The Collected Works of John G. Lake

This edition - Copyright 2013 Jawbone Digital

http://www.JawboneDigital.com

Check us out for more great books, special offers, and more!

Scan the QR Code for direct access to our homepage:

Thank you for your purchase from Jawbone Digital Publishers!

Just as Samson slew his many enemies with a donkey's jawbone, you can take something cheap and readily available, namely this book and, with God's help, use what you learn to tear down your strongholds. This book is one of hundreds we have in our catalog. For more great weapons for your spiritual arsenal, check us out online at:

www.JawboneDigital.com

Connect however you like. Read the blog, follow us on Facebook, and sign up for our newsletter. You are sure to find more great deals to enrich your walk with Christ. Our catalog is growing all the time, so stay with us.

You should also know that we love giving eBooks away, so keep in touch. You won't want to miss out.

Introduction

This volume contains much concerning the life of the late John G. Lake. Originally, this volume opened with Lake's book "Adventures in God," and then was followed by radio transcripts, sermons, and articles.

However, it seemed expedient to open this work with a quote from Lake, and an outline that was printed later in his ministry that laid out the premise of divine healing. This may not be the best teaching on the subject that he ever published, but it serves as a great primer to begin our study of Lake's life and teachings.

Read this volume prayerfully, keeping your Bible always before you. There is no doubt that you will be blessed by the teachings of John G. Lake, but always remember that the same Jesus who blessed His life and ministry is here to bless your own.

THE EDITOR

An Education in Faith

Printed in The Pentecost, Indianapolis, Indiana, December 1908

There is no education in faith like seeing God do the thing. I have a conviction that you can pray and pray and pray until Jesus comes, but unless you get up and believe Him for the thing and commence to use what He has given you, you will never know any more, and you really pray yourself into unbelief. The results that God has given us demonstrate this to my mind.

John G. Lake

Transvaal, South Africa

Teaching on the Subject of Healing for the Body

Printed in The Spokesman Review, Februray 25, 1918

JOHN G. LAKE, our pastor founder of Lake's Spokane Divine Healing Institute, where Fifty Thousand Healings by the power of God have taken place in three years. The lame, deaf, halt and blind have found Jesus Christ a present day Savior and Healer. Where Tumors, Cancers, Tuberculosis, Appendicitis, Gall-Stones and all the multitude of diseases that curse mankind have vanished by the touch of Jesus, our Lord.

The WORD OF GOD, that neither World, Church, Preacher, Doctor or Devil can deny.

Teaching on the Subject of Healing for the Body

1. HEALING BY GOD, THROUGH FAITH AND PRAYER, WAS PRACTICED BY THE PATRIARCHS.

"Abraham prayed unto God: and God healed Abimelech, and his wife, and his maid-servants; and they bare children." Gen. 20:17

2. GOD MADE A COVENANT OF HEALING WITH THE CHILDREN OF ISRAEL.

A Covenant is an indisoluble Agreement, and can never be annulled. The laws of South Carolina recognized marriage as a Covenant, not a legal contract. Therefore in that state there was no divorce. A Covenant can not be annulled.

God tested the Nation at the Waters of Marah, and made a COVENANT with them known as the Covenant of Jehova Rophi:

a. "IF THOU WILT DILIGENTLY HARKEN TO THE VOICE OF THE LORD THY GOD.

b. AND WILT DO THAT WHICH IS RIGHT IN HIS SIGHT,

c. AND GIVE EAR TO HIS COMMANDMENTS,

d. AND KEEP HIS STATUTES

I will put none of these diseases upon thee, which I have brought upon the Egyptians; for I AM THE LORD THAT HEALETH THEE." Exodus 15:26.

3. DAVID REJOICED IN THE KNOWLEDGE OF THIS COVENANT.

"Bless the Lord, O my soul and all that is within, bless His holy name. Bless the Lord, O my soul, and forget not all His benefits: Who forgiveth all thine iniquities, who HEALETH ALL THY DISEASES." Psalm 103:1-3.

4. ISAIAH PROCLAIMED IT.

"Then the eyes of the blind shall be opened, and the ears of the deaf shall be unstopped. Then shall the lame man leap as an hart, and the tongue of the dumb sing." Isaiah 35:5,6.

5. JESUS MADE HEALING ONE OF THE PLANKS OF HIS PLATFORM.

a. "The spirit of the Lord is upon me, because HE HATH ANOINTED ME TO PREACH THE GOSPEL TO THE POOR.

b. HE HATH SENT ME TO HEAL THE BROKEN-HEARTED,

c. TO PREACH DELIVERANCE TO THE CAPTIVES,

d. AND RECOVERING OF SIGHT TO THE BLIND,

e. TO SET AT LIBERTY THEM THAT ARE BRUISED." Luke 4:13.

6. JESUS MINISTERED HEALING TO THE SICK.

"And Jesus went about all Galilee, teaching in their synagogues, and preaching the gospel of the Kingdom, and HEALING ALL MANNER OF SICKNESS AND ALL MANNER OF DISEASE among the people." Mat. 4:23.

7. HEALING IS THE ATONEMENT OF CHRIST. See Mat. 8:1-17; especially verse 17.

a. Healing of the leper. Mat. 8:1-4.

b. Healing of the Centurion's Servant. Mat 8:5-13.

c. Healing of Peter's wife's mother. Mat. 8:14-15.

d. Healing of the multitude. Mat. 8:16.

e. His REASON GIVEN for these healings, verse 17--That it might be fulfilled which was spoken by Isaiah the Prophet, saying, HIMSELF TOOK OUR INFIRMITIES AND BARE OUR SICKNESSES."

8. JESUS BESTOWED THE POWER TO HEAL UPON HIS TWELVE DISCIPLES.

"Then He called His twelve disciples together, and GAVE THEM POWER AND AUTHORITY OVER ALL DEVILS and to CURE DISEASES. And he sent them to preach the Kingdom of God, and to HEAL THE SICK...and they departed and went through the towns, preaching the gospel, and HEALING EVERYWHERE." Luke 9:1-3,6.

9. HE LIKEWISE BESTOWED POWER UPON THE SEVENTY.

"After these things the Lord appointed other seventy also, and sent them two and two before His place into every city and place whither He Himself would come...HEAL THE SICK that are therein, and say unto them, the Kingdom of God is come nigh unto you." Luke 10:1,9.

10. AFTER JESUS' RESURRECTION HE EXTENDED THE POWER TO ALL WHO BELIEVE.

"He said unto them, go ye into all the world and preach the gospel to every creature. He that believeth and is baptized shall be saved, but he that believeth not shall be damned. And THESE SIGHS SHALL FOLLOW THEM THAT BELIEVE; in My name they shall CAST OUT DEVILS; they shall speak with new tongues; they shall take up serpents; and if they drink any deadly thing it shall not hurt them; they shall LAY HANDS ON THE SICK, AND THEY SHALL RECOVER." Mark 16:15-18.

11. AND LEST HEALING SHOULD BE LOST TO THE CHURCH, HE PERPETUATED IT FOREVER AS ONE OF THE NINE GIFTS OF THE HOLY GHOST.

"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 spirits; to another divers kinds of tongues; to another interpretation of tongues." I Cor. 12:8-10.

12. THE CHURCH WAS COMMANDED TO PRACTICE IT.

"Is any among you afflicted? Let him pray. Is any merry? Let him sing psalms. Is any sick among you? Let him CALL FOR THE ELDERS OF THE CHURCH; AND LET THEM PRAY OVER HIM, anointing him with oil in the name of the Lord, and the PRAYER OF FAITH SHALL SAVE THE SICK, and the Lord shall raise him up; and if he have committed sins they shall be forgiven him. Confess your faults one to another, and pray one for another, that ye may be HEALED. The effectual fervent prayer of a righteous man availeth much." James 5:13-16.

13. THE UNCHANGEABLENESS OF GOD'S ETERNAL PURPOSE IS THEREBY DEMONSTRATED.

"Jesus Christ the same yesterday, and today, and forever." Heb. 13:8.

"I am the Lord, I change not." Mat 3:6.

GOD ALWAYS WAS THE HEALER. He is the healer still, and will ever remain the Healer. Healing is for YOU. Jesus healed, "all that came to Him." He never turned any one away. He never said, "It is not God's will to heal you," or that it was better for the individual to remain sick, or that they were being perfected in character through the sickness. He healed them ALL. Thereby demonstrating FOREVER God's unchangeable will concerning sickness.

Have you need of healing? Pray. Pray to God in the name of Jesus Christ to remove the disease. Command it to leave, as you would sin. Assert your divine authority and refuse to have it. Jesus purchased your freedom from sickness as He purchased your freedom from sin.

"His own self BARE OUR sins in His own body on the tree, that we, being dead to sins, should live unto righteousness; BY WHOSE STRIPES YE WERE HEALED." I Peter 2:24.

Therefore, mankind has a right to health, as he has a right to deliverance from sin. If you do not have it it is because you are being cheated out of your inheritance. It belongs to you. In the name of Jesus Christ go after it and get it.

If your faith is weak, call for those who believe, and to whom the prayer of faith and the ministry of healing have been committed.

JOHN G. LAKE, Overseer.

INTERNATIONAL APOSTOLIC CONGRESS.

Adventures in God

Foreword

John Graham Lake was a man of prayer and commitment. To better understand the quality of his life, you will want to read his consecration to God at the close of this book. At the Lake Healing Rooms in Spokane, Washington, 100,000 healings were recorded in five years. Dr. Ruthlidge of Washington, D.C., called Spokane the healthiest city in the world as a result of Lake's Healing Rooms.

John G. Lake was born March 18, 1870, at St. Mary's, Ontario, Canada. While he was still a child, his parents moved to the United States. At the age of 21, he became a Methodist minister, but later chose to start a newspaper instead of accepting a church ministry.

After his marriage, Lake's wife entered into a prolonged serious illness, but was miraculously delivered under the ministry of John Alexander Dowie in April 1898. This experience forever altered the direction of John G. Lake's life and ministry.

All that he accomplished as a result of his intense regard for the Word of God stands as an example to all Christians of what is possible for any person who will believe and act on the Scriptures.

Adventures in God

I found God as a boy, so for years, 50 of them almost, I have been walking in the light of God understanding fellowship with Him and listening to His Voice.

I want to call to your attention some of the things the Christian enjoys that others miss. A dear man received an injury that caused his death in a motor accident not far from Beaverton. The day after this man was killed, I was visiting some friends in Beaverton and they told me of his injury. After our visit, my wife and I were driving into the city. As we were coming up one of the highway a Voice said, "Pull onto the left of the road and stop."

Don't you know that Voice, Christian heart? That Voice is so common that I never even spoke of it to my wife.

The left side is the wrong side of the road, and you are breaking the traffic law to be there. But I have listened to that Voice so many years that I have learned in most cases to obey it. Jesus said, "My sheep know my voice." (John 10:27.)

(The thought I am trying to bring to you, dear friends, is the value of knowing the Lord and what communion with God means. Salvation is not just something God gives you that is going to bless you after you die; it is having the presence of the Lord now. God has promised to the Christian the guidance and direction of the Holy Spirit.)

I pulled onto the left hand side of the road, ran the wheels of my car close into the ditch, and stopped. Immediately, I heard the grinding of a great truck coming around the curve. I had not seen it before. Instead of coming normally, it was coming down the driver's left hand side of the road at a 45-degree angle. The truck had gone out of control and was covering the whole road!

If I had been on my side of the road, it would have sideswiped me and pushed me over the bank.

A 100-foot drop down! But I was on the other side when the great thing swept past me. The truck went 50 to 100 feet beyond me, struck a rough spot in the road, and righted itself. The driver got the truck under control and went on. Dear friends, men in the Word of God were guided by the Voice of God. God talked to them. This is the inner thing of real Christian experience, the reason men seek by the grace of God to enter into the real heart of God into the real soul of Jesus Christ into the place where He lives within you where His Voice speaks in your heart.

I was sitting one day in the home of the DeValeras in Krugersdorp, South Africa, when a man arrived who had traveled all over the country. He had been following me from place to place, trying to catch up with me. He suffered a sunstroke which had affected his mind and he also had developed a large cancer.

He came into the house and proved to be a friend of the family. In a little while a six year old child who had been sitting near me went across the room, climbed on the man's knees, put her hands on the cancer on his face, and prayed. I saw the cancer wither. In half an hour, the thing had disappeared. The wound was still there, but in a few days it was healed. After the child had laid her hands on top of his head, he arose, saying, "Oh! The fire that has been in my brain has gone out," and his mind was normal. Power belongeth unto God (Psalms 62:11). The simplest soul can touch God and live in the very presence of God and in His power.

It is almost sadness to my soul that men should be astonished and surprised at an ordinary, tangible evidence of the power of God.

A woman came into the Healing Rooms once with a tumor larger than a full grown unborn child. Her physicians had been fooled, believing it to be a child until nature's period had passed. Then they decided it must be something else. She came to the Healing Rooms and I interviewed her. She said, "Mr. Lake, I have the opinion of several physicians. They are all different, but each has said, 'It is possible it may be a child.' But now the time has passed, and they do not know what to say." I put my hand upon her for a moment, and I said, "Madame, it is not a child; it is a tumor." She sat down and wept. Her nurse was with her. Her soul was troubled and she did not receive healing. She came back on another afternoon for prayer and returned the next day wearing her corsets. She said, "I came down to show you that I am perfectly normal. When I retired last night at 10 o'clock, there was no evidence that anything had taken place, beyond that I felt comfortable and the choking was gone. But when I awoke this morning, I was my normal size." I asked, "Did it disappear in the form of fluid?"

She said, "There was not an outward sign of any character." Beloved, what happened to it? It dematerialized. The tumor dissolved. What is a miracle? It is the tangible evidence of the supreme control of the Spirit of God over every character and form of materiality. Beloved, the power of such an event, such an act and sign, shows you and me that through living, positive, actual contact with the Spirit of God, all things are possible. Blessed be His Name!

I was in a meeting in Los Angeles on one occasion. An old black man was conducting the services. He had the funniest vocabulary. But I want to tell you, there were doctors, lawyers, and professors listening to marvelous things coming from his lips.

It was not what he said in words; it was what he said from his spirit to my heart that showed me he had more of God in his life than any man I had ever met up to that time. It was God in him who was attracting people. One man insisted on getting up and talking every little while. Some people have a mania for talking.

The old black brother endured it for a long time. Finally, the fellow got up again, and the old man stuck his finger out and said, "In the Name of Jesus Christ, sit down!" The man did not sit down. He fell down. And his friends carried him out. That is only one of the living facts of what Christianity is: the divine power of Jesus Christ by the Holy Spirit, filling a man's soul and body, flashing through his nature like holy flame, accomplishing the will of God.

There is a baptism that belongs to Jesus. It is in His supreme control. No angel or man can bestow it. It comes from Him alone. He it is which baptizeth with the Holy Ghost (John 1:33). So the individual who wants the Holy Spirit must come into definite, conscious contact with Jesus Christ Himself. Bless God! Almost a year before I went to Africa, as I was praying one night, I was overshadowed by the Spirit of the Lord. The Lord showed me various places in which I would labor for five years and, by the illumination that would appear in the heavens, I knew the extent of the work in each place. The last of these places I saw was South Africa. That night as I knelt on the floor, I was suddenly present at a church in Johannesburg, South Africa, where an acquaintance of mine was pastor. I walked in the door of the church, walked the entire length of the church to the front and into a little vestry. I looked around the place and took note of everything. The furniture, the room, and all about it. All of this occurred as I prayed in my hometown near Chicago. In less than a year, I was in that church and pastor of it. God did the whole thing. I had nothing to do with it.

God having shown with the illumination the marvelous extent and character of the work He was going to do all over the land, I had faith to believe that the thing God showed me would come to pass, and I have lived to see it through. One evening in my own tabernacle, a young girl about 16 to 18 years of age by the name of Hilda suddenly became overpowered by the Spirit of God.

She arose and stood on the platform beside me. I recognized at once that the Lord had given the girl a message, so I simply stopped preaching and waited while the Spirit of God came upon her. She began to chant in some language I did not know, and then made gestures like those a Mohammedan priest would make when chanting prayers. In the back of the house I observed a young East Indian, whom I knew. He became enraptured and commenced to walk gradually up the aisle. No one disturbed him, and he proceeded up the aisle until he had reached the front. Then he stood looking into the girl's face with intense amazement. When her message had ceased, I said to him, "What is it?" He answered, "Oh, she speaks my language!" I said, "What does she say?" He came up on the platform beside me and gave the gist of her message. "She tells me that salvation comes from God. In order to save men, Jesus Christ, Who was God, became man. She says one man cannot save another; that Mohammed was a man like other men, not a power to save a man from his sins. But Jesus was God, and He had power to impart His Spirit to me and make me like God."

While I was preaching in a church in South Africa, an American lady whose son resided in the state of Iowa, was present in a week night service. Before the service began, she called me into the vestry and said she had just received a letter from her daughter in law. It stated that the woman's son, It college professor, appeared to be tubercular. He was compelled to give up his teaching position and was in a condition of great weakness. As I conversed with the mother, I observed that she, too, believed her son to be tubercular and that, unless healing came to him quickly, he would die. I returned to the Audience Room; and as we were about to pray, I stepped to the end of the platform and asked the mother to hand me the letter. Taking it in my hands, I knelt to pray, inviting all present to join me in faith in God for the man's deliverance. My spirit seemed to ascend in God, and I lost all consciousness of my environment. Suddenly, I found myself standing in that young man's home in Iowa, nearly 10,000 miles from Johannesburg.

The man sat by a hard coal heater with a little boy about two years old on his lap. I observed him critically and said to myself, Your face is hard and shows no evidence of soul development or spiritual life, yet your affection for your son is a redeeming quality. His wife sat on the opposite side of the table, reading a magazine. Observing her, I remarked to myself, When he got you, he got a Tartar! While standing behind the man's chair, I laid my hands on his head, silently praying for God to impart to him His healing virtue and make the man well that he might bless the world and that his mother's heart might be comforted. There was no knowledge of my return. In a moment I was aware that I was kneeling on the Church platform. I had been uttering audible prayer and the Spirit of God was resting deeply upon the people.

Some six weeks later, word was received that the young man was quite well. His recovery had begun on the exact date that prayer was offered for him in our church 10,000 miles away.

I was absent from the city of Spokane for a time and, when I returned, Mrs. Lake was not at home. It was just time to leave for my afternoon service when someone came in and said, "Your secretary, Mrs. Graham, is in the throes of death. Your wife is with her."

Immediately I hurried to the place. One of my ministers' wives met me at the door and said, "You are too late; she is gone."

As I stepped inside, the minister was coming out of the room. He said, "She has not breathed for a long time." But looking on that woman, I thought of how God Almighty had raised her out of death three years before; how He had miraculously given her back her womb, ovaries, and tubes which had been removed in operations; how she had married and conceived a child. As these thoughts arose, my heart flamed!

I took that woman up off the pillow and called on God for the lightnings of heaven to blast the power of death and deliver her. I commanded her to come back and stay. She came back after having not breathed for 23 minutes! We have not yet learned to keep in living touch with the powers of God. Once in a while our souls rise, and we see the flame of God accomplish this wonder and that. But, beloved, Jesus Christ lived in the presence of God every hour of the day and night. Never a word proceeded from the mouth of Jesus Christ, but that which was God's Word. He said, The words that I speak unto you, they ore spirit, and they are life (John 6:63).

When you and I are lost in the Son of God and the fires of Jesus burn in our hearts, as they did in His, our words will be the words of Spirit and of life. There will be no death in them. Beloved, we are on the way.

Having formal acknowledgement as a student of science, it was my privilege to attend clinics, which I frequently did.

At one time I submitted myself to a series of experiments. It was not sufficient to know that God healed; I had to know how God healed.

I visited one of the great experimental institutions and submitted myself for a series of experiments.

First, an instrument was attached to my head. This instrument had an indicator that would register the vibrations of the brain.

I began to repeat things like the 23rd Psalm to soothe the mind and reduce its vibrations to the lowest point. Then I repeated the 31st Psalm, the 35th chapter of Isaiah, the 91st Psalm, and Paul's address before Agrippa.

After this, I went into secular literature and recited Tennyson's "Charge of the Light Brigade" and finally Poe's "The Raven" as I prayed in my heart that at the psychological moment, God would anoint my soul in the Holy Spirit.

My difficulty was that while reciting, I could not keep the Spirit from coming upon me. When I finished with "The Raven," those in charge of the experiment said, "You are a phenomenon. You have a wider mental range than any human being we have ever seen."

In reality, this was not so. It was because the Spirit of God kept coming upon me to such degree that I could feel the moving of the Spirit within me.

I prayed in my heart, "Lord God, if You will only let the Spirit of God come like the lightnings of God upon my soul for two seconds, I know something is going to happen that these men have never seen before.

As I recited the last lines of the poem, suddenly The Spirit of God struck me in a burst of praise and tongues. The indicator on that instrument bounded to the limit and I haven't the least idea how much further it would have gone if it had been possible.

The professors said, "We have never seen anything like it!"

I replied, "Gentlemen, it is the Holy Ghost."

In the second experiment, a powerful X-ray machine with microscopic attachments was connected to my head. The purpose was to see, if possible, what the action of the brain cells was.

I proceeded just as in the former experiment. First, I repeated Scriptures that were soothing those calculated to reduce the action of the cortex coils to their lowest possible register. Then I went to Scriptures which conveyed better and richer things until I reached the first chapter of John. As I began to recite this, the fires of God began to burn in my heart.

Suddenly, the Spirit of God came upon me as before, and the man who was behind me touched me. It was a signal to me to keep that poise of soul until one after another could look through the instrument.

Finally, when I let go, the Spirit subsided. The professors said, "Why, man, we cannot understand this, but the cortex cells expanded amazingly." I said to them, "Gentlemen, I want you to see one more thing. Go down in your hospital and bring back a man who has inflammation in the bone. Take your instrument and attach it to his leg. Leave enough space to get my hand on his leg. You can attach it to both sides."

When the instrument was ready, I put my hand on the man's shin and prayed like Mother Etter prays: no strange prayer, but the cry of my heart to God.

I said, "God, kill the devilish disease by Your power. Let the Spirit move in him; let it live in him."

Then I asked, "Gentlemen, what is taking place?"

They replied, "Every cell is responding."

It is so simple: The life of God comes back into a part that is afflicted; immediately the blood flows; the closed, congested cells respond; and the work is done!

That is God's divine science.

Oh, beloved, when you pray, something is happening in you! It is not a myth; it is the action of god.

The Almighty God, by the Spirit, comes into your soul, takes possession of your brain and manifests Himself in the cortex cells of your brain. When you wish and will, either consciously or unconsciously, the fire of God, the power of God, that life of God, that nature of God, is transmitted from the cortex cells of your brain and throbs through your nerves down through your person, into every cell of your being into every cell of your brain, your blood, your flesh, and your bone, into every square inch of your skin, until you are alive with God!

That is divine healing.

One day I sat talking to Father Seymour in Los Angeles. I told him about the following incident in the life of Elias Letwaba, one of our native preachers in South Africa:

I went to his house one day in the country, and his wife said, "He is not home. A little baby is hurt, and he is praying for it."

So I went over to the native hut, got down on my knees, and crawled inside. I saw Letwaba kneeling in a corner by the child. I said, "Letwaba, it is me. What is the matter with the child?"

He told me the mother had been carrying it on her back in a blanket as natives carry their children, and it fell out. He said, "I think it hurt its neck."

I examined the baby and saw that its neck was broken. It would turn from side to side like the neck of a doll. "Why, Letwaba, the baby's neck is broken!"

I did not have faith for a broken neck, but poor old Letwaba did not know the difference. I saw that he did not understand. He discerned the spirit of doubt in my soul, and I said to myself, I am not going to interfere with his faith. He will just feel the doubt generated by all the old traditional things I have learned, so I will go outside.

I went to another hut and kept on praying. I lay down at 1 a.m. At 3 o'clock Letwaba came in.

I said, "Well, Letwaba, how about the baby?"

He looked at me, so lovingly and sweetly, and said, "Why, brother, the baby is all well. Jesus do heal the baby."

I said, "The baby is well! Letwaba, take me to the baby at once."

So we went to the baby. I took the little black thing on my arm and came out of the hut praying: "Lord, take every cursed thing out of my soul that keeps me from believing the Lord Jesus Christ."

As I related the incident to Mr. Seymour, he shouted, "Praise God, brother! That is not healing. It is life!"

In my assembly in Spokane, there was a dear little woman who had been blind for nine years. She had received very little teaching along the line of faith in God.

As she sat at home one day with her six children, she discovered that her dirty brute of a husband had abandoned her and the children, leaving them to starve. (A debased human being is capable of things that no beast will do, for a beast will care for its own.)

You can imagine the effect this had on her little heart. She was crushed, broken, bruised, and bleeding.

They were all sitting together on the front porch of their home. She gathered her children around her and began to pray.

Suddenly one of them got up and said, "Oh, Mama! There is a man coming up the path and he looks like Jesus! And oh, Mama, there is blood on His hands and blood on His feet!"

The children were frightened and ran around the house.

After a while the biggest child looked around the corner and said, "Why, Mama, He is laying His hands on your eyes!" And just then, her eyes were opened.

That is divine power...

Some years ago there was a farmer in Indiana, who used to be a friend of mine. His son, while in South America had contracted a dreadful case of typhoid fever. Because he had no proper nursing, he developed a great fever sore ten inches in diameter. His whole abdomen became grown up with proud flesh, one layer on top of another until there were five layers. A nurse had to lift up these layers and wash them with an antiseptic to keep out the maggots.

When he exposed his abdomen to me to pray for him, I was shocked. I had never seen anything like it before. As I began to pray for him, I spread my fingers wide and put my hand right on that cursed growth of proud flesh. I prayed God in the name of Jesus Christ to blast the curse of hell and burn it up by the power of God.

After praying, I took the train back to Chicago. The next day I received a telegram saying, "Lake, the most unusual thing has happened. An hour after you left, the whole print of your hand was burned into that growth a quarter of an inch deep."

You talk about the voltage from Heaven and the power of God! Why there is lightning in the soul of Jesus! The lightnings of Jesus heal men by their flash!

Sin dissolves and disease flees when the power of God approaches!

And yet we are quibbling and wondering if Jesus Christ is big enough to meet our needs.

Take the bars down!

Let God come into your life.

In the name of Jesus, your heart will not be satisfied with an empty Pentecost. But your soul will claim the light of God and the lightnings of Jesus to flood your life!

One day, as a young man, I needed healing from Heaven, but there was nobody to pray for me. I was not even a Christian in the best sense of being a Christian. I was a member of the Methodist church and had seen God heal one dear soul who was very dear to me.

As I sat alone, I said, "Lord, I am finished with the doctor and the devil. I am finished with the world and the flesh. From today forward, I lean on the arm of God."

Right then and there, I committed myself to God and God Almighty accepted my consecration to Him although there was no sign of healing.

The disease that almost killed me and had stuck on my life for nearly nine years was gone! It was chronic constipation. I would take three ounces of castor oil at a single dose three times a week.

The place of strength and the place of victory is the place of consecration to God. That victory will come when a man grits his teeth and says, "I go with God this way."

There is no man alive who can define the operations of faith in a man's heart. But one thing we can be sure of: When we cut ourselves off from every other help, we have never found the Lord Jesus Christ to fail. If there are any failures, they are ours, not God's.

Edward Lion was a native man who, until a few years ago, didn't even wear clothes. He was illiterate and knew nothing whatever of our conception of scholarship.

But God anointed that man with the faith of God and a measure of the Holy Ghost so intense that on one occasion when a multitude of sick folk had been brought into a valley, the power of God came upon him and he went upon the mountainside, stretched out his hands over the sick below, and poured out his heart to God.

In a minute, hundreds were healed! Healing power fell upon them.

There is no such instance recorded in the New Testament. Jesus promised that the Last Days would be marked by greater works than He Himself had wrought.

In 1912, I was pastor of the Apostolic Tabernacle, Johannesburg, South Africa.

One of the cardinal teachings of our organization was the ministry of healing through faith in Jesus Christ, the Son of God. The sick were brought from all parts of the land; and thousands were healed through the prayer of faith and the laying on of hands of those who believed.

Our church was then enjoying a great period of spiritual blessing and power. Various remarkable manifestations of the Spirit commonly occurred.

At a Sunday morning service, before public prayer was offered, a member of the congregation arose and requested that those present join in prayer on behalf of his cousin in Wales (7,000 miles across the sea from Johannesburg), that she might be healed. He stated that the woman was violently insane and an inmate of an asylum in Wales.

I knelt on the platform to pray; and an unusual degree of the spirit of prayer came upon my soul, causing me to pray with fervor and power. The spirit of prayer fell upon the audience at the same time.

The people ordinarily sat in their seats and bowed their heads while prayer was being offered, but on this occasion 100 or more in different parts of the house knelt to pray with me. I was uttering the audible prayer; they were praying in silence.

A great consciousness of the presence of God took possession of me. My spirit rose in a great consciousness of spiritual dominion, and I felt for the moment as if I were anointed by the Spirit of God to cast out demons.

My inner, or spiritual, eyes opened. I could see, in the spirit and observed that there was a shaft of seeming light, accompanied by moving power, coming from many of those who were praying in the audience.

As the prayer continued, these shafts of light from those who were praying increased in number. each of them reached my own soul, bringing an increasing impulse of spiritual power until I seemed well nigh overcome by it.

While this was going on, I was uttering the words of prayer with great force and conscious spiritual power.

Suddenly, I seemed out of the body and, to my surprise, observed that I was rapidly passing over a city of Kimberley, 300 miles from Johannesburg. I as next conscious of the city of Cape Town on the seacoast, a thousand miles away. My next consciousness was of the Island of St. Helena, where Napoleon had been banished; then the Cape Verde lighthouse on the coast of Spain.

By this time it seemed as if I were passing through the atmosphere observing everything, but moving with great lightning-like rapidity.

I remember the passage along the coast of France, across the Bay of Biscay, into the hills of Wales. I had never been in Wales. It was new country to me; and as I passed swiftly over its hills, I said to myself, These are like the hills of Wyoming along the North Dakota border.

Suddenly, a village appeared. It was nestled in a deep valley among the hills. Next I saw a public building that I recognized instinctively as the asylum.

On the door I observed an old fashioned 16th Century knocker. Its workmanship attracted my attention and this thought flashed through my spirit: That undoubtedly was made by one of the old smiths who manufactured armor.

I was inside the institution without waiting for the doors to open and present at the side of a cot on which lay a woman. Her wrists and ankles were strapped to the sides of the cot. Another strap had been passed over her legs above the knees, and a second across her breasts. These were to hold her down.

She was wagging her head and muttering incoherently.

I laid my hands upon her head and, with great intensity, commanded in the name of Jesus Christ, the Son of God, that the demon spirit possessing her be cast out and that she be healed by the power of God. In a moment or two, I observed a change coming over her countenance. It softened and a look of intelligence appeared.

Then her eyes opened, and she smiled up in my face. I knew she was healed.

I had no consciousness whatever of my return to South Africa. Instantly, I was aware that I was still kneeling in prayer, and I was conscious of all the surrounding environment of my church and the service.

Three weeks passed. Then my friend who had presented the prayer request for his cousin came to me with a letter from one of his relatives, stating that an unusual thing had occurred. Their cousin, who had been confined for seven years in the asylum in Wales, had suddenly become well. They had no explanation to offer. The doctors said it was one of those unaccountable things that sometimes occur.

She was perfectly well and had returned home to her friends.

After returning from Africa some years ago, I spent some time visiting my brother and my sister. As we sat together one day, my sister said, "John, I have some neighbors here who are elderly German people and they are having a very hard time.

"First, the old man died; then one of the sisters died. This thing happened, and that thing happened. Finally, the son, who is a shipbuilder, fell and was carried to the hospital. Now gangrene has set in; they say his leg has to be amputated.

"The old mother, a rheumatic cripple, has been sitting in a wheelchair for two and a half years and cannot move."

My brother and I had been having a discussion over this very thing. Jim, a splendid fellow, a professor and well educated, said, "Jack, don't you think these things are all psychological?"

"Not much," I said.

Jim said, "I think it is. Don't you think healing is a demonstration of the power of mind over matter?"

I said, "No. If that were all it is, you could give just as good a demonstration as I could."

After a while, our sister said, "I have been across the street and have made arrangements for you to go and pray for these people."

I said, "All right. Jim, come along."

When we arrived, I asked the old lady, "Mother, how long have you been in this wheelchair?"

She replied, "Two and a half years. It is awful hard. Not just hard sitting here all the time, but I suffer night and day, with no moment of relaxation from my acute suffering for all this time."

As I listened to her, the flame of God came into my soul. I said, "You rheumatic devil, in the name of Jesus Christ, I will blot you out, if it is the last thing I ever do in the world!" Laying hands on her I looked to Heaven and called on God to cast that devil out and set her free.

Then I said to her, "Mother, in the name of Jesus Christ, get out of your chair and walk!"

And she arose and walked!

My brother said, "My, it beats the devil."

I replied, "That's the intention!"

We went into another room to see the son whose leg was to be amputated. I sat for a few minutes and told him of the power of God. I said, "We have come to you with a message of Jesus Christ, and we have not just come with the message, but with the power of God."

And laying my hands on the limb I said, "In the name of the living God, they shall never amputate this limb!"

The leg was healed.

After about six months, I again stopped at my sister's home. The young lady from across the street called and said, "You must come across and see my mother and brother. They are so well."

When I called, I found the old lady was very happy. I asked about her son. She said, "Oh, Jake, he is not at home. Why, he is so well that he went down to the saloon and danced all night!"

I waited to see Jake and tried to tell him something about the living God that he had felt in his body and who wanted to take possession of his soul and reveal the nature of Jesus Christ in him.

Five years passed. When I again stopped at my sister's home, she said, "Do you remember the people you prayed for across the road? Here is Jake now, coming from work."

We sat on the porch and talked. I said, "Well, Jake, how is it?"

"Oh," he said, "I do not understand it all, but something has been going on. It is in me. First, I could not go to the dance. Next, I could not drink beer; then my tobacco did not taste good; and then a joy came into my heart. I found it was Jesus."

This man had been born of God his nature brought into union with God by the Holy Spirit. Blessed be His precious Name!

A few days after my arrival in Johannesburg, the superintendent of one of the great missionary societies said, "Our native pastor, who has the church a few doors from your home, must leave for six weeks. Will you occupy the pulpit of the native Church until you are ready to undertake your own work?"

This was God's first door. I instantly accepted!

On Sunday afternoon I preached to a congregation of 500 Zulus through a proficient interpreter, a woman missionary who had lived among the Zulus for 30 years.

As the meeting progressed, a spiritual condition developed almost similar to the dread silence the deep stillness that permeates the atmosphere preceding a cyclone.

This condition in the Spirit climaxed suddenly as, by a single impulse, the native audience burst into prayer. Everyone prayed, saints and sinners alike, but no one came to the altar. No invitation was given.

God had come in overwhelming conviction for sin, and we were impressed that it was not the mind of God to begin to reap until God Himself thrust in the sickle.

I feel, out of life's experience as a Holy Ghost preacher, that great damage is done by not waiting for a real ripeness of the work of the Holy Spirit in the soul of an audience. So frequently, an invitation is given and pressure is put on the audience to bring souls to the altar before God's ripeness of Conviction unto repentance is complete.

At the close of the meeting my interpreter said, "In all my missionary experience, I have never before seen such a spirit of prayer on a native audience."

The next meeting took place at 7 o'clock that evening. A quiet stillness pervaded the meeting. God was searching hearts.

I preached on repentance: real repentance, hundred fold repentance, Holy Ghost repentance, heaven's metanoia, the completeness of separation from the world, its sin and its spirit, like Jesus separated Himself unto all righteousness at the River Jordan (Matt. 3:13-15).

Suddenly, a man arose in the back of the audience and started for the altar. When he was about ten feet away from the altar, the Spirit of the Lord struck him and he fell flat on his face.

Another man arose and walked calmly and steadily to the front. When he came to where the first man had fallen, the Spirit of the Lord struck him and he fell on top of No. 1!

One after another, they began to come forward. Each one in turn fell at the same spot until fifteen men were piled, one on top of another.

It was a hot, sultry night. I was troubled because on the very bottom of the pile was a little man lying on his face. The next man lay on top of him, pressing the first man's face into the floor, and I was afraid he would smother.

I had never witnessed such a situation before. I had seen many wonderful manifestations of God, but none like this.

Soon my human sympathy for the little fellow on the bottom of the pile overcame me. I stooped down and tried to pull two or three of these men off him; but they were so piled up, one on top of another, that it seemed impossible to reach him.

The Spirit of the Lord spoke within my soul and said, "If God has slain these, can you not trust Him to keep them from smothering?"

I replied, "Excuse me, Lord," and returned to my seat on the platform.

My interpreter was greatly disturbed. She said, "Dr. Lake, what will you do now?"

I replied, "The Lord is doing this. We will just wait and see what the Holy Ghost does and learn how He does it. Remember, sister, He made known his ways unto Moses, his acts unto the children of Israel (Ps. 103:7). We have seen His acts strange ones. Perhaps we can now learn His ways." We sat quietly. In about fifteen minutes one of the prostrate men began to confess his sin at the top of his voice. It was a wholehearted soul confession of such evident thoroughness! After a short time, he arose with the light of God in his face and returned to his seat.

By that time another man was confessing, and then another and another, until the whole fifteen men had poured out their souls to God and returned to their seats.

I indicated to the interpreter that I wanted the first man brought to me (the little fellow for whom I had been distressed) so I could question him.

He was a Zulu native who worked for a Dutch family. They had given him a Dutch name, Willum.

I said, "Willum, tell me: What took place while you lay on the floor?"

He said to me in Dutch, "Oh, boss, (This was the manner in which the native always addressed a white man) while I lay on the floor, Jesus come to me, and Jesus say, 'Willum, I take all your sins away.' And Jesus go away. Then Jesus come again. And Jesus put His hand upon my heart, moved it up and down, and say, 'Willum, I make your heart all white.'"

Willum looked into my face. He was all glorified with the light of Heaven until his face was like the face of an angel. He said, "My heart all white! My heart all white!"

He and his friend remained in the church and sang all night. At 6 o'clock the next morning, they both went to their work.

On Wednesday night, my wife and I sat on the platform together. Willum and his friend came early and sat on the front seat.

Mrs. Lake asked, "John, who is the boy sitting on the front seat?"

I replied, "This is the boy with whom I was so impressed Sunday night."

"John, Jesus told me just now if I would lay my hands on that boy, He would baptize him with the Holy Ghost."

"Then go to him at once."

She laid her hands on him. In three minutes he was filled with the Holy Ghost, speaking in tongues, glorifying God, and prophesying.

Close to a South African city in which I was ministering, there were hills with outcroppings of rocks like a series of cliffs, one above another. I would go up into these hills to be alone and rest.

One day I observed a lady bringing a young child and setting him on one of the shelves above a small cliff. She left the child some food and water. It seemed a dangerous thing to do, since the child might fall and hurt himself. However, I observed that the child was crippled and could not move around.

After his mother left, I went over to him, laid my hands on him, and prayed. Immediately the child bounded off down the hill to catch his mother.

Not caring to meet anyone, I moved around the hill out of sight.

One day a woman came to the Healing Rooms in the old Rookery Building in Spokane. She could not raise her arm. She said she had an open sore on her side and could get no help from physicians. She added that she had no faith in doctors, in man, in God, or in Jesus Christ but asked if I could help her.

I prayed for her three times with no results. After the third time I said to God, "God, her soul is closed. Open her soul that she might receive."

The next morning as she was putting up her hair, she suddenly discovered that she was using the bad arm and had it raised up to her head. She felt her side, and the open sore was gone.

Immediately, she telephoned to tell us about it.

I said, "Sister, come down here. There are people waiting to hear your testimony."

How much faith does God require of the person who comes and asks?

A closing sentence of an interpretation of tongues given in June, 1910, in Somerset, East Cape Colony, South Africa:

"Christ is at once the spotless descent of God into man, and the sinless ascent of man into God, and the Holy Spirit is the Agent by whom this is accomplished."

A holy mind cannot repeat a vile thing, nor be the creator of a vile suggestion. It is an unholy mind that is capable of such an act. I say with Paul, mark such a person (Romans 16:17). He may talk, but he does not know God. He does not comprehend the power of salvation, nor is he the possessor of the Holy Spirit.

How the Lord Sent Me to South Africa

I planned to go to Africa as a boy. I looked forward to it through my young manhood.

Shortly after my baptism in the Holy Spirit, a working of the Spirit commenced in me that seemed to have for its purpose the revelation of the nature of Jesus Christ to me and in me.

Through this guardianship and remolding of the spirit, a great tenderness for mankind was awakened in my soul. I saw mankind through new eyes. They seemed to me as wandering in the midst of confusion, having strayed far, groping and wandering hither and thither. They had no definite aim and did not seem to understand what the difficulty was, or how to return to God.

The desire to proclaim the message of Christ and to demonstrate His power to save and bless grew in my soul, until my life was swayed by this overwhelming passion.

However, my heart was divided. I could not follow successfully the ordinary pursuits of life and business. When a man came into my office, though I knew that twenty or thirty minutes of concentration on the business at hand would possibly net me thousands of dollars, I could not discuss business with him.

By a new power of discernment I could see his soul and understand his inner life and motives. I recognized him as one of these wandering sheep and longed with an overwhelming desire to help him find God and find himself.

This division in my soul between business interests and the desire to help men find God became intense. In many instances what should have been a successful business interview and the closing of a great business transaction ended in a prayer meeting. I would invite the individual to kneel with me while I poured out my heart to God on his behalf.

I determined to discuss the matter with the president of my company and frankly told him the condition of soul I found myself in and its cause.

He kindly replied: "You have worked hard, Lake. You need a change. Take a vacation for three months. If you want to preach, preach. But at the end of the three months, $50,000 a year will look like a lot of money to you, and you will have little desire to sacrifice it for dreams of religious possibilities."

I thanked him, accepted an invitation to join a brother in evangelistic work, and left the office, never to return.

During those three months I preached every day to large congregations, saw a multitude of people saved from their sins and healed of their diseases, and hundreds of them baptized in the Holy Ghost. At the end of the three months, I said to God: "I am through forever with everything in life but the proclamation and demonstration of the Gospel of Jesus Christ."

I disposed of my estate, distributed my funds in a manner I believed to be for the best interests of the Kingdom of God, made myself wholly dependent upon God for the support of myself and family, and abandoned myself to the preaching of Jesus.

While ministering in a city in northern Illinois, the chore boy at the hotel where we were staying asked for help in sawing down a large tree. I volunteered to assist him. As we sawed the tree, the Spirit of the Lord spoke within my spirit clearly and distinctly: "Go to Indianapolis. Prepare for a winter campaign. Get a large hall. In the spring you will go to Africa."

It all came to pass. It is power. Power is manifest in many ways. There is the power of faith which draws to you what seems impossible.

I returned to the hotel and told my wife of the incident. She said: "I knew several days ago that your work here was done, for as I prayed the Spirit said to me, 'Your husband is going on.'"

I went to Indianapolis and the Lord directed in a marvelous way. In a few days I had secured a large hall and began conducting services, as He had directed.

One day during the following February (after I had been preaching some time), my preaching partner said to me, "John, how much will it cost to take our party to Johannesburg, South Africa?"

I replied, "Two thousand dollars."

"Well, if we are going to Africa in the spring, it is time that you and I were praying for the money."

"Tom, I have been praying for the money ever since New Year's. I have not heard from the Lord or from anyone else concerning it."

"Never mind. Let's pray again."

We went to Tom's room and knelt down by his bed in prayer.

After some time he slapped me on the back, saying, "Don't pray anymore, John. Jesus told me just now that He would send us that two thousand dollars, and it would be here in four days."

Four days later Tom returned from the post office and threw out upon the table four $500 drafts, saying, "John, there is the answer. Jesus has sent it. We are going to Africa."

The gift of money had been sent to Tom by a friend with a letter. The letter read, "I was standing in the bank at Monrovia, California, and something said to me, 'Send Tom Hezmalhaltz two thousand dollars.' It is yours, Tom, for whatever purpose God has shown you."

I never knew who wrote the letter, as he desired that no one else know.

We went straight out and purchased the tickets for the entire party to travel from Indianapolis, Indiana, to Johannesburg, South Africa. There were twelve of us my family of eight and four others.

We had our tickets to Africa, but there would be many other expenses en route. I had only $1.50 in hand.

As our train pulled out of the station at Indianapolis, a young man who had worked as my secretary ran alongside the train and threw a two dollar bill through the window. That gave us a total of $3.50.

A young lady, who had been one of our workers, was traveling with us as far as Detroit, Michigan. I needed $10 to buy her a ticket to northern Michigan.

As we rode along, I said to my wife, "Jen, when we reach Detroit, I will need $10 for Winnie's railway ticket; but I have no money." So we bowed our heads and prayed.

We always followed this practice concerning our needs. We never told anyone what our needs were, but we always told the Lord.

When we arrived in Detroit, my brother and married sister were there to meet us and with them was my younger brother, Jim.

As I stepped off the train, Jim took me by the arm and walked across the station with me. Then he said, "Jack, I hope you won't be mad, but I would like to give you this," and he pulled out of his wallet a ten dollar bill and slipped it into my vest pocket.

I thanked him, turned about, and went to purchase Winnie's ticket.

I still had $3.50. We purchased some canned beans and other edibles which we used on the train a route to St. Johns, New Brunswick.

When we finally arrived at the ship for Liverpool, I had $1.25 left. On board I gave 50 cents to the table steward and 50 cents to the bedroom steward. When we reached England, I still had 25 cents.

We remained five days in Liverpool at the expense of the transportation company, waiting for the second ship.

One day Mrs. Lake said to me, "What about our Laundry?

I replied, "Send it down. I have no money, but perhaps the Lord will meet us before we need to get it." Being very busy, I forgot about it entirely.

On the last night of our stay in Liverpool, just after I had retired about midnight, my wife said, "How about the laundry?"

I replied, "I'm sorry, but I forgot it."

"Just like a man! Now I'll tell you about it. I knew you didn't have any money, neither did I. So I prayed about it. After praying, I felt that I should go down to the laundry and inquire what the amount of the bill was. It was $1.65. As I was returning to the hotel, I passed a gentleman on the street. He said, 'Pardon me, but I feel I should give you this.' He handed me a number of coins. I returned to the laundry, counted it out to the laundry man, and found it was just the amount of the bill."

We rejoiced in this little evidence of God's presence with us.

The next morning we left by train for London and that evening boarded our ship for South Africa.

At that time, I had an English shilling. When our ship stopped at Madeira, one of the Canary Islands, I purchased a shilling's worth of fruit for the children and the last penny was gone.

Through my knowledge of the immigration laws of South Africa, I knew that before we would be permitted to land, I must show the immigration inspector that I possessed at least $125. We prayed earnestly over this matter. About the time we reached the Equator, a rest came into my soul concerning it, and I could pray no more.

About eight or ten days later we arrived in Cape Town harbor, and our ship anchored. The immigration inspector came on board and the passengers lined up at the purser's office to present their money and receive their tickets to land.

My wife said, "What are you going to do?"

"I am going to line up with the rest. We have obeyed God this far. It is now up to the Lord."

As I stood in line, awaiting my chance to explain our dilemma, a fellow passenger suddenly tapped me upon the shoulder and indicated that I step out of the line and walk over to the ship's rail to speak with him. He asked me some questions, then he drew from his pocket a traveler's checkbook. He handed me two money orders totaling 42 pounds sterling, or $200.

He said, "I feel led to give this to help your work."

Johannesburg is 1000 miles inland from Cape Town. Throughout the voyage we earnestly prayed about the subject of a home. As faith missionaries, we had neither a Board nor friends behind us to furnish money. We were dependent upon God. Many times during the trip to Johannesburg, we bowed our heads and reminded God that when we arrived there we would need a home.

Upon our arrival, as we stepped ashore, observed a little woman bustling up, whom I instantly recognized to be an American. She stepped up to Tom and said, "You are a American missionary party?"

He replied, "Yes."

"How many are there in your party?"

"Four."

"No," she said, "you are not the family. Is there any other?"

He said, "Yes. Mr. Lake."

Turning to me, she said, "How many are in your, family?"

I answered, "My wife, myself, and seven children only."

"Oh," she said, "you are the family."

"What is it, madam?"

"While in prayer last night, God told me to meet, this boat, and there would be upon it an American missionary with a family of nine, consisting of two adults and seven children, and that I was to give them a home."

At 3 o'clock that same afternoon, we were in a furnished cottage in Johannesburg. God had provided the home for us.

Our beloved benefactor was an American missionary, Mrs. C. L. Good enough. She remained our beloved friend and fellow worker in the Lord.

And that is how we got to Africa.

How I Came To Devote My Life to the Ministry of Healing

No one can understand the tremendous hold the revelation of Jesus as a present day Healer took on my life, and what it meant to me, unless they first understand my environment.

I was one of 16 children. Our parents were strong, vigorous, healthy people. My mother died at the age of 75, and my father, still lives at the time of this writing, and is 77.

Before my knowledge and experience of the Lord as our Healer, we buried eight members of the family. A strange train of sicknesses, resulting in death, had followed the family. For 32 years some member of our family was an invalid. During this long period, our home was never without the shadow of sickness.

As I think back over my boyhood and young manhood, there comes to mind remembrances like a nightmare: sickness, doctors, nurses, hospitals, hearses, funerals, graveyards, and tombstones; a sorrowing household; a broken-hearted mother and grief stricken father, struggling to forget the sorrows of the past, in order to assist the living members of the family who needed their love and care.

When Christ was revealed to us as our Healer, my brother who had been an invalid for 22 years, upon whom my father had spent a fortune for unavailing medical assistance was dying. He bled incessantly from his kidneys and was kept alive through the assimilation of blood creating foods which produced blood almost as fast as it flowed from his person. I have never known any man to suffer so extremely and for so long as he did.

A sister, 34 years of age, was then dying with five cancers in her left breast. Before being turned away to die, she had been operated on five times at a large hospital in Detroit, Michigan, by a German surgeon of repute. After the operations, four other "heads" developed, making five cancers in all.

Another sister lay dying of an issue of blood. Day by day, her lifeblood flowed away until she was in the very throes of death.

In my own life and circumstances, there were similar conditions. I had married and established my own home; but very soon after marriage, the same train of conditions that had followed my father's family seemed to appear in mine. My wife became an invalid from heart disease and tuberculosis. She would lose her heart action and lapse into unconsciousness. Sometimes I would find her lying unconscious on the floor or in her bed, having been suddenly stricken.

Stronger and stronger stimulants became necessary to revive her heart until we were using nitroglycerine tablets in a final, heroic effort to stimulate the action of her heart.

After these heart spells, she would remain in a semi-paralytic state for weeks, the result of over stimulation, the physicians said.

But suddenly, in the midst of the deepest darkness, when baffled physicians stood back and acknowledged their inability to help, when the cloud of darkness and death was again hovering over the family the message of one godly minister, great enough and true enough to God to proclaim the whole truth of God, brought the light of God to our souls!

We took our dying brother to a Healing Home in Chicago, where prayer was offered for him with the laying on of hands. He received an instant healing and arose from his deathbed a well man. He walked four miles, returned home, and took a partnership in our father's business.

Great joy and a marvelous hope sprang up in our hearts! A real manifestation of the healing power of God was before us. We quickly arranged to take our sister who suffered from cancers, to the same Healing Home. We had to take her there on a stretcher. As we carried her into the healing meeting, she was speaking within her soul, Others may be healed because they are so good, but I fear healing is not for me. It seemed more than her soul could grasp.

But after listening from her cot to the preaching and teaching of the Word of God on healing through Jesus Christ, hope sprang up in her soul. She was prayed for and hands were laid on her. As the prayer of faith arose to God, the power of God descended upon her, thrilling her being. Her pain instantly vanished! The swelling disappeared gradually. The large core cancer turned black and in a few days fell out. The smaller ones disappeared. The mutilated breast began to regrow, and it became a perfect breast again.

How our hearts thrilled! Words alone cannot tell this story! A new faith sprang up within us. If God could heal our dying brother and our dying sister, causing cancers to disappear, He could heal anything or anybody!

Then our sister with the issue of blood began to look to God for her healing. She and her husband were devout Christians; and although they prayed, their prayers seemed unanswered for a time. Then one night I received a telephone call and was told that if I wished to see her in this life, I must come to her bedside at once.

Upon arriving, I found that death was already upon her. She had passed in unconsciousness. Her body was cold. No pulse was discernable. Our parents knelt, weeping, beside her bed, and her husband knelt at the foot of the bed in sorrow. Her baby lay in his crib.

A great cry to God, such as had never before come from my soul, went up to God. She must not die! I would not have it! Had not Christ died for her? Had not God's healing power been manifested for the others, and should she not likewise be healed?

No words of mine can convey to another soul the cry that was in my heart and the flame of hatred for death and sickness that the Spirit of God had stirred within me. The very wrath of God seemed to possess my soul!

After telephoning and telegraphing some believing friends for assistance in prayer, we called on God. I rebuked the power of death in the name of Jesus Christ. In less than an hour, we rejoiced to see the evidence of returning life. My sister was thoroughly healed! Five days later she came to my father's home and joined the family for Christmas dinner.

My wife, who had been slowly dying for years, suffering untold agonies, was the last of the four to receive God's healing touch. But, oh, before God's power came upon her, I realized as never before the character of consecration God was asking, and what a Christian should give to God.

Day by day, death silently stole over her. Then the final hours came. A brother minister who was present walked over and stood at her bedside. Then returning to me with tears in his eyes, he said, "Be reconciled to let your wife die."

I thought of my babies. I thought of her whom I loved as my own soul, and a flame burned in my heart. I felt as if God had been insulted by such a suggestion! Yet I had many things to learn.

In the midst of my soul storm, I returned home, picked up my Bible from the mantelpiece, and threw it on the table. If ever God caused a man's Bible to open to a message his soul needed, surely He did it then for me.

The Book opened at the 10th chapter of Acts, and my eyes fell on the 38th verse, which read, God anointed Jesus of Nazareth with the Holy Ghost and with power: who went about doing good, and healing all that were oppressed of the DEVIL; for God was with him.

Like a flash from the blue, these words pierced my heart: Oppressed of the devil! So, God was not the author of sickness! And the people whom Jesus healed had not been made sick by God!

Hastily taking a reference to another portion of the Word, I read the words of Jesus in Luke 13:16. Ought not this woman . . . whom SATAN HATH BOUND, lo, these eighteen years, be loosed from this bond? Once again Jesus attributed sickness to the devil.

What a faith sprang up in my heart! What a flame of knowledge concerning the Word of God and the ministry of Jesus went over my soul! I saw as never before why Jesus healed the sick: He was doing the will of His Father; and in doing His father's will, He was destroying the works of the devil (Hebrews 2:14).

I said in my soul, This work of the devil this destruction of my wife's life in the name of Jesus Christ shall cease, for Christ died and Himself took our infirmities and bare our sicknesses.

We decided on 9:30 a.m. as the time when prayer would be offered for my wife's recovery, Again, I telephoned and telegraphed friends to join me in prayer.

At 9:30, I knelt at her deathbed and called on the living God. The power of God came upon her, thrilling her from head to feet. Her paralysis left, her heart became normal, her cough ceased, her breathing became regular, and her temperature became normal. The power of God was flowing, through her, seemingly as blood flows through veins,

As I prayed, I heard a sound from her lips not the sound of weakness as before, but a strong, clear voice. She cried out, "Praise God, I am healed! With that, she caught hold of the bed clothing, threw it back, and in a moment was standing on the floor.

What a day! Will I ever forget it? The power of God thrilled our souls, and the joy of God possessed our hearts because of her recovery.

The news spread throughout the city, the state, and the nation. Newspapers discussed it and our home became a center of inquiry. People traveled great distances to see and talk with her. She was flooded with letters.

A new light dawned in our souls. The church had diligently taught us that the days of miracles had passed; and believing this, eight members of the family had been permitted to die. But, now, with the light of truth flashing in our hearts, we saw that as a lie, no doubt invented by the devil and diligently heralded as truth by the church, thus robbing mankind of its rightful inheritance through the blood of Jesus.

People came to our home, saying, "Since God has healed you, surely He will heal us. Pray for us." We were forced into it. God answered, and many were healed.

Many years have passed since then, but no day has gone by in which God has not answered prayer. I have devoted my life, day and night, to this ministry; and people have been healed not by ones and I twos, nor by hundreds, or even by thousands, but by tens of thousands.

In due time, God called me to South Africa, where I witnessed a manifestation of the healing power of God such as the world perhaps has not seen since the days of the apostles.

Christian men were baptized in the Holy Ghost, went forth in the mighty power of God, proclaiming the name of Jesus and laying hands on the sick. And the sick were healed! Sinners, witnessing these evidences of the power of God, cried out in gladness and gave themselves to the service of God. Like it was in the days of Jesus: There was great joy in that city and that nation (Acts 8:8).

Finally, God brought me to Spokane, where we have ministered to hundreds of sick persons each week. The city is filled with the praises of God. More because of the blessed manifestations of God's healing power everywhere. People have come from as far as 5,000 miles away for healing. Some have written letters. Others have telegraphed. Some have cabled from halfway round the world, asking for prayer, and God has graciously answered.

Ministers and churches throughout the land have seen that, although the church has taught that the days of miracles only belonged to the times of the apostles, that statement was a falsehood. They have seen that the healing power of God is as available to the honest soul today as it was in the days of Christ on the earth. The gifts and callings of God are without repentance, and Jesus is the Healer still.

More Adventures in God

During my ministry in South Africa, I came across a bachelor who hated everything that was Christian. He had a reputation for cussing preachers off his place.

One day I realized that he had not been seen for it while, so I decided to pay him a visit. Immediately, I was warned as to what kind of a reception I could expect. I went anyway.

Upon entering his home, I observed that he was it very sick man. Before he could say a thing, I tossed my hat down, prayed that God would heal him, and left.

A few days later he came to church. He was a changed man!

The Christian, the child of God, the Christ man who has committed his body as well as his spirit and soul to God, ought not to not be a subject for healing. He ought to be a subject of continuous, abiding health, because he is filled with the life of God.

Jesus Christ is at once the law and life of God.

When I lived in Africa, one of our departments was the native work. I bless God for the marvels He let me witness among the native people. I believe we had a privilege never accorded any other white man in modern times.

In Basutoland, on Christmas Eve, 1912, the Lord's Supper was administered to 75 healed lepers. They had been healed under the ministry of a black fellow whose sole raiment when we first knew him was a goatskin apron.

It was a beautiful thing to sit with a man under whose ministry 75 lepers had been healed! Some were without noses others without fingers, or toes, or ears.

But I am going to tell you another leper story. Until about seven weeks ago, a man by the name of Young was quarantined in the State of Nebraska. Correspondence with him was made possible through a senator, another leper.

Reared as a Roman Catholic, Young believed in the power of faith. God told him He was going to move in behalf of this deliverance.

Officers of the institution discovered that he had been sending and receiving letters, contrary to instructions.

When confronted, Young said, "Yes, I have been corresponding with people who pray the prayer of faith that I shall not die like a dog or pig."

The officers asked to see the letters. In a few days they came back to him and said, "If you think you can get healed, we will turn you loose on your pledge that you will go directly to Spokane to these people who heal."

So he started for Spokane with their pledge to furnish him with the necessary funds.

The day before I left Spokane, I sat down with that man and he dictated the story of his healing by the power of God. He joined his wife and children in Key West.

My Lord is not dead! But I'll tell you, dear hearts, we have been satisfied to live in Christ in our babyhood, to perpetuate our babyhood, and to go on shouting like a lot of babies, instead of entering into the secrets of the heart of Jesus Christ by the grace of God and claiming from Heaven the divine flames of God upon our souls.

When that takes place, then we shall stand amazed at the action of God in our own and others' lives.

A Mrs. McDonald was brought to the Healing Rooms so emaciated by tuberculosis that she weighed only 70 pounds. Her condition improved so rapidly that she put on flesh at the rate of one pound per day.

She attended our Divine Healing Meeting and gave public testimony to her healing.

An hour later she called us on the telephone, exclaiming, "I am so happy I just had to tell somebody. I have walked all the way home, kindled the fire in two stoves, and am preparing supper. A thing I have not been able to do for over a year."

