. I do not know any place where there was a great body of fire dividing on the foreheads of the people.
I do not read that anywhere else, at any other time, everybody present began to speak in a language that everybody else could understand without an interpreter. Yet, that is exactly what happened here.
I do not read any place where without interpreters, seventeen different people could hear these people speak and all know what they were talking about.
So, I say, those are elements, which obviously never were repeated, because in every instance they were external.
Now, right here some of you will not like that. But then, I am going to tell the truth and trust God and hope for the best.
Here is the logic of it. That if these things were necessary to the Church, and necessary to the perpetuation of whatever took place there at Pentecost that was basic and fundamental; and then if it was necessary to the Church’s life and it was never repeated, then the Church must have ceased to exist the day she was born. Or, at least ceased to exist the day that they died who were present there, about one-hundred-twenty.
So, obviously these external things were not the basic things. They were there and were present, but they were external; they were incidental, they were elements that belonged to that particular historic scene and there something was born.
Something came to past. Something was given. A deposit was made. Something happened. And what happened was internal, heavenly, permanent and lasting.
Now what was it that happened that did not pass away? Did not pass away with the sound of the wind. Did not pass away with the sight of fire on the forehead. Did not pass away with the seventeen languages being spoken all at one time. Or being understood at least by seventeen people of seventeen languages. What didn’t pass away? What is the eternal and abiding element in Pentecost?
In order to discover it, of course, we have to go and find out what was promised. “And He shall send you another Comforter,” said Jesus, “and He shall take the things of mine and show them unto you.” Somebody was coming that should make Jesus Christ real.
Then He said, “He will convict the world, the presence of the Holy Ghost in showing Christians Christ and showing sinners their sin.” Then He said, “Tarry in the city of Jerusalem until ye be endued with power from on high.”
Do you know what happened when He came? Here is what happened. Peter leaped to his feet and shouted, “But Peter, standing up with the eleven, lifted up his voice, and said unto them, Ye men of Judaea, and all ye that dwell at Jerusalem, be this known unto you, and hearken to my words: For these are not drunken, as ye suppose, seeing it is but the third hour of the day. 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 2:14-18).
As I tried to explain, power means ability to do. That is all it means. Because it is a Greek word from which our English word dynamite comes, some of our brethren try to make out that the Holy Ghost is dynamite. Forgetting that they got the thing upside down. Dynamite was named after that Greek word, and the Holy Ghost and the power of God were not named after dynamite. We ought to remember that. Dynamite was discovered only less than two-hundred years ago, but this Greek word goes back to the time of Christ. It means ability to do, that is all. Just ability to do.
One man picks up a violin and he gets nothing out of it but unconscionable squeaks and impossible raucous sounds. He does not have the ability to do. Another man picks up the violin and he is soon playing beautiful, rich melodies. One man sets into the prize ring and he cannot even lift his hands, and the other fellow walks in and he has power to do. Soon the fellow who cannot lift his hand is sleeping peacefully on the floor. The man who has ability to do. One businessman cannot run a peanut stand; he would go bankrupt if he tried even to sell peanuts down on the corner. He has not the ability to do. One man can step up, open his mouth, and a song will come out. I can step up and no song comes out. Nothing anybody wants to hear.
Ability to do, is what the word means, actually. A dynamic ability to be able to do what you go to do. And ye shall receive ability to do, it will come on you. If you are a soul-winner, you will have the ability to win souls. If you are a preacher, He will give you ability to make the Word plain. Whatever you do in the name of God, He gives you the ability to do.
And He gives you the ability to be victorious in your life, to live right, to behold Jesus and to live with heaven in view. It is ability to do.
Those vital, essential and eternal things took place, came, and stayed. The wind, the fire and the appearance of tongues have never been repeated as far as I know. And all the Christians coming together in one place could not be repeated now, because they are scattered all over the world and you could not get them together. But that the Comforter came, and that He filled them and abode in them, and that He came to make Jesus real and to give them inward moral ability to do right, and inward ability to do God’s work; that stayed. That is still here and if we do not have it, it is because we have been mistaught. It is because we have been scared out of it. The teachers have scared us out of it. And some Christians have scared us away from the Holy Spirit.
I remember as a young fellow on the farm in Pennsylvania, when a field of corn was planted and they wanted to save the field from the crows, they would shoot a crow and hang him by his feet in the middle of the cornfield. The point was this, this is a good field of corn but you see what happens to crows that come into this cornfield! That was supposed to scare off all the crows for miles around. They were supposed to hold a conference and say, “Look, there’s a field of new planted corn, but don’t go near it; I saw a dead crow over there.”
That is exactly what Satan has done. He has taken some fanatical, weird, wild-eyed Christian that does things that he should not do, and he has hung him up in the middle of God’s cornfield. Then he says, “Now, don’t you go near that doctrine of the Holy Spirit, because if you do, you will be acting like him.”
