In this sermon, the speaker emphasizes the importance of the gifts of the Spirit and their role in the church. He mentions that the gifts are carefully worked out and are not just passing illustrations. The speaker also highlights the need for discernment and faith in order to connect with God, especially in times of excitement or when others are making speeches. Additionally, he cautions against relying on worldly methods, such as hiring money-getting concerns or making films, to raise funds for the church. The speaker encourages a reliance on God and a willingness to step out in faith.

In line with a series of proofs which I have been, proofs which I have been bringing, I want today to speak on the gifts of the Spirit. And many of the things that I say will be repetitions. It is, I will have said them at some time in my life, and maybe at some time in your hearing, the hearing of some of you. But I will sum it up and bring it all together in one place this morning. In 1 Corinthians 12, once more let me read. There are diversities of gifts, but the same Spirit. There are differences of administration, but the same Lord. Diversities of operations, but the same God which worketh all in all. But the manifestation of the Spirit is given to every man to profit withal. For to one is given by the Spirit the word of wisdom, to another the word of knowledge by the same Spirit, to another faith by the same Spirit, to another the gifts of healing by the same Spirit, to another the working of miracles, to another prophecy, to another discerning of Spirit, to another diverse kinds of tongues, to another the interpretation of tongues. But all of these worketh that one and the same Spirit is provided to every man, severally as he will. Further on in that chapter, verse 27, Now ye are the body of Christ, and members in particular. And God hath set some in the church, first apostles, secondarily prophets, thirdly teachers, after that miracles, then gifts of healing, health, governments, diversities of tongues. Are all apostles? Are all prophets? Are all teachers? Are all workers of miracles? Have all the gifts of healing? Do all speak with tongues? Do all interpret? Those questions are what's known as rhetorical questions. The answer, of course, is no. Now, in the book of Romans, the twelfth chapter, we read this. After that famous I beseech you therefore brethren passage, which everybody quotes, then we come to this passage which scarcely anybody quotes. For I say, through the grace given unto me, to every man that is among you, not to think of himself more highly than he ought to think, but to think soberly according as God hath dealt to every man the measure of faith. For as we have many members in one body, and all members have not the same office, so we being many are one body in Christ. And every one member is one of another. Having then gifts differing according to the grace that is given to us, whether prophesied, see, let us prophesy according to the proportion of faith. For ministry, let us wait on our ministry. For he that teaches on teaching, for he that exalteth on exhortation, he that giveth, let him do it with simplicity. He that ruleth with diligence, he that showeth mercy with carefulness. And in the book of Ephesians, the fourth chapter, verse 8, wherefore he saith, when he ascended up on high, he led captivity captive, and gave gifts unto men. Now, that he ascended, what is it but that he also descended first into the lower parts of the earth? He that descended is the same that ascended, that is Christ, far above all heavens, that he might fill all things. And he gave some apostles, and some prophets, and some evangelists, and some pastors, and teachers, for the perfecting of the saints, for the work of the ministry, for the edifying of the body of Christ, till we all come to the unity of the faith, and of the knowledge of the Son of God, and to a perfect man, and to the measure of the stature of the fulness of Christ. Now, let's sketch something here that is known to us all, but in order to arrive at where we're going, when you're going into a new area, you always have to drive over familiar streets, the ones you know best to get where you're going, if nothing else, just to get away from your house. So, the doctrine of the body of Christ here, that the Church is the body of Christ, with Christ ahead, and the true Christians are parts of that body, and that the Holy Spirit is to the body what our soul is to our body, the life, the union, that is what unites it, and the consciousness. That the soul is the body, and all the parts of the body cease to function. The spirit in the body gives to it life, cohesion, and consciousness. And each member recapitulates the local Church, that is, every Christian, every human body, is an illustration. Paul uses it in three of his epistles, and asserts it three different times in his epistles, not simply as an illustration to pass by, but something very carefully worked out and at great length. And each local Church recapitulates the entire Church. Now, always illustrations break down, and parallel break down, particularly when we come to the sacred and infinite