A 12 year old boy suffering from tuberculosis of the spine, so extreme that he was compelled to wear a steel jacket both day and night, was brought to the Healing Rooms a few days for prayer.

In less than ten days, his condition was so improved that he discarded the jacket entirely. His shoulders had straightened; the vertebrae remained fixed; and the boy returned to his home at Rosalia, praising God that He had proven in our own city in March 1919, that Jesus Christ is still the Healer.

At Cookhouse, Cape Colony, there were ten brothers by the name of Watson. Men who had been saved and baptized in the Holy Ghost.

As I was conducting a meeting at the home of one of them, the Spirit fell upon the youngest of the family. He arose and we observed that he was giving the arrangements for a drama. He was perfectly under the power of the Spirit. He had no consciousness in the natural of what was taking place.

All at once, the Spirit fell upon another of the brothers, then another and another until all ten became actors in the same drama.

We sat there amazed for hours, observing a perfect five act drama. A presentation of God's dealings with the race of man throughout the history of the world.

I left that night with the awe of God on my soul so deep that, for weeks afterwards, I felt as if I wanted to walk very softly.

The life of the Christian without the indwelling power of the Spirit in the heart is a weariness to the flesh. It is an obedience to commandments and an endeavor to walk according to a pattern which you have not power to follow.

But, bless God, the Christian life that is lived by the impulse of the Spirit of Christ within your soul becomes a joy, a power, and a glory.

When preaching at Bloemfontein, Orange Free State, a man by the name of Johnson, an epileptic for twelve years, attended the meetings. He had been suffering 12 to 15 seizures a day.

After the service, a group of us were in an attitude of prayer and communion with God preparatory to going out for an open air meeting.

Someone turned and asked this young man if he would like to be a Christian.

He said, "Well, I guess not. I would do the same things tomorrow I have done today if I were."

Like a flash out of the blue, the Spirit of God fell upon him and he fell prostrate upon the floor, remaining there until 10 o'clock the next morning.

Before morning, that fellow who had been having about 15 seizures a day was not only saved, but also healed. He went forth at 10 o'clock, baptized in the Holy Ghost.

One day our minister at Bloemfontein was going out to conduct a meeting for Basuto natives. He could not speak enough Basuto to preach to them, so it was necessary for him to have an interpreter. Johnson was with him.

The interpreter did not arrive. But when time came for the meeting to begin, the power of God came upon Johnson. To the amazement of all, he stood and spoke forth the Word to those native people in the purest Basuto!

One evening as I was preaching, the Spirit of the Lord descended upon a man in the front row, a minister from London, England.

He remained in a sitting posture, but began rising from the chair. Gradually, he came down on the chair; then gradually, he began to rise again, somewhat higher. This was repeated three times.

Was it a reversal of the law of gravitation?

I think not.

My own conception is that his soul became so united with the Spirit of God that the attractive power of God was so intense it drew him up.

One day I stood at the railway station in Logansport, Indiana, waiting for my train and observing a group of Italian men, apparently laborers, sitting on a bench. They were going somewhere to work.

As I walked up and down the platform, I said, "Oh, God, how much I would like to be able to talk to these men about the living Christ and His power to save! "

The Spirit said, "You can."

I stepped over to them; and as I preached, I observed myself beginning to speak in some foreign language.

I addressed one of the group, and he instantly answered me in Italian. I asked where he was from, and he replied, "Naples."

For fifteen minutes God let me tell the truths of Christ and the power of God to that group of laborers in Italian, a language of which I had no knowledge.

That was a little flash, a gleam but one day, bless God, there will come from Heaven a shower that will so anoint the souls of men that they will speak in every language man speaks by the power of God.

And this gospel of the kingdom shall be preached in all the world for a witness unto all nations; and then shall the end come (Matthew 24:14).

While I was in Africa, the Church of England sent a three man delegation to Johannesburg for a year to report back to England concerning our work in South Africa.

The result was a great conference of Church of England preachers was called and I was asked to preach at the conference.

It resulted in the establishment of healing societies in the Church of England.

We were blessed recently in this country with one of their "healers," Mr. Hicks, who held meetings in the various Episcopal churches all around the land.

I have just come from Portland, where the streets were filled for ten blocks around the church with automobiles carrying the sick to his meetings.

Mr. Clark Mitchell was in a logging accident ten years ago in which his left side was severely injured the knee and left shoulder were crushed.

For ten years he experienced great suffering. His knee developed a tumor so large that it filled his pant leg.

He told me there were occasions when he was able to walk perhaps a single block, but with great suffering. Other periods he was compelled to be confined to his home and his chair.

One day as I was hurrying down Pacific Avenue on the way to my meeting at the Free Methodist Church, I passed Mr. Mitchell's home and his daughter, waved to me.

She had seen me coming and said to her father, "I see Mr. Lake, and I am going to call him in."

Mr. Mitchell replied, "No, don't do it. I don't take any stock in that kind of stuff."

Though I knew nothing of these circumstances, I would have paid no attention if I had. I am Scotch.

When I entered their home, I said, "Mr. Mitchell, I have no time to talk to you."

I threw off my overcoat and hat, and knelt to pray. He indicated it was his knee, so I laid my hands on his knee and began to pray. As I did, I was conscious that he was healed.

I said, "Mr. Mitchell, stick out your leg." He did.

"Get up and walk." He did. As he walked, he kept saying, "I don't understand. I don't understand." He came back and sat down, still saying, "I don't understand."

"What is it you do not understand, brother?"

"Why, I cannot understand God's healing me. I am not a Christian."

I said, "Is it possible you have not yet given your heart to God?"

He said, "It is."

"Then, brother, in the name of the Lord, let us do it now."

So he, his dear daughter, and another lady, knelt with me and all three yielded their hearts to the Lord Jesus Christ.

As he sat in his chair, I told him of the healing of another man and how the bones would grind in his hip.

Mr. Mitchell said, "That is like my shoulder."

This is when I first learned he had a bad shoulder, so I called his daughter again, and we prayed for his shoulder.

Then I said, "Put up your arm, brother."

When he raised his arm, I asked him if it was perfectly free.

He replied, "Perfectly free."

By 8:30 p.m. the tumor that had been on his knee for ten years had totally disappeared.

The next morning, he went to the printing office, presented himself to the editor, and said, "Mr. Scott, I am the man the Lord has healed." And the newspaper editor wrote up a statement about the man's healing.

The same day he spaded his entire garden.

The day after, he went to work for a plasterer where he continued work.

The day of miracles had not passed as of this incident. March, 1922, in Forest Grove, Oregon.

Dominion

Now I want to teach you something of the inner things of healing that people are not aware of.

There is a conscious dominion Jesus Christ gives to the Christian soul. It was that thing in the soul of Peter when he met the lame man at the Beautiful Gate.

Instead of praying for the man's healing, Peter said, In the name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth rise up and walk (Acts 3:6). No prayer about it; no intercession.

Peter exercised the dominion that was in his soul. The divine flash of the power of God went forth from his soul, and the man instantly arose and went with them into the Temple walking and leaping, and praising God (verse 8).

Sometimes those who minister to the sick are aware of what takes place, although the individual himself is unaware of any healing. There is a dominion in the soul of the real man of God who is in touch with Heaven. When the real thing takes place when a person is saved or healed from disease we know what it is. We pray until we are satisfied in our souls that the work is complete.

In the same building that we had our Healing Rooms, there was an X-ray laboratory. The technicians wanted to see what it was all about, so they asked to take X-rays, at no charge to us of some of our prospects for healing. It was a unique opportunity.

Among those we sent to them was a man with tuberculosis. Each time after he was ministered to in prayer, they would take an X-ray. We could see the progress of the healing. Each picture showed less and less of the disease until there was no more evidence of it. He was completely well.

We always prayed for a person until we were satisfied that the healing was complete. There was no dependence on the arm of man (flesh).

Mr. W. A. Fay suffered from cancer of the stomach. He has been ministered to perhaps thirty times.

For the first ten days there was no evidence of healing whatever or a subsiding of his suffering. After that, there was a gradual subsiding; then color began to return to his face, and he began to put on flesh.

Now he can eat anything and everything, and as much of it as he can get! And that is not all, beloved. He found the Lord and Savior Jesus Christ while the process was going on, and he says that is the big part of it.

I guess the Lord knows how to open doors in people's hearts. A good many Christians overlook the fact that Jesus Christ made the ministry of healing just as broad as He could make it.

Luke 10: 8-9. To the Seventy, He said.... into whatsoever city ye enter, and they receive you ... heal the sick that are therein. And then what did He tell them to do? ... Say unto them, The kingdom of God is come nigh unto you.

I once lived near a man who was sick unto death. Some went to him and told him he had to be baptized, or he would die and go to hell.

I have always said that was a form of coercion, and Jesus Christ never used it. He was too much of a gentleman. He never took advantage of a man when he was down to grind his soul and try to influence him to be a Christian.

If the man was sick, Jesus went and healed him by the power of God. Then, when that man was healed, the natural response of his loving soul led him to Christ.

I wonder, have you ever paid attention to the different occasions in reading the Scriptures when the Voice of God is mentioned?

You know, the thing that makes the Bible the Bible is the fact that somebody had an interview with God! Somebody heard from Heaven before there was any Bible. Then the conversation or the incident was recorded, and these became the Word of God.

Now, the Word of God is indestructible, because it was a real Voice, a real experience. God really did or said something, and the record of it is true.

It is very simple to prove the inspiration of the Bible. Every child is taught to "prove" whether or not his sum in mathematics is correct.

If you have doubts, questions, and fears concerning the Bible and its inspiration, we know that if one soul ever heard from Heaven, another soul may.

If one soul ever had an interview with God, another soul may.

If any man ever knew his sins were forgiven at any period, another man may know his sins are forgiven now.

If a man or woman ever was healed by the power of God, then men and women can be healed again.

The only thing necessary is to return again in soul experience to that same place of intimacy where the first individual met God.

That is the way you prove the Word of God.

That is the reason Christians love the Word of God.

That is the reason the Word of God becomes the thing men live by, the thing men will die for. The Word of God becomes a present, living reality to them, not just a theory.

In my church in South Africa we published a paper in 10,000 lots. We would have the printers send them to the church, and we would lay them out on the front platform in packages of 100 and 200. At the evening service I would call certain people from the congregation (that I knew to be in contact with the living God) to come and kneel around the packages and lay their hands on them.

We asked God to not only bless the reading matter in the paper that the message of Christ should come through the words printed on the paper, but that the paper itself become filled with the Spirit of God, just as the handkerchiefs became filled with the power of God (Acts 19:12).

I could show you thousands of letters from people in all parts of the world, telling me that the Spirit of God came upon them when they received our paper. Not only were they healed, but the joy of God came into their hearts and many were saved.

One woman wrote from South America: "I received your paper. When I took it into my hands, my body began to vibrate so, I could hardly sit on the chair. I did not understand it. I laid the paper down, and after a while took it up again. As soon as I had it in my hands, I shook again. The third time I picked up the paper, the Spirit of God came upon me so powerfully, I was baptized in the Holy Ghost."

Beloved, do you see that this message and this quality of the Spirit contains the thing that confuses all the philosophers and all the practice of philosophy in the world? It shows the clearest distinction, which characterizes the real religion of Jesus Christ. It is distinct from all other religions and all other ministries.

The ministry of Christianity is the ministry of the Spirit. It is the Spirit of God that inhabits the words, that speaks to the spirit of another and reveals Christ in and through him.

Miss K. is a woman I term a victim of surgery, operated on 26 times, then left to die. She was an invalid for 13 years, and was visited and ministered to by different physicians for 6 years.

(I know you will pardon me if I speak with great plainness. I must in order to let you know what God has done in this woman's life.)

In one operation, an incision was made connecting the rectum and the vagina. That wound refused to heal. Three times the wound was sewn up, but to no avail. Also, she was thought to be tubercular, and no doubt she was.

One day this dear soul called Brother West wood to minister to her. We commenced to pray the prayer of faith on her behalf, and right away the wounds on her body began to heal until all the outer wounds were healed. If you were close enough to her, you could see scars all down her throat and neck where some of these 26 operations had been performed.

Now I want you to see the power of God: When she discovered that the rectal incision had not healed, it became a matter of special prayer. Soon her bowels ceased to operate; she had no movement for 28 days. Think of it! If such a thing occurs in your life for three or four days, you think you are going to die.

Note the purpose of God: During those 28 days when there was no movement whatever, the wound healed up.

Miss K. went to the south side of town to do some dressmaking; but while working, she became unconscious due to the gas pressing upon her heart and lungs.

A physician was called. In his examination, he discovered that the incision was perfectly healed; but during the long time that the lower end of the rectum had not been used, it had adhesed. Now according to the doctor, she could never have a movement of the bowels until she was operated on.

They were about to carry Miss K. off to the hospital when she became conscious and said, "No more operations for me, even if I die. I have committed my body, my soul, and my spirit to God!"

So they took her home.

She came down to the Tabernacle to drill the children for their Christmas entertainment. On her way home, she fainted on the street and was carried to the emergency hospital. They examined her there and corroborated the statement of the other physician.

They were in the act of taking her to St. Luke's when she became conscious and said, "No, sir! No more operations for me, even if I die."

When they asked her what she wanted to do, she told them she was coming to my home. That was on Saturday, November 27th.

On Sunday afternoon, November 28th, she was sitting in the audience. As prayer was being offered, she said it seemed as though a hand was laid upon her body (abdomen) and another hand on her head. Then a Voice said, "You are healed."

She left the Audience Room and became perfectly normal, and has remained a normal woman ever since.

Beloved, people who oppose this ministry and do not understand it will say, "That is all right. We know God does do such things as that on special occasions, but they are special cases. Paul had a thorn in the flesh. He prayed three times that it might be healed, and the Lord said, 'Paul, My grace is sufficient for you' (2 Corinthians 12:9), and he was not healed."

Who said so? Who gave you the interpretation? Did you hear the Voice of God, or are you repeating the old fable that has come down through theology for 100 years?

Do you not see, beloved, just one of the many tricks the old theological dodgers use to get away from the responsibility of praying the prayer of faith that saves the sick?

My, the Church has had a time trying to dodge this issue of healing! They come up with Paul's thorn in the flesh.

Paul said, "I wrote this large letter with my own hand" (Gal. 6:11), and they interpret that to read that he had bad eyes. Who said so?

On another occasion, the people said they loved Paul so much they would pluck out their eyes for him. I believe they would have cut off their leg or their right arm, too, if it would have done him any good, but none of these things argue for a moment that there was anything wrong with his leg, his arm, or his eyes.

Paul prayed three times. The first two times he was not conscious of the answer. He prayed again, bless God, and this time God met his faith and said to him, "Paul, My grace is sufficient for you."

Apply it, Paul. Dive in, Paul, and take all you want of the grace of God. It will fix your thorn in the flesh and everything else that is troubling you.

We went to Lourdes, France, in the company of a group of Church of England people who had been appointed as a committee to visit all the institutions of repute along the healing lines in Europe.

We visited a Catholic institution where healing is obtained by the waters of Lourdes. They maintain a board of 200 physicians whose business it is to examine all candidates and report on them.

We also visited the greatest hypnotic institution for healing in the world while at Lourdes. This institution sent its representatives to demonstrate their method before the Catholic board of 200 physicians. Hearing of our committee, they invited us to come before this body and demonstrate healing along our lines.

I agreed to take part, if I were given the final demonstration. The committee selected five candidates. People who had been pronounced absolutely incurable.

The hypnotists tried their several methods without success.

I then had the five candidates placed in chairs in a row upon the platform, in view of this large audience of physicians and scientists. I then prayed over each of them separately and at the same time laid my hands upon them.

Three were instantly healed, a fourth recovered in a few days, and one died.

In 1901, I joined the Dowie Institution and moved to Zion City, Illinois, with the objective of becoming a student and teacher of divine healing.

I was made manager of Dowie's Building Department. During that year we handled business amounting to $1.2 million, or $100,000 per month. We issued 1,200 building contracts.

This was the year John Alexander Dowie made his trip from Zion City to New York City, taking 3,000 people with him in ten trains. We had a road choir of 1,200 selected voices and a road processional of 100 church officers.

Dowie rented Madison Square Garden, which holds 20,000 people. The New York City Police said some nights they turned away as many as 100,000 people. The streets were congested for four blocks away.

In 1904, when Dowie's financial affairs were entangled, I left Zion City practically broke, my holdings in the Dowie property having become depreciated at his death.

One Saturday night in South Africa, the church was packed. All available standing room was occupied as men stood shoulder to shoulder. The majority of them were men from the Tattersall Racing Club. Most were Jews. They included horsemen of all classes: bookies, jockeys, stablemen, racetrack gamblers, etc.

I was preaching on the power of God and, in a strong spirit, was endeavoring to demonstrate that Jesus Christ is the same yesterday, today, and forever; that His power is as great as it ever was; and that the only qualification for touching God for anything is faith in Him. The audience was greatly moved.

At this point, I observed a gentleman and two ladies trying to squeeze through the people who were standing in the aisles. I asked the crowd to separate, if possible, to permit the ladies to come through and I tried to arrange seating space for them on the steps of the platform.

As they approached, I observed that one of the ladies held her arms perfectly stiff. She did not move them at all. By instinct, I knew at once that she was a rheumatic cripple.

When she got to the platform, I asked, "What is the reason you do not move your arms?"

She said, "My shoulders are set from rheumatics."

I said, "How long have they been like this?"

She replied, "Ten years."

I inquired if she had been treated by physicians.

She replied, "I have been discharged from three hospitals as incurable."

"What hospitals?"

She answered, "Kimberley, Johannesburg, and Pretoria."

Then addressing the gentleman who accompanied her, I asked, "Do you know this lady?"

He said, "Yes, she is my sister in law."

I said, "Do you know her story to be correct?"

"Absolutely," he said.

I asked her what she had come for.

She replied, "In the hope that the Lord would heal me."

I inquired, "Do you wish me to pray for you for healing?"

"Yes," she said.

Addressing the noisy crowd in the aisles and around the doors, I said, "You men never saw Jesus heal a person in your life. You do not know anything about this matter. You have never witnessed an exhibition of the power of God, and therefore you should be considerate enough to keep still, confess your ignorance of such matters, and learn.

"This is what I want: Select two men from your group, and let them come and see for themselves if this woman's arms are stiff, as she states."

I waited for them to make their selection. Finally, they put forward two men. One was a barber, a very intelligent gentleman. I learned afterwards he was an American.

They examined the lady's arms critically and found them to be as she had said quite immovable.

I asked the men, "Have you finished your examination? Are you satisfied her condition is as stated?"

They said, "We are."

"Then stand back, for I am going to pray that the Lord will heal this woman."

Placing my hands on her shoulders, I commanded in the name of Jesus Christ, the Son of God, that this rheumatic devil that bound the woman be cast out. In Christ's name I commanded it to go, rebuking it with all the energy of my soul.

The power of God flashed through me like a burning fire until perspiration burst from the woman's face.

Then, taking her by the hands, I said, "In the name of Jesus Christ, put your arms up!"

The right arm went up.

Then I said, "In the name of Jesus Christ, put the other arm up, too."

She instantly obeyed. Her arms had become free!

As I moved her arms, making the shoulders rotate, I heard a grinding sound in the joints. I said to the two men from the audience, "You have never heard a dry joint in your life. Come put your ear to this woman's back while I make her arms move." As they did, I moved her arms, and the shoulder joints ground, because the oil had not yet returned to them.

In the woman's delight at being healed, she threw up her hands, praised God, and started for the door. The crowd parted for her, and she disappeared. I did not see her again for some months.

John G. Lake's Consecration Statement as A Christian.

My Consecration as A Christian

I, this day, consecrate my entire life to glorify my Heavenly Father by my obedience to the principles of Jesus Christ through the power of the Holy Spirit. All my effort from now on will be directed in an effort to demonstrate the righteousness of God in whatsoever I may be engaged...

Principle 1

All the things earthly that I possess shall not be considered my own, but belonging to my Heavenly Father, and shall be held in trust by me to be used and directed by the wisdom of the Spirit of God, as the law of love of men as Christ loved them may dictate.

If at any time God should raise up men wiser than myself, I will gladly commit my all to their use and turn over all my possessions to them for distribution.

If at any time in my life I should be engaged in any earthly business and should employ men to aid me in conducting it, I shall reward them justly and equally, comparing their own energy expended with my own after adding a sufficient amount to my own to cover all risk that may be involved in the operation of my business.

I shall consider my employees my equals with rights to the blessings of nature and life equal to my own. I shall not strive to elevate myself to a position of comfort above the rest of my employees and shall direct all my efforts to bring all mankind to an equal plane, where all enjoy the comforts of life and fellowship together.

Principle 2

I shall not cease to cry to God and implore Him to deliver mankind from the effects of sin so long as sin lasts, but shall cooperate with God in the redemption of mankind.

I will have seasons of prayer and fasting in behalf of mankind, weeping and bewailing their lost condition and imploring God to grant them repentance unto life as the Spirit of God may lead me.

Principle 3

I shall live my life in meekness, never defending my own personal rights, but shall leave all judgment to God who judges righteously and rewards all according to their works. I shall not render evil for evil or railing for railing, but shall bless all and do good to enemies in return for evil. By God's grace I shall keep all hardness and harshness out of my life and actions, but shall be gentle and unassuming, not professing above what God has imparted to me, nor lifting myself above my brethren.

Principle 4

I shall consider righteous acts as more necessary to life and happiness than food and drink, and not let myself be bribed or coerced into any unrighteous action for any earthly consideration.

Principle 5

By God's grace I will always be merciful, forgiving those who have transgressed against me and endeavoring to correct the ills of humanity instead of merely punishing them for their sins.

Principle 6

I shall not harbor any impure thoughts in my mind, but shall endeavor to make my every act uplifting.

I shall regard my procreative organs sacred and holy and never use them for any purpose other than that which God created them for.

I shall regard the home as sacred and always guard my actions in the presence of the opposite sex, so as not to cause a man and his wife to break their vows to one another. I shall be chaste with the opposite sex who are married, considering them as sisters. I shall be careful not to cause them undue pain by playing on their affections.

Principle 7

I will always strive to be a peacemaker. First, by being peaceful myself and avoiding all unfruitful contentions, and treating all with justice and regarding their rights and their free agency, never trying to force any to my point of view.

If I should offend anyone knowingly, I shall immediately apologize.

I will not scatter evil reports about any person and so try to defame their character, or repeat things that I am not certain of being true.

I will strive to remove the curse of strife among brethren by acting as a peacemaker.

Principle 8

I shall not become discouraged when I am persecuted on account of the righteousness mentioned above nor murmur on account of any suffering I undergo, but shall gladly give my life rather than depart from this high standard of life, rejoicing because I know I have a great reward in Heaven.

I shall strive to make the above principles the ideal of all the world and give my life and energy to see mankind get the power from God to practice the same.

John G. Lake.

Adventures in Religion

A series of radio lectures given by John G. Lake between June 24th and August 22nd, 1935

LECTURE ONE

This is the first of a series of articles on the general subject of "Adventures in Religion." I want to remind you for a few moments of some of the old mystics who were given glimpses into the unseen that it has not been the privilege of the ordinary man to understand.

The first and foremost was St. Francis of Assissi, whom the world has conceded to be one of the most Christ-like characters who has ever lived in the world. At a later period came St. John of the Cross, who for ten years seemed to live detached from the world. Today he is discovered to be one of the most practical men.

At a later period Madam Guyon appeared on the scene, and almost every library contains one of her books. The moulding of her character was so amazing that it has caused much discussion in the religious world of our day.

We have only, however, to look over the records of our own land to see many others. Such men as Charles G. Finney, founder of Oberlin College, and it's first president. He was a practicing lawyer. He was seized with a conviction for sin so pungent that he retired to the woods to pray, and the Spirit of the Lord came upon him so powerfully, so divinely and took such amazing possession of him that he tells us he was compelled to cry out to God to cease least he should die. His wonderful ministry in the land is so well known, his books so frequently found in our libraries that it is not necessary to discuss him further.

On this list I wish to mention one who is not usually mentioned so lovingly as Finney. He was a Scotch boy, educated in the University of Australia, (John Alexander Dowie). In addition to this, the Lord came to him in his own tabernacle one morning as he sat at his desk. Jesus was accompanied by His mother, the Virgin Mary. He advised Dowie concerning his ministry. Jesus laid His hands upon him and from that period his ministry was marked by the supernatural.

It is a matter of public record and one of the most astonishing facts that on one occasion he invited all persons who were healed under his ministry to attend a meeting at the auditorium in Chicago. Ten thousand people attended the meeting. At the psychological moment they all arose and gave testimony to the fact that they were healed. Those who were not able to attend were asked to send in a card, three and a half inches square, telling of their healing. Five bushel baskets were filled with these cards, representing the testimony of 100,000 people. At the psychological moment these five bushel baskets of cards were spilled over the stage, to emphasise the extent and power of God's ministry and blessing to the people.

Again, I want to call your attention to another marvellous life, that of Hudson Taylor, founder of the China Inland Mission. To him the Lord came, not only in personal presence, but in prophecy concerning the future. It was Hudson Taylor who prophesied the great revival in Wales ten years before it came to pass, giving almost the very day on which it would begin, and its power and extent. All this came to pass just as he had outlined it, while he was in the heart of China.

The Welsh revival was one of the most remarkable revivals that was ever produced. It was apparently prayed out of heaven by a single little church whose lights were never extinguished for seven years. This indicates that a portion of that congregation was continually in prayer to God, that God would send a revival. And thus it came, the most astonishing and intensely powerful revival. In small churches which would hold perhaps 500 people, in one corner fifty people would be singing the praises of God, thirty-five people would be down praying, another group would be praising God and testifying of His power.

It was not produced by evangelism, but it was the descent of the Spirit of God on the people. Conviction for sin was so powerful men knelt in their stores or wherever they were to give themselves to God. Sometimes while men were drinking in the public houses at the bar, they would cry out to God and give their hearts to Him.

Beginning with that revival there was a movement of God that spread throughout the world. In our own land we were particularly and wonderfully blessed by a movement that began New Year's Eve, 1900, which was accompanied by the Baptism in the Holy Ghost, and multitudes were baptized in the Holy Ghost.

After that revival there arose a phenomenal group of men and women. I am going to mention a few. The first I am going to mention is Aimee Semple McPherson. She was a young girl on a farm in Ontario, Canada. She attended a meeting by a young Irishman, Robert Semple, who was preaching under the anointing of the Holy Ghost. She became convicted of sin, opened her heart to God, and found Him, and was baptized in the Holy Ghost. Finally they were married and went as missionaries to China, where he died of fever. She was left a widow, and soon with a new born baby. Some friends provided the funds that brought her back to the United States. Later she formed the acquaintance of a fine young business man, and decided to settle down and forget all her burning call to the Gospel. This she tried to do. Two children were born to them. And then one day God came to Aimee in a meeting at Berlin, Ontario, conducted by Rev. Hall. Her early ministry for a period of about fifteen years surpassed everything that we have ever seen in any land since the days of the Apostles; a multitude was healed under her ministry.

Again, I want to call your attention to another unusual man, Raymond Ritchie, who belonged to Zion, Ill. His father was mayor of Zion City at one time. This boy was tubercular. They did not seem to understand his difficulty. He had no ambition; he could not work like other boys. He was in a state of lacitude. Eventually he found God. We speak of finding God as the old Methodist Church spoke of being saved, getting religion, meaning one and the same thing. When a man confesses his sin and God comes into his heart. And gives him the peace and consciousness of his salvation, he has found God.

Young Ritchie, after his salvation, was so absorbed in prayer, the family got sort of worried. The father finally told him he had to get to work and help earn his living. But some woman who understood the boy said, "I have a room you can have." Another said she would provide him with food to keep him alive.

The great war came on, and the epidemic of the flu followed, when men died by the thousands throughout this United States. He became stirred, and began to pray for people and they were healed. The medical department presently took notice of it, and they sent him to pray for sick soldiers, and they were healed. Very well, he has continued in the ministry from then until now, and some of the most wonderful healing meetings that have ever taken place, he has conducted.

Another man God has marvellously blessed and used is Dr. Price. He belongs to our own locality. Price used to live in Spokane. Dr. Price was baptized in the Spirit. Right away he began to manifest a most amazing ministry of healing. I attended one of his meetings at Vancouver, B.C. He had four audiences a day and 15,000 people in each, and people for a block around who could not get inside. All the churches in Vancouver I think united with him in that meeting. It was the most amazing meeting I ever saw. The sick people stood in groups of fifty and he would anoint them with oil according to the 5th chapter of James, and then pray for them. They were so overpowered by the Spirit they would fall to the floor, and a great number were healed.

LECTURE TWO

No greater Book has ever been given to mankind than the Bible. The amazing things recorded there that men experienced and that men wrought in the Name of Jesus Christ through faith by the power of God stand forever as an incentive to every man who enters and labours where they did. There is a place in God into which the soul enters and that makes it possible for the Spirit of God through you as His agent to register in the hearts of others.

Henry Fosdick says, "Until the New Theology can produce the sinless character of the old theology, it stands challenged." We believe that. We believe that the old-fashioned salvation through the blood of Jesus Christ followed by the Baptism of the Holy Ghost make possible an experience that no other religious experience in the world has ever been able to produce.

In the year 1900, there came a new wave of heavenly experience to this land and to the world. It began in Topeka, Kansas. It was in a Bible School conducted by Charles Parham. The founding of that school was an amazing thing. He was moved of God to go to Topeka, Kansas. He obeyed the promptings of the Spirit and went to the city. After looking all around for a building suitable for a Bible School and finding none, one day a gentleman told him of a residence on the outskirts of the city. It contained about twenty-two or more rooms and it was unoccupied. The owner lived in California. He went to see the building, and as he stood looking at it the Spirit of the Lord said, "I will give you this building for your Bible School." And he said to himself, "This is the house."

As he stood there a gentleman came up to him and said, "What about the house?" Parham told him what the Lord had said to him, and the man being the owner of the house said, "If you want to use this building for a Bible School for God it is yours," and he handed him the key without any more ado.

The next day he went to the train and met a young woman of his acquaintance. She told him that when she was praying the Spirit of God told her there was going to be a Bible School here and that she should come. She was the first student. Thirty-five students came, all correspondingly directed by the Spirit of God.

This group began a study of the Word of God to discover what really constituted the Baptism of the Holy Ghost. After a month of study they became convinced that there was one peculiarity that accompanied the Baptism of the Holy Ghost: speaking in tongues.

They went to seeking the Baptism of the Holy Ghost. Parham was not present at the time. On New Year's night at twelve o'clock, 1900, one of the group, a Miss Osmand, a returned missionary, was baptized in the Holy Ghost and began to speak in tongues. In a few days the entire group, with a couple of exceptions, was baptized in the Spirit. When Parham returned and found that the students in his school had been baptized in the Holy Ghost, he himself went down before the Lord and God baptized him in the Holy Ghost, too.

I want you to keep this story in mind for it forms the basis of the wonderful experience I want to relate in my next talk.

LECTURE THREE

For a moment I want to call attention to a challenge that has been distributed widely through the ministry of Henry Fosdick, as I mentioned yesterday. Fosdick has said, "Until the new theology can produce the sinless character of the old theology, it (the new theology) stands challenged."

That is our position. We are reminding you, friends, that God is a miracle God. God is a miracle; Jesus Christ is a miracle; His birth was a miracle; His life was a miracle; His death was a miracle; His resurrection from the grave was a miracle; His ascension was a miracle; His reception at the Throne of God by the eternal Father was the greatest of all miracles, because that God then gave Him the gift of the Holy Ghost, and made Him the administrator of the Spirit forever.

Some things can be better taught by relating experiences than in any other way. I might try to impress you with the beauty and wonder of the Baptism of the Holy Ghost, but dear friends, I think the relating of a few experiences will make it clearer to our mind than any other way.

I am reminded of an incident that took place on a railway train. Father Neiswender was stricken with a paralytic stroke. He had not been able to sleep for weeks. When they got him on a train to bring him to Spokane the motion of the train temporarily soothed him and he fell asleep and dreamed. In his dream an angel came to him and said, "When you get to Spokane, inquire for a man by the name of Lake. He will pray for you and God will heal you." He was directed to our place and when we prayed for him he immediately began to use his paralysed arm and side, but was not completely delivered. The third time I went to pray the Lord showed me a blood clot in the spinal chord as large as a bead. I prayed until the blood clot disappeared. No one could explain an incident like that by any natural law. Consequently we must classify it in the line of miracles IN OUR DAY, not a thousand years ago.

One more incident of this order. A family by the name of Bashor had a lovely boy who became dissatisfied at home and ran away. He went to a farmer where he was not known, gave another name, and worked for him for a year. In the meantime the family with the aid of the police searched everywhere for the boy, but he could not be found. One day the mother came to me broken hearted and told me the story. We knelt and prayed and asked God that He would cause that boy to get in touch with his parents. Two days later she received a letter from the boy. He told her that on the night we had prayed he went to bed and had an unusual vision. Jesus appeared and talked to him. Jesus said, "I forgive your sins, but I want you to write to your mother, and get home to your folks." The boy was greatly moved, got up and told the farmer the incident, and the result was the farmer hitched up his team and brought the boy in to his home. That boy is now married and has a nice family, and still lives in Spokane, The part of that incident that might interest young folks is this. I was preaching at Mica, Wash. where I related this incident. A young lady in the audience listened to the story, and after the meeting she said to me, "I would like to get acquainted with that young man." She did and he is her husband.

Dear friends, these are some of the things that show us that there is a work of God's Spirit different from what we are ordinarily accustomed to, and these are the things that make religion real to New Testament Christians. Different ones in the Scriptures were guided by dreams. Joseph was guided by dreams, some were guided by a Voice from heaven. Now we are contending and bringing to your attention that there was an experience provided by the Lord Himself that made that intimacy a possibility. That is, the Baptism of the Holy Spirit. I wish I might say that with such emphasis that it would penetrate the deep recesses of your spirit.

One more incident. Over in the woods back of Kellog, Idaho, lived a family by the name of Hunt. I visited in their home just a little while ago. His aged father was given up to die; the son was very anxious about him. The father kept saying, "Son, I ought not to die." The son had been much in prayer about this matter. One day he stood on a log road and presently he said a man appeared a little distance ahead, and as the gentleman approached he addressed Mr Hunt saying, "I am Mr Lake. I have Healing Rooms in Spokane. If you will bring your father there, the Lord will heal him." He was so impressed, that he got his father and brought him to me for prayer, and the Lord healed him gloriously and he lived many years.

The value of the ministry of healing is not in the mere fact that people are healed. The value of healing is more largely in the fact that it becomes a demonstration of the living, inner, vital power of God, which should dwell in every life and make us new and mighty men in the hands of God. (1916)

LECTURE FOUR

When the German army started their famous march on Belgium and France with an army of three million men, they came to the borders only to find that they were met with such a tremendous opposition that for ten full days they were compelled to stay back until they could bring up their heavy artillery. Statesmen of Germany declare that the ten days delay resulted in their losing the war. France and Belgium were prepared in the meantime to meet the assault.

Jesus Christ, the Son of God, said to his disciples: "Behold I send you forth as lambs in the midst of wolves," but He did not send them out without being prepared. They were commissioned and empowered by God, for that is what constitutes the Baptism of the Holy Ghost. Jesus Christ gave his disciples a big program before He left them. He told them they were not only to preach the gospel to the whole world, but that they were to demonstrate its power.

"Go ye into all the world, and preach the gospel to every creature… And these signs shall follow them that believe; In my name shall they cast out devils; they shall speak with new tongues; they shall take up serpents; and if they drink any deadly thing, it shall not hurt them; they shall lay hands on the sick, and they shall recover." Mark 16:18.

These signs shall follow them that believe; those who accented their work.

Dear friends, men who were going to put a program like that into effect needed heavy artillery from heaven. That is what Jesus undertook to give from heaven. So He said they were not to go out right away unprepared. Instead He said:

"Tarry ye in the city of Jerusalem, until ye be endued with power from on high." Luke 24:49

That enduement from on high is the equipment of every child of God who follows the Biblical pattern. We are trying to impress upon the minds of men that one of the greatest Adventures in Religion that this world ever has found was when men dared to step across the usual boundaries and dared receive from His hand the Baptism of the Holy Ghost, which equips them with the power of God to bring blessings to other lives.

Just for one moment I want to bring you this fact. That the first thing Jesus said would be manifested in the Christian life was: "In my name shall they cast out devils." It was the first thing in Christian experience, and the exercise of Christian power that Jesus said would follow the Christian's life. They had power to cast out devils.

Jesus first gave that power to the twelve; then He gave it to the seventy, then He gave it to the church at large on the day of Pentecost, when the Baptism of the Holy Ghost descended upon 120 at Jerusalem. Jesus gave the equipment from heaven.

In our day, within the past thirty years, we have seen such a manifestation of God from heaven as no other century in the world's history ever saw with the exception of the first four centuries of the Christian era. Beginning with 1900 the Spirit of God began to be poured out in power upon the world so that every country in the world has received this amazing power of God. Men who were ordinary business men, men who were scholars and teachers, students, and men from every walk in life found this equipment from heaven by the grace of God, and stepped out into a great life and ministry for God. This preparation, friends, is not for preachers only, but for the people. Jesus said, "These signs shall follow them that BELIEVE."

Friends, there is an adventure for your soul, the most amazing adventure in all the world. It takes a brave soul to step into the light of God and receive the equipment He provides. That is no place for a coward. A cowardly spirit, a spirit that is always hiding, always apologising for his faith, will never enter there. That is the Gate of God. That is the gate into His Spirit. That is the gate into a life of effectiveness for every one who wants to serve God aright. Friends, you need this equipment to meet the demands of this day.

Sanctification is the cleansing of a man's nature by the indwelling power of the Spirit of Christ, for the purpose of the transformation of the mind and nature of man into the mind and nature of Jesus Christ.

I like John Wesley's definition of Sanctification, "Possessing the mind of Christ, and ALL the mind of Christ."

LECTURE FIVE

This afternoon I want to talk to you on the subject of MIRACLES. From the year 400 until now the church has assumed the attitude that the days of miracles are passed without any Scriptural evidence whatever. They have taught that miracles were to demonstrate the divinity of Jesus, and therefore the divinity of Jesus being demonstrated there was no longer any need for miracles.

We had a local incident that demonstrates the effect of this teaching, I think. My convictions on the matter is that it has done more damage to the Christian faith than any other teaching that has been promulgated. There is a gentleman who works at the Devenport Hotel in Spokane, O.A. Risdon, who is one of the engineers there. He had a son with a deformed head. The top of the head raised up like the ridge of a roof, the forehead and back of the head also were forced out in similar manner, giving the head the appearance of the hull of a yacht upside down. He was born with what the physicians call a closed head. The boy was always slobbering; the pressure on the brain caused the right side to become paralysed, and the boy was dumb. He was five years old at this time.

The physicians said there was nothing they could do. Then in desperation he appealed to his pastor. The pastor told him the days of miracles were past; that the Lord did not heal now; that miracles were given to demonstrate the divinity of Jesus. The father replied; "If Jesus would heal my son I would be convinced that He is divine now. If He is divine He could lift this damnation from our house."

Finally, he came to us seeking help. We began to minister to the child. In a few days we observed that the paralysis began to depart; instead of walking on one side of his ankles he began to walk on the foot, and that indicated that the pressure was relieved on the brain. In seven weeks the child was perfectly well. The bones of the head softened and came down to normal. The paralysis disappeared and the child began to talk. In three months he was in the public school. He is a young married man now.

Dear friends, if we had continued to believe that the days of miracles were past that boy would be in the insane asylum. But we believed that Jesus Christ was the same yesterday, today and forever, and the boy was healed. It is a delight to believe the words of Jesus. I have used this rule in my study of the Scriptures. If there is any question on any Scripture I settle it with the Words of Jesus. I consider all the Scriptures are a Common Court of the gospel, but the Words of Jesus are the Supreme Court of the gospel. When I want a supreme court decision I appeal to the Words of Jesus.

You can read all the words of Jesus in two hours or less in a Red Letter New Testament. Make a practice of reading the words of Jesus on any subject that troubles you, and make a compilation of what He says. He ought to be sufficient authority on any question for the heavenly Father called attention to the fact that He is the Son of God, and that we are to hear Him. He said;

"This is my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased; hear ye Him." Matt. 17:5.

LECTURE SIX

Jesus Christ came on the scene as a Challenger. We have almost come to believe in our day that He was a sentimentalist and an easy type. He was King. He was the Prince of God. He was the Glory of Heaven! He was the representative of the Eternal Father! He had a mission. He declared the Father. He stepped among the religions of the earth as the Challenger.

Jesus said there was real sin, that there was real sickness, that there was real death. He was not dodging the issue. He met it foursquare, and He said, I am bigger that it all, I am the Prince of Life. He destroyed sin and obliterated it from the souls of men. He blasted sickness and dissolved it from their system. He raised the dead to life. He challenged the devil who was the author of death to destroy Him if he could. He went into the regions of death and conquered and came forth triumphant. So that it became necessary for the Lord to have a new vocabulary. He said after coming forth from the grave, "All power is given unto me in heaven and in earth. Go ye therefore, and teach all nations, baptizing them in the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost." Matt. 28:19.

Sin and sickness and death, the triumvirate of darkness, that Jesus met and overcame were the original forces of evil in the world; the manifestation of the Kingdom of Darkness. There never will be a heaven, there never could be one, where these exist. Their destruction is necessary. Jesus realized that and He came to do what man could not do for himself. That is one of the reasons why men can not save themselves. All the good works that man may perform from now to the day. of his death will not save him. Sin is of the heart, it is in the nature. Jesus came to reconstruct man's nature and give him instead of his own evil nature, the nature of God. Sin has made the nature of man vile. Christ came to give him deliverance from this nature and give him a new nature, the divine nature.

"Through sin death entered into the world."

Death is not a servant of God, nor a child of God, nor a product of God. SIN is the ENEMY of God. The New Testament declares that "The last enemy that shall be destroyed is death." Not the last servant or friend, but the last enemy. Death is doomed to destruction by the Lord Jesus Christ. Sin and Sickness is incipient death.

That is the reason we do not speak of the things of the Lord and His salvation in moderate tones. We are shouting them to mankind. The spirit of a real child of God challenges darkness, challenges sin, challenges sickness. The Lord Jesus came to destroy sickness and wipe it out of the lives of men, to make possible the heaven of God in their hearts and lives now. There could be no heaven where disease and sickness are found. Sin and sickness and death must be blotted out. That is the reason, dear friends, that Christianity is always a challenger. Christianity is a thing of strength. Real religion is a source of power. It is the dynamite of God. The Holy Spirit gives the overcoming grace and strength essential to destroy sin, to destroy sickness, to overcome death.

LECTURE SEVEN

I am pleased to greet you today, dear friends, with a real account of one of the marvellous adventures in God. Jesus said,

"Heal the sick, cleanse the lepers, raise the dead, cast out devils: freely ye have received, freely give." Matt. 10:8

Christianity was not to be stinted in her giving. She was not to be a beggar. She was to be a giver. She had something from heaven to give that the world did not have. She had something to give that would bring deliverance to the world. Jesus was putting His program of deliverance in force through the Church.

The man is a bold man who undertakes to carry out this program of Jesus. The Christian who never has faith enough in God to undertake it, I fear, is of the cowardly type. I am afraid that modern Christianity stands indicted at the bar of God for cowardliness because of fear to undertake the program of Jesus.

Friends, that is why we urge upon men the necessity of the Baptism of the Holy Ghost. It is the only thing that brings the heavenly equipment to the hearts of men, that makes them equal to this program and the possibility of carrying it out.

I want to talk to you today of a bold soul, and in my judgment a very extraordinary one indeed. I refer to a gentleman who lives in this city, a preacher of the gospel from the days of his youth, Rev. C. W. Westwood. His home is on Nora Avenue.

A number of years ago there was born at one of the great hospitals of the city, a little child (a girl) from healthy parents, Mr and Mrs Young. Mr Young for many years had a stall in the Westlake Market. Mrs Young has been a nurse for many years and also is well known. When this baby was born it weighed 6-1/2 pounds. Because of some strange difficulty the child could not assimilate its food. When she was nine months old she only weighed, four and a half pounds. The child looked more like a little dried up alligator than it did like a human being. She finally fell into a state of death and remained in a dying condition. In the meantime we were called to minister to the child.

Mr. Westwood was assigned to the case. One day when he went to the hospital as usual to minister to the child, they explained that the child was not there. It had died that morning and was in the dead room. He asked if he might see the child, and went into the dead room, took the child down. He sat down on a chair with the baby on his knees. He opened his heart to God, turned the spirit of faith in his heart loose on behalf of the little one. In a little while, (and I am saying this with all reverence before God, because I expect to meet this matter when I stand before the great Judgment Throne), the child revived. He sent for the parents, they took the child from the hospital and put her in the hands of an elderly lady by the name of Mrs Mason, who nursed her for six weeks. At the end of that period she was as well as any other child. Her name is Agnes Young.

About a year ago I received a telephone call from Agnes Young asking me if I would perform a marriage ceremony for her and her fiance. This young couple lives at Eugene, Oregon now.

And so I want to leave this testimony, that God is as good as His Word. That faith in Almighty God brings to pass the very same things today that it always did.

LECTURE EIGHT

The climax of all adventures was the adventure of Jesus in delivering men from sin and sickness and death. One can not measure the Man of Galilee with any tape line or yard stick that comes from human reasoning. Jesus is outside of the realm of reason. In the first place His history was written by the prophets ages before He was born. Man can write a better history of Jesus from the Old Testament than they can from the New Testament. In the New Testament we have simply a little fragment about His incarnation and birth and then thirty years of silence, except for a little glimpse of Him when He was twelve years of age. All the books that have been written of Jesus have been written almost entirely about His three years of public ministry that began with His baptism in the Jordan and closed with His resurrection. Now men try to write on His pre-existence. Here and there one has caught a glimpse of His ministry seated at the right hand of the Majesty on High.

I want you to see another fact. That every prophecy that was written before His time was all in the miracle realm. His incarnation was a real miracle. He was not born under the natural laws of generation. He was conceived of the Holy Ghost. He was a true incarnation; God uniting Himself with humanity. The scenes surrounding His birth; the angelic visitation, the coming of the wise men were all miracles. The angel's warning to Joseph to flee with the child to Egypt was miraculous. The very silence of those thirty years is considered most miraculous. The divine silences represent the most marvellous elements in the Book we all love. The descent of the Spirit at His baptism was a miracle. From that day until Mount Olive was a period of miracles. His life among men was a miracle. The new kind of life that He revealed to the world was a miracle. Jesus' mental processes were miraculous. Our libraries are full of books written by great thinkers, like Thomas Edison, and others, who were incessant thinkers. With Jesus there is something different. He speaks out from the Spirit that dominated His spiritual faculties. Jesus' spirit ruled his intellect. Gems of divine truth dripped from His lips as honey from the honey comb. The sermon on the mount, great portions in Luke and John are as untouched as when they dropped from the lips of Jesus. Men's writings grow old and out of date. God's truth is ever fresh. Yes, Jesus words and life and contact with men was miraculous; it is still miraculous.

His death on the cross, His three days in the tomb, His dramatic and startling resurrection were all miracles. His presence among the disciples on different occasions, and finally His ascension in the presence of five hundred witnesses were miracles. The do not belong to the reason realm; they belong to the miracle realm. Jesus was in the realm of the Spirit, the realm of faith, the realm where God acts, the realm where the real child of God lives. You see, Christians have been translated out of the realm of human thought and reason into the Kingdom of the Son of His love, the realm of the Spirit.

It would be uncharitable if we were to criticise the man of reason, who knows nothing about the spiritual realm. Christianity is not the product of human reasoning. Christianity is a divine intervention. Christians are those who have been "born from above." They have been recreated. This life of God that comes into their spirit nature dominates the reason so that they have the "mind of Christ," to think God's thoughts and live in God's realm of miracles.

Friends, when a Christian tries to live by REASON he is moving out of God's country into the enemy's land. We belong in the miraculous or supernatural realm.

Christ was a miracle. Every Christian is a miracle. Every answer to prayer is a miracle. Every divine illumination is a miracle. The power of Christianity in the world is a miraculous power. God help us to realise that ours is a High and Holy Calling.

LECTURE NINE

I want to talk to you concerning some of the purposes of God. Among them is God's amazing purpose to baptize men in the Holy Spirit. I think that even among the deepest Christians in our day, little is understood of the real purpose of God in this wonderful experience.

We say to one another that the Baptism of the Holy Spirit is God coming into man, that it is God manifesting Himself in man, and other expressions of this type, but it fails to convey to the mind anything like the great purpose of God in His incoming in us.

The Baptism of the Holy Spirit has among its wonderful purposes the dwelling of God in us, the perfecting of His life in us through His Word in our spirit, through His power in our life. Tongues is the peculiar manifestation of God accompanying the coming of God the Holy Spirit into the life. This was the evidence when the Holy Spirit of God descended on the Day of Pentecost at Jerusalem. The Scripture is given in these wonderful words:

"Suddenly there came a sound from heaven as of a rushing mighty wind, and it filled all the house where they were sitting. And there appeared unto them cloven tongues like as of fire, and it sat upon each of them. And they were all filled with the Holy Ghost, and began to speak with other tongues, as the Spirit gave them utterance." Acts 2:2-4

What is the real purpose? What is God doing? Is He giving to the individual certain powers to demonstrate and to convince the world? I do not think that is the real reason. There is a deeper one. God is taking possession of the inner spirit of man. From the day that Adam sinned, the spirit of man was a prisoner. This prison condition continues until God releases the spirit of the individual in the Baptism of the Holy Ghost. The spirit remains dumb, unable to express itself to mankind, until God through the Holy Ghost releases the spirit, and the voice of the spirit is restored.

You understand man is a triune being; spirit, soul, and body, and these departments of our life are very different. God manifests Himself to the spirit of man, and the experience of real salvation is the coming of God into the spirit of man; the infusion of the spirit of man and God.

In the olden days the church used to discuss the subject of sanctification but were somewhat hazy in their explanation of what it was. Sanctification is God taking possession of our mental forces, just as He took possession of our spirit when He bestowed on us eternal life. Your mind is brought into harmony with God, even as your spirit was brought into harmony with God. Following the example of Jesus we dedicate not only our spirit and soul (or mind) to God, but also our body to God. That is the reason we left doctors and medicine behind.

I want to talk to you about speaking in tongues by relating this experience, and reciting a poem God gave me, when I was a missionary in South Africa and had my residence there. There was a dreadful epidemic of African Fever and within thirty days about one-fourth of the population of some sections of the country of both white and black died. I was absent from my tabernacle on the field with a group of missionaries and we did the best we could to get them healed of God and help bury the dead. I returned to my tabernacle after about three weeks absence to discover that the same thing was taking place there. I was greatly distressed. My pianist was gone; my chief soloist was gone, the only daughter of an aged mother. I went to her home to console her and comfort her. As I sat by her table she reminded me that just four weeks before I had been present when the pianist and the soloist were practicing music in that home, My soul was very sorrowful. As I sat meditating I began to pray: "My God, I would like to know what sort of reception such a soul as that gets when they arrive on the other side." Presently God spoke to my soul and said, "Take your pen and I will tell you about it."

The first thing that came was the name of the poem in tongues. Then the Lord gave me the interpretation. It was called "The Reception." Then the first verse came in tongues, then I received from the Lord the interpretation and then the next verses like-wise, and so on. In the mean time some thing transpired in my own spirit. I felt as if I was being elevated into the presence of God, and I could look down on the folks on earth, and it was described in these verses:

THE RECEPTION

List! 'Tis the morning hours in Glory.

A shadow through the mists doth now appear

A troop of angels sweeping down in greeting.

A "Welcome Home" rings out with joyous cheer!

A traveller from the earth is now arriving;

A mighty welcome's ringing in the skies!

The trumpets of a host are now resounding

A welcome to the life that never dies.

Who is the victor whom the angels welcome?

What mighty deeds of valour have been done?

What is the meaning of these shouts of triumph?

Why welcome this soul as a mighty one?

She's but a woman, frail and slight and tender,

No special mark of dignity she bears:

Only the Christ light from her face doth glisten:

Only the white robe of a saint she wears.

She's but a soul redeemed through the blood of Jesus.

Her's but a life of sacrifice and care;

Yet with her welcome all the Heaven's ringing,

And on her brow a victor's crown she bears.

How come she thus from sin's benighting thraldom,

The grace and purity of heaven to obtain?

Only through Him Who gave His life a ransom;

Cleansing the soul from every spot and stain.

See! As you gaze upon her face so radiant,

'Tis but the beauty of her Lord you see;

Only the image of His life resplendent;

Only the mirror of His life is she.

See with what signs of joy they bear her onward;

How that the Heavens ring with glad acclaim;

What is the shout they raise while soaring upward?

"Welcome! Thrice welcome, thou, in Jesus' Name!"

Rest in the mansion by thy Lord prepared thee,

Out of the loving deeds which thou hast done,

Furnished through thoughts and acts which have portrayed Me,

Unto a lost world as their Christ alone.

Hear how thy heavenly harp is ringing!

Touched are its strings with hands by thee unseen.

Note that the music of thine own creating

Heaven's melodies in hearts where sin has been.

See how the atmosphere with love is laden,

And that with brightness all the landscape gleams!

Know this the gladness and the joy of heaven

Shed now by rescued souls in radiant beams.

Oh, that here on earth we may learn the lesson

That Christ enthroned in our hearts while here,

Fits and prepares the soul for Heaven,

Making us like Him both there and here.

Doing the simple and homely duties

Just as our Christ on the earth has done,

Seeking alone that the Christ's own beauties

In every heart should be caused to bloom.

Showing all men that the blood of Jesus

Cleanses our hearts from all sin below,

And that the life of the Christ within us

Transforms the soul till as pure as snow.

When we thus come to the dark cold river,

No night, no darkness, no death is there,

Only great joy that at last the Giver

Grants us anew of His life to share.

LECTURE TEN

Today I want to talk to you concerning one of the remarkable and outstanding incidents in the Word of God. You will find it in the 19th Chapter of Acts and the 11th and 12th verses. It reads:

"And the Lord wrought special miracles by the hands of Paul: So that from his body were brought unto the sick handkerchiefs or aprons, and the diseases departed from them, and the evil spirits went out of them."

The people brought their handkerchiefs or aprons to the Apostle Paul that they might touch his person. They were then carried to the sick and laid upon them; the demons went out of them, and the sick were healed.

An examination of this incident discloses one of the most wonderful facts I know. First, that the Spirit of God is tangible. We think of the air as tangible; of electricity as tangible and we register the effects of it. And I want to say to you, friends, that the Spirit of God's equally as tangible and can be handled and distributed; can be enclosed in handkerchief or apron and sent as blessing to the one who needs it.

Get this Scripture and read it for yourself and secure from heaven the blessing it contains; and remember when you are in a struggle and doubts and fears assail you that God is not far away in the heavens. His Spirit is right here to bless, here to act in your life for a blessing.

Along this line I want to present this testimony of Mrs Constance Hoag, who is dean of women at the state college, Pullman, Washington. She was visiting her son at Fairfield, Washington. They were going for a motor ride. When she stepped on the running board, her son thinking she was already in the car, started the car. She fell and broke the knee cap and the bone protruded through the flesh. They carried her into the house, then called us on the long distance and asked that we pray and send her a handkerchief as soon as possible by messenger. We sent the handkerchief and in fifteen minutes after she received it the bone had gone back into place. In forty-five minutes the knee was entirely well.

However, her friends began to challenge this healing and she found herself in the midst of a strange debate. A little later almost the same accident happened again. She was thrown to the pavement and the other knee cap was broken and protruded in two sections through the flesh. Once again we prayed over a handkerchief and sent it to her, and once again the power of God acted, but this time not so quickly as the first time. The second time she said the pain was gone in half an hour; in an hour the bone had gone back in its place and in an hour and a half the knee was healed and she was well. Friends, the Spirit of God is as tangible today as it was in the days of the Apostle Paul.

LECTURE ELEVEN

This morning I was out on the extreme east side of the city. I ran across a strange thing. A man was coming down the street with a pack on his back. The pack was in a cow hide which was only about half cured. In the sack he had a cow's leg. As I came up to him he said, "Excuse me, sir, but this is my Christian cross." I said, "Excuse me, but it looks like just the opposite to me." He went down the street and as far as I could hear him he was scolding me.

Then I went to the home of a woman who had been ill a long time. She had lain in bed and was gradually growing worse, and all the time she was accepting this sickness as from God. So I told her this foolish incident; and I said, "Dear woman, if you knew the Word of God you would never accept a thing like that as the will of God, because Jesus most emphatically declared that sickness was not the will of God but the devil's." She had accepted that rotten, nasty business as God's will and had lain in bed for eight months. It is as offensive to God as the man with his "Christian cross." I want you to know, dear friends, that the Word of God is the foundation upon which our faith is to be built.

Jesus said that He came "to destroy the works of the devil." Acts 10 declares:

"How God anointed Jesus of Nazareth with the Holy Ghost and with power, who went about doing good, and healing all that were OPPRESSED OF THE DEVIL; for God was with Him."

You do not find "if it be thy will" in the teaching of Jesus. He never suggested in word or deed that sin, sickness and death were the will of God. The leper who came to Jesus for healing in the 8th of Matthew did say, "Lord, if thou wilt, thou canst make me clean." I suppose he, too, was accepting the dirty leprosy as the will of God. Jesus instantly said, "I will; be thou clean." The answer of Jesus to the leper is Jesus' answer to you, to every sick man. "If it be thy will" was never suggested in any of Jesus' teaching concerning sickness and disease. Friend, Jesus had declared His will in the most emphatic manner. His will is always to heal if you but come to Him.

Every student of the primitive Church discerns at once a distinction between the soul of the primitive Christian and the soul of the modern Christian. It lies in the spirit of Christ's dominion.

The Holy Spirit came into the primitive Christian soul to elevate his consciousness in Christ to make him a master. He smote sin, and it disappeared. He cast out devils (demons); a divine flash from his nature overpowered and cast out the demon. He laid his hands on the sick, and the mighty Spirit of Jesus Christ flamed into the body and the disease was annihilated. He was commanded to rebuke the devil, and the devil would flee from him. He was a reigning sovereign, not shrinking in fear, but overcoming by faith.

It is this spirit of DOMINION, when restored to the Church of Christ, that will bring again the glory-triumph to the Church of God throughout the world and lift her into the place where, instead of being the obedient servant of the world, the flesh, and the devil, she will become the divine instrument of God. She will minister Christ's power in salvation, in healing the sick, in the casting out of demons, and in the carrying out of the whole program of Jesus' ministry as the early Church did.

LECTURE TWELVE

I want to tell you the story of an unusual family. I am going to call this story, "Following the Trail of Jesus." A number of years ago I felt as if I wanted to do something out of the ordinary to call attention to the subject of Divine Healing. So I went to the newspapers and posted $500. Then I announced that if anyone who was sick or diseased would come to the Healing Rooms and be ministered to for thirty days, and if at the end of that time they were not substantially better or healed, they could have the $500.

Over at Monroe, Washington, was a man by the name of Paul Gering, who had got to fooling around with spiritualism. That dear fellow was an open, splendid man. He was a hardworking business man. After he got to fooling with spiritualism nobody could live with him. He was more like a raging lion than a human. He went all over the U.S. seeking deliverance from all kinds of folks who were praying for the sick.

He read my announcement and became interested. He sent me a telegram asking, me to come to Monroe and put on a meeting, and, of course, pray for him. He met Mrs Lake and me at our hotel and drove us out to his home on the outskirts of the city. He walked into his home and stopped in the middle of the dining room and fell on his knees saying, "Mr Lake, I am waiting for you to pray for me that I may be delivered." We laid hands on him and prayed, and, bless God, the power began to go through him. He was completely delivered, the demons were cast out, and he was baptized in the Spirit. From that time on hundreds of people have been saved and healed and baptized in the Holy Ghost under his ministry. Now he is a great wheat farmer in the Big Bend country. Last night I spent the evening at his home and conducted a public service for his relatives and neighbours.

