In this sermon, the preacher discusses the theme of joy and triumph over death in the Christian faith. He highlights how the four Gospels have a minor key, symbolizing the sadness and impending death of Jesus. However, after Jesus rises from the grave, the music of the church shifts to a major key, representing pure joy. The preacher also emphasizes the importance of balancing the upward thrust of the spiritual life with the recognition of our human nature and the downward tug of earthly temptations.

Now, I begin tonight a series of thoughts from the Book of Acts on the Spirit in the Book of Acts, and will be only over the month of April, 570 nights. I know that's over Easter and all that. I also know that the Holy Spirit is very, it's very important that we know about him and know what he can do and know his office work and his person, and the more particularly seasonal preaching I hope to do during the morning times. But in the evenings it will be on this topic and now. Now, in the Book of Acts, verse 8, Acts 1, 1-8. A former treatise have I made, O Theophilus, of all that Jesus began both to do and teach, until the day in which he was taken up, after that he through the Holy Ghost had given commandment unto the apostles whom he had chosen. To whom also he showed himself alive after his passion by many infallible truths, being seen of them forty days, and speaking of the things pertaining to the kingdom of God, and being assembled together with them, commanded them that they should not depart from Jerusalem, but wait for the promise of the Father which saith he ye have heard of me. For John truly baptized with water, that ye should be baptized with the Holy Ghost not many days hence. When they therefore were come together, they asked of him, saying, Lord, wilt thou at this time restore again the kingdom to Israel? And he said, It is not for you to know the times or the seasons which the Father hath put in his own power. Ye shall receive power after that the Holy Ghost is come upon you, and ye shall be witnesses unto me both in Jerusalem, and in all Judea, and in Samaria, and unto the uttermost parts of the earth. Particularly that 8th verse, ye shall receive power of the Holy Spirit coming upon you. Now it is written here that he was taken up. Incidentally, I received a letter from someone, a very sincere letter, telling me that I don't know where they heard this, they heard me preach somewhere or something that I had written. But this person said, Did I not know that the Holy Spirit never spoke of himself? He was so self-effacing that he talked about the Father and the Son, but never did he talk about himself. That is a commonly held mistake in Christian circles, because he shall not speak of himself. Of himself has been misunderstood to mean he shall not speak about himself. I wrote a letter back saying this. I said, You are confusing the expression he shall not speak of himself with he shall not speak about himself. The truth is, everything written in the Bible about the Holy Spirit was spoken by the Holy Spirit. For the Holy Spirit wrote the Bible, and every bit of information we have in the Bible about the Spirit was put there by the Spirit. So the Spirit does speak about himself. But what is meant by the phrase, he shall not speak of himself, he shall not speak from his own authority? He speaks from the authority of the Father, and therefore is not the originator of the truth he gives, but he gives it by inspiration, but he gives it from the Father. So the Holy Spirit wrote this, and what we have here is by the Spirit. It's written here that he was taken up, that is, Jesus our Lord was taken up. And this was the triumphant joy cry of the Church. He was taken up. Not only did he show himself alive after his death, but he was taken up and he made his triumphal entry into his ancient position, vacated when he came down. He prayed, O Father, glorify thou me with the glory which I had with thee before the world was. And now, says the Holy Spirit through Luke, he was taken up and introduced back into the ancient glory which he had with the Father before the world was. Full and eternal favor with God the Father. But when he went back to heaven, he took something that he did not bring down. When he came down from heaven, he was the eternal word all-divine. When he went back, he was the eternal word all-divine, plus the new nature which he had taken on himself in the womb of the Virgin Mary. So this that went back to the right hand of God was not only the eternal word which had come from the right hand of God, but the man which had been born in the world and now goes back to the Father, the eternal word took our humanity back with him to the right hand of God. So this man is now Lord over creation and head over the Church and potentially King of the earth. But before he ascended, the scripture says, after his resurrection, he was seen of them 40 days. Now, 40 days is a testing period, the period of testing and verification. Moses was in the mount 40 days, and Christ was in the wilderness, tempted by the Devil for 40 days. And now Christ is seen of them for 40 days, full verification. And they saw him and heard him and touched him and ate with him and questioned him and heard him speak and knew that he was no ghost, no spirit, but that he was truly the man that had died. By being there 40 days