The Enduement of Power and the Perennial Revival
We once visited in a family where every child in the house was afflicted, severely afflicted. The parents, beautiful people, bore their affliction with the greatest patience and fortitude. And yet beneath the outward serenity there must have been a continual sorrow, which, like the sorrow of Miriam, in “The Marble Faun,” was unseen, but always flowing on. The mother in this home said, “I have not lost my faith that my children will yet be made whole.”
One other family with which we are acquainted is far more afflicted; and, strange to say, this is the family of God. Deafness, dumbness, and paralysis of powers is the experience of not a few in the so-called household of faith. God, who’ is our Father, and God, who is our Mother, must look down upon his own children incited always by the hope that they will all yet be made whole. This is the promise of the resurrection; but willing ones need not wait that supernal hour. When Jesus said to the impotent man, “Wilt thou be made whole?” he proposed for him a present work of grace; and according to the testament of God, power is the privilege of his saints here and now. The last words Jesus uttered before his ascension, words that were upon his lips when his feet were lifted from the ground, were these: “Ye shall receive power, after that the Holy Ghost is come upon you: and ye shall be witnesses unto me, both in Jerusalem, and in all Judaea, and in Samaria, and unto the uttermost part of the earth” (Acts i: 8). Andrew Murray once declared: “The one thing needful for the church of Christ, and for every member of it, is to be filled with the spirit of Christ. Christianity is nothing except as it is a ministration of the Spirit; preaching is nothing except as it is a demonstration of the Spirit; holiness is nothing except as it is the fruit of the Spirit.” He might have added: “Life, even the life that is from above, is truly blessed only when enlarged by the gift of the Holy Ghost.”
The last words of Jesus look to this enduement, and in those words there are some noteworthy suggestions.
The Person of Power
The Holy Ghost is the Person of power. When Jesus employed the language, “after that the Holy Ghost is come upon you,” he spake of the third Person in the Godhead. So long as the Holy Ghost is counted “a breath,” “ an influence,” “a mysterious spell,” “an indefinable energy,,” just so long will our Christians be invalids and our churches weak. Our fathers were faithful in teaching justification by faith, regeneration essential to salvation, obedience better than sacrifice, public profession a step to service. For all of that we should thank God; it is all true, all scriptural. The men, lettered and unlettered, who laid those truths to the heart put us under the fullest obligations. But, alas, that these same fathers should have said so little of the Holy Ghost that their sons begin to preach without having discovered that the Spirit is the third Person in the Godhead.
A doctor of divinity employs the impersonal pronoun in speaking of the Holy Ghost. In one of the largest of the ministers’ conferences in this country a preacher, quite well known, referred to the Holy Spirit as “it.” Christ always spoke of “him.” Paul did not write to the Romans, “The Spirit itself beareth witness with our Spirit, that we are the children of God” — see Revised Version: “The Spirit himself.”
He is the Person of all power. You may have some difficulty to receive that truth upon first statement. You may be disposed to say, “The Father has power; and Christ has power “; but let us never forget that this is the age of the Spirit. He represents Christ, and he expresses the power of God. When Christ was on earth he was “the power of God,” and emphatically declared that the works he did were none other than the works of the Father that dwelt in him. But when he was ready to depart from earth, he insisted that greater works than these should be done because he was going and the Spirit was coming. He clearly expressed some of the marvels that should evince the ministry of the Spirit. “When he is come he will reprove the world of sin.” The power of conviction is with the Holy Ghost. He alone convicts men of sin; he only can convert men from sin. To Nicodemus Christ said: “Except a man be born of water and of the Spirit, he cannot enter into the kingdom of God.”
He also declared of the Spirit that he should be the great Teacher of truth: “He will guide you into all truth.” And it is only as men know the truth that they are free. Mr. Spurgeon reminds us that when Jesus Christ preached there were only a few converts unto him, and assigns as the reason that the Holy Spirit was not yet poured out. True, the Master had the Spirit without measure; but on others he had not yet descended. “Remember,” adds Spurgeon, “that those few who were converted unto Christ, under his ministry, were not converted by Christ, but were converted by the Holy Spirit which rested upon him,” that eternal Spirit, whose
... power conveys our blessings down
From God the Father and the Son.
The Holy Spirit is pleased tO’ impart his power to God’s people. It is none other than a satanic suggestion that God is pleased to give the Holy Ghost to but few believers — to sample saints only. Some good Christian men and women speak as if it were presumption to ask the Holy Ghost and expect to be infilled with his power. But, as against that sentiment, let us remember the blessed words of Jesus: “If ye then, being evil, know how to give good gifts unto your children, how much more shall your heavenly Father give the Holy Spirit unto them that ask him.” Fathers will understand how freely God grants the enduement for which we pray. When fathers find their children in need and know that a gift will be for their good, how gladly they bestow; and when God finds a man or woman really fitted for the infilling of the Spirit, he has more pleasure in granting it than the best of us ever knew in buying shoes, coats, and provisions for our loved little ones. Do you believe it? To doubt it is to deny his word. God help us to understand that it is ours, if we will, to wear the name that old Ignatius assumed. That noble martyr called himself Theophoros, or “Godbearer,” “because,” said he, “I bear about with me the Holy Ghost.”
