In this sermon, the preacher emphasizes the power of God and how He can intervene in the lives of men. The speaker highlights the importance of relying on God's power rather than human efforts. He also discusses the need for revival and a hunger for righteousness in the world today. The preacher challenges Christians to examine their own actions and contributions to advancing God's kingdom.

It is indeed a great pleasure to introduce to you our speaker, we have been anticipating for some months now, the coming of Reverend Duncan Campbell, who is a native of Scotland, where he's principal of a Bible college there, and as we have been saying, greatly used of God in a ministry of revival, not only in the British Isles, but throughout different portions of the world. This is not his first visit to Canada, but I believe it's his first visit to Regina. So we welcome him, and trust that God will minister through him to us. Before we turn to the word of God, I would like to say one word of thanks to the pastor, for his very warm and very gracious words of welcome. I'm sure I'm happy and privileged to be with you here this evening. Indeed I feel very much at home already. Being motored to the church, I saw Lorne Street, and was certainly impressed. I presume called after Lorne in the old country, that part of Scotland in which I was born and brought up, and also brought to a saving knowledge of the Lord Jesus Christ many years ago, when the district of Lorne was swept by revival. So I do feel at home with you, being so near to Lorne Street. Then I do trust you will not find it too difficult to follow my Scottish Highland accent. Gaelic is my native language. I think in Gaelic, but I've got to come down to your level and talk to you in English. However, I'm sure that the good Lord will help us. And I will return with me to the portion of Scripture which we have read together, the Acts of the Apostles, chapter 4. And we shall turn again to that very familiar passage, verse 28. For to do whatsoever thy hand and thy counsel determined before to be done, and now, Lord, behold their threatening, and grant unto thy servants that with all boldness they may speak thy word, by stretching forth thine hand to heal, and signs and wonders may be done by the name of thy holy child Jesus. And when they prayed, the place was shaken where they were assembled together, and they were all filled with the Holy Ghost, and they spake the word of God with boldness. And the multitude of them that believed were of one heart and of one soul, neither said any of them that all of the things which he possessed was his own, but they had all things common. And when they had prayed, the place was shaken where they were assembled together. The burden that is on my heart this evening for this meeting is that of a message on the Holy Ghost in revival, or God in revival. It will be generally agreed that the world we knew a few years ago is gone beyond recall, at least so far as man is concerned. Ideas and habits that seem to be part of the solid foundation of things have been completely abandoned, and are being remembered today as that which belongs to the vanished past, the God. Now it seems to me that in this shaking of things, we as Christian men and Christian women must ask ourselves, what is the Church doing today? What am I doing today? To establish and advance the kingdom that cannot be shaken. In other words, what are we to offer a generation that is awake, but is failing to find the answer to the supreme problem of the age, and the supreme problem is faith. I know of no Christian in all the range of thoughts so vital in its issues for devastating in its implications, ask this one question. Is the Christian Church today, I speak as a Presbyterian minister, is the Christian Church today a light that marks the road that leads men to the land? A lighthouse, for instance, can be very imposing, the structure perfect, the work of a master. But that structure in the ocean could be a positive danger to navigation but for the light. It's the light that gives warning, it's the light that gives direction apart from the light, a positive danger to navigation. There are institutions today in the world, they certainly are to be found in Britain, they speak of them as churches. But I have no hesitation whatsoever in saying a positive danger in a Christian community because they lack the one thing that can alone constitute the Church of God, the power, the presence, the anointing of the Holy Ghost. It was my privilege some time ago to address a congregation of clergymen of the Church of England under the chairmanship of the Bishop of Plymouth. I want to read to you words spoken by the Bishop in his chairman's remarks. Might I suggest that the serious question that confronts us today is not that the state of our country is so bad, but that in a country that claims to be Christian, the Christian witness has been and is so feeble and inspective. How is it that while we make such great claims for the power of the gospel, in practice, we see so very little, now I want you to notice, we see so very little of the supernatural in operation. Of course you believe that the work of God is supernatural. A Christian is a supernatural being, or is not a Christian. He is a person who has had a supernatural experience and is so supernaturally altered that in the moment of his conversion he is characterized by godliness in every part of his being, body, soul, and spirit. I believe that the