Just let me follow the trail of Jesus with you in that family for a few minutes. His sons were unsaved; his daughters were unsaved. One by one, after the father's deliverance, the faith of God in his heart laid hold on God for his family. They became converted and baptized in the Spirit until his entire family, including his beloved wife, was saved and baptized in the Holy Ghost.

Mr Gering had a brother, Joe, a hard fellow and a heavy drinker. He owned a farm down in the country. His wife was distressed for she saw he was gradually losing his grip on his affairs and squandering his money, and they were getting into financial difficulty. She was a woman of prayer and was praying for him. Finally one day he came to visit Paul Gering. Paul said, "Joe, I am going to Spokane to attend Mr Lake's meeting; come and go with me." We were conducting meetings in our tabernacle. When they came, we were in the prayer room. The meeting went through without anything unusual occurring until we were practically ready to dismiss. This man, Joe Gering, was sitting on one of the back seats. A lady turned to me and asked, "Who is that man on the back seat?" I said, "That is Paul Gering's brother." She said, "The Lord told me to go and lay hands on him and pray, and he would be saved and baptized in the Holy Ghost." I said, "Then you had better go and do it, sister."

She went back to him and engaged him in conversation and finally asked if she might pray with him. He said he had no objection to her praying for him. So she laid her hands on him and began to pray, and as she did, the Spirit of God from heaven came down on him, and in a few minutes he yielded his heart to the Lord and prayed through until he got a real witness from heaven and began to rejoice in the Lord. After he rejoiced for awhile she said, "Now you ought to be baptized in tho Holy Ghost." He knelt down again and began to pray, and after a few minutes Joe Gering was baptized in the Holy Ghost. That man's soul was so full of rejoicing that he spent the entire night singing and praying and rejoicing and talking in tongues and sometimes in English. In a few days he was out among the sinful and sick and getting folks saved and healed.

Here is another portion of the story. These men had a sister who lived at Palouse, Washington. She was unfortunately married to a very wicked man. She developed a tumour, and he insisted on her being operated on. She tried to tell him that in their family the Lord always healed them. He would not listen and insisted she be operated on. They brought her to St. Luke's Hospital in Spokane and she was operated on. A dreadful infection developed and they wired to the family that she was going to die, so the family began to gather here to see her. I knew nothing of these circumstances.

I was riding up Monroe Street when the Spirit of the Lord said, "Go to St. Luke's Hospital and pray for Paul Gering's sister. She is dying." I went immediately and inquired at the office and was directed to her bedside. I laid my hands on her and began to pray, and the Spirit of the Lord came upon the woman, the infection was destroyed, and in ten minutes she was sound asleep and the next day was on the highway to a blessed recovery. These are some of the things that take place when folks get into the line of God.

Their old mother was a godly woman who lived at Palouse. She had been notified that her daughter was likely to die, and when she got the word she went into her closet and interceded with God and prayed for the daughter's deliverance. I believe before God, that when God spoke to me it was the answer to that mother's prayer. He sent help through me, and the Lord made her whole.

GERBER GIRL'S HEALING

One day Mrs Lake and I were present in a gathering of Christian people where these Gering people were and some of their neighbours. A family by the name of Gerber had a girl 17 or 18 years old. She stood up with her back to us, and I remarked to Mrs Lake, "Did you ever see such a perfect form? That girl would do for an artist's model." But when she turned around I was shocked at her appearance; I never saw anyone so cross-eyed. It was a dreadful sight.

Later I talked to the father and he told me that surgeons would not undertake to straighten her eyes. They said it was impossible, and if they undertook it she was likely to lose her eyesight. Presently the young girl came over our way and I said, "Sit down, little woman, I want to talk to you." After talking a few minutes I stood up and laid my hands on her eyes. The Spirit of God came upon her and in three minutes time those eyes were as straight as they were supposed to be. She is now married and has a beautiful home and lovely babies. Her eyes and heart are straight.

Christ is at once the sinless descent of God into man, and the sinless ascent of man into God. And the Holy Spirit is the Agent by which this is accomplished.

Tongues and interpretation (Somerset East Cape Colon, South Africa, June, 1910)

The Grace of Divine Healing, and The Secret of Miracles

Reprinted from "Good News," an up-to-date religious magazine.

The Grace of Diving Healing

Convention of Pentecostal Assemblies, Chicago, Ill. July 26, 1920.

I want to use a familiar text: "The Grace of God that bringeth salvation hath appeared to all men" (Titus 2:11). There never was a bigger word than the word "Grace." If we undertake to define and analyse its operations, that beautiful term brings the many-sided Gospel of Jesus Christ to the heart with a wonderful clearness. Sometimes we see a beautiful manifestation in the lives of men, a paroxysm of gratuitous giving forth of divine loveliness. But the Grace of Jesus Christ is not His demeanot, neither His beautiful, gratuitous-giving. The Grace of Jesus is the Divine Outflow of the Nature of God, heavenly, healing loveliness and holy balm, and it comes to the needy world, not only as a sin-saving action of God, but as a healing virtue, stealing into the natures of men, soothing away their pains, changing the very chemicalisation of their being, making them whole, and blessing them through salvation, healing and abiding rest in God. Divine Healing is no mystery. It is the definite action of the Spirit of God in the souls and bodies of men.

There is a Grace of God that rests upon a community, a Grace of God that rests upon a church, a Grace of God that rests upon an individual. In South Africa there used to be an old lady who visited our home once in a while. She was one of the sweetest, most blessed creatures I ever met; when she came into my office and sat down for five minutes she brought the consciousness of God, a restfulness and peace of mind. From her whole person there seemed to radiate the blessedness that can only be described as the Grace of God, and the very atmosphere would become pregnant with it. Sometimes when we had failed to pray down healing for a sick one the radiation of His holy healing sweetness through that dear old saint of God would make the sick one well. After I learned to appreciate the wonder of her presence, and what she brought in her soul, I used to make excuses to take her out into the dining room and show her something, real or imaginary. Then I would take her to the bedroom of my sons to show her the paper on the wall, then to the room where my daughters slept, and finally to the kitchen. I wanted her to leave that beautiful emanation of God all over the place, because, when she was gone, it seemed as if the house settled down—the noisy children ceased to disturb, and even the invisible unrest disappeared, soothed into the holy quiet by a presence that perhaps few ever took time to understand or realise. It was the Grace of God.

I was interested in our brother's little story of teh young man with suicidal intention who was saved and healed. Strangely, at Portland, we had an experience with a young woman who was on the way to the river with suicidal intention. Somehow she felt impelled to come up to our healing rooms. She sat for a little while, and we talked to her and soothed her heart and tried to get her to God. I said to Mrs. G.: "I wish there was someone who could take her and love her for a little while." She suggested Mrs. Cole, one of our Holy Ghost-filled sould, but I was reminded that she had no telephone. I said, "We will have to look to heaven, and God will send her here." Thrity minutes later Miss Cole came in and said: "Mr. Lake, you wanted me." So I took her and introduced her. I said: "Just take this woman home with you. Take her to bed with you, and put your arms around her, and let her feel your love. Let her know what the Grace of God is, not by preaching, but by contact."

So she took her home, and four days later the young woman came back, after having given her heart to God. In the meantime, God got to work on the other end of the line, and her brother came from a distant city and said: "Mother is just dying for you to come home." And she went to her home to be a blessing to her brother, sister and dear old parents and the kingdom of God. This is the same Grace of healing that flowed from the loving hands and heavenly spirit of Jesus—the very same Grace of God that healed the dumb boy last night as Sister Etter prayed, or that baptised teh man as Brother Gillespie prayed.

The Grace of God, in Jesus Christ, enriches man's heart and gives him loveliness that is unspeakable. When I was leaving South Africa, a gentleman, Lord North, came to me and said: "I want to give you a letter to my old mother, eighty-nine years old, who lives in London. When you get there, tell her this is from her son. I want you to know my mother and, if possible, pray with her." I arrived at the old lady's home and made her acquaintance—a most beautiful, wonderful woman—the very finest type of English aristocracy. There was a radiance from her mind that would bless and keep on blessing you. In the night time, to this hour, when I lie still in meditation I think of that old mother, of the radiant loveliness of her life, and can still feel that blessed aura of Christ that enriched my heart. I did not pray for her of lay my hands upon her. I only said: "Let the light and glory of Christ from your soul have power in your body." She was healed right then.

I wonder when the Lord Jesus Christ passed down the highway from Bethany to Jerusalem, if the atmosphere was not alive—pregnant with the beautiful light, beautiful life, divine presence and blessing. I haven't a bit of doubt that when someone walked down that way after Jesus passed, and breathed the air that Jesus breathed, they felt the life of God that was shed from His person, and were healed by the virtue with which the very atmosphere had become pregnant, because Christ was there. That same healing Grace permeated the atmosphere around dear old Peter, so that the sick were healed as far from him as his eventide shadow reached.

That is my ideal of a Christian heart, a Christian life, a Christian church or a Christian ministry. My soul desires, by the Grace of God, that out through these old brick walls there will flow that beautiful emanation of the Christ throughout dirty Chicago that will discover disease in every part of the city and heal both soul and body. Let our faith vitalise the Spirit and it is done. "The Grace of God that bringeth salvation," stealing into men's hearts, bringing them into that holy unity of life God meant the world to enjoy; that Jesus Christ came to reveal, and in order to obtain it, gave His precious blood as its tremendous price. "The Grace of God that bringeth salvation," the Grace of God hath appeared, bringing to man a heart made free from sin's power and control; a soul set free, a life joined to God, a consciousness of holy oneness with our Father God, through Jesus Christ. Atonement makes at-one-ment in body, soul and spirit with Christ, both in salvation through Him and in ministry for Him.

How blessed it is when once in a while we walk suddenly into the presence of one rich with the light and life of God. As we emerge from the storms of life, as we come out of the turmoil, passing into the presence of the sunlit soul, the God-lit life, instantly there comes to the heart that balm and sweetness and presence and power, indicating the presence of God, leaving upon our life a divine influence that gives us restfulness of mind, and restfulness of heart, and quiet in God, our pulse becomes normal under its power, and God is recognised, and so when we preach the Gospel of Christ we do not wait till the end of the meeting to minister this healing, but out of our hearts we give forth the heavenly love and power to whosoever will receive.

(At the close of the service a lady, also two gentlemen, announced that as these words were uttered they were instantly healed.)

We lift our hearts to heaven that this blessed Grace of God from on High may so rest over our soul that, as we fulfil the duties of this day, God's power and blessing may rest upon every heart, and like a divine benediction that Grace of God, ministered by Jesus Christ, shall so impregnate our lives that we shall go forth as sons of God to bless the hungry world, for which our Lord has died.

There is the Grace of God that goes underneath the soul of a man, that—by the blessed gift of the Spirit—lifts from the life forever the shadows and darkness that sin has brought, and takes away the corrosion that has come upon the soul of man, and, by the Grace of God, lets the heart of man understand the blessed touch of the Son of God that imparts eternal life. Blessed be His name.

"Down in the human heart,

Crushed by the tempter,

Feelings lie buried

That Grace can restore.

Touched by a loving heart,

Wakened by kindness,

Chords that were broken

Will vibrate once more."

Oh, yes, beloved, there is a Grace of God that goes underneath the life and lifts the nature of man into beautiful holiness and heavenly contact, into the consciousness of purity, the realisation of power. Blessed be His name forever!

"The healing of Christ's seamless dress Is by all beds of pian. We touch Him in life's throng and press, And we are whole again."

One morning in Spokane a distress call came from a woman on behalf of her husband. Brother Andrews, Dr. McInturff and I responded. We found the man in delirium tremens, begging his wife for just a little more whiskey, and making the usual promises that an insane man would make. We knelt by his bed, laid our hands upon him, lifted our heart in love and faith to God. "The Grace that bringeth salvation" appeared, stole into that man's soul, and in five minutes his pains were gone, the curse had departed, and he never wanted whiskey again. Later he called on me in Portland, Oregon, took my hands and poured out his tears and love for God, told of his success in life, and all the rest of the beautiful story. The Lord was not in the cyclone or teh fire or the earthquake. He is now, as then, in the still small voice and healing touch of divine gentleness.

Brother, what will you trade for the Grace of God? What else in life is worth while to him who knows the blessed secret of its heavenly action in the lives of men, by which they are delivered from sin and sickness and brought into fellowship and harmony with the living Son of God Most High? Bless His name forever and forever!

Every soul has had its own contact with God. Every soul has its own touch with God. If that touch with God has not been realto your heart yet, I want to tell you, my brother, my sister, it may become just as real in your soul as it is real in mine. It may become just as real in your heart as it has in the heart of any man in the whole world. Bless God! Mrs. Graham, our secretary, was dying of pneumonia. As I entered her home I was met by Rev. Fogwill coming out. He said: "Brother Lake, you are too late. She is gone." The flames of God came over my heart, and though she had not breathed for three minutes, the breath and power of Christ came upon her and she is continuing her ministry for God and man.

Beloved, the Christian life is a glorious doorway into God, through Jesus Christ, into the divinest secrets that the soul of man ever desired to attain. And, bless His name, you and I to-night are privileged to enter that doorway, and to know Him "Whom to know aright is eternal."

Some days past, Dr. McInturff and I were called to the bedside of a soul that was dying. She had gone out of her mind. Had become unconscious, and was then in a coma of death. Her nurse told us she had not been able to speak, hear or see for a number of days. We knelt and prayed and left, still with the feeling that God was there. That subtle action of the Spirit was not even manifested in the woman's body so far as we could tell. We could only feel the action in our heart, but we went away with the consciousness that our prayer was heard, and the work was done.

Weeks passed, and there was no sound from the woman, no voice that came to report her condition, until finally one day her mother-in-law came into the office and told how wonderfully God had delivered and healed that woman. Later the lady walked in herself, and for half an hour told of the wonderful inner action of the Spirit that went on in her life, even while we prayed. She said: "Brother, as you knelt by my bedside, I became conscious there was someone there. All I knew was that the sound of the voices was different from others. Then you proceeded to put your hands on my head, and I could feel your fingers in my hair. Something began to steal down through my brain, the awful torture gradually subsided. After a while my person became still and quiet, and I was quiet in my soul. Then I discerned that that something was an intellegence. It began to move. It talked to me about my Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ. It bade me have faith in God, and said taht I should come out of this condition, and be a blessing to my home and husband. And, brother, as it talked to me day by day, I knew it was the voice of the Holy Spirit. I have tried to be obedient to that voice, brother, and I am here because that Voice told me to come down and tell you your prayer was heard. The Grace of God that bringeth salvation hath appeared unto me, and I am now a child of God."

We had not spoken of the Grace of God "that bringeth salvation," but that living presence of the Holy Spirit that came into her heart, gave her the very words of the blessed Holy Scriptures, indicating the power in the Grace of God that not only brought salvation to the world because Christ died, but that brings salvation and healing to the hearts of men today, because Jesus Christ lives. Bless God! For "If we are saved through His death, much more are we saved through His Life."

The world is in need of a knowledge of Christ's way of salvation and healing. The whole subject of the real truth of its actuality has become greatly dimmed in the hearts of man. There is a great need of a wondrous clarifying of the spiritual atmosphere, in order that His power may be made effective to those who turn their hearts thitherward.

This, then, is part of the mission of Pentecost. Not only to declare our Christ as a Saviour and Healer, and His benefits available, but to manifest them by God's grace in daily life, through God-anointed lives and hands, and God-anointed hearts, and to carry that blessed Grace of God, and transmit it to whomsoever will. Lay your hands on the sick believer, Jesus Christ commanded it, "and they shall recover."

So I am praying that upon your souls there will come that presence of God, through Christ, that will make you realise yourself as a minister of the Lord and Saviour, Jesus Christ, with a mission from God, and that in His name you, too, my brother, you too, my sister, will go forth to carry this light and life and power to whomsoever will.

In the back of the house is a brother who always wants to apologise because he is a German, and does not speak our language properly. In his community a young man is dying of consumption. One day Mr. P. called on him; told him of his Christ, his Saviour and His power to heal. That man with his broken English was God's messenger to his neighbor.

The result was that the young man came to our healing rooms, and, like a manly fellow, said: "I am no Christian. I have not been interested in religion. I have heard that people are healed here. I am dying and have no hope. Tell me what you have to say in the shortest words you can."

I said: "Young man, God is able to deliver you. He is able to heal you. He is ready to do it right now." He replied: "I haven't a bit of faith." I said: "But I am a child of God, I am a son of God, and I have faith." And without more ado I proceeded to pray.

The man was healed. His sister was converted and healed, and other members of the family were converted. I received word telling of a movement of God in the community, whereby a dozen people are seeking God unto salvation. All because one man testified to his neighbor of the truth of Christ to-day. Verily, the old-time Gospel of salvation and healing brings old-time results for God.

"For the Grace of God that bringeth salvation hath appeared." Not only in Christ, as I said before, as a Saviour, when He gave His life for the world, but it "hath appeared" in your heart, young man—in your life, young woman—that your soul might be made free from sin's power, your body made free from the control of disease, and in very truth you should feel and know yourself to be a child of God in deed and in truth.

(The old hymn, "A sinner once came to Jesus by night." was sung, led by Brother Lake. The power of God fell upon the audience.)

When the heart call of God comes to your soul, when the blessed Spirit of God speaks to you as it does to-night, and points to you, saying: "Son, daughter, give Me thine heart," beloved, that is the time to begin your entrance into God. That is the time to call on God that by His Grace, His wondrous love and power may be revealed in your heart, and in His blessed name you, too, may be numbered among those who know Jesus Christ, Saviour and Healer, forever.

I pray that upon the souls of this precious people the blessed Spirit of God may come afresh. Many a heart has been longing for the day when they would find the presence of God, sufficient to open the doors of their nature, and break down the barriers in their life, when God might have entrance and power in their soul, and by His Grace they might truly know Him. That day has come.

The Secret of Miracles

I want to read a few words from the second chapter of Hebrews as a basis for my thought to-night. God says of man:

"Thou hast put ALL things under his feet."

Now, I am going to read what I believe to be the most startling statement in the Word of God, and doubly startling, because Jesus Himself said it. It is in the tenth of John. You and I are ready to conceive, no doubt, that by the marvellous processes revealed in the Word of God, and by the Holy Spirit, that God has an amazing purpose for man, and that Jesus Christ in very truth has made provision for man's salvation and man's exaltation to the very Throne of God.

"I said, Ye are Gods."

Sometimes when I preach a funeral sermon I tell the people that Jesus Christ marked the pathway of man from the cradle to the Throne of God; for "the Throne of God," as an heir and joint-heir with Jesus Christ our Lord, is God's purpose for every man, and so, exercising God dominion, "Ye shall reign on the earth."

In the tenth of John we find that Jesus was preaching, and He got along nicely until He made this statement:—

"I and my Father are one."

"Then the Jews took up stones again to stone him; Jesus answered them: Many good works have I showed you from my Father; for which of these works do ye stone me? The Jews answered him, saying, 'For thou, being a man, makest thyself God.' Jesus answered them, Is it not written in your law, I said, Ye are gods? If he called them gods, unto whom the Word of God came, and the Scripture cannot be broken; say ye of him, whom the Father hath sanctified, and sent into the world, Thou blasphemest; because I said, I am the Son of God?"

That reveals the divine potentiality in man. If you are going to quarrel with anyone about that statement, you will have to quarrel with the Lord. Jesus said: "Ye are gods."

Paul, in Hebrews, said:—

"What is man, that thou are mindful of him? or the son of man, that thou visiteth him? Thou madest him a little lower than the angels; thou crownedst him with glory and honor, and didst set him over the work of thy hands. Thou hast put all things in subjection under his feet." (Hebrews 2:6-8)

In the beginning of creation the Lord said: "Adam, I give you dominion over the fish of the sea, over the beasts of the field, and over the fowls of the air." And the original man, clothed in likeness of Christ, was a Ruler in earth and sea and sky.

I never could imagine that when Adam wanted the cows he went out with a club and a dog to get them. There was a dominion in his spirit that the animal kingdom recognised, that the birds knew, the fish understood. Man was God's king in the earth.

Man has fallen from his glorious position. Man has lost his high dominion. Indeed, the ravages of sin have been such that man in his spiritual capacity, in his moral nature, in his capacity for the exercise of power, has become weakened. Weakened to that degree that, instead of ruling the animal world, the animal world rules him. The elements rule him—control him. Sin chokes the virtue from his soul—Satan laughs him to scorn. Because of the weakened state of our physical being, through sin, we have become subject to the varied lasws of nature about us. We get in a draught and catch cold. We develop pneumonia. The waves toss us about. The terrors of life frighten us. All of which—through Jesus Christ—was meant to be reversed, and "in Christ" is reversed, when—through Christ's indwelling—man is restored to his former estate.

Real salvation is not mere forgiveness of sins, or the mere cleansing of the heart from sin's power, or the nominal baptism of life in the Holy Ghost. Christ's salvation is intended to bring again into the nature of man that was lost that which was lost through sin; that once again, through the divine operation of the Spirit of God, ministered to our hearts by Jesus Christ, His overcoming Son, the divine spirit and holy dominion that rules in the soul of Jesus, should rule in the nature of man. Thus, once more, by the grace of God, man takes his place before God in the state and status in which God created him in the beginning—a son of God.

So my heart is longing these days, since God commenced to teach me of His wondrous purpose by the Spirit, that you and I may in very truth begin to lift our heads, knowing that "our redemption draweth nigh." Bless God!

Beloved, the eventual purpose of Christians and Christianity is not that we be translated, and off floating into the heavens as the Bride. The Rapture, at best, is a very short period, perhaps seven years. That period will correspond in our experience with the forty days in which Jesus took the disciples after the resurrection into the mountains of Galilee, where He had them alone, where He could teach them of the higher things of God, that had been evolved in His soul through His experience in teh Regions of Death. So that when He came forth from the grave the great soul of the Son of God was waiting for the opportunity to pour out His resurrection life—to give the balm to His disciples—and the very first time they came together He "breathed on them and said, Receive ye the Holy Ghost." He was breathing the new dominion, born in His soul through His victory over death and hell, into them.

Sin always has the same action in a man's life. Sin produces fear. Fear causes the spirit of man to lose its sense of dominion. It causes the mind of man to become subjective. It causes the person of man, the body of man, to become subservient and absorbent. When the Christ ceases to reign, and the consciousness of dominion is gone from the spirit of a man, all his nature changes; his whole attitude toward life is changed. Instead of being God's prince, ruling by the dominion of Christ, his nature is made subjective and subservient to the conditions about him.

If you could examine the very structure of the mind, you would observe that when a man is filled with fear, instead of being repellent and dominant, instantly he is made subjective. His head drops, his face grows pale, fear comes into his eyes—his whole demeanor is changed. And if you could examine the pores of his flesh during such a time you would discover that the divine aura—the holy radiation of the Spirit of God, that He purposed should radiate from the pores of the whole body—had ceased, and, instead, there was a reverse action. He is drawing to himself, the spirit around him, whether that spirit be disease or mental torment, or whatever the condition, he is taking the curse to himself.

But the instant fear is banished and faith from God comes, the whole nature is changed by the power of its indwelling. Instantly his spirit is dominant—his mind positive. His person repels and rejects every form of darkness and disease by the outflow and emanation of the Spirit of God through the pores of the flesh.

Beloved, it is my conviction that when Satan came to the Lord Jesus Christ he talked to Him from a respectful distance. In Satan's complaint to God concerning Job, he says: "Hast not thou made an hedge about him, and about his house, and about all that he hath on every side?" Why, God was not standing out with a gun to keep the Serpent from stealing his she-asses. But God had established in the soul of Job the dominion of God. His very body radiated the divine aura, or Holy Ghost power. He was God's prince—God's king—and so long as that condition of dominion remained in his soul, no power of darkness could touch him—not even the things he possessed were in danger. He was God's king.

But right away, when that condition chagned, and Job commenced to scratch himself with an old piece of pottery, and his spirit was drooping, his mind subjective, and his body covered with boils in consequence, his spirit could not rise into that high place in God, until once again God came and comforted him by His word, and strengthened him by the mightiest sermon that ever was preached to a human soul. Under its magic power his spirit lifted into God again—he was master once more, forgot himself, realised the deficiency in his friends, prayed for them, and his deliverance came.

The objective of Christianity is the kingdom of the Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ in this world. When this world is changed by the power of God—when earth becomes a part of heaven, and the same conditions that now prevail in heaven are here in the world—will it not be wonderful? Will it not be splendid to go around Chicago and have no bad smells coming up from the alleys?—but it will be just as sweet as heaven.

But somebody will have to go out and clean them up. Sure they will. There will be something told you to do in the Kingdom. You will not always be floating around in the air and singing "Hallelujah!" when we return with Jesus to enjoy His Kingdom. Perhaps the Lord will put me with some street-cleaning gang, to get Chicago cleaned up. I do not know. Earth is to become a part of heaven. There are to be "days of heaven on the earth."

Now, that explains why itis that Christianity is defferent from every other form of religion. Christianity provides a resurrection, because Christianity has need of a resurrection. With other forms of religion, existence is purely in the spirit. The individual has no body—has no use for a body—because he has no place where a body will be valuable. But, bless God! when earth becomes a part of heaven, Christianity has need of a body—a risen body, a resurrected body, a God-anointed body! a golrified body!

Now someone is wondering what all this has to do with The Secret of Miracles. Beloved, this is what it has to do with it. God has to bisabuse the mind of man of that which the Devil has promulgated from time immemorial, and particularly through the Church—that man is a vile worm, without value, and that hell was created for his particular reception, and it is the only place that he is fitted for. Don't believe is! It is the Devil's lie. God never created hell for man. Somebody says, "Brother, what did he create it for?" To receive the dirt and filth of hell. That is, the receptacle for your cancers and tumors, your sins and diseases and sicknesses, and every other accursed thing that ever inhabited the nature of man. Just the same as the old valley on Hinnom, outside of Jerusalem, was used to dump the garbage in, and they burned it up. But they did not carry the people of Jerusalem to the old valley to burn them up. No! They carried out the rottenness, filth and dirt.

But God has a purpose for you, and God has a purpose for me. God's exalted purpose for us is to take us into fellowship with the Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ—to make us brothers of our Lord. He is our elder brother. He is the one who strengthens the younger brother. He pushes us forward, encourages our soul, says to us when we are discouraged, "Go on. You can win. I am at your back."

Beloved, lift up your heads. My! if there are any people on earth who ought to walk with uplifted heads, and uplifted hearts, surely it is the man and woman who claim to be anointed in teh Holy Ghost, with the Christ-conquering power power of the Glorified Son of God in blood and brain.

I am so anxious these days that, somehow, God will help us, that the divine dignity, the moral strength, the heavenly power and purity, the divine character and holy nature that God revealed through Jesus Christ as our inheritance, will be realised, and we will walk with our Lord, and we will talk with our Lord, and exercise God government over sin and sickness, know and reveal His all-conquering grace.

Oh, that is my conception of Christ's salvation. That is what the Baptism of the Holy Ghost reveals to me. That is the way my spirit interprets the precious Spirit of Jesus Christ. That is the revelation that Jesus brought from heaven for the world that was down—for the world in sin. Oh, beloved, not confessing your sins because somebody is behind you with the club of hell, but because the Lord Jesus Christ is revealing in your soul the God possibility and quality of your nature, and that, instead of being in the likeness of Christ, as He intended you to be, you have sold yourself out to the world and the flesh and teh Devil, and you are covered with dirt and shame, and debased in your nature. Rise, beloved, rise up to victory!

That wonderful strain runs all through the Word, where God endeavors to encourage mankind to rise out of his debased condition, and let the mighty action of the heavenly Spirit in the soul of him, in the spirit of him, in the body of him—make him God's new man, like the Christ the Son of God.

Once in my life I was very ill—ill unto death. Had reasoned it out in my heart that, unless God came, my time was short. Long before, I had put myself into God's hands, and committed my body and soul and spirit to Him. When I gave myself to God I gave my body, as well as my soul and my spirit, to God, and that meant for me that I would trust God, and God only, and that I would die before I would violate my covenant with God. My healing must come direct from God. So I said, "If I have got to die, I will die like a man and like a Christian." And He lifted me.

You know there used to be a beautiful Christian death beds. That was before the days of narcotics and hypodermic needles. There are no Christian death beds these days. They cannot talk to their families, let alone their God.

(Voices in audience: "That's so!")

Christian death beds are a thing of the past. The glory of God came to the old saints, and they waited with anticipation for that hour when their spirits were liberated. When heaven was nearer, their spiritual senses keener, their perceptive powers clarified—then they told of God and heaven, of home and waiting angels.

When I was a boy of about sixteen, I was invited to the bedside of a young lady who was dying. When I got there I found a group of young people there. We knew nothing of praying for healing. We had just come at her request. She wanted to tell us the glories of God that had come to her dying vision, and she could not pass out until she had. She desired to inspire our hearts to be true. And I think of that little Parker girl to this day, as she talked to us of the glory of God, and the impress it left on my heart was life-lasting. And after I left that room I walked with a soft tread for many a day. I was walking in a new presence, a new realisation, a consciousness that God was not so far away, and that heaven was just as close to Jesus Christ was to the Christian heart.

Beloved, it is that purpose of God, and that possibility of heavenly union with Jesus Christ, that is the whole key to the secret of miracles. Oh, it is because your soul and the soul of the Son of God cease to be two souls any longer, and you become one—His life breathed into you—His Dominion, not a word, but a fact in your soul.

Jesus Christ on the Mount of Transfiguration is God's eternal pattern of how much man may become absorbed in, reflect, and reveal God. Why, when Jesus was transfigured before them, His clothes became white and glistening—His face shone as the light. There is a touch there that I have always blessed God for. The Word says it took place while He prayed. While He was praying He was transfigured. It reveals the power of prayer. It reveals the quality in the nature of man to become identified in oneness with God, so that the glories of God are not shining upon him from heaven, but radiation out of him. God resident in man, shining forth.

It reveals again that man is the divinest instrument in all God's creation for revelation of God—that the living Spirit of God energises him, leaps from him as the lightnings. Dear brother, dear sister, let me encourage your heart. Everything in the Word of God that ever was possible to the Lord Jesus Christ is likewise possible to the Christian. God never meant to establish Christians on one plane and Christ on another. He purposed by God's grace and by the Holy Ghost to come into our heart to lift us up, to develop us, and bring us up into God until we stand togehter on Christ's plane. Not Christ coming down to our debased state, but our debased condition giving way to the divine operation of the Holy Ghost in our life, until we stand exalted in the Lord Jesus Christ—Christ conquerors, Christ revealers.

In 1909 I preached one day from this platform on one of my return trips from Africa. I never will forget that day. While I was preaching the Spirit came upon Brother Sinclair, until his face became radiant—until all his spirit was flaming in God. And he arose and gave a prophetic message in the Holy Ghost that left an impress on my soul from that day to this. When I think of Rev. John Sinclair, that is the vision I try to keep in my heart—that God-exalted man, that Spirit lifted up in God, that nature flaming with God's divine power and presence.

Yea, beloved, the Lord found us. We were in sickness, in sin, and in shame, and, by the grace of God, He healed us from our sickness, and He cleansed us from our sin. Then He came and indwelt heart and life, and lives in us and undertakes to transform our nature and our character, our very persons and being, that our spirit and our soul and our body and our blood may become spirit of His Spirit, soul of His soul, flesh of His flesh, bone of His bone, and blood of His blood.

Oh, bless God, that is the Pentecost I read about in the New Testament. It is this that came down from heaven, and that is the life to which our Lord calls you and me to-day. I am trying these days to cuddle up close to the heart of God, where I can feel the pulse of His soul, the pressure of His hands, and His encouragement, saying, "Come on, my boy, this is the way, this is the way!"

Dear ones, I want to say that it is because God sent His blessed Holy Spirit from heaven, baptised and quickened and sensitised our hearts to understand God, that you and I to-day possess this holy vision and this heavenly possibility. And I care not what the difficulties have been in the years that are past, I know that God is speaking from heaven anew, and the hearts of the people never responded with more keenness than our hearts respond to-day to God's highest call.

Beloved, I tell you the days of darkness and weariness are passing, and God, by His gracious goodness, is leading us out into the Highway of Holiness in the Lord Jesus Christ.

TONGUES AND INTERPRETATION

Unto Thee this night, our precious God and King, we give forth from our souls the very richest—yea, God, the very sweetest—that our nature possesses. We bless Thee with the love of saints, we bless Thee with the love of brothers. Oh, Christ, we bless Thee with the joy of redeemed, and, blessed Lord, our hands are given to Thee all anew for God's high purpose. Amen.

God is identifying us with Jesus Christ in all the possibilities of His nature. One day the disciples were discussing matters with Jesus, and Jesus turned to them and said: "I have a baptism to be baptised with," and then he questioned them whether they were able to receive it. And they answered, "Lord, we are able."

So it went along until the night of His crucifixion, when they were together. Presently Jesus took the cup when He had drunk, saying: "My blood in the New Testament." Listen! Get the force of it. That was Jesus' pledge that His very blood was given for the life of the world. And just as men have done from time immemorial, so Jesus Christ Himself took that cup, sanctified it unto the highest and holiest, raised it to His lips, saying: "My blood in the New Testament." And when He had drunk to that pledge, He turned to Peter and the others, and, giving it to them, He said: "Drink ye, all of it." And they drank with His saying in their hearts, "My blood in the New Testament."

What does it mean when a man drinks to another's pledge? It means that he has entered into oneness and fellowship and understanding with him, according to the words of the uttered pledge. And when Peter took the cup, it meant for Peter, "My blood in the New Testament." And when John took it, it meant for John, "My blood in the New Testament." And when Matthew took it, it meant, "My blood in the New Testament." The became one with the Sone of God in His redemptive life, and pledged their faithfulness to Christ forever; that, just as He gave His blood to redeem mankind, so they would give their blood to rescue mankind.

Beloved, that is what it should mean to every intelligent Christian the world over. You may have partaken of it in ignorance, like thousands and tens of thousands have done, but the quickened soul, the God-anointed heart, sees the purpose of Jesus—to bring the Church into divine identity with Himself for the salvation of the world.

So, beloved, it means to my soul, "My blood in the New Testament," and it means to your soul—if you have entered into that same fellowship with Him—"My blood in the New Testament." Once more, it means that the words of Jesus are made a reality, "Be thou faithful even unto death, and I will give thee the crown of life."

Beloved, that is the secret of miracles. The power of God is in a consecration like that. The lightnings of Jesus are there. The fellowship with the Son of God is there. The anointing of God-power is there.

One Kingly One came from the Throne of God in heaven to earth, to give us the everlasting pattern of a Son of God. And, by His grace, my heart is reaching, my soul is reaching and asking that His operation in me may be with power and success, making me like Himself in body and soul and spirit. Identifying my nature with His own in life, in death, in resurrection power and everlasting dominion, giving meaning to the Word of God, "Thou hast put all things in subjection under his feet." "I said, Ye are gods."

Collected Sermons and Teachings

God's Way of Healing

God's way of healing is a person, not a thing. Jesus said. "I am the way, the truth, and the life." And He has ever been revealed to His people in all the ages by the Covenant Name, Jehovah Rophi, or, "I am the Lord that healeth thee," (John 14:6 and Exodus 15:26)

The Lord Jesus Christ is still the healer. He can not change, for "He is the same yesterday, today, and forever," and He is still with us, for He said, "Lo, I am with you always, even unto the end of the world." (Hebrews 13:8 and Matthew 28:20.) Because He is unchangeable, and because He is present, in Spirit, just as when in the flesh. He is the healer of His people.

Divine Healing rests on Christ's Atonement. It was prophesied of Him, "Surely He hath borne our grief, (Hebrew, sicknesses) and carried our sorrows, and with His stripes we are healed," and it is expressly declared that this was fulfilled in His ministry of Healing, which still continues. (Isaiah 53:4,5 Matt. 8:17)

Diseases can never be God's will. It is the Devil's work consequent on sin, and it is impossible for the work of the Devil ever to be the will of God. Christ came to destroy the works of the Devil and when He was on earth He, "healed every sickness and every disease," and all these diseases are expressly declared to have been the "oppression of the Devil." (1 John 3:8 Matt. 4:23 and Acts 10:38.)

The gifts of Healing are permanent. It is expressly declared that the "gifts and callings of God are without repentance," and the Gifts of Healing are amongst the nine Gifts of the Spirit to the Church. (Romans 11:29 and 1 Corinthians 12:8–11)

There are four modes of Divine Healing. The first is the direct prayer of faith: the second, intercessory prayer of two or more: the third, the anointing of the elders with the prayer of faith; and fourth, the laying on of hands by those who believe, and whom God has prepared and called to that ministry. (Matthew 8:5-13 Matthew 18:19 James 5:14,15 Mark 16:18.)

Multitudes have been healed through faith in Jesus. The writer knows of thousands of cases and has personally laid hands on scores of thousands of persons. Full information can be obtained at the meetings and Healing Rooms, 340 Rookery Bldg. Spokane, Washington. Also at the Masonic Temple meetings each Lord's day at 11 A.M. and 3 P.M. and in many pamphlets which give the experience, in their own words, of many who have been healed in this and other countries.

"Faith cometh by hearing, and hearing by the Word of God." You are heartily invited to attend and hear for yourself.

Triune Salvation

This sermon was delivered in London, England, by Rev, John G. Lake at a conference of Church of England ministry, presided over by Ingram, Bishop of London, who said, "It contains the spirit of primitive Christianity and reveals the distinction between the Christian soul of the first and twentieth century, the spirit of Christ dominion, by which primitive Christianity attained its spiritual supremacy. It is one of the greatest sermons I have ever heard and I recommend its careful study by every priest."

"Mr Lake had been invited to address us and has travelled 7000 miles to be here. A committee of the Church of England was sent to South Africa to investigate Mr Lake, his work, his power, teaching and ministry, and his presence here is the result of their satisfactory report."

Sermon delivered at London, England, and Washington D. C. by Rev. John G. Lake.

Text: "I pray God your spirit and soul and body be preserved blameless (without defilement, corruption) unto the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ. Faithful is he that calleth You, who also will do it." (1 Thessalonians 5:23-24)

In the beginning of all things, even before the creation of man at all, there was a condition in which all things that then existed were obedient to God. Angels were obedient to the Lord. But there came a time when angels themselves rebelled against the government of God. In Isaiah Satan is spoken of as "Lucifer, son of the morning." Again the Word says in substance concerning him, "Wast thou not pure and holy until pride was found in thine heart?"

Pride was the condition which, in the angel who was pure and holy, generated the desire to be separated from God, and to rebel against Him.

It was the same pride, or desire to substitute his will for the will of God, which caused Adam to sin. From Adam humanity has derived the same instinctive desire to insist on their way instead of God's way; through the continued exercise of the human will and the world's way, the race has drifted into misty conceptions of the real will and the real way of God. This is particularly true in regard to the nature and substance of God.

It seems difficult to think of Him as a being and a substance. God is Spirit, but Spirit is a materiality. And God Himself is a materiality, a heavenly, not an earthly materiality. The forms of angels are a substance otherwise they would not be discernible. It is not an earthly substance or material, but a heavenly one.

As we think of the substance of which heavenly beings are composed, and of which God Himself must necessarily be a composition, the mind settles on light and fire and spirit as a possibility.

Then the Word tells us that God breathed into Adam the breath of life, and man became a living soul. There came a time when God made man. The Word tells us, "He made man's body of the substance of the earth." He made man, the Word says, "in His own image, in the image of God created He him;" not just in the form that God was, but God breathed into him His own self, His own being: that heavenly materiality of which God consists. He injected, or breathed, Himself into the man, and the man then became a composition of that heavenly substance, or materiality, and earth, or the substance of earth.

Adam was the created Son of God. He was just like God. He was just as pure as God was pure. God fellowshipped with him. The Word of God tells us that God came down into the garden in the cool of the day, and walked with Adam, and talked with Adam. There was perfect fellowship between God and Adam. He was a sinless man. He could look right into the face of God, and his eyes nor his spirit did not draw back. The purity of God did not startle him. He was just as pure as God was pure. That was the original man.

Man being composed of God, of heaven, of a heavenly materiality, and his body of the earth, being a sovereign like God, being on an equality with God in sinlessness, God treating him on an equality and giving him dominion over the earth, man as a reigning sovereign on the earth. Everything, all conditions, spiritual and physical, were subject to that God-man. The way of sin was this, that man chose to follow the inclinations of his earth-being, animal consciousness, or body, instead of his God-man, God-being, or spirit. The result was that because of the suggestion of Satan there developed calls of the earth for the earthly. After awhile he partook of things earthly and became earthly himself. Therefore the fall of man was his fall into himself. He fell into his own earthly self, out of his heavenly estate, and the separation was absolute and complete.

God had said, "In the day that thou sinnest, thou shalt die." That is, in the day thou sinnest, partaking of that which is earthy, the conditions of the earth, being that of decay, the death process begins. So death reigneth from the time that sin came. Sickness is incipient death. Death is the result of sin. There is no sickness in God. There never was, there never will be, there never can be. There was no sickness in man, in the God-man, until such time as he became the earth-man, until by the operation of will he sank into himself and became of the earth, earthy. Therefore, sin is the parent of sickness in that broad sense. Sickness is the result of sin. There could have been no sickness if there had been no sin.

Man, having fallen into that condition and being separated from God, needed a Redeemer. Redemption was a necessity because the Word says, "Ye must be born again." God had to provide a means of getting man back into the original condition in which he had once been. One man can not save another because one man is of the earth, earthy, even as another is, and man in the natural can not save another. One can not elevate another into a spiritual condition or put that one in a spiritual condition which is not in himself.

Thus it became necessary for God, in order to redeem the race, to provide a means of reuniting God and man. So Jesus was born, even as Adam had been made. He was begotten of God. He was born of God, but he partook of the tendencies of the natural life and received his natural physical body through his mother, Mary. The Word of God speaks of the first Adam and the last Adam. They were both Adams. They both came to produce a race. The first Adam had fallen and sinned. Therefore the race that was produced through him was a race of sinful people with the same tendencies in their natures which were in his.

The last Adam, Jesus, had no sin. He had exactly the same privilege that the first Adam had. He could have sinned if he so chose. Jesus was a man in this world just as every man is. "He took not on Him the nature of angels, but He took on Him the seed of Abraham." (Hebrews 2:16) He did not take upon Him a heavenly condition. He took upon himself the natural condition of the human family: fallen human nature.

But Jesus Christ triumphed over that condition of fallen human nature and did not sin, though the Word of God emphasises that, "He was tempted in all points like as we are, yet without sin" (Hebrews 4:15). The Word also says, "Having been tempted, He is able to succour (or to save, or deliver) them that are tempted, having Himself been tempted even as we are tempted." (Hebrews 2:18) This is what makes Him a sympathetic Saviour and Christ.

The purpose of Jesus in the world was to show us the Father. So Jesus came and committed Himself publicly at His baptism at the Jordan before all the world in these words, "unto all righteousness," to do the will of God. He willed not to obey his own natural human will but to do the will of the Father, and to be wholly and solely and entirely obedient to the will of God. He declared, "I came not to do mine own will, but the will of him that sent me."

When a Christian is born of God, and becomes a real Christian, he is made a Christ-man. If the world wants to see Jesus, it must look upon the Christian, who is the Christ-man, just as we who want to look upon the Father, and understand Him, look upon the man Jesus, who was the embodiment of the Father. Everything that Jesus did was the will and the word of the Father. So everything the Christian does, if he is a real one, should be the will and word of Jesus Christ. The Christ-man commits himself as entirely to the will of Jesus, and becomes a Christ-man as Jesus, committed Himself to the will of the Father, and became a God-man.

A low standard of Christianity is responsible for all the shame and sin and wickedness in the world. Many Christians think it is all right if they pattern after Jesus in a sort of way. They imitate Him and they do the things which He did; that is, they outwardly do them. They perform kind acts and they do other things which Jesus did. But the secret of Christianity is not in doing. The secret is in being. Real Christianity is in being a possessor of the nature of Jesus Christ. In other words, it is being Christ in character, Christ in demonstration, Christ in agency of transmission. When one gives himself to the Lord and becomes a child of God, a Christian, he is a Christ-man. All that he does and all that he says from that time on, should be the will and the words and the doings of Jesus, just as absolutely, just as entirely, as He spoke and did the will of the Father.

Jesus gave us the secret of how to live this kind of life. Jesus showed us that the only way to live this life was to commit oneself, as He did, to the will of God and not walk in his own ways at all, but walk in God's ways. So the one who is going to be a Christ-man in the best sense and let the world see Jesus in him, must walk in all the ways of Jesus, and follow Him, he must be a Christ-man, a Christian, or Christ-one.

Therefore, the things which possess the heart and which are unlike God fasten themselves because the inner being is not subject to the will of God. One of the reasons for this low standard of Christian living is the failure to recognise the trinity of our own being. Man is triune - body and soul and spirit - just the same as God is triune, being Father and Son and Holy Ghost.

Salvation begins at the time when the spirit is surrendered to God, where the name is written in the Book of Life, and we receive the conscious knowledge of sins being forgiven. Then God witnesses to the spirit that our sins are blotted out. The Word, in the eighth of Romans, says: "His spirit beareth witness with our spirit that we are the children of God." That is, the testimony of the Spirit of God to our spirit is that we are the children of God when we surrender our spirits to God.

People wonder why, after having given their hearts to God and after having received a witness of the spirit, they are troubled with evil desires and tempted in evil ways. The nature has three departments, and therefore, the surrender of the spirit to God is not all that He demands. God demands also the mind and the body.

The mind is the soul life; and it continues being of the earth and doing earthy things until God does something to that mind, until we seek God for a new mind. It is similar to the change which occurs in the spirit; and the mind that formerly thought evil and that had wicked conceptions becomes as the mind of Christ.

The Church at large recognises the salvation of the spirit. But they have not recognised the salvation of the mind from the power of sin, and that is why many Church people will say there is no such thing as sanctification.

There are Christian bodies that believe in the power of God to sanctify the mind, even as the spirit is saved. John Wesley, in defining sanctification, says that it is, "Possessing the mind of Christ, and all the mind of Christ." An individual with all the mind of Christ can not have a thought that is not a Christ thought, no more than a spirit-fully surrendered to God could have evil within it.

In later years, as the revelation by the Spirit of God has gone on, man has begun to see that there is a deeper degree of salvation than these two. He is a triune being. As he needed salvation for the mind and spirit, so he has a body which needs to be transformed by God. The whole question of physical healing, the redemption of the body, the possible translation, the resurrection, are included there.

Christ is a Saviour of the whole man; of spirit, of soul, of body. When Jesus, at the Jordan, committed Himself unto all righteousness to His Father, He committed His body just as He committed His mind and just as He committed His spirit. Christians have not been taught to commit their bodies to God, and therefore they feel justified in committing them to someone else or something else, rather than to God.

Therefore, it is clear that in a whole salvation it is just as offensive to God to commit the body to the control of man, as it would be to commit the spirit to man for salvation. Salvation for the spirit can only come through Jesus, through the blood of Christ, through receiving His Spirit. Salvation from natural thoughts and ways, and the operation of the natural mind, can only come through the natural mind being transformed into the mind of Christ. Salvation for the body is found in the same manner, by committing the body now and forever to God.

No one would think of sending to any other power than God for a remedy for the spirit. There is no spirit that one could go to, unless it is the spirit of the world or the spirit of the devil; and one goes not to either of these for the healing of the spirit or mind.

The real Christian is a separated man. He is separated forever unto God in all the departments of his life, and so his body and his soul and his spirit are forever committed to God. Therefore, from the day that he commits himself to God, his body is as absolutely in the hands of God as his spirit or his mind (soul). He can go to no other power for help or healing, except to God. This is what gives such tremendous force to such Scriptures as this, "Cursed be the man that trusteth in man, and maketh flesh his arm and whose heart departeth from the Lord." 2 Chronicles 16 relates that Asa, the king of Israel, who in the thirty and ninth year of his reign, became diseased in his feet, and in his disease he trusted not the Lord, but the physicians, and he died. Asa had been trusting God for many years, by taking his little, insignificant army and delivering the great armies into his hand. But when he became diseased in his feet, he trusted not the Lord, but the physicians, and that was the offense of Asa against God.

The impression I wish to leave is this, that an hundredfold consecration to God takes the individual forever out of the hands of all but God. This absolute consecration to God, this triune salvation, is the real secret of the successful Christian life.

When one trusts any department of his being to man, he is weak in that respect, and that part of his being is not committed to God. When we trust our minds (soul) and our bodies to man, two parts are out of the hands of God, and there remains only our spirits in tune with heaven. It ought not to be so, The committing of the whole being to the will of God is the mind of God. Blessed be His Name.

Such a commitment of the being to God puts one in the place, where just as God supplies health to the spirit and health to the soul, he trusts God to supply health to his body. Divine healing is the removal by the power of God of the disease that has come upon the body, but divine health is to live day by day and hour by hour in touch with God so that the life of God flows into the body, just as the life of God flows into the mind or flows into the spirit.

The Christian, the child of God, the Christ-man, who thus commits himself to God ought not to be a subject for healing. He is a subject of continuous, abiding, health. And the secret of life in communion with God, the Spirit of God, is received into the being, into the soul, into the spirit.

The salvation of Jesus was a redemption of the whole man from all the power of sin, every whit: sin in the spirit, sin in the soul, sin in the body. If salvation or redemption is from the power of sin and every sin in our being, then the effects that sin produces in us must disappear and leave when the source is healed. Thus, instead of remaining sick, the Christian who commits his body to God becomes at once, through faith, the recipient of the life of God in his body.

Jesus gave us an example of how perfectly the Spirit of God radiates not only from the spirit or from the mind but from the body also. The transfiguration was a demonstration of the Spirit of God from within the man radiating out through his person, until the illumination radiated through his clothes, and his clothes became white and glistening, and his face shone as the light. It was the radiation of God through his flesh.

In a few instances God permitted me to see Christians thus illuminated in a measure. I am acquainted with a brother in Chicago, whose face is illuminated all the time; there is a radiation from it. His countenance is never seen in a condition of depression or as if the pores of his flesh are closed. There is an unmistakable something that marks him as one through whom the Spirit of God radiates.

God radiated through the purified personality of Jesus so that even his very clothes became white and glistening. Christians are Christ-men and stand in the stead of Jesus. The Word of God says to the Christian and to the Church, "Ye are His body." The accumulated company of those who know Jesus, who really have the God-life within, are the body of Christ in the world, and through that body of Christ all the ministry of Jesus is operative.

The nine gifts of the Holy Ghost are the divine equipment of God by which the Church, His body, is forever to continue to do the works of Jesus. "To one is given the word of wisdom, to another the word of knowledge, to another the distinguishing of spirits, to another faith, to another the gifts of healing, to another working of miracles, to another prophecy, to another tongues, and to another the interpretation of tongues." All these gifts Jesus exercised during His earthly ministry. The people who exercise these gifts create another practical Christ, the Church which is His body, Christ being the head.

Then this truth is seen, Christianity will be on a new-old basis. The illumination of God, the consciousness of our position in the world, the consciousness of our responsibility as the representatives of Christ, places upon us as Christ-men and Christ-women the burden of Christ for a lost world. Of necessity this lifts the heart and spirit into a new contact with God and the consciousness that if a son of God, if a Christ-man to the world, then one must be worthy of his Christ. The only way to be worthy is to be in the will of Jesus.

Men have mystified the gospel; they have philosophised the gospel. The gospel of Jesus is as simple as can be. As God lived in the body and operated through the man Jesus, so the man on the throne, Jesus, operates through His body, the Church, in the world. Even as Jesus Himself was the representative of God the Father, so also the Church is the representative of Christ. As Jesus yielded Himself unto all righteousness, so the Church should yield herself to do all the will of Christ.

"These signs shall follow them that believe," not the preacher, or the elder, or the priest, but the believer. The believer shall speak in new tongues, the believer shall lay hands on the sick and they shall recover. The believer is the body of Christ in the world. The Word says, "There shall be Saviours in Zion." As Jesus took us and lifted us up to the Father, and as He takes the Church and lifts it to the Father, and gave Himself to sanctify and cleanse it, so the Christian takes the world and lifts it up to the Christ, to the Lamb of God that taketh away the sin of the world.

The wonderful simplicity of the gospel of Jesus is itself a marvel, The wonder is that men have not understood always the whole process of salvation. How was it that men mystified it? Why is it that we have not lived a better life? Because our eyes were dim and we did not see and we did not realise that God left us here in this world to demonstrate Him, even as the Father left Jesus in the world to demonstrate the Father.

The man with Christ in him, the Holy Ghost, is greater than any other power in the world. All other natural and evil powers are less than God; even Satan himself is a lesser power. Man with God in him is greater than Satan. That is the reason that God says to the believer, he shall cast out devils. "Greater is He that is in you than he that is in the world." The Christian, therefore, is a ruler; he is in the place of dominion, the place of authority, even as Jesus was. Jesus, knowing that all power had been given unto Him, took a basin and a towel, and washed His disciples' feet. His power did not exalt Him. It made Him the humblest of all men. So the more a Christian possesses, the more of a servant he will be. God is the great servant of the world. The one who continually gives to men the necessity of the hour. Through His guidance and direction of the laws of the world, He provides for all the needs of mankind. He is the great servant of the world, the greatest of all servants.

Yea, Jesus, knowing that all power had been committed to Him, and as God gave the power to Jesus, so Jesus commits through the Holy Ghost, by His own Spirit, all power to man.

I tell you, beloved, it is not necessary for people to be dominated by evil, nor by evil spirits. Instead of being dominated, Christians should exercise dominions and control other forces. Even Satan has no power over them, only as they permit him to have. Jesus taught us to close the mind, to close the heart, to close the being against all that is evil; to live with an openness to God only, so that the sunlight of God shines in, the glory radiance of God shines in, but everything that is dark is shut out. Jesus said: "Take heed how you hear," not what you hear. One can not help what he hears, but he can take heed how he hears. When it is something offensive to the Spirit and the knowledge of God, shut the doors of the nature against it, and it will not touch you. The Christian lives as God in the world, dominating sin, evil, sickness. Bless God. I would to God, He would help us to so present Jesus in the true light, that this Church, and the Church that is in the world, the Christian body, would be lifted up until they would realise their privilege in Christ Jesus. Bless God, it is coming.

By the God within we cast out or expel from the being that which is not God-like. If you find within your heart a thought of sin or selfishness, by the exercise of the Spirit of God within you, you cast that thing out as unworthy of a child of God, and you put it away from you.

Beloved, so should we do with our bodies. So must we do when sickness or the suggestion of sickness is present with us. Cast it out as evil; it is not of God. Dominate it! Put it away! It is not honouring to Jesus Christ that sickness should possess us. We do not want disease. We want to be gods. Jesus said, "I said ye are gods." It is with the attitude of gods in the world that Jesus wants the Christian to live. Blessed be His Name!

Evil is real. The devil is real. He was a real angel. Pride changed his nature. God is real. The operation of God within the heart changes the nature until we are new men in Christ Jesus, new creatures in Christ Jesus. The power of God, the Holy Ghost, is the Spirit of dominion. It makes one a god. It makes one not subject to the forces of the world, or the flesh, or the devil. These are under the Christians' feet. John said, "Beloved, now are ye the sons of God."

Beloved, God wants us to come, to stay, and to live in that abiding place which is the Christian's estate. This is the heavenly place in Christ Jesus. This is the secret place of the most high. Bless God!

The Word of God gives us this key. It says, "That evil one toucheth him not." When the Spirit of God radiated from the man Jesus, I wonder how close it was possible for the evil spirit to come to him? Do you not see that the Spirit of God is as destructive of evil as it is creative of good? It was impossible for the evil one to come near him, and I feel sure Satan talked to Jesus from a safe distance.

It is the same with the Christian. It is not only in his spirit that he needs to be rid of sin, nor only in his soul that he is to be pure. It is God in the body that the individual needs for a well body. It is just God that he needs.

The complaint of the devil concerning Job was, "Hast thou not built a hedge about him?" He was not able to get through that hedge to touch the man. Don't you know that the radiation of the Spirit of God around the Lord Jesus was His safeguard? The artists paint a halo around the head of Jesus. They might just as well put it about his hands, feet, body, because the radiation of the Spirit of God is from all the being.

Now the Spirit of God radiates from the Christian's Person because of the indwelling Holy Ghost and makes him impregnable to any touch or contact of evil forces. He is the subjective force himself. The Spirit of God radiates from him as long as his faith in God is active. "Resist the devil and he will flee from you." "For this purpose the Son of God was manifested, that He might destroy the works of the devil." "Whatsoever is born of God overcometh the world, even our faith." "Who is he that overcometh the world but he that believeth that Jesus is the Son of God?" The reason people become sick is the same reason that they become sinful. They surrender to the suggestion of the thing that is evil, and it takes possession of the heart.

Sickness is just the same. There is no difference. The suggestion of oppression is presented, and becoming frightened, the disease secures a foothold. "In my Name they (the believer) shall cast out devils." The believer says, "In the Name of Jesus Christ I refuse to have this thing."

For 15 years God has let me move among all manner of contagious diseases and I have never taken one of them. The devil could not make me take them. I have prayed with small pox patients when the postules would burst under the touch of my hands. I have gone home to my wife and babies and never carried contagion to them. I was in the "secret place of the most High." Indeed contact with diphtheria, smallpox, leprosy, and even bubonic plague, and the whole range of diseases, was in line of my daily work in connection with the work of the Apostolic Church of South Africa.

"Behold I give you authority over all the power of the enemy, and nothing shall in anywise hurt you." So the prayer of the apostle comes to us with a fresh understanding. "I pray God your whole spirit and soul and body be preserved blameless (without corruption, defilement) unto the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ. Faithful is He that calleth you, who also will do it."

CONSECRATION PRAYER

My God and Father,

In Jesus Name I come to Thee, take me as I am. Make me what I ought to be, in Spirit, in Soul, in Body. Give me Power to do right. If I have wronged any, to repent, to confess, to restore. No matter what it costs, wash me in the blood of Jesus, that I may now become Thy child, and manifest Thee, in a perfect Spirit, a Holy Mind, a Sickless Body. Amen.

The Platform of Jesus

There has always been a passage in the Declaration of Independence that has rung very deeply in my spirit. It was the thought of the Revolutionary Fathers in providing an explanation and reason to the world for undertaking to set up a new government among the families of nations. They said something like this: out of due respect for mankind they felt it necessary to give a reason for such an act.

As we invite this company of people together in this section of the country, I feel that a due word of loving explanation may be helpful.

I have been in this particular manner of ministry for many years. I believe Brother Fogwill and I began in this ministry some 16 or 17 years ago, or there about. Of course, we had been Christian ministers before that, but at that period God enlarged our vision of Himself and His purposes.

Personally, I received my ministry in the gospel of healing through John Alexander Dowie, a man whom I have loved with all my soul. And though in his later life he became broken in mind and committed many foolish things, so that discredit for a time was brought upon his work, I knew him from the beginning until the day of his death. I have gone to his grave since I have returned to this land, and as I have thought over that wonderful life, I have prayed in the silence of the night time, "Lord God endue me with the Spirit of God in the measure that you did that life."

I have always regarded it as a privilege in my life and as a unique thing, that after his death I was invited to preach in his pulpit, and I preached there for several months. I remember as I stood on the platform, above my head was a great crown possibly eight feet in diameter. It was made from boots with iron stirrups on them, thick soles, and all that character of thing that had come from people who had been healed of short limbs. Can you wonder, as I stood in that place, and looked around those walls, and saw plaster of Paris casts fastened on the walls, some of which had come off of my own friends who had been healed, iron braces that cripples had worn, cots on which the dying had been brought, one of them Anna Hicks. That cot was fastened to one of the walls above the gallery. And as I thought of the day when she was carried in practically dead, and that old man prayed for her and she was healed. And the company of her students who had lovingly escorted her to the station at Beren, Kentucky said to me, "We carried her as if we would if she had been dead, as pall bearers, and we received her back as from the dead."

Her friends cabled her and telegraphed her from all over the earth, and she gladly told the story, the wonderful story, almost the same character of story that our Brother Zienke told you this morning, of the love of God, of the tenderness of the Christ that mankind has not known, of Jesus the Healer still.

Beloved, there is a deep passionate yearning in my soul, that above all else, this congregation may set forth to the praise of God such a character of righteousness in God, such a purity of holiness from God, that this people may not only be recognized in this city, but throughout the world, as a people among whom God dwells.

