In this sermon, the preacher discusses the concept of living in two worlds - the visible world and the invisible world. He explains that we are constantly influenced by the powers in the invisible world, and if our hearts are pure, we become subject to Jesus Christ. The preacher emphasizes the importance of having a pure heart and being united with God, as this allows God to rule and reign in our lives. He highlights the significance of prayer and the need for ministers to be hungry for God and longing for His coming.

I have wondered myself how it is that Pentecost is not discovered. That short and easy method of prayer by Madam Gein. When I was brought in touch with the faithful there, that was the great teaching, and I found out it's the great teaching of the Bible of the New Testament. In Revelation 12, the apostle is told to measure the temple of God and the altar, the holiest of all, and then that worship therein, but the court is to be cast out. It is to be trodden under the foot of the Gentiles, and we can easily discover what is meant by that. But there's the difference between the outward religion and the inward, and the Lord has taught us very diligently what His will is. This is the true inwardness called for in every Christian, whether they ever heard about gifts or not, the Lord has said. And there was a time when, during my stay there at the faith home, God brought me into that place very powerfully. And the first time I came to hear the Word of God, He seemed to recognize immediately what had happened to me. I had sought God, I wanted to know Jesus and the power of His resurrection, and I discovered that the only way to get there was by prayer, and that prayer could not be effective except it was prayer in the Holy Ghost. And that's the teaching of the New Testament on prayer. Lord, teach us to pray. And He said, well, when you pray, don't do like those in the outer court, don't do like the scribes and Pharisees. You're sons of God. Your job is to show forth the praises of Him who has called you out of darkness into His marvelous light. In other words, to be the temple of the living God, that God might come and dwell within you and perform His work and bring about the glories and victories of His kingdom upon this earth. And that puts prayer where it belongs. Lord, teach us to pray. When ye pray, say, Our Father, Thy kingdom come. It is the very same thing that Jesus proposes when He says, Lo, I come to do Thy will, O my God. Here at last is a vessel sanctified and meet for the Master's use and prepared unto every good work. And that shows what prayer is. It isn't incessant begging, but it's a presentation of my body as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable unto God. This body which heretofore has given its members as servants of unrighteousness unto sin. And all of us were set in like that. We all bore the image of the earthy. And we all had the heritage of Adam the first, sin and death. And now Jesus Christ has purchased these bodies that He might live in them. And that He might work in them. And that's what prayer consists of. It has its beginning and its progress and its consummation. And the aim of this praying, praying in the Holy Ghost, is union with Almighty God. That they all might be one as Thou, Father, art in me and I in Thee. That they might be made perfect in one. And that the world might know that Thou hast sent me and hast loved them as Thou hast loved me. That's why He calls upon us to pray without ceasing. Watch ye therefore and pray always that ye may be accounted worthy to escape all the things that shall come to pass and to stand before the Son of Man. And that's prayer. And in Romans 8, we're told very plainly what prayer consists of. It isn't my praying anymore. It's the prayer of the Holy Ghost. And that's why God launched Pentecost. Because He needed to have a sanctuary in which He might speak His Word and manifest His glorious presence. Every Pentecostal assembly ought to be a praying assembly. Prayer ought to be its life. Its fruitfulness depends upon that union with God. And prayer is not talking a great deal to God. But it's union with the Almighty God. It's letting go and letting God. It is getting out of the way that Jesus Christ might come forth. That's why He says, Prayer in the Holy Ghost. The Bible tells us that that's the job of the whole church. Beginning, progressing, and consummating prayer, these saints of God, the elect of God that cry to God day and night, represent the latter-day saints. They finally have come to the place where they pray, Even so come Lord Jesus. And until the church really prays that prayer in the Holy Ghost, Jesus Christ will not come. What does He mean when He says, Blessed are those servants whom the Lord, when he cometh, shall find so doing. How? While their loins skirt about and their lamps burning, and they, ready for the coming of the Bridegroom, watching and waiting. Our praying in our altar services, and in our prayer meetings, and in all of our meetings, ought to be intensely filled with the Holy Ghost. Instead of that, we're backsliding. Instead of that, we're allowing all kinds of things, religion included, to crowd out this prayer. And when God had brought me into that light, I wanted to pray all the time. I didn't want to do anything else. And I found out that all my ministry grew out of my praying. It was the result of my prayer, of my union with God. I found out that a meeting was not successful, nor fruitful, nor did it do its work successfully, unless it was the result of prayer. Unless it was prayer itself. It is perfectly funny for people to want to pray. Why are we praying all the time, or we're not praying at all? Either our eyes are always upon the King, and our hearts are always aglow with His love, or we're not praying. Praying in the Holy Ghost means that the Spirit of God breathes in us. The Spirit of God has taken over. Our minds are now enamored of God. We have been transformed by the renewing of our minds. God gives us our thoughts. Have you ever reflected, where do your thoughts come from? It's a strange realm, this realm of thoughts. Where do evil thoughts come from? Why, we're living in two worlds. We're living in the visible world and in the invisible world. And we are