regeneration of a soul, that is a man brought into failing covenant and vital relationship with God, is a man who knows the miracle working power of God in his life. I say again that regeneration is God's greatest miracle, far greater than the creation of the world. Worlds will fall, will break, will burn. They will wax dim in their orbits. They will fall like leaves in autumn. I believe that day is coming. But the gentlest soul who has known the miracle of the new birth will survive the wreck of a million worlds. He is alive in God, the God that is eternal. Eternity awaits in this miracle. Well in this portion of scripture which we have just read we have miracles demonstrated when they prayed the place was shaken and multitudes were added to the church. That is God at work, God at work. Now one naturally asks what had the early disciples that the church lacks today? How is it that we're not witnessing miracles? How is it that we seldom hear the cry of a penitent? Or a man under deep distress of soul in his search after reality in God? What had it? There's only one answer to that question. They had the Holy Ghost. In other words, they believed in the personality of the third person of the Trinity, God, the Holy Ghost. And it was the impact of God, the impact of the Holy Ghost, not the eloquence of Peter, not the logic of his hermits, but God, the Holy Ghost. Now let me illustrate by an incident that I shall not touch on on Sunday evening. I was in a church one evening in the northwest of Scotland. I was asked to assist at a communion service. Now in that part of Scotland a communion lasts for several days. It begins by a prayer meeting on Wednesday night and finishes by a Thanksgiving service on Sunday night or Monday night. On this occasion I was asked to preach the action sermon. That is the main sermon of the communion. I felt the going extremely hard. The parish, the district had not been visited by anything in the nature of revival. God was preaching through communities sixty-odd miles away, but not in this community. Halfway through my address I noticed that a young boy, sixteen years of age, who was saved in the revival and who had come to this communion service, I saw him weeping bitterly. Tears flowing, revival. We seldom see tears flowing today. Oh, thank God I saw them in Toronto last week. And God, in his massive itchiness, he's weeping. And I realized that the boy sitting in the pew was nearer to God than the minister in the pulpit. And I stopped preaching and I asked him to pray. Converted about six weeks or thereabouts. Had a remarkable experience in the baptism of the Holy Ghost. I trust you believe in the baptism of the Holy Ghost as a definite, distinct experience. This young lad had it. So much so that a party had to go out in search of him. He went out to herd some cattle on the hillside. God met with him and he's lying among the heather with wave after wave of divine realization sweeping through him. So much so that he forgot all about time and home. But they found him there. Well, I'm asking him now to lead in prayer. And that boy stood in that part of the country we've termed as a prayer we sit to say. He stood, the congregation stood with him. He's looking up toward the heavens, he's praying. And in his prayer he says this, God, I seem to be gazing in through the open door. I see the Lamb in the midst of the throne. That morning at family worship, they were reading the fourth chapter of Revelation when John saw the door. A door was opened in heaven and he prays, I seem to be gazing in through the door. And I see the Lamb in the midst of the throne with the keys of death and of hell at his girdle. Then he paused, began to weep, strangely moved by God. After a little, when he was able to control himself, he began again. Looking toward the heavens, he cried, God, there's power there. Let it loose. And at that moment, the miracle happened. Oh, my dear people, have you witnessed the Bible? Have you seen God at work in the field? God moved into the midst of men in that church. And suddenly, half the congregation slumped from the top of each other. About between 80 and 100 fell into a trance. Now don't ask me to explain this because I can't. Read the history of revival. Jonathan Edward revived in New England. The 59 revivals in Ireland and in Scotland. The hundred or four, 1904, rather, revival in Wales. These were characterized by physical manifestations that cannot be explained on the basis of the human. We have to acknowledge that God is there. And God was certainly in that visitation. But the most remarkable thing that happened that night was this, that at that very moment, when this was happening in the church, a village five miles distant from the church suddenly was gripped by an awareness of God. There wasn't a single minister near it. No special effort. Nothing in the nature of evangelism. A sleeping village. Suddenly gripped by God. The Holy Spirit moving into the homes of the people. And here and there a whole family, in a matter of hours, brought to a saving knowledge of the Lord Jesus Christ. The place was shaken where they were assembled together and multitudes were added to the church. The following day the churches in the parish were crowded and God moved in, in such a manner that there was hardly a house in the whole community, in the whole parish, but had someone in it who found the Lord Jesus Christ our Savior. In some cases, whole family. Now God, at what cost, had that boy that