things of God. For a man's body to function, it all has to be in one place. If you separate him and scatter him around, he's dead. But the body of Christ doesn't all have to be in one place, because its unity is the unity of the Spirit. And therefore, the Church is never all in one place. Some are in heaven. I was wondering this morning what proportion of the members of the body of Christ are in heaven. I would suppose that 98% of them might be in heaven, having two thousand years gone to die and go to heaven. But whatever the percentage, the largest number are in heaven, and the remainder are on earth. And not all are on earth at the same time, nor in the same place. And yet the body is not torn nor divided, because it is held together by the Holy Spirit, who is the life of the body. And each local group has all the functions of the whole group, and recapitulates, that is, gathers up in itself, and sums up all of the offices and gifts and workings of the entire Church of Christ. Now the members, according to Paul, we're still on our familiar streets. The members, according to Paul, are designed for a function. He says the eye is designed to see, and we all know that. That's what it's there for. And the ear is designed to hear, that's its function. The hand is designed for very, very many purposes. The foot for another purpose, the lungs for another, the heart for another. And so all the parts of the body have their particular function. And they're designed to cooperate and act in concert with each other. And in the body of Christ, the motto might be a good boy scout motto. I thought when I was thinking of it here, that somebody might say, well this is a pep talk, because actually it can be summed up like this, all for each and each for all, for that is what Paul says. He says that the whole body exists for its members, and the members exist for the whole body. And that therefore God gives gifts that the body might profit with all. And remember one final thing, and it is that all take direction from the head. Cut the head off of a man's body and there's no direction anymore. We've all seen the familiar country scene of the chicken having its head cut off and still imagining that it was called upon to fly away. So it fluttered all over the barnyard. But it wasn't going anyplace, it had no direction. Its direction was taken away from it and it soon died. So the body has its direction from the head. And the body of Christ, the church of Christ, gets its direction from its head, which is Jesus Christ our Lord. Now I've talked about the functions that Paul has, and what are these various functions? Well, there are abilities which are called gifts in the Bible. Gifts according to the measure of faith, and gifts according to grace. There are gifts, there are graces, variously called. And it says, having then gifts differing according to the grace, that's in Romans 12.6. Now concerning spiritual gifts, read in 12.1, covered earnestly the best gifts, 12.31. And when he ascended up on high, he gave gifts unto men, 4, 8. And then in Romans it says, let nobody think of himself more highly, but everybody judge himself according as God has given him gifts. Now I find that there are more than nine gifts in the scriptures. I find that there are about 19. And I've marked down 17 of them here, but in reading Old Refuge, it comes to two more, Evangelist and Pastor. But because in this Corinthian passage, Paul develops it by saying that there are diversities of gifts, and then names nine of them, we say those are the gifts. But Devon, if you will read the rest of the scriptures, and read what Paul says in the passages I read today, and then read what Peter says, you will find that there are more gifts than nine. And it could be that in saying there are 19, that I haven't named too many, because it's possible some of them are synonymous with each other. So that if that's the case, then of course, if you were naming your family, and you had one named Billy, and you also called him Willie, and you were counting him, and you said Willie and Billy, you'd get one too many, because he's the same one. You'd give him a synonymous name. So that if we are counting the gifts of the Spirit as revealed in the New Testament, if we should by accident find, or we should find that the Spirit had designated one gift by two names, then we'd have to cut it down that much, and say, well, I'm sorry, that's just using a synonym for the same thing. But now here are the gifts as are found in the passages I read. The gift of an apostle, which means an ambassador or a messenger or one commissioned to go. And it's generally believed, I think, by all sound Christians everywhere, that the twelve apostles, as we knew them, had a particular office which had not been perpetuated. Because it talks in Revelation of the twelve apostles of the Lamb. Judas by apostasy fell away, and Paul was added to make up the number of the twelve. And yet the word apostle is only a name. It's a designation. It means an ambassador. And here sitting back in our congregation this morning are two who have gone as ambassadors for Christ, or maybe others. Two missionaries who have