unconsciously influenced all the time by the powers that are in the invisible world. And if our hearts are pure, then they become subject to Jesus Christ. And He takes over, and He rules, and He reigns. He thinks for us. Our words will be words that glorify God. Our whole being will be so united to God that God Almighty proposes our living. Moment by moment, I'm kept in His love. Moment by moment, I've life from above. And what does that require? Why it requires that bending of my knees, spiritually speaking, unto the Father, who is rich over all that is called children in heaven and in earth, that He would grant you. There's something to get. Just like I breathe the air that surrounds me, in which I live. And that air exerts a certain pressure, otherwise I wouldn't be able to operate my respiratory organs. But if I don't, I die almost immediately. I need that life-giving element of the oxygen around me. And so God has made this body so that it's got to live in the air that surrounds me. And God has made the new man so that he cannot live except by drawing in that life of God, by being filled moment by moment and controlled moment by moment by that God who has beset me on all hands. Who has laid His hand upon me in whom we live and move and have our being. That's prayer. And so we bend our knees, our whole being is bowed all the time. And that's what Madam Gein brings out in her little treatise. She says that prayer without ceasing is not a prayer of the lips and it isn't a prayer of the mind or of the thoughts. It's more than that. It's a constant inward attention to this King eternal, immortal, invisible, the only wise God. It's being united again like a drop of rain falling upon the ocean. It's united to the ocean so that you cannot say here's the rain and here's the ocean. It has all become one. And so Jesus says that they all may be one. As thou father art in me and I in thee and how will I ever get there? I won't. God's got to draw me. Draw me. We will run after thee. And all of us have had that experience. We all know something about being drawn powerfully by the Son of God. When I first came to God, the Lord said one day to me, you have sometimes a great cry for God and it never goes through. And that awakened me to the necessity of praying without ceasing until finally the Lord said, he's gone through completely. That's what God wants. That's the consummation of prayer. That is the purpose of prayer. It isn't to get rid of your corns and to get healed and to get the baptism in the Holy Ghost alone. But it means to subdue all things within you unto himself that Jesus Christ may truly take over his kingdom and may reign alone over my will and over my affections. And isn't it a sad thing that an experience like that is relegated to some deep life gang? Just a deep life experience. It doesn't at all. That alone is life. Life was manifested. Life is life. I need life. I need to have life moment by moment. And if I prayed like Jesus Christ prayed and like the Holy Ghost wants me to pray, I would soon get into that place where God would take over. I would enter into rest. We who have believed. Why, this is the work of God that you believe on him whom he has sent. And God didn't send Jesus Christ alone to walk upon this earth and then be crucified and be raised again. But now he sends him from the throne of God like the seven spirits of God sent forth into all the earth and the eyes of the Lord, again, representing the seven spirits of God, run to and fro throughout the whole earth to find some habitation where God may make his home, where he may live. And where does he find a habitation like that? We're all too busy. He knocks at the door of our hearts and we answer him and we say, we're rich and increased with goods. My, didn't we have a wonderful meeting last night? I preached. Oh, there's a lot of that in us. God have mercy upon us until we really become poor in spirit. And God Almighty has been able to strip us completely, not only of our sin and our conceit, but our spiritual attainments. I counted all but refuse, the apostle Paul said. And he's talking about his religious attainments, the things that he was able to boast of above everybody else. Now it's refuse because there is set before him the prize of the high calling of God in Christ Jesus, the power of his resurrection, the fellowship of his sufferings. And he calls upon all the saints who thought they were perfect to be like-minded, to press toward the mark. That again pictures the true prayer that God calls us to pray. We know not what to pray for as we ought. As long as we do, we don't pray like we ought. But when we find out that we don't know how to pray as we ought, and that awful majestic presence of God reveals itself to us, we will automatically bow our knees and we'll say, Oh God, I know you're offering to me things that I don't grasp, that I don't understand. All my asking and all my thinking sink into the dust before thy majesty. Now you take over and you do it all. We have all had that experience and I'm afraid we're wobbling. How many times we have had times of prayer, one week, and we only get ready after one week's time we begin to pray and then after two weeks time we become silent in the presence of God. One time we had eight weeks and weren't they marvelous weeks. God was able somehow to strip us and to empty us. And when we were thoroughly and perfectly empty, God began to fill us with what? Why, with all the fullness of God. That's the great lack in the world. That's what Jesus means when he says, Verily I say unto you, when he finds his servants watching and waiting for his coming, he will come forth and serve them. That's prayer. When you cease praying yourself and Jesus Christ takes over and he prays within you. Oh what a prayer when the Holy Ghost prays. That's where that ineffable silence come from by which and in which we subsist in God and the life of God has a free flow back and forth. We breathe in and we breathe out and there's that perfect spiritual respiration where we live no more but Christ honestly lives within us and it isn't done by effort of our own but it's by ceasing from our own works and believing. Why that's the very essence of faith that God is. God is. Oh how that ought to make me silent. How that ought