In this sermon, the speaker discusses the concept of ability and how it relates to the preaching of the word of God. He gives examples of individuals who have different abilities, such as a violinist playing beautiful melodies and a businessman who lacks the ability to run a successful business. The speaker also shares a personal anecdote about how he would have starved to death if God hadn't called him to preach, as he lacks business ability. He then transitions to discussing the eternal and abiding element in Pentecost, which is the promise of the Holy Spirit as a comforter who reveals the truth of Jesus Christ. The speaker emphasizes the role of the Holy Spirit in convicting the world of sin and revealing Christ to believers.

...passage, 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. And there appeared unto them cloven tongues like as of fire, and it sat upon each of them. And they were all filled with the Holy Ghost, and began to speak with other tongues as the Spirit gave them others. And there were dwelling at Jerusalem Jews, devout men, out of every nation under heaven. Now, when this was noise abroad, the mouths who came together, and were confounded, because every man heard them speak in his own language, and they were all amazed and marveled, saying one to another, Behold, are not all these which speak Galilean? How here we every man in his own tongue, wherein we were born, and it named seventeen different languages. And they were all amazed and were in doubt, saying one to another, What meaneth this? And some said, These are full of new wine. There were always the mockers present. These are full of new wine. But the seventeen people, the seventeen languages said, We do hear them speak in our language the wonderful works of God. Now tonight, I don't know, but what this will be, probably the most controversial of the messages that I bring, though my purpose is not to be controversial, but to be helpful, is that I find you can't please everybody, that some say you go too far, and some say you don't go far enough. And very few are ready to pat your little head and say, Well, I think you're about hit it. Mostly, we're either too far or not far enough. So because you can't 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. Now tonight, here's what I want to do. I want to try to discover the abiding elements in Pentecost, what came and stayed and what came and went, because I'd like you to know this, and I want you to take this with you and remember it, and if you had any occasion to, you could quote it. I don't mean to leave the impression that you're going around quoting me, but if you ever had occasion to, it's all right to quote it, because I won't say anything that I have to back out on, or if I do, I'll gracefully back out. But this I won't back out on. I do not believe in a repetition of Pentecost, but I believe in a perpetuation of Pentecost. There's a vast difference there, my brother. I do not believe that Pentecost is to be repeated, but I believe it's to be perpetuated. Now that doesn't contradict anything else I've said. I believe that Pentecost did not come and go, but Pentecost came and stayed. And if we'd only get a hold of that, that Pentecost came and stayed, and that you and I are living in the midst of it if we only knew it. And would only do something about it. And I want to discover what stayed and what went. Some things went and some things stayed. What were they? Well, it's true here, as it's true of all spiritual, or at least all religious experience, there are elements that were external, and so were variable. God doesn't care very much for the external. Now, we ought to get a hold of that. We ought to let the Holy Ghost teach us that, that God doesn't care very much for the external. So the external, it may be variable. Then there are the elements which are internal and of the Spirit, and so they are permanent, and they're always about the same. Then there are elements which are incidental, and so of relative importance. I wouldn't say they're not important, but I say that they're not critically important. Then there are elements that are fundamental, and so of vital and eternal importance. Now, I read the historic facts. What did happen there that day in that upper room there in Jerusalem? Well, they were sitting around. It says they were sitting. I suppose they'd gotten off their knees, and there were about 120. I've always wondered why, when the Spirit of God moved Luke to tell you the number of people there, he gave an approximate figure. He said about 120. That could have been 119 or 122, but he said about 120. While they were there, suddenly there was a sound in the room as of a rushing mighty wind. It didn't say that a rushing wind went through there, blowing everything. A whirlwind, 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's in nature. That's what it means. It means it was like a rushing mighty wind, the sound of it. And then while they were wondering what it was, suddenly there appeared a great cloud of fire, and it divided up into little bits and sat upon the forehead of each one present. This fire was a divine kind of presence, and it divided up and sat upon the forehead of each of them. It says tongues of fire. You light a candle and you will see that it takes the shape of a tiny tongue, broad at the bottom and tapering up. That's all it means. It hasn't any reference whatsoever to language. It says that the fire sat upon their foreheads. Now, that's about all I could except, of course, 