and living with them, he proved and demonstrated his total resurrection. Now, the Bible teaches the perpetuation of our total being. We Christians have been jockeyed into another philosophy and another kind of belief by the pressure of unbelievers and philosophers and psychologists and half-believers, so we think that the resurrection means a sort of oozing out of a spirit, a ghost, and that the Christ who rose from the dead was an eerie something but not the real man. I tell you that the same man they put in the grave was the man that came out of the grave, and whatever they put in the tomb was what rose from the tomb again. They did not put his spirit in the tomb, for in his spirit he went and preached to those spirits in prison and led captivity captive and gave gifts unto man. They did not put his spirit in the tomb, but they put his body there. And when he rose from the dead, what they put in the tomb rose from the tomb glorified, but this still the man. In the Bible, the idea of a spiritual resurrection is unknown. There isn't anything in the Bible, either Old Testament or New Testament, either by prophet or psalmist or by Christ himself or any of his apostles, that would give us any right to believe in a spiritual resurrection as opposed to a physical resurrection. The only use of a spiritual resurrection is when it's meant in a regeneration, when it's used figuratively of regeneration. But when we talk about the resurrection of the dead, we do not mean a spiritual resurrection. They said he is not here, he is risen, crucified, dead and buried, we say in the Creed, and the third day he rose again. Now, it says that just before he was taken up, he was among them, speaking of things pertaining to the kingdom of God. I think this must have been the greatest Bible conference of them all. They have had great Bible conferences over the past years on this North American continent, when great Bible teachers and evangelists and missionaries have met and contributed their part to a great, vast Bible conference. But this must have been the greatest Bible conference of them all, because they were hearing the vibrant, living, life-giving voice of the very living, resurrected Jesus teaching them. And what did he say to them? I want to tip you off how sometimes you may be let off if you don't watch yourself. God's people mustn't be suspicious, but they also mustn't be credulous. They've got to keep their guard up. I remember talking to a man one time, and he told me something that I thought wasn't true, that is, he gave me a doctrine I didn't believe, and I told him so. And I said, Where do you find that in the Bible? Well, he said, In the book of Acts it says that our Lord for forty days was with his disciples speaking of the things pertaining to the kingdom of God. And he said that was one of the things he spoke about. He didn't identify it, and so you see, that's a basket you can throw anything in. If you say, Now he spoke of things pertaining to the kingdom, and then you come in with a false teaching, that anybody would come in with a false teaching, and you say, Where is it? Well, those are one of the things he talked about to his disciples. How they knew that, of course, we don't know. So watch yourself and keep your guard up, and from 8 chapter and verse, and don't let anybody play with your serious theological views. But I do not think that we need to go far astray in knowing what our Lord talked about, because he talked about what he was, who and what he was determined what he said. For instance, being who and what he was, we can know that he spoke of what and who he was. He was and is the Eternal Son, so there can be no doubt that he talked much of the Eternal Father. Is there any reason to believe that what he had to say varied very much from what he had said before he went into the grave and came out again? I think not. He talked about the Father when he was on earth walking with men, he talked about the Father undoubtedly when he came out of the grave again, for he was soon to go unto the Father. He was and he is the Savior of men, so he no doubt spoke of his atoning death. He was and is the head of the church, and so therefore he must have spoken of his church. How could you think that he could talk for forty days to his disciples off and on in his conversations and not talk about his church? He was going to found his church when the Holy Ghost came, and that church was the apple of his eye. It was that church that he had died and risen and was about to ascend into the presence of the Father to establish and perfect and keep. So can you imagine him talking and not talking about his church? Then he was the light and is the light of the world, so he spoke of the world's evangelization. There can be no doubt about that. He did before he died, I should suppose he would surely after he had risen. He was the anointed of God, and so he would naturally speak of the Holy Spirit who anointed him. He was and is the coming King, and so we could expect him to talk about his return and the coming of the Kingdom. But we do know in the 8th verse about one thing he did talk about, and that particularly I would talk to you about tonight, and that is that ye shall receive power. The word power in English means two things. It means authority and it means dynamism, but he didn't use the word that means