gone as ambassadors for Christ, and as messengers for Christ, as those commissioned to go. So that I am not at all sure that while the twelve apostles certainly were a group in themselves, and their offices have not been perpetuated, still I am not sure that it's not proper and permissible, if we know how we mean it, to call a missionary of an apostle. Because we often hear people call the apostle to the Jews, the apostle to this or that. Maybe we might call one of our missionaries that went into the Bowling Valley the apostle to the donning. Meaning simply an ambassador, a messenger, as someone commissioned to go. The second is the gift of the prophet. Now, the gift of the prophet in the New Testament was only secondarily a gift of foretelling events. In the Old Testament the gift of the prophet was to foretell events mainly, and to warn, and to plead, and to call back early men to God. But in the New Testament the gift of the prophet is not so much to foretell events inasmuch as the Bible has been written, and the prophecy stands, and all events have been foretold that God wants to foretell. But the gift of the prophet in the New Testament is to tell forth, and to see with an anointed eye, and to give leave in due season, and not simply to be a mimicker, but to tell out what God has to say for a given time. Then there is the gift of the teacher. Not everybody can teach, we might just as well admit it, and even of those that teach, not many can teach. There is a gift of the teacher. It is both a natural gift, and it is a gift of the Spirit. And then there is the gift of the exhorter. Let him exhort, says the apostle. Well, now an exhorter is not known in our day. But the old Methodists were wise enough that they had an office of an exhorter. They commissioned him, called him a lay preacher. He had a license, he couldn't marry people, and he couldn't give the Lord supper, but he could get up and burn up sin, and tell how wonderful God was, better than most preachers can do. And it might be interesting to remember that it was a lay preacher, an exhorter, that won Sir Spurgeon to the Lord. Spurgeon came in out of a snowstorm into a Methodist church, and got up in the balcony, and sat and listened to young Spurgeon. And an exhorter, who wasn't much of a preacher at all, but he had the gift of exhorting, and he was exhorting the people. Spurgeon said, I believed in Jesus Christ right there, and I could have stood up with the best and the oldest saints, and sung, There's a fountain filled with blood. He was converted. Then there is the ruler. Now, a ruler is used in the same sense as a ruler of the synagogue. He's not a legal ruler, he's simply somebody that takes some direction, and reads the scripture, and teaches, and I don't know whether he might be synonymous with a pastor or not. Then there's the gift of wisdom also, and the gift of knowledge, and the gift of faith, and the gift of healing, which a few people have had, and the gift of miracles, and the gift of tongues, and the gift of interpretation of tongues, the gift of discernment, the gift of health, whatever that is, I do not know, but I sometimes think some people are gifted just to be helpers. Then there is the mercy-shore, which I've called for want of a better name, and this mercy-shore appears to be someone who is particularly gifted by the Holy Ghost to go about helping people that are discouraged, and helping the poor, and otherwise going about doing good, as it was said of Jesus. Then there's the gift of government, and that might be the same as the gift of ruling. Then there's the gift of giving. Somebody says, aren't we not all to give? Yes, we're all to give, just as we are all to have some wisdom, but there's such a thing as the gift of wisdom. We're all to have some discernment, but there's such a thing as the gift of discernment. We're all to show mercy and be helpful, but there's such a thing as the gift of helping and showing mercy. And so, we're all to give, but there's such a thing as the gift of giving. And I believe that God enables some men, if they will align by the Holy Spirit to sow, control, and run business, that they'll be able to support the Church, and the cause of missions, and the cause of Christ on earth, and to help the poor in a way that we, the average people, can't possibly do. Then there's the gift, also, of the evangelist. And everybody knows that there's the gift of an evangelist. We've met that today. Then there's the gift of the pastor. Now, I've named nineteen. Now, my brethren, these are gifts given by the Holy Spirit to individual persons, just as the gift of sight is given to my eye, the gift of hearing is given to my ear, the gift of smelling is given to my nose, the gift of taste is given to my tongue, and the gift of manipulation is given to my hand, and particular gifts are given to every member of the body, so God gives to his Church, of which Christ is the head, these gifts. Now, the work of the Church is to be done by the Spirit working through these gifted members. Now, you'll hear me. The work of the Church is to be done by the Spirit working through these gifted members. Now, I'll go further