The Promise of Power
The promise of power is definite, “Ye shall receive power, after that the Holy Ghost is come upon you.” That promise is made the more definite by repetition. In the fourteenth, fifteenth, and sixteenth chapters of John this promise is uttered in almost every possible form, as if Christ were attempting to stimulate the disciples to expect and prepare for the incoming Spirit. The blessed day of Pentecost evinced the meaning of his words: “I will not leave you comfortless. I will pray the Father, and he will give you another Comforter, even the Spirit of Truth.” That this unspeakable promise was not intended for apostles only is evidenced in that, when the day came, he was poured out upon the entire discipleship, and afterward on the new converts when they were made.
This promise was uttered under sacred circumstances. The last words of a man are accepted by society as having peculiar weight. The courts of justice take the testimony of the dying as not to be impugned. The fuller promises concerning the gift of the Holy Ghost were made after the shadow of the cross lay on his path. He knew his hour was nigh. As a father, seeing the end near at hand, might counsel and comfort his children, so our Saviour did for his disciples. The greatest point of that comfort was expressed in this promise, “I will send the Spirit.” These were the last words of Jesus before ascending up to the right hand of God. Who shall question the speech of such sacred circumstances? Whatever we do with the philosophies of men, let us hold fast to the words of the Eternal One.
This promise of power is almost an unlimited one. There were no select few to whom it was to come; and there was no certain measure beyond which it was not to extend. For, after all, the gift was that of the Holy Ghost himself — the unlimited and immeasurable One.
F. B. Meyer reminds us that the discovery of electricity involves the best illustration yet born of the power of the Holy Ghost. He asks: “How much of it is in the world, and to what parts of the world is it limited? “and answers,” Immeasurable amount, and every part of the world knows its presence.” There is as much in the world now as there was when first the day and night were divorced, and perhaps no more. But in modern times many have learned about it, and have met its conditions, and have utilized it. There is more in every little village than it can possibly employ. It may start its mills, put up its telegraph lines, conduct its street-cars, and still not touch that wonderful thing we call “electricity.” And his reply is the argument: “So it is with the Holy Spirit. There is as much Holy Spirit power in your little church, my brother, as there is in the largest tabernacle in the country, ’ because the Holy Ghost himself is there ‘; and the mistake of your life has been that you never learned the law of the Holy Ghost, for if you had, the Holy Ghost would have come flowing through your life as much as through the life of a Peter or a John.” What a church it would be with one such man in it; not to speak of the hundreds that God is just as willing to give enduement! “Ye shall receive power, after that the Holy Ghost is come upon you.” Therein is provision for all life and energy needful to all the labors of a church. Should we not, therefore, reach up to it, touching it with the finger of faith as the trolley touches the wire, and, as the huge cars sweep on, so see our churches move forward, impelled by that resistless energy, the Spirit himself? John McNeill says: “A Christian man came to me once, and said, ‘I have been seeking that very blessing, sir, for over thirty years.’ Well, brother,” replied McNeill, “ it is time you got it, for all these years during which you have been crying, ‘Give! give! give! ‘God has been saying, I have given. Take! take! take! Receive! receive! receive! ‘” And God is no respecter of persons. Our failure, therefore, to be infilled by the Spirit is not God’s fault.
The Purpose of Power
“And ye shall be witnesses unto me.” How that sentence dismisses much of unscriptural sentiment touching the Holy Spirit! It disposes of the idea that God will give his Spirit for the sake of your feelings or mine.’ There are people who pray for the Holy Ghost, hoping to receive in response an experience of spiritual ecstasy. They want to have the peace that passeth understanding, the exhilaration that comes of his infilling, and they think of that as the all-important thing. Joy is one of the fruits of the Spirit. The Holy Ghost man is the happy man. That splendid saint, John Flavel, speaks of his baptism by the Holy Ghost as bringing him “such refreshing tastes of heavenly joy, and such full assurances of his interest therein, that he utterly lost sight and sense of this world and all the concerns thereof.” It is reported also that people found him wandering in the streets, asking his neighbors for his own name and home, while his face was so radiant as to make his informants afraid. Brainerd speaks of his divine baptism as a “flood of divine love which casts out fear’’; and Edwards of his infilling as being “swallowed up in God.” But all of that is incidental; the Scriptures never suggest happiness as the final purpose of giving the Holy Ghost.