seems to be lacking in our ministry today. He had the Holy Ghost. He is today a minister in southern Arabia, a missionary under the auspices of the Church of Scotland and his ministry is being wonderfully blessed among Mohammedans. God, the Holy Ghost, doing the baptism of the Holy Ghost, the killing of the Holy Ghost, is the answer to the missionary problem today. I am convinced of that. Now it's quite obvious that the early disciples had certain fundamental convictions. They believed in action rather than entertainment. These are days when a great deal of emphasis is placed on the need of entertainment. I want to read an extract from a letter that I received from a group of ministers in London. You may have heard of Theodore Bamberg, an outstanding preacher in England. He signed the letter along with others. We are at our wit's end to know what to do with our young people who made a decision for Christ recently at Haringey. They are demanding all sorts of entertainment and if we do not provide it, we just cannot hold it. Tragic. I say tragic. Where is the Holy Ghost? Where is the gripping truth of God? It's lacking. Ah, but the early disciples believed in action and not in entertainment. One of the sad features that characterizes much that goes under the name of evangelism is this craze for entertainment and this emphasis upon what man himself can do. We can do this. We must do that. And if we do this and that, then God is sure to work. I was arrested by an address given by one of our workers at the minister's conference recently. I refer to a young worker in our own mission that we'll be visiting Canada shortly. She made this statement. God is not obliged to send revival because we work toward revival. He's not even obliged to send revival if we pray. But he's bound by covenant promise to send revival when we humble ourselves and seek his faith. She was, of course, speaking from that great passage. If my people, called by my name, will humble themselves and pray and seek my faith, I in heaven will hear and will come and heal their land. That is the attitude and the approach that God honors. They believe in unction and not in entertainment. Or as they say, how can we get the teenager? How can we get the teenager today that in many parts of the world seems to be going wild, living in utter disregard to high principles? How can we get him? Well, how did they get them in the early days of the church? How are they getting them just now in many parts of northwest Scotland? Thank God we are seeing movements of the Spirit. I wouldn't say that we're witnessing revival such as we witnessed in 49, 50, 51, 52. But teenagers are being arrested, not by special efforts, not by publicity in the field of evangelism, but because of the prevailing prayer of men and women. And I saw that happening recently in Ireland in a most marked manner. A group of men giving themselves to waiting upon God. A group of men anointed by the Holy Ghost and praying in the Spirit, in touch with heaven, brought heaven down. So that I witnessed this. God left Sinai stopping me on the street as he left his car coming over to me and said, I was in a meeting last night. Will you show me the way to God? But this is no function. God, the Holy Spirit. I read part of that letter to you, but I didn't tell you that they asked me what entertainment did I provide in the Louis and Harry's revival? What entertainment? Well, I couldn't help smiling when I read that. I looked back and said that I took nothing at all to do with the arranging of anything in the nature of entertainment. But I left that to the young converts themselves. And they found their entertainment in five prayer meetings a week in each parish. Five prayer meetings. And indeed, they found their life and they found their entertainment. I was saying to the students at the college today that I cannot understand all this talk about Palo Alto. Well, you may not be talking about it in Canada, but I can assure you they talk about it in Britain. You can't have a crusade or a special effort in the field of evangelism without arranging for men and women to follow up those who have made a decision at the crusade, such as Billy Graham or others. Call on them and try and get them interested in the church. Try and get them to come to some place of worship. Follow them up. My dear people, I just can't understand it. Surely a person born again of the Spirit of God needs not to be followed up. Why, the moment he comes into vital relationship with God, aspirations are created. The final expression is the tenderness in the prayer meeting. Far less public worship in the church than Sabbath. Aspirations after God. As the heart panteth after the water brooks. O, panteth my soul after thee, O God. Don't misunderstand me. I believe that there is a need, a great need today for instruction in the Word of God because of so many of our young people yet, and old people, ignorant of the Word. There is a need for instruction. But O, don't tell me that a person who has found the Savior needs to be followed up. He'll search out for green pastures and he'll find it where food is given that will nourish the hunger after God in soul is born again. Because that doesn't follow in every case where there's only deficient. Deficient. O, the thousands today in our land of Ennui who are living under a self-created illusion and going on in contentment to a Christless hell who made a decision and because of them having made a decision led to believe