than that. I will say this. That in the judgment, when we all receive the gifts for the deeds we've done, the rewards for the deeds we've done, and we know as we're known, and that which is chaff and wheat and straw and stubble is separated from that which is gold and silver and diamonds, and all that that is of the flesh perishes and passes away, and that which is of the Spirit alone stands, you will find that not only does God design to do all his work through gifted men, but he does do all his work through gifted men. Now, he doesn't carry on all religious activity through gifted men. You don't have to have a gift of the Holy Ghost to be a preacher. You don't have to be a gift of the Holy Ghost to be a Bible expositor. We can be Bible expositors by reading commentaries and going to Bible school and learning what men say is true of the scriptures. And a man can get up and preach. A politician can get up and preach. Turn from politics if he's talking to a religious group and preach like a house on fire. You only have to be able to talk and know how to use religious phrases to be a preacher. But if you're going to preach so that it'll stand in the day of the fire, then you're going to have to speak by a gift of the Spirit. And any preaching that is not done by a gift of the Spirit is not the true preaching of God, for it's written that Jesus Christ was anointed by the Holy Ghost and went about doing good. And he said that the Holy Spirit is upon me because he has anointed me to preach the gospel to the poor and to open the eyes of the blind and so on. Even our Lord Jesus Christ worked by a gift of the Spirit on his human nature. So if you're giving and serving and working and it's not by a gift of the Spirit, you may lose everything you've done, and everything that you've put into it may go down the drain in that day. And if we don't have the gifts of the Spirit, then where these gifts are not present and the Church is thrown back upon four or five things which I won't name, all of them should be talked about at length. But of course I can't talk for two hours here, you wouldn't stay, and I wouldn't blame you. But we will fall now upon talent. We use the word talent, that is, some fellow can whistle to his feet or somebody else has a marvelous gift for impromptu composition of poetry. Somebody else is marvelously gifted in mathematics. You can give him a whole handful of numbers, talk them up, and by the time they've been lit he'll tell you the sum of them. Now those are talents. Some people are talented composers. Some are talented musicians, and some are talented singers, and some are talented talkers, we might as well admit it. Some of you dear, honest, good, godly people haven't opened your mouths in public because you just don't have any gift for it, and it doesn't mean that you're dumb or ungifted, it just means that isn't your gift. But some of the hollowest, most hopeless people in the world can run off at the mouth and talk like everything. So, talent, that's the next thing, talent. And the talent runs the church. Not the gifts of the Spirit, as God intended, but talents run the church. Just as you can keep a body alive by a little while or keep it functioning by, you know how Colonel Lindbergh and his men did? The man who wrote the great book about man? I've forgotten his name, it doesn't matter. But they took a chicken's heart and kept it alive for a month. But it was being done by artificial stimulus from the outside, so the church can be run like that. And then another method religion can carry on with is psychology. And a great many people are skilled master psychologists. They know how to handle people, really. They're amazing how they know how to handle people. So, the church can be run, a new man comes in, and the crowds come, and first thing you know you have what looks like an amazingly successful church. But that man is simply a shrewd psychologist who knows how to say Jesus in the right place and say tender things. Then other religious work can be done by business methods. And a lot of it is being done by business methods today. And then some use political techniques, and some use plain sales methods. And so with Christianity now, the church, this church, any church, can be carried on by the exercise of human talents without a touch of the Holy Ghost, by sharp use of psychology without a touch of the Holy Ghost, by business methods, by political techniques, and by sales techniques that have not one trace of the Holy Ghost in it. But I'm telling you and warning you, my dear friend, that when this takes place, we may not know it until the great and terrible day when our deeds are burned with fire, and only that which was rocked of the Holy Ghost stands. Jesus said, even now the axe lies at the root of the tree, and whatever isn't of God and wasn't planted by my Father and doesn't bring forth fruit shall be cast down. And much of the religious activity during the centuries has been an activity wrought by talent and psychology and business methods, political techniques, and sales methods. All right, you say, now Mr. Pope, let's be honest about this. If you say that the gifts of the