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pastorfrin
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 A Powerful Church, Seth Rees

A Powerful Church

By
Seth Rees

"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.

Continued:


 2009/1/11 0:04Profile
pastorfrin
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Joined: 2006/1/19
Posts: 1406


 Re: A Powerful Church, Seth Rees


A Powerful Church -- (Continued)

By
Seth Rees

There is a widespread misapprehension as to what spiritual power really is. It is not power to found colleges nor maintain great universities. It is not power to teach the arts or sciences, to build pyramids, to drive steamships, to run express trains, or to establish telegraphic communication. These things are caused by other forces, other powers, than the purely Pentecostal. It is not power for political scheming or wise statesmanship. There are many things, good things, perhaps, which it is not the special function of this power to accomplish. Positively, it is power to destroy the works of the devil and to save man from sin and from hell. But where, we ask, are the works of the devil? If they are to be destroyed, they must be located, and the power applied to them where they are. Some maintain that the works of the devil are located in the saloon, in the liquor traffic, and so we find men who give all their strength for the overthrow of this hellish business. Others believe that the brothel, social impurity and licentiousness are the works of the devil. Laboring under this impression, certain persons bend all their energy to the work of the social purity movement. Still others assert that the works of the devil are housed in secret societies, and they therefore bend every energy toward the overthrow of these Christless institutions. We admit that the devil is actively engaged in the maintenance of these gigantic evils, and yet we must get on a warmer track than any of these if we are to find his workshop, his place of business, where he turns out his samples. The place to which we have reference is the human heart. If from it the devil's works are cast out the man leaves the saloon and the woman forsakes the brothel; the lodge man renounces his order, and worldly entanglements are severed. The works of the devil are not located in our heads, in our intellects. If they were, Yale, Harvard, Brown, Amherst, and Dartmouth might be able to cure the disease. Neither is sin to be located in the body. No medicine can reach it. Even if one be healed by Divine power he is not necessarily delivered from inbred sin. Many marvelous cases of Divine healing are recorded in which the healed person was not sanctified. Sin is located in the heart, the spiritual, affectional nature of man. "Out of the heart," says Christ, "proceed evil thoughts," etc.

The Pentecostal power, the power of the Holy Ghost, lays an axe at the very root of the tree, and, instead of dealing with branches and limbs, it attacks and destroys all roots of pride, anger, jealousy, malice, envy, strife, impatience, worldliness, unholy ambition, lust, and all impurity even in its most complex ramifications. It delivers us from all grumbling, whining, peevishness, fretfulness, fearfulness, sensitiveness and touchiness. It blessedly relieves us of all pomp, gusto and brag. The bluster and braggadocio of swaggering depravity entirely departs. That yeasty "puff" so characteristic of carnality when lauded and commended has yielded to amore solid and satisfactory tissue. Men may flatter and use "soft soap," but the Holy Ghost man does not puff up; they may criticize and severely censure and mercilessly condemn, and yet he does not puff down.

This power of Pentecost delivers a man from a thirst for place in the church. No one holds a position that he wants for himself. He is not offended if others are used more than he. He is not "hurt" if others are honored and he is slighted. He rejoices in the prosperity of another, and that not with a smirking, hypocritical semblance of rejoicing, but with a real, heartfelt gladness that "in honor the other" is preferred. "The Holy Ghost coming upon" us furnishes such power that all work runs easily. "My yoke is easy," says the Lord. One who has received the gift of the Holy Ghost never has to rely on human dependencies or outward circumstances. The writer was one day sailing down the Narragansett Bay in company with a member of his church when suddenly the brother called his attention to the "Walker Armington," remarking that it was the only vessel of its kind on the Atlantic Coast. "What is there peculiar about this vessel?" he asked, for it was but one of the many beautiful four-masted schooners which filled the bay. "Notice," said the gentleman, "the black smoke issuing from the top of one of the masts. The schooner is fitted out with an engine, and thus is able to sail up and down this crooked channel without requiring the assistance of a tug." "That, "I said to myself, "is but a symbol of my own experience. Since I received the Holy Ghost I am not dependent upon any fleet of tugs." That queenly, graceful "floating palace," the "Connecticut," was approaching our Providence harbor one morning in a heavy fog. As the steamer rounded Field's Point the pilot failed to hear the foghorn, and the huge ship slipped onto the bar. The full strength of the massive engines only lurched the steamer from side to side and ground her hull more firmly in the sand. Tugs were sent for; but the combined efforts of many tugs only showed their utter incompetency to float the vessel. What was to be done? There was but one thing to do. Wait until God's moon by the magic of its attraction had lifted the sea five feet, and then it was that the "Connecticut " floated with perfect ease. Five feet of God's water under the ship's keel were worth more than all the tugs. So with us when we cease our own struggles. When we stop trusting in our friends to tug us loose, when we turn our eyes from all things human up to the great God, then he will lift us with the tide of love that swells in his bosom and waft us to a calm haven with perfect ease. Instead of tearing us to pieces by pulling at us, he gently puts the "everlasting arms" beneath us and raises us and bears us swiftly away from all bars and shoals. It is so delightfully easy when we let him do it all. We are informed by false teachers that "God helps the man who helps himself," and that God will not do anything for us that we can do for ourselves. But this is not Bible. It is damaging teaching. Thus thousands seek God only to supplement their own unholy efforts. They call on him only when they have completely failed. In the utmost extremity God is to be resorted to. What a pity! All our doings are deadly. We reach a point where we must do nothing: Christ must do all. "Ye shall not fight in this battle. The battle is not yours but God's." "It is not by might nor by power, but by my Spirit, saith the Lord." "For he that is entered into his rest he also hath ceased from his own works as God did from his." When we receive the Holy Ghost we retire from business; we are then at leisure; we enter upon a Sabbath of rest that never ends, a Sabbath that must not be broken.

So long as we endeavor to care for ourselves, God will give up to us the entire monopoly of the business, and it is awfully hard work. But when we receive him, he takes entire charge and manages everything. We go out of business. We sell the entire stock, the fixtures, the stand, everything to him. We make a clear warranty deed to all we have; we turn in all, past, present and future, things known and unknown, future friends and foes, wealth or poverty, prosperity or adversity, coming conquest and seeming failure. Our reputation is included in the consecration. No longer will we seek it, defend it, or try to take care of it. We will quit itching to run down every little rumor the devil sets flying from lip to lip concerning us. We transfer ourselves with all our belongings over to God. We surrender the papers, we hand over the keys. God cancels the mortgages, pays the taxes, and keeps up repairs on the property. What a relief!
Hallelujah!

 2009/1/11 13:39Profile





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