Emblems of the Holy Spirit: Wind

The emblem wind has four characteristics that I want to call your attention to. It is independent, reviving, sensible in its effects, and powerful.

I. WIND IS INDEPENDENT.

The wind is independent’. God chooses His own instrument. When He works, He will sometimes pass by the very one you expect Him to use, and He will mark out a path for Himself to work in. When the Spirit of God moves, man cannot dictate the time or the manner.

Christ said to Nicodemus, “The wind bloweth where it listeth, and thou hearest the sound thereof, but canst not tell whence it cometh and whither it goeth; so is every- one that is born of the Spirit.” You cannot understand the workings of the Spirit. See how the Spirit passed by Cambridge and Oxford and breathed upon that drunken, blaspheming tinker in the Bedford jail, and turned him into one

H4 Short Talks by D. L. Moody.

of the most polished shafts England has ever had. Not a nobleman or duke but looked down on him while he was on earth, yet not long ago a duke unveiled a monument to him, and now nearly every duke in England would be glad to pay honor to John Bunyan. “The wind bloweth where it listeth.” We cannot tell why. So the Spirit of God is independent. He works where He pleases; we are not to dictate.

Another thing. You can traffic in lire and in water and in oil, but you can’t traflic with the wind. That is independent. No man can control it; no man can measure it; no man can buy it or sell it. Wind goes into the darkest lanes and homes as well as into palaces, and it gives ventilation to all kinds of people in all places.

2. WIND IS REVIVING.

The next thought. Wind is reviving. In the thirty-seventh chapter of Ezekiel we have that wonderful vision of the dry bones. The bodies were formed at the word of the prophet, but not until the breath of Cod came upon them did they live.

“Then said 1 le unto me. Prophesy unto the wind, prophesy, son of man. and say to the wind, Thus saith the l.ord Cod; Louie from the four winds, 0 breath, and breathe upon these slain, that they may live. So 1 prophesied as He commanded me, ami the breath came into them, and they lived, and stood up upon their feet, an exceeding great army.”

It was a prophecy of the reviving of the whole house of Israel: “I shall put my Spirit in you, and ye shall live” (v: 14).

‘And when the day of Pentecost was fully come, they were all with one accord in one place. And suddenly there came a sound from heaven as of a rushing, mighty wind, and it filled all the house where they were sitting” (Acts ii: 2).

I don’t know of anything this country needs so much as Pentecostal people. I have heard of reforms until I am tired of it. These settlements in cities too often banish Christ; they don’t want Christ. The boast has been made that they are going to lift up these cities without the Son of God. They are cultivating a crab apple tree, and they will have nothing but crab apples when they get through. I have seen it in London, in New York, and in Chicago, and it is a miserable failure.

My dear friends, don’t sneer at revivals. Would to God we had Pentecost repeated in every American city. There isn’t a denomination that hasn’t sprung out of a revival. I don’t know o anything this country needs so much as a revival, and I would put my hand in a red hot furnace quicker than talk against revivals. What will take infidelity out of men? The fires of Pentecost, the breath of heaven.

Wind is good to blow away chaff. Don’t be afraid of the wind. “A religion without Christ” — that is the cry of the world to-day. I wouldn’t give a snap of my ringer for a merely historical Christ who only touches your head. What we want is a personal, ever-living Christ to renovate our hearts and transform our lives.

3. WIND IS SENSIBLE IN ITS EFFECTS.

In the North of England they have been digging the coal for a century. They have gone miles and miles away from the shaft, under the sea, and there is danger of men getting lost. I heard of two old miners who lost their way. Their lights went out, and they were in danger of losing their lives. After wandering around for a long time, they sat down, and one of them said:

“Let us sit perfectly quiet, and see if we cannot feel which way the air is moving, because it always moves towards the shaft.”

There they sat for a long time, when all at once one of them felt a slight touch on his cheek, and he sprang to his feet, and said:

“I felt it.”

They went in the direction in which the air was moving, and reached the shaft.

Sometimes there comes a little breath from God that touches our souls. It may be so gentle and faint that 3-011 barely recognize it; but if 3-011 do, do not disregard it. Thank God that He-has spoken to you, and praise Him for it, and whatever may come do not go in the opposite direction. Give yourself up to be led by it, and you will come out of darkness, out of bondage, out of sorrow, into perpetual light and J03-.

The air is always in motion. Did 3-011 ever think what awful death and stagnation would occur if there was no such thing as wind? What misery and gloom would settle down upon this world! We would not live long if the air never moved. If you are in a place where there seems to be death and stagnation, get out as quickly as you can, and get into a place where God will bless you.

4. WIND IS POWERFUL.

Then wind is powerful. Sometimes it sleeps, and at other times it travels at the rate of a hundred miles an hour. We cannot tell whence it comes or whither it goes. In Missouri a few years ago after one of those western cjxlones, I found a hickory tree about as big as my arm that had been taken by the wind and shot right through a tree as big as my body.

There is power in the wind, and there is power in the Spirit of God. George Muller said that he was an habitual thief at ten years of age. His father sent him to the Lutheran pastor with his confirmation money, and he sto’e eleven-twelfths of it. He and another young man went through Switzer’and, and he was treasurer, and he stole his companion’s money. He was a confirmed drunkard at sixteen. He was in prison before he was seventeen. For thirteen weeks he lay on his bed with a disease he had contracted in sin. He was given up by everybody as a hopeless case; but the Spirit of God powerfully converted him, and he became one of the most useful men of this century. The idea of people talking against anything that will transform a man like that! The idea of throwing their influence against it!

My dear friends, let us get back to the old ways. We need these old revivals. May God give them to usl n8 Short Talks by D. L. Moody.