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? Well, let me give you some facts. First, there was the physical presence of all the Church together in one place. That could be there 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 born. That made 8,000, and I'm 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 could be saved, so that 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 book. No place could they have gotten together. You hear a word in our time, ecumenical and ecumenicity. Well, now, don't get scared and run when you hear these big words. Preachers like to toss them around because it gives the impression they're very learned. But ecumenical only means universal. It means all over the world, and the ecumenical Church just means all the Christians that there are, or as it used to mean, the representative of all the Christians that there are. So an ecumenical council of Christians would be either all the Christians there are in the world, or at least official representatives of all the Christians there are in the world. Well, you could have that, I suppose. I don't think it would ever be, but you might envision a gathering of people where there were representatives from all the churches all over the world. Even that would create such a crowd. There isn't 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 port, but there was only a small number of them, because when those words were spoken, there were running up into the thousands of Christians, and you couldn't get thousands of them on Solomon's port, so that merely meant some of them were there. Then that was one thing that happened, it never can be repeated again, and as far as my knowledge of history goes, the sound from heaven was never repeated again. That is, I have not read anywhere among the Methodists, among the Moravians, among the Presbyterians or Anglicans, nowhere have I read of any gathering of Christians where there was a sound as of a Russian mighty wind. I have heard that when Moody called the Christians together, took them out under the pine trees out in the eastern part of the United States, kept them there several days and nothing happened. Then 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 that evening or the next morning and took trains in all directions, and the historian says that everywhere they went, they went like Samson's foxes going through the fields setting fire every place they went. The Holy Ghost had come, but he had not come with a sound of a wind, so that wasn't repeated. And then I don't 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, you can get them to say anything you know, but I'm talking about trustworthy and reputable Christians who would not overstate things. I don't know any place that there was the appearance of a great body of fire dividing up on the foreheads of the people. And I don't read anywhere else at any other time that everybody present began to speak in a language that everybody else could understand without an interpreter, and yet that's exactly what happened here. And I don't read any place where, without an interpreter, 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. The sound from heaven was external. The sight of the fire was external. The speaking with languages was external, and the hearing and the understanding, all was external, so that they never repeated, and I suppose never needed to be repeated. Now right here, some of you won't like that, but then as I've said, I'm going to tell the truth and trust God and hope for the best. But now here's the logic of it, brother, 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, 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, that about 120, so that obviously these external things were not the basic things. They were there and they 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 pass, something was given, a deposit was made, something happened, and that that happened was internal and heavenly and permanent and lasting. Now what was it that happened that didn't pass away, didn't pass away with the sound of the wind, didn't pass away with the sight of the fire on the forehead, didn't pass away with the 17 languages being spoken all at one time, or being understood at least by 17 people of 17 languages? What didn't pass away? What is the eternal and abiding element in Pentecost? Well, 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 could make Jesus Christ real. Do you know what happened when he came? Here is what happened. Peter leaped to his feet and said, Men and brethren, these men are not drunk, but something has happened, and here is what has happened. God has made this Jesus, whom he crucified, Lord and Christ, and has set him at his own right hand, and this which ye now see and hear, this outpouring was shed forth by the man at God's right hand, that is the Lord Jesus Christ. And then he said he will convict the world. I tell you the truth, John 16, he will convict the world. The presence of the Holy Ghost in showing the Christians Christ and showing sinners their sin. Then he said, Carry in the city of Jerusalem until ye be endued with power from on high. As I tried to explain one or two Sundays ago, power means ability to do. Now, that's all it means. You know, because the Greek word from which our English comes, our English word dynamite comes, some of our brethren try to make out that the Holy Ghost is dynamite, forgetting that they've got the thing upside down, that dynamite was named after that Greek word and that the Holy Ghost and the power of