Beginning this work, as I do at this time, I want to say that I do not come as a novice to this time of my life. God has permitted me in the years that are past to assist in the establishment of two great works of God, each of them on a new plane in God. I trust, blessed be His Name, that in calling together once again the people of God, that it shall be to establish a work on a new plane. Indeed, a higher one that our souls have ever known, where the radiant purity of the holiness of God shall be shed forth into the whole world. And I believe that is God's purpose.

Jesus, Himself, stood at Nazareth on an almost similar occasion. He had been raised in one of the country towns. He had disappeared from His community, gone down to the Jordan, and had been baptised of John. The Holy Ghost had come upon Him, and He had returned to his own home town, to the synagogue where He had worshipped as a boy.

One thing I have always praised God for is that when God put me into public ministry, He made me start in the very town, the very community, next door to the very home where I had been raised. When a man fights out the battles of life in his own community, in his own home town, among his friends and neighbours, and receives love and confidence from them, I always feel he has received a good preparation for the next step in life. Jesus knew the place for a man to begin to serve God when He had said to the demoniac of Gadara who was delivered, "Go home to thy friends, and show them how great things the Lord hath done for thee" (Mark 5:19).

If your wife does not know you are a Christian nobody else will be likely to. If your husband does not know you are a Christian, it is a poor testimony, It is the woman that is with you, who eats with you, and sleeps with you, that will know whether you are a child of God or not. It is the man who lives in the same house with you, and the people in your community, who will know best how much of the life of God radiates from your own soul.

So Jesus stood in His own home town of Nazareth and read this wonderful text that I am going to read this morning. It is known, or ought to be, as the platform of Jesus Christ.

"The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he hath anointed me to preach the gospel to the poor."

THE POOR. (Jesus Christ has an anti-poverty program) That is the first duty of every child of God and every Church of God that ever came into existence. And the Church that fails in that duty to mankind has failed in the first principle, and has denied the first principle of the platform of the Son of God.

My heart has never gone out in sympathy to a body of Christian people who became a little clique and represent a certain select number of society. My conception of the real Church of God is one where rich and poor alike, bless God, feel at home, where there are no barriers and no boundaries but where soul flows out to soul, and in the larger life man knows only man and God. Blessed be His precious Name.

"The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he hath anointed me to preach the gospel to the poor."

The ministry of the things of God must ever be without money and without price. My soul could never descend to the place where charges are made for the services of the minister of the gospel of Christ. Never, Bless God!

It is our privilege to make possible a ministry to the people without money and without price, bless God. The magnanimity of the Lord Jesus Christ has stood out as blessed and wonderful feature in all His ministry. I have sometimes wondered how many people really knew how the Lord existed during His own earth life. The Word of God gives us one little hint in these words: "Joanna, the wife of Chuza, Herod's steward, and Susanna, and many others, which ministered unto him of their substance." That was how the Son of God was able to minister without money and without price to mankind. We today have that privilege too. It is ours. I have faith in God that this Church will demonstrate Christ's ministry to the poor.

For ten years God has privileged me to preach the gospel without salary, without collections. I never asked a man for a cent in my life, and I have lived, bless God, and been able to minister every day. God has met me every time, and I believe He will meet every other man and woman who will likewise put their trust in God and go forward.

The second plank in the platform of the Gospel of Jesus Christ is this:

"To heal the broken hearted."

There are lots of them. I tell you since I have been in Spokane the Lord has let me into the homes of the rich and poor, and it is not in the poor districts that you find all the broken hearted by any means. "He hath sent Me to heal the broken hearted," that is the ministry of this body. If there is a broken hearted soul in your locality, you are the one, who in the Name of Jesus Christ, has the privilege of ministering in the things of God to that soul: broken hearted because of sin, broken hearted, sometimes by sickness, broken hearted because of the conditions around them that they seem unable to control.

When I see the living God in His tender mercy touch one and another and make them whole, whether in spirit, in soul, or in body, I rejoice equally in either case, for what God does is always good, and worthy of praise. I regard the healing of a man's body to be just as sacred as the healing of his soul. There is no distinction, Jesus made none. He provided a perfect salvation for mankind: all that man needed for spirit, soul or body.

So this ministry, bless God, will be a healing ministry. This Church will be a healing Church. This will be a Church to which you can invite your friends who are ill, and bring them here, and help them. I trust after a time we will be able to bring the people in great numbers, the sick who are on cots and stretchers and crutches, that the Lord Jesus through this Church and its ministry may make them well.

It is my purpose that a number of brethren, who have had this same burden on their hearts for many years as I have had it, may come together in this city as a Headquarters, and that from this city we may extend this ministry throughout the land. I have particularly invited my old preaching partner, Brother Cyrus B. Fockler, of Milwaukee, my dear, precious brother, Archibald Fairley, of Zion City, a prophet of God and one of the anointed of the Lord, Brother (Rev.) Bert Rice of Chicago, my dear Brother (Rev.) Charles W. Westwood, of Portland, Oregon, and Reverend Fogwell to assist me in this ministry. Brother Westwood visited with me a few days, and is now going on to Chicago to make the necessary arrangements.

This is the outline so far as God has made it clear. This is to be a healing Church. Everyone who has been called to this ministry and those who will be called in the future will minister to body and soul and spirit through the Lord Jesus Christ.

The third plank in the platform of Jesus Christ is this:

"To preach deliverance to the captives."

How many there are! One day, not long ago, I received a telephone call from a lady in one of the Missions saying that she had a man there who was a terrible drunkard. Every once in a while he would get delirium tremens. He saw devils: he was haunted by them. The lady said, "We can not do anything for him. We thought perhaps you could help him." He came up to see me. He sat down to tell me about himself. Right away I could discern that he was a soul who from his very birth had been gifted with spiritual sight. But instead of associating in the spirit with angels, with God, with Christ, all his spiritual association was with devils, demons, horrors, until that to escape from that condition he had become a drunk in his youth. In order to have relaxation for a time, he had paralysed himself with drink, and that was his difficulty.

I said to him, "my son, kneel down. We are going to pray to God." And I prayed that God would bind every last demon and lift his soul into union with God, and fill him with the Holy Ghost, so he might associate with the angels of God and become a new man in Christ, and have fellowship with the Holy Spirit.

In a few days he returned and said, "Oh, brother, it is all so new, so different. As I walk along the street there are no more demons, no more devils; but as I came up to the Church today an angel, so beautiful, so sweet, so pure, walked by my side. And, Brother, there he is now, and He has wounds on His hands and on His feet." But my eyes were dim; I could not see Him. I presume they were like the eyes of the servant of Elisha. "To preach deliverance to the captives" from all kinds of powers, earthly and sensual. It is the privilege of the real Church to bring deliverance to the captives of sin, of disease, of death and hell, not only proclaim the message of deliverance but exercise the power of God to set them free.

The fourth plank:

"Recovering of sight to the blind."

Among the blessed healings of the past few weeks is one dear soul who is not yet completely healed, a blind woman whose eyes have gradually opened day by day from the first morning of prayer, and who will be present with us in the near future, as Brother Zeinke was this morning, to praise God for her deliverance.

"Recovering of sight to the blind." But there are many blind hearts, blind minds, blind souls, just as well as blind eyes, who do not see the beauty and power of the things of Christ. And to them we bring today the message of our Christ, "recovering of sight to the blind."

I pray above every other thing this Church will be a Church that will know God so intimately that when men come in contact with any one of us they will feel that they have met one who is able to reveal the Lord Jesus Christ to them. I believe it will be so.

The fifth plank:

"To set at liberty them that are bruised."

There are the bleeding ones, the bruised ones, those who have been hid away, and those whose life has been made a burden. May I tell you this incident.

The last night I preached in my tabernacle in Johannesburg, they brought a young man with whom life had gone so very hard. He had lost hope and had gone into despair so that he tried to blot himself out by committing suicide. He shot himself in the mouth, and the bullet came out the back of the head, strangely without killing him. This left him with a violent pain in the base of the brain that caused him to suffer untold agony, and his neck was rigid.

This night the greatest part of the congregation was composed of Cornish miners, whom I have regarded as the hardest men I have ever met in South Africa. They live a very hard, terrible life. They dissipate terribly.

This man came up on the platform to be prayed for, and I wanted the sympathy of the people. So I made a plea in some such words as these: "Here is a poor fellow with whom life has gone so hard that he tried to blot himself out, and in his endeavour to do so, he shot himself, with the result that he is in the condition you see him in now." Presently I began to observe that up from the audience there came a wave of loving sympathy. I said, "If you never prayed in your life, if you never prayed for yourself, bow your head and pray tonight and ask God to deliver your fellow man."

I put my hands on him and prayed, and the power of God came down upon him and instantly the joints became loose, the neck pliable, the pain gone. Looking up into my face, he said, "Who did that?" I said, "That was the Lord Jesus Christ." And dropping on his knees before me he said, "Brother, show me how to find that Christ; I want to know Him."

Down in the audience that night was one of the most cultured gentlemen it has ever been my privilege to know. He raised in his seat and reverently raising his hands, he said, "My Lord and my God." He had not been a Christian, but he saw a new vision of the love of God for man that night.

Away back in the audience another soul was touched. He was a different type of man. He came from a different environment. He raised up and slapped himself on the hip, and shouted, "Bully for Jesus!" It came out of the depth of his soul.

Beloved, it is my conviction that the purity of Jesus Christ and the radiant holiness and the power of God will manifest Christ alike to the cultured and the uncultured, for both hearts are hungry when they see the living Christ.

The sixth plank of the platform:

"To preach the acceptable year of the Lord."

Not next year, not in five years, not when you die, but a present salvation, a present healing for spirit, soul and body. Blessed be His Name. All you need, bless God, is to bring your whole being into perfect harmony with the living God so that the Spirit of God radiates through your spirit, radiates through your mind, and radiates likewise through your body. Blessed be His Name.

Among the most precious privileges that is given to the real Church is to be in fact, not in word alone, the Body of Christ. The Word of God speaks of "The Church," which is His body. And as God, the Father, manifested Himself through that one beautiful, holy, purified body of Jesus Christ in such a perfect manner, when men looked upon Him they did not see the man Jesus, but they saw God. Then He ascended and sent the Holy Spirit to the Church, to you and to me. What for? That the new Body should come forth, and the Church, the real Church, united to God and filled with the Holy Ghost, should manifest God again to mankind through this Body. That Church is made up of all that are written in the Lamb's Book of Life.

When God wants to heal a man, the healing does not fall down from heaven, but it does come through the medium of the child of God. Therefore, God has given us the exalted privilege of being co-labourers together with God. And among our high privileges is to radiate, to give forth from the love passion of our souls the courage and strength to help other souls to come to God. And the business of the Church is to be a saviour, or saviours, for the Word of God says, "And saviours shall come up on Mount Zion." These are those in such union with God that they are able to lift mankind up to the "Lamb of God that taketh away the sin of the world."

Have Christians a Right to Pray "If It Be Thy Will" Concerning Sickness?

I am going to read a familiar portion of the Word of God. It is the Lord's Prayer as recorded in the 11th chapter of Luke.

I purpose this afternoon to speak on this subject, "Have Christians a right to Pray, 'if it be Thy will' concerning sickness?" Personally, I do not believe they have, and I am going to give you my reasons.

"And it came to pass that, as he was praying in a certain place, when He ceased, one of His disciples said unto Him, 'Lord, teach us to pray, as John taught his disciples.' And He said unto them, 'When ye pray, say, Our Father which art in heaven, hallowed be thy name. Thy kingdom come. Thy will be done as in heaven, so in earth. Give us day by day our daily bread. And forgive us our sins, for we also forgive everyone that is in debted to us. And lead us not into temptation; but deliver us from evil.'" Luke 11:1-4.

Beloved, if there is one thing in the world I wish I could do for the people of Spokane, it would be to teach them to pray. Not teach them to say prayers, but teach them to pray. There is a mighty lot of difference between saying prayers and praying.

"The prayer of faith shall save the sick, and the Lord shall raise him up, and if he have committed sins, they shall be forgiven him."

The prayer of faith has power in it. The prayer of faith has trust in it. The prayer of faith has healing in it for soul and body. The disciples wanted to know how to pray real prayers, and Jesus said unto them, "When ye pray say, Our Father which art in heaven ...Thy will be done."

Everybody stops there, and they resign their intelligence at that point to the unknown God. When you approach people and say to them, "You have missed the spirit of the prayer," they look at you in amazement. But, Beloved, it is a fact. I want to show it to you this afternoon as it is written in the Word of God. It does not say, "if it be Thy will," and stop there. There is a comma there, not a period. The prayer is this, "Thy will be done on earth as it is done in heaven." That is mighty different, is it not? Not "Thy will be done," let the calamity come, let My children be stricken with fever, or my son go to the insane asylum or my daughter go to the home of the feeble minded. That is not what Jesus was teaching the disciples to pray. Jesus was teaching the people to pray, "Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven." Let the might of God be known. Let the power of God descend. Let God avert the calamity that is coming. Let it turn aside through faith in God. "Thy will be done on earth (here) as it is in heaven."

How is the will of God done in heaven? For a little time I want to direct your thought with mine heavenward. We step over there and we look all about the city. We note its beauty and its grandeur. We see the Lamb of God. We do not observe a single drunken man on the golden streets; not a single man on crutches; not a woman smelling of sin.

A man came in the other day and was telling me what an ardent Christian he is. But after he left, I said, "Lift the windows and let the balance of the man out." Men ought to smell like they pray. We defile ourselves with many things.

A dear man came to me the other day in great distress. He said his eyes were going blind. The physician told him he had only a year of sight, perhaps less. As I endeavoured to comfort him and turn his face toward God, I reverently put my hands on his eyes and asked God for Christ's sake to heal him, and as I did so the Spirit of God kept speaking to my soul and saying, "Amaurosis." I said, "What is amaurosis?" As soon as I could get to a dictionary, I looked up the word to see what it is. It is a disease of the eyes, caused by the use of nicotine. That was what was the matter with the man. The Spirit of the Lord was trying to tell me, but I was too dull; I did not understand. I do not know what the man's name is, but the other day God sent him back to my office. As we sat together I related the incident to him and said, "My brother, when you quit poisoning yourself the probability is that you may not need any healing from God."

We defile ourselves in various ways; we go on defiling ourselves; and some people are able to stand the defilement a long time and throw it off. Others are not able to. It poisons their system and destroys their faculties. One man may drink whisky and live to be an old man. Another may go to wreck in a few months or years. Some systems will throw off much; others will not.

Now, when we get to the beautiful City, we did not find any of these conditions, and so we say, "Angel, what is the reason you do not have any sin up here?" "Why the reason we do not have any sin here is because THE WILL OF GOD IS BEING DONE."

I have been used to looking for the sick, and if I see a man with a lame leg or a woman with a blind eye, I will see that a way down the street. I have mingled with the sick all my life. So I look around up there, and I do not see anybody on crutches or anybody that is lame, no cancers or consumption, or any sickness at all. So I say to my guide, "Angel, tell me what the reason is that you do not have any sickness up here." The Angel replies, "THE WILL OF GOD IS BEING DONE HERE." No sin where the will of God is being done. No sickness where the will of God is being done.

Then I return to the earth, and I can pray that prayer with a new understanding. "Thy will be done in me on earth as thy will is done in heaven." Just as the will of God is done there, so let the will of God be done here. Let the will of God be done in me. "Thy will be done, as in heaven, so in earth."

But some one says, "Brother, do you not remember on the 8th of Matthew how a leper came to Jesus one day and said to Him, 'Lord, if Thou wilt, Thou canst make me clean?' The leper said, when he prayed, 'If it be Thy will,' why should I not say that too?" Well, he was ignorant of what the will of Christ was concerning sickness. Perhaps he had been up on the mountainside and had heard Jesus preach that wonderful sermon on the mount, for it was at its close that he came to Jesus and said, "If thou wilt, thou canst make me clean." He knew Christ's ability to heal but did not understand his willingness. Jesus' reply settled the question for the leper and it should settle the question for every other man for ever. Jesus said, "I will, be thou clean." If He ever had said anything else to any other man, there might be some reason for us to interject "if it be Thy will" in our prayers when we ask God for something He has declared His will on. If always doubts. The prayer of faith has no if's in it.

Suppose a drunken man kneels down at this platform and says, "I want to find God. I want to be a Christian." Every man and woman in this house who knows God would say, "Yes," right away. "Tell him to pray, to have faith in God, and God will deliver him." Why do you do it? Simply because there is no question in your mind concerning God's will in saving a sinner from his sins. You know He is ready to do it when a sinner is ready to confess his sin. But you take another step over, and here is another poor fellow by his side with a lame leg, and he comes limping along and kneels down, or tries to, and right away a lot of folks say, "I wish he would send for a doctor," or else pray, "if it be Thy will, make him well" forgetting "who forgiveth all thine iniquities, who healeth all thy diseases."

Instead of Christians taking the responsibility, they try to put the responsibility on God. Everything there is in the redemption of Jesus Christ is available for man when man will present his claim in faith and take it. There is no question in the mind of God concerning the salvation of a sinner. No more is there concerning the healing of the sick one. It is in the atonement of Jesus Christ, bless God. His atonement was unto the uttermost, to the last need of man. The responsibility rests purely, solely and entirely on man. Jesus put it there. Jesus said, "WHEN ye pray, believe that ye receive, and YE SHALL HAVE." No questions or if's in the words of Jesus. If He ever spoke with emphasis on any question, it was on the subject of God's will and the result of faith in prayer. Indeed, He did not even speak them in ordinary words, but in the custom of the East, He said, "Verily, verily." Amen, amen: the same as if I would stand in a American court and say, "I swear I will tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, so help me God." So the Easterner raised his hand and said, "Amen, amen." or "Verily, verily," "with the solemnity of an oath I say unto you." So Jesus said, "When ye pray, believe that ye receive, and ye shall have."

James, in expounding the subject, says concerning those that doubt, "Let not that man think that he shall receive anything of the Lord." Why? Well, he says, a man that doubteth is like a wave of the sea, driven with the wind and tossed. There is no continuity in his prayer. There is no continuity in his faith. There is no continuity in his character. There is no concentration in God for the thing that he wants. He is like the waves of the sea, scattered and shattered, driven here and there by the wind because there is if in it "Let not that man think he shall receive anything of the Lord."

Now that leper did not know what the mind of Jesus was concerning sickness. Perhaps he had seen others healed of ordinary diseases, but leprosy was a terrible thing. It was incurable and contagious. The poor man was compelled as he went down the road to cry out, "Unclean, unclean," in order that people might run away from him.

In my work in South Africa I saw dozens of them, hundreds of them, thousands of them. I have seen them with their fingers off of the first joint, at the second joint, with their thumbs off, or nose off, their teeth gone, the toes off, the body scaling off, and I have seen God heal them in every stage. On one occasion in our work, a company of healed lepers gathered on Christmas eve and partook of the Lord's supper. Some had no fingers on their hands, and they had to take the cup between their wrists, but the Lord had been there and healed them. That was not under my ministry but under the ministry of a poor black fellow, who five or six years did not even wear pants. He wore a goat skin apron. But he came to Christ. He touched the living One. He received the power of God, and he manifests a greater measure of the real healing gift than I believe any man ever has in modern times. And if I were over there, I would kneel down and ask that black man to put his hands on my head and ask God to let the same power of God come into my life that he has in his.

You have no more right to pray "if it be Thy will" concerning your sickness than the leper had. Not as much, because for two thousand years the Word of God has been declared and the Bible has been an open book. We ought to be intelligent beyond any other people in the world concerning the mind of God.

"But Brother," someone says, "you have surely forgotten that when Jesus was in the garden He prayed 'Lord if it be possible, let this cup pass from me. Nevertheless, not as I will but as thou wilt.'" No, I have not forgotten. You are not the Saviour of the world, beloved. That was Jesus' prayer. No other man could ever pray that prayer but the Lord Jesus. But I want to show you, beloved, what caused Jesus to pray that prayer because a lot of folks have never understood it.

Jesus had gone into the garden to pray. The burden of His life was upon him. He was about to depart. He had a message for the world. He had been compelled to commit it to a few men - ignorant men. I believe that he wondered, "Will they be able to present the vision? Will they see it as I have seen it? Will they be able to let the people have it as I have given it to them?" No doubt, these were some of the inquiries besides many more.

Do you know what the spirit of intercession is? Do you know what it means when a common man comes along, as Moses did, and takes upon himself the burden of the sin of the people and then goes down in tears and repentance unto God until the people are brought back in humility and repentance to His feet? When in anxiety for his race and people, Moses said, "Lord, if you forgive not this peoples blot my name out of thy book." He did not want any heaven where his people were not.

Think of it! Moses took upon himself that responsibility, and he said to God, "If you forgive not this people, blot my name our of thy book." God heard Moses' prayer. Bless God!

Paul, on one occasion, wrote practically the same words. "I would be accursed for my brethren, my kinsmen according to the flesh." He felt the burden of his people. So Jesus in the garden felt the burden of the world, the accumulated sorrows of mankind, their burdens of sin, their burdens of sickness. And as He knelt to pray, His heart breaking under it, the great drops of sweat came out on His brow like blood falling to the ground. But the critics have said, "It was not blood." Judge V. V. Barnes, in his great trial before Judge Landis, actually sweat blood until his handkerchief would be red with the blood that oozed through his pores. His wife said that for three months she was compelled to put napkins over his pillow. That is one of the biggest men God has ever let live in the world. His soul was big, and he saw the possibility of the hour for a great people and desired as far as he could to make that burden easy for them. He did not want the estate to go into the hands of a receiver. The interests of one hundred thousand people was in his hands, the accumulated properties of families who had no other resource. He was so large that the burden of his heart bore down on him so that he sweat blood and did so for three months. But people of these days say, "It looked like blood," and are so teaching their Sunday School scholars. The Lord have mercy on them! The blood came out and fell down to the ground.

Jesus thought He was going to die right there in the garden, but He was too big to die there. He wanted to go to the cross. He wanted to see this thing finished on behalf of the race of man, and so He prayed, "Lord, if it be possible, let this cup pass from me. Nevertheless, not as I will, but as thou wilt." What was the cup? Was it the cup of suffering that was breaking Him down, that was draining the life blood out right then, and that would be His death instead of the cross? But He towered above that and prayed, "Lord, if it be possible, let this cup pass from me. Nevertheless, not as I will, but as thou wilt." Instantly the angels came and ministered to Him, and in the new strength He received, He went on to the cross and to His death as the Saviour of mankind.

Beloved, I want to tell you that if there was a little sweating of blood and that kind of prayer, there would be less sickness and sin than there is. God is calling for a people who will take upon them that kind of burden and let the power of God work through them.

People look in amazement in these days when God answers prayer for a soul. A week ago last night my dear wife and I went down to pray for a soul on the Fort Wright line, a Mrs McFarland. She is going to be here one of these days to give her testimony. Ten years ago a tree fell on her and broke her back. She became paralysed, and for ten years she has been in a wheel chair, her limbs swollen, and her feet a great senseless lump that hangs down useless. She says many preachers have visited her. In these years, and they have told her to be reconciled to the will of God, to sit still and suffer longer. She said, "Oh, I would not mind not walking; if the pain would just stop for a little while, it would be so good." We lovingly laid our hands upon her and prayed. You say, "Did you pray, 'if it be Thy will?'" No! You bet I did not, but I laid my hands on that dear soul and prayed, "You devil that has been tormenting this woman for ten years and causing the tears to flow, I rebuke you in the Name of the Son of God. And by the authority of the Son of God I cast you out." Something happened. Life began to flow into her being, and the pain left. In a little while she discovered that power was coming back into her body. She called me up the other day and said, "Oh, such a wonderful thing has taken place. This morning in bed I could get up on my hands and knees." Poor soul, she called in her neighbours and relatives because she could get on her hands and knees in bed.

Do you not know you have painted Jesus Christ as a man without a soul? You have painted God to the world as a tyrant. On the other hand, He is reaching out His hands in love to stricken mankind desiring to lift them up. But He has put the responsibility of the whole matter on you and me. That question of the WILL OF GOD was everlastingly settled long ago, eternally settled, no question about the will of God.

The redemption of Jesus Christ was an uttermost redemption, to the last need of the human heart, bless God, for body, for soul, for spirit. He is a Christ and saviour even to the uttermost. Blessed be His Name. Who shall dare to raise a limit to the accomplishment of faith through Jesus Christ? I am glad the tendency is to take down the barriers and let all the faith of your heart go out to God for every man and for every condition of life, to let the love of God flow out of your soul to every hungry soul.

Instead of praying "Lord, if it be Thy will" when you kneel beside your sick friend, Jesus Christ has commanded you and every BELIEVER to lay YOUR hands on the sick. This is not my ministry nor my brethren's only. It is the ministry of every believer. And if your ministers do not believe it, God have mercy on them; and if your Churches do not believe it, God have mercy on them.

In these days the Churches are screaming and crying because Christian-Science is swallowing up the world, and that it is false. Why do the people go to Christian Science? Because they can not get any truth where they are. Let the day come when the voices of men ring out and tell the people the truth about the Son of God, who is a redeemer even unto the uttermost for body and soul and spirit. He redeems back to God. Beloved, believe it and receive the blessing that will come into your own life. Amen.

Divine Healing

Philadelphia, Pennsylvania: January 30, 1914

If there is something wrong with a man's spirit, he goes directly to God, but the next day he has a pain in his back and he goes down the road to the doctor's. Where do you get your right to do such a thing? There is a wretched looseness about consecration to God. Christians do not seems to know what consecration to God is. Christians do not seem to know what consecration to God means. What would you think of Jesus Christ, if you saw Him going down the road and into a doctor's office for some dope? Why, you would feel like apologizing for the Lord, wouldn't you? Well, He has just as much reason to apologize for you. When you become a Christian, consecrated body, soul, and spirit, your privilege of running to the doctor was cut off forevermore.

"Faith cometh by hearing, and hearing by the word of God." This young man who testified says he suffers because of an appetite for cigarettes and he hopes that we will pray so that the next time he wants to smoke he won't. I tell you God says, "Quit your sins and then come to Me, and I will pardon." He doesn't say, "You come on with your sins, and I will pardon you." He says, "You quit your meanness, you quit fooling with the doctor, and the devil, you quit your secret habits, and come to Me, and I will deliver you." That is the only road to God; that is the way in God.

So a Christian's consecration is not just a consecration of his spirit to God, nor of his soul to God. It's a consecration of body and soul and spirit -- the entire man, everything there is of us, and it cuts us forever plumb off from looking for help from the flesh, the world, or the devil.

There are three enemies of man -- the world, the flesh, and the devil. Our nature has three departments: spirit and soul and body. What would you think of the Christian who would go to the devil or to some deceitful spirit to find balm for his spirit? Why, you would think he was not a Christian at all, nor would he be. Suppose a man wants peace for his soul (mind), and he appeals to the spirit of the world or the flesh to get it. You would not think he was a Christian at all. Then how will you consider a man who wants healing for his body and goes to the world and man to get it?

I am going to preach to you for five minutes out of the fifth of James. He is very explicit in this matter. He is not laying down rules for the people of the world. He is talking straight to the Christians. "Is any among you (Christians) afflicted? Let him pray," not, "Let him go to the devil or the doctor or some human source."

"Is any sick among you? Let him send for the elders of the church," meaning this, if you have prayed and deliverance has not come, unquestionably it is a weakness of your faith. You need help. Then the next thing is, "Let him call for the elders of the church; and let them pray over him, anointing him with oil in the name of the Lord."

When I was preaching at Washington, D.C., recently an old sister said she had anointed her little girl the night before and she had put a whole bottle full of oil all over her. So you see, she was not looking to God to heal; she expected the anointing oil to heal. Satan is a subtle old devil, but the Lord gives us light. He says not the anointing of oil, but "The prayer of faith shall save the sick, and the Lord shall raise him up." That is why I never use oil except when requested to do so, because people are looking to the anointing oil instead of to the Lord God. "Let him call for the elders of the church; and let them pray over him, anointing him with oil in the name of the Lord: And the prayer of faith shall save the sick," not the anointing oil. The use of anointing oil is a matter of obedience. It is a symbol of the Spirit of God, and that is all it is.

So we place upon the individual the anointing oil in order that we fulfill the symbol of the Spirit of God as the healer, and that is all. "The prayer of faith shall save the sick, and the Lord shall raise him up; and if he have committed sins, they shall be forgiven him." Thus he goes on and makes the teaching broader.

One of the beautiful things about the Gospel of Jesus Christ is that it is progressive in its revelation and application. First, we were asked to pray if we are afflicted. Second, we were asked to call for the elders. Then, the Lord goes down to the real business in a man's heart. "Confess your faults one to another." Get your old tattling, blatting tongue tied up, and confess to the other party that you have been tattling.

If all the Christians had that gag in their mouth, there would not be half as much shouting in the meetings as there is. Now listen, I don't want to pound people on the head, but I want to teach you a lesson. Here is the broad principle of the Gospel, "Confess your faults."

When I went to Africa, I had the advantage of getting on absolutely new ground that no one had spoiled with a lot of loose teaching. In this country our people have been slobbered over with teaching that doesn't amount to anything, and they wobble this way and that way, "like a wave of the sea driven with the wind and tossed." And God says, "Let not that man think that he shall receive any thing of the Lord."

One day when a young man, God brought me in to see my own need when I needed healing from heaven. There was nobody to pray for me and I was not even a Christian in the best sense of being a Christian. I was a member of a Methodist church, but I had seen God heal one dear soul, who was very dear to me. As I sat alone one day, I said, "Lord, I am finished with the doctor and with the devil. I am finished with the world and the flesh, and from today I lean on the arm of God." I committed myself to God and God almighty right there and then, though there was no sign of healing or anything else, accepted my consecration to Him. That disease that had stuck on my life and almost killed me for nearly nine years was gone. It was chronic constipation. I would take three ounces of castor oil at a single dose, three times a week.

The place of strength and the place of victory is the place of consecration to God. It is when a man shuts his teeth and says, "I go with God this way," that victory is going to come. My! This wobbling business makes one think of the old Irish woman who was on a ship in a storm. When the ship rolled one way, she would say, "O good Lord," and when the ship would plunge to the other side, she would say "Good devil." When someone asked her why she did that, she said, "Why, how can I tell into whose arms I will fall?"

May the Lord wake us up in our soul and get us out of this wobbly state and get us where we all commit ourselves once and for all and forever to Almighty God, and then live by it and die by it.

People say, like the dear soul last night who sent word to the meeting, "I am very sick, and if I don't get deliverance, I will have to do something." Why sure you can do something. You can die; you ought to die instead of insulting and denying the Lord Jesus Christ and turning your back on Him. People say, "I can't die." Yes you can, if you are not a coward, but you cannot sin. And it is just as much a sin to commit your body to the Lord Jesus Christ and then to run to the doctor as it is to go and commit adultery or any other sin. It is a violation of your consecration to God.

Make a consecration to God and stand by that and live by that and be willing to die by that. Then you will grow up into God, where your faith is active enough to get answers to prayer.

There is no man who lives and has the ministry of healing that could pray for all the sick people. There are so many of them. Why you come to an assembly like this, and every old saint who has a stomach ache will come and ask you to pray for them, and there is no time for anything else. God wants us to grow up into Him where we get answers to prayer for ourselves. Then if there is an extreme case and your faith is broken, confess your faults one to another and get the rest of the people to pray for you, and then in the extreme cases send for the elders of the Church, and that is the mind of God.

In the twelfth chapter of First Corinthians the nine gifts of the Holy Spirit are enumerated:

To one is given by the Spirit the word of wisdom; to another the world 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 spirits; to another divers kinds of tongues; to another the interpretation of tongues.

These are the gifts or enablements that are given by God to certain in the Church. Now here is a thought I want to leave with you. We go over into Ephesians and we see a different order. Now the gifts or enablements are mentioned, but the gifts in this case are individuals. It is men to whom God has given definite ministries.

And in the Church of Jesus Christ not only should the gifts exist, but the faith to use them. And they do exist if they are developed, and they are workable when the faith in your heart is made active to use them. But you can have the gifts right out of heaven, and if the faith in your heart is not active, you cannot operate them.

There is only one prayer that is answered. It is not prayer that is answered but is the prayer of faith. It is the prayer of faith that shall save the sick. Believing prayer is not much noise. Believing prayer may not be any noise at all. Believing prayer is a committing, an intelligent committing of yourself to God, and your mind is stayed in God and your heart is stayed in God and you are walking in God. You are ready to die rather than go to anyone but God. That is the real believing prayer. That is the continuous prayer. That is prevailing prayer. Blessed be God!

So in Ephesians, the Word God tells us that there are some apostles, some prophets, some teachers, some evangelists, and some pastors. These are God's gifts, these men -- not gifts as they are mentioned in Corinthians, but men are mentioned in Ephesians, and the men with ministries are God's gift to the Church until such time as they shall all come, the entire body of Christ, into the unity of the faith, into the likeness of Jesus Christ, into the measure of the stature of the Son of God. "Till we all come," not one or two. Blessed be His precious name!

These things will demonstrate to you how far we are behind the Gospel ideal. We are away so far behind. A few years ago many commonly believed that when the baptism of the Holy Ghost was being poured out upon the world, that we were the particular little lot who were to be the bride of Christ and go with Him when He came. But pretty soon it began to down on those who looked into the Word that there was not even an tangible body of Christ yet. The body of Christ is the members called to God, united in one spirit and in one hope of their calling. Blessed be God. With one Lord, one faith, and one baptism. That is the body. Then all the other developments, the bride, and all the rest of it are born out of the body. (Ephesians 4:2-6.)

God is getting a body at this present time, and in the body of Christ, the orderly body of Christ, the unified body, He wants to bring it forth today. He hath set His gifts -- the word of wisdom, knowledge, faith, gifts of healing, etc. He has set likewise men -- apostles, prophets, evangelists, 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 in the unity of the faith, and the knowledge of the Son of God, unto a perfect man, unto the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ."

Now healing is not a difficult matter. It does not take a bit more faith to be healed from your sickness than it does to be saved from your sins. The only difference is that in your own consciousness, you knew there was no place to get forgiveness except from God. You had sense enough to know you could not get it from the devil; you had to get it form the Lord.

But your body gets sick and your consciousness, because of your education, permits you to go to the doctor or the sorcerers or the devil, and the one is just as offensive to God as the other. The Christian body and soul and spirit is one. A real Christian has committed his whole being unto the living God. He consecrates himself to Jesus Christ with all the fullness that Jesus consecrated Himself to the Father at the river Jordan on the day He was baptized. He consecrated Himself unto the uttermost, unto "all righteousness," unto everything that was right, to the will of God forever. Blessed be his name.

Now there are examples in the Word of God that are very striking along this line. You listen to the Word of God. "Cursed be the man that trusteth in man." Talk about your running to the doctor. That is what the Lord thinks about it. "Cursed be the man that trusteth in man, and maketh flesh his arm, and whose heart departeth from the LORD." And the Word of God in the fourteenth of Second Chronicles gives us a most remarkable example of Asa, the King of Israel, who trusted God when the great armies of their enemies came up again them. He went down on his knees before God, and he said,

LORD, it is nothing with thee to help, whether with many, or with them that have no power: help us, O LORD our God; for we rest on thee, and in thy name we go against this multitude. O LORD, thou art our God; let no man prevail against thee. -- 2 Chronicles 14:11

Their little handful of men conquered the whole mob.

But after awhile, Asa got a disease in his feet and the Word says his disease became exceeding great and in his disease he trusted not the Lord, but the physicians, and Asa died. It is recorded against him as an offense against God that he failed to trust God for the disease n his feet, but instead trusted the physician.

Somebody says, "Well, all right. I will commit myself to the Lord, and then of course, I will not have any more stomach ache. I will just be kept, etc." Maybe you will if your faith stands in God strong enough and perhaps you won't if it does not. But there is one thing that stands -- that is your consecration to God. If your faith fails it does not make any difference, you stand consecrated to God just the same. If you do not get answer to prayer you are consecrated to God just the same. If you do not get answer to prayer, you are consecrated to God just the same, and if God Almighty has got to let the devil thrash you half to death for a week or two months or longer, you take it until the crook is out of your life that the lord is after and faith has conquered. Then you will learn obedience to God by the things you suffer. That is the only way.

People go around cursing the devil all the time. You go in the ways of the devil, you get crooked in your soul and proud in your heart, and that cuts you off from God and you are left in the hands of the devil. The wisest thing to do with you is just like I did with one of my sons. I said, "Young man, you just take your own way until you bump your head against the wall." When he was hurt almost to death, he was glad to come back to his old dad to be helped out.

We know the Word of God so well, so in our proud hearts we say: "We have been baptized in the Holy Ghost," and all that kind of attitude. It is just as offensive to God as it can be, and God has just got to draw back His hands and let you go, like I did my son. And then you will come down with some old disease, and you will lay and fret and fume and cry until you get right with God and open your heart to God, and He will rebuke the devourer, and He will take the thing away. Bless God.

I used to be a member of a church where it was considered just as offensive to take medicine or go to the doctor as it was to go to the devil for health. The Christian who would run to a doctor was on a level with the adulterer or the thief. That is absolutely right. That is according to the Word of God. A whole consecration of your whole being, your body and soul and spirit, is what Jesus demands. It is what Jesus asks, and bless God, that is the only place that is worthwhile.

We go around talking and shouting about the Almighty Christ and what He can do and what He is, etc., and the first time we get a stomach ache, away we go to the doctor and get a dose, and the Almighty Christ gets a slap in the face.

Beloved, you listen to me. If there are any people in all the world that ought to be taught of God, who ought to be walking with God, who ought to be consecrated to all the will of God, it is the Christian people, especially those who are baptized in the Holy Ghost. It ought to be absolutely unnecessary for any man at this day to even speak of these things in a public service. We ought to have been so committed from the first day to the Lord Jesus Christ that the committing of ourselves to any man for anything would be highly offensive to our spirits. And if we saw our brothers or sister becoming weak and falling into the hands of man, our prayer and love and faith and sympathy ought to get under them as though they were falling into the habit of drinking whiskey again.

It is just as offensive for the Christian to take medicine as for the drunkard to take whiskey. Don't you see, beloved, the great wonderful advantage in the Christian's life of becoming cut clear and free from all dependence on the arm of man? You are cut forever from the world, from the flesh, from the devil. Bless God.

I had a friend in Africa who was greatly distressed because he could not learn to swim. Finally one day he got drunk and walked off the docks into the sea at Cape Town into about five hundred feet of water, and he could swim after that, all right.

Don't you see, beloved, that you will never have faith in God in the world until you launch out into God, until you commit yourself to God and then either live or die? I belong to God and I am done with man, and I am done with leaning on his arm.

I know what these things are. In my home I had seven children. They were born without medicine. One dear brother testified the other night that the Lord had kept disease out of the home. It was not that way in mine. There wasn't a devilish thing came down the road that my family did not get, from pneumonia, small pox, typhoid fever, to a shooting accident, and God let us be tested right up and down the line.

It is one thing to get down on your knees and say I commit my body, my soul, my spirit to God, and it is another thing to stand by your baby until you hear it gasp, and it is another thing to close its eyes in death if necessary, but I am not going back on my Lord. That is the kind of training I got, and that is the cleanness in faith my heart cries out for.

Maybe in another generation we will have a multitude of people who stand in God like giants, and we can have a manifestation of the sons of God and take the world for God and crown the Christ King of kings and Lord of lords.

Now I do not preach to anybody else what I have not been through myself. I tell you the Lord has let me go through the mill. One time I got inflammatory rheumatism and for nine months I suffered. I guess I did. But I shut my teeth and I said, "You devil, you can't put me in bed; I won't go," and I dragged myself home and I would get in bed and feel like crying out in my agony. At the end of nine months God had wrought one thing in my heart, that if I died the devil would not get me to take medicine again. One day I felt in my spirit I needed help. There was nobody there that could pray for me. So I got on a train and went to Chicago to John Alexander Dowie. One day there was a company of people like this, and when I came along it was so packed full I could not even look into the door. After awhile there were some other people who couldn't get in, and finally an old man, an elder, came along and prayed for us out there, and as he did I was healed from the crown of my head to the soles of my feet. Years after he told me that was the only healing he ever had that he knew about.

I often wondered if the virtue came through the old brother or not, but God met my faith. Do you not see, to commit yourself to God means something? I tell you, it is probably going to mean some suffering someday, but that is the way of clearness, the way of truth. That is the way you can look every man in the face and say, "I am not leaning on the arm of the flesh; I am going God's way."

We are such a weak, wobbly lot in these latter days. God is just trying to get some backbone in us. We come along and are baptized and about a week after, we can find them doing all sorts of things. The Christian in the old days came down to be baptized, and as they did so a Roman officer took their names and sent them up to Rome. Instantly their citizenship was canceled, their right of protection from Roman government was cut off, their goods were confiscated, they were left as a prey to the avarice of the people, but they got baptized just the same. Bless God.

I tell you that is the kind of people that thirty million of them gave their lives to God in the first four centuries and were blotted out of the world in various ways. Thirty million of them! There was some Christian spirit, there was some consecration to God in those days. It was poverty or death or sickness or prison or anything else, but it was God's way of consecration. I tell you God will meet that kind of thing. If they lived, all right, and if they died, all right. They belonged to God, and the world ever since for 1400 years looks back with pride to that list of people who gave themselves to the Lord God. They put the stamp of character on the Christian world. Bless God.

All the heroes, bless God, did not live back there either. You come down to the history of Scotland, to the Convenanters. They wrote a covenant and said, "We will have nae King but Jesus," and you can see the old Scottish man shut his teeth and opening a vein in his arm, signs the covenant. And three hundred thousand of them gave their lives then to make that covenant good and died saying, "We will have nae King, but Jesus."

Now you listen to me. I will guarantee to you that if there are fifty sick people in this room and you commit yourselves to God in that spirit and with that reality, bless God, you won't need anybody to pray for you. You will just get well. Bless God. The devil cannot come around you when that kind of thing is in your soul.

One of my sons was dying with pneumonia once. I prayed for that fellow and I prayed for him, and it was not a bit of good. But one day I was downtown, and I was praying about that boy and the Lord said, "You go home and confess your sins to your wife."

And I said, "I will." I stopped and got one of the old elders to come down to my house. As we rode along we talked together, and I said, "I have some things I want to fix up with my wife before you pray. There has been all kinds of prayer, but He won't hear." So I took my wife in the other room and told her the whole business, all there was, and we went into the other room and prayed for that son and he was healed in a second.

I want to tell you that when Christians are not healed, as a rule you get digging around and get the Holy Ghost to help you, and when they have vomited out all the stuff, they will get the healing.

You listen to me. Healing comes straight down from God. All man is, is a medium through which God can work. God is a Spirit, He needs embodiment. He chooses man as a body. The Church is the body. "Know ye not that ye are the temples of the Holy Ghost?" There is something that gets into your spirit or into your body that is obstructing the free flow of the Spirit of God. Get that thing out, it is between you and God.

I tell you, when you line people up so they will trust God for their bodies as they do for their souls, there will not be one half the back-sliding there is now. I was a member of a body of one-hundred-thousand people and I never heard of such a thing as any of them backsliding. They stood for God and they died for God. The character was in them, and they did not know half as much about God as we do by the revelation of the Spirit in these days.

I am twice as anxious this afternoon about his great body of people here, to know whether or not they are going to commit themselves clear in God, than I am about the sick. There may be dozens in this room who are so very sick that they need God. But beloved, listen. Suppose one of them was not healed and the rest were made clear in their consecration to God, you would have a bigger demonstration.

As fast as you get them healed, the Christians without Christ's consecration are down in their faith and becoming sick. After awhile a preacher gets to be a kind of doctor of saints in his little assembly. God does not want it. Get clear; get straight in your consecration to God. Put yourself body and soul and spirit forever in God's hands. Do it today, bless God. Do it today.

How ashamed a Christian ought to be that he is trusting in the arm of flesh or in a medicine bottle somewhere around the house. You go home and gather up the abominable stuff and put it in the alley box and then apologize to the alley box.

You cannot tell me anything about medicine. There never was a bigger humbug practiced on mankind than the practice of medicine. The biggest men in the medical world have declared it over and over again, but the mob do not pay any attention to it.

Professor Douglas McLaggen, who had the chair of medical jurisprudence, stood up among one thousand students, when asked to lecture of the Science of Medicine, and he said, "I am an honest man, and 'An honest man is the noblest work of God'; from the days of Hypocrates and Galen until man we have been stumbling in the dark, from diagnosis to diagnosis, and from treatment to treatment, and any doctor worth his salt will tell you that there is not one atom of science in the whole range of either medicine of surgery. For science is absolute knowledge, and regarding the healing of diseases the most eminent physicians will say what Sir Ashley Cooper, who was physician to Queen Victoria for twenty-five years, the greatest physician in Great Britain, has said: 'The science of medicine is founded upon conjecture and improved by murder.'" Dr. Magendie of Paris, who has the greatest system of diagnosis in the world, said, "We take up the attention of the patient with our medicine, while nature cuts in and makes a cure." But you cannot tell a third-rate American doctor that.

Yet the Christian would turns their back on the Son of God and goes and puts themselves in the hands of men. No man that ever lived, or ever will live, will ever reduce the subject of medicine to a science. No two doses of medicine will ever produce the same effect in your own person. You can take a dose of medicine today and another tomorrow, and you will have a different effect tomorrow than you had today.

That may be all right for the world. Why the man that is not a Christian has got to have a physician of some kind, but the Christian can't. God cut the privilege off long ago. Bless God. "Is any among you (Christians) sick? Let him call for the elders of the church." That is tall the privilege the Word of God gives him. That is the way into God, on the line of divine healing. Bless God.

Bless God, I tell you I am just looking for the day when there will be a great, blessed, true company of men and women in this world who will stand in this through the living God just as clear as crystal, who have cut clear off form the world, the flesh, and the devil. That is the characteristic of the church of Philadelphia all right.

God has let me see healings in every way that human eyes can see them. I have seen them come like the flash of lightning. I have seen the Spirit of God as lightning flash around the room, just like the lightning. God was there in lightning form, and the devils were cast and the sick healed. I have seen God come as the tender bud when nobody knew He was there, and people were healed. I have seen people healed in the audiences when cancers would melt away and varicose veins were healed. Nobody prayed for them. They just put themselves in the hands of God. That is all.

There is no man that lives who can define the operations of faith in a man's heart. But there is one thing we are sure of, that when we cut ourselves off from every other help, we never found the Lord Jesus Christ fail. If there are any failures, it is our failure, not God's. Bless God!

Christian Consciousness

There is a wonderful single word that expresses what God is trying to develop in us. That word is, consciousness. I love it. It is an amazing word. Consciousness means, that which the soul knows. Not that which you believe, or that which you have an existent faith for, or that which you hope, but that which the soul has proven, which the soul knows, upon which the soul rests, the thing, bless God, which has become concrete in your life.

Consequently God's purpose, and the purpose of real religion, is to create in the nature of man, a consciousness of God. And that church which will succeed in creating the highest degree of consciousness of God in the soul of men, will live longest in the world. And the only mode of possibility of perpetuating a church in the world forever is to bring into the souls of the people the full measure of the consciousness of God that Jesus Christ enjoys.

It is a good thing, not only to be good, but to know WHY you are good. It is not only a good thing to be an American, but to know WHY you are an American. It is a good thing, not only to be a Christian but to know WHY you are a Christian, and to know why Christian consciousness is superior to every other known consciousness.

I want to declare that Christianity stands superior to every other form of religion under the heavens and in the whole earth; that no other religion under the heavens has the same consciousness of God or the same means of producing a consciousness of God, that Christianity possesses.

In 1893 in this city, was the great Chicago World's Fair. Among the features of the fair was a Congress on Religions. All the religions of the world were invited to send their representatives and present their peculiar religion for the good of all. Many regarded it as a great calamity that the varied forms of Eastern Philosophy should thus be introduced into this country. I never felt that way. I have always felt that if Christianity could not demonstrate her superiority over every other religion, then Christianity has not the place and power that Jesus Christ said Christianity had in the world.

But the result of that Congress of Religions was that Christianity was so poorly presented, that the Indian Philosophers ran away with the whole thing, and in the minds of thousands who listened, it left a belief that their knowledge of God, and God's laws, and the laws of life were greater than the Christian possessed.

And, fellow Christians, there began in my soul a prayer that Almighty God would reveal in my soul what the real secret of real Christianity is, in order that, in this world, Christians might become kings and priests, and demonstrate the superiority of the religion of the Son of God, beyond that of every other in the whole earth.

In later years I went to South Africa. It was at a time of peculiar interest in South African history, just following the Boer War. The great industry there is mining. One fourth of the gold of the world comes from Johannesburg and vicinity. The diamonds of the world come from South Africa, and the United States is the greatest diamond market of the world.

When the Boer War came on, the native people became so frightened over war between white men, that after the war was over and settled, they could not coax them back to open the mines. The result was, that in order to get the industries established again, they had to send to China and get two hundred thousand (200,000) Chinese, and put them to work to open the shops and mines, and all the other industries. These Chinese came in real colonies. Some were followers of Confucius, some were Buddhists, some where Brahmans, some represented this form, and some that form of philosophy. They brought their priests, and their priests ministered unto them.

At the same time there were in South Africa, one and a half million East Indians. These represented all the cults of India. They made complaints that they were not being properly cared for, and the British government sent to India and imported a great company of Buddhist priests, and Brahman priests, and Yogi priests, and all the rest of them, and they came to South Africa to assist their own people.

I had a Jewish friend, Rabbi Hertz, who became famous as a great Rabbi, because of his influence for the British, during the war. There was also a Roman Catholic priest, Father Bryant, a wonderful man. I listened to Dr. Hertz give a series of lectures on the Psalms of David, which I regard as the finest of that character I had ever heard.

One day he said, "Did it ever occur to you what an amazing Congress of Religions we have in this country? It would put the one in Chicago, in 1893, in the shade." I said, "I have thought of it, but do not have sufficient acquaintance among these other men to undertake it, but would gladly give a helping hand." So it was eventually brought to pass.

We gathered once a week. They sat on the floor all night, Eastern fashion, a priest with his interpreter, and we gave the individual a whole night if he wanted it, or two nights if he wanted it, or as long as he wanted, to tell out the very secret of his soul, to show the very best he could, the very depth of his peculiar religion, and the consciousness of God it produced. It was not the details of his religion we sought, but the soul of it, and the consciousness it possessed. We listened to the Indian Buddhist priest one night, and the Chinese Buddhist priest the next night, and it went on. Eventually it came to the night that Dr. Hertz, the Jewish Rabbi, was to give the secret of the Jewish religion, and tell out the whole of God that the Jewish religion revealed, and the consciousness of God that was produced by the Mosaic and the prophetic teachings.

Did you ever stop to think that in all religious history, the Jewish prophets knew more of God than all the Philosophers of earth combined? They superseded all others of the ancients in knowledge of God, His ways and power. They gave to their day and generation such a revelation of God as the world had never known. Stop and think of the wonders of God that the Old Testament revealed. Think of the marvels, that it seems would stagger the very soul of modern Christianity.

When the Israelites were traveling over the deserts, God arrested the processes of decay in their very shoes and clothing, and they wore them continually for forty years. Think of the marvel of it, the arrest of the process of decay! And then someone wonders if it is possible to arrest the process of decay in a man's life. Yes, it is, bless God! Jesus Christ arrested the process of death by the power of God, through the introduction of the life and the Spirit of life in Jesus Christ, giving man eternal life.

Think again of the old prophet who, when they had lost the ax in the water, and came to him in their distress, and he takes a stick and holds it in his hands. What for? Until that stick became magnetized by the Spirit and power of God. And when he threw it in the water, the ax arose and came to the stick. Think again of the prophet when he was called to the dying boy. He said to his servant, "Take this staff", the staff that he carried, "go ahead of me, lay it on the child." What for? Because he carried that staff next to his God anointed hands until the staff itself became impregnated with the life and power of God. So the servant went ahead, and there was enough of God in that staff to keep the life there, and the spirit there, until he arrived and called the child to life by the power of God.

Later they were burying a man, and in their haste they opened the grave of Elisha, and when the dead man touched his old God-filled bones, he became alive. There was enough of God in the old bones to quicken him into life again. Bless God!

You say, "Well, how can Christianity demonstrate anything further than that?" When I listened to Dr. Hertz my heart asked, "Dear God, when I get my turn to reveal what Christianity is, what am I going to say that is going to reveal Christianity as superior to the Jewish dispensation, and the consciousness of God that it produced in the souls of the prophets?"

From eight o'clock at night until four thirty Dr. Hertz poured out his soul in a wondrous stream of God revelation, such as my soul had never heard. In the morning as I started for home I prayed, "God, in the name of Jesus, when it comes next Thursday night, and it is my turn to show forth Jesus Christ, what am I going to say to surmount the revelation of God that he gave?" I had searched Christian literature for it. I had searched the libraries of the world. I could not find it in the writings of the old Christian Fathers. I searched the Word of God for it. I saw flashes of it, but somehow it would not frame in my soul. I decided there was only one way. I gave myself to fasting and prayer and waiting on God. And one day, in the quiet, God told me that secret.

And from that day my heart rested in the new vision of Jesus Christ, and a new revelation of the real divinity of Christianity came to my heart.

So it came my turn and I sat down and reviewed for hours, with care, step by step, the consciousness that the philosophers and priests had shown as belonging to their respective religions, and finally the wonderful consciousness that Dr. Hertz had shown as belonging to the Mosaic dispensation.

Oh, bless God, there is a secret in Jesus Christ. Christianity is all supernatural, every bit of it. The philosophers are natural. The Mosaic dispensation and its revelation was supernatural, but its revelation did not have the high degree of overcoming consciousness that belongs to Christianity. Yet, you can go around the world, and you will not find one in a hundred thousand that can tell what the real secret of Christianity is, which makes it superior to all other religions.

You say, "It is the Holy Ghost." Well, the prophets had the Holy Ghost. There is no more marvelous record given than the Old Testament records. When Moses wanted mechanics and workmen, the Lord called a man by name and said, "I have placed the Spirit of God in wisdom, and in understanding, and in knowledge, and in all manner of cunning works, to work in gold, and in silver, and in brass, and in cutting of stones, to set them, and in carving of timber, to work all manner of workmanship." That is the way they learned their trade.

Later, they were making preparations for the building of Solomon's temple. That temple is one of the seven wonders of the world. Did you ever stop to think of where the plans came from, or how they got them? Old David tells us that God gave him the plans of the temple in writing; "while the Spirit of God was upon me in writing", and he wrote the details of it. He put these details down with such accuracy that they prepared the temple in the mountains, and when they came to put it together, there was no sound of a hammer. Every piece fit into place. What a wonderful moving of God! What a wonderful presence of God! Talk about the glory of God! Why, when Moses came down from the mountain, his face shown or radiated with the glory of God so intensely that the people were afraid of him, and he was compelled to wear a veil until the anointing had somewhat left his soul.

But, beloved, Christianity is more than that. Paul declares that the glory of Moses' face was superseded. I said a moment ago, Christianity is not a natural religion. It has nothing natural in it. It is supernatural from the top to the bottom, from the center, to the circumference, within and without. It comes right from heaven, every bit of it. It is the divine outflow of the Holy Soul of the crucified, risen, glorified Son of God.

Why does God come down from heaven into the hearts of men; into the natures of men; into the bodies of men; into the souls of men; into the spirits of men? God's purpose in man is to transform him into the nature of God. Jesus said, "I said ye are gods." (John 10:34)

The philosophers came to the grave and died. They had no further revelation to give. They had left their nets and they exist to this day. I have studied the great Eastern philosophies. I have searched them from cover to cover. I have read them for years as diligently as I have read my Bible. I have read them to see what their consciousness was. The secret of salvation is not in them.

But in my Bible is seen that the Son of God saves men from their sins, and changes them by His power in their nature, so that they become like Him. And that is the purpose of Jesus, to take a man and make a Christ out of him. To take a sinner and wash him pure and white and clean, and then come into his life and anoint him with His Spirit, speak through him, live in him, change the substance of his spirit, change the substance of his body, until his body and his blood and his bones and flesh and his soul and his spirit, are the body, and blood, and bones, and soul, and spirit of the Son of God (Ephesians 5:30, 1 Corinthians 6:17).

Oh, Jesus was crucified. Jesus was crucified after there grew in the soul of Jesus the divine consciousness that He could go into the grave, and through faith in God, accept the word of God, and believe that He would raise Him from the dead. Jesus went into the grave with a divine boldness, not simply as a martyr. He was God's Prince, God's King, God's Savior. He went into the grave God's conqueror! He was after something. He went after the power of death, and He got it, and He took it captive, and He came forth from the grave proclaiming His victory over death.

No more bowing before the accursed power that had been generated through sin. It was a captive. No more fear of hell! Do you hear it? No more fear of hell after Jesus Christ came out of the grave. He had death and hell by the throat, and the key in His hands. He was Conqueror!

When He came forth from the grave, He came forth bringing that wonderful spirit of heavenly triumph that was begotten in the soul of Jesus because He had not failed. He had gone and done it. No longer a hope, no longer a faith, now a knowledge of God's consciousness in His heart. It was done!

Oh, yes, bless God, I am coming back to that word which I started. Do you know the secret of religion is in its consciousness? The secret of Christianity is in the consciousness it produces in your soul. And Christianity produces a higher consciousness than any other religion in the world; no other religion in the world, or other revelation of the true God equals it. It is the highest and holiest. It comes breathing and throbbing and burning right out of the heart of the glorified Son of God. It comes breathing and beating and burning and throbbing into your nature and mine, bless God.

So that is the reason I love the religion of the Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. That is the reason the cross of Calvary is a sacred place. That is the reason that the conquest of the Son of God in the world's religions. Death makes a man's heart throb. That is the reason He gathered His disciples together, and as if He could not wait, He said, "Let me breathe it into you. Go forth in its power. All power is given unto me, both in heaven and in earth. Go ye therefore. These signs shall follow … Cast out devils, speak with new tongues, … heal the sick." Amen.

In those early centuries of Christianity, Christianity did not go into the world apologizing. It went to slay the powers of darkness and undo the works of the devil, and it lived in holy triumph!

Ministry of the Spirit

November 24, 1916

One of the most difficult things to bring into the spirit of people is that the Spirit of God is a tangible substance, that it is the essence of God's own being.

We are composed of an earthly materiality, that is our bodies are largely a composition of water and earth. This may sound a little crude, but the actual composition of a human being is about sixteen buckets of water and one bucket full of earth. I am glad that there is one bucket full of good mud in us. Water, you know, is a composition of gasses, so you can see how much gas there is in mankind. But, we are not all gas.

Now as to the composition of the personality of God; for God has a personality, and a being, and a substance. God is a Spirit and spirit is a substance. That is the thing I am trying to emphasize. All heavenly things are of spiritual substance. The body of the angels is of some substance, not the same character of materiality as our own, for ours is an earthly materiality; but the composition of heavenly things is of a heavenly materiality. In other words, heavenly materiality is Spirit. The Word says, "God is a spirit". He is a spirit. Therefore, "They that worship Him must worship Him in Spirit."

You see, the spirit of man must contact and know the real Spirit of God, know God. We do not know God with our flesh, with our hands, nor with our brains. We know God with our spirit. The knowledge of God that our spirit attains may be conveyed and is conveyed to us through the medium of our mind, through the medium of our brains. The effect of God in our body comes through the medium of the spirit of man through the mind of man into the body of man.

There is a quickening by the Spirit of God so that a man's body, a man's soul or mind, and a man's spirit all alike become blessed, pervaded and filled with the presence of God Himself in us. The Word of God is wonderfully clear along these lines.

For instance, the Word of God says that "I will keep him in perfect peace whose mind is stayed on Thee" (Isaiah 26:3). Why? "Because he trusteth in Thee." That is the rest that a Christian knows, whose mind rests in God in real, perfect trust. I will keep him in perfect peace whose mind is stayed on Thee."

The Word of God again says that our FLESH shall rejoice. Not our mind, but our very flesh shall rejoice. The presence of God is to be a living presence, not only in the spirit of man, nor in the mind of man alone, but also in the flesh of man, so that God is known in all departments of our life. We know God in our very flesh. We know God in our mind. We know God in our spirit. Bless His precious Name!