authority here. He did not say, ye shall receive authority. Though I believe in the authority of the believer in Christ, he did not talk about it here. He said, ye shall receive that dynamic power which we'll call ability, and it's ability to be and to do. That is, the ability to achieve moral ends. That is the power. In the book of Galatians, the Apostle by the Holy Ghost defines for us, or breaks down for us, what it is that he gives power to be. It is character. Love and joy and peace, he said. Long-suffering and gentleness and goodness, he said. Faith and meekness and temperance, he said. It is quite significant that these are exactly what the natural man does not have, and what he cannot be. He cannot be these things. But ye shall receive power to be and power to do, for that's what power means. It means ability to be and to do. The quality of the power, we'll notice here, he said it was love and joy and peace. This love he's talking about here is another kind of love from the kind you and I know, the kind that Liz Taylor carries around on her sleeve, that we hear about in the papers so much. I don't know what you think about it, but I'm all for romantic love. I think that is natural and right and good, and I don't believe that we ought to be so spiritual that we forget a man can love a woman and they can love their children and be perfectly normal and right and even spiritual in doing it. But romantic love has been degraded to the level of the barnyard animals. In fact, a decent, respectable, dignified cow wouldn't be as low or as beastly as a lot of that so-called love we hear about now in the world. But the love here is another thing altogether. This love is as pure as the heart of God, because it is the heart of God. Then there is joy here, and the joy we have here is not the joy that makes you giggle, it is not the joy that you'll work up, it is the joy of triumph. You see, the joy of Jesus was the joy of the other side of the grave. Now, here lies the grave, that awful, ominous, hollow place in the hill where men are buried. And when you approach that from this side, there is always a certain sadness upon the heart. Even our Lord Jesus Christ did not look forward to dying. He was the Prince of Life, and dying was an unnatural thing to him. And when he died, he died not because he had to, but because he would. He laid it down, and he did not have to do it. He said, I lay it down of myself, because so my Father wills. He laid his life down. But there was a sadness over his heart. And so the four Gospels have about them, in a minor key, the music of the four Gospels always is in the minor, and there's always a shadow of impending death and a grave. But after the grave is over and the Lord is out and he's on this side of the grave, there is pure joy, and the music of the church rises to the major key, and there's no longer any of the sadness, the muted sadness that was upon the heart of our Lord and upon the heart of those wondering disciples who looked forward and wondered what he meant when he said he was going to die. But after he had died and risen again, the rising again, put the grave behind him. If you knew you didn't need to die ever and the grave was behind you, you certainly could never be sad again for a moment in your entire lifetime. And this joy of the Lord is the joy of triumph over the grave. And then there is peace here, too, and longsuffering. And of course, impatience is the opposite of longsuffering. Longsuffering is a disposition to bear injuries patiently, not to bruise us in the pains of life only. I said to Pastor Gray this morning when I came in, feeling kind of bruised, I said, Brother Gray, do you feel it, too? Life just has a way of wearing you out. It just wears you out. All you have to do is stay around long enough and you'll be worn. It has an abrasive effect, a wearing effect. Life has that. And longsuffering is the ability to take that grinding effect of life. You men who have business, take me. I don't have any business, but I've got Uncle Sam on this hand and Canada on this hand. Right now I'm trying to make up two sets of income tax. Well, just that's enough to kill the average man, figuring out to put it on line 4 but not on line 5, and add line 6 to line 7, and it's miserable. Just to live in the middle of this world of ours is a terrible thing. Just to be here, just to read the headlines, just to feel the pressure and the tug of gravitation down toward the earth, but you've got to bear that with longsuffering. It says longsuffering means the ability to suffer a long time. Anybody can suffer a sudden twinge of pain, but they have to suffer it for a long time. Not only I say that, but the injury is inflicted by the injustices of someone. Then there is gentleness, and its opposite is harshness and severity. Then there is goodness, its virtue and kindness, moral goodness, pure, clean, honesty, goodness, that kind of goodness. Then there is faithfulness, which is the opposite of instability, which is always flopping about, fidelity to a trust. Faithful is what Peter was not, and what Demas was not, and what Mark was not, but faithful is what Daniel was and Paul was. So we set Peter, when he denied his Lord over against Daniel, who refused to do it, and he would have vividly illustrated the difference between the man who was faithful and the man who