God wasn't named after dynamite. We ought to remember that. Dynamite was discovered only less than 200 years ago, but this Greek word from which we get our word power goes way back to the time of Christ. Well, it means ability to do, that is all. It's 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 hasn't got the ability to do. Another man picks up the violin and he is soon playing beautiful, rich melodies. One man steps into the prize ring and he can't even lift his hands. And the other fellow walks in and he has power to do. And pretty soon the fellow who can't lift his hand is sleeping peacefully on the floor. The man who has ability to do, one businessman, he can't run a peanut stand, he'd go bankrupt if he tried even to sell peanuts down on the corner. He hasn't ability to do. Incidentally, that describes me. I would starve to death. If God hadn't called me to preach, I'd have starved to death years ago because I'm no businessman at all, none whatsoever. Anybody can cheat me, they can fine me. And if I'm not protected by the law, I have no business ability, ability to do. There you have it. One man can step up, open his mouth and a song will come out. I can step up and no song comes out. You know, nothing anybody want to hear. So ability to do, that's what the word means actually. It means the dynamic ability to be able to do what you go to do. And ye shall receive ability to do. It'll come on you. If you're a soul winner, you'll have ability to win souls. If you're a preacher, he'll 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 and to live right and to behold Jesus and to live with heaven in you. It's ability to do. Now those are the vital and essential and eternal things that took place and that came and stayed. They came and stayed. The wind and the fire and the appearance and all that, never been repeated so far as I know. And all the Christians coming together in one place, that couldn't be repeated now because they're scattered all over the world. You couldn't get them together. But that the Comforter came and that he came and filled them and that he came and abode in them and that he came to make Jesus real and that he came to give them inward moral ability to do right and inward ability to do God's work. That stayed. That stayed. That's still here. And if we don't have it, it's because we've been mistaught, because we've been scared out of it. The teachers have scared us out of it. And then some Christians have scared us away from the Holy Spirit. When I was a young fellow on the farm in Pennsylvania, when they wanted to, when they planted a field of corn and they wanted to save the field from the crows, they would shoot a crow. It wasn't an easy task because they're pretty wise, but they'd shoot a crow and then they'd hang him by his heels in the middle of the cornfield. The point was this. Now, this is a good field of corn, but you see what happens to crows that come into this cornfield? And 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. Well, now that's exactly what Satan has done. He's taken some fanatical, weird, wild-eyed Christian that does things that he shouldn't do, and he's hung him up in the middle of God's cornfield and says, now, don't you go near that doctrine about the Holy Spirit, because if you do, you'll be acting like them. I went, a fellow called me one time to his home, wanted me to come over and see if I could untangle his wife. And I went over, and he said, now, Brother Tozer, he said, I'll tell you, my wife, he said things are pretty bad with her. He said, well, he said, Reverend, what would you do if you'd wake up in the middle of the night and your wife was standing over on the floor in her nightgown making a noise like a vacuum cleaner? Well, I didn't know what to do with the fellow, you know. I didn't know what to do with him. And I didn't know what to do with her. She just stood around and smiled. She didn't give any demonstrations of the Hoover Sweeper while I was there. But because there has been a lot of this weird stuff, why, God's children are frightened. And as soon as you start to talk about it, they start to run for cover. They say, none of that for me. I've seen dead crows out there in the middle of the field. I will not be frightened out of my heritage. I will not be scared out of my birthright because somebody didn't know what to do with it, birthright, or found something else that wasn't a birthright. I want all that God has for me. Now, let me point out something here. When Christ was born, many external things happened. They weren't 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, the 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. So these external things are not important. It's the internal things that matter. Thousands of people felt the saving power of Christ who had never seen the angels, and thousands felt his healing touch who had never seen the wise men. Now, this is the eternal meaning of Acts 2, that the comforters 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 has shed forth this which ye now see and hear. He has shed forth this. Now, let me point out something to you here, that 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 fundamentalists 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 what we need is for God's children to realize that they have a heritage which they have not taken advantage of. There is God that has promised us a unica pletis, a seizure and invasion from beyond us, that is to come to us and to take over, and is to be in us what we