to make me bow in his presence. God is. How often we have striven to get the attention of people to Jesus. I was in a place in Germany some time ago and the preacher got up and he said, why God is here. God is here. God is here. It didn't do anything for the people because he himself didn't live like that. It's when the life of God flows from you like a river, like a mighty river that it arrests the thoughts of men and it arrests everything and the atmosphere around about you changes because you are changed. In Revelation 11 we read of that sanctuary. The altar is now being revealed. That's exactly what's happening today. After 50 years of Pentecostal movement, God is at last beginning to get some people into that sanctuary, into that holiest of all. Formerly one of the mystics said, if God has three in one generation that live like that, they ought to be regarded as prodigies of grace. But the Lord told me 30 years ago how many there were today. There were a few more than three, but only a few. But God's getting them slowly, slowly, and I don't know whether he's getting them all together in Pentecost. I was interested to read of a Catholic leader who during Easter week or the weeks preceding Easter got a crowd of young people together and they sat down in the presence of God in perfect silence for about 10 days before Easter and then they expressed what happened to them. Why, something happens to you when you really bow the knee, when you bow your soul in the presence of God and you believe on him whom he has sent. God, did you send Jesus Christ to me? Oh yes. And what did you send him for? Why, because I know not what to pray for as I ought. He wants to take over. Oh, how different my prayer is now. How different my prayer life is. It becomes at once simple and sublime. At once I don't pray anymore. I don't know how, but I do know that there is within me operative a power of eternity that prays with groanings that cannot be uttered and my whole job is now to present my body to him so that he may perform his high priestly function. After all, heaven is your heart. Your heart is the kingdom of God. The kingdom of God will not be anywhere else but in your heart. You and I will never know the kingdom of God until we allow the king to take his great power and to reign supreme. And I'm glad that this subject has been brought up this morning because we ought to come back to our first love. We ought to come back to our first simplicity. All of us, all of us. Oh, we're getting so busy now. There are so many things in connection with our meetings to be taken care of. I was really glad when I first came to Pansion Avenue to find that a lot of things were missing. I love good music and I like meetings where singing is really harmonious and where everything is done decently and in order and it was impossible at Pansion Avenue. We had a piano and we had an organ. No, we had an organ and we had two organists and they were so jealous one of another that sometimes neither of them showed up because one thought if the other's there, I don't want to be there. And so when they suspected that either was there, neither of them showed up and how we stumbled through our meetings and I was so glad because it gave God a chance. It just gave God a chance. Oh, when there's nothing to look to but Jesus, isn't that terrible? When there's no one there and the preacher doesn't know what to preach about. Oh, it doesn't mean that the preacher doesn't need a preparation. When somebody asked me, how long did it take you to prepare that sermon? I said, 60 years. It takes a life, a life that is saturated with God, a life that is immersed in God, a channel that is so empty that the flow of the Spirit of God is unhindered. And oh, for ministers that are so hungry for God, longing for his coming. Do you know that Jesus Christ has been ready to come a long time ago? And that we, the ministers, have barred the door against him. I could tell you some mysteries that you haven't dreamed of along that line. And have you ever thought that maybe you're the hindrance, maybe I am the hindrance, maybe God has chosen me. And you know when Jesus Christ comes, he doesn't come with the blare of trumpets, but he comes to those who watch for him like the bride who saw him put his hand through the hole of the door and her heart was stirred within her. I have looked through the lattice and I have seen him faintly and my heart has been stirred. Where is my beloved? Oh, where is my beloved? That after all must constitute my prayer. It must be that love sickness for Jesus Christ that cannot be satisfied by any signs or wonders, by any entertainment, even spiritual entertainments, by absolutely nothing. What does he mean when he says he sendeth them strong delusion? Who does that? Why the bridegroom does? He wants to sweep away these false souls that seek powers and seek gifts and seek great names and seek something to reflect credit on themselves. But he is looking for those that seek to be disguised and rejected, seek to be nothing, that Jesus Christ might be all and in all. I tell you this heavenly lover is a jealous lover. Where does he find his lovers? Where in the world does the bridegroom of heaven find souls that constitute the bride? Why he finds them in the secret places of the stairs. He finds them where the Holy Ghost has found hearts that groan within themselves. We ourselves have received the first fruits of the Spirit. That's what we have received the first fruit of the Spirit for, that he might prepare us for the coming of Jesus Christ, that our whole spirit, soul and body might be permeated by that life of God. And these strong delusions are today filling the world, filling the world and filling the church and filling Pentecost. And the flood is coming and taking them all away. But here's the bridegroom. Where is he? Why is at the door? He's in my heart. He's in my mouth. He's in my body. He claims attention and I haven't got time. Oh yes, I may spend an hour a day waiting upon the Lord and giving him a chance to come to me. But beloved, I tell you, until the Spirit of God takes over so that we really reckon ourselves dead indeed, we don't pray like God counts praying. Groanings which cannot be uttered will never cease until we wake in his likeness.