Spirit ought to be in the church, and I emphatically do, and that the people of God could have these gifts of the church and could labor in these gifts, then why don't we simply throw in our lot with the tongues people, the Pentecostal people, by various names. There are, I guess, 17 or 18 different splits and divisions of them. Why don't we throw our lot in with them? What I'm going to say now is going to hurt some of my friends. And God Almighty made me do it. He made me do it. And he makes me draw blood and hurt my friends. I don't want to do it. I'd rather love them and have them love me and go around telling what a nice boy I am. But I must tell the truth. And so I have studied those who are of what we call the tongues persuaded since 1918. That's about 41 years, isn't it? And in all love and charity, I tell you my findings. Not 41 years, no, but whatever it is, my mathematics always loses me. In all love and charity, and with complete Christian kindness, I want to say this. First, that there are some good, sweet Christians among our tongues friends. No question about that. I've met some of them. I've prayed with some of them. And some pretty nice songs, and no great songs, but say, Oh Sweet Wonder, for instance, came out of the Pentecostalism. And there have been a few lovely songs, never any great songs, but a few good little sweet songs have come out of it, and some good people, and I have friends among them. And I'm not condemning, but I'm going to tell you this. That before I will become a part of a movement, or a school of thought, or a theological school of thought, or a church group, or a denomination, I'm going to have to test them and see what have been the characteristics and the marks and earmarks of that group down the years. Now, with the full understanding that there are many individual churches of which what I say is not true, and with a full understanding that there are individual Christians that are excellent, wonderful, godly, sweet people, then I say this, that the marks that have characterized the various flips of divisions of Pentecostalism since the turn of the century have been A. A magnification of one single gift above all others, and that, the one that Paul says, was of least value. B. The unscriptural exhibition of that gift before the people like a boy with a toy on Christmas. C. A tendency to place personal feeling above the scriptures, which is always an insult to God. D. An almost total lack of discernment, revealing itself in a predominance of women in their leadership, and sometimes women of questionable character. A credulity beyond belief, allowing them to be taught by little boy preachers, little girl preachers, religious racketeers, people back from the dead, they say, and allow them to adopt rock and roll music long before Albert Pressley, and that led them to splits and divisions. E. Free love, divorce and remarriage among their preachers to a shameful degree. E or E or whatever it is, unbecoming public conduct not justified in the New Testament. Now brethren, when a group of people say, we have the gifts of the spirit, come and join us, then I want to see what cloud hovers over them. Is it a cloud of purity? Is it a cloud of sanity? Is it a cloud of sharp discernment that knows the flesh from the spirit? Is it a cloud of moralism? Is it a cloud of cohesion and unity? Or is it a cloud of noisy flesh, and sex extravagance, and careless moral living? And if it is the latter, and it is, then I want nothing to do with it. Realizing that there are among these brethren some good people, and some sweet people, and if they're mad at me, I'll grieve about it, because I don't want them to be. I'm only saying what can be proved and would be agreed to by everybody that knows the facts. So therefore we cannot help ourselves by going somewhere else. Now I say we ought to have the gifts of the spirit in the church. Every church ought to have. Well then somebody says, I believe what Tozer says, I'm going to go somewhere else. No brethren, I don't know of a group or denomination, or fellowship, or communion anywhere in the world that realizes the Pauline apostolic doctrine of the body of Christ, with each member recapitulating the local church, and the local church recapitulating the entire church, and that work as a team, and each one having a proper gift, as God gave them to do, and work thus in the Holy Ghost. Now I know denominations and churches where there are a few like that among them, but I don't know denominations or groups of churches where that is the regular and general and common thing. So I'll tell you this, you won't help yourself by going somewhere else. We here now, in this present moment, this 1956, 28th of October, I think it is, we here and now can receive, this day before the sun sets tonight, we can receive an endowment of the Holy Ghost. If we will pay the price, each one of us, any one of us, all of us, can receive a down-coming, an endowment of the Holy Spirit. And when he comes, he invariably brings these functional graces, which will enable some to have a sharp discernment. Now you say, What gifts do you think that we ought to expect? And it