couldn't possibly be by ourselves. Would you, if you were going to, suppose that you were going to try to write a bunch of sonnets as good as Shakespeare wrote, suppose that you were going to write, shall I compare thee to a summer's day, and all that, well what would you want? What would you have to have? I'll tell you what you'd have to have. You'd have to have the spirit of Shakespeare. You'd have to have the intellect of Shakespeare enter your personality, because if you and I tried to write, shall I compare thee to a summer's day, we'd never get any further than that. Winter would come before we'd get the second line written, you see, because we couldn't make it. But Shakespeare could make it, he knew what to do with words. Emerson said that he was the man who above all men that ever lived in the world could say anything he wanted to say, and he did say it. But now, how could you write like Shakespeare? I remember seeing a book one time not so long ago, one of these weird sisters, these, they call them these madam so-and-sos, you know, that sell fortunes, and all that spirit. Well, she claimed to have the spirit of Shakespeare, and she was writing sonnets. But oh brother, if they were written by the same man who wrote Shakespeare's other sonnets, he must have gone into dodage before he started to write, because they were cheap imitations. She was just writing out of the back of her own little head, and Shakespeare had nothing to do with it. 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 Johann Sebastian Bach, what would you have to have? You'd have to have the spirit of Bach. And if you wanted to be a statesman like any man you might name, a Gladstone or an Israeli, what would you have to have? You'd have to have the spirit of those men. And now, if we are going to, if we are going to reproduce Christ on earth and be Christ-like and be like Christ and show forth Christ, what are we going to have to have? We're going to have to have the spirit of Christ. If we're going to be the children of God, we're going to have to have the spirit of the Father to breathe in our hearts and breathe through us. So that's why we have to have the spirit of God. That's why the Church has to have the spirit of Christ, for the Church is called to live above her own ability. She's called to live up so high that no human being can live like that. The humblest Christian listening to me tonight is called to live a life of miracles, a life that is a moral and spiritual life of such intensity and such purity that no human being can do it. Only Jesus Christ can do it, or could do it and can do it, and so he wants the spirit of Christ to come to his people. This afflatus, this seizure, this invasion from above that affects us mentally and morally and spiritually. Now, I believe that it might be well for us, I said two weeks ago, that if we just stopped all our busyness and got quiet and worshiped God and waited on him, because so carnal is the body of present Christian, it doesn't make the people love you to say this, and this is certainly chapter two from How to Win Friends and Influence People. But it's true, nevertheless, that the body of Christians is carnal. We're a carnal bunch. The Lord's people ought to be a sanctified, pure, clean people, but we're a carnal crowd. We're carnal in our attitudes and carnal in our faith and carnal in everything. The average Christian is. Even the average gospel Christian is. And the conditions are so shockingly irreverent these days. Over in Africa, one of our missionaries told us, and I think he's a Canadian man, what was his name, Herbert, Mr. Heber, Herbert, some such name, told me this. He said that he had been on one of the fields in Africa, I believe the Congo, and of course the church in the Congo, they're very strong, several generations old, and they're indigenous and they run their own churches. They have almost complete autonomy without any missionary having anything to do with it. And he said they had some marvelous old, he says, marvelous old saints. He said one day some missionaries from the United States went over there. They had to leave the United States, always me. They went over there, and they started to sing some imitation Negro spiritual, Seed That Sun, How He Runs, and so on. And this white missionary, those colored deacons, called him aside. They said, Teacher, we have a word with you. Called him in. He said, Why do you allow a thing like this? He said, We gave up that junk when we left the jungle and came to Jesus Christ and got some clothes on and got converted. And why do you import from the United States this stuff that we gave up and left in the jungle? And yet you hear it everywhere you go. Everywhere you go you hear it. Young fellows that ought to be padded. And yet here they are. I say shockingly irreverent, our Christian services are, and degraded, so degraded our religious faith is, so largely is our Christian service exhibitionism, that unless there's a divine visitation, unless there's a divine visitation, I don't know where we're going. And wherever we're going, we're going pretty fast. It'll never be cured, my brothers and sisters. It'll never be cured by sermon. It'll never be cured until there is a, 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 tremendous justice, 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 we're confronted with this. And then out goes our irreverence, and out goes our carnality, and out goes our degraded religious taste, and out goes all that. And the soul held speechless