wasn't. Demas, who loved this present world, and Paul, who turned his back on it. There you have it illustrated in men. I know that Peter got right, and I hope that Demas did, and I am sure that Mark did. But for the time being, they illustrated faithlessness. Then there is neatness. Neatness is the opposite of arrogance. My father was an Englishman, as I've often said, and he was an arrogant Englishman. You know what that means. He was so arrogant that when he finally left the farm and went to work in a factory in the city of Akron, Ohio, he was so independent that he refused to take orders from his boss. He said he didn't want to be bossed around by anybody. He was getting paid for it, but that was the way he lived. It was that arrogance. I used to say to my father that in the New Testament they slapped you on one cheek and you were to turn the other, and his eyes used to blaze. He said, That couldn't be, couldn't be, couldn't think of this, that anybody should be so meek as all that. I didn't understand at the time, but now as I get older, I find that instead of growing meek, I'm going the other way, and it takes the power of God to keep me from standing out and telling people off. Meekness is not a natural thing. It would be to some people. I know that there are some people that are meek, they have no chins, and they go about with an apologetic look on their face, and their heads usually bob up and down, a perpetual yes to anybody and everybody. But mostly we're not like that. Americans aren't, and Canadians aren't, and we of the Western world that have had a good deal of freedom and liberty, we don't like to take orders from anybody. But here is meekness, softness of manner. Then there is temperance, which of course in temperance is the opposite of it, the masterfulness in controlling self. The will of God for us, my dear friends, is that we should always demonstrate, because we always have these qualities of love and joy and peace and faith and meekness and temperance and longsuffering and gentleness and goodness, that we should not rise to them occasionally during a revival campaign, but they should be the level and average of our living, that we should be like that all the time, that we should have them and their opposites never should be present. This can only be by the indwelling of the Holy Ghost, because it takes Adam and turns Adam exactly inside out and upside down. Remember that when you clench your fist and set your jaw and say, you can't boss me around, you're acting like Adam, because that's Adam's nature. But when Jesus our Lord stood before Pilate meekly and answered not a word, he was not acting like Adam because he owed nothing to Adam. He was acting like God, because he was God. And it's his Holy Spirit in us that enables us to be like this. Now, this can only be, I say, by divine indwelling, because the flesh of Adam never can produce it. I know that there have been certain moral philosophers and certain religionists that have come very near to it. For instance, the Stoics. Epictetus and Marcus Aurelius were two of the celebrated Stoics. If you read Marcus Aurelius, you will see there so many qualities that you wish you had yourself. And when you read the sayings of Epictetus, you see something there that is near true, but not the fruits of the Spirit. And of course, the contemplative religionists of the East did arrive at something very close to this. But the trouble is this. Because it was Adam's tree, the fruit it bore was only Adam's fruit. We often notice one thing, and be careful in our teaching and preaching. We have, in order to draw a sharp contrast between the sinner and the Saint, we have painted the Saint always at his best and the sinner always at his worst. And when we talk about a sinner going to hell, we think of a Hitler or a Bluebeard, and we're always painting somebody as very evil. And the evangelists love to tell about people on their way to commit suicide. In fact, I've never heard of anybody in recent years who has been converted, except he was on his way to commit suicide. Somebody is always on his way to commit suicide, he says. Most of them don't, but they are on their way. And then they hear, Salvation Army, and go get converted. It's all very well, but a little too bad to be true. Not all people are hopelessly bad from a human standpoint. I've known a lot of lovely people in my time. I've known sinners who could hold their temper. I've known sinners whose mouths were clean. I've known sinners who never raised their voices to their wives. I've known sinners who were free and generous with their money as much as any Christian. I've known sinners that were gracious and kind and thoughtful of other people, and I know sinners like that today. But it's fruit growing on the wrong tree. It is Adam, nevertheless it is still Adam. And except a man be born of the Spirit, he cannot enter the kingdom of God. Let us not forget that Adam is capable of infinite refinement, but not refinement enough to save him. Let us remember that a son of Adam can become a very good man, but not good enough to save him. Let us not, when we talk about people being lost, let's not always think of them both fiends and hollocks on their way to commit suicide. Certainly there are a lot of them, but there are also very, very many more lovely people you'd like to live next door to. But