says, Covered earnestly the best gifts, and we have a right to pray for these gifts and cover them before our God that we might use them to bless his church and glorify his name. You say, Then what are the gifts that you would say would be the most needed in the church today? I believe the gift of discernment is one of them. We have in fundamentalism ruled the Holy Ghost out, and because we have ruled him out, we have gone blindfolded down these decades. With the result that the church has traveled way over into entertainmentism, way over into rationalism, way over into worldlinessism, and the true church of Christ is scarcely to be found anywhere on the face of the earth. It's because, not because men were bad, but because men had fearfully ruled out the Spirit, and so the gift of discernment was not there. The mighty gift that can discern. Let me, I don't think he's here now, but let me point out a man that I believe has the gift of discernment. I don't think he knows he has, but I think dear old praying brother Tom has the gift of discernment. It's amazing how he can look at you and see through you and tell you all about yourself, and yet he doesn't make anything out of it at all except to pray and help you a little. And if this gift of discernment had been in our leadership, we wouldn't be where we are today. We wouldn't be locked up behind dispensationalism over here and entertainmentism over there and something else over here. But we'd be in the middle of the way going along. Pray that the leaders of the church might be endued with a gift of discernment. Second, I believe the gift of prophecy. That is, the gift of the prophet that can see his generation, know what's going on, and tell it abroad and make folks listen one way or another and find the church in the middle of things and help the church through. I believe we need that gift. I believe we need the gift of faith. Everybody has to have some faith or he wouldn't be saved. But there are those who have a peculiar gift of faith. And they come around. When this church was being built, we were trying to pay off the old ones in the middle of things. Why, there were a few people, I don't know who they were all, but there were a few that had the gift of faith. Twenty-eight years ago, when this church and the old building, meeting the old building, called me here as pastor. I wrote them back and said, thank you very much, thank you, thank you. But I'm not coming. And they reported it properly because the church of the board did not come. But there was a little woman in this church, still little, very old now, and she was a member of the prayer band. And she got up and said in her broken Dutch English, she said the Lord had shown her and answered her prayer and I was coming. I said, don't worry about it. I did. She said, this is all settled. I said, here's the letter saying thank you, but I don't feel it's right. I'm not the will of God. She said, that's okay. She said, the Lord showed me. I hadn't heard it yet, but God had shown her. She did it right to me. That would have been a mistake for her to try to be a messenger boy to me. She kept still and talked to God. And shortly after that, I began to feel it and sense it. And that's what I mean. That gift of discernment and faith that can get through to God when everybody else is excited, where everybody else is jumping up making speeches, let's do it this way, let's do it this way. When the Bible school gets into difficulty, then the members of the board, and here's one of them, not this one, he wouldn't do it, he knows better. But members of school board, we've got another one back here, chairman of the school board of Bible College. And the members jump up and say, well, let's call in a money-getting concern that for 29% of the proceeds they'll raise the money for us. Or let's make a film of our church work, supposedly do that. Let's photograph Brother Ruben Ecclestone in action. And let's photograph Brother Chase in action. And wave your arms and hold your Bible high, and we'll take that around among the churches and show that. And thus we'll get the money. Oh, brethren, that isn't the way it's done. Somebody sitting by will say, God has told me he'll look at this and we don't have to assume to that. And usually he's voted down. But if he isn't voted down, and can have his way, God will honor that faith and bless that school. Somebody said recently that in all the Bible colleges and Bible schools, a great number, maybe not all in America, but vast numbers of them were examined. And there were only six of them that were going anyplace and increasing in numbers and making progress. And they were the ones that don't use any business methods to get their money. They just pray. They have men on their boards that say to God, now hear, God, you either do this, or else the whole thing will blow up in our faces. And God doesn't. I think I mentioned this briefly, that over in Highland Lake, last July, I spoke for a week there, and incidentally, I don't know that week, six young men, but anyway, this young man, Merrill Fuller is his name, 40 years old, just when I got there at his birthday, and they sang Happy