that they're Christians. There never was a greater delusion forged from the anvils of hell than that. That doesn't make me a Christian. Making a decision, joining the church, becoming a Sunday school teacher or an elder or a minister. That doesn't make me a Christian. A Christian is that person who knows the power of the Holy Ghost bringing the personality of God to be incorporated in his personality and suddenly making this profound discovery that heaven has invaded his head. O, how great, how great our need is to rediscover the personality of the Holy Ghost in our work and witness to God. I labored as a Presbyterian minister for seventeen years. I was, I should imagine, fairly successful as a minister in three congregations in Scotland. But there came a moment when with a sense of baffling and frustration I said, God, if you cannot do something better for me than I know now, I'm giving up the ministry and going back to business. Listen, dear people. God makes, when I found myself at the end of all human resolve, and no one need come to me and say there isn't such an experience as the baptism of the Holy Ghost God makes. A professor in your college Edinburgh faced me with the question, what difference has this experience made in your ministry? Well, I said, following that visitation of God in my own study, I went forth to preach the same sermons that I'd been preaching for seventeen years. Of course, I was Evangelical, but you can be as dry as a cork and yet be very fundamental, such as my case. I went out to preach the same sermons. What was this difference? Now I saw hundreds weeping their way to Jesus. That's the difference. That's the difference that the Holy Ghost makes. Oh, we are laboring and tiring ourselves and seeing little accomplished. But oh, let God come. Let God come. I'm an old soldier of the First World War. Some of you may have been there. I was there. And you will recall that awful morning when the Germans sent over clouds of poison gas. The clouds came right over the Highland Brigade of the 65th Scottish Division. The thing was terrible. Well now, what could we do, officers or non-commissioned officers such as I was? What could we do? Would I suggest that we call all who could to fix their bayonets and charge the cloud of gas? You got it. Foolish! Or would I get on to the line and get in touch with the batteries and cry, oh, with all haste, get the batteries to fire on the clouds of gas? Folly. Folly. That wouldn't stop the havoc and the dying and the desolation and the destruction. A miracle happened. You read it in history. A miracle happened. The wind changed. And one breath of wind did what the ingenuity of man could never do. It blew the clouds back to the German line. Wind did it. Breath did it. Oh, what an illustration of what is possible when God, the Holy Ghost, moves in. We are living today in an atmosphere which seems to me to be impregnated by satanic power. Horses are like roots that are out to defy every known Christian principle. And we organize and we have our conventions and our conferences and we pass our resolutions and we organize in an endeavor to counter this jealous movement in the world. But the movement advancing, oh, for a breath of God to come, the winds of heaven to blow, and soon we shall see communism and all the other isms that have their origin in hell swept back to the covens of death from which they came. But God, my dear people, we've seen it happen. We've seen it happen. And it could happen again if the Church of Jesus Christ would again recognize the personality of the Holy Ghost. Then might I say that here were men who put power before influence. They put the power of God. Ye shall receive power after that the Holy Ghost is come upon you. And the Holy Ghost came upon them and power invested them. Multitudes, multitudes in the valley of decision and the Church of Jesus Christ born in a night because they put power before influence. Now I think it will be generally agreed that the state of the world today presents a challenge to the Christian Church. There is a growing conviction among true thinking men that unless we witness a demonstration of the power of God that will lift men beyond the ordinary into the sphere of the extraordinary, beyond the natural into the sphere of the supernatural, the average man that we know will look upon us will stagger back disappointed, disillusioned and dissatisfied. The average church conquers the globe because the early believer in the power of the Holy Ghost outlived, outformed and out died the pagan. He had a quality of life that could not be explained on the basis of the human. I say again, until we rediscover that and with purpose and true intentions with God we shall go on preaching our evangelical sermon but the multitude shall pass us to hell. You remember Paul and Silas? In prison. Why, they hadn't sufficient influence to keep them out of prison. That was bad enough. But they had so much of the power of God asked to shake the old prison to its very foundation and listen to the cry of the penitent. What shall I do? To be saved? Not influenced? I believe that the hour has come when preachers and pastors and evangelists must forget influence and proclaim the whole counsel of God to a bewildered, a bewildered world. The apostles were not men of influence. Not many wise, not many don't know the truth. God has called the foolish, the weak things, defiled things, influenced. But prepare to honor God. Oh, give us such men, give