The medium by which God undertakes to bless the world, is through the transmission of Himself. Now the Spirit of God is His own substance, the substance of His being, the very nature and quality of the very presence, and being, and nature, of God. Consequently, when we speak of the Spirit of God being transmitted to man, and into man, we are not talking about an influence, either spiritual or mental. We are talking about the transmission of the living substance and being of God into your being and into mine. Not a mental effect, but a living substance, the living being and actual life transmitted, imparted, coming from God into your being, into my being. Bless God!

That is the secret of the abundant life of which Jesus spoke. Jesus said, "I am come that ye might have life, and that ye might have it more abundantly." (John 10:10)

The reason we have the more abundant life is that, by receiving God into our being all the springs of our being are quickened by His living presence. Consequently, if we are living today and we receive God, we live life in a fuller measure, we live life with a greater energy because we become the recipients of the energy of the living God in addition to our normal energy, through the reception of His being, His nature, His life into ours!

The wonderful measure that the human being is capable of receiving God is demonstrated by some of the incidents in the Word of God. For instance, the most remarkable in the Scriptures is the Transfiguration of Jesus Himself, where with Peter, James, and John, the Spirit of God came upon Him so powerfully that it radiated out through His being, until His clothes became white and glistening, and His face shown as the light.

Now one must be the recipient of the light, glory and power of God before he or she can manifest it. Jesus demonstrated these two facts; the marvelous capacity of the nature of man to receive God into His being, and the marvelous capacity of the nature of man to reveal God. In the glory shining through His clothes, in the glistening of the glory of God that made His face glorious and wonderful, He demonstrated man's capacity to reveal God.

The human being is God's marvelous, wonderful instrument, the most marvelous and wonderful of all the creation of God in its capacity to receive and reveal God. Paul received so much of God into his being that when men brought handkerchiefs and he took them in his hands, and when the women brought their aprons and handed them to him, the handkerchiefs and aprons became so impregnated with that living Spirit of God, that living substance of God's being, that when they were carried to one who was sick or possessed of devils, the Word says, when they laid the handkerchiefs or aprons on them, the Spirit of the living God passed from the handkerchiefs or aprons into the sick, or, into the insane man, and the sick were healed and the devils were cast out.

You see, people have been so in the habit of putting Jesus in a class by Himself that they have failed to recognize that He had made provision for the same living Spirit of God that dwelt in His own life and of which He, Himself, was a living manifestation, to inhabit your being and mine, just as it inhabited the being of Jesus or Paul.

There is no more marvelous manifestation in the life of Jesus than that manifestation of healing through the Apostle Paul.

You remember the incident of the woman who touched the hem of Jesus' garment, knowing how His whole being, His whole nature radiated that wondrous, blessed life of God, of which He was, Himself, the living manifestation. She said within herself, "If I can but touch the hem of His garment, I shall be healed." So she succeeded, after much effort, to touch the hem of His garment, and as she touched the hem of His garment, there flowed into her body the quickening life stream, and she felt in her body that she was made whole of the plague. And Jesus, being conscious that something had flowed from Him, said to Peter, "Who touched Me?" "Oh," He said, "Somebody touched me, for I perceive that virtue has gone out of me."

If you will analyze that Greek word you will see it means the life or substance of His being, the quickening, living power of God, the very nature and being of God.

If I transmit to another the virtue of my life, I simply transmit a portion of my life to another, the life power that is in me. Blessed be God! The life of God that flows through me is transmitted to another, and so it was with Jesus.

Now then, because of the fact that people brought to Paul, handkerchiefs and aprons, and they became impregnated with the Spirit of God, and the people were healed when they touched them, it is a demonstration in itself that any material substance can become impregnated with the same living Spirit of God.

In my church in South Africa we published a paper in ten thousand lots. We would have the publishers send them to the tabernacle, and we would lay them out in packages of one or two hundred all around the front of the platform. At the evening services I would call certain ones of the congregation, that I knew to be in contact with the living God, to come and kneel around, and lay their hands on those packages of papers. We asked God not only that the reading matter in the paper might be a blessing to the individual, and that the message of Christ come through the words printed on the paper, but we asked God to make the very substance of the paper itself, become filled with the Spirit of God, just like the handkerchiefs became filled with the Spirit of God. And if I were in my tabernacle now I could show you thousands of letters in my files from all quarters of the world, from people telling me that when they received our paper, the Spirit came upon them and they were healed, or when they received the paper the joy of God came into their hearts, or they received the paper and were saved unto God.

One woman wrote from South Africa, who said, "I received your paper. When I received it into my hands, my body began to vibrate so I could hardly sit on the chair, and I did not understand it. I laid the paper down, and after a while I took the paper up again, and as I had it in my hands, I shook again. I laid the paper down and took it in my hands a third time. Presently, the Spirit of God came upon me so powerfully that, I was baptized in the Holy Ghost!"

Beloved, don't you see that this message and this quality of the Spirit contains the thing that confuses all the philosophers and all the practice of philosophy in the world? It shows the clearest distinction, which characterizes the real religion of Jesus Christ, and makes it distinct from all other religions and all other ministries.

The ministry of the Christian, is the ministry of the Spirit! He not only ministers words to another, but, he ministers the Spirit of God. It is the Spirit of God that inhabits the words, that speaks to the spirit of another and reveals Christ in, and through him.

In the old days, when I was in Africa, I would walk into the native meetings, when I did not understand the languages, and would listen to the preacher preach for an hour, and I did not understand a word he said. But my soul was blessed by the presence of the Spirit of God.

As Bishop of the church, as I went from place to place holding conferences here and there among white and native people, in many of them, people would speak either in English or Dutch. But, I was just as blessed when a Dutchman spoke, and I did not understand him as when an Englishman spoke. Why? Because the thing that blessed my soul was the living Spirit of God.

The ministry of the Christian is the ministry of the Spirit. If the Christian cannot minister the Spirit of God, in the true sense he is not a Christian. If he has not the Spirit to minister in the real high sense, he has nothing to minister. Other men have intellectually, but the Christian is supposed to be the possessor of the Spirit. He possesses something that no other man in the whole world possesses.

A minister of Jesus Christ is as far removed above the realm of psychological influences, as heaven is above the earth. Blessed be God!

He ministers God Himself into the very spirits, and souls, and bodies, of men. That is the reason that the Christian throws down the bars of his nature, and he invites God to come in and take possession of his being. And the incoming of God into our body, into our soul, into our spirit, accomplishes marvelous things in the nature of man.

A man came into my healing rooms one day and said, "I am almost ashamed to call myself a man, because I have simply indulged the animal of my nature, so that I am more a beast than a man." You say, "Why don't you quit such a life?" "I have not the strength of my being to do so. Unless something takes place that will deliver me from this condition, I do not know what I will do."

I tried to show him what the Gospel of Jesus Christ was. I tried to show him that through living in the animal state, thinking animal thoughts, surrounding himself with beastly suggestion, and contacting the spirit of bestiality everywhere, that element had taken such possession that it predominated in the nature. I said, "My son, if the gospel means anything, it means there shall be a transference of nature. Instead of this living hell that is present in your being, the living holy God should flow into your life and cast out the devil, dispossess the beast, and reign in your member."

We knelt to pray and today he came back with tears in his eyes, and said, "Mr. Lake, I feel I can shake hands with you now. I am a beast no more. I am a man."

Yesterday, a dear woman was present in our afternoon service. She had a tumor that for ten months the physicians believed to be an unborn child. She came with her nurse a few days ago to the healing rooms and told me her symptoms. The thing that fooled the physicians was that there was a movement that they considered similar to life movement, and the result was that during all these months they believed the woman would become a mother until the normal time had long passed. She was the first one to be prayed for after the Thursday afternoon service.

Today, she returned and said, "Mr. Lake, I want you to see me. I have my corsets on. I am perfectly normal. When I went to bed I was not aware that anything had taken place except that the choking had ceased and I felt comfortable. I was not aware of any dimension in my size. But when I awoke this morning I was perfectly normal."

I said, "How did the tumor disappear? Was it in the form of a fluid?"

"No, nothing came from my person," she declared.

Now I am going to ask you, "Where did a great tumor like that go?" What happened to it? (Voice from the audience: "Dematerialized")

Yes, the living Spirit of God absolutely dematerialized the tumor, and the process was accomplished in one night while the woman slept. That is one of God's methods of surgical operation, isn't it?

Beloved, the Spirit of God took possession of that dear soul's person. That tumor became filled with the Spirit of God, and the effect of the Spirit of God in that tumor was so mighty, so powerful, that the Spirit of God dissolved it.

That is the secret of the ministry of Jesus Christ. That is the secret of the ministry of Christianity. That is the reason that the real Christian, who lives in union with the living God, and possesses His Spirit, has a ministry that no other man in all the world possesses.

That is the reason that the real Christian here has a revelation of Jesus Christ and His almightiness and His power to save that no other human in all the world possesses. Why? He is full and experiences in his own soul the dissolving power of the Spirit of God that takes sin out of his life and makes him a free man in Christ Jesus. Blessed be His name forever!

A few weeks ago a dear woman called me over the telephone and said, "I have a young friend who is a drunkard, and the habit has such power over him, that he will go to any excess to abstain. Dry state or no dry state, he has to have it. He is an intelligent fellow. He wants to be free. We have invited him to my home for prayer, and he is here now. I want you to join me in prayer for him."

I said, "All right, but first you call one of your neighbors to join you in prayer for this man, then when you are ready, call me on the phone, and Brother Westwood, and Mrs. Peterson, and we will join you in prayer."

She called me in a little while, and we united our hearts in prayer for the young man, who was on the other side of the city. About twenty minutes afterward he arose from his knees and with tears in his eyes he took the woman by the hand and said, "I am a man of sense. I know when something has taken place within me, and the appetite has disappeared." That is the ministry of the Spirit, the ministry of God to man. Blessed be His name.

Isn't it a marvelous, wonderful thing that God has ordained an arrangement whereby, man becomes God's own co-partner and co-laborer in the ministry of the Spirit, that is, "the Church, which is His Body."

Just as Jesus Christ was the human body, through which the living Spirit was ministered to mankind, so God has arranged that the living Church, not the dead member, but the living Church, alive with the Spirit of the living God, should minister that quickening life to another, and thereby become a co-partner, a co-laborer, together with God. Blessed be His name forever!

Men have mystified and philosophized the Gospel of Jesus, but the Gospel is as simple as can be. Just as God lived and operated through the body of the man Jesus, so Jesus, the Man on the throne, operated in, and through, the Christian, also through His body, the Church, in the world. Just as Jesus was the representative of God the Father, so the Church is the representative of Christ.

As Jesus yielded Himself unto all righteousness, so the Church should yield herself to do all the will of God. The secret of Christianity is in being. It is in being a possessor of the nature of Jesus Christ. In other words, it is being Christ in character, Christ in demonstration, Christ in agency of transmission. When a person gives himself to the Lord and becomes a child of God, as a Christian he is a Christ man. All that he does, and all that he says, from that time forth, should be the will and the words and the doing of Jesus, just as absolutely and entirely as Jesus spoke and did the will of the Father.

Spiritual Dominion

The lesson that God seems to have put in my soul tonight is found in second Timothy, the 1st chapter. Do you know we do not read the Scriptures like people read a text book. Have you ever observed how a scientist reads his text book? He weighs every single word, and each word has a peculiar meaning. If we read the Word of God like that we would get the real vitality of what it says. I wonder if we have caught the force of this scripture:

"Paul, an apostle of Jesus Christ, by the will of God, according to the promise of life, which is in Christ Jesus." (Verse 1)

There is no life outside of Jesus Christ, no eternal life outside of Jesus Christ, by the declaration of Jesus Himself. John said:

"God hath given to us eternal life, and this life is in His Son. He that hath the Son hath life, and he that hath not the Son of God hath not life." (1 John 5:11-12)

All the Scriptures are dear to my heart, and bring their Peculiar ministry and lesson, but the words of Jesus are the supreme words of the Gospel. Jesus said:

"It is the Spirit that quickeneth … the words that I speak unto you, they are spirit, and they are life." John 6:63

Do you know the difficulty in our day is that we have run away from Jesus. That is, the church at large has. The world is making a great struggle at the present hour, and we are in the midst of it ourselves, to get back to Jesus. We have run into false theology, we have run into "churchianity" and human interpretations, and a hundred other follies, but friends, it is a perfectly lovely and refreshing thing to get back to Jesus. Take the words of Jesus and let them become the Supreme Court of the Gospel to you.

I consider all the Word of God the Common Court of the Gospel, but the words of Jesus are the Supreme Court of the Gospel. If there is a question that is not clearly decided according to your vision in the Common Court of the Gospel, then refer it to the Supreme Court, which is the words of Jesus, and the words of Jesus will settle anything that is in your mind.

If our questions were settled by the words of Jesus, we would be out of all the confusion that the world is in at present. I do not see any other way for the world to come out of her present confusion unless it is to accept the words of Jesus as final authority, to accept Jesus as the divine finality where all questions are finally adjudicated, and stand by the words of Jesus.

Just as an example on that line, I suppose there is not any question in the Scripture that is more muddled and fuddled and slobbered over than the subject of water baptism, and we have a dozen forms of baptismal practice, emphasizing different phases of baptismal consecration. But, beloved, the words of Jesus would settle the whole controversy. Jesus' words settle both the spirit and mode of baptism forever. All the damnation that the Christian world has been in over that question is because we simply refused to take the words of Jesus and believe and obey them. I am such an enthusiast on the words of Jesus that if I was compelled to choose between the practice of the apostles and the words of Jesus, I would stand by the words of Jesus. It is the only method that has kept my soul from the confusion I see in other lives.

Coming back to our lesson, observe these words: "According to the promise of life."

There is no promise of life outside of Jesus Christ. Jesus was the most emphatic teacher the world ever saw. He said: "Ye must be born again."

There is no arbitration by which you can get around the matter. There is no possibility of avoiding that truth. You have got to come straight to it and meet it. "According to the promise of life, which is in Christ Jesus …"

"When I call to remembrance the unfeigned faith that is in thee, which first dwelt in thy grandmother, Lois, and thy mother, Eunice; and I am persuaded that it is in thee also." (2 Timothy 1:5)

Timothy had two generations behind him of women of faith.

"Wherefore I put thee in remembrance that thou stir up the gift of God, which is in thee by the putting on of my hands." (2 Timothy 1:6)

Paul had some faith in the value of the putting on of his hands. It was not a mere form. I want to call your attention to the Word of God, especially on this line. Paul's own convictions were that, through the laying on of hands on this young man, an impartation of God to his life had been given. It was so real that even though Timothy was not aware of it and was not exercising the power of God thus bestowed, yet Paul's conviction was that the power of God was present. Why? Because he had laid his hands on him in the Name of the Lord Jesus Christ, and he believed the Spirit of the Lord Jesus Christ had been imparted to him. Therefore, the gift of God was in him. Therefore, the faith to exercise that gift ought to be present, and he believed it was present because of the fact that the Faith of God had already dwelt in his mother and grandmother, and he believed in him also.

Beloved, it takes faith to exercise your gift of God. There are just lots of people around everywhere who have gifts of God, and they are lying dormant in their lives, and there is no value for the Kingdom of God through them because of the fact they have no faith in God to put the gift in exercise and get the benefit of it. Probably, Timothy was a timid fellow, and Paul is going to show him why he should be exercising this gift of God, which he believed to be in him.

There are so many preachers who are afraid of the devil. They have no idea of how big God is who dwells in you. They have no idea of the power given to you because God dwells in you. They preach fear of the devil, fear of demons, and fear of this influence, and fear of that influence, and fear of some other power. If the Holy Ghost has come down from heaven into your soul, common sense teaches us that He has made you the master thereby of every other power in the world. Otherwise the Word of God is a blank falsehood. For it declares: "Greater is He that is in you, than he that is in the world." (1 John 4:4)

"Behold, I give unto you power to tread on serpents and scorpions, and over all the power of the enemy, and nothing shall by any means hurt you." (Luke 10:19)

And if we had faith to believe that the "greater" is in us, bless God, we would be stepping out with boldness and majesty. The conscious supremacy of the Son of God would be manifest in our lives and instead of being subservient and bowed down and broken beneath the weight of sin and the powers of darkness around us, they would flee from us and keep out of our way. I believe before God, there is not a devil that comes within a hundred feet of a real God anointed Christian. That is the kind of vision God put in my soul.

When I went to South Africa, years ago, after I was there a short time, I attended a great missions conference. It was a general missions conference of the country. We were bringing a new message on our teaching the Baptism of the Christian to heal, and they wanted to hear us, and get us sized up and classified. On account of the Holy Ghost and the power of God featured in the conference, we were a peculiar lot.

Among the difficulties they discussed in that conference was the tremendous influence of the native medicine men over the people. They call them witch doctors. They are a powerfully developed psychic type of man, and for generations and generations they have studied psychic things, until they understand the practice of psychic laws.

It is marvelous to see the psychic manifestations they bring to pass. I have seen shocking things take place at the hands of witch doctors, things that nobody would believe unless you beheld them.

On one occasion two men who had become extremely jealous of each other, both native chiefs, and they lived sixty miles from each other. One time, as I was in the kraal of one of them, I heard them discussing this difficulty with the other chief and it was decided by the chief that the next Sunday morning he was going to set the other fellow on fire. I wanted to see this phenomena and I got a horse and went across the country to be there on Sunday morning.

The chiefs go out and round up their cattle and herds, look over their flocks, etc. It is a sort of Sunday exercise. I rode along. We had not ridden for more that an hour when I observed that this fellow was becoming very hot. Within half an hour he was absolutely purple. I knew somewhat of medicine; I would have said the man was likely to have a stroke from blood pressure. After a while he began to complain of terrible pain, and finally he became exhausted, got down and lay on the ground, and passed into a state of terrible exhaustion. I believe the man would have died. I had heard about these sort of things, but this was taking place under my own eyes. I saw that unless the man got deliverance he would die. When it got to that point, I said to the brethren, "it is time that we prayed." I stepped over and laid my hands on the chief, and called on God to destroy that damning psychic power that was destroying the fellow and God shattered it.

I talked to the conference about this matter. I said, "It is a strange thing to me that in all the years of missions in this land that your hands are tied on account of witch doctors. Why don't you go out and cast the devil out of these fellows, and get the people delivered from their power?" They took a long breath and said, "Cast the devil out? He will cast the devil out of you!" The secret of our work, the reason God gave us one hundred thousand people, the reason we have twelve hundred native preachers in our work in Africa, is because of the fact we believed the promise of: "Greater is He that is in you, that he that is in the world."

We not only want to seek them, but challenged them separately and unitedly, and by the power of God delivered the people from their power, and when they were delivered the people appreciated their deliverance from the slavery in which they had been held through their superstitions, psychological, spirit control, and they are most terrible.

"God hath not given us the spirit of fear; but of power, and of love, and of a sound mind." (2 Timothy 1:7)

Whenever they got in the presence of one of these fellows and wanted to cast out the devil, I always felt I wanted to get his eye. The eyes of a man are the windows of his soul. In teaching a class of children I asked them what the eyes are for. One little chap said, "Your eyes are for you to look out of." Do you get it? It is not a poetic expression, they are the windows through which you look out. It is wonderful the things you see when you look out. Sometimes you see fear, and the spirit of darkness, and you see the devil in the other life. Marvelous things that you see with your inner eyes.

The world laughs at our Pentecostal people, because they sometimes talk about seeing by the Spirit, and sometimes we talk about seeing psychically. We see all the time, naturally, as you and I do now.

God anoints your soul. God anoints your life. God comes to dwell in your person. God comes to make you a master. That is the purpose of His indwelling in a Christian. The real child of God was to be a master over every other power of darkness in the world. It was to be subject to His. He is to be God's representative in the world. The Holy Ghost in the Christian was to be as powerful as the Holy Ghost was in the Christ. Indeed, Jesus' words go to such an extreme that they declare that, "Greater works than these shall ye do." (John 14:12)

It indicated that the mighty Holy Ghost from heaven in the lives of the Christian was to be more powerful in you and in me after Jesus got to heaven and ministered Him to our souls that He was in Jesus.

Beloved, who has the faith to believe it? Who has faith to exercise it? We cannot exercise anything beyond what we believe to be possible.

Listen: "God hath not given us the spirit of fear."

Fear of the devil is nonsense. Fear of demons is foolish. The Spirit of God anointing the Christian heart makes the soul impregnable to the powers of darkness. How I love to teach men that when the Lord Jesus anoints your soul and baptizes you in the Holy Ghost, that the almightiness of the Eternal God, the Father, by the Spirit, and Jesus Christ combined, has come into your soul.

One of the thirty six articles of the Church of England says, "The Holy Ghost which proceedeth from the Father and the Son." There is no truer thing in all the world. Do you get it? "Which proceedeth from the Father and the Son." In the fourth and fifth chapters of Revelation you see the distinctive personalities of God the Father and Jesus Christ. God the Father occupies the Throne, is holding the seven sealed book in His hand. And Jesus Christ, the silent Lamb, without an attendant, not an angel to accompany Him, absolutely alone, presents Himself to the Father, and the Father hands Him the seven sealed book, as He whose right it is to unseal and open the seals. What I want to bring to you is that the Spirit of God, the divine master, the eternal power of God, the combined life and presence, by the Spirit of the Father and the Son, is given to you. Not to leave you a weakling, and subject to all kinds of powers of darkness, but to make you a master, to give you dominion in God over every devilish force that ever was.

"God hath not given us the spirit of fear, but of power, and of love, and of a sound mind."

The Spirit of Power is the Holy Ghost, bless God. And not only of power, but of love and of a sound mind. Not craziness and insanity, but a sound mind, by which you can look in the face of the devil and laugh.

Once I was called to come and pray for a blacksmith at Johannesburg, South Africa. He was in delirium tremens. When I got to the house they had him locked in a room, and the windows were barred. The wife said, "Mr. Lake, you are not going into that room?" I said, "Yes, I would like to."

"But, Brother, you do not understand. My sons are all more powerful than you are, and four of them tried to overpower him and could not do it. He nearly killed them."

I said, "Dear sister, I have the secret of power that I believe matches his case."

"Greater is He that is in you, that he that is in the world."

"Sister, you just give me the key, and go about your work, and do not be troubled." I unlocked the door, slipped into the room, and turned the key again, and put the key in my pocket. The man was reclining in a crouch like a lion ready to spring. I never heard any lips blaspheme as he did. He cursed me by every expression I ever heard, and worse. He threatened me if I came near him he would tear me limb from limb and throw me out the window. He was as big as two of me. I never saw such an arm in my life.

I began to talk to him. I had the confidence that, "Greater is He that is in you, that he that is in the world." I engaged him in conversation until the Holy Ghost in me got hold of that devil, or a legion, as the case might be. I approached the bed step by step, sometimes only three inches, and in half an hour I got up close enough where I could reach his hand. He was still reclining in a posture like a lion. He caught his hand and turned his wrists. I was not practicing any tricks, but I unconsciously turned his wrist over, and as I did it brought my eyes down near to his, and all at once I looked up and I could see the devil in that man begin to crawl. He was trying to get away. God Almighty can look out of your eyes, and every devil that was ever in Hell could not look in the eyes of Jesus without crawling. The lightnings of God were there.

My spirit awoke, and I could see the devil was in terror and was crawling and trying to get back away from my eyes as far as he could, I looked up to heaven and called on God to cast that devil out, and lent Jesus Christ all the force of my nature, all the power of my spirit, and all the power of my mind, all the power of my body. God had me from the crown of my head to the soles of my feet. The lightnings of God went through me and the next thing I knew he had collapsed in a heap and flopped down like a big fish. Then he turned out of the bed on his knees and began to weep and pray, because he had become human again, and the devil was gone.

Dear hearts, don't you see, in a moment that character of education develops a certain confidence in God, and it makes your soul sick when you see Christian men and women sneak around afraid of the devil, and teaching people the devil is going to jump on you and take possession of you. Not a bit of it! There never was a devil in the world that ever went through the blood of Jesus, if the individual was in Christ.

In the Jewish Bible, among the listings of the covenants, is one that is known as the Threshold Covenant. That was the Covenant by which the Israelites went out of the land of Egypt when God told them to slay a lamb, and put the blood in the door posts and lintel. And the Jewish Bible adds they put the blood on the threshold. And a lot of people get the blood of Jesus on their head, but it seems to me they do not get it under their feet. The Word of God teaches us to get the blood under your feet, and on the right hand and on the left hand and over your head. That is your protection. There was no angel of death in the land of Egypt, or in hell, that could go through that blood unto that family. No Sir! He was absolutely barred.

Friends, do you believe it was the blood of the lamb that was barring the angel of death? Do you believe the red stains on the doors frightened him away. Oh sir, the blood signified to me that there is one that goes through the blood, that is the Holy Ghost. And beloved, the Eternal God, by the Spirit, went through the blood to the inside, and stayed there and defended the house.

"Greater is He that is in you, that he that is in the world."

All these little insignificant devils that came along in this sickness or that sickness, or that temptation of sin have no power over you. Dear friends, from heaven there comes to your heart and mine that dominion of Jesus by which the God anointed soul walks through them, through myriads of demons and they cannot touch you.

I was in Pretoria, South Africa, visiting with a friend and trying to keep out of the hot sun, to meditate and pray; and as I meditated and prayed, I seemed to be lifted up in the Spirit until I was a mile or more above the city and could see the city like you would from an airplane. When I got up there, I made a discovery. There were spirits of darkness and myriads of spirits of light in the most awful conflict I ever saw. Naturally, you think of a weapon when you see a fight. I thought, "If only I had a weapon I would get into that fight."

Presently, the Spirit of God got hold of me and when these demons came at me from all sides, I waded into them and began to knock them down. It continued until I had knocked so many down I had to climb over them to get at the rest.

When the vision lifted I prayed, "Dear Lord, what does it mean?" And the Spirit of the Lord said to me, "This contest that you have seen in the upper air will exist among your own people in six months. This lesson is to teach you that there is a dominion in Jesus Christ, and "greater is He that is in you, that he that is in the world."

Friends, it is time you and I, as the Blood washed in Jesus, awoke to our privilege, whereby in the Name of the Lord we cease to sin, and let no unholy condemnation remain upon our life any longer.

I do not know, but maybe I have come through a different school from what others have, in the lines of the Spirit, but I am sure of one thing, that if Christianity was to leave me a weakling, to be oppressed by the power of darkness, I would seek something else because it would meet the need. It is that which meets the need that gives you divine supremacy in Jesus Christ. Friends, when your heart is surcharged by that faith in God so that "greater is He that is in you that he that is in the world", you will pray a new prayer.

Moses came to the Red Sea with impassable mountains on the right hand and impassable mountains on the left hand, the army of Pharaoh behind him and the sea in front of him. If any man had a right to stop and pray, surely you might say that man had.

Over and over and over again, when we get to the real ditch, we try to jump over the thing and put the responsibility back on God. Just watch God make a real man. When Moses got his prayer nicely started, God rebuked him and said, "Wherefore criest thou unto me? Speak unto the children of Israel, that they go forward: But lift THOU up thy rod, and stretch out thine hand over the sea, and divide it." (Exodus 14:15-16)

I want you Pentecostal Christians to get this. God did not say, Moses, you stretch forth your hand, and I will divide the sea. He said, "Stretch forth thine hand over the sea, and divide it." You have faith in me, you stretch forth your hand and divide the sea. Jesus said practically the same thing to His disciples, "When he had called unto Him His twelve disciples, He gave them power against unclean spirits, to cast them out, and to heal all manner of sickness and all manner of disease." (Matthew 10:1, Luke 9:1-6)

Beloved, He gives it to you. What is the Holy Ghost? It is the gift of God Himself to you. The Holy Spirit is not simply given that you may be a channel, and always a channel. No sir! But instead of that, the most magnificent thing the Word of God portrays is that Christ indwelling in you by the Holy Ghost is to make you a son of God, like Jesus Christ. God's anointed from heaven, with the recognized power of God in your spirit to command the will of God.

It may not be all souls have grown to that place where such a life as that is evident, but surely if the Son of God by the Holy Ghost has been born in our heart, it is time we began to let Him have some degree of sway in our heart, and some degree or heavenly dominion of value, and some degree of the lightnings of Jesus Christ breaking forth from our spirit.

That is what the word of God speaks to my soul tonight. That is why my spirit rejoices in this blessed Word.

"God hath not given us the spirit of fear, but of power, and of love, and of a sound mind."

The sanest man is the man that believes God and stands in His promises, and knows the secret of His power, receives the Holy Ghost and gives His way in his life, and goes out in the Name of the Lord Jesus to command the will of God and bring it to pass in the world.

At the end of the first three hundred years of the Christian era, there were millions or Christians. Christianity was an aggressive power. Christianity went into the heart of heathendom to undo their superstitions to break down their psychological forces, to leave the consciousness of Jesus Christ in the heart, to heal the sick, to raise the dead. Oh, God in Heaven, bring our hearts back to it! Christianity was a conquering force.

But, friends, there was a consecration secret in the life of the early church. It was this: If She could not conquer, they would die. Dear friends, you will never exercise very much of the dominion of the Son of God in your spirit until your heart is ready to say, if I cannot get the mastery, "I can die." The early Christians died, plenty of them. Millions of them. That is the reason people say the blood of martyrs was the seed of the Church. Bless God, they died for their faith.

Friends, you and I will never know or have the big ministry and the big victory until our souls have arrived at the place where we will die for our faith also. Lord God, help us. These days, if a man gets a stomach ache he is afraid he will die. Die if you have to die, but do not disgrace the cause of Christ and weaken in your faith and sell it to man or the devil. When that degree of consecration comes into your heart, when that degree of determination comes into your spirit, you will not have to die.

But I tell you, most of you will think she is dying before we enter there. That is the life into which dead men enter. That is the resurrection life. You have to die to get it. You have to die to enter there. We die to our sin, we die to ourselves, we die to the opinions of men and we die to the old world, we die to the fear of spooks and demons and devils, and prove the truth of the text, "Greater is He that is in you that he that is in the world." In my name they shall cast out devils. Rebuke the devil and he will flee from you. We live in Jesus Christ. Blessed be His name. (Ephesians 4:27, Ephesians 6:11, James 4:7, 1 Corinthians 10:13, Matthew 17:20, Luke 10:19)

The Real Christian

At Church of the Truth, Spokane, Washington, October 11, 1914

When I first commenced to preach the Gospel, at least after I got to the point where I gave up everything else and gave my life exclusively to the Gospel, a number of my friends from the city of Chicago were in the habit of coming out to hear me preach, brokers from the Board of Trade and other business friends who were in my circle. It was sort of a curiosity. One day at the club one inquired from a friend, "Have you heard Lake preach yet?"

He said, "Yes, last night."

And the other said, "How was it?"

"Well," he replied, "it was wonderfully apostolic. He took a text and went everywhere preaching the Word."

When the secretary inquired what the subject of my sermon would be yesterday, I told her it was "The Real Christian." I trust the Lord will let me keep in reasonable touch with the subject. However, I would rather the Lord would have His way than mine.

A Christian is unique. He stands alone. He supersedes all who have gone before. He will not have a successor. He is man at his best and God's best effort for mankind.

When the conception of a Christian has been established within our spirits as the New Testament establishes the ideal Christian, we will understand then how it is that men have been ready to abandon all else in the world in order to attain Christ, in order to attain His character, in order to become the possessor of His Spirit.

I went to South Africa in a most unique time in the nation's history, just after the reconstruction period after the Boer War. On account of the great war the native populace had been frightened practically out of the country. They had gone far back from the war zone, and the war zone covered practically the whole country.

The great mines were depending on the natives for labor, and it became a great issue how it was possible to carry on the work while this condition of fear rested upon the natives. Finally, it was proposed that they should bring one hundred thousand men from China. They were brought on a contract for three years. The British government sent a fleet over there and brought them all out at one time. They were a real living colony. They brought their teachers, preachers, priests, and prophets. Chinese are largely Confucians and Buddhists.

At the same period the East Indian people who live in South Africa (and there are many of them; I think in the Transvaal alone there are two hundred and fifty thousand of them), felt that they were not receiving the attention from the government in the way of education that they ought to, so the British government sent teachers, both religious and secular, to supply them there.

So the Buddha, the Yogi, and many others came there and made their headquarters at Johannesburg. Our ministry was somewhat unique. We were the only ones who held meetings and preached on the subject of healing.

After a little time it dawned on me that here was a possibility that had never come into my life before. If I could get these various priests and teachers of the various Eastern religions to come together, we might have an exchange of thought. We would have something accomplished. It would at least give me an opportunity to discuss it. So after some time the matter was arranged. At the same time, we added to our company a Rabbi from Chicago, Dr. Hearst. We had a combination, I presume, representing all the great religions on earth. We were able by wise exchange and guidance and much prayer to finally bring about such a condition of fellowship among these various ones that they spoke out their hearts to each other with a great deal of freedom. Many times we sat from sundown to sun up comparing notes and going over the various teachings, etc.

It had this effect on me, that I left that series with this conclusion: There is lots of light in the world, and men are groping after the light. Some possess it in a larger degree than others, but all possess it in some degree. I said to a man as I walked home on the last morning, "One thing surely has been demonstrated, and that is that in Jesus Christ there is a divine life of which, when a man becomes a real possessor, he has a richer appreciation of his power that no other man possesses." And I have been more of a Christian, of a real Christian, from that day than I ever was before.

I am convinced tonight that there is a profound secret in the life and character, teaching and virtue of Jesus Christ that when a man attains it he is rich indeed beyond measure.

In order to have you appreciate some of the things that I trust the Lord will let me say, I want to relate some incidents. It seems as if I can teach things through incidents that I am not able to teach in any other way.

Among my young friends in South Africa were two young men whom I have regarded as the brightest men I have ever known. One was a Boer. His name was Von Shield, the son of an old-line stock of highly educated Hollanders. The other's name was Kritzmall. He had come from a generation of Church of England preachers. I think his great grandfather had occupied St. Paul Church in London. I believe he had been baptized there himself.

He has always stood out in my mind as a sort of counterpart of St. Paul, for if I can comprehend the character of Paul, I think he was more largely duplicated in that man than any other I ever knew.

These two men were really the only up-to-date "new thought" men I met in Africa. Von Shield was agent for Christian D. Larson and handled his books in South Africa. He began to attend our meetings and, one day when I was not present, came forward out of the audience and knelt at the altar and sought God for the conscious knowledge of his salvation. And bless God, he received it.

Some days after that when I was present, I was teaching at the afternoon service on the subject of the baptism of the Spirit. And raising up in his seat he said to me, "Lake, do you suppose that if God gave me the baptism of the Holy Spirit it would satisfy the burning yearning that is in my soul for God?"

I said, "My son, I don't know that it would, but I think you would be a long piece on the way."

So without more ado he came forward and knelt, and looking up he said to me, "Lay your hands on my head and pray." And as I did the Spirit of God descended on Von Shield in an unusual manner. He was baptized in the Holy Ghost very wonderfully, indeed. He was a transformed man. I tell you from that hour that man became the living personification of the power of God, and in all my life I have never found a soul through whom such majestic, intense flashes of power would come as through that soul at intervals. He was not a student of the Word of God. Presently, he disappeared. His father came to me saying, "I am troubled about Harry. He took a Bible and went off into the mountains almost three weeks ago, and they tell me he has gone up to such a mountain, a long piece off. I am afraid he is going insane."

I said, "Brother, do not worry yourself. One of these days he will come down in the glory and power of God. "I knew what was in that fellow's heart.

One day he returned under such an anointing of the Spirit as I had never before witnessed on any life. Here was a soul who had never read the words of Jesus. He was a full-grown man, but he said to me, "I have never looked into the Bible, unless it was in my childhood. I knew nothing of it."

One day after that he came to me, his face radiant, and said, "Brother Lake, did you know this was in the Bible?" and proceeded to read to me that familiar verse in the sixteenth of Mark: "These signs shall follow them that believe … They shall cast out demons." Among other things it says that the believer shall accomplish is, "he shall cast out devils."' Looking up into my face with great earnestness he said, "My! I wish I knew somebody that had a devil." I believe God had planned that situation, for I was reminded that in my mail a couple of days before had come a request for an insane son. The mother said, "As far as I can tell my son has a devil," and her request was that we might come and pray that the devil might be cast out. So I got the letter and handed it to him. He said, "Why this is only a couple of three blocks from where I live." He said, "I am going to find that fellow, and then I am coming back for you."

And all the time I said, "Here is a newborn soul just born unto God whose vision enters into the real realm of God-power." I realized that my own spirit had not touched the degree of faith that was in that soul and I said, "I do not want to do a thing, nor say a word that will discourage that soul in the least."

Presently, he came back and said: "Brother Lake, come on." We went and found a boy who had been mad from his birth. He was like a wild animal. He would not wear clothes and would smash himself or anybody else with anything that was given to him. He couldn't even have a dish to eat on. But in the center of the enclosure where he was, they had a large stone hollowed out and they would put his food on that and let him eat it just like an animal.

We tried to catch him, but he was as wild as a lion. He would jump right over my head. Finally his father said, "You will never catch him out here." All this time I realized what the situation meant. I had been somewhat of an athlete in my youth, and I said to V.S. "You get on one side, and if he comes to your side you will take care of him, and if he comes to my side I will take care of him."

Now, beloved, this all sounds strange I know, but I'll never forget that afternoon as long as I live. As I looked across to the young man, Von Shield, I could see the lightning flash of faith, and I knew that if he got his hands on the insane man the devil would come out.

Presently, he landed on my side of the bed, and in an instant Von Shield sprang over the bed, laid his hands on his head, and commanded that devil to come out. In two minutes that man was absolutely transformed and was a sane man. The first moment of sanity he ever knew.

Sometime later the family moved to another section of the country, so I have lost track of him.

One more incident in the man's life will help you to realize this thing. Among the Boer people, especially in the Transvaal, they were a pioneer people. They had moved from Cape Colony and lived among the natives there many years. Finally, they succeeded in establishing their own community and later a republic. They did not have the advantages of good schools. In fact, about the time they passed into the hands of the English, education was becoming a real factor. About the only educated person in a community was the Dutch Predicant. He is a real old aristocrat. The firstborn of houses is the Predicant and everything else likewise. He is the lord of all he surveys and some more. I believe they were people with all authority that the priests of Ireland exercise over the people there.

I wanted to leave you with the conception of a Dutch Predicant and then you can understand how a young fellow, unrecognized as a preacher, is situated when he begins to preach the Gospel of Christ in a different manner, than the Predicant.

One day when Von Shield was conducting a service with a couple of hundred people present, the Predicant was there. He arose when he was teaching and told the people that they were being misled, etc., and that these things Von Shield was talking about were only calculated for the days of the apostles.

The young man, naturally, if he had been an ordinary young man, would have been somewhat nonplussed. But presently he said, "I will tell you how we will settle this thing. There is Miss LeRoux, whom we all know. She is stone blind in one eye and has been so for four years. You come here, and I will lay my hands on you and ask the Lord Jesus to make you well." And picking up his Dutch Bible he said, "And when He does, you will read that chapter," designating the chapter she was to read.

God Almighty met the fellow's faith. The woman's eye opened right then and she stood before that congregation and covering the good eye, read with the eye that had been blind, the entire chapter. I know her well; visited at their home a great many times.

Now I will return to the other young man, the most extraordinary incident that I have known in the life of any other human being, unless it was the history of St. Paul when he was on his way to Damascus, when suddenly there shone around about him a light, brighter than the sun, and he says, "When we were all fallen to the earth" (they were probably on horseback), "I heard a voice speaking unto me, and saying in the Hebrew tongue, 'Saul, Saul, why persecutest thou me? it is hard for thee to kick against the pricks.' And I said, 'Who art thou, Lord?' And he said, 'I am Jesus whom thou persecutest.'"

Kratzmall was visiting one night at the home of some friends,a few doors from my home. These young people with whom he was visiting had just recently been baptized in the Spirit themselves, and they were very anxious about this friend and had been praying a great deal about it. This same night he was in the tabernacle and his friends said, "Come down to our home." So he went.

These two men, Kratzmall and Von Shield, were the highest developed men. I believe Kratzmall was the strongest man, physically, I ever met. He was an altogether unusual character. And here was a dealing of the Spirit of God such as I have never known with any other individual.

After a time, I believe it was suggested that they pray. He was going to stay all night. Harry said in speaking of it afterwards, "It was not my custom to kneel. As I sat in my chair I began to realize that a peculiar power was taking hold of me. I said, "This must be some sort of a psychological condition that I am not familiar with. Anyway, I will have nothing to do with it." And he sat up in his chair and shut his teeth and endeavored to resist. The Spirit of God intensified, and he said, "I will not yield."

For two hours and a half he sat there while the perspiration poured off his person, until there were little pools of perspiration oozing from his shoes. But at the end of two and a half hours as this battle was going on, a voice spoke within him and said, "I am Jesus."

And instantly he said, "If You are the Christ, You can do anything You like." The next moment the Spirit of God deepened upon him, and he began to speak in tongues by the power of God.

Kratzmall, after that anointing, became the most remarkable preacher of the Gospel I have ever known anything about. He traveled that country from end to end when he didn't have a cent. I met him once when he had no shoes and his feet were cut and bleeding. But he established congregations of Christian people for three hundred and fifty miles down through the wilderness. Bless God.

Now then I will return. I have told you these incidents in order to demonstrate to you that there is a force in the Christian life that mankind has not gotten hold of in any great degree. But the thing that interests me most, and I endeavor to present to you the facts of a Christian life, is the inquiry that comes to me day by day from souls that I deal with in the healing room, "How can I enter into the consciousness of the presence and power of Christ?"

That is the real issue in all our hearts. We see the thing that was burning in the heart of Nicodemus when he came to Jesus in the nighttime, and said, "Rabbi, we know that thou art a teacher come from God: for no man can do these miracles that thou doest, except God be with him." John 3:2.

But Jesus, disregarding all that, said, "Except a man be born again, he cannot see the kingdom of God…. That which is born of the flesh is flesh; and that which is born of the Spirit is spirit. Marvel not that I said unto thee, Ye must be born again." John 3:3,6-7

The birth again of God, the conscious incoming of the Spirit of God into the life and being and personality, lifts mankind out of the condition of the professing Christian experience into the place of divine consciousness and power.

The baptism of the Holy Spirit was the common experience of New Testament times. The New Testament was written by men who had the baptism of the Holy Spirit. It was written to churches that possessed the baptism of the Holy Ghost. Indeed, in my study of the New Testament the disciples seemed to consider it essential that each receive. "Have ye received the Holy Ghost since ye believed? And they said unto him, We have not so much as heard whether there be any Holy Ghost. And he said unto them, Unto what then were ye baptized? And they said, Unto John's baptism." Acts 19:2-3

And then he explained what John's baptism was. He said,

John verily baptized with the baptism of repentance, saying unto the people, that they should believe on him Which should come after him, that is, on Christ Jesus." Acts 19:4.

Then He laid his hands upon them and they received the Holy Ghost and began to speak with tongues and magnify God and prophesy, etc.

There are only five cases on record in the New Testament of persons receiving the baptism of the Spirit: The church at Jerusalem, one hundred and twenty, in the second of Acts. The church at Samaria under the ministry of Peter and John. That is the case of Simon, the Sorcerer. When he witnessed the manifestation of power that occurred at the hands of the apostles, he offered them money, saying, "Give me also this power, that on whomsoever I lay hands, he may receive the Holy Ghost." But you remember the answer, "Thy money perish with thee, because thou hast thought that the gift of God may be purchased with money."

The next case is in the tenth of Acts, where the Gentile church was baptized in the Holy Spirit, the household of Cornelius, as Peter preached the Word. No altar services there. No laying on of hands. There the Holy Ghost fell on all those who believed.

And I tell you it is my conviction to this hour, that is the real manner in which the Lord desires to pour out the Spirit in these days. We had mighty few altar services or prayer services, but the power fell upon the people as they sat hearing the Word of God. I have witnessed the Lord baptize fifty people in an ordinary service like this on a Sunday evening.

There is a consciousness, that seems to me by the Word of God and by my own personal experience, that must be possessed where any individual can enter into the direct presence of God and receive the baptism of the Spirit. That is the consciousness of sinlessness. The consciousness that your sins are gone. You can classify sin in any way you like. There is this much about it, that in our own inner soul we know that sin is offensive to God, because it is offensive to our own spirit.

So as I said before, the consciousness of sinlessness seems to be God's requirement for those who would seek the baptism of the Spirit. Indeed, I remember in my own experience when my heart began to he stirred along this line, and I definitely began to seek God for the baptism of the Spirit, that as the illumination of the purity and holiness of God began to dawn over my soul, instead of going on boldly, there was an inclination to draw back as I realized the awful extreme between my own heart and the heart of God. And I was compelled to cry out, yea not once, but a thousand times, "Lord God, by the divine process of God cleanse my soul from this condition." And I remember, bless God, how that one night I was present in a friend's home. An ordinary meeting was going on, conducted by a little Quaker woman, but she outlined what seemed to me to be the method of cleansing the soul.

That night as I knelt in Fred Bosworth's home, that consciousness of the cleansing power of Jesus Christ went through my being, and I realized something of what I never realized before. That the battle between my spirit and my soul had ceased and that God reigned, not only my spirit, but in my flesh too. The war that had been in my spirit for years was all gone, and I entered into Beulah land. I really felt that I had crossed the Jordan and everything was new.

I tell you, beloved, that the external evidences of God and the power of His Spirit, no matter how wonderful, are a small matter compared with the consciousness of the Word of God in the human heart; in your heart and mine, bless God.

In the 17th verse of the fourteenth chapter of John there is this one verse. While Jesus was discussing this subject with the disciples, He said, "He is with you," that is, the Comforter. "He is with you, and shall be in you."

There is a definite possession of the Spirit of God by which the individual becomes the conscious possessor of the Spirit of God. Indeed, the Word of God puts it in this forceful manner. "Know ye not that your body is the temple of the Holy Ghost which is in you?" (1 Cor. 6:19 paraphrased) It is God's purpose, as outlined by Jesus Christ and this Word from cover to cover, that man shall be the conscious possessor of the Spirit of the living God, the Holy Ghost.

That is the "Real Christian. "That is the thing that has been lacking in the Church throughout the centuries that are past. It was that consciousness of God's presence and God's power in the disciples and the Church of the first centuries that wrote across the pages of history the wonderful, wonderful record of Christianity of the first four hundred years. There were thirty million Christian martyrs, those who were slaughtered in the Christian wars, etc. Thirty million gave up their lives for the Christ. There was a spirit that made it so intense, so powerful, that had such a power of induction that the world got out. Bless God.

But there came a day when the Church traded the communion of the Holy Ghost for the smile of the world, and then the long, long night of the middle centuries followed.

But bless God, I tell you we are living in a day and hour when the Spirit of God has come into the world afresh, when the consciousness of mankind is opening up to God in a manner that they have never opened before. There is an awakening in the world from ocean to ocean, from pole to pole, as there never was before. And I believe, bless God, that God Almighty's outpouring of the Spirit upon all flesh is at hand. And though we are receiving the droppings and our hearts are being warmed under the impulse of the Spirit, the day is not far distant when the flame of God will catch the soul of mankind. And the Church of the latter day will close this era with a place of divine glory excelling that of the early Church.

This is according to the prophecy of the Word. "If the former rain was abundant, shall not the latter rain be more abundant." Bless God.

If the disciples, without the train of Christian history behind them that you and I have, were able to enter into the divine consciousness and power of the Holy Spirit in such a way that they left a stamp upon Christianity, how much more shall men and women who have the advantage of two thousand years of Christian record enter into a diviner consciousness than ever the apostles possessed?

Tongues and Interpretation:

The eternal God hath ordained that mankind, being united with Him as one heart and as one soul, shall glorify the Lord Jesus Christ in manifesting His life and character, His person and being.

If then, God's purpose for mankind is to receive the Christ, shall we not yield ourselves body and soul and spirit to the conscious control of the Spirit of God and let Him manifest Himself in us in humbleness and meekness, bowing lowly at the feet of Him whose we are and whom we serve?

Down in the human heart

Crushed by the tempter,

Feelings lie buried that grace can restore.

Touched by a loving heart,

Wakened by kindness,

Chords that were broke will vibrate once more.

Our God, we ask Thee tonight that Thy Almighty power shall be upon each soul. That as we endeavor to yield ourselves to Thee for the conscious cleansing of our nature from sin and its effects, that Thy power shall lift us into that consciousness of oneness with God whereby from Thy soul to our own will flow the divine unction of God. That we, being cleansed from sin, may manifest God to mankind that the hungry world and a dying race anda wandering world may be brought back into oneness with God. Amen.

Christ Liveth In Me

That is the text, "Christ liveth in me." That is the revelation of this age. That is the discovery of the moment. That is the revolutionizing power of God in the earth. It is the factor that is changing the spirit of religion in the world and the character of Christian faith. It is divine vitalization.

The world is awakening to that marvelous truth, that Christ is not in the heavens only, nor in the atmosphere only, but Christ is IN YOU.

The world lived in darkness for thousands of years. There was just as much electricity in the world then as now. It is not that electricity has just come into being. It was always here. But men have discovered how to utilize it and bless themselves with it.

Christ's indwelling in the human heart is the mystery of mysteries. Paul gave it to the Gentiles as the supreme mystery of all the revelation of God and the finality of all wonder he knew. "Christ in you. Christ in YOU."

Christ has a purpose in you. Christ's purpose in YOU is to reveal Himself to you, through you, in you. We repeat over and over that familiar phrase, "The church, which is His body" (Ephesians 1:22-23), but if we realized the truth of it and power of it, this world would be a different place.

When the Christian church realizes that they are the tangible, living, pulsating body-flesh and bones and blood and brain of Jesus Christ and that God is manifesting through each one every minute, and is endeavoring to accomplish His big will for the world through them, not through some other body, then Christian service and responsibility will be understood. Jesus Christ operates through you. He does not operate independently of you, He operates through you. Man and God become united. That is the divine secret of a real Christian life. It is the real union, the real conscious union of man and God. There is no substitute for that relationship. You can manufacture all the ordinances on earth, all the symbols there ever were until you become dazed and you lose yourself in the maze of them, and still you must still find God.

There is only one reality. That reality is God. The soul of man must contact God, and unless the spirit of man is truly joined to God, there is no such thing as real Christian manifestation. All the processes of preparation, but which a soul is prepared by God for such a manifestation, are only preliminary processes. The final end is that man may reveal God and that God may not only have a place of residence, but a right action in the body and spirit of man. Every Spirit-taught man in the world is aware of how gradually his own nature has become subjected to God and His will.

I was visiting with a gentleman who had a grouch on me. He said, "I wrote you a twenty-four page letter, and you have not received it. If you had, you would not be here."

I laughed. That man has been a Christian for thirty or forty years, always a devout man, and I have spoken of him frequently to my wife and my friends as one of the most consistent Christian men I ever knew. Yet every once in a while we see how the big human just rises up above the spirit and spoils the beauty and delight and wonder of the life that is revealing God.

God's effort and God's purpose in us is to bring all the conditions of our being into harmony with His will and His mind. God's purpose is not to make an automaton. We see a ventriloquist operating a little wooden dummy, and the wooden dummy's lips move and it looks as though it is talking. It is just moving because another power is moving it.

Now God has a higher purpose than making man an automaton. God's highest is to bring out all the qualities of God in your own soul, to bring out all the individuality that is in your life, not to submerge or destroy, but to change it, to energize it, to enlarge it, until all your individuality and personality and being are of the nature and substance and quality of God.

You notice among the most devout Christians how continuously their thought is limited to that place where they can be exercised or moved by God. But God's best is more than that. Receive the Spirit, then use the Spirit for God's glory.

While I was in Chicago, I met a couple of old friends who invited me to dinner. While at dinner the lady, who is a very frank woman, said: "Mr. Lake, I have known you so long and have had such close fellowship for so many years, I am able to speak very frankly." I said, "Yes, absolutely."

"Well," she said, "there is something I miss about you. For lack of words I am going to put it in Paul's words, 'I bear in my body the marks of the Lord Jesus' (Galatians 6:17). You do not seem to have the marks of Jesus."

I said, "That depends whether or not it is the marks of mannerisms. If you are expecting that the personality that God gave me is going to be changed so that I am going to be another fellow and not myself, then you will miss it. If that is the kind of marks you are looking for you will not find them. But if you are expecting to observe a man's flesh and blood and bones and spirit and mind indwelt by God, then you will find them: not a machine, not an automaton, or an imitation, but a clear mind and a pure heart, a son of God in nature and essence."

What is all God's effort with the world but to bring out the real man in the image of Christ, that real man with the knowledge of God. That real man, reconstructed until his very substance is the substance of God. And when you stop to reason that to its proper conclusion, that is the only way that Jesus Christ Himself or God the eternal Father will have fellowship with man forever.

When one stops to analyze that fact, we see that God is trying to make us in all our nature and being and habits and thought, in all the structure of our life, just as beautiful and just as real and just as clear minded and just as strong as Jesus Himself. Then we understand what Christ's redemption means. It is the bringing out of Christ IN YOU, until Christ in you is the One manifest: manifest through your eyes just as God was manifest through the eyes of Jesus; manifest through your touch just as God was manifest through Jesus. It is not a power nor a life separate from yourself but two lives made one, two natures co-joined, two minds operating as one, Christ in YOU.

In the Chicago conference I sat with an old colored lady one afternoon after meeting, and she told me of her woes and sicknesses, and they were many. After a time when she had grown somewhat still, I said, "Dear Mother, how long have you been a Christian?" She replied, "Since I was a child."

Then I tried to show her that God expected a development of God and His nature and the working and action of God in her in transforming power through the agency of the Holy Spirit, and that there was a process of remaking and remolding that should change her nature and life, and dissolve the rheumatism and Bright's disease and all the other difficulties, just as truly as long ago sin dissolved out of her soul.

After the conversation had gone on to the proper point, I said, "Dear Sister, anybody can see that Christ dwells in your spirit." Her eyes were lovely, delightful. "Let your mind extend just a little bit. Let your thought comprehend that just as Jesus dwells in your spirit and also possesses your soul, in just exactly the same way He is possessing your blood and your kidneys and your old rheumatic bones, and that the very same thing will happen in your bones when you realize that truth as happened in your spirit when you were converted at the altar."

(She told me how she had prayed twenty-two days and nights until Christ was revealed in her soul as Savior. She seemed to want to wait twenty-two days and nights for God to manifest Himself in the rheumatic bones, and I was trying to get her away from it.) She said, "Brother, lay your hands on me and pray for me, and I will be healed."

I answered, "No, I want you to get well by realizing that right now that same Christ that dwells in your spirit and your soul is in your bones and in your blood and in your brain." Presently the old lady hopped to her feet and said, "My God, He is." She had it. Christ had been imprisoned in her soul and spirit, now He was permitted to manifest in her body.

Brother Tom Hezmalhalch came into a Negro meeting in Los Angeles one day where they were talking about the Baptism of the Holy Ghost. He had picked up a paper and read of these peculiar meetings, and among other things that they spoke in tongues. That was new to him. He said, "If they do, and if it is real, that is an advance in the Spirit of God beyond what is common. I am going to get it." He went, and listened as the old black brother taught. He was trying to develop the thought of conscious cleansing, and he used a beautiful text: "Now ye are clean through the Word which I have spoken unto you." That became very real to Tom, and after a while they were invited to come and kneel at the altar to seek God for the baptism of the Spirit.

Tom said unto me, "John, I got up and walked toward that old bench with the realization in my soul of the truth of the Word, and that the real cleansing and cleanser was in my heart. 'Now are ye clean through the Word which I have spoken unto you.'"

He knelt down and he prayed for a minute or two, his soul arose and his heart believed for the Baptism of the Holy Ghost. Then he arose and took one of the front seats. One of the workers said, "Brother, don't stop praying until you are baptized in the Holy Ghost."

Mr. Seymour said, "Just leave him alone. He has got it. You wait and see." A few days passed, and one day Tom said the Spirit began to surge through him, and a song of praise in tongues, angelic voice, broke through his lips.

An old preacher came into my office in Africa and said, "Brother Lake, there is something I want to talk to you about. There used to be a very remarkable manifestation in my life. It was the manifestation of tongues and interpretation. But I have not spoken for a year. I wish you would pray for me."

I said, "No, go over and lie down and get still and let God move in your life." I went on writing a letter. Presently I observed that something wanted to speak in me, and I turned my head just a little to see that the old man was speaking in tongues and I was getting the interpretation of it as I wrote the letter.

Don't you know Christians are stumbling every day over that fact. You are doubting and fearing and wondering if Christ is there. Beloved brother and sister, give Him a chance to reveal Himself. He is there. Probably because of your lack of realization your soul is closed and He is not able to reveal Himself. You know God is never able in many to reveal Himself outside of the spirit or soul. The real secret of the ministry of healing is in permitting the grace of God in your heart to flow out through your hands and your nerves into the outer life. That is the real secret. And one of the greatest works God has to perform is to subject to our flesh to God. Many Christians, the deepest Christians who really know God in their spirits and enjoy communion with God, are compelled to wait until there is a process of spiritualization takes place in their bodies before God can reveal Himself through them. Do not imprison Christ in you. Let Him live, let Him manifest, let Him vent through you.

There is one great thing that the world is needling more than anything else, and I am convinced of it every day I live. Mankind has one supreme need, and that is the LOVE of God. The hearts of men are dying for lack of the love of God. I have a sister in Detroit. She came over to Milwaukee to visit us for two or three days at the convention there. As I watched her moving around, I said, "I would like to take her along and just have her love folks." She would not need to preach. You do not need to preach to folks. It is not the words you say that is going to bless them. They need something greater. It is the thing in your soul. They have got to receive it, then their soul will open and there will be a divine response. Give it to them, it is the love of God.

You have seen people who loved someone who would not respond. If there is any hard situation in God's earth, that is it, to really passionately love someone and find no response in them.

I had an English friend and was present at his marriage. Some years later he and his wife came to visit our home. He was the cold type of closed up Englishman, and his wife was the warm type. One day they started out for a walk, and I noticed the passionate yearning in her soul. If he would just say something that was tender, something that would gratify the craving of her nature for affection: but he seemed to go along absolutely unconscious of it. After a while they came back from their walk. I was sitting on the front steps. After the lady had gone into the house, I said, "Hibbs, you are a stiff. How is it possible that you can walk down the street with a woman like your wife and not realize that her heart is craving and crying for you to turn around and do something that shows you love her?"

He said, "Do you think that is the difficulty? I will go and do it now." And everything subsided while he proceeded to do it.

What is it men are seeking? What is it their hearts are asking for when they are seeking God? What is their soul crying for? Mankind is separated from God. It may not be mountains of sin between you and God at all. It may be that your nature is closed and unresponsive. My! When the real love touch of God is breathed into your soul, what a transformation takes place.

There is probably no more delightful thing on earth than to watch a soul praying to God, when the light of God comes on and the life of God fills the nature and that holy affection that we seek from others finds expression in Him.

That is what the Lord is asking from you; and if you want to gratify the heart of Jesus Christ, that is the only way in all the world to do it. You know the invitation is not "Give Me thine head." The invitation is, "My son, give Me thine heart." That is an affectionate relationship, a real love union in God. Think of the fineness of God's purpose. He expects that same marvelous spiritual union that is brought to pass between your soul and His own to be extended so that you embrace in that union every other soul around you.

Oh, that is what it means when it talks about being baptized in one spirit, submerged, buried, enveloped and enveloping in the one Spirit of God.

While I was in Milwaukee recently, I went out one morning with Rev. Fockler to make a call on a sick person. We stepped into one of the most distracted homes I have ever been in. A strange condition had developed in one of the daughters, and the household was distressed. They were the saddest group. They were German people. Fockler speaks German. Presently he began to talk to the household. I just sat back and watched.

Presently I noticed the faces began to relax and the strain was gone. The girl was apparently insane. She came down the stairs, stood outside the door where she could not be seen except by me. He continued to converse with the family, and as their souls softened and their faith lifted, her eyes commenced to change. She was moved upon by the same Spirit until her nature responded, and in just a little while she stepped into the room. She had tormented that household. Nobody could get near her. She slipped up behind Fockler's chair, stood with her hands on the back of the chair. He understood and disregarded. After a little while she put the other hand on the other shoulder. And in fifteen or twenty minutes we left that home and there was just as much distinction between the attitude of those dear people when we came in and left as between heaven and hell. If hell has a characteristic, it is that of distraction. If heaven has a particular characteristic, it is the presence of God, the calm of God, the power of God, the love of God.