they're not Christians, and the fruit they have is a carefully cultivated Adamic fruit, and it's just no good, it's just no good before God. It's another kind of fruit altogether that a Christian bears. It's the fruit of the Spirit. Now, it would be a wonderful thing if I could stand here and tell you that when you bear the fruit of the Spirit, you instantly cease to bear any other kind of fruit. I wish that I could draw a picture of light and dark, I wish I could draw a picture like checkerboard, either holy white or holy black, and say you're either one or the other. But honesty forces me, and Scripture forces me to say that the man in whose heart the Holy Ghost dwells has also another nature that's always trying to hinder and blight the fruit of the Spirit, always trying to blight the fruit of the Spirit. So it isn't fair to a Christian to present the typical norm as being the saintly saint you know. Dear brother and sister, there are godly people who bear the fruit of the Spirit, but who are nevertheless greatly troubled by the flesh of Adam. But it's not the will of God that we should continue to lie down under it. It's not the will of God that we should bear two kinds of fruit. It's the will of God that we should crush the earth's serpent under our heels, and that we should rise into the fullness of the Spirit, and that the Holy Ghost should come into the ascendancy, and that we should live the spiritual life. Have you thought about how they put a man in orbit and send him around the earth? Well, when they send a man up from Cape Canaveral, they send him up at a speed which will escape the gravitational tug of the earth. It has to go up to about 17,000 miles an hour. And that thrust upward is exactly balanced by a drag downward. Glenn, when he was up there going around the earth, was always falling a little toward the earth, always falling, always falling. He didn't know it, but he was always falling. You say, why didn't he come down? Because the earth fell away from him. As he went around, he fell, but the earth fell away from him. So he just kept right on going, and he'd be up there yet if they hadn't put some brakes on and pulled him down. But the point is, there was a balance there between the upward thrust which had sent him into the orbit and the downward tug which was pulling him down. If there had been no downward tug, he would have just kept right on going, and he would have been out there somewhere dead by this time, but a couple of million miles out into space. But it was a nice balance between the upward thrust and the downward tug that kept him going in orbit. I don't say that's a very good illustration. Maybe I'd better have left that one at home. But I will say this to you, that we Christians, if we had nothing but the upward thrust, we would be on the Mount all the time, Lord Biddletree Tabernacles. We'd be there all the time. But the Lord lets us know that we're human. I remember one time going into a barber shop, and I got to talking to the barber years ago about the Lord. I was trying to go to the barber shop now, but don't stay as long as I used to. I was talking to him about the Lord, and then I got up in my eagerness to talk to him about the Lord and started to walk out without paying. I'd forgotten all about it in my evangelistic zeal. He said, Don't you pay? Red-facedly, I paid him. I remember it was only 50 cents in those days. But I was bothered by that. I thought, Now I've ruined myself here. I was talking about the Lord to the barber, and no doubt he thought that I was keeping him interested so I wouldn't have to pay him. I said to a member of the church, I told him this story. He smiled and said, The Lord was just reminding me that we were still down here. He said, You're that type. One man told me when I was a young preacher, I began preaching when I was 19 years old, and he said, By the time you are 30, you will have a religion of your own. Well, I had so much zeal there that God had to just keep reminding me, so he just let me have that red face there a little to show me that I was still here. When some of you get great blessing from God and great help from the Lord, then you immediately feel that you are just in orbit. But the Lord lets little things come along to let you know you are still down here. A man wrote me from down when I had forgotten where now. Well, I get letters from all over, but this I think may be New Jersey. He said, I was from Pennsylvania because he came to see me at Pittsburgh when I was down there. He said, I wrote you that I had gone to a certain Bible conference and I had received such an amazing, wonder-filled experience that I literally rode on clouds for a couple of months. Now, he said, it's all faded away and I'm back down to the daily grind again. I said to him, your trouble was you fell in love with the experience instead of with the Lord. Your trouble was that you got your eyes on how you felt instead of on him who is the center of your hope for all the time to come. I hope he took it well. I think he did. He'll come out all right for he's a zealous young man. But listen, my brethren, if the constant downward tug of Adam is on the world and even is on the church, if there is no upward thrust of the Holy Ghost, then I say that we're not any above the sinners round about us. To talk to me about judicial blessings, blessings