I will not be frightened out of my heritage. I will not be scared out of my birthright because somebody did not know what to do with it, or found something else that was not a birthright. I want all God has for me.
Let me point out something here. When Christ was born, many external things happened. They were not of ultimate or vital importance. When Christ was born the angels were notified and they came, but He would have been born whether they came or not. When Christ came, kings came from the east, but He was born whether kings came or not. When Christ came, He was born in a manger and there were all sorts of external circumstances. But there was one great vital fact that never has been taken back. He was born. He did come into the world; He became flesh to dwell among us. He did come and take our human nature, and the word was made flesh to redeem mankind on a cross. That did take place and it remains forever.
These external things are not important. The internal things matter. Thousands of people felt the saving power of Christ but had never heard the angels. Thousands who felt His healing touch had never seen the wise men.
This is the eternal meaning of Acts 2. That the Comforter has come; that deity is in our midst; that God has given Himself to us; the liquid essence of deity has been poured out. He called it, “he hath shed forth this which ye now see and hear.”
Let me point out something to you here. Unless we have an outpouring of the Holy Spirit, if we continue to go the way we have been going in fundamentalist, evangelical circles just a little while longer, the fundamentalist will all be liberals and most of the liberals will be Unitarians and there won’t be very much left but a few empty buildings.
It is my opinion that we need God’s children to realize that they have a heritage, of which they have not taken advantage. God has promised us a unique afflatus, a seizure, an invasion from beyond us that is to come to us and take over and to be in us what we could not possibly be by ourselves.
If you were going to try to write some sonnets as good as Shakespeare wrote like, “Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day,” what would you have to have? I will tell you what you would have to have; you would have to have the spirit of Shakespeare. You would have to have the intellect of Shakespeare enter your personality. If you and I tried to write, “Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day,” we would never get any further than that. Winter would come before we would get the second line written. Nevertheless, Shakespeare could make it; he knew what to do with words.
Emerson said that he was the man who, above all men who ever lived in the world, could say anything that he wanted to say. And he did say it. Now, how could you write like Shakespeare?
But if you wanted to write like Shakespeare what would you have to have, The intellect of Shakespeare. If you wanted to compose music like Johanna Sebastian Bach, what would you have to have? You would have to have the spirit of Bach. If you wanted to be a statesman like Gladstone or Disraeli, what would you have to have? You would have to have the spirit of those men.
If we are going to reproduce Christ on earth and be Christlike and show forth Christ, what are we going to have? We are going to have to have the Spirit of Christ. If we are going to be the children of God, we are going to have the Spirit of the Father to breathe in our hearts and breathe through us. That is why we must have the Spirit of God. That is why the Church must have the Spirit of Christ, for the Church is called to live above her own ability. She is called to live up so high that no human being can live like that. The humblest Christian listening to me is called to live a life of miracles; a moral and spiritual life of such intensity and purity that no human being can do it.
Only Jesus Christ can do it. Therefore, He wants the Spirit of Christ to come to His people. This afflatus, this seizure, this invasion from above that affects us mentally, morally and spiritually.
If we just stopped all our busyness; got quiet, worshiped God, and waited on Him; we would rise above the carnality of present Christians. This does not make people love you to say this, and it certainly is not chapter two from How to Win Friends and Influence People. But it is true nevertheless that the body of Christians is carnal. We are a carnal bunch. The Lord’s people ought to be a sanctified, pure, clean people, but we are a carnal crowd. We are carnal in our attitudes, carnal in our tastes and carnal in everything. The conditions are so shockingly irreverent these days.
One of our missionaries in the Congo told about some missionaries from the United States who came over to his mission field and started singing some imitation Negro Spirituals.
These old deacons took this white missionary aside and said, “Teacher, may we have a word with you? Why do you allow a thing like this? We gave up that junk when we left the jungle and came to Jesus Christ and got some clothes on and were converted. Why do you import from the United States this stuff we gave up and left in the jungle?”
Yet you hear it everywhere you go. Young fellows that ought to be paddled, and here they are with nothing more than silly little jingles, when they should be worshipping.
I say, our Christian services are shockingly irreverent and so degrade our religious face. So largely is our Christian service exhibitionism that unless there is a divine visitation, I do not know where we are going. But wherever we are going, we are going pretty fast. It will never be cured by sermons. It will never be cured until the Church of Christ, you and I, have been suddenly confronted with what one man called the mysterium tremendum; the fearful mystery that is God. The tremendum adjustist; the fearful majesty that is God. And this is what the Holy Ghost does. He brings this mysterium tremendum, this fearful majesty, fearful mystery, this wonderful thing we call God, this wonderful One we call God and presents Him to the human spirit. And when we are confronted with this, out goes our irreverence and out goes our carnality and out goes our degraded religious tastes, and out goes all that. And the soul held speechless trembles inwardly to the furthest fiber of its being. The Holy Ghost bestows upon us a beatitude beyond compare.