There were days when the Church could club men into obedience by preaching hell to them, but that day has long passed. The world has outgrown it. And men are discovering there is only one way and that is the Jesus way. Jesus did not come with a club, but with the great loving heart of the Son of God. He was "moved with compassion" (Matthew 9:36, Matthew 14:14, Mark 1:41).

This morning I lay in bed and wrote a letter, an imaginary letter to a certain individual. I was getting ready so that when I came down I could dictate the sentences that would carve him right. One of the phrases was, "You great big calf, come out of it and be a man." As I lay there I got to thinking, If Jesus was writing this letter, I wonder what He would write? But somehow it would not frame. My soul was not in an attitude to produce such a letter. So I came down this morning and called Edna and commenced to dictate, and I was trying to dictate a letter in the Spirit of Jesus. Presently I woke up to the fact that I was putting the crimp into it like a lawyer. After she had written and laid it down for me to sign, I commenced to read it over. It was not what I wanted to write at all. The first two paragraphs had a touch of the right spirit but that was all. So I laid it aside. Then I went in and prayed a little while. After I had been praying for twenty minutes, the telephone rang. It was that fellow. He wanted me to come down to the Davenport Hotel. We had three of the best hours without being aware of the time.

We boast of our development in God, we speak glowingly of our spiritual experiences, but it is only once in a while that we find ourselves in the real love of God. The greater part of the time we are in ourselves rather than in Him. That evidences just one thing, that Christ has not yet secured that perfect control of our life, that subjection of our nature, that absorption of our individuality, so that He is able to impregnate it and maintain it in Himself. We recede, we draw back, we close up. We imprison our Lord.

The secret of a religious meeting is that it assists men's hearts to open. They become receptive, and the love of God finds vent in their nature for a little while and they go away saying, "Didn't we have a good time? Wasn't that a splendid meeting?"

I wonder if there is anything that could not be accomplished through that love of God. Paul says there is not. "Charity never faileth" (1 Corinthians 13:8). That is one infallible state. Try it on your wife, try it on your children, try it on your neighbors.

Ah, sometimes we need to get things over on to the bigger love, the greater heart. It is a good thing to detach your soul. Do not hold people. Do not bind people. Just cut them loose and let God love them. Don't you know we hold people with such a grip when we pray for them that they miss the blessing. Why, you have such a grip on your humanity that it is exercising itself and the spirit is being submerged. Let your soul relax and let the Spirit of God in you find vent. There is no substitute for the love of God. "Christ in you" (Colossians 1:27). Oh, you have the capacity to love. All the action of the Spirit of God has its secret there.

I stood on one occasion by a dying woman who was suffering and writhing in awful agony. I had prayed again and again with no results. But this day something just happened inside of me. My soul broke clear down, and I saw that poor soul in a new light. Before, I knew it I reached out and gathered her in my arms and hugged her up to my soul, not my bosom. In a minute I knew the real thing had taken place. I laid her back down on the pillow. In five minutes she was well. God was waiting on men, until He could get to my soul the sense of that tenderness that was in the Son of God.

That is the reason that His Name is written in imperishable memory. And the Name of Jesus Christ is the most revered Name in earth or sea or sky. And I am eager to get in that category of folks who can manifest the real love of God all the time.

The real Christian is a SEPARATED man. He is separated forever unto God in ALL the departments of his life. So his BODY, so his SOUL and his SPIRIT are forever committed to God the Father. From the time he commits himself to God, his BODY is as absolutely in the hands of God as his spirit or his soul. He can go to no other power for help or healing.

An hundredfold consecration takes the individual forever out of the hands of all but God. "Ye are not your own."

Building on a Firm Foundation

Philadelphia, Pennsylvania: March 1, 1914

"Ye shall receive power, after that the Holy Ghost is come upon you." We are entitled to it, bless God. We are glad to see some of it and wish, bless God, that we might see a great deal more. And beloved, I have a splendid conviction in my heart that we will.

I want to read some familiar verses, as a basis of thought.

When Jesus came into the coasts of Caesarea Philippi, he asked his disciples, saying, Whom do men say that I the Son of man am?

And they said, Some say that thou art John the Baptist: some, Elias; and others, Jeremias, or one of the prophets.

He saith unto them, But whom say ye that I am?

And Simon Peter answered and said, Thou art the Christ, the Son of the living God.

And Jesus answered and said unto him, Blessed art thou, Simon Barjona: for flesh and blood hath not revealed it unto thee, but my Father which is in heaven.

And I say also unto thee, That thou art Peter, and upon this rock I will build my church; and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it. --Matthew 16:13-18

Those of us who are familiar with this scripture will remember that Peter is very careful to call attention to the fact that Jesus wasn't referring to him as the one upon which the Church was to be built. He speaks in the second chapter of First Peter of how Jesus Christ is the great foundation and is established upon the apostles and prophets, Jesus Christ Himself being the chief cornerstone, etc.

Foundation laying is always a hard process. Over here in the East, with your solid ground, you are not so badly as some cities in the West, Chicago, for example. Chicago is built on a great quicksand bed, which is from seventy to eighty feet deep. After the great Chicago fire, the board of aldermen did a thing that no body of men had ever dared to do till then. They passed an ordinance raising the grade of the city sixteen feet. In sections of the city where the old buildings still stand, you go down a story and a half from the street level to the original street. It was a tremendous undertaking, but it got them everlastingly out of the mud. So sometimes a destructive process is good. The Chicago fire became the great means by which the new and wonderful city came into existence.

I want to talk to you today about foundation building. When I was a young man I was a builder. I looked upon Chicago as the great Mecca of all builders, so I got to Chicago as quick as I could. I looked around among various occupations and I settled on this fact: There were two classes of men always in demand: the man who understood scientific foundation building, and the man who understood scientific roofing. And I said, "I will master these two things."

In those days, they used to build twelve story skyscrapers, sometimes fourteen. Foundation building was not known as it is today. In those days they went to the forests and brought great pilings, seventy, eighty, and ninety feet long. These were driven into the ground until they touched bedrock. At the surface, these were cut off level and railroad iron laid on top. Then they commenced their stone work on top of the railroad iron, and after they got to the street level it would probably be brick.

I lived long enough to see that these great buildings would get out of plumb and it would be necessary for a civil engineer to go over the buildings every three months to see whether they were moving out of plumb one way or another. If they were, great systems of jackscrews were used under the buildings to adjust them. It may surprise some of you to know that some of these great buildings in Chicago would literally stand on a system of jackscrews, which are adjusted every three months by civil engineers. That was too much like hanging a city up in the air, so they said, "We will drive great steel castings down to the rock and we will take out the earth and fill the castings with cement." That system likewise passed away. And now they excavate clear down to the bedrock, four or five stories if necessary. The quicksand and mud is removed. The foundation is laid on the base rock.

For the Church of God and Christian faith to become strong and to be built up in God, it is necessary to get a good foundation. It is a greater problem with most builders to get the old rubbish out of the way than to do the building. If we will look at our own lives, we will observe this: that the things that have been rooted and grounded in our hearts --some tradition of the Fathers, some of it misconception of the meaning of the Word of God; much of our teaching is fragmented-- these form the greatest obstacles to the engrafting of the living Word of God. Every one of us who have progressed in God have found that the difficulty was not in believing the Word of God, but the difficulty was to get away from things that were settled in our own being as facts, though untrue. How hardly have we struggled over the matter of, "If it be Thy will," concerning sickness. From our babyhood and all down through the generations, we have been taught that if you are sick, the proper thing to do is to pray, "If it be Thy will," forgetting all the time that the Lord has forever demonstrated and declared His eternal will concerning the subject of sickness by healing all that come to Him.

Well, bless God, some have succeeded in getting over that difficulty and put the subject, "If it be Thy will," behind their back and moved out where they believe the declarations of Jesus Christ. So it was that victory came on that line.

Now dear ones, the thing that the Spirit of God is laying deeply upon my own heart these days is the need of a settled, established state in the Lord Jesus Christ, and the movement of the Spirit worldwide is to bring into unity the children of God who will raise A Standard of Truth for the World.

Now listen! This come-together call of the Spirit is not an isolated movement. It doesn't belong to a little company of people in Philadelphia, nor in any other city. In the last days, months, or the last year, in my correspondence worldwide, I have discovered this quote and the Lord is beginning to move everywhere in this particular line. Only yesterday I received a letter from Los Angeles from one of the prominent leaders. He goes on to outline the processes of development in God through which he has been brought during the last few years and its final result. I had written of what God was doing in our own midst and what God was endeavoring to do in the establishment of the Church, etc. He said, "Brother, your letter is a revelation. We thought that was all confined to ourselves, but I see that this movement, that we supposed was local, is a general movement, and of the Holy Ghost, and it is in your heart just as it has been in ours."

So God is moving in these days on a certain definite line. The man who has a settled, established faith in God has got that faith based on the eternal declarations of the Lord Jesus Christ and is moving in harmony with the revealed plan of God as outlined for this hour in God's Church Plan. The difficulty with most individuals and teachers in times past has been that the revelation of the mind of God, as revealed in the Word, was limited to such a degree that they were compelled to take only a certain few of the great principles of the Gospel, and thus their entire system was based on them. But in these days, as the coming of the Lord approaches and as the added light of the Spirit has been given, God has revealed in a larger way, in a broader manner, the truth. So that in these days it seems to me it is the purpose of God that the Church of the latter day, the Church of Philadelphia (if you like), should be based upon the great broad basis of the eternal truth, as laid down in the New Testament by the Lord Jesus Christ and the apostles, not on any fragmentary principles.

In days past, it was thought necessary to endeavor to bind men's hearts and consciences to certain established truths that the Church was ready to accept. And so these truths were usually embodied in the form of a creed, and they said, "This is all of truth that we accept. This is our faith." So they laid this basis and built a fence around themselves. After awhile, to the amazement of the Church and to her discomfiture, it was discovered that their creeds have been the means that squeezed them in, and instead of being a foundation broad enough for the Word of God, they are strangled inside their unyielding creed and there is no room for expansion. When the dear Lord has wanted to give a revelation of progressive truth, He has been compelled to go outside of the Church fence and raise up a new body. That was because a fence had been built. A certain little enunciation of truth had been collected and the structure established on that instead of on the entire Word of God.

We can see this: The individual who learns truth these days cannot confine it to certain declarations of doctrines. For as the days go by we see the progressive light of God, and if you were to compare your faith now with what you believed ten years ago, you would find there has been a great expansion. Now what is ten years more going to develop? What truths will it be necessary for us ourselves to accept from the Lord in the coming days? Consequently, beloved, there is only one basis upon which the Church of Jesus Christ can rest: That is, upon Jesus Christ and the apostles and the whole body of truth as outlined in the New Testament.

Then, beloved, in that great body of truth there must be the accompanying largeness and Spirit of the Lord Jesus Christ who didn't confine Himself to certain little dogmatic teachings, but He laid the great broad principles upon which the whole great kingdom of heaven rests and upon which a great Christian life can rest eternally.

There never was a teacher like Jesus. He was the one great Mastermind who understood the Spirit of the living God, who understood that all revelation of God was a progressive revelation. And thereby the minds that He must prepare by His own personal teaching were not able to receive all the great body of truth He had to reveal, so He said, "Ye are not able to bear it now." They had to grow up into the place in God where they were able to bear and analyze and utilize the greater truths of the Word of God. Now, beloved, we are in the place, just that place, bless God.

I believe in my heart that God is laying, even in this little company with her one hundred and twenty like the church at Jerusalem, the foundation of the truth of God that will command the attention of the Christian world.

Yesterday I received an invitation from E. N. Bell, Editor of Word & Witness, Malvern, Arkansas. In April they are having a great convention down there that includes all the Southern states. Among other things he says, "Brother Lake, there are two contending forces; the one which desires a strong organization, the other which don't want any organization, but desires to be a law unto themselves."

As I read the letter I said, "They are both wrong." The man who is an anarchist and is a law unto himself and doesn't put himself into line with the Word and cooperate with God according to God's plan is just as great a sinner as the other who comes along and wants to organize the Church into a frozen, man-created mass.

Jesus Christ laid down the principles of eternal truth: Every man who accepts the principles, who lives the life, is acceptable to Me. So, beloved, the Church of God these latter days must just return to the blessed basis that the Lord Jesus Christ laid down.

Beloved, the day has long gone past when men's consciences can be bound with certain little doctrines. If we were to take this audience today, of those who are living holy lives, baptized in the Holy Ghost, and note carefully what this brother believes and that brother believes, we would perhaps have twenty different statements before you got through with this little company.

Don't you see, the thing is this: Our hearts are one in the blood of Jesus Christ, our hearts are one in the recognition of a common Spirit of God. Blessed be His name! Every one of us can join hands and hearts on the seven unities demanded and experienced in the Church at Ephesus, "One body, one Spirit, one hope, one Lord, one faith, one baptism, one God and Father of you all, who is above all, through all, and in you all." (Ephesians 4:4-6)

So the dear Lord, in these days, is once again moving upon the hearts of men that the body of Jesus Christ shall be brought together in holy oneness, that the power of God may be poured upon her, that the Spirit of the living God may move through her in mighty power and demonstration, and that through her the last message of this present age may be given to the world, the great kingdom message. Bless God.

It seems to me we are only beginning to understand with what force the kingdom message is going to come and its revolutionary character. A few weeks ago the country was stirred by one man's endeavor to just touch in a small way the first principle of Jesus Christ, that first one, "Blessed are the poor in spirit."' I refer to Henry Ford, the manufacturer of the Ford Motor car. He set aside out of his profit, ten million dollars for 1914, to be divided between his twenty-six thousand employees. He established a minimum wage of five dollars per day to be the wage of every man. Then every two weeks, he would receive in a check the proportionate amount of the ten million dollars, in addition to his wages.

We say, "Bless God, that is a good thing." That's a starting point. It indicates that some men are beginning to see the mind of the Lord. It is not by any means a fulfillment [of the kingdom of God, or even the principle]. Then the selfish man says, "Yes, that will draw to Henry Ford every expert workman in the United States, etc. and his profits thereby will only be increased, not lessened, but it is a start." (Bracketed text is a best guess by the editor. The original is incomplete. Doubtless, the original contained more.)

Now see, the blessed principles of the Lord Jesus Christ are the principles of unselfishness. That is the one crowning principle that the Lord Jesus Christ wants to lay down in His Church this very day. It makes no difference how it is applied. The Lord Jesus Christ Himself didn't undertake to tell us how to apply that principle. He left it to every man in his own station. But, beloved, the demand upon us is that we live that blessed principle of the Lord Jesus Christ.

My thought is this: Jesus Himself didn't undertake to tell us dogmatically how to apply that principle, but He, on the other hand, laid down the principles and left it to us, His sovereign servants, to apply them just as the Spirit of the Lord illuminated our own hearts and told us to do. That is the great basis upon which the Lord Jesus Christ is founding His Church. It is based on the principles of the Son of God. He don't ask us what we think about this or that petty doctrine, but He lays down the great principles of the kingdom as the essentials:

1. "Blessed are the poor in spirit: for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.

2. "Blessed are they that mourn: for they shall be comforted.

3. "Blessed are the meek: for they shall inherit the earth.

4. "Blessed are they which do hunger and thirst after righteousness: for they shall be filled.

5. "Blessed are the merciful: for they shall obtain mercy.

6. "Blessed are the pure in heart: for they shall see God.

7. "Blessed are the peacemakers: for they shall be called the children of God.

8. "Blessed are they which are persecuted for righteousness' sake: for theirs is the kingdom of heaven."

Beloved, these are the things that God calls us back to today: to the original basis, to the foundation: Jesus Christ Himself, the chief cornerstone. We see these blessed principles exemplified all through the New Testament by the apostles themselves, who as the fathers of the Church, were desirous that they should not even become a burden on the Church and endeavored to keep themselves from being a burden. And with their own hands in some instances labored that they might have the privilege of living and preaching the blessed Gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ.

Don't you see, beloved, that every departure from the principles that the Lord Jesus has laid down has weakened the great fabric? Out of that condition has grown our divisions. All our departure from the principles of the Lord has robbed us of that vital faith that was necessary to get answers from God, even for our daily bread. A return to the principles of the Lord Jesus Christ, to the practical life of the Son of God, will bring again upon our souls the blessing of God.

Beloved, that's the entrance into power. That's the final manner of testing the spirit. The spirit must ever be tested by the Word of God, by the principles of Jesus Christ; the law that He laid down by the commandments of Jesus. If the spirit in you won't measure up with the principles that the Lord Jesus Christ laid down, be sure that it is not the Spirit of the Lord Jesus Christ. If the spirit in you exalts itself, etc., just settle it. There is a spirit there that isn't like the Spirit of the Lord Jesus. The way we can see what His Spirit was like is from the principles He laid down and the life He lived.

I feel it this day that the Lord is going to pour a rich and wonderful blessing upon the saints when we come down and return to the blessed principles of the Gospel of Jesus.

If I were to advise you to do anything particular during the coming weeks it would be this: Take the fifth, sixth, and seventh of Matthew and read them and reread them on your knees, until the principles of Jesus Christ enter into your heart. Then, bless God, there will be a good basis laid in your soul for the everlasting blessing of God.

It is as impossible to get the eternal working power of God to appear in a man's life, or the life of the Church, until first the clearing away is done and the rubbish of petty doctrine and littleness is taken out of the way, as it would be to build a Chicago skyscraper without first taking out all the quicksand and mass of rotten stuff. It has got to come out. It has got to be cleared away. When the life goes down on the eternal Rock, Jesus Christ, then the structure will come up and will stand in the power of God.

So this morning I pray God that He will help us this day to take these blessed words of God, the declarations of Jesus Himself as He has outlined them in the fifth, sixth, and seventh of Matthew especially, and get these real basic things settled in our soul.

I have received during the week applications from several persons who want to come up here and receive membership into this body, who desire to receive the right hand of fellowship. You can't keep it from growing, from developing. But O, beloved, is it going to develop in God or is it going to be like every institution has been or is it going to be placed on eternal foundations? And is our life going down into the bottom, to the bedrock, to the foundation stone of Christ Jesus?

Let us pray.

O God, our Father, let our lives be once and forever and for all settled on the eternal Rock, Christ Jesus, Lord God, where our lives shall stand. Blessed be Thy name! And where the Church of Jesus Christ shall stand, Lord God, and the gates of hell shall not prevail against her. Blessed be Thy name! O God, let that deep, true, holy, unselfish working of the Holy Ghost in our lives be so pure and true and real that, my God, there shall not be left a superficial thing in us, Lord, but that our character shall be opened wide, opened to the living God, and wide open to one another. O God, reflecting, showing forth the real life of Jesus Christ. O God, we bless Thee for this day. Lord God, there is an echo of gladness in our soul. There is a shout of praise in our hearts. Lord God, the day has come. Thine appointed hour has come when Thou hast really begun to call together into one body the body members of Jesus Christ whose names are written in heaven. Lord God, we worship at Thy feet, and Lord, we declare our faith in Thee, the Son of God, this very day. Thou art going to bring forth Thy people, Lord God, the Church of Jesus Christ, bless God! Who shall give forth to the world the message of the kingdom. Bless God! Who shall raise up a banner of truth and demonstrate a righteousness that men of God will not have to be ashamed of.

O God, we pray Thee then, that the great virtue of Jesus Christ shall be so inwrought in us that, my God and Father, we shall look with love into the face of every other man. That, O God, our Father, we will have the eyes of Jesus in us and the heart of Jesus in us in such a way that we will not see things that are evil, but O God, we will see the good in the man. We will see the purity, Lord, we will think of the things that are lovely, Lord, and are true, Lord. We will be so pure and clean before God that the light of God and the life of God shall shine in us and flow through us so that mankind will be blessed.

O God, our Father, we rejoice in this day. We rejoice in this hour. Thou art the Son of God, Lord Jesus. We are so glad You have let us live at this time of life. My God, we rejoice in the expectation of Thy soon coming. Bless God! But O Jesus, blessed Jesus, get us ready, get us ready. Lord God, get us ready to give the message that is going to stir the world. Get us ready, Lord, to receive the power of God that is going to demonstrate Christ to mankind, for Jesus' sake.

O God, we pray that upon this Pentecostal Movement worldwide and upon the Church of Christ at large, by whatever name it is known and upon the hidden ones who are known by no name, the power of God shall come. Lord God, once again let the pulsating movement of the Holy Ghost be felt through the body of Christ. Lord Jesus, draw Thy children together, Lord. Lord Jesus, establish them on the rock. Lord God, build up the body, we pray Thee, Lord. And bless God, we pray that upon our own souls these days there shall be such a passion of the Christ-heart that we will seek the lost, that we will seek the sick, that, my God, religious life, religious service shall forever cease to be a matter of religious entertainment. But O God, make it what Your heart desires, religious service, serving our fellowmen. O God, shedding Your tears with the afflicted, putting Your hands under the weary, lifting them up to God, praying for the stricken ones.

O Christ, let the pure heart and Spirit of Christ throb in every breast for Jesus' sake, that the will of God may come, that the prayer of Jesus Christ may be answered, that we may all be one. Lord God, that Thy kingdom may come and Thy will be done in earth as it is in heaven, Lord, for Jesus' sake. Amen.

Moses' Rebuke

Moses had his interview with the Lord at the burning bush, and God had definitely commanded him to go to Pharaoh in Egypt and demand the deliverance of the children of Israel. God gave him the signet of His presence with him, his shepherd rod. All the miracles that followed that demand had taken place, and the children of Israel were finally given permission by the king to leave.

They started toward the Red Sea when the king's heart drew back, and I presume he felt he had done an unwise thing. He was losing the services of two and a half, probably four million slaves. In his effort to recall what he had done, he started after them with an army. In the meantime, Moses had gotten down to the Red Sea. On the right and on the left were impassable mountains and Pharaoh and his armies behind him.

The situation from a natural point of view was desperate, and if there was ever a time when a man was seemingly justified in calling on God in prayer, it was then. But I want to show you tonight one of the things I regard as a hindrance in our life for God. Most of us do just exactly what Moses did. When the test comes we stop and cry and as a second thing we stop and pray and put ourselves in a position where we become amenable to exactly the same rebuke that came upon Moses.

Moses started to pray. It is not recorded how long he prayed, or what he said, but instead of God being pleased, He was grieved and said to Moses: "Why standest thou here, and criest unto Me? Speak to the children of Israel that they go forward." I will turn to the Scripture and read the exact words:

The Lord said unto Moses, Wherefore criest thou unto me? speak unto the children of Israel, that they go forward: But lift thou up thv rod, and stretch out thine hand over the sea, and divide it: and the children of Israel shall go on dry ground through the midst of the sea. (Exodus 14:15-16)

God did not even say, "You stretch out your hand, and I will divide the sea." But God said to Moses: "Stretch out thine hand over the sea, and divide it." It was not an act for God to perform, but it was an act for Moses to believe for. The responsibility was not with God: it was with Moses. A weak Christianity is ever inclined to whine in prayer while God waits for the believer to command it.

In my judgment, that is the place of extreme weakness in Christian character. I feel that very frequently prayer is made a refuge to dodge the action of faith. And just exactly as Moses came down there and began to pray instead of honoring God's word to him by the use of his rod, so many times our prayer becomes offensive to God. Because instead of praying as Moses did, God demands us to stretch forth our hand, exercise our rod of faith, and divide the waters.

In many respects it seems to me, this is the most powerful lesson that the Word of God contains on the subject of prayer and faith. Just stop for a moment and think of God throwing the responsibility of making a passage through the sea on Moses. God would not take it. It was for Moses to believe God and act. God commands: "Lift up thy rod, and stretch out thine hand," not "My hand." He was to lift the rod that God had given to him, the signet of God's presence with him to be used by the hand of Moses.

In the consideration of the whole subject of an Apostolic Church, do you not see the principle in it? The principle of acceptance of responsibility from God.

I want to call your attention now to the New Testament on that line. In the ninth chapter of Luke we have Jesus commanding the twelve disciples:

"Then he called his twelve disciples together, and gave them power and authority over all devils, and to cure diseases. And he sent them to preach the kingdom of God, and to heal the sick."

Moses stood before God, and God gave him the commission to go down to Egypt. Then as an evidence of His presence, He said, "What is it you have in your hands?"

Moses answered, "A rod."

He said, "Throw it down," and as Moses obeyed it became a serpent.

Then He said, "Take it up," and it was changed to a rod again. This is one of the instances of taking up serpents. God said, "Keep it. It is a signet of My presence with you," and it was so with Moses.

But you see Moses had forgotten as he stood by the Red Sea, that God had given him a sign of His presence with him. Circumstances overpowered him and he commenced to pray and that prayer was an offense to God.

Just as God had done with Moses, so Jesus called the twelve to Him, and gave them power and authority over all devils, and to cure diseases, and that was their rod. He sent them to preach the kingdom of God and heal the sick. Suppose they came to the sick, and they commenced to pray and say, "Jesus, You heal this man." They would be in just exactly the same position Moses was when he got down to the Red Sea and prayed, "Lord God, You divide these waters." The two cases are absolutely parallel. God demands the action of the believer's faith in God. You stretch out your hand and divide the waters.

God has likewise given to every man the measure of faith, and it is for man, as the servant of God, to use the rod that God has given him. In these days there is an attitude of mind that I do not know hardly how to define. It is a mock humility. Rather, it is a false humility. It is a humility that is always hiding behind the Lord and is excusing its own lack of faith by throwing the responsibility over on the Lord. The Word of God, in speaking of this same matter concerning the disciples says, "They departed, and went through the towns, preaching the gospel, and healing every where."

Over and over again throughout the New Testament, the Word of God says, "They healed them, the disciples healed them," etc. You see, they had received something from God. They were as conscious of it as Moses was conscious he had received a rod from the Lord. It was theirs to use. It was theirs to use for all purposes. Peter used the conscious rod of God to heal the man at the beautiful gate. He did not pray. He did not ask God to heal the man, but he commanded him, "In the name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth rise up and walk." And the man obeyed. That was not intercession. It was a command. It was the faith in Peter's soul that brought the result.

Peter used the rod. The rod in this case was the rod of faith. In whose hands was it? In the hands of Peter and John together, and they used that rod of faith. The Word was spoken through Peter. The command was given through him. Unquestionably, John's soul was in it just as much as Peter's was. By faith in His name, by the faith of the disciples, the power of God was made active, and the lame man was healed.

Beloved, the lesson in my soul is this. There is a place of victory and a place of defeat, but there is a hairbreadth line there. It is the place of faith in action. To believe the thing God says and to do the thing that He commands, accepting, as the servant of God, the responsibility God lays upon you. Not interceding as Moses did, but as in Peter's case, through the faith that was in his soul, he commanded the power of God on the man. Suppose Peter had prayed, "Oh Lord, You come and heal this man." It would have been his own acknowledgment of lack of faith to do what Jesus told the disciple to do: heal the sick.

In the story of Saul, in 1 Samuel 10, among other things the prophet Samuel says to him:

"The Spirit of the Lord will come upon thee, and thou shalt prophesy with them, and shalt be turned into another man. And let it be, when these signs are come unto thee, that thou do as occasion serve thee; for God is with thee." (1 Samuel 10:6-7)

The lesson I know God wants us to see tonight is this: He endues a man or woman with the authority of God to accomplish the will of God. The power of God is bestowed upon the man. It is not the man that accomplishes the matter. It is the stretching forth of the hand; the dividing of the waters must be in response to the faith of the man. The man is the instrument. "Thou shalt do as occasion serve thee; for God is with thee." That is, you simply go on about your business, and the power of God is present with you to accomplish the desire of your heart.

Returning to the case of Peter, Peter used the faith of God that was in his soul to restore a man who was born lame, and he was instantly restored.

In the case of Ananias and Sapphira, we see Peter using the same power, by the spoken Word, not to restore a man's limbs, but to bring judgment on a liar. When Ananias lied, the Spirit of God fell on him, and he died as an example of sin. His wife likewise died. "Behold, the feet of them which have buried thy husband are at the door, and shall carry thee out."'

Man is a servant of God. Man is an instrument through which God works. The danger line is always around this: The weak men have taken to themselves the glory that belonged to God, and they have said, "We did it." They did not do it. God did it, but the man believed God that it would be done.

How closely we are made co-workers with the Lord, "co-laborers together with Him." It is God's divine purpose to accomplish His will in the world through men. God placed a profound respect upon the Body, "the church, which is his body." I want to show you that.

In the tenth chapter of Acts we have that remarkable response to the prayers of Cornelieus when an angel came to him and said,

"Cornelieus...thy prayers and thine alms are come up for a memorial before God. And now send men to Joppa, and call for one Simon, whose surname is Peter: ... he shall tell thee what thou oughtest to do."

The angel came from heaven. He was a direct messenger of God. Yet the angel did not tell Cornelius the way of salvation. Why did the angel instruct Cornelius to send for Peter? Because Peter was a part of the body of Christ, and God ordained that the power of God, with the ministry of Christ, shall be manifest through the Body. Not through angels, but through the Body, "the church, which is his body."

It is, therefore, the duty of the body to use the Spirit of God to accomplish the divine will of God, the purpose of God. With what strength then, with what a consciousness of the dignity of service, Christians ought to go forth! With what a conscious realization that God has bestowed upon you the authority and not only the authority, but the enduement of the Spirit to cause you to believe God and exercise the faith for the will of God to be accomplished.

Is it any wonder that David said,

"What is man, that thou art mindful of him? and the son of man, that thou visitest him? For thou hast made him a little lower than the angels, and hast crowned him with glory and honour. Thou madest him to have dominion over the works of thy hands; thou hast put all things under his feet."

Man and God working together, co-laborers, co-workers. Blessed be God.

The Power of Consecration to Principle

The great purpose of Jesus Christ in coming to the world was to establish the kingdom of God. The kingdom of God is universal, containing all moral intelligences willingly subject to the will of God both in heaven and on earth, both angels and men. The kingdom of heaven is Christ's kingdom on the earth, which will eventually merge into the kingdom of God. We read of that merging period in the 15th of 1 Corinthians, where it says:

"Then cometh the end, when he shall have delivered up the kingdom to God, even the Father; when he shall have put down all rule and all authority and power... And when all things shall be subdued unto him, then shall the Son also himself be subject unto him that put all things under him, that God may he all in all."

Now then, in order to establish a kingdom there must be a basis upon which it is to be founded. When the Revolutionary fathers got together in '76 they laid down the Declaration of Independence, the principles upon which American government was to be founded. They laid down as one of the first principles this one: "All men are born free and equal." That every man, by his being born a man, is likewise born on an equality with all others. All men are born free and equal before the law; there is no special privilege.

Next, they considered this as the second principle: That man, because of his birth and his free agency, was entitled to "Life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness."

Third: That government rests on the consent of the governed.

These were the underlying principles upon which the government was to rest. There was nothing little about them. They did not discuss the doctrines by which these principles were to be made effective, but they laid down the foundational principles upon which was built the greatest system of human government in the world's history.

Now Jesus likewise, when he came to found His kingdom, first enunciated the principles upon which His government was to rest. The eight Beatitudes, as they are given in His official declaration in His Sermon on the Mount, were the great principles upon which His government was to be founded.

A principle is not a dogma, or a doctrine. It is that underlying quality, that fundamental truth, upon which all other things are based. The principles of the kingdom of heaven are those underlying qualities upon which the whole structure of the Christian life rests and the principles upon which the real government of Jesus Christ will be founded and exercised. The eight Beatitudes are the principles of the kingdom, the Sermon on the Mount is the constitution, and commandments of Jesus are its laws or statutes.

First, the kingdom is established in the hearts of men. The principles of Jesus Christ are settled in our own spirit. We become citizens of the kingdom of heaven. The aggregate citizenship of the kingdom in this present age constitutes the real Church, which is His body. And throughout the Church age the working of the body is to be apparent in demonstrating to the world the practicability and desirability of the kingdom of heaven, that all men may desire the rule of Jesus in the salvation of men.

It is the purpose of Jesus to make the Church, which is His body, His representative in the world. Just as Jesus came to express God the Father to mankind, and Jesus was necessary to God in order that He might give an expression of Himself to the world, so the Church is necessary to Jesus Christ as an expression of Himself to the world.

Now the first principle that He laid down was this one: "Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven," Usually we confuse this with the other one, "Blessed are the meek,"' and we have commonly thought of one who is poor in spirit as being a meek person: possessing the spirit of meekness. But it is much more than that. The thing Jesus urged upon men was to practice what He had done Himself.

Jesus was the King of glory, yet He laid down all His glory. He came to earth and took upon Himself our condition. "He took not on Him the nature of angels; but took on him the seed of Abraham" (Hebrews 2:16). He took upon Himself the condition of mankind, that is, of human nature's liability to sin. Therefore, "He was in all points tempted like as we are, yet without sin." And because of the fact that He took upon Himself our nature and understood the temptations that are common to man, He is "able to succour them that are tempted" (Hebrews 2:18). He understands. He is a sympathetic Christ. Bless God!

Now see! "Blessed are the poor in spirit." Blessed is he who regards the interests of the kingdom of heaven as paramount to every other interest in the world, paramount to his own personal interest. Blessed is he whose interest in life, whose interest in the world is only used to extend the interest of the kingdom of heaven. Blessed is he who has lost his own identity as an individual and has become a citizen of the kingdom. Blessed is he who forgets to hoard wealth for himself, but who uses all he has and all he is for the extension of the kingdom of heaven. It is putting the law of love of God and one another into practice.

So after Jesus had laid down the things that He possessed, then bless God, He was able to say to us, as He had experienced it Himself, "Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven."

We commonly think as we read the Word of God that some of the teachings of Jesus were accidental or were applied to a particular individual and no one else. So we think of the rich young ruler, who came to Jesus and said:

Good Master, what shall I do to inherit eternal life? And Jesus said unto him... Thou knowest the commandments, Do not commit adultery, Do not kill, Do not steal, Do not bear false witness, Honor thy father and thy mother. And he said, All these have I kept from my youth up... He [Jesus] said unto him, Yet lackest thou one thing: sell all that thou hast, and distribute unto the poor, and thou shalt have treasure in heaven: and come, follow me. (Luke 18:18-22)

Don't you see, Jesus was applying to that young man that first principle of the kingdom. We have said that young man was covetous and he loved his wealth, etc., and that was keeping him out of the kingdom of heaven. Not so. Jesus was applying one of the principles of the kingdom to that young man's life. He turned away sorrowful. He had not developed to the place where he could do that thing.

There is a apocryphal story that tells us that the rich young ruler was Barnabas. After the resurrection and the coming of the Holy Ghost, Barnabas received from heaven the thing Jesus had tried to impart to him. He forgot all about Barnabas, his own interests and his own desires, and he sold his great possessions and came with the others and laid them at the apostles' feet. "Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven." So Jesus was able, after all, to get the real thing in the heart of Barnabas that He desired in the beginning.

The real miracle of the Holy Ghost at Pentecost was not the outward demonstration of tongues, etc.; but it produced such unselfishness in the hearts of all baptized that they each sold their lands and estates and parted the money to every man as he had need. They were moved by God into one family. Their brother's interest was equal to their own. That was "Blessed are the poor in spirit."

The second principle of the kingdom is this: "Blessed are they that mourn: for they shall be comforted." This figure is taken from the old prophets, who when the nation sinned, took upon themselves the responsibility of the nation. They put sackcloth on their body and ashes on their head and in mourning and tears went down before God for days and weeks, until the people turned to God. They became intercessors between God and man and in some instances in the Word we read where God looked and wondered. He wondered that there was no intercessor. There were no mourners who took upon themselves the responsibility of the sins of the people, who dared to stand between man and God.

We see how wonderfully Moses stood between God and the people. When God said to him after they had made the golden calf, "Let me alone ... that I may consume them: and I will make of thee a great nation" (Exodus 32:10). Moses said, "Not so, Lord. What will the Egyptians say, what will be the effect upon Thy great name? Will they not say that their God destroyed them?"

God had said to Moses, "I will make of thee a great nation," but Moses was big enough to turn aside the greatest honor that God could bestow upon a man: to become the father of a race.

Not so, Lord. This people have sinned a great sin, and have made them gods of gold. Yet now, if thou wilt forgive their sin... and if not, blot me, I pray thee, out of thy book. (Exodus 32:31-32, paraphrased)

The prophet became the great intercessor. He took upon himself the burdens and sins of the people, and when he got down to confess he did not say, "Oh! These people are so weak and they do this and that." But when he got down to pray he would say, "Lord God, we are unworthy." He was one with his people. He was identified with them, as one with them. He was not putting any blame on them. He was big enough to take the whole blame, the entire responsibility, and go down before God and lay the whole matter before God until the blessed mercy of God was again given to the people. "Blessed are the poor in spirit... Blessed are they that mourn."

Blessed is the man who comprehends the purposes of God, who understands his responsibility and possibility, who by God-given mourning and crying, turns the people to God. With his heart yearning for sinners, he becomes a mourner before God and takes the responsibility of fallen men on his own life. He goes down in tears and repentance before God until men turn to God and the mercy of God is shown to mankind.

In the day that God puts the spirit of mourning upon Pentecost, it will be the gladdest day that heaven ever knew. Blessed be His precious name!

Do you know, it always jars me down in the depths of my spirit when I hear people say hard things about churches and sects. That is not our place. Our place is as intercessor, as the one who is to stand between the living and the dead, as those whom God can trust and use to pray down the power and mercy and blessing of God upon this old race.

First we see that the kingdom is based on principles. Principles are greater than doctrines. Principles are the foundation stones upon which all other things rest. Doctrines are the rules, the details by which we endeavor to carry out the things that the principles contain; but the principles are the great foundation stones upon which all things rest.

Let us turn away from this until we see Jesus at the Jordan, consecrating Himself to His own life work, then we will understand how the Christian is to consecrate himself to carry out the principles.

The Word tells us that when Jesus began to be about thirty years of age, He came down to the River Jordan where John was baptized and presented Himself for baptism. John looked in amazement on Him and said, "I have need to be baptized of thee, and comest thou to me?" But Jesus said, "Suffer it to be so now; for thus it becometh us to fulfill all righteousness." Unto "all righteousness."

Listen! Hear the declaration to which Jesus Christ was baptized; it was His consecration unto "all righteousness." There was no further to go. It comprehends all there is of consecration and commitment unto the will of God and all there is of good. Unto "all righteousness." Bless God!

So Jesus understandingly permitted Himself to be baptized of John unto "all righteousness." Now listen! You and I have also been baptized. But see! Immediately after He was baptized, something took place. First, the Spirit of God came upon Him as a dove and abode upon Him. Then we read He was led by the Spirit into the wilderness to be tempted of the devil. It was not the devil that led Him into the wilderness. It was the Holy Ghost.

In the 16th of Leviticus, we see one of the beautiful figures which will illustrate that to you. On the day of atonement there were brought two goats. One, the priest laid his hands upon, put a towrope around its neck, then the Levite took the towrope and led it three days into the barren sands of the wilderness, and left it there to die. That is the picture of the life-death of Jesus Christ.

The Holy Ghost is God's Levite. He put the towrope on the neck of Jesus Christ and led Him likewise three days --a year for a day, God's three days-- into the wilderness. What for? To prove out, to test out the real fact of His obedience unto God and whether His consecration was going to stand. So the Spirit, the Holy Ghost, led Jesus into the wilderness.

Now I want you to see something. We are triune beings just as God Himself is triune. You will see the character of the consecration that Jesus made at the Jordan. God is triune. He is God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Ghost. Man is also triune. The Word says,

I pray God your whole spirit and soul and body be preserved blameless unto the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ. (1 Thessalonians 5:23)

So Jesus, when He went into the wilderness, encountered a peculiar temptation, peculiar to each separate department of His being. The Word of God says He fasted forty days and was an hungred. Satan comes to Him and says, "If thou be the Son of God, command that these stones be made bread." But Jesus could not do it. If He had done that, He would have been exercising His own authority in His own behalf and He had committed Himself unto "all righteousness." He only lived to express God, He only lived to express the Father. He said, "The words I speak, I speak not of myself. The work that I do I do not of myself." All He said and all He did and all He was, was the expression of God the Father.

May the Lord give us an understanding of the utterness of what a real baptismal consecration ought to be. When an individual comes and commits himself to Christ once and for all and forever, he ceases to be, he ceases to live in his own behalf, to live for himself any longer, but becomes the utter expression of Jesus Christ to mankind.

So Satan had no power to tempt a man who had made a consecration like that. The hunger calls of Jesus' body, after He had fasted forty days, were not enough to turn Him aside from the consecration He had made to God.

The second temptation was one peculiar to the mind (soul). He was taken to a pinnacle of the temple, and Satan said, "Do something spectacular, cast yourself down; let the people see You are an unusual person, and that You can do unusual things, and they will give You their acclaim."

Jesus could not do that. There was nothing, bless God, in the mind of Jesus Christ that could tempt Him to be disobedient to the consecration He had made to God, unto "all righteousness." So He turned the temptation aside.

The third temptation was one peculiar to the spirit. By a supernatural power Jesus is permitted to see, "All the kingdoms of the world and the glory of them," in a moment of time. Then Satan said unto Him, "All these things will I give thee, if thou wilt fall down and worship me." But Jesus turned him aside. No crossless crowning for the Son of God, no bloodless glory for my Lord. He had come to express God to the world, He had come to demonstrate one thing to you and me. That is, that man relying on God can have the victory over sin and Satan. Bless God! That is the peculiar thing about the life of Jesus Christ that makes Him dear to your heart and mine.

After going on the towrope of the Holy Ghost for three years as the first goat, through the sorrows and trials and disappointments of life --even ministering and blessing-- though the world cursed Him, He was able to come as the second goat and present Himself as the sinless, spotless sacrifice unto God at the cross.

If Jesus had fallen down anywhere along the line, if there had been a single instance where He had failed to express God to the world, He could never have been the Savior of the world. "He became the author of eternal salvation." He was honored of God in being permitted to die for mankind, having triumphed, having presented Himself the sinless, spotless sacrifice unto God. His blood flowed for all the race. Blessed be His name!

We have seen two things. We have seen the principles of Jesus Christ. We have seen His consecration to carry out those principles. He consecrated Himself utterly unto the mind and will of God. But now we are going a step farther.

We come to the last night of the Lord's life. He is with His disciples in the upper room. Here comes the final act, the consummation of all His life. There is a phase of this act, I know the Lord has made clear to many.

They sat around the table after they had eaten their supper, Jesus took bread and brake it, saving, "Take, eat: this is My body, which is broken for you," and yet He was there in the flesh. Now what did it mean? What was its significance?

This: By that act the Lord Jesus Christ pledged Himself before God, the holy angels, before men, that He would not stop short of dying for the world. There was no limit. He was faithful "even unto death" Just as He had been faithful in life and had lived each day the conscious life-death, dying to every desire of His mind and will and being, He is now going one step further. He is going to be faithful even unto death."

So He said, "Take, eat, this is My body, broken for you." After supper, likewise, He took the cup, when He had drunk, saying, "My blood of the new testament."

Now you listen. From time immemorial mankind has been in the habit pledging themselves in the cup. There is no date that mankind has of its origin. It is so ancient we do not know when the custom began, when men began to pledge themselves in the wine cup, but our Jesus sanctified the custom to God and His Church forever.

Jesus poured the wine into the cup, took it, and said, "This is my blood of the new testament," and He drank that Himself. That was the pledge of the Lord Jesus Christ. Having laid down the principles of the Gospel of the Son of God, having walked and lived and suffered for three years, now He was going to the very uttermost. There was no further to go. He said, "This is My blood of the new testament," meaning He would give His life for the world.

That is not all. That was His pledge, but after He had drunk, saying, "Drink ye all of it." And when they took the cup of which their Lord had drunk, they drank to that pledge. They were made partakers in the same pledge and likewise pledged themselves, "My blood of the new testament." Bless God.

Christianity had character in it. Jesus Christ put character in it. Bless God! "My blood of the new testament." The other day I was going over the list of the apostles as they are given by Hippolytus, one of the early writers, and he tells us that five of the twelve were crucified just as Jesus was. Others died by the spear and sword, and three died natural deaths after enduring tortures. So it meant for them just what it means for their Lord, "My blood of the new testament." We see the degree of faithfulness to which they pledged themselves that night.

We have loved and admired the spirit of the apostles. The spirit of Jesus Christ was so intense in the early Christians, that millions of them gave their lives for the Son of God; multitudes of whom died the death of martyrs and multitudes died in the war to exterminate Christianity. Thirty million! Think of that. It gives some meaning to the saying that "The blood of the martyrs was the seed of the Church."

How often have you and I taken the Lord's cup? Has it meant that to you and me, and does it mean that to you and me now? Beloved, I have no doubt that the sacred cup has touched many lips, perhaps the lips of most of you. If we have been understanding, comprehending Christians, we have realized it meant to us just what it did to the Lord: our everlasting pledge of faithfulness.

There is no place for sin in the Christian's life. There is no place for letting down in the Christian's life. There is no place for weakening in the Christian's life. Paul said, when they were having a hard time, "Ye have not yet resisted unto blood, striving against sin" (Hebrews 12:4). That was expected of them. They were expected to resist even unto death; so Paul says, "Ye have not yet resisted unto blood." In the revelation, the Church in Smyrna is commanded, "Be thou faithful unto death, and I will give thee a crown of life" (Revelation 2:10).

In this land, after our fathers had signed the old Declaration of independence they pledged, "Our lives, our fortunes, and our sacred honor," then they went out and gave themselves to eight years of war to make it good.

When people make a declaration on principles, it is going to cost them something and it costs them something. After awhile the men in the Revolutionary Army got where they did not have shoes on their feet, but in the depth of winter they tied straw and rags on their feet. They had stood by principles, they had lived by principles, they were ready to die by principles, and the British tracked them by the blood marks on the snow.

So Jesus Christ, in enlisting an army, put them under a kindred pledge with Himself. He pledged Christians on the same plane with Himself. Just as far as the Lord went, they went "even unto death."

The real purpose of becoming a Christian is not to save yourself from hell or be saved to go to heaven. It is to become a child of God with the character of Jesus Christ, to stand before men pledged unto the uttermost, "even unto death," by refusing to sin, refusing to bow your head in shame. Preferring to die rather than dishonor the Son of God.

If the character of Jesus Christ has entered into you and into me, then it has made us like the Christ. It has made us like Him in purpose. It us has made us like Him in fact. Bless God! His Spirit is imparted to us. Bless God for that same unquenchable fidelity that characterized the Son of God.

My God and Father, in Jesus' name I come to Thee, take me as I am. Make me what I ought to be in spirit, in soul, in body. Give me power to do right. If I have wronged any to confess, to repent, to restore, no matter what it costs. Wash me in the blood of Jesus that I may now become Thy child and manifest Thee in a perfect spirit, a holy mind, a sickless body, to the glory of God. Amen.

The Baptism of the Holy Ghost: Part 1

The Baptism of the Holy Ghost is a most difficult subject to discuss with any degree of intelligence, for though we may not care to admit it, the fact remains that the density of ignorance among the people, and the ministry, on this subject is appalling. To view this subject with any degree of intelligence we must view it from the standpoint of progressive revelation. Like Christian baptism, the operation of the Holy Ghost must be seen (comprehended) in its various stages of revelation. Otherwise we shall be unable to distinguish between the operations of the Spirit in the Old Testament dispensation and the Baptism of the Holy Ghost in the New Testament.

As we approach the threshold of this subject it seems as if the Spirit of God comes close to us. A certain awe of God comes over the soul. And it is my earnest wish that no levity, satire, or sarcasm be permitted to enter into this discussion. Such things would be grievous to the tender Spirit of God.

In the beginning of this revelation after the deluge, it seems as if God was approaching man from a great distance, so far had sin removed man from his original union with God at the time of his creation. God seems to reveal Himself to man as rapidly as man by progressive stages of development is prepared to receive the revelation. Consequently we see that the Baptism was a further revelation of God's purpose in purifying the heart from sin than was the original ceremony of circumcision; so the Baptism of the Holy Ghost is a greater, more perfect revelation of God than were the manifestations of the Spirit in the Patriarchal or Mosaic dispensations.

Three distinct dispensations of God are clearly seen, each with an ever-deepening manifestation of God to man. A preceding dispensation of God never destroys a foregoing richer revelation of God. This is manifestly seen in looking at the Patriarchal, Mosaic, and Christian dispensations. In the Patriarchal dispensation we see God appearing to man at long intervals. Abraham furnishes the best example, for to him God appeared at long intervals of 20 and 40 years apart; so with the other patriarchs. Under the Mosaic dispensation there is a deeper and clearer manifestation of God. God was ever-present in the pillar of cloud and the pillar of fire. He was present also in the tabernacle where the Shekinah Glory overshadowed the Mercy Seat. This is a continuous, abiding revelation of God. It was God with man not to man as was the Patriarchal dispensation. God was leading, guiding, directing, forgiving, sanctifying and abiding with man. But the revelation of God under the Christian Dispensation is a much deeper and truer revelation of God than this. It is God in man. It is the actual incoming of the Spirit of God to live in man. This brings us then to where we can see the purpose of God in revealing Himself to man in progressive steps of revelations.

Man by progressive stages through repentance and faith is purified, not alone forgiven his transgressions, but cleansed from the nature of sin within that causes him to transgress. This cleansing from inbred sin, the nature of sin, the carnal mind, the old Man, and so on, is the actual taking out of our breast the desire for sin, and all correspondence with sin in us is severed. The carnal life is laid a sacrifice on the altar of Christ in glad surrender by us. This inner heart cleansing that John and the disciples of Christ demanded is the work of the Holy Spirit by the blood and is necessary if maturity in Christ is to be achieved. A holy God must have a holy dwelling place. Oh wondrous salvation, wondrous Christ, wondrous atonement, man born in sin, shapen in iniquity, forgiven, cleansed, purified outside and inside by the blood of Jesus and made an habitation (dwelling place) of God. It was that man once created in the likeness of God should again become the dwelling place of God. That is what the atoning blood of Christ provided (Galatians 3:13-14). Christ hath redeemed us from the curse of the law, being made a curse for us; for it is written, "Cursed is every one that hangeth on a tree," that the blessing of Abraham might come on the Gentiles through Jesus Christ that they might receive the promise of the Spirit through faith. This reveals to us God Is purpose by the blood of Jesus Christ for us now to become the habitation of God: "In whom ye also are builded together for an habitation of God through the Spirit" (Ephesians 2:22). Again in 1 Corinthians 6:19, we see Paul in astonishment saying, "What? Know ye not that your body is the temple of the Holy Ghost?" Let us now see where we are and we will better understand how to go on.

The Holy Ghost is the Spirit of God, His purpose is to dwell in man after man's perfect cleansing from sin through the blood of Jesus Christ. His coming was definite, just as definite as was the advent of Jesus. When Jesus was born his birth was proclaimed by an angel voice and chanted by a multitude of the heavenly host praising God (Luke 2:9,13-10.) Equally so was the Holy Spirit's advent attested by His bodily form as a dove (Luke 3:22), and by His sound from heaven as of a rushing mighty wind and by cloven tongues of fire upon each of them (Acts 2:2-3). Heavenly dove, tempest roar, and tongues of fire crowning the hundred and twenty were as convincing as the guiding star and midnight shout of angel hosts. The coming of the Holy Ghost upon the hundred and twenty is found in Acts 2.

At the last supper when Jesus addressed the disciples, He said to them, "Nevertheless I tell you the truth; it is expedient for you that I go away: for if I go not away, the Comforter will not come unto you; but if I depart, I will send Him unto you. And when He is come, He will reprove the world of sin, and of righteousness, and of judgment" (John 16:7-8). As the disciples were together at Jerusalem after the resurrection, when the two who had walked with him to Emmaus were conversing with the eleven disciples, Jesus Himself stood in their midst. He said unto them, "Peace be unto you." They were affrighted believing they had seen a spirit. Jesus addressed them and said, "And, behold, I send the promise of the Father upon you: but tarry ye in the city of Jerusalem until ye be endued with power from on high" (Luke 24:49). Then in Acts 1, we find that the one hundred and twenty tarried in prayer in the upper room ten days. Thus between the crucifixion of Jesus and Pentecost is 53 days.

There was a crucifixion day. It was necessary. And now, we the children of God, must be crucified with Christ and freed from sin, our old man nailed to the cross. We die to sin, a real act, a genuine experience; it is done. So we are made partakers of Christ's death. But there was a resurrection day. He arose as a living Christ, not a dead one. He livest! He lives! And by our resurrection with Him into our new life, we leave the old sin life and the old man buried in baptism (Romans 6), and are made partakers of His new resurrection life. The life of power, the exercise of the power of God, is made possible to us by Jesus having elevated us into His own resurrection life by actual spiritual experience.

Then comes His ascension, just as necessary as the crucifixion or the resurrection. Jesus ascends to heaven and sits triumphant at the right hand of the Father. And according to His promise, He sent upon us the Holy Ghost. This experience is personal and dispensational. The Holy Ghost descends upon us, entering into us, for the Baptism of the Holy Ghost is the Holy God, the Spirit of Jesus, taking possession of our personality, living in us, moving us, controlling us. We become partakers of His glorified life, the life of Christ in glory. So it was with the hundred and twenty (see Acts 2:2-4): "And suddenly there came a sound from heaven as of a rushing mighty wind." (Suppose we heard it now. What would the audience think?) "And it filled all the house where they were sitting. And there appeared unto them cloven tongues like as of fire and it sat upon each of them. And they were all filled with the Holy Ghost, and began to speak in other tongues, as the Spirit gave them utterance." It was the Spirit that spoke in other tongues. What spirit? The Holy Ghost who had come into them, who controlled them, who spoke through them. Listen! Speaking in tongues is the voice of God. Do you hear God's voice? They spake as the Spirit gave them utterance.

Now we have advanced to where we can understand God's manifestations. Not God witnessing to man. Not God with man, But God in man. They spake as the Spirit gave them utterance.

At this point the Spirit of God fell on Brother Lake causing him to speak in tongues in an unknown language. The audience was asked to bow their heads in silent prayer for the interpretation of the words spoken in tongues. As they prayed the interpretation was given as follows:

"Christ is at once the spotless descent of God into man and the sinless ascent of man into God. And the Holy Spirit is the agent by which it is accomplished."

He is the Christ, the Son of God. His atonement is a real atonement. It changes from all sin. Man again becomes the dwelling place of God. Let us now see one of the most miraculous chapters in all the Word of God, Acts 10. A man, Cornelius, is praying. He is a Gentile centurion. An angel appears to him. The angel speaks. The angel says to send to Joppa for Peter. Peter is a Jew and he is not supposed to go into the home of a Gentile. He has not learned that salvation is for the Gentiles. God has to teach him. How does God do it? Peter goes up on the housetop to pray, and as he prays he is in a trance. Think of it! A trance. He falls into a trance. Suppose I was to fall on the floor in a trance: nine-tenths of this audience would be frightened to death. They would instantly declare that my opponent had hypnotised me. Why? Because of the ignorance among men of how the Spirit of God operates. But listen, listen! As he lays on the roof in a trance he sees a vision, a sheet let down from heaven caught by the four corners full of all manner of beasts and creeping things. And a voice --what voice?-- the Lord's voice said, "Rise, Peter, kill and eat." But Peter said, "Not so, Lord. I have never eaten anything common or unclean." But the Voice said, "What I have cleansed that call thou not common." Peter obeyed. He went with the messengers. Now see the result. As he spake the Word "the Holy Ghost fell on all them that heard the word. And they of the circumcision which believed were astonished, as many as came with Peter, because that on the Gentiles also was poured out the Holy Ghost. How did they know? "They heard them speak with tongues and magnify God." Then answered Peter, "Can any man forbid water that these should not be baptised which have received the Holy Ghost as well as we?" And so it all ended in a glorious baptismal service in water of all who had been baptised in the Holy Ghost.

In Acts 22:12, Paul tells of Ananias coming to see him, but how did Ananias know Paul was there? See Acts 9:10-19. "And there was at Damascus a certain disciple named Ananias and to him the Lord said in a vision, go into the street called Straight and inquire at the house of Judas for one called Saul of Tarsus." Now let us see that as we would see it today. The Lord said, "Ananias, go down into Straight Street to the house of Judas and ask for a man named Saul of Tarsus for behold he prayeth." And now the Lord tells Ananias what Saul had seen (Acts 9:12): "and hath seen in a vision a man named Ananias coming in and putting his hands on him that he might receive his sight." Here Ananias talks with the Lord. Do you know anything of such communion or talks with God? If not, get the Baptism of the Holy Ghost like the early Christians, and their knowledge and experiences afterward can be yours, and you will see as we do the operation of the Lord upon saint and sinner by the Holy Ghost. Men say to us, "Where do you men get your insight into the Word?" We get it just where Paul and Peter got it: from God by the Holy Ghost. (Galatians 1:11-12)

Beloved, read God's Word on your knees. Ask God by His Spirit to open it to your understanding. Read the Word with an open heart. It is a lamp unto our feet and a light unto our path.

Ananias went as the Lord had directed him and found Paul. And Paul was healed of his blindness and was baptised in the Holy Ghost and was also baptised in water and spoke in tongues "more than ye all." (1 Corinthians 14:18)

Now see again Acts 22:14. Ananias is speaking to Paul, and he said, "The God of our Fathers hath chosen thee, that thou shouldst know his will, and see that Just One, and shouldst hear the words of his mouth. For thou shall be his witness unto all men of what thou hast seen and heard." Say, what about the people who say, "Don't tell these things to anyone." "And now why tarriest thou? Arise, and be baptised, and wash away thy sins calling upon the name of the Lord." You see, as with Peter at Cornelius' house, all this work of the Spirit ended in salvation and baptism.

Now God through Ananias promised Paul that he should know "His will and see that Just One and shouldest hear the voice of his mouth," (Acts 22:14). When did that come to pass? Three years after when Paul returned to Jerusalem. "Then after three years I went up to Jerusalem," (Galatians 1:18). "And it came to pass that when I was come again to Jerusalem, even while I prayed in the temple, I was in a trance," (Acts 22:17). Think of it, the intellectual, wonderful Paul, the master theologian of the ages, the orator of orators, the logician of logicians in a trance. Bless God for that trance. It was the fulfilment of what Ananias had said to him three years before. "And saw him (Jesus) saying unto me, Make haste and get thee quickly out of Jerusalem for they will not receive thy testimony concerning me." Now what is a trance? A trance is the Spirit taking predominance over the mind and body, and for the time being, the control of the individual is by the Spirit; but our ignorance of the operations of God is such that even ministers of religion have been known to say it is the devil.

Let us see where Paul got his commission to preach and instructions about what he was to preach, and what his condition and attitude were when Jesus gave him his commission.

See Acts 26:16-18. He was lying on the road on his way to Damascus. Now if we were to see someone lying on the road talking to an invisible somebody, no doubt in our ignorance we would send for an ambulance or for the police. But this is where the glorified Christ spoke to Paul and gave him definite instructions about what he should preach; and the purpose of his preaching was to be the salvation, not the entertainment, of others. "But rise, stand upon thy feet: for I (Jesus) have appeared unto thee for this purpose, to make thee a minister and a witness both of these things which thou hast seen, and of those things in the which I will appear unto thee." Jesus promises to appear to Paul again, and that was fulfilled while he lay in a trance in the temple three years later (Acts 26:16).

Now the object of his preaching was to open their eyes, and to turn them from darkness to light, and from the power of Satan unto God, that they may receive forgiveness of sins, and inheritance among them which are sanctified (present experience) by faith that is in me (Jesus). Whereupon, O King Agrippa, I was not disobedient unto the heavenly vision" (Acts 26:18-19).

From this we see and are able to understand the operations of God by His Spirit. And now, is the Holy Ghost in the Church today? Verily, yes; but you say, "We do not see Him work in this way. Why is it?" Because you say all these things were for the Apostolic days. You can not take the Word of God and find one place where the gifts of the Holy Ghost were withdrawn.

The nine gifts of the Holy Ghost are found in 1 Corinthians 12:8-11: "For to one is given by the Spirit the word of wisdom, to another the word of knowledge by the same Spirit (gift two), to another discerning of spirits (gift three), to another divers (different) kinds of tongues (languages) (not an acquirement but by the Spirit), to another faith by the same Spirit, to another gifts of healing by the same Spirit." Oh, praise God for the discovery of the gifts of the Holy Ghost and especially for the gift of healing. May we all learn to know Christ not alone as our Saviour but as our sanctifier and healer, too.