us such men who will put recitation aside, it's necessary, and stand with God in His endeavor to bring a lost world back through the preaching of the everlasting gospel-based and fundamental truth. What have they then? What have they? They believed in the Holy Ghost. Notice the prayer of verse 29. And now, Lord, behold their threatening, and grant unto thy servants that with all boldness they may speak thy word, by stretching forth thy hand to heal, that signs and wonders may be done by the name of thy Holy Child Jesus. You see, they looked for signs and wonders. And because they looked and expected, they saw signs and wonders happening. We saw that in Ireland in the Child of Lisbon just six weeks ago. I question if I witnessed anything like it outside of the heavens. Suddenly, through the singing of one of our workers that I've already referred to, that will be visiting Canada shortly. She's an outstanding singer. But she sings under the anointing of the Holy Ghost. And she sang that lovely hymn that speaks of the blood getting deeper than the stain can go. The blood reaching deeper than the stain can go. And as she sang, wave after wave of God came over them. It's eight o'clock. The benediction is now pronounced. And I sit down and she sits down. And then an elder of the church rose to his feet and said this. God, Mr. Campbell has sat down. Miss Morrison has sat down. Now you get to your feet. Stingy words. Now you get to your feet. And demonstrate your power. We were in that church until twenty minutes past eleven. No one thought of leaving. The cry of the penitent. The cry of Christian men seeking to get right with God. Again and again men would say, God, let the blood reach deeper than the stain that troubles me. One farmer was crying bitterly. Oh, let the blood reach deeper than the stain that troubles me. They looked for signs and looked for wonders. And that happened. I close by quoting a verse from him following the quotation, Then Peter filled with the Holy Ghost. That's a significant word. Filled with the Holy Ghost. If you're full of the Holy Ghost, you cannot be full of anything else. God means full. Every avenue of my redeeming personality under the control of God. Filled with the Holy Ghost. And God now told me, A lot full. Here is that. Empty it before me, fill me. A clean vessel in thine hand with no power, but as thou gavest graciously at each command. I take the power of Pentecost. I take the promise of the Holy Ghost which gave me to the uttermost. I came to undertake the task that if I obey the laws of the Spirit, the power of the Spirit will obey me. Miracle, multitudes added to the church. A man bowing before the crowned right of our crowned leader. I, this Old Testament preacher, talk of all that speaks to me of a crisis creating a sense of urgency. A crisis creating a sense of urgency. In the case of the lepers, the crisis came when they were made to face their own dire and death. Listen again to what they said. If we stay here, we die. Here you have a personal consciousness of need and a personal conviction that they themselves must do something about it. I wonder if I have here a far-fetched comparison suggesting the desperate need of our own land today and perhaps the need of our individual lives. Is there not a coming today? A coming for righteousness. A coming for true godliness. A coming for the movings of the Spirit of God in the midst of men. I am eager to say this morning that the streams of vital Christianity never ran so low as they seem to be running today. Take the world that you know and the world that I know today. Are we not in the midst of a world that is wrought in a sea of trouble because we've left God in the lumber of forgotten things? We have said we can get on without you. That is the desperate condition and state of the world today. Not that man, generally speaking, is more wicked than in other days, but he is certainly more godless. I received a letter from one of her workers laboring in the center of England and in her letter she said this. The average man in the average village in the middle of England is either an atheist or an agnostic. And here I am speaking about Britain. I can't speak for your country. But my deep-seated conviction is that the crying need of this momentous hour in world system is for a manifestation of God. Is it true that Canada has never known revival? I've been told that. You've had moments in different places. You've had manifestations of God in some communities. But I understand from the pages of church history in the realm of revival that Canada has never witnessed a nationwide manifestation of God. No. The need, the crying need, the desperate need is for this manifestation. Not just church activity. Not just conventions and conferences for the deepening of spiritual life. Not just gathering together to discuss the question of revival. All that may be helpful and has its place in the economy of grace. But the need of this hour is for something altogether different from anything that man can conceive of or man arrange. A manifestation. Sounds from heaven. God stepping into the midst of men and demonstrating His power. The God who through worlds enters space by the touch of His hand demonstrating that power in the midst of man whom He hath created and whom He judges and will judge. That is the picture you have here. A people moved. A situation saved. Because of something happening that man of himself could never accomplish. Just a sound.