Neither, indeed, is that purpose one of selfish success. One reason why so many of us pray for him, only to see our petitions unanswered, is found just here. He is not to be the subject of the convenience of men. Christ would never consent to become the temporary, or partial, Saviour of any man — a Saviour for the hour of temptation only, or from the saloon, or any single sin. He is our Saviour altogether, or not our Saviour at all. And the Holy Ghost is not subject to the call of the selfish. One might desire him to help in winning a soul, or in the conduct of a series of meetings, but he is no neighbor to be coaxed into cooperation at your pleasure, and parted from when your purpose is accomplished. It is little less than simony to want to use the Holy Ghost as a politician uses an influential friend, to accomplish selfish purposes. Christ said, “I will pray the Father, and he will give you another Comforter, that he may abide with you forever.” Unless we are willing to live with him in the relation of an inseparable love, he will not live with us at all. To illustrate: Some years since, a pastor wrote to one of our religious newspapers, saying: “The Rev. H. W. Brown has been aiding me in a meeting for ten days. The Holy Spirit has been present in power. He remains here another week, and then he goes to Champaign.” Not so, beloved! If we propose to have the Holy Spirit with us in a series of meetings we must also plan to have him with us forever. Gordon says: “He is bestowed only upon those who are ready to devote themselves utterly and irrevocably to his service.” Holy William Grimshaw understood this; hence his words: “I desire and resolve to be wholly and forever thine, blessed God. I most solemnly surrender myself to thee... In thy service I desire and propose to spend all my time, desiring thee to teach me to use every moment of it to thy glory and the setting forth of thy praise.” From Peter to the last Spirit-filled man such a dedication has preceded the Spirit’s baptism. Are we ready to make it? Are we ready to say, “Fill us, O Spirit of God “? Then his purpose will appear, and we shall be witnesses unto him. Doctor Torrey has said: “The baptism with the Holy Ghost is an experience always connected with testimony or service, and has primary relation tO’ equipment or gifts for this testimony or service.” (See Acts i: 5-8; 2: 4-17; 19: 6; i Cor. 12: 4-13.) That is the purpose — that we should save men and serve God. When we do the latter we accomplish the former.
Possession of Power
Already we have indicated some of the conditions of this enduement of power. But the deeply concerned will desire some further words upon the subject. It is universally conceded by students of the Scriptures, and those who have had experience of the Spirit’s baptism, that self -surrender is an absolute essential. We have heard the story of the two strongholds, Fort Henry on the Tennessee and Fort Donaldson on the Cumberland. They were held for some time by the Confederates. General Grant and his army and a fleet of gunboats under Commodore Foote proceeded against the forts. Fort Henry was captured. Fort Donaldson resisted strongly. After four days of fighting the Confederates hoisted the white flag and asked for terms. Then the silent general replied, ‘* No terms other than unconditional surrender.” It is in vain for us to fly a flag of truce and plead for the infilling of the Spirit except we are also ready to surrender.
Self must be surrendered — the whole self, body, soul, and spirit. “Yield ye yourselves unto God.” “Present your bodies a living sacrifice.” There is a story to the effect that a certain monk was disobedient to the laws of the monastery and his punishment was to be buried alive. He was placed standing in the grave, and when the earth was thrown upon his feet the Superior said to him, “Are you dead yet?” He answered, “No.” They shoveled in more, until his limbs were fastened. The Superior then repeated the question, and the stubborn man answered, “I am not dead.” They tossed in the dirt until it reached his lips and was smothering him, and then he cried out to the Superior: “I surrender. My will shall be thy will.” That surrender was victory for him over death and the grave, and favor also with the reigning one. Man has no such right over his fellow, but God the Father has it. Do we not see our way? Surrender!
Again, surrender to serve. Some time ago a young woman went from a Western church to the East, an invalid. She had been injured in a railroad accident. For a long time she was bitter about it, and even rebellious.
She had prayed for physical power, and did not become healed; she prayed for spiritual peace, but none came. Finally she made up her mind to serve God to the limit of her ability and leave her body and spirit to his disposition. Scarcely had she begun on this course when, to her sweet surprise, health was suddenly given her, and the Holy Ghost came into her heart, and her home church had one of its richest blessings when she came back to it, and with radiant face told how great things God had done for her. Surrender to serve!
Let it be understood also that we are to serve not as we desire, but as God indicates. We are tempted at times to think that if we had been better born, better bred, more broadly educated, given more excellent opportunities, our success would have been more sure. But what is human success when compared to the Spirit’s power for service? It makes little difference about one’s first birth, but much as to whether he is born of the Spirit. It makes little difference about one’s social breeding, but much as to his spiritual culture. It makes little difference what college or university one attends, or at what Gamaliel’s feet he sits, but much as to whether he is instructed by the Holy Ghost. In a Kentucky college there was a young man who was regarded a poor student. He was the subject of many a smile on the part of his intellectual superiors; he was a constant trial to the patience of his learned professors, and often he was a chagrin to himself. But he was surrendered to God tO’ do whatever God said, and wherever he went revivals were in his wake. He was able to win more men to Christ than the combined Christian faculty and two hundred students, though many of the latter were candidates for the ministry. Was he not the successful man of that school? It is thirty-five years now since he left it, and he has gone on adding stars to his crown, for God is with him.
Beloved, whatever our privileges in life, whatever our station, whatever our favored circumstances, we might well covet that man’s experience. To raise up a generation of those who know the third Person of the Godhead, who appropriate the promises of his infilling, who appreciate the purpose of his power, who possess that enduement — this is to see a perennial revival.
The strong man’s strength to toil for Christ,
The fervent preacher’s skill,
I sometimes wish; but better far
To be just what God will.
No service in itself is small,
None great, though earth it fill:
But that is small that seeks its own.
And great that seeks God’s will.