Now I will go over these gifts on my fingers: 1st, wisdom; 2nd, knowledge; 3rd, faith; 4th, healing; 5th, miracles; 6th, prophecy; 7th, discerning of spirits; 8th, divers kinds of tongues; and 9th, the interpretation of tongues. We have seen that the Holy Ghost came into the Church at Pentecost and the gifts are in the Holy Ghost; consequently, if the Holy Ghost is in the Church, the gifts are, too. Because of the lack of faith we do not see them exercised in the ordinary Church. We stand for the obtaining of the gifts of the Holy Ghost through our personal baptism in the Holy Ghost and the enduement of the Holy Ghost power as promised by Jesus, yea, commanded by Him in Acts 1:8: "Ye shall receive power after that the Holy Ghost is come upon you..."

People ask, "What is tongues?" Tongues is the voice (or operation) of the Spirit of God within. When the Holy Ghost came in He spoke, Again, in Acts 10:44-48, when the Holy Ghost fell on them, Peter demanded the right to baptise them in water, saying "Can any man forbid water, that these would be baptised, which have received the Holy Ghost?" See verse 46, "for they heard them speak with tongues, and magnify God." Tongues is the evidence of the baptism of the Holy Ghost by which Peter claimed the right to baptise them in water. Again in Acts 19:1-7, Paul at Ephesus met twelve men whom John had baptised unto repentance, but now Paul re-baptised them by Christian Baptism. In verse 5 we read that when they heard this, they were baptised (water baptism) in the Name of the Lord Jesus. And when Paul had laid his hands on them, the Holy Ghost came on them and they spoke with tongues and prophesied. "Tongues are for a sign, not to them that believe, but to them that believe not." (1 Corinthians 14:22)

The Baptism of the Holy Ghost: Part 2

There are as many degrees in God in the Baptism of the Holy Ghost as there are preachers who preach it. Some people are born away down weeping at the foot of the cross. They are still on the earth plane with Christ. They are still weeping over their sins, still trying to overcome sin and be pure of heart.

But there are other people who are born away up in the blessed dominion of God, like our Mother Etter. They have resurrection power. All power is given, and it is in our soul.

And beloved, one day there are going to be Christians, baptised in the Holy Ghost who are away up in the Throne of God, away up in the consciousness that is breathed out of His holy heart. Somebody is going to be born a son of God; and be baptised in the Holy Ghost where Jesus is today, in the Throne-consciousness of Christ. Where they can say, like Jesus said, where they can feel like Jesus feels: "I am He that liveth, and was dead, and behold. I am alive for evermore and have the keys of hell and of death." Absolute overcoming consciousness!

You dear folks listen, who are trying to pump up a Pentecost that has worn out years ago. God let it die. God had only one way under heaven to get you to move up into God, and that way is to let you become dissatisfied with the thing you have. And if you have not the consciousness you once had, God Almighty understands the situation. He is trying to get you hungry so that you will commit your Body and your Soul and your Spirit to God forever, and by the grace of God you will be baptised in the Holy Ghost over again, at the Throne of God-consciousness, in the power of Jesus Christ., as Jesus is today. "As He is, so are we in this world".

Why, with most of you, when you were baptised in the Holy Ghost the Lord had to baptise a whole dose of medicine, and pills, and everything that was in you. Well, God never had to baptise that kind of stuff in the Lord Jesus. Jesus came down to the River Jordan, and gave His BODY and His SOUL and His SPIRIT to God forever, and He never took a pill or a dose of medicine. He never went to the spirit of the world for assistance: or to the devil for help. His SPIRIT, His SOUL, and His BODY were God's from that minute, forever.

Beloved, God is calling men and women to a holier consecration, to a higher place in God, and I am one of God's candidates for that holy place in God. I want to get to the Throne of God. Oh, yes, God baptised me in the Holy Ghost with a wondrous baptism, according to the understanding I possessed ten or fifteen years ago. But I am a candidate today for a new baptism in the Holy Ghost that comes out of the heart of the GLORIFIED Christ., in the lightnings of God; everlasting overcoming; on the throne with Jesus.

And that is the experience that is going to make the sons of God in the world. That is the reason they will take the world for Jesus Christ, and the Kingdom will be established, and they will put the crown on the Son of God and declare Him "King of kings and Lord of lords" forever. Amen.

Therefore, fear not., for God is able to perform in you even that which He performed in Jesus, and raise you likewise in union with Christ Jesus, and make you reign in dominion over sin, instead of being dominated by the powers of evil and darkness.

Tongues and interpretation (Battle Creek, Michigan, September, 1913)

The Baptism of the Holy Ghost: Part 3

The Baptism of the Holy Ghost was of such importance in the mind of the Lord Jesus Christ that He commanded His disciples to tarry in Jerusalem "until ye be endued with power from on high." (Acts 1:8) And they steadfastly carried out what the Lord had commanded, waiting on God in a continuous prayer meeting in the upper room for ten days until the Promise of the Father was fulfilled (Luke 24:49), and that Baptism had fallen of which John the Baptist spoke in Matthew 3:11, saying, "I indeed baptise you with water unto repentance, but He that cometh after me is mightier than I, whose shoes I am not worthy to bear: He shall baptise you with the Holy Ghost and with fire."

In order to obtain from Heaven the Spirit of Jesus (the Holy Ghost), it is first necessary that the individual shall know that his sins are blotted out, that the blood of Jesus Christ has sanctified his heart and cleansed him from the sinful nature, or the Adamic nature, the inherent nature of sin (Ephesians 2:1-3).

Personally I knew that my sins had been blotted out, but it was only two months prior to my Baptism in the Holy Ghost that I learned by the Word of God and experienced in my life the sanctifying power of God subduing the soul and cleansing the nature from sin. This inward life cleansing was to me the crowning work of God in my life at that period, and I shall never cease to praise God that He revealed to me the depth by the Holy Ghost the power of the blood of Jesus.

Many inquire what is the reason that when your heart is sanctified and the conscious knowledge of your cleansing has taken place that you are not instantly baptised with the Holy Ghost. From my own experience and the experiences of others it is readily seen that, notwithstanding that the heart is cleansed from sin, it is still necessary in many instances for the dear Lord to further spiritualise the personality until the individual has become sufficiently receptive to receive within his person the Holy Ghost. The forces of our personality must be subdued unto God. This we commonly speak of as spiritualising. In many instances even though the heart is really pure, yet the individual has not at once received the Baptism of the Holy Ghost, and in some instances has given up in despair and turned back to his first works, believing that there must still be sin in his heart, thus discrediting what God has already done within him through the blood of Jesus. No, it is not always that the heart is still impure. It is not because you are not thoroughly sanctified. It is only God waiting and working to bring you to the place and to sufficiently spiritualise your personality that you may receive into your being the Holy Ghost.

The Baptism of the Holy Ghost is not an influence, nor yet a good feeling, nor sweet sensations, though it may include all of these. The Baptism of the Holy Ghost is the incoming into the personality of Him, the Holy Ghost, which is the Spirit of Jesus taking real possession of your spirit (or inner man), of your soul (the mind and animal life), yea, of your flesh. He possesses the being. The flesh is caused to quake sometimes because of the presence of the Spirit of God in the flesh. Daniel quaked with great quaking when the Spirit of the Lord came upon him (Daniel 10:1-13).

Beloved reader, do you realise that it is the Spirit of Jesus that is seeking admittance into your heart and life? Do you realise that it is the Spirit of Jesus within the spirit, soul and body of the baptised believer that moves him in ways sometimes strange, but who accomplishes the wondrous work of God within the life that every baptised believer praises God has taken place in him.

While yet a justified man, even without an experience of sanctification, the Lord committed to me in a measure the ministry of healing inasmuch that many were healed, and, in some instances, real miracles of healing took place. Yet I did not know God as my sanctifier. Ten years later, after sanctification had become a fact in my life, a great and wonderful yearning to be baptised in the Holy Ghost and fire came into my heart. After seeking God persistently, almost night and day for two months, the Lord baptised me in the Holy Ghost causing me to speak in tongues and magnify God. I had looked for and prayed and coveted the real power of God for the ministry of healing and believed God that when I was baptised in the Holy Ghost that His presence in me through the Spirit would do for the sick the things my heart desired and which they needed. Instantly upon being baptised in the Spirit I expected to see the sick healed in a greater degree and in larger numbers than I had before known, and, for a times I seemed to be disappointed.

How little we know of our own relationship to God! How little I knew of my own relationship to Him; for, day by day, for six months following my Baptism in the Holy Ghost the Lord revealed to me many things in my life where repentance, confession and restitution were necessary, and yet I had repented unto God long ago. O, the deep cleansings, the deep revelations of one's own heart by the Holy Ghost. It was indeed as John the Baptist said, "whose fan is in his hand, and he will thoroughly purge his floor, and gather his wheat into the garner: but the chaff he will burn up with unquenchable fire."

First, then, I will say the Baptism in the Holy Ghost meant to me a heart searching as I have never before known, with no rest, until in every instance the blood was consciously applied, and my life set free from the particular thing that God had revealed. As I say, this process continued for six months after my Baptism in the Holy Spirit.

Second, a love for mankind such as I had never comprehended took possession of my life. Yea, a soul yearning to see men saved, so deep, at times heart rending, until in anguish of soul I was compelled to abandon my business and turn all my attention to bringing men to the feet of Jesus. While this process was going on in my heart, during a period of months, sometimes persons would come to my office to transact business and even instances where there were great profits to be had for a few minutes of persistent application to business, the Spirit of love in me so yearned over souls that I could not even see the profits to be had. Under its sway, money lost its value to me and in many instances I found myself utterly unable to talk business to the individual until first I had poured out the love passion of my soul and endeavoured to show him Jesus as his then present Saviour. In not just a few instances these business engagements ended in the individual yielding himself to God.

That love passion for men's souls has sometimes been overshadowed by the weight of care since then, but only for a moment. Again, when occasion demanded it, that mighty love flame absorbing one's whole being and life would flame forth until, under the anointing of the Holy Ghost on many occasions sinners would fall in my arms and yield their hearts to God.

Others have sought for evidences of this Pentecostal experience being the real baptism of the Holy Ghost. Some have criticised and said, "Is it not a delusion?" In all the scale of evidences presented to my soul and taken from my experience, this experience of the divine love, the burning love and holy compassion of Jesus Christ filling one's bosom until no sacrifice is too great to win a soul for Christ demonstrates to me more than any other one thing that this is indeed none other than the Spirit of Jesus. Such love is not human! Such love is only divine! Such love is only Jesus Himself, who gave His life for others.

Again, the development of power. First, after the mighty love came the renewed, energised power for healing of the sick. O what blessed things God has given on this line! What glorious resurrections of the practically dead! Such restorations of the lame and the halt and the blind! Such shouts of joy! Such abundance of peace! Verily, "Himself took our infirmities and bare our sicknesses."

Then came as never before the power to preach the Word of God in demonstration of the Spirit. O, the burning fiery messages; O, the tender, tender, loving messages! Oh, the deep revelations of wondrous truth by the Holy Ghost! Preaching once, twice, sometimes three times a day, practically continuously during these four years and four months. O, the thousands God has permitted us to lead to the feet of Jesus, and the tens of thousands to whom He has permitted us to preach the Word!

Then came the strong, forceful exercise of dominion over devils, to cast them out. Since that time many insane and demon possessed, spirits of insanity, all sorts of unclean demons, have been cast out in the mighty name of Jesus through the power of the precious blood. Saints have been led into deeper life in God. Many, many have been baptised in the Holy Ghost and fire. My own ministry was multiplied a hundredfold in the very lives of others to whom God committed this same ministry. Yea, verily the Baptism in the Holy Ghost is to be desired with the whole heart.

Brother, Sister, when we stand before the bar of God and are asked why we have not fulfilled in our life all the mind of Christ and all His desire in the salvation of the world, how will be our excuses if they are weighed against the salvation of imperishable souls. How terrible it will be for us to say we neglected, we put off, we failed to seek for the enduement that cometh from on high, the Baptism of the Holy Ghost.

Again, are we close, may we say that it was only after the Lord had baptised us in the Holy Ghost that we really learned how to pray? When He prayed through us, when the soul cries born of the Holy Ghost rolled out of your being and up to the throne of God, the answer came back: His prayer, His heart yearning, His cry. May God put it in every heart that we may indeed see the answer to our Lord's prayer, "Thy Kingdom come; Thy will be done on earth as it is done in Heaven."

But someone will say, "How about tongues?" We understood that you taught that tongues were the evidence of the Baptism in the Holy Ghost?" So they are. "Tongues are a sign to them that believe not." (1 Corinthians 14:22) While I personally praise God for the wonderful and blessed truths of His Word by the Spirit, revelations in doctrine, in prophecy, in poems by the Holy Ghost in tongues with interpretation that He has given me, yet, above all the external evidences, that which God accomplishes in your own lives, demonstrating to your own consciousness the operations of God, no doubt is the great evidence to the believer himself, for that which is known in consciousness can not be denied. We stand firmly on scriptural grounds that every individual who is baptised in the Holy Ghost will and does speak in tongues.

Baptism means a degree of the Spirit upon the life sufficient to give the Spirit of God such absolute control of the person that He will be able to speak through him in tongues. Any lesser degree can not be called the Baptism or submersion, and we feel could properly be spoken of as an anointing. The life may be covered with deep anointings of the Holy Ghost yet not in sufficient degree to be properly called the Baptism.

The Baptism of the Holy Ghost: Part 4

The Baptism of the Holy Ghost is the greatest event in Christian history, greater than the crucifixion, of greater import than the resurrection, greater than the ascension, greater than the glorification. It was the end and finality of crucifixion and resurrection, ascension and glorification.

If Jesus Christ had been crucified and there had been no resurrection, His death would have been without avail, in-so-far as the salvation of mankind is concerned. Or if He had risen from the grave in resurrection, and failed to reach the throne of God, and receive from the Father the Gift of the Holy Ghost, the purpose for which He died, and for which He arose, would have been missed.

It is because there was no failure, it is because Jesus went to the ultimate, to the very Throne and heart of God, and secured right out of the heavenly treasury of the Eternal Soul, the Almighty Spirit, and poured it forth upon the world in divine baptism that we are here tonight.

The Day of Pentecost was the birthday of Christianity. Christianity never existed until the Holy Ghost came from heaven. The ministry of Jesus in the world was His own divine preparation of the world for His ultimate and final ministry. His ultimate and final ministry was to be BY THE SPIRIT.

The ministry of Jesus during His earth life was localised by His humanity, localised again in that His message was only given to Israel. But the descent of the Holy Ghost brought to the souls of men a UNIVERSAL ministry of Jesus to every man right from the heart of God. Heavenly contact with the eternal God in power set their nature all aflame for God and with God, exalted their natures into God, and made the recipient GODLIKE. Man became God-like!

There is no subject in all the Word of God that seems to me should be approached with so much holy reverence as the subject of the Baptism of the Holy Ghost. Beloved, my heart bleeds every day of my life when I hear the flippancy with which Christians discuss the Baptism of the Holy Ghost.

When Moses entered into the presence of God at the Burning Bush, God said, "Put off thy shoes from off thy feet, for the place whereon thou standest is holy ground." How much more so when the individual comes into the presence of God looking for the Baptism of the Holy Ghost, and remembers that in order to obtain this Gift, Jesus Christ lived in the world, bled on the cross, entered into the darkness of death and hell and the grave, grappled with and strangled that accursed power, came forth again, and finally ascended to heaven in order to secure it for you and me. If there is anything under heaven that ought to command our reverence, our Holy reverence, our reverence beyond anything else in the world, it surely is the subject of the Baptism of the Holy Ghost.

My! Sometimes my soul is jarred when I hear people flippantly say, "Have you got your baptism?" Supposing that Jesus was on the cross, and we were privileged tonight to look into His face at this hour, I wonder what the feeling of our soul would be? Supposing we were to follow tonight behind the weeping company that bore His dead body and laid it in the tomb, what would our feelings be? Supposing we were to meet Him in the garden, as Mary did, in the glory of His resurrection, or supposing that God in His goodness would let us look into that scene of scenes at the Throne of God, when the heavens lifted up their gates, and the Lord of Glory came in. Oh, if we could, beloved, we would have a better comprehension of the Baptism of the Holy Ghost.

I love that dear old word "Ghost." The Anglo-Saxon is "Ghest" a spiritual guest, heavenly visitor, spiritual presence, the Angel One. And that Angel One that comes to you and me, comes right out of the heart of the Eternal God, breathed through the soul of Jesus Christ! When He came upon a man originally, as He did upon the hundred and twenty at Jerusalem, no one went around saying: "Brother, have you got your baptism?" They were walking with their shoes off, with uncovered heads and uncovered hearts before the Eternal God!

I believe that the first essential in a real Holy Ghost Church and a real Holy Ghost work, is to begin to surround the Baptism of the Holy Ghost with that due reverence of God with which an experience so sacred, and that cost such an awful price, should be surrounded.

I sat one day on a kopje in South Africa, in company with a lady, Mrs Dockrell, a beautiful woman of God, baptised in the Holy Ghost. As we sat together on the rocks, meditating and praying, the rest of the company being a little distance away, I observed the Spirit falling upon her powerfully, until she was submerged in the Spirit. Then she began to deliver a message, first in tongues, later giving the interpretation in English, and I listened to the most wonderful lecture on the subject of "REVERENCE" I have ever heard in all my life.

Afterward I said to her: "Tell me what you can about the experience through which you have just passed." She had never been in Europe. But she said, "I was carried by the Spirit somewhere in Europe. I approached a great cathedral." And she went on to describe its architecture. She said: "As I approached the door, I was greeted by an English priest, who led me down the isle to the altar, and I knelt. A white cloud began to settle down, and presently out of the cloud came the face and form of Jesus Christ. The priest was standing in the rostrum and began to speak but I could see by the action of the Spirit that the words he spoke were simply words that were being spoken by the Lord." It has always been one of the sorrows of my life that I did not have a stenographer, who could have taken that wonderful message on reverence for the works of God.

I have been reading one of the most beautiful books I have ever read. It is written by an English lady, Mrs Parker, a missionary to India, and describes the life and teaching and mission of one Sadhu Sundar Singh, an Indian Sadhu. A Sadhu is a HOLY MAN, who renounces the world absolutely utterly, never marries, never takes part in any of the affairs of the world, separates himself to religious life, practices meditation on God and the spiritual life. Sundar Singh, when he found the Lord Jesus Christ, conceived the idea of becoming a Christian Sadhu. They walked from place to place. They wore no shoes, they slept on the ground, but their life is utterly abandoned to God.

One of the statements of Mrs Parker, who wrote of Sundar Singh, was to this effect: "As you approach his presence, an awe comes over the soul. It seems as if you are again in the presence of the original Nazarene." Let us approach the Holy of Holies with a similar awe, Let us be reverential in the presence of the glorified One.

The Baptism of the Holy Ghost is peculiar to the Lord Jesus Christ. "I indeed," said John, "baptise you in water unto repentance, but HE shall baptise you with the Holy Ghost and with fire; whose fan is in His hand, and He will thoroughly purge His floor, and gather His wheat into the garner; but He will burn up the chaff with unquenchable fire." Jesus Christ, the Glorified, must lay His hands on you and on me and bestow upon us all His own nature, the outflow of God, the substance of His soul, the quality of His mind, the very being of God Himself. "Know ye not that your body is the temple of the Holy Ghost, which is in you?" A temple of God, a house of God in which God lives!

Sometimes I have tried to get it clear before my soul that God LIVES IN ME. I have tried to note the incoming influence and power of that pure, sweet, living Spirit of the Eternal God. I have tried to realise His presence in my spirit, in my soul, in my hands, in my feet, in my person and being: a habitation of God, a habitation of God! God equipping the soul to minister, Himself, God, to the world. God equipping the soul of man that he may live forever in harmony of mind with God. God furnishing to the soul of man the POWER of His personality, by which man is as made as God. For all the God-like qualities of your heart is due to the fact that God by the Spirit dwells in you. What is it that you look for in another? It is God! You look into the eyes of another to see God. If you fail to see God in the other life, your heart is troubled. You were looking for God.

I am not interested in the form or the figure or the name of an individual. I am interested in seeing God. Is God there? Is God in that man? Is God in that woman? Is it God that speaks? Is it God that moves? Are You seeing God?

The Baptism of the Holy Ghost was the incoming of God in personality, in order that the man, through this force, might be moved by God. God lives in him, God speaks through him, God is the impulse of his soul, God has His dwelling place in him.

YOU may have God. That is the wonder of the Baptism of the Holy Ghost. It is not a work of grace, it is God possessing you. Oh, your heart may have been as sinful as the heart of man ever was sinful. But Christ comes to your soul, That spirit of darkness that possessed you goes, and in its stead, a new Spirit comes in, the Spirit of Christ. YOU have become a new creature, a saved man, a God-filled man.

Sin manifests itself in three ways, in thought, in acts, in nature. Salvation is a complete transformation. God takes possession of man, changes his thoughts, in consequence his acts change, his nature is new. A Christian is not a reformed man. A Christian is a man renewed, remade by the Spirit of God. A Christian is a man indwelt by God: the house of God, the tabernacle of the Most High! Man, indwelt by God, becomes the hands, and the heart, and the feet, and the mind of Jesus Christ. God descends into man, man ascends into God! That is the purpose and power of the Baptism in the Holy Ghost. A soul is saved. How does Jesus reach them? Through your hands, through your heart, through your faith. When God baptises you in the Holy Ghost, He gives you the biggest gift that heaven or earth ever possessed. He gives you Himself! He joins you by the one Spirit to Himself forever.

The requirement is a surrendered heart, a surrendered mind, a surrendered life. From the day that a man becomes a child of God, baptised in the Holy Ghost, it was God's intention through Jesus Christ that that man should be a revelation or Jesus, not of himself any more. From that time on the Christian should be a revelation of Jesus.

If you were looking to know whether a man was baptised in the Holy Ghost or not, what would you look for? You would look for God in him. You would look for a revelation of the personality of God. God in him, God speaking in him, God speaking through him, God using his hands, God using his feet, a mind in harmony with God, a soul in touch with heaven, a spirit united and unified with and in Jesus Christ!

It is not in my heart to discourage any man, or to make you disbelieve for one minute in the trueness of your own baptism in the Holy Ghost. I believe that God by the Spirit has baptised many in the Holy Ghost. Hundreds and hundreds of people have been baptised in the Holy Ghost during the life of this Church in the last six years. But beloved, we have not comprehended the greatness of God's intent, Not that we have not received the Spirit, but our lives have not been sufficiently surrendered to God.

We must keep on ascending right to the Throne, right into the heart of God, right into the soul of the Glorified.

The common teaching that my heart these days is endeavouring to combat is that God comes to present the individual with a gift of power, and the individual is then supposed to go out and manifest some certain characteristic of power. No! God comes to present you with HIMSELF. "Ye shall receive power after that the Holy Ghost is come upon you."

Jesus went to heaven in order that the very treasury of the heart of the Eternal God might be unlocked for your benefit, and that out of the very soul of the Eternal God, the streams of His life and nature would possess you from the crown of your head to the sole of your feet, and that there would be just as much of the Eternal God in your toe nails and in your brain as each are capable of containing. In other words, from the very soles of your feet to the last hair on the top of your heard, every cell of your being, would be a residence of the Spirit of the living God. Man is made alive by God and with God by the Spirit. And in the truest sense man is the dwelling place of God, the house of God, the tabernacle of the Most High.

Listen! "The words that I speak, I speak not of myself, but the Father that DWELLETH in Me." "But the Father that dwelleth in Me." Where did the Eternal Father dwell in Jesus Christ? Why in every part of His being, within and without, in the spirit of Him, in the soul of Him, in the brain of Him, in the body of Him, in the blood of Him, in the bones of Him! Every single, solitary cell of His structure was the dwelling place of God, of God, OF GOD.

When you look for God you do not look on the surface. You look within, When you discern a man to see whether God is in him, you look into the spirit of him, into the soul of him, into the depth of him, and there you see God.

How trifling are the controversies that surround the Baptism of the Holy Ghost? Men are debating such trifling issues. For instance, does a man speak in tongues, or does he not? Do not think for a moment that I am discounting the value of tongues. I am not. But beloved, I will tell you what my heart is straining for. Down there at Jerusalem they not only spoke in tongues, but they spoke the languages of the NATIONS. If it was possible for old Peter and old Paul, or for the Jewish nation, then it is possible to every last one, Not to speak in tongues alone, as we ordinarily understand that phase, but to speak because God dwells in you and speaks to whomsoever and will in whatever language He desires. And if our present experience in tongues is not satisfying, God bless you, go on into languages, as God meant that you should. Dear ones, I feel the need of that, and I feel it away down in my heart to a depth that hurts. I lived in South Africa for a number of years, where it is commonly said that there are a hundred thousand tribes of native people. Every last one of the hundred thousand speaks a different dialect. These tribes number sometimes as low as ten thousand people and sometimes as high as hundreds of thousands, even millions, of people.

Supposing we were going to undertake to evangelize Africa rapidly. It would be necessary to have a hundred thousand different missionaries and have them all at one time, master one particular language, for there are a hundred thousand of them. No sir! I believe before High Heaven that when the Spirit of the Eternal God is poured out upon all flesh, that out of the real Christian body will arise a hundred thousand men and women in Africa that will speak in the language of every separate tribe by the power of God.

The unknown tongue of the Spirit was to teach you of God, to be a faith builder in your soul, to take you out into God's big practical endeavour to save the world. And that is the reason, dear ones, that I bring this issue to your soul tonight. In the matter of the Baptism of the Holy Ghost we are in a state of the merest infancy of understanding, the merest infancy of divine control, the merest infancy in ability to assimilate our environment, including languages.

When we go to a school we see classes arranged for every grade. I was talking to a young school teacher, who teaches out in the country in a little public school. I said: "How many children have you in your school?" She replied; "fifteen." I asked: "How many grades have you?" She said: "Eight grades." Fifteen scholars divided into eight grades.

The Christian Church is God's big school. What student in the eighth grade would think of saying to the child learning its A, B, C's, "You haven't anything. Why don't you have the eighth grade understanding?" Well in due time he will have it. That is the reason the student does not say it. It is because he knows the child will have it. One day that boy will understand just the same as he does. A weak Christianity always wants to drop to the imperfect, and adjust itself to the popular mind. But a real Christianity ever seeks to be made perfect in God, both in character and gifts.

Dear ones, I want to repeat to you tonight a little of my own personal history on the subject of the Baptism of the Spirit, for I know it will clarify your soul.

I knelt under a tree when about sixteen years of age, in repentance and prayer, and God came into my soul. I was saved from my sins, and from that day I knew Jesus Christ as a living Saviour. There never was a single moment of question about the reality of His incoming into my life as a Saviour, for He saved me from my sins. My friends said, "You are baptised in the Holy Ghost."

Sometime later, I think when I was yet under twenty, or there-about, I met a Christian farmer, Nelvin Pratt, who sat down on his plough handles and taught me the subject of sanctification, and God let me enter into that experience. My friends said: "Now surely you are baptised in the Holy Ghost." Later in my life I came under the ministry of George B. Watson, of the Christian and Missionary Alliance, who taught with more clearness and better distinction between the Baptism of tile Holy Ghost and sanctification, and I entered into a richer life and a better experience. A beautiful anointing of the Spirit was upon my life.

When the ministry of Healing was opened to me, and I ministered for ten years. in the power of God. Hundreds and hundreds of people were healed by the power of God during this ten years, and I could feel the conscious flow of the Holy Spirit through my soul and my hands.

But at the end of that ten years I believe I was the hungriest man for God that ever lived. There was such a hunger for God that as I left my offices in Chicago and walked down the street, my soul would break out, and I would cry, "Oh God!" I have had people stop and look at me in wonder. It was the yearning passion of my soul, asking for God in a greater measure than I then knew. But my friends would say: "Mr Lake, you have a beautiful baptism in the Holy Ghost." Yes, it was nice as far as it went, but it was not answering the cry of my heart. I was growing up into a larger understanding of God and my own souls need. My soul was demanding a greater entrance into God, His love, presence and power.

And then one day an old man strolled into my office, sat down, and in the next half hour he revealed more of the knowledge of God to my soul than I had ever known before. And when he passed out I said: "God bless that old grey head. That man knows more of God than any man I ever met. By the grace of God, if that is what the Baptism of the Holy Ghost with tongues does, I am going to possess it." Oh, the wonder of God that was then revealed to my heart!

I went into fasting and prayer and waiting on God for nine months. And one day the glory of God in a new manifestation and a new incoming came to my life. And when the phenomena had passed, and the glory of it remained in my soul, I found that my life began to manifest in the varied range of the gifts of the Spirit. And I spoke in tongues by the power of God, and God flowed through me with a new force. Healings were of a more powerful order. Oh, God lived in me, God manifested in me, God spoke through me. My spirit was deified, and I had a new comprehension of God's will, new discernment of spirit, new revelation of God in me. For nine months everything that I looked at framed itself into poetic verse. I could not look at the trees without it framing itself into a glory poem of praise. I preached to audiences of thousands night after night and day after day. People came from all over the world to study me. They could not understand. Everything I said was a stream of poetry. It rolled from my soul in that form. My spirit had become a fountain of poetic truth.

Then a new wonder was manifested. My nature became so sensitised that I could lay my hands on any man or woman and tell what organ was diseased, and to what extent, and all about it. I tested it. I went to hospitals where physicians could not diagnose a case, touched a patient and instantly I knew the organ that was diseased, its extent and condition and location. And one day it passed away. A child gets to playing with a toy, and his joy is so wonderful he sometimes forgets to eat.

Oh say, don't you remember when you were first baptised in the Holy Ghost, and you first spoke in tongues, how you bubbled and babbled, it was so wonderful, so amazing? We just wanted to be babies and go on bubbling and exhilarating. And now we are wondering what is the matter. The effervescence seems to have passed away. My! It is a good thing that it did. God is letting your soul down, beloved, into the bedrock. Right down where your mind is not occupied any more with the manifestation of God. God is trying to get your mind occupied with HIMSELF. God has come into you, now He is drawing you into Himself.

Will you speak in tongues when you are baptised in the Holy Ghost? Yes, you will, but you will do an awful lot more than that, bless God. An awful lot more than that! You will speak with the soul of Jesus Christ. You will feel with the heart of the Son of God. Your heart will beat with a heavenly desire to bless the world, because it is the pulse of Jesus that is throbbing in your soul. And I do not believe there will be a bit of inclination in your heart to turn around another child of God and say: "You are not in my class. I am baptised with the Holy Ghost." That is as foreign to the Spirit of the Son of God as night is from day. Beloved, if you are baptised in the Holy Ghost, there will be a tenderness in your soul so deep that you will never crush the aspiration of another by a single suggestion, but your soul will throb and beat and pulse in love, and your heart will be under that one to lift it up to God and push it out as far into the glory as your faith can send it.

I want to talk with the utmost frankness, and say to you, that tongues have been to me the making of my ministry. It is that peculiar communication with God when God reveals to my soul the truth I utter to you day by day in my ministry. But that time of communication with me is mostly in the night. Many a time I climb out of bed, take my pencil and pad and jot down the beautiful things of God, the wonderful things of God, that He talks out in my spirit and reveals to my heart.

Many Christians do not understand the significance of tongues, any more than the other man understands the experience of your soul when you are saved from sin. It has taken place in you. It is in your heart, it is in your mind, it is in your being. The man who tries to make you doubt the reality of your touch with God when He saved you out of your sin is foolish. It is established IN you. The old Methodists could not explain the experience, but they said: "It is better felt that told." They knew it by internal knowledge. So it is in a real baptism of the Holy Ghost. So it is in prophecy. So it is in healing. So it is in tongues. Do not throw away what you have. Go on to perfection.

THE SPIRIT OF MAN HAS A VOICE. Do you get that? The spirit of man has a voice. The action of God in your spirit causes your spirit to speak by its voice. In order to make it intelligent to your understanding it has to be repeated in the language that your brain knows. Why? Because there is a language common to the spirit of man, and it is not English, and it is not German, and it is not French, and it is not Italian, or any other of the languages of earth. It is a language of the spirit of man. And, oh, what a joy it was when that pent-up, bursting, struggling spirit of yours found it's voice and "spake in tongues."

Many a time I have talked to others in the Spirit, by the Spirit, through the medium of tongues, and knew everything that was said to me, but I did not know it with this ear. It was not the sound of their words. It was that undefinable something that made it intelligent. Spirit speaks to spirit, just as mouth speaks to mouth, or as man speaks to man. Your spirit speaks to God. God is Spirit. He answers back. Bless God. And I believe with all my heart that is what Paul had in mind when he talked about the "unknown" tongue. The unknown tongue, that medium of internal revelation of God to you. The common language of the spirit of man, by which God communicates with your spirit.

But if you want to make that medium of internal revelation of God intelligent to other folks, then it must be translated into the language that they know. That is the reason the apostle says: "Let him that speaketh in tongues pray that he may interpret," that the Church may receive edifying. Paul says: "IN THE CHURCH I would rather speak five words with my understanding, that by my voice I might teach others also, than ten thousand words in an unknown tongue." Your revelation from God is given to you in tongues, but you give it forth in the language the people understand.

Beloved, settle it. It is one of the divine mediums and methods of communication between your spirit and God's. And as long as you live, when you talk about TONGUES, speak with reverence, for it is God. When you talk about healing, speak with reverence, for it is God. When you talk about prophecy, remember it is God.

A German woman came to the healing rooms one day and a brother prayed for her. She had been a school teacher, but had to give up her profession because of her eye sight. She came back some weeks late after having been alone for three weeks. She had never been in a religious service in her life where they speak in tongues, and had not knowledge of the Scriptures on that line. She came back to me with a volume of written material that God had given her. For when she had been prayed for to receive healing, the Spirit of God came upon her and she was baptised in the Holy Ghost. And now God had commenced to reveal Himself to her, teach her of His Word, and of His will, until she filled a volume with written material of her conversations with God. She communed with God in tongues, her spirit speaking to God, but when she came to me I received it in English.

The man that sits along side of you can not understand that. He never talked to God. He does not understand anything about getting up in the middle of the night to write down what God has said to him. Well, he needs something else to convince him that there is a God. Tongues are for a sign, NOT to them that believe, but to them that believe not. But prophecy, the outspeaking for God, is for all. Therefore, Paul does not want them to crush a man who is speaking in tongues, but to keep their hands off and stand back. Leave him alone with God. Let him travel away out in His love and power, and come back with messages in his soul.

But he must not monopolise the time of hundreds of people in the Church with a private communication of God to his soul. But when he has completed his interview with God, he gives forth his knowledge as interpretation or prophecy.

There have been so many controversies over the various gifts of the Spirit as they appeared one after another. Twenty-five or thirty years ago when we began in the ministry of Healing, (this was preached in 1921) we had to fight to keep from being submerged by our opposing brethren in Jesus Christ, who thought you were insane because you suggested that the Lord Jesus Christ could still heal. In the State of Michigan I had to go into the courts to keep some of my friends out of the insane asylum because they believed God could heal without taking pills or some other material stuff. (To popularise healing, some have compromised on the use of medicines, but the REAL CHRISTIAN STILL trusts God alone.)

It was because they did not understand the eternal and invisible nature of God. They had no idea God could be ministered through a man's hands and soul, fill a sick man's body, take possession of and make him whole. The world has had to learn this. It is a science far in advance of so-called material or physical science.

Then that marvellous wave of God came over the country from 1900 to 1906, when hundreds of thousands of people were baptised in the Holy Ghost and spoke in tongues. But listen! Old John Alexander Dowie, riding on the wave of that wonderful manifestation of healing power, wanted to build a Church and stamp it with healing only, and his Church practically did that, and died. Other Churches branded theirs with Holiness only, and died. Others with an anointing of the Holy Ghost, called "baptism," and they died in power also. Later on we wanted to build a great structure and stamp it with tongues. After a while the tongues got dry. Somehow the glory and the glow had gone out of them. They became rattly and did not sound right. What was the matter? Nothing wrong with the experience. God had not departed from the life, but was hidden from our view. We were absorbed in phenomena of God, and not in God Himself. Now we must go on. Now beloved, I can see as my spirit discerns the future and reaches out to touch the heart of mankind, and the desire of God, that there is coming from heaven a new manifestation of the Holy Ghost in power, and that new manifestation will be in sweetness, in love, in tenderness, in the power of the Spirit, beyond anything your heart or mine ever saw. The very lightning of God will flash through men's soul. The sons of God will meet the sons of darkness and prevail. Jesus Christ will destroy anti-Christ.

In 1908, I preached at Pretoria, South Africa, when one night God came over my life in such power, in such streams of liquid glory and powers that it flowed consciously off my hands like streams of electricity, I would point my finger at a man, and that stream would strike him. When a man interrupted the meeting, I would point my finger at him and say: "Sit down!" He fell as if struck, and lay for three hours. When he became normal they asked him what happened, and he said, "Something struck me that went straight through me, I thought I was shot."

At two o'clock in the morning I ministered to sixty-five sick who were present. And the streams of God that were pouring through my hands, were so powerful the people would fall as though they were hit. I was troubled because they fell with such violence. And the Spirit said: "You do not need to put your hands on them. Keep your hands a distance away." And when I held my hands a foot from their heads they would crumple and fall in a heap on the floor. They were healed, almost every one.

That was the outward manifestation. That was what the people saw. But beloved, something transpired in my heart that made my soul like the soul of Jesus Christ. Oh, there was such a tenderness, a new-born tenderness of God, that was so wonderful that my heart reached out and cried and wept over men in sin. I could gather them in my arms and love them, and Jesus Christ flowed out of me and delivered them. Drunkards were saved and healed as they stood transfixed looking at me.

During that period men would walk down the aisle, and when they came within ten feet of me, I have seen them fall prostrate, one on top of the other. A preacher who had sinned, as he looked at me fell prostrate, was saved, baptised in the Holy Ghost, and stirred the nation with his message of love.

In eighteen months God raised up one hundred white Churches in the land. That hundred Churches was born in my tabernacle at Johannesburg. The multitude of those who composed that hundred Churches were healed or baptised in the Holy Ghost under my own eyes, as I preached or prayed.

I continued in the ministry of healing until I saw hundreds of thousands healed. At last I became tired. I went on healing people day after day, as though I were a machine. And all the time my heart kept asking: "Oh God, let me know yourself better. I want you, my heart wants YOU, God." Seeing men saved and healed and baptised in the Holy Most did not satisfy my growing soul. It was crying for a greater consciousness of God, the within-ness of me was yearning for Christ's own life and love. After a while my soul reached the place where I said: "If I can not get God into my soul to satisfy the soul of me, all the rest of this is empty." I had lost interest in it, but if I put my hands on the sick they continued to be healed by the power of God.

I will never forget Spokane, Wash, for during the first six months I was there, God satisfied the cry of my heart, and God came in and my mind opened and my spirit understood afresh, and I was able to tell of God and talk out the heart of me like I never had been able to before. God reached a new depth in my spirit, and revealed new possibilities in God. So beloved, you pray through. Pray through for this Church, pray through for this work. Oh! God will come! God will come with more tongues than you have ever heard. God will come with more power than your eyes ever beheld. God will come with waves of heavenly love and sweetness, and blessed be God, your heart will be satisfied in Him.

Will a man speak in tongues when he is baptised in the Holy Ghost? Yes, he will, and he will heal the sick when he is baptised, and he will glorify God out of the spirit of him, with praises more delightful and heavenly than you ever heard. And he will have a majestic bearing. He will look like the Lord Jesus Christ, and he will be like Him. Blessed be God.

The greatest manifestation of the Holy Ghost baptised life ever given to the world was not in the preaching of the apostles, it was not in the wonderful manifestations of God that took place at their hands. It was in the UNSELFISHNESS manifested by the Church. Think of it! Three thousand Holy Ghost baptised Christians in Jerusalem from the Day of Pentecost onward, who loved their neighbour's children as much as their own, who were so anxious for fear their brethren did not have enough to eat, that they sold their estates, and brought the money and laid it at the apostles feet, and said: "Distribute it. Carry the glow and the fire and the wonder of this divine salvation to the whole world." That showed what God had wrought in their hearts. Oh, I wish we could arrive at that place, where this Church was baptised in that degree of unselfishness.

That would be a greater manifestation than Healing, greater than conversion, greater than baptism in the Holy Ghost, greater than tongues. It would be a manifestation of the LOVE of 1 Corinthians 13, that so many preach about, and do not possess. When a man sells his all for God, and distributes it for the Kingdom's good, it will speak louder of love than the evangelists who harp about love, and oppose tongues and the other gifts of the Spirit.

That was the same Holy Ghost that came upon them and caused them to speak in tongues. No more grabbing for themselves. No more bantering for the biggest possible salary, no more juggling to put themselves and their friends in the most influential positions. All the old characteristics were gone. They were truly saved. Why, their heart was like the heart of Jesus, their soul was like the soul of God, they loved as God loved, they loved the world, they loved sinners so that they gave their all to save them.

Do you want Him? You can have Him. Oh! He will come and fill your soul. Oh, the Holy Ghost will take possession of your life. He will reveal the wonder of heaven and the glory of God, and the richness and purity of His holiness, and make you sweet and God-like forever.

Prayer in Tongues and Interpretation: Thou art not far away, Oh God, Our souls tonight are enveloped in the Eternal God. We feel thee round about us. We feel thy precious loving arm, and the beating of thy heart, and the pulsing of thy heavenly soul, and we are asking thee, my God, that the truth of the Eternal shall be breathed into us forever until all our nature is submerged in God, buried up in God, infilled with God, revealing God.

Healing Consciousness

I am going into the history of the Old Testament. It is surprising how ignorant people are of the Word of God.

God made a covenant of healing with the children of Israel after they crossed the Red Sea, and they lived under that covenant four hundred and fifty years, unbroken, and there never was an Israelite for four hundred and fifty years, so far as the record goes, except Asa, who ever took one dose of medicine. One backslider went back on God and called the physicians like the heathen did, but the people trusted God, and God alone for four hundred and fifty years, or until Solomon got into polygamy. He went down into Egypt and married Egyptian wives, who brought their heathen physicians with them. Eventually the whole nation had fallen from grace, and gone back again and were taking pills and medicine and dope, just like some Pentecostal heathens do.

Do you want to get on God's territory? Cut it out. It belongs to the devil and the heathen, and the great big unbelieving world.

When you can see those holy flashes of heavenly flame, once in a while, in a person's life, as we observe in our Sister Etter, when someone is healed, it is because her consciousness and Christ's are one. She is fused onto God. I saw a dying, strangling, woman healed in thirty seconds, as Mrs. Etter cast out the demon. The flame of God, the fire of His Spirit, ten seconds of connection with the Almighty Christ at the throne of God, that is the secret.

Oh, I would like to get you in touch with the Son of God for five minutes. I would like to see the streams of God's lightning come down for ten minutes! I wonder what would take place.

A few months ago I was absent from the city of Spokane, and when I returned we discovered Mrs. Lake was not at home. It was just time to leave for my afternoon service. Just then, someone came in and said, "Your secretary, Mrs. Graham, is in the throes of death, and your wife is with her." So I hurried down to the place. When I got there the wife of one of my ministers met me at the door and said, "You are too late, she has gone." And as I stepped in I met the minister coming out of the room. He said, "She has not breathed for a long time." But as I looked down at that woman, and thought of how God Almighty, three years before, had raised her out of death, after her womb and ovaries and tubes had been removed in operations, and God Almighty had given them back to her, after which she had married and conceived, my heart flamed. I took that woman up off that pillow, and called on God for the lightnings of heaven to blast the power of death and deliver her, and I commanded her to come back and stay, and she came back, after not breathing for twenty-three minutes.

We have not yet learned to keep in touch with the power of God. Once in a while our soul rises, and we see the flame of God accomplish this wonder, but beloved, Jesus Christ lived in the presence of God every hour of the day and night. Never a word proceeded from the mouth of Jesus Christ, but that which was God's Word. "The words that I speak unto you, they are spirit, and they are life."

When you and I are lost in the Son of God, and the fires of Jesus burn in our hearts, like they did in Him, our words will be the words of life and of spirit, and there will be no death in them. But, beloved, we are on the way.

I have read church history because my heart was searching for the truth of God. I have witnessed with my own eyes the most amazing manifestations of psychological power. I knew an East Indian Yogi who volunteered to be buried for three days, and he came up out of that grave well and whole. I saw them put a man in a cataleptic state, and place a stone fifteen inches square on his body, put his feet on one chair and his head on another, and strike that stone with a twenty five pound sledge seven times, until it broke in two. I watched these things, and I said, "These are only on the psychological plane. Beyond that is the Spirit plane and the amazing wonder of the Holy Spirit of God, and if God got hold of my spirit for ten minutes, He could do something ten thousand times greater than that."

Jesus was the triumphant One. Did you ever stop to think of Jesus at the Throne of God? I like to think of the twentieth century Christ. Not the Jesus that lived in the world two thousand years ago. Not the humiliated Jesus. Not Jesus dying on the cross for my sins, but the glorified, exalted Son of God at the throne of God, who stands declaring, "I am He that liveth, and was dead; and, behold, I am alive forever more; and have the keys of hell and of death." Blessed be God!

That is the Christ that breathes His power into your soul and mine, and that is the consciousness that is breathed from heaven in the Holy Ghost when it comes to your heart. Amen.

God purposed that the Christian Church should be the embodiment of the living, blessed Son of God! Christ is living not in one temple, Jesus, but in multitudes of temples, the bodies of those yielded to God in holy consecration. God's real church, not in name only, but in power. Many members, one in Spirit, one divine structure of divine faith and substance. Man transformed, transfigured, and transmuted into the nature, the glory and the substance of God.

The Offense of the Cross

"And I, brethren, if I yet preach circumcision, why do I yet suffer persecution? Then is the offense of the cross ceased." Galatians 5:11.

"Offense," the stumbling block of the cross. This word calls for careful consideration. After writing to the Galatians, Paul calls attention to the "offense of the cross." He suggests that those who read his letter would understand what he was saying. The "offense of the cross" was expected. If it was absent there was something wrong.

We sing:

"In the cross of Christ I glory,

Towering over the wrecks of time,

All the light of sacred story,

Gathers round that head sublime."

We have almost with astonishment, and even with a tendency toward reluctance, come to a phrase like this, "The stumbling block of the cross," or "the offense of the cross." And in meditation I ask you to consider with me the word, the arresting challenge of that word "offense" or "stumbling block." It is very interesting to see how the great translators have attempted to get over the import of the word.

Wycliff's translation employed the word that is now obsolete in our language. He rendered it the "sclaunger" of the cross. That was two words merged. We have divided them into "slander" and "scandal." Cranmer translated it "slaumger." The Geneva Council translated it "slander." The Roman Catholic translated it "scandal." The King James translates it "offense." The English and American Revised Standard versions put it "stumbling block." They were all trying to interpret the word. I am daring to submit for your consideration the Revised Version, as exactly expressing the word: "scandalon - stumbling block".

Listen: Something in the way, in the way of progress. Suddenly you trip and stumble and fall. That is the word. I am not quarrelling with the word "offense."

What does this mean, "the stumbling block of the cross?" It was something that men stumble over intellectually; stumble over emotionally. It is a stigma attached to the cross.

The cross was well known throughout the Roman world. The Romans had taken it over from the Venicians for capital punishment. But even in that world it never produced anything in the sense of scandal or upheaval. It was the symbol of justice. It was the symbol of punishment for breaking the law. It was the poetic result of wrong doing, against righteousness and justice. Men were not scandalised by the cross.

Then what is Paul talking about? It is the cross of Christ. Yes, but why should it be a scandal? It was the cross of Christ as presented to the world. What was being presented to the world that would make it a scandal? What were those early ministers and preachers declaring about the cross of the Nazarene?

What were they declaring? They were declaring that the cross was the very centre of religion, the secret of government, and the inspiration of culture. That was what characterised the scandal. Jews from Jerusalem were moving out over all the world. Wherever they went they were telling that the cross of the Nazarene is the centre of religion. It is the secret of authority and government. It is the inspiration of true culture to human life. Men laughed. They stumbled over it. Men were against it emotionally, morally and intellectually.

We can see that there is the same sense in the minds of men today. The cross is still spelling to men a scandal. Men are still intellectually tripped by it. They still revolt against it. The cross is still bearing a stigma.

You and I are called to represent that cross in word and in life, and if we fail to do it, we are failing in loyalty to our Lord and Master.

Will you come patiently with me to the historic scene? Yes, I would remind you of the well known fact that while Pilate had the superscription written over Jesus, "This is Jesus the King of the Jews" that the wording was not the significant thing. The significant thing was that he had put it in Hebrew, Latin and Greek. The purpose was that no stranger near the cross should fail to read it. The three languages of the world powers were there.

Now look at the cross. First look at it from the soul of the Jew. Then look at it from the mind of the Roman. Lastly look at it from the person of a Greek.

Now supposing you could put yourself back of the scene, and could see it as a Jew, and was aware of the fact that its witnesses were telling that is was the secret of religion. The Jew looking as that cross, What did he see? Disgrace! To the Jew the cross was the place of moral disgrace. "Cursed is every one that hangeth on a tree." Criminals; cursed.

Then for the Jew to be told that that cross was the CENTRE of religious life, the secret, and the only secret of righteousness for an individual and the world, don't you see intellectually how he stumbled over it; that the cross of the crucified male-factor is the secret of righteousness? PREPOSTEROUS!

Then imagine you are a Roman and look at the cross from that standpoint. In the time our Lord was born into this world and exercised His ministry, and went to that cross, was the only time in human history where a great power had mastered the known world. It had been attempted and never succeeded. It was the period known as PAX ROMANA, Roman peace. While I agree that "war is hell," I declare that that period was worse. Man or woman, boy or girl, did not own his or her own soul under the rule of Rome. Her procouncils were everywhere; her soldier's were everywhere. An example is shown by Pilate, the Roman governor; he had mingled the blood of the Galileans with the Jewish sacrifices.

A Roman comes and looks at the crucified Nazarene, and the Roman is told that that is the throne of an imperial power and imperial empire. That that is the King; that that is the One and the only One who ever will subdue humanity so that His rule will be universal. I can hear the laughter of Rome at the very suggestion. The Roman suggestion of the cross is that the man there is not only in disgrace, but that the man is DEFEATED, not a question of morality to them. They had their own laws and jurisprudence, but were not bothered with morality.

Notice this, that at that moment on the throne in Rome was a man that was known notoriously. The Roman believed that power was all that was necessary. And that Galilean, whether He had done anything that was wrong or not, being on the cross, could He be a King? If the Jew says, "preposterous," the Roman says, "ridiculous."

Why do the Romans object? Naturally we see why. A defeated man be king? They had a false philosophy of government. The philosophy of force. If you have plundered a man so that he dare not do what he wants to do, you have conquered. Rome did not care if my inner heart was in revolt. If they bludgeoned me and I had to do what they said, "That is victory." Yes the whole scheme of government is that; we have not escaped it yet. We still think we can compel a man to be moral, you can restrain him but that doesn't change his heart.

There He was on the cross. What do I see there? The weakness of God! Paul says it is stronger than men. You look at the cross and there is one supreme thing manifested. It is the exhaustion of human power. Man attempting to govern has done all he can. He can do no more. He has taken the criminal and put Him on a cross. He has executed Him. All the armies of Rome can do no more. In a few moments that malefactor will have left the world. Is that all? They have done their utmost; they are powerless.

Jesus said, "Fear not him that killeth the body, and after that," that laughter of the man that thinks he is done for when he kills the body. He faces a rude awakening.

Now for a moment, do not be a Jew or a Roman but a Greek. I am not thinking of the chattering Greek merchant. I am thinking of some chance traveller from Athens. He looked at that cross. If he had looked once, he would never have looked again. A mutilated man was disgusting to the Greek. Greek idealism was looking for the perfection of personality, and there was no room for mutilation in their thought.

It is not a question whether or not this is the result of morality. A broken and mutilated man, the Greek with his esthetic culture turned from it. He would not have looked twice.

Then there passes through the Greek cities, one after another, men who proclaim that the broken, mutilated man on Judea's cross is the inspiration of culture, and of all that is refined and beautiful in life. The Greek intellect stumbled over it. Emotionally the Greek revolted against it. If the Jew said, "preposterous," and the Roman, "ridiculous", the Greek said "absurd." Wherever the Gospel was preached the scandal of the cross became known, the offense of the cross was created.

Why were these things so? What is the real meaning in the Jews' objection of the cross, that it is the centre of religion? And to the Romans when they were told it was the secret of government? And to the Greeks when they were told it was the inspiration of culture?

Take the Jew. Why was the Jew scandalised by the cross? Because he had an inadequate sense of sin and was ignorant of the God of his fathers. In the presence of that cross when told it was the centre of religion he objected because he only saw there tho moral delinquency. It was not the curse of the King, but the man who put Him there. "He was made sin." That is the sinner's place, and they did not see it; and men still do not see that it is the only place for sin and that God can not deliver a man except his sin is put there. The route of religion is the cursing and cancelling of sin. Unless sin is cursed and cancelled there is no approach to God.

A man tells me he is disgusted at the cross and that it is the religion of the shambles; that man has never had an adequate sense of sin. A man tells me that he does not go to Church; he goes to the country to worship. Worship God through nature while sin is in his heart? Nonsense. Earth is crammed with God, and every bush ablaze with Him, but only he who sees takes off his shoes. You can not worship God while there is still sin in your soul. There on that bitter cross the God of eternity and the God of Moses was dealing with sin so it would be blighted, blasted, cursed, cancelled, and the way open. And when He cried, "It is finished!" the veil of the temple was rent in twain, and there was a way to the heart of God opened for humanity. They did not see it. Men were ignorant of God. God is holy, yet so full of infinite love that He would bow and bend and stoop, and when sin must be cursed, gathering the curse into His own being and bearing our sins in His own being on the tree, brought deliverance. The cross in religion, to those who are blind and ignorant of God, is still made a scandal and a stumbling block.

Why do the Romans object? A defeated man, dying on a cross, a King! Whoever had heard of such a thing. To the Romans, the Man on the cross had no power as He would soon die and it would be all over. I repeat what Jesus said, "Fear not them that kill the body, but are not able to kill the soul … ," Matthew 10:28. After that, then what? His resurrection from the dead. He is God's King. He is going to rule over this world. The secret of His rule is love. His subjects will serve Him because they love Him. He will not bludgeon a man into submission and call it victory while that man in his heart is still in rebellion. Men are afraid of God because of wrong concepts. Let a man meet God in Jesus and he will love God.

To the man with the ideal of bludgeoning power we point to the power of the resurrection. Don't look at the cross and stop there. Look beyond and see the mighty Christ at the right hand of the Father. Listen to the greatest declaration and cry of victory in the history of the world. "... I am the first and the last: I am he that liveth, and was dead; and, behold, I am alive forevermore, Amen, and have the keys of hell and of death," (Revelation 1:17,18).

Why did the Greek revolt at the sight of a mutilated man? The soul of Greek idealism was expressed in the observance of the Olympic Games. It was the perfect person, the perfect personality, the perfect body with its smooth flowing muscles. The sculpture of ancient Greece displayed this high idealism. Their statues are marvels of perfection that express a high ideal of physical beauty. It is no wonder the Greek would not take a second look at the mutilated Man on the cross.

To the man who is looking for physical perfection we would say, "Look at the cross and what it stands for, then look beyond. What will he see? What will the Greek see? He will see one "clothed with a garment down to the foot, and girt about the paps with a golden girdle. His head and his hairs were white like wool, as white as snow; and his eyes were as the flame of fire; and his feet like unto fine brass, as if they burned in a furnace," (Revelation 1:13-15). His transfiguration was a foretaste of His beauty. "His face did shine as the sun, and his raiment was white as the light," (Matthew 17:2). Our body shall be like His glorious body (Philippians 3:21).

To the Jew, to the Greek, to the Roman and their counterparts today we point you to the cross and point out what it means and then take you beyond into the glories that are there and are yet to come to us.

"But we preach Christ crucified, unto the Jews a stumbling block, and unto the Greeks foolishness; but unto them which are called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God, and the wisdom of God," (1 Corinthians 1:23-24).

Christ, the power of God, can change your life. He can make a new creature out of you. Old things will pass away and all things will become new (2 Corinthians 5:17). Old things are passed away. That is the power of the cross. All things are become new. That is the power of being raised in newness of life in Him (Romans 6:4).

There is the power of His resurrection yet ahead for the physical body (Philippians 3:21). We are to be presented perfect in Christ Jesus, perfect in spirit, perfect in soul, and perfect in body (Colossians 1:28 and 2 Thessalonians 5:23).

The Spirit of God

I want to read to you one of the best incidents in the Word of God. It is the story of Elijah upon Mount Carmel. (1 Kings 18:17-40)

In every land, among every people, throughout all history, there have been occasions when a demonstration of the power of God was just as necessary to the world as it was in the days Elijah. It is necessary now.

The people had turned away from God. They had forgotten that there was a God in Israel. They were trusting in other gods, just as the people are today. If I were to call you heathen, I suppose most people would be offended; but I want to say that there is no people with more gods than the average American. Men are bowing down to the god of medicine. Men are bowing down to the god of popularity. Men are bowing down to this god and that god. Men are as afraid of the opinion of their neighbours as any heathen ever was in any time in the world. There is practically no Christian, let alone an unchristian, who has the real stamina to stand forth and declare his absolute convictions concerning Jesus Christ, the Son of God. Much less have men the necessary stamina to declare their convictions as to Jesus Christ, the Saviour of mankind. That is the reason that the modern Church has lost her touch with God and has gone into a sleep unto death, a sleep that can only end in spiritual death and the disintegration of the Church as she stands. The only power that will revive the Church in this land and the world is that which she will receive when she throws her heart open to God as the people of Israel did and says, "Lord God, we have sinned." The sin she needs to repent of is not the committing a lot of little acts which men call sin and that are the out growth of what is in the heart, but the thing that mankind needs to repent of is this: that they have denied the power of God. They have denied to mankind that the Christ of Israel is the Son of God and that He is the Almighty Saviour. God's call to the Christian Churches today is to come forth from their hiding place, just as Elijah came forth, and meet the king. Declare the ground on which you meet the enemies of God, and meet them in the name of Jesus Christ.

The Christian Church is absolutely, solely and entirely to blame for the whole existence of metaphysical associations which are covering the earth like a plague of lice. The Church is to blame for if the Church of Jesus Christ, for the last 50 or 100 years, had declared to mankind in the power of the Spirit the Christ of Nazareth, as He is, there never would have come into existence the whole tribe of metaphysical societies.

The world today is being taken by the metaphysical associations to such an extent that they are bowing before the metaphysical laws and calling them God. That is human nature and not God. The time has come when the Christian Church has got to give a new demonstration to the world. If metaphysicians, through the operation of natural laws, can produce a certain character and degree of healing, then it is up to the Church of Jesus Christ and the minister of the Son of God to demonstrate that there is a power in the blood of Jesus Christ to save men and heal men unto the UTTERMOST, not half healed or half the people healed; but I pray and believe that God's time has come for God's challenge to mankind and the challenge of the Christian Church to the world is to come on, and if it is God, let the FIRE FALL.

There was no bluffing with the old Israelite prophets. When the people came, they laid their sacrifices on the altar, and they did not put artificial fire under it. But instead, the soul went down before God. He lifted his heart to heaven, and when the fire came down and consumed the sacrifice, that was the evidence that the sacrifice was accepted.

The time has come when God wants tho fire to fall; and if you, my beloved brother and sister, will pay God's price and make Christ's consecration of yourself to God, we will see God's fire fall. And it will not be destructive either, except that sin and selfishness and sickness will wither under that fire, while purity and life and holiness and character will stand forth purified and refined by the glory and the power of the God-fire that comes from heaven. God's fire is creative of righteousness as well as destructive of sin.

Some years ago, when I opened my work in South Africa and the Lord had moved marvellously for about six months, a movement was put on foot to congregate a crowd of Indian Yogi, (The Indian Yogi are a society of people who utterly give themselves up to a demonstration of metaphysical things), Brahman priests, Buddhist priests, Confucian priests, and all kinds of priests and hypnotists. After a time they said, "We would like to have a demonstration." And I said, "Yes, I would like to have a demonstration also. Come on with your Yogi and your Buddhas and your Confucians and hypnotists. Let them show their God. Let them heal people if they can. Let it be in the public, and let it be done on the platform of my tabernacle or any other place large enough to accommodate the public. Then when you have finished, we will call on the Christian's God and see what He will do."