that are given to me legally like my father makes a will and then dies and I get his money, I can't see that at all. I believe, of course, in the teaching of justification and judicial act of God, I believe the doctrines of the faith. But I do not believe that I am doomed to go to heaven simply as legally saved, judicially converted. I believe that God wants to impart to my vibrant living human soul something of the power that makes men good and makes men holy. But most Christianity is simply Adam at his best. We might as well admit that. You go everywhere, you find Adam at his best. You go down to the dance halls and you'll find Adam at his worst. You go to the churches and you'll find Adam at his best. But it's Adam in both cases, until we understand that there is such a thing as regeneration and until we know there is such a thing as the entering into the human nature of the Holy Ghost, that we might have power to be, power to be and power to become, as well as power to do. So holiness of character is the product of the indwelling Spirit. One of the publishers in the States sent me a manuscript and asked me whether I would read it for them. It's actually in galley proof now. He said, Would you read it and then write something about it so we can put it on the book jacket? And I thought, Well, here's another one. I get them, and some of them I read and some of them I refuse. But this one I took along, and they had the picture of the author on it. And I have a weakness for old, old, old people. And this lady is pretty well alone. She died when she was eighty-five. She had begun writing this book when she was seventy-eight, and it had taken her seven years. But, oh, brother, was that a book! There she was a schoolteacher, and she began writing her daily journal, Conversations with God, she called it. Ah, it was like turning back the pages of history back to the days of the mystics, to read what this lovely, old, wrinkled, sweet old Saint of God had to say. Here was something that didn't grow on Adam's tree. Here was not refinement, here was love and joy and peace. Here was not culture, here was long-suffering and gentleness and goodness. Here was not simply education, though she was a highly educated woman. Here was faith and meekness and temperance. Here's why. So she jotted her little Conversations with God down, and now it's going to be printed. It's worth your buying, Conversations with God, by Miss Oma, I've forgotten. I've never heard of her before, but you'll hear about it when it comes out. Now, who we need, is there such a thing as receiving this power? Is this a built-in standard equipment that every Christian receives the moment he's converted? I wish I could believe it. He certainly receives a measure of the Holy Ghost, because without the Holy Ghost we cannot possibly be pleasing to God, and we're not pleasing or accepted to God. But the Holy Spirit wants to pour a horn of oil upon his people, a horn of oil on that head that runs down over us and will bring to us in fulness the fruit of the Spirit. In other words, moral character to be holy. There has been a great error abroad in fundamental circles over the past few generations, and that error has brought us into the sad state we're in now. It is the error that assumes because we can explain it, we have it. Because we can teach it, therefore we have it. Oh, mistaken, my brother. There is such a thing as having in reality, working in your life, this power to be, which is moral power, the power to be loving, the power to be peaceful, the power to be gentle, the power to be good, the power to be meek, and the power to be temperate. It's the power to be. We shall receive power to be, ability to be. Because we live below our privileges here, we do not have these fruits of the Spirit very much. I long for the fellowship of the Saints. I long for that type of church service where the Holy Ghost can come like a dove over his people, warm their hearts and sweeten them, bring a few tears to their eyes and a few quiet praises to their lips, so that we can feel and sense that he is with us, and so that our people will be loving people, joyful people, peaceful people, gentle people, good people, people of faith and meekness and temperance. This doesn't grow on religious trees. This is the fruit of the Holy Spirit. But we'll remain as we are till the absence of this becomes a pain in our hearts. Don't forget it. If you can get on the way you're getting on, God will let you get on that way. It's when your yearning to be holy becomes a pain in your heart that God will do something about your situation. We'll remain as we are till we're done with the deadly average Christianity. Always remember this. If you take average Christianity as we know it on the North American continent, if you take it as your standard, you're taking a subnormal standard. There is something better than the average Christianity of the average evangelical church. If you're satisfied with the average, God will let you have the average and give you no more. We'll remain as we are till we no longer care what other Christians say. Our desire to please our brother who led in prayer prayed against man-pleasing, and the curse of man-pleasing is on the world. The curse of man-pleasing is on the church. Rather than offend someone or rather than have someone think we're extreme, we