Brethren, you will never know more about God then the Spirit teaches you. You will never know any more about Jesus then the Spirit teaches you, because there is only the Spirit to do the teaching. Oh, Holy Ghost, how we have grieved Thee. How we have insulted Thee. How we have rejected Thee. Yet, He is our teacher, and if He does not teach us, we can never know. He is our illuminator, and if He does not turn the light on, we never can see. He is the healer of our deaf ears, and if He does not touch our ears, we can never hear. And yet churches can run for weeks, months and years without ever knowing anything about this or ever having the Spirit of the Living God come at all upon them.
Oh, my heart be still before Him; prostrate inwardly adore Him. This I say is the news I have for you. Deity is present. Pentecost means that Deity came to mankind to give Himself to man that man might breathe Him in as he breathes in the air. That He might fill man.
Dr. A. B. Simpson had an illustration, which I think was about as good as I ever heard. He said to be filled with the fullness of God was like a bottle in the ocean. You take the cork out of the bottle and sink it into the ocean; you got the bottle full of ocean, the bottle is in the ocean, the ocean is in the bottle, the ocean contains the bottle, the bottle contains a little bit of the ocean and so it was with the Christian. We are filled under the fullness of God, but of course, we cannot contain all of God because God contains us.
But, we can have all of God we can contain. And if we only knew it, we could enlarge our vessels. The vessel gets bigger as we go on with God. Deity is among us. If some celebrity were here, the ushers would not know what to do with the people. I tell you, we have a celebrity in our midst. “And it came to pass, suddenly, they were all filled with the Holy Ghost.” Deity came down among us and He came down to stay. Not to come and go, but to come and stay. We have eyes, we see not; we have ears and we hear not; we have hearts and we feel not; and we ignore the presence of royalty.
How would the gracious queen of England feel if she were to come to Toronto and not even a policeman on the corner would know she was here? Nobody would know. She would walk down the streets and nobody would even give her a glance. I know, being the gracious little lady that she is, she would probably smile it off, but it would be pretty bad for us, and for the people to know royalty is present and we did not even know it. We have higher than royalty; we have the Lord of lords and King of kings. We have the blessed Holy Ghost present and we are treating Him as though He was not present.
I say, this is terrible. We resist Him; we disobey Him; we quench Him and we compromise with our hearts. We hear a sermon about Him and determine to learn more and do something about it. Then our conviction wears off and soon, we go back to the same old dead level we were in before. We resist the Blessed Comforter. The Blessed Comforter has come to comfort, to teach; for He is the Spirit of Instruction. He has come to bring light, for He is the Spirit of light. He comes to bring purity, for He is the Spirit of Holiness. He comes to bring power, for He is the Spirit of power. He comes to bring these all to our hearts, and He wants you to have this kind of experience.
Years ago, I was up in a little town north of Chicago preaching to a group of Baptist. I told them about Isaiah’s vision and these Baptist preachers gathered down front to pray afterward. I went home and got interested in other things. That meeting rather passed into the back of my mind. Two years later two Baptist preachers came to my home and said, “We would like to come in a minute.”
They came in. I knew one of them.
He said, “Do you remember when you preached about Isaiah?”
I said, “Yes, I remember.”
He said, “I became so thirsty to be filled with the Holy Ghost that I have been a miserable man for two years. I sought God and I sought God, and nothing happened. Here a little while ago, one day in my agony, I was standing in the middle of my living room floor and I looked up at God and said, ‘Oh God, You’ve got to do it.’ And I was suddenly, instantaneously and marvelously filled with the Holy Ghost. Now, I am not going out among the Pentecostal people; I am a Baptist and I am going back and preach in the Baptist church. But I just had to stop by and tell you that what you preached two years ago has now happened to me.”
Just a Baptist preacher, that is all. God will do that for people and He does not ask you your denominational background. He does not ask whether you are Arminian or Calvinist or what you are. He doesn’t ask anything except, are you willing to obey. Are you willing to listen? Are you willing to stop disobeying? Are you willing to stop quenching the Spirit, resisting the Spirit, and throw up your hands and say, “I believe deity is present,” and breathe in the Holy Ghost? Let Him come in and fill your life.
I only gave you one illustration but I could give you many more. A young man walked right down here the other night and shook my hand. I recognized him just a little bit, not too much. I went down and he began to talk to me.
“Do you remember when you preached to me so many years ago in Chicago?”
Then I said, “Now I do remember.”
He said, “Do you remember what I wanted? I wanted to be filled with the Spirit. I left there and I am here to tell you that it happened to me.” The evidence was all over his face of what he was talking about. He was not giving a testimony that someone else had given him.
Now, that is it. Not as dramatic and colorful as you are taught that things ought to be, I suppose. But here we have it. The Holy Ghost came and He is still here. All He wants is for us to yield, obey, open our hearts, He rushes in and our lives are transformed and changed.