trembles inwardly for the furthest fiber of it. The Holy Ghost bestows upon us, bestows upon us, I say, a beatitude beyond compare. Brethren, you will never know more about God than the Spirit teaches you. You'll never know any more about Jesus than the Spirit teaches you, because there's only the Spirit to do the teaching. Oh, Holy Ghost, how we've grieved thee, how we've insulted thee, how we've rejected thee. And yet he is our teacher, and if he does not teach us, we never can know. He is our illuminator, and if he doesn't 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 never can hear. And yet churches can run for weeks and 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. And this, I say, then, we can't 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 vessel. The vessel gets bigger as we go on with God. Deity is among us. If some celebrity were here, he couldn't, the ashid wouldn't 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. And we have eyes, and we see not, and we have ears, and we hear not. We have hearts, and we feel not. And we ignore the presence of royalty. How would your queen, 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, no one would know. She walked down the street, down past the Royal York, and nobody even gave her a glance. Now, I don't know, being the gracious little lady she was, she probably would smile at all. But it would be pretty bad for us, wouldn't it? And pretty bad for the people to know that royalty is present, and we didn't even know it. Oh, we've got higher than royalty. We have the Lord of lords and kings, kings. We have the blessed Holy Ghost present, and we're treating him as if he wasn't present at all. I'd say this is terrible. We resist him, and we disobey him, and we quench him, and we compromise with our hearts. We hear a sermon about him, and we determine we'll learn more, and we'll do something about it, and then our conviction wears off, and pretty soon we go back to the same old dead level again we were in before. We resist the blessed comforter, the blessed comforter. He's come to comfort, he's come to teach, for he's the spirit of instruction. He has come to bring light, for he's the spirit of light, and 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 be nonetheless to have this kind of experience. I don't know whether I ever told you about this or not, but I was up in a little town north of Chicago preaching to some Baptists one time, maybe five years ago, six years ago, and I preached a sermon which I told them about Isaiah, a vision, and these Baptist preachers, they were Baptist preachers, and they gathered around, and they got down on their knees to pray afterwards. I went home then, always do, you know, after a meeting you go home. I did. I went back to Chicago and got interested in other things, and that meeting sort of passed into the back of my mind, and later on, two years after that exactly, two Baptist preachers came to my study, came to my home, and said, Would you like to come in a minute? I have a word for it. So they came in, I knew one of them, and he said, Do you remember when you preached about Isaiah up in whatever town it was? I said, Yes. He said, I became so thirsty to be filled with the Holy Ghost that I have been a miserable man for two years. Said, I've sought God, and I've sought God, and nothing happened, and I've sought God, and he said here a little while ago. He said, One day in my agony, I was standing on the middle of my floor, in the middle of my living room floor, and I looked up to God, and said, Oh God, you've got to do it. He said, I was suddenly, instantaneously, and marvelously filled with the Holy Ghost. Now he said, I'm not going about among the Pentecostal people. He said, I'm a Baptist, and he said, I'm going to go back and preach in the Baptist church, but he said, I just had to stop by and tell you that what you preached about up there two years ago has now happened to me. He's a Baptist preacher, that's all. God will do that to people. He doesn't ask your denominational background. He doesn't ask whether you're Armenian 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 your spirit, resisting your spirit, and drop your hands, and say, I believe deity is present. I believe deity is present. Breathe in the Holy Ghost, and 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 where these flowers are the other night, took my hand. I recognized him just a little bit, not too much, and I went down, and he began to talk, and he said, do you remember when you preached to me so many years ago in Chicago? And I said, no, I do remember. He said, do you remember what I wanted? Oh, he said, I wanted to be killed with a spear. He said, I left there, and I went to such and such a place, and he said, you know what, I'm here, I can tell you, it happened to me. And the evidence on his face, all over his face was he was talking about. He wasn't giving testimony that somebody had given him. Well, now that's it, that's it. Not as dramatic and colorful as you thought that things ought to be, I suppose, but here we have it. The Holy Ghost came, and he's still here, and all he wants is to yield, obey, open our hearts, and he rushes in, and our lives are transformed and changed. And another Sunday or two, perhaps two weeks from tonight, I am going to speak on how to be killed with the Holy Spirit. Next Sunday night, God willing, I'm going to speak on the Dove of Noah's Ark. The Dove of Noah's Ark is the Holy Ghost. But this is all I have for you tonight. Let's pray.