accept the cold average of low-tempered church Christianity. I'd rather offend every brother in Christ from Singapore to San Francisco, New York and London, than to grieve the Holy Ghost by accepting the average as the norm. What is revival? It's when we stop being satisfied with the average and determine to have the normal. Average Christianity is subnormal. God wants to give us normal Christianity, which is the indwelling Holy Ghost and his outworkings through us. We'll remain as we are until we're willing to turn against ourselves, and until we really believe Christ meant what he said when he told us that we should receive ability, moral ability to be, and until we cease to look to ourselves and look to him and till we're through with ourselves, until we start expecting. I believe that it's the will of God that his people should be as spirit-filled. God has his dear people everywhere, not many, I suppose, but some. I received a letter, and I'm not going to mention the denomination because it's got a reputation for being frightfully terribly liberal. I could have no part in the denomination, but I got a letter yesterday sent to this church to me from one of the editors of their publishing house. He said, I understand that you're coming to Philadelphia. I want to see you. I'm going to call you at your hotel at two o'clock. I hope I can have a talk with you. His name is on their letterhead as one of their men in the publishing house. He said, I've just had a talk with Paris Reedhead, and I want to have a talk with you. He said, I want something from God. Here is a man in a liberal denomination that has forsaken God, and he's high up there, and yet he's coming home to the top. God has a few here and there. But don't take yourself for granted. Don't take yourself for granted. Because you belong to Avenue Road Church doesn't mean this means you at all. Each one of us alone, each one of us individually as if there were none else, we each lonely soul must wait in the presence of our Lord and remind him of his promise and look to him in the quietness of the deep inner heart until he comes and pours upon us a horn of oil. Ability, moral ability to be. This I believe. I don't want anybody going out and saying, I don't think Brother Tozer meant that. Yes, he did. I'm not apologizing or putting any annotations or editorial disclaimers in anything I've said tonight. I stand for this. I believe the woe of the Churches is we're carrying on holy work by the flesh instead of carrying on holy work by the Holy Spirit. And we're paying a tragic and terrible price. Lord, oh Lord, we love thy Church, we love thy kingdom. Her walls before thee stand. Here is the apple of thine eye engraven in thy hands. For her our tears shall flow, for her our prayers shall rise, and for her we promise to labor and work. But oh Lord, thy poor Church is only a ragged beggar woman when she could be a queen, when she could be a princess and lean upon the arm of her beloved. Oh, Lord Jesus, we pray for thy Church. We pray for thy people who believe thy word or claim to believe it. We cannot pray now at the moment for the liberal, for the cultist, for the false teacher, we cannot. But we pray for those who believe the Bible. We pray for those who claim they're even jealous, and yet they wear rags where they should wear silks. Oh, God, we pray thee revive thy Church in the midst of the years. Revive this Church, oh Lord. Revive the Alliance, revive every denomination that stands for the truth. Oh, Lord, save us from fear and save us from intimidation. We have grieved thy Holy Spirit by neglecting him. We have quenched thy Holy Spirit. We have listened to the blandishments of men who ought to know better, and they have made us afraid to believe in the power of the Holy Ghost. We grieve for this, and we apologize to thee for it. We pray thee, O God of grace, out of infinite grace, send to this Church a sweet wave of power to be, a sweet wave of ability to be holy and good and faithful and temperate and joyful and right. Send, we pray thee, such a wave. We thank thee for the Blessed Spirit, Father, out descending to the earth to be our advocate, our indweller, to show us the Lord Jesus, to lead us as a shepherd leads his sheep, and to be in us a mentor and teacher, showing the things of Christ to us. We've acted as if he didn't exist, and we're sorry. We apologize and we repent for our neglect of the Spirit and our mistreatment of the Spirit. O Father, wash us clean and make us white in the blood of the Lamb, and then pour a horn of oil on our heads, for the poor world bleeds and dies, and we have not to help them. They starve and we have not to give them. Forgive us, Lord. Breathe, O breathe thy breath upon us and say, Receive thee the Holy Ghost. Save us, we pray thee, O God, from logicians and men with pencils and rules and squares and levels, always driving us away from the fountain. Lord, we would put them behind us and under our feet and rise on our dead selves to better things. Help us, we pray, over these evenings together. May the total result be that one after the other of us shall be filled with a new power and a new grace and a new ability to be and do that we might show forth the excellency of him who called us out of darkness into his marvelous light. We ask it in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ. Amen.