Birthday in the dining room. Well, this Merrill Fuller owns, I don't know how many hundred thousand dollars' worth of property right around there. And over across the Pennsylvania state line, he owns another vast holding, which is going to make a Christian high school. He had no more idea how to run a Christian high school than I know how to run a B47. But he said, Mr. Tozer, a whole faculty came to me without my ever soliciting anybody. He said, I want a job. I want to teach. A whole faculty, a Christian teacher, a whole high school faculty came. He said, we were just praying, that's all they had me up at five o'clock in the morning praying. Five o'clock in the morning. Boy, I never felt so old in my life. But I went up there and prayed, and we had a great time. Five o'clock in the morning, and then he said this, every time he'd get up he'd say, now friends, we have put this whole business on the platform where it's either God or total collapse. If God doesn't hear our prayers and send in the money, we'll all finish, and that's the end of it, and we'll close this place up and write Ichabod over it. He said, I'm not going to pray and then do something in such a carnal manner that I won't know whether God answered or whether my carnal methods worked. So he said, we're going to walk out and say, now God, here I go. You either hold me up or I perish. Now I ask him, do you think he's going to fail? Nah, he'll never fail. The man who trusts on God will never fail. Well, the man of faith. We need some faith. And I think we could use some people with the gift of showing mercy. We're all so starry-eyed in the long distance in our piety, and we tremble about the Baleen Valley, but there are people within the neighborhood that could use a little help. You say, why don't you go do it? Brother, I'm already staggered to bed at night without what I have to do, and I'm not gifted anyhow. I'm not gifted to go to anybody and help them much, but certainly some of you could be, and maybe I could be, but we all ought to be gifted. I think a mercy shower would be a great help around here. And then I think that God should bless some businessmen and give them a gift so that honestly and without cheating or without praying against a competitor, they could have money enough that they could keep God's work humming along like a diesel engine. All right, brethren, we don't have to go somewhere else. God will not do anything for any church that he won't do for this church. And he won't do anything for any people that he won't do for this people. And he won't do anything for anybody that he won't do for you. We here now can receive. Ye shall receive power, says the Holy Spirit. He said Jesus about the Holy Spirit. And when the Holy Spirit comes, remember this, that he will bring not only the gifts, but the graces and the fruits of the Spirit. So it is my earnest hope and my earnest prayers that we God's children here, with the dignity and self-control that belongs to Christianity, with the calmness and sweetness that belong to Jesus Christ, but with the abandonment that belong to the apostles and the early Christian church, might throw ourselves out on him with an expectation that he should come and endue us. Come, Holy Spirit, heavenly dove, with all thy quickening power, come shed abroad us, Savior's love in these cold hearts of ours. I believe he'll do it. And he may easily come in great fullness to some people that you and I are kind of overlooking. And he may pass over some that we think are pretty big shots. And some big shots may even look scant and wonder if it's God. But I believe that the Spirit of God wants to do a new thing. I believe he wants to do a new thing. Just about, I don't know, maybe about the time I thought I was born, that would be 17 years back. No, it was more recently than that. That's 1944. How long was that ago? Twelve years ago. God and I had something out. We had something out and settled. And God began to fulfill in my poor, ragged ministry what he'd promised me so long that he would. And I believe he's ready to do this for us all. It wasn't in 1944 that I was baptized with the Holy Ghost. That was when I was 19 years old. I know that. But twelve years ago, and I have lived to see God do things he said he would do. I've lived to watch him work and do the things he said he would do. Until out of this poor, humble, uneducated, worthless preacher, God has influenced, and influenced in the right direction, men whose shoelaces I'm unworthy to lose around this world. Brethren, we don't have to go somewhere else. We can now in here have all the mighty outpourings of the Spirit. Wouldn't it be a wonderful thing if to us in this church would come that which came to the Moravians? And they could only explain it by saying it was a sense of the loving nearness of the Savior instantaneously bestowed upon us. A sense of the loving nearness of the Savior instantaneously bestowed. And then we'll come along with its scripturalness, purity, cohesion, dignity, usefulness, high moral living, purity of life, because that's the only kind of nearness the Holy Ghost ever brings, and the only kind of life He ever motivates.