Well, they came to the tabernacle to make the demonstration. One man, Professor Henerson, a professional hypnotist, was put forward. He said he was there to demonstrate what he could do through hypnotism. He brought with him as his subject a woman from Germiston who had a locked hip, probably from rheumatics or hip disease. After he had tried and tried privately for months and publicly before the people, then I said, "Stand off." Calling one of the brethren to pray with me, I said, "In the name of the Lord Jesus Christ I command this hip to become unlocked." Instantly she was healed and walked. I want to tell you more of what God did. That was as far as my faith reached, but God met me at that point. As I stood looking at her, I said to myself, "That is the way Jesus did it when He was on the earth, and that is the way Jesus does it yet." It was Jesus who did it.

Well, as I stood looking at her, suddenly something came upon my soul from heaven. It was the anointing of the Spirit of God. I understood then what the blessed old Book talked about when it spoke of the Spirit of the Lord coming upon Elijah, and the Spirit of the Lord coming upon Samson, and so on. Samson, under the power of the Spirit, took the Gates of Gaza and carried them off. He took the jawbone of an ass and killed a thousand men with it. These were the things by which God endeavoured to teach the world what the Spirit of the Lord is. Well, as I stood there, the Spirit fell upon me, not like the gentle dew of heaven but in power until my spirit towered up in such strength I did not know how to control it. In my heart I cried out, "My God, what does it mean?" Then all at once I discovered the Spirit going out in operation to the spirit of that hypnotist. I said, "Are you the man who has been hypnotising this woman for two years and grafting her hard-earned money? In the Name of Jesus Christ you will never hypnotise anyone else." Grasping him by the coat front, I struck him on the shoulder with my other hand, saying, ''In the Name of the Son of God come out of him;" and it came out. That hypnotic demon was gone out of him. He never hypnotised again but earned an honest living.

God is not the God of the dead. He is the God of the living. And the desire in my soul is that in this city God Almighty may raise up an altar unto the living God, not unto a dead God. Mankind needs an altar to the LIVING God, to the God that hears prayer, to the God that answers prayer, and the God that answers by fire. The time has come when God's challenge has gone forth. God is saying, "'If there is a Christian, let him pray. If there is a God, let Him answer." God will meet the soul every time you turn to Him and meet Him face to face.

In emphasising this, the Lord Jesus Christ says to the world, "When ye pray, believe that ye receive, and ye shall have." That is what is the matter. Your blank check is not worth ten cents in your hands. Why? Because you do not believe God. Fill in your check, believe God and it will come to pass.

The call of Elijah is the call of the present hour. If the Christ is the Christ, get your answer from Him. If Jesus is the Son of God with power on the earth to forgive sins, then as Jesus put it, "Rise up and walk, that ye may know that the Son of Man hath power on earth to forgive sins."

Jesus Christ was reasonable enough to meet man's reasonings and inquiries. And the minister of God who is afraid to walk out and believe his God and trust his God for results is no Christian at all.

What does Christianity mean to the world? Is it a hope for the glory land away off in the future? Is that Christianity? Is it a hope that you are not going to fry in hell all the days of your life? No! Christianity is the demonstration of the righteousness of God to the world.

So, Brethren, God has given us something to do. He has given us a demonstration to make. If we do not make it, then we have no more right to the claims that we make of being sons of God than the other people. If God be God, serve Him; if Baal, then serve him.

Behold, I Give You Power

Matthew 8:1-2

"When He was come down from the mountain, great multitudes followed Him, and behold, there came a leper and worshipped Him, saying, Lord, if thou wilt, thou canst make me clean."

That man knew that Jesus had the power to heal him, but he did not know it was God's will, and that Jesus had committed Himself to the healing of mankind. If he had known he would have said, "Lord, heal me."

It is always God's will to heal. Our faith may fail. My faith failed to the extent that unless someone else had gone under my life and prayed for me, I would have died. But God was just as willing to heal me as He could be. It was my faith that broke down. God is willing, just as willing to heal as He is to save. HEALING IS A PART OF SALVATION. It is not separate from salvation. Healing was purchased by the blood of Jesus. This Book always connects salvation and healing.

David said: "Bless the Lord, O my soul, and forget not all His benefits: Who forgiveth all thine iniquities; Who healeth all thy diseases." (Psalm 103:2-3)

There never has been a man in the world who was converted, and was sick at the same time, who might not have been healed if he had believed God for it. But he was not instructed in faith to believe God for healing.

Suppose two men came to the altar. One is sick and lame; the other is a sinner. Suppose they knelt at the altar together. The sinner says, "I want to find the Lord." Everyone in the house will immediately lend the love of their heart and the faith of their soul to help him touch God. But the lame fellow says, "I have a lame leg" or "my spine is injured. I want healing." Instead of everybody lending their love and faith in the same way to that man, everybody puts up a question mark.

That comes because of the fact we are instructed on the Word of God concerning the salvation of the soul, but our education concerning sickness and His desire and willingness to heal had been neglected. We have gone to the eighth or the tenth grade or the university on the subject of salvation, but on the subject of healing we are in the A,B,C class.

"Jesus put forth His hand, and touched him, saying, I will: be thou clean." (Matthew 8:3) Did He ever say anything in the world but "I will", or did He ever say, "I cannot heal you because it is not the will of God", or "I cannot heal you because you are being purified by this sickness", or "I cannot heal you because you are glorifying God in this sickness?" There is no such instance in the Book.

On the other hand we are told "He healed ALL that came to Him." Never a soul ever applied to God for salvation or healing that Jesus did not save and heal! Did you ever think what calamity it might have been if a man had come to Jesus once and said, "Lord, save me", and the Lord had said, "No, I cannot save you". Every man forevermore would have a question mark as to whether or not God would save him. There would not be a universal confidence as there is today.

Suppose Jesus had ever said to a sick man, "No, I cannot heal you". You would have the same doubt about healing. The world would have settled back and said, "Well, it may be God's will to heal that man or that woman, but I do not know whether or not it is His will to heal me."

Jesus Christ did not leave us in doubt about God's will, but when the Church lost her faith in God, she began to teach the people that maybe it was not God's will to heal them. So the Church introduced the Phrase, "If it be Thy will" concerning healing. But Jesus "healed all that came to Him" (Matthew 4:23; Luke 9:6; Luke 9:11).

Notice what it says in Isaiah 35, "He will come and SAVE you. THEN THE EYES OF THE BLIND SHALL BE OPENED, AND THE EARS OF THE DEAF SHALL BE UNSTOPPED. Then shall the LAME MAN LEAP AS AN HART, and the TONGUE OF THE DUMB SHALL SING." Salvation and healing connected!

"That it might be fulfilled which was spoken by Isaiah the prophet, saying, Himself took our infirmities and BARE OUR SICKNESSES." (Matthew 8:17) And lest we might be unmindful of that great fact that he "bare our sicknesses and carried our sorrows", Peter emphasises it by saying, "Who his own self bare our sins in His own body on the tree, that we being dead to sins, should live unto righteousness: by whose stripes ye were healed" (1 Peter 2:24). Not "by whose stripes ye are healed", but "by whose stripes ye were healed." The only thing that is necessary is to BELIEVE GOD. God's mind never needs to act for a man's SALVATION. He gave the Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ to die for you. God cannot go any farther in expressing His will in His desire to save man. The only thing that is necessary is to believe God. There is salvation by blood. There is salvation by power that actually comes of God into a man's life. The blood provided the power. Without the blood there would have been no power. Without the sacrifice there would have never been any glory. Salvation by blood, salvation by power.

The Church in general is very clear in her faith on the subject of salvation through the sacrifice of the Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ. The Christian world in general, regardless of their personal state of salvation, has a general faith and belief of the Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ for the salvation of the world. But they are ever in doubt and very inexperienced on the power of God.

"When He was come down from the mountain, great multitudes followed Him. And, behold, there came a leper and worshipped Him, saying, Lord, if thou wilt, thou canst make me clean. And Jesus put forth His hand, and touched him, saying, I will: be thou clean. And immediately his leprosy was cleansed. And Jesus saith unto him, See thou tell no man; but go thy way, shew thyself to the priest, and offer the gift that Moses commanded, for a testimony unto them." (Matthew 8:1-4)

Did you ever stop to think that they have no medical remedy for the real things that kill folks? Typhoid fever: Fill the patient with a tankful of medicine and he will go right on for twenty-one days.

In 1913, I was in Chicago in a big meeting when I received a telegram from the hospital in Detroit, saying, "Your son, Otto, is sick with typhoid fever. If you want to see him, come." I rushed for a train, and when I arrived I found him in a ward. I told the man in charge I would like a private room for him so I could get a chance to pray for him. Well, God smote that thing in five minutes. I stayed with him for a couple of days until he was up and walking around. He went along for four or five weeks, and one day, to my surprise, I got another telegram telling me he had a relapse of typhoid. So I went back again. This time there was no sunburst of God like the first time. Everything was as cold as steel, and my, I was so conscious of the power of the devil. I could not pray audibly, but I sat down by his bed and shut my teeth, and I said in my soul, "Now, Mr Devil, go to it. You kill him if you can." And I sat there five days and nights. He did not get healing the second time instantly. It was healing by process because of the fact my soul took hold on God. I sat with my teeth shut, and I never left his bedside until it was done.

You may be healed like a sunburst of God today, and tomorrow, the next week or the next month when you want healing you may have to take it on the slow process. The action of God is not always the same because the conditions are not always the same.

In the life of Jesus people were instantly healed. I believe Jesus has such a supreme measure of the Spirit that when He put His hands on a man he was filled and submerged in the Holy Ghost, and the diseases withered-out and vanished.

But, beloved, you and I use the measure of the Spirit that we possess. And if we haven't got as much of God as Jesus had then you pray for a man today, and you get a certain measure of healing, but he is not entirely well. The only thing to do is to pray for him tomorrow, and let him get some more, and keep on until he is well.

That is where people blunder. They will pray for a day or two, and then they quit. You pray and keep on day by day and minister to your sick until they are well. One of the things that has discredited healing is that evangelists will hold meetings, and hundreds of sick will come and be prayed for. In a great meeting like that you get a chance to pray once and do not see them again. You pray for ten people, and as a a rule you will find that one or two or three are absolutely healed, but the others are only half healed, or quarter healed or have only a little touch of healing. It is just the same with salvation. You bring ten to the altar. One is saved and is clear in his soul. Another may come for a week, and another for a month before he is clear in his soul. The difference is not with God. The difference is inside the man. His consciousness has not opened up to God.

Every law of the Spirit that applies to salvation applies to healing likewise.

"And when Jesus was entered into Capernaum, there came unto Him a centurion, beseeching Him, and saying, Lord, my servant lieth at home sick of the palsy, grievously tormented. And Jesus saith unto him, I will come and heal him. The centurion answered and said, Lord, I am not worthy that thou shouldst come under my roof: but speak the word only, and my servant shall be healed" (Matthew 8:5-8). Here is healing at a distance. That centurion understood divine authority, and the same divine authority is vested in the Christian, for Jesus is the pattern Christian.

"For I am a man under authority, having soldiers under me: and I say to this man, Go, and he goeth; and to another, Come, and he cometh and to my servant, Do this, and he doeth it." (Matthew 8:9)

The same divine authority that was vested in Jesus is vested BY JESUS in every Christian soul. Jesus made provision for the Church of Jesus Christ to go on forever and do the same as He did, and to keep on doing them forever. That is what is the matter with the Church. The Church has lost faith in that truth. The result, they went on believing He could save them from sin, but the other great range of Christian life was left to the doctors and the devil or anything else. And the Church will never be a real Church, in the real power of the living God again, until she comes back again to the original standard where Jesus was.

Jesus said, "Behold, I give you authority." What authority? "Over unclean spirits to cast them out, and to heal all manner of sickness and all manner of disease" (Matthew 10:1). Jesus has vested that authority in you. You say, "Well, Lord, we understand the authority that is in your Word, but we haven't the power." But Jesus said, "Ye shall receive power, after that the Holy Ghost is come upon you" (Acts 1:8).

Now the Holy Ghost is come upon every Christian in a measure. It is a question of degree. There are degrees of the measure of the Spirit of God in men's lives. The BAPTISM OF THE HOLY SPIRIT is a greater measure of the Spirit of God, but every man has a degree of the Holy Spirit in his life. You have. It is the Spirit in your life that gives you faith in God, that makes you a blessing to other people. It is the Holy Spirit that is out-breathed in your soul that touches another soul and moves them for God. Begin right where you are and let God take you along the Christian life as far as you like.

"When Jesus heard it, He marvelled and said to them that followed Verily, I say unto you, I have not found so great faith, no, not in Israel." (Matthew 8:10)

Jesus always commended faith when He met it. Jesus did not always meet faith. All the people who came to Jesus did not possess that order of faith. They had faith that IF THEY GOT TO JESUS they would be healed. But here is a man who says, "Speak the word only, and my servant shall be healed."

Then you remember the case of the man at the Pool of Bethesda. He did not even ask to be healed. As he lay there Jesus walked up to him and said, "Wilt thou be made whole?" The poor fellow went on to say that when the water was troubled he had no one to put him in, but while waiting another stepped in ahead of him, But Jesus said unto him, "Arise, take up thy bed and walk." He was made whole. Afterward Jesus met him and said, "Behold thou art made whole: sin no more, lest a worse thing come unto thee." (John 5:14).

Most of sickness is the result of sin. That is the answer to the individual who sins. For thousands of years men have been sinning, and in consequence of their sin, they are diseased in their bodies. This will give you an idea. scientists tell us there are tubercular germs in 90% of the population. The only difference is that when people are in a healthy state, the germs do not get a chance to manifest themselves. I am trying to show the intimacy between sin and sickness. Not necessarily the sin of the individual. It may never be the sin of the individual.

In the records of the Lake and Graham family away back, tuberculosis was never known to them, until it appeared in my sister. My sister accompanied me to Africa and she became so ill that when I got to Cape Town we had to wait until her strength returned. God healed her.

Regarding people being healed at a distance, we receive telegrams from all over the world. Distance is no barrier to God. The United States has just finished the building of the greatest wireless station in the world. They send messages that register almost instantly, ten thousand miles away. Well, all right, when your HEART strikes God in faith, it will register there wherever that individual is just that quick. All the discoveries of later years such as telegraph, telephone wireless and that sort of thing are just the common laws that Christians have practiced all their lives.

Nobody ever knelt down and prayed, but that the instant they touched God their soul registered in Jesus Christ in Glory, and the answer came back to the soul. Christians have that experience every day. The wise world has begun to observe that these laws are applicable in the natural realm. I asked Marconi once how he got his first idea for the wireless, He replied he got it from watching an exhibition of telepathy in a cheap theatre.

The prayer of the heart reaches God. Jesus replied to the leper, "I will: be thou clean," The next was the centurion's servant. The centurion said "You do not need to come to my house. You SPEAK THE WORD ONLY and my servant shall be healed." And in the soul of Jesus He said, "Be healed." Distance is no barrier to God. Distance makes no difference. The Spirit of God will go as far as your love reaches. Love is the medium that conveys the Spirit of God to another soul anywhere on God's earth.

This is what takes place when you pray, The Spirit of God comes upon you and bathes your soul, and a shaft of it reaches out and touches that soul over there, If you had an instrument that was fine enough to photograph spirit, you would discover this is done.

Is it not a marvellous thing that God has chosen us to be co-labourers with Him, and He takes us into partnership to do all that He is doing? Jesus Christ at the Throne of God desires the blessing of you and me, and out of His holy heart the Spirit comes, and the soul is filled, and we cannot tell how or why.

I have known thousands of people to be healed who have never seen my face. They send a request for prayer, we pray, and never hear anything more about them sometimes, unless a friend or a neighbour or someone comes and tells us about them. Sometimes someone sends in a request for them. They will tell you they do not know what happened. They just got well. But you know why. That is the wonderful power there is in the Christian life, and that is the wonderful cooperation that the Lord Jesus has arranged between His own soul and the soul of the Christian. That is the Church which is his body.

The Believer

There is only one thing I could preach on today, and that is:

"Go ye into all the world and preach the gospel to every creature. He that believeth … "

He that BELIEVETH. He that believeth, bless God. The believer is the big fellow. "He that believeth," Jesus said.

"He that believeth and is baptised shall be saved." Mark 16:16

Don't you know Jesus Christ was the most drastic teacher this world ever saw, Jesus Christ demanded that every other religion in all the world be abandoned and thrown to the bats, in order that men might receive the gospel of the Son of God. Do you hear that?

Not only so. Jesus Christ demanded that every other dispensation and revelation of the true God be set aside in favour of the one pure existent demonstration and manifestation of Jesus Christ. That is the reason the Jew is seeking God for salvation through Jesus Christ, though he had the first and the greatest revelation until Jesus came. Christianity is the most drastic thing in its demands on the human conscience that the world has ever known. No other teacher in all the world like the Son of God places such demands on the life.

Listen, dear hearts,

"Go ye into all the world."

The Lord began His preparation of the group to whom He said these wonderful words with the closest possible intimacy. My, He called them one at a time out of the course of the world into attachment with Himself; lived with them, ate with them, slept with them, worked with them, taught them and prayed with them for three years. Bless God, He took them to the bedside of the dying, took them out in the streets among the sick, the lame, the halt and blind, and healed them, and said, "Go out likewise 'He that believeth.'"

They came into the ranks of Jesus as believers, as believers in Him. Their abandonment of all that had gone before for the divine superiority of Jesus Christ and His revelation was complete. They came to the Lord with open hearts and open minds and open souls to understand and know the way of God and receive the light of heaven into their hearts, and become divinely equipped by His eternal power.

Oh, the believer has a marvellous place. "He that believeth!" Sound it out dear ones. "He that believeth." Christianity is the most extraordinary democracy that the world ever knew. Jesus Christ laid its ground work and its strength and it soul and spirit of the life in the believer. "He that believeth." A personal relationship and union with Jesus Christ in heaven, bless God. My, how it sweeps out class distinction, and it wipes away everything and lets the believer stand in the first place of relationship with God.

How struck I was with our Brother Wilson's testimony the other night. He said he had studied Christian Science for five years. He said when he first got the light of Christian Science he thought it was the most beautiful and wonderful thing in the world. After a while he began to discover it was nice sounding phrases, beautiful words, but lacking in the divine secret, the secret of the eternal power of Jesus Christ through the blood of the Son of God, and he abandoned it.

Oh my, lots of that in the world. Before Jesus Christ came Christian Science in a hundred forms was old and grey whiskered and outcast, and in the dump heap. Buddhism, Confuscianism, Zorostrianism and all the rest of the long line of human philosophies had to go to the dump heap when Jesus Christ the Son of God revealed the Lord from heaven. No place, no contact, separation was the word of Jesus. Let them go, dump them for the divine superiority of Jesus Christ by the Holy Ghost in the human heart.

"He that believeth." "HE THAT BELIEVETH."

Christianity is not based on the mere statement of these words, or mere belief in them. If it was it would be a philosophy equal to the others, possibly superior in its demands on the conscience, but it would be placed on the philosophic demonstration, the same as the other philosophies are. No sir! That is not Christianity. The secret of Christianity is that Jesus Christ based it on an acceptance of Himself. Jesus Christ said, "Receive Me, receive Me. He that receiveth Me." Not he that receiveth my words alone, but he that receiveth Me.

"He that receiveth." "He that receiveth Me."

Receive Him. That is what constitutes you a believer, when you receive the Lord into your heart. Not when you receive some particular teaching or a partial statement of His word, but when you receive Him, the Lord, the Christ, the Redeemer into your heart.

"He that believeth." "He that believeth Me."

Christianity is the most extraordinary revelation. It so far surpassed everything else in the form of religion in the known earth that there is no comparison what-so-ever.

I have just written a letter to say that I am accepting an invitation to preach at the International New Thought Convention next July for five days. I am going to preach to them about the Son of God. In conference with them (one or two hundred of them) their national leaders a couple of years ago said, "Lake, we absolutely challenge you to show where the gospel of Jesus Christ, or the teachings of Jesus are superior to the teachings of the philosophers." I said, "Dear brethren, it is not in the statements on the demands of the conscience that is in it. That is not the secret of Christianity. The secret of Christianity is that Jesus gave HIMSELF to the BELIEVER. That Jesus Christ comes into the believer's heart: that He comes to dwell within his soul; that He comes to anoint his spirit from heaven; that He comes to take possession of his heart and life; live in him, move in him, act in him, speak in him, pray in him, and all the other activities of the Christian soul."

Did you ever see Buddha come into anybody? Ten thousands have accepted his philosophy, but he never came from heaven to dwell in any man's heart or life. Confucius never came to dwell in any man's heart yet. Zoroaster, in all the marvel of his wondrous teachings, never came from heaven to dwell in the human soul. When he died, he died, and the grave covered him and there was not a thing left but the books that he wrote as a guide for others.

Ah, Christianity began where philosophies left off. I always feel sorry for the individual who only sees Christianity as a human code, or a moral law, even though it was given by Jesus Christ Himself. Oh, that is not Christianity. This moral code that Jesus gave must be made a possibility in your soul, in your life by the Christ who came to dwell in your heart.

"He that believeth."

He has entered into an exalted place, into an amazing relationship. Christianity is absolutely distinguished among all the religions of the world in that it provides for the resurrection of the body, and that Jesus Christ Himself was made the "first fruits" of the resurrection. He came forth in a glorified body, in a glorified life, in glorified power, in glorified being to dwell by the Spirit in the heart of every other man in the world. Bless God.

Think of the royal, regnant, glorified Son of God of heaven, at the eternal throne, coming into my heart, into your heart, believer! To dwell in your life, Bless God. Oh, say, I wish the blessed Lord would uncover our eyes to the divine majesty of the believer's relationship.

"He that believeth."

Why, Jesus had such an exalted concept of the relationship of the believer to the Eternal Christ on the throne that he ordained him with Himself. Hear it! He ordained him with Himself. I am telling you that Jesus Christ said that the BELIEVER had authority from heaven to say to the lame man, "Arise and walk."

Heaven conferred something on the souls of men when He made it possible for the risen Lord by the Spirit to come into your heart and mine. Oh, how the joy bells of heaven ought to be breaking loose in our soul, and the fires of heaven ought to shine forth from us because the Christ came into our hearts. Blessed be His Name.

Jesus of Nazareth did His work in the world, shed His tears over mankind, labored in the Spirit for their salvation, died on the cross and shed His blood. But Jesus my Lord, bless God came forth out of the tomb, a living, glorified, regnant sovereign of earth and heaven, with all power and authority within His hand. Hallelujah! Jesus of Nazareth was my Lord in the days of His humiliation, but Jesus the Christ at the eternal Throne is the divine manifestation of the overcoming of God. The ultimate of all perfection, the final manifestation of all that is God-like. Hallelujah.

If I could not leave another thing in this service in your hearts I would like to leave this one text in your soul, branded in your soul, stamped on your conscience, burned into your heart that Jesus Christ as is presented in Revelation, the first chapter, which I love to call the Twentieth Century Christ, is not Jesus in tear in Galilee, or on the Mount of Olives weeping over Jerusalem, but the resurrected, glorified, masterful finality in God stands out and says,

"I am He."

Let the world look, let the universe behold, let the devil see, let the kingdoms of darkness take notice,

"I am He that liveth and was dead; and, behold, I am alive forevermore, and have the keys of hell and of death." (Revelation 1:8)

Would it not sound strange if you heard Buddha say that? You do not catch anything like that in his writings. He never gave a revelation like that. It took the Christ to get that.

A famous author of a new religion presented himself to Talleyrand and told him of an amazing religion he had evolved, and wanted to know the best means to quickly present it and fix it upon the minds of the people. Talleyrand told him to come back in three days and he would give him an answer. In three days he came back, and Talleyrand received him. The gentlemen said, "Have you got my answer?" He said, "yes, it is this. You be crucified, lay in the grave for three days, come forth in resurrection, ascend to heaven as the glorified Son of God, and the whole world will receive you."

Beloved that is what makes Christianity the superior of every other religion. And listen, dear hearts, when Jesus Christ, that glorified Son at the eternal throne, who speaks words that none other in all the universe of God ever spake, when he said,

"I am He that liveth, and was dead; and, behold, I am alive forevermore, and have the keys of hell and of death."

It is He who by the Spirit deigns to come into the heart of the believer.

Oh, glory to God, if you have not appreciated the Baptism of the Holy Ghost look up to heaven and see the glorified One who purposes to come into your life and possess it.

Suppose I could get inside of Mrs Lake. Can you imagine such a thing? She would be 190 pounds heavier than she is now. She would have a voice like a pirate, and all the other characteristics of me. She would be me. Do you see it?

Oh, listen, there is a divine secret in Christ's salvation. It is Christ in fact in you by the Holy Ghost, dwelling in you, speaking in you, living in you, blazing in you, flashing from you, bless God.

I lay half the night writing a letter to a brother. I have done that three times, and each time I have torn them up. I said, "They are not worthy. They have not sufficient of heaven's finality. I am going to wait until God gives the real light that that boy needs. He has never seen Christ at the throne and the glorified, regnant Jesus in heaven that comes into a man's life."

Our eyes become clouded and our soul dimmed with the earthy thing that we see around us, and it is only once in a while that our spirit rises above it into the light of heaven that we see the glorified Son of God.

To His feet I call you. To His heart I ask you to join your soul, and without that you will never know the abundance of His salvation.

The Vision

Given to John G. Lake October 10, 1909, in tongues with interpretation.

Jesus thou King! Glorious and eternal!

Mighty and loving! Powerful and grand!

Who through the blackness and darkness infernal

Guideth and holdeth Thy child by the hand.

Pierced is Thy soul! Grieved is Thy Spirit!

Bleeding Thy feet are! Wounded Thy hand!

Sorrowing Christ, through the Veil now uplifted

See I Thy beckoning with uplifted hand.

Hear I Thy voice as to me Thou now speakest!

See I Thy teardrops silently fall!

Know I the anguish Thy sorrowing Spirit

Feels as Thou drinkest this wormwood and gall.

What, Lord, the cause of Thy anguish of Spirit?

Why doth this suffering come to Thee now?

Crucified once, on the cross wast Thou lifted?

Have not the cruel thorns pierced Thy brow?

Have not the sins of mankind on Thee rested

Causing Thy soul in anguish to be torn?

Has not the blood-sweat from Thee been wrested?

Have not Thy saints for the crucified mourned?

Why is it then that again now I see Thee

Bruised and bleeding, anguished and lone?

Why is the Spirit of Christ now within me

Witnessing thus of Thy sorrow again?

List to the answer! Let all the world hear it!

Jesus is speaking! Let all hear His voice!

It is because of the sins of my people.

It is because ye will not heed My voice.

Do ye not bite and devour one another?

Do ye not slay with your tongue and pen

Many of my precious daughters and mothers,

Young men and maidens, E'en boys and old men?

Have ye e'er stood in the fire where they're tested?

Have ye e'er felt of the withering blast?

Know ye how long and how hard they've resisted

Fighting and struggling unto the last?

The Power of Divine Healing

My soul used to be able to enjoy as much lightness in the Lord Jesus as anybody, but various processes of life reduced my capacity to enjoy jingle, and God brought me down into the solids of life. No man could live in the environment in which a large portion of my life has been spent, without realising that unless men can contact the living God in REAL POWER, power out of the ordinary, power sufficient for tremendous needs and unusual occasions, he could not live. Man could not live!

In South Africa some years ago, in a single night a fever epidemic struck the country for three hundred and fifty miles. As I rode through the section of that country I found men dead in their beds beside their wives, children dead in their beds alongside the living, whole families stricken, dying, and some dead. In one single month one quarter of the entire population of that district, both white and black, died. We had to organise an army to dig graves, and an army of men to make caskets. We could not buy wood enough in that section of the country to make caskets, so we buried them in a blanket, or without a blanket, when it was necessary to save the blankets for a better purpose.

I had a man in my company who perhaps some of you know. God had appointed that man to pray, as I have never found anybody else anointed to pray. For days he remained under a thorn tree, and when I passed that way in the morning I would hear his voice in prayer, and when I returned in the evening I would hear his voice in prayer. Many times I got a prepared meal and carried it to him, and aroused him long enough to get him to eat it. I would say, "Brother, how is it? Are you getting through?" He would reply, "Not yet." But one day he said, "Mr Lake, I feel today that if I had just a little help in my faith that my spirit would go through into God." And I went on my knees beside him, joined my heart with his, and voiced my prayer to God.

As we prayed the Spirit of the Lord overshadowed our souls, and presently I found myself, not kneeling under the tree, but moving gradually away from the tree some fifty or one hundred feet. My eyes gradually opened, and I witnessed such a scene as I had never witnessed before: a multitude of demons, like a flock of sheep. The Spirit had come upon him also, and he rushed ahead of me, cursing that army of demons, and they were driven back to hell, or to the place from whence they came. Beloved, the next morning when we awoke that epidemic of fever was gone. THAT IS THE POWER OF DIVINE HEALING. God destroying Satan.

Now when you consider that I have been a man of some scientific training, you can understand what an introduction into a life where everything was made new, and of a different order, meant. Instead if being on the hard, natural plane of materialistic life and knowledge, suddenly introduced into the Spirit you can realise what a revolution has brought to pass in my soul, and how gradual discovery revealed the wonder of God and the mighty action of God through the souls of men. There is a little keynote in one of Paul's epistles that gives the real key to successful prayer. In successful prayer there is a divine action, a divine interaction, an interaction just as real as an chemical interaction in any experiment in the world. Your bring two opposite chemicals together, and you realise a little flash or flame, an explosion. There has been an interaction, your chemicals have undergone a change. They are no longer the same properties they were before. For instance, oxygen and hydrogen united is water. So it is in the spiritual realm. Paul said in giving us this key, "The Word did not profit them, not being mixed with faith." There is a quality and content in the soul of man, a necessary quality. That quality is the POWER OF THE SPIRIT. And when faith and Spirit come together there is an interaction. There is a movement of God. There is a manifestation of the Spirit. There is a divine explosion! FAITH AND GOD UNITED IS DIVINE HEALING.

When I was a boy a neighbour employed a chemist. They were trying to manufacture a new explosive of some kind. A section of the barn was being used for the experiments. Johnnie was strictly reminded that he had no business around the barn, but like many johnnies his curiosity was aroused. One day when they had gone to town he discovered that the door was not thoroughly locked. Just a little picking and prying and it opened and Johnnie was inside. There were some packages on the bench and some liquid on the floor. Presently Johnnie bungled; a package fell into a bucket of liquid and that is the last Johnnie remembered. When he came to himself he was some fifty or seventy feet away, and they told me I was carried there by a section of the wall. It just went off. That package and the liquid interacted.

We look at the wonderful powers in nature and marvel. A group of scientists not long ago compressed such a quantity of nitrogen in a solid block thirteen inches square that they declared if it could be placed in the heart of the city of Chicago and permitted to explode it would wreck the city. One can imagine somewhat of the terrific energy stored up in that little block of nitrogen thirteen inches square; and when you come to think of the marvel of the nature of God, the dynamic of His being, how staggering His almightiness becomes.

The world's conception of religion is that it is a matter of sentiment, for in the minds of most men religion is just sentiment to them, it is not a thing of power. They do not understand the properties of the soul of God, nor the quality of His life, nor how it is that God moves in the nature of men to change their hearts, to dissolve the sin out of their souls, to cleanse them by His life and power, to heal their bodies, and reveal His light and life in them.

I believe the very beautiful thing we call SALVATION, and the holy statement of Jesus Christ, "Ye must be born again," is itself a scientific fact and declaration of God's divine purpose and intent, based on the law of being. We are inclined to think that God just desires, and our hearts are changed. But I want to tell you, beloved, that there is a process in a man's soul that admits God into his life. Your heart opens because it is touched by the love of God, and into the heart, into the nature of man there comes the divine essence of the living Spirit, and bless God, it has an action in him. Sin dissolves from his nature and from the mind of man. The Spirit of God takes possession of the cells of his brain, and his thoughts are changed by its action. There is a new realisation of divine holiness. By the grace of God he discovers himself SANCTIFIED in deed and in truth because Christ in truth dwells there.

Beloved, Jesus Christ had His eye and His soul fixed on that one dynamic power of God, the HOLY GHOST. And His holy life, His death, His resurrection, His ascension to glory were all necessary in the process of soul development to arrive at the Throne of God where He could receive from the Father the Gift of the Holy Ghost, and have the privilege of ministering to your soul and mine.

So in my heart there has grown a wondrous reverence for the mighty Son of God, who saw beyond the ken of man, who visioned in the distance, who sought in His soul for the key to the mighty powers of the nature of God, who determined for our relief and for our benefit and salvation to leave the Throne of God, come to earth, be born as a man, take upon Him the nature of man (not the nature of angels). He looked to God as men do, overcome by His power, through reliance on His Word, and so believing, so advancing step by step in the nature of God and the likeness of God, one day He stood forth, the Eternal Sacrifice before the throne of God, and received the eternal reward of His fidelity: the Holy Ghost. In life, Jesus the man was in the LIKENESS of God. In resurrection, the NATURE of God. In glorification, the SUBSTANCE OF God, and thus "became the author of eternal salvation."

And the man or the woman who does not understand the Holy Ghost, and His magnificence and the wonder of His power, must turn his heart again heavenward and see the price that Jesus paid in order to secure Him for you and me, in order to give Him to the world that was in sin, sickness and death, to lift it out of darkness. I love that blessed old hymn, "Ye Must Be Born Again." Can we not sing it?

A ruler once came to Jesus by night,

To ask Him the way of salvation and light;

The Master made answer in words true and plain;

"Ye must be born again!"

Chorus:

"Ye must be born again!

Ye must be born again!

I verily, verily bay unto thee,

Ye must be born again!"

Ye children of men, attend to the word

So solemnly uttered by Jesus the Lord;

And let not this message to you be in vain;

"Ye must be born again!"

O ye who would enter this glorious rest,

And sing with the ransomed the son of the blest;

The life everlasting if ye would obtain,

"Ye must be born again!"

A dear one in heaven thy heart yearns to see,

At the beautiful gate may be waiting for thee;

Then list to the note of this solemn refrain:

"Ye must be born again!"

There is a process of divine TRANSMUTATION. But beloved, by the power of God's Spirit in a man's heart, that process is going on every single day of your life, sister, where God takes that which is natural, that which is earthly, touches it by His divine power, moves upon it by His heavenly nature, and in the name of Jesus Christ you come forth no longer self and selfish, but now TRANSFORMED, changed, by the power of Christ, into the nature of the Son of God, into the likeness of the Lord, into His character and nature and understanding and knowledge. Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ!

"To us is given exceeding, great and precious promises, that BY THESE we may become partakers of the divine nature." And being a partaker, in consequence "escape the corruption that is in the world through lust." Bless God, His divine purpose is not to whitewash the soul, but to change the character, transmute the life by the grace of God, make the man a christ and king, a deliverer and a saviour, in common with the Lord Jesus Christ, his elder Brother. If I am a brother of the Lord, then I am bone of His bone, and flesh of His flesh, and substance of His substance, like my elder brother. The source of life is the same source of life that is in Him. The same purpose that is revealed in Him is His high purpose for you and for me.

Men have little understanding of the quality of faith, or what it accomplishes, because of the fact that they are not aware of the process by which that work is done. FAITH has the quality and power, with the Spirit of God, to do what a match does to powder. It is the touch of God. It is the touch of FAITH through us that ignites the Spirit and produces the divine action that takes place in the soul, when sin is rebuked and cast out, when sickness is destroyed and dissolved from the life, the nature set free, and man rejoices as a son of God, saved in spirit, soul and body.

One day there came to my healing rooms a little boy that we know on the streets as a newsboy; just one of the little ragged chaps. A lady had observed the little fellow on the street in an epileptic fit, afterwards took him by the hand and led him into the healing rooms. We talked to the little chap about the Lord, prayed for him, and told him to return again. The Lord healed him. He was a manly little urchin, and one day he said, "Mr Lake, I haven't any money to reward you with now, but you are not going to lose any money on me." We smiled and were glad to see the spirit of the little chap, and he went his way. About two weeks later, in the midst of a great meeting, he strutted in, marched up and laid five silver dollars on the table, and marched out again.

Then he got up against his first real problem of living his new life in his business. Every boy has a corner. He can sell papers on his own corner and it is up to him to keep all other boys away. He had given his heart to the Lord. One day he came around with a long face. He said, "It's all off." "Well, my boy, what's the trouble?" "They were going to rush my corner, until I could not stand it, and I cleaned up the whole bunch." The little chap was getting his first introduction into the real problem of being a Christian in this old world, under a competitive system, the outgrowth of human selfishness, devised by the devil.

One day a gentleman came along and wanted to buy a paper. His arm was disabled, and he could not get his purse. He said to the boy, "I have put my purse in the wrong pocket. Put your hand in and get if for me." The boy said, "What is the matter with your arm?" He replied, "I have what is called neuritis. My arm is paralysed." The little chap said, "Well, if the doctors can't do you any good, I'll tell you where you can get it fixed up. There are some men up in the Rookery Building that pray, and folks get well." The man said, "How do you know?" He replied, "I used to take fits, and fall on the street, and they would carry me off to the police station. I was like that for four years, but I don't take fits any more. If you want me to, I will take you up there."

So he brought him up. He was the head of a great lumber concern; his name was Rose. He sat down and told me how he was moved by the child's simple words, but he had no more idea of how God could heal a man or save man from sin than anyone. So we began to tell of the Lord Jesus and His power to save, and continued to minister to him each day. Three weeks afterward he returned again to the medical clinic, where two hundred and seventy-five physicians had declared four weeks before that they could do nothing for him. They re-examined him and found him perfectly well, healed by the power of God. THAT IS THE POWER OF DIVINE HEALING.

I went to the medical association and got a copy of the lecture that was given by Dr Semple on the seriousness of the disease, and the utter impossibility of medicine ever to help him, or change his condition. In so far as they were concerned, he was a cripple. The nerves were dead, atrophied. It would require a miracle, they said, to reproduce the original life and restore power in the tissue of the arm. But the miracle took place, because there is a Fountain of Life, the Life of God, available for every man. Bless His Name! THAT IS THE POWER OF DIVINE HEALING.

When the LIFE of Jesus comes in, the death of your soul ends. When the Spirit of God comes in, your DEAD nerves come alive. God, by the Spirit, takes possession of the blood, and the brain, and the bone. He dwells in the very cellular structure of your whole being. His quickening LIFE regenerates you, and generates LIFE in you, and by the Christ of God you come forth, not a dead senseless lobster, but a living man, a LIVING Christian.

Let me tell you a story to illustrate this point. They say a man died, and he appeared at the Beautiful Gate, and said to Peter, "I am from Philadelphia. I subscribe for the Ladies' Home Journal. I have a bed of mint in the back yard, but I never drink intoxicants. Peter replied, "Go on to heaven and stay dead." He was dead already. Some folks think you know that because they are not committing this sin and that sin that they are dutiful, beautiful children of God. But, beloved, there is an awful lot more to Christianity than delivering a man's soul from the power of sin.

Professor Riddell tells this story; "I was walking along the Sea Beach and I encountered a lobster. I said, 'Lobster, did you ever chew tobacco?' 'Never!' 'Lobster, did you ever stay out nights?' 'Never!' 'Say, Lobster, shake hands. We are both lobsters!'"

Oh, there is a negative thing, and that negative thing in religious life is what is killing the real power of God. That negative thing, when we are all the time NOT DOING this and that and something else. It is a religion of DON'T do this and DON'T DO THAT. My God! When Christ comes into the soul and into the spirit it is all changed. Instead of deadness, there is LIFE in God. Instead of in-action, there is POWER by the Spirit of God. The Christian is a MAN, not a lobster.

"Down in the human heart,

Crushed by the tempter,

Feelings lie buried

That grace can restore.

Touched by a loving heart,

Wakened by kindness,

Chords that were broken

Will vibrate once more."

Oh, the grace of God is the lovely thing, the grace of God is the powerful thing. The grace of God is the life and Spirit of the Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ. And ministered to the soul, breathed into the heart, transmitted to the life, MAN becomes like Christ, because the Christ of God is moving in the heart of him, generating and regenerating, and man comes forth a finished product by the hands of the Lord, saved from sin, healed of disease, kept by the indwelling Christ, who is the power of God.

I am looking to God for some real finished products these days, real men grown up in the Lord Jesus Christ, established in the splendid solidarity of His Holy nature and divine character, beautified by His holy glory, enriched by His divine nature, LIKE THE SON OF GOD.

So, my brother, my sister, I want to bring your heart this afternoon into this blessed confidence, this holy truth, this divine reality. If religious life has been a sort of sentiment, let me tell you beyond it there is the power of God, the moving, dynamic, burning force of LIFE in Christ Jesus, waiting to come into your heart, to revitalise your thought and change your spirit, and indwell the very flesh and bone and blood of you and make you a new man and a new woman in the Lord Jesus. Say, Beloved, that is the POWER OF DIVINE HEALING.

On one occasion I was entertaining myself by examining some typhoid bacteria, as they developed in dirty water. A neighbour woman came one morning and was anxious for me to show her one of her hairs under the microscope. I told her I had the microscope set, and was waiting for the development of the bacteria, and would be obliged if she would come back another day, when my experiment was over. Instead of paying attention to what I said, she returned the next day with the same request. Again I explained to her, but the next morning she was back again, and finally the fourth morning I was annoyed and thought I would just take one of her hairs, let her see it anyway and not disturb the microscope. So I pulled it through under the microscope, and let her look. Presently she jumped up and hurried away, and never even said, "Thank you."

When I came home that evening Mrs Lake said, "What did you do to Mrs B___?" I said, "I really do not know. Why?" She said, "Well, she has been on the back porch all day, and the servant has been drenching her hair with kerosene." Why, she saw more crawling things than she ever saw before. She saw the bacteria and believed the crawling beasts were attached to her hair. Her hair and head were perfectly clean. The presence of the beasts she saw was explained in another way.

I want to bring home the truth of God. In the minds and lives of many, religion is simply an illusion. There is no divine reality in it. But, beloved, real religion is God's divine reality, for it is the heart of God and the life of Christ. And when it comes into the soul of man it generates the same divine reality and heavenly power in him, and man becomes God's new creature.

In my younger days, when I first touched the ministry of healing, and as yet had developed a very small portion of faith in God, a young lady who lived nine miles in the country had a tubercular limb. Her physicians had tried to build her up in strength so they could amputate the limb, but on final examination the disease was found to have made such progress that the amputation would not save her. One day we received a request to join in prayer for her the next morning at nine, and to invite all the people who knew God and had faith in Him, to unite with us. So I telegraphed all around the country to those I knew.

The Physician told me that the knee had become so decayed that he could put his finger through the joint. Her suffering was more than ordinary. It required three men to hold her in bed the night before she was healed.

But in the morning she desired to be left alone for the last half hour before prayer. She lay with her eyes closed and her body still, and after a while she said, "I opened my eyes and saw it was just exactly the time for the people to pray for me." She said in soul, "It is time for the people to pray for me. It is the time I ought to be healed." And letting her faith reach out to God, she said, "In the Name of Jesus Christ it is the time I AM healed." And she made a motion towards the side of the bed and landed out on the floor, perfectly whole. She rushed downstairs, two steps at a time. Her sister-in-law had a tub of water on the floor. She stuck her diseased limb into it, and the entire mass of rotten flesh of the leg disappeared in the tub, and there was a new leg, as new as a newly born baby, both flesh and bone. That is the POWER OF DIVINE HEALING.

I travelled down to Chicago and met old John Alexander Dowie, and I told him. He said, "Do you know the facts in this case?" I said, "I do." He said, "I want to see the woman." And he handed me one hundred dollars, and I wired for her to come. Beloved, even in that man's life he had never realised the creative power of God. He had seen wonderful healings, but here was the creative action of God making muscle and bone and flesh, by God's power instantly.

Beloved, may every one of these holy demonstrations work out in your life, as they worked out in mine, a divine consciousness that God by the Spirit never comes to a man's life to whitewash him over or smooth him over or clean him up, but God comes to him to make him NEW and give him a new heart, and a new mind, and a new spirit, new blood, and new bone, and new flesh, and to send in him out with a new song in his mouth, and a new shout of praise in his heart and a new realisation of holiness: a truly REDEEMED man.

Tongues and interpretation: Thou God eternal, who lifts the soul of man from degradation and shame and sin, and exalts him in Jesus Christ, and lifts him by God's grace into His presence and power, we pray Thee this day that Thy action in our heart will prify our souls forever, and illuminate our natures in God, and fill us by The Divine Spirit, and send us forth among men, not whitewashed, but WASHED WHITE with God's power and God's grace.

First commit your body and soul and spirit in entire, hundredfold consecration to God forever. Do not be satisfied with sins forgiven. Press on, press in, let God have you and fill you, until consciously He dwells, live, abides in every cell of Your blood, of your bone and your brain, until your soul (mind), indwelt by Him, thinks His thoughts, speaks His word, until your spirit assimilates God, and God's Spirit assimilates you, until your humanity and His divinity are merged into His eternal Deity. Thus BODY, SOUL and SPIRIT are God's forever and forever. Amen. THAT is the POWER OF DIVINE HEALING.

Christian Communion

I want to read a series of portions of Scriptures this morning, with this one general thought in view, the presence of Christ. Some of you may have read a little booklet by an old monk, whose name was Father Lawrence, It is called "Practising the Presence of Christ."

One of the things the Christian world does not get hold of with a strong grip is the conscious presence of Christ with us now. Somehow there is an inclination in the Christian spirit to feel that Jesus, when He left the earth, returned to Glory, and in consequence is not present with us now.

I want to show you how wonderfully the Scriptures emphasise the fact of His presence with us now. When He was talking to the eleven, just prior to His ascension, (Matthew 28), after delivering to them the great commission, He said:

"Go ye therefore., and teach all nation, baptizing them in the Name of the rather, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost." He ended the statement with these words:

"And, lo, I am with you always, even unto the end of the world."

It would naturally seem as if a separation had been contemplated because of His return to Glory, but no such separation is contemplated on the part of Christ. Christ promises His omnipotent presence with us always, Christ omnipresent everywhere. Present in the soul, present in the world, present always unto the end of the age.

As Paul was going down the road to Damascus, when the presence of God's Glory shone around him, he fell prostrate on the earth, and heard a voice speaking to him. When he demanded to know who it was, the voice replied, "I am Jesus." Jesus was present with him as a Saviour to deliver him from his difficulties and his sins.

At a later time in Paul's career, he returned to Jerusalem, and was in danger of his life. While he prayed in the temple, he was overshadowed by the Spirit, and says, "I was in a trance, and saw Him saying unto me, make haste and get thee quickly out of Jerusalem: for they will not receive thy testimony concerning Me." Paul endeavours to argue with the Lord about it. That conversation has always been a blessing to my soul. It is so real. I have always been so glad that Paul answered back to the Lord, and the details of the conversation have been recorded.

Paul said, "But Lord, they know that I imprisoned and beat in every synagogue them that believed on Thee. And when the blood of Thy martyr Stephen was shed, I also was standing by, and consenting unto his death, and kept the raiment of them that slew him." But the Lord replied, "Depart, for I will send thee far hence unto the Gentiles."

Jesus is just as close to the Christian soul as He was to Paul. There is a beautiful verse that expresses that so sweetly, "Closer is He than breathing, and nearer than hands and feet."

Christ is the living presence, not only with us, but to the real Christian, He is in us, a perpetual joy, power and Glory in our life. When a soul reaches to the heights of God it will only be because of the guiding and counselling and indwelling and infilling of Christ.

Tongues and Interpretation:

Blessed Jesus, Lord and God, He who dwells within.

Blessed Jesus, He who came to free our hearts from sin.

Give us now Thy presence in us

Sweetly verified by Thy Holy Word

Give us now Thy presence

That we too may call thee Lord.

Precious Jesus, Lord of Heaven,

Blessed Jesus, come and dwell,

Blessed Christ of all the Heaven,

Dearer to our heart

Christ of God come in and dwell,

That within us we may be

Perfectly conscious of that indwelling,

And ever from sin set free.

Many of us no doubt have been struck with the beautiful war story that has been going the rounds of the magazines for some months, called "The Comrade." It is the sense of comradeship that makes the Lord Jesus not only a Saviour in the ordinary sense, but a Saviour and Companion in all our ways and walks of life, filling the place in our soul that only a comrade can fill.

One of my exploring expeditions while in Africa, I met a man in Portuguese East Africa, who told me he had lived for eleven years with only natives as his associates. One evening as we came along, passing through the veldt, I observed this little cabin, which indicated the presence of an European. So I started over, expecting to discover a man with some white blood in him at least. But I was overjoyed to find he was an intelligent English gentleman.

He had come to Africa in the early days with his wife and children. His sons had been killed in a native uprising. His wife had died of fever and only he was left. I said,. "Why didn't you return to England?" He replied, "I did not have any desire to return. Many of my friends I used to know had died or gone to Australia, or with a new set of people. I concluded I would just settle down and spend the rest of my days here."

He sat all night and talked about the ordinary things that were going on in the world about us. It was the first time he had any outside news in several years. We sat fellowshipping during the night.

Before I went away in the morning I asked him what it was he missed more than anything else since he had been out there. He replied, "Mr Lake, I guess one word will cover it. "Comradeship." The lack of that real soul comradeship which makes life so dear to every man.

That is the place that Jesus purposes to occupy in the Christian life. That place of real comradeship, whereby through His grace and love He supplies to us that thing that we need so much to make this life the joyous, victorious life He purposed it to be. His presence with us, His guiding counsel, His transforming grace, His soul absorbing presence, which in the ultimate commands all the intensity of our nature, is for us. Paul expresses it so wonderfully in the words, "Christ is all and in all."

Paul gives us a still different vision of the presence and power of Christ with us in the fourth of Ephesians. This time it is as a Transformer.

"Until we all come in the unity of the faith and of the knowledge of the Son of God, unto a perfect man, unto the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ."

This shows the ultimate purpose of Christ as Saviour, of Christ as a Companion, of Christ as the Indweller. Christ's presence with us is not just as an outward companion, but an indwelling, divine force, revolutionising our nature and making us like Him. Indeed, the final and ultimate purpose of the Christ is that the Christian shall be reproduced in His own likeness, within and without.

Paul again expresses the same thing in the first of Colossians, the 22nd verse, where he says,

"To present you holy and unblamable and unreprovable in His sight."

That transformation is to be an inner transformation. It is a transformation of our life, of our nature, into His nature, into His likeness.

How the mechanical fades away in view of the living fact that Christ purposes to accomplish in us through the Spirit. How wonderful the patience, and marvellous the power that takes possession of the soul of man and accomplishes the will of God, in His absolute transformation into the real beautiful holiness of the character of Jesus.

Our heart staggers when we think of such a calling, when we think of such a nature, when we contemplate such a character. That is God's purpose for you and me.

In emphasising this truth the apostle again puts in into a different form, he says,

"Until Christ be formed in you."

Or until by the transforming operation of the Spirit of God we are remade, or transformed, until our nature is transformed by the operation of the Spirit of God in our soul, then we are remade or transformed. Until our nature is transformed into the nature of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ.

His was the perfect character. Consequently every other character that can be co-joined with Him in real heirship must be like God's Son. Jesus never can present that which is faulty or evil or weak to the Father. The transforming grace of God must take away, and does take away, sin from the soul of man. It gives him His strength instead of human weakness. It supplies the grace that makes him like the Lord Jesus Christ.

That is the mission of the Lord Jesus Christ. That is the marvel He has undertaken to accomplish, to transform the soul of man into the likeness and character of Himself, and then present mankind to the Father, "Holy and unblamable and unreprovable in His sight."

When Jesus stood before the disciples, just prior to His going out into the Garden, He delivered to them that wonderful address of the 14th, 15th, and 16th of John. He climaxed it with that marvellous high priestly prayer of the 17th. He endeavoured to bring them to understand His nature and power. Knowing that all power had been given unto Him. He took a towel and a basin and proceeded to wash the disciples' feet. When He had finished He said, "Know ye not what I have done unto you. In explanation He said, "If I then your Lord and Master, have washed your feet, ye also ought to wash one another's feet." In assuming the attitude of a servant He had taught mankind what their relation as brother should be.

When we examine the human heart and endeavour to discover what it is that retards our progress, I believe we find that pride in the human soul perhaps is the greatest difficulty we have to overcome. Jesus taught us a wonderful humility, taking the place of a slave. So we are enjoined to thus treat and love one another.

His presence with us, His presence in us must produce in our hearts the same conditions that were in His own. It must bring into our life the same humility that was in Him. It is one of the secrets of entrance into the grace of God.

Tongues and interpretation: When the precious Christ enters into the unregenerated heart He becomes the very centre of their being, He becomes the very peak of their ambition, that they might be like Him. He through true humility of His soul, left the things of His glorious Father's Kingdom to come into this world of woe and sin; by which He was enabled to live the life of perfection in this earth and become the real Redeemer and Sympathiser of mankind.

In the story of the Comrade the substance of it is practically that the Comrade is ever present. In the course of the conversation with the Comrade it is observed that there are wounds in His hands, and He replies, "Yes, they are old wounds, but they have been giving me a good deal of trouble of late."

That is the vital sense of real Comradeship that makes the Spirit of Jesus one with us, so that we realise and He realises when the conditions of our nature and mind affect Him.

For two days I have been under a tremendous burden, one of these spirit burdens that come at times, when you can not define them. I could not tell whence it came. But every little while I felt I wanted to sit down and cry. Presently during the day a friend came and unloaded the burden of her soul to me, and then I realised that I had been under the burden for that soul for two days. I had not known the trouble existed.

That is the character of Comradeship, which is between the real Christian and the Christ. The Christian feels the burdens of the Christ and the Christ feels the burdens of the Christian and being united as one spirit, the interest of the Christ are the interests of the Christian, and the interests of the Christian are the interests of the Christ. That relationship is of the truest, deepest order. It is the relationship of spirit with spirit.

When a young man, before I had entered into this life, indeed from my boyhood, there were times when my spirit would become overshadowed with the burden of another life, sometimes with the sorrows of another. I had one of these experiences when perhaps not more that ten or eleven years of age. On a particular Sunday, I arose with one of these burdens on my spirit, and I walked out into the fields. There was a high hill on my father's farm. The sun had not yet gotten over this hill. When I got to the top I looked down over the beautiful field. There was a lake, and I was thinking how beautiful it was and all the surroundings. In the midst of it tears commenced to run and I sat down on a stone and cried. After a while I got up and wondered why I was crying. Several days later we received a letter telling that dear old Grandfather had died. And then the old Grandmother had said, "Well, I do not want to live any more," and she died also. Around them were a group of sorrowing friends, and somehow my spirit contacted that sorrow.

One of the truest things in all my life, in my relationship with the Lord Jesus Christ, has been to feel that He was capable of knowing my sorrows, and yours. And that in the truest sense He thereby became our Comrade.

In Isaiah there is a verse that wonderfully expresses that fact. "In all their affliction He was afflicted, and the angel of His presence saved them...," (Isaiah 63:9). "In His love and in His pity He redeemed them, and bare them, and carried them all the days of old."

There is a union between the Christ and the Christian that is so deep, so pure so sweet, so real that the very condition of the human spirit are transmitted to His, and the conditions of the Christ's Spirit are transmitted to ours. It is because of the continuous inflow of the Spirit of Christ in our heart that we appreciate or realise His power and triumph. It lifts man above his surroundings and causes him to triumph anywhere and everywhere.

The Christian life is designed by God to be a life of splendid, holy triumph. That triumph is produced in us through the continuous inflow and abiding presence of the Spirit of the triumphant Christ. He brings into our nature the triumph that He enjoys. Indeed the mature Christian, having entered into that consciousness of overcoming through the Spirit of Christ, is privileged to transmit that same overcoming power and spirit to other lives, in and through the power of the Spirit of God.

That is why the Christian who is joined with the Christ, lives, moves and has his being in the same life, in the same Spirit that the Christ is and has, and is therefore the reproduction of the Lord Jesus Christ.

The Calling of the Soul

If I were to choose a subject for the thought in My soul tonight, I would choose "The Calling of the Soul."

Someone has given us this little saying that has become prevalent among many people. "My own shall come to me." Jesus framed that thought in different words. He said: "He that hungers and thirsts after righteousness shall be filled." It is the same law. "Blessed are they that hunger and thirst after righteousness, for they shall be filled."

RIGHTEOUSNESS is simply God's rightness. God's rightness in a man's soul, God's rightness in a man's spirit, God's rightness in a man's body. In order that man may be right or righteous, God imparts to man the power of His Spirit. That Spirit contains such marvellous and transforming grace that when received into the nature of man, the marvellous process of regeneration is set in motion and man becomes thereby a new creature in Christ Jesus.

The deepest call of our nature is the one that will find the speediest answer. People pray, something happens. If they pray again something still deeper occurs within their nature, and they find a new prayer. The desire is obtained.

In my ministry in South Africa, I had a preacher by the name of Van Vuuren. That name means "fire." Van Vuuren had been a butcher in the city of Johannesburg and was given up to die of consumption. His physician said to him: "You have only one year to live." So he gave up his business and went down into the country to develop a farm, that his family might be able to support themselves.

After he left the city many were baptised in the Holy Spirit and healed, and so forth, and his friends wrote him a letter and "So-and-so, who was sick, has been healed; So-and-so, your niece, has been baptised in the Holy Spirit and is speaking in tongues by the power of God; So-and-so has been blessed of God," and so on.

Van Vuuren took the letter and went out into the fields and got down under a thorn tree and spread the letter out before God. Then he began to pray: "God, if you can do these things for the people at Johannesburg, you can do something for me. I have been a Christian for eighteen years, and I have prayed and prayed for certain things which have not come to pass. God, if others can be baptised in the Holy Ghost, surely I can; if other's hearts are made pure by the power of God, the power that made theirs pure can make mine pure also; if others have been healed, then you can heal me."

As he thus gave himself to God, and opened his soul to heaven, suddenly the Spirit came upon him and he became the most transformed creature I ever knew.

God moved into the man. For eighteen days he walked as though overshadowed by the Spirit of God, God talking continuously to his soul, directing him to this one and that one, judges and lawyers, statesmen and physicians, rich and poor. When he would reach them the Spirit of God would pour forth through his soul such messages of God that in many cases they fell down and wept.

This is the point of the story I wanted you to get. He said for eighteen years he had prayed for the real conversion and transformation of his wife, and it had not come to pass. But that morning after the Lord had baptised him in the Holy Ghost a new prayer came into his heart, a new depth had been touched in the man's nature, and from that great inner depth flowed out to God a cry that had been going out from his soul for years. But that morning the cry of God touched the soul of his wife, and before he reached the house she had given her heart to god. In three months all his family, his wife, eleven children and himself, had been baptised in the Holy Spirit.

The desire of which Jesus spoke of (for when He spoke of desire, He spoke of this same call of the soul) was not the simple attitude of the outer man. Certainly it included it. Perhaps the desire in the beginning was simply that of the mind, but as the days and years passed, and the desire ability of obtaining grew in the soul, it became a call of the deepest depth of the man's nature. And that is the character of desire that Jesus spoke of when He said: "Blessed are they that hunger and thirst after righteousness, for they shall be filled."

The spiritual action that takes place within the nature of man, that strong desire for God, His ways, His love, His knowledge, His power, causes everything else, perhaps unconsciously to himself, to become secondary.

Politicians talk about a paramount issue. That is the issue that stands out by itself above all others and is the greatest and largest and of most interest to the nation. It is the paramount issue.

The soul has its paramount issue, and when the desire of your heart is intensified so that it absorbs all your energies, then the time of its fulfilment is not far away. That is the desire that brings the answer. It is creative desire.

A woman testified in my hearing one day to this fact. She had been pronounced hopeless and was going blind. No human remedy could do her any good. Someone opened to her in a dim way the possibility of seeing through the power of God. She was not very well taught, but she said this: "That every day for four years she gave up two and one-half hours absolutely to expressing the desire of her soul for real sight. Not only expressing it in words, but calling the power of God to her that would recreate in her the function of sight in her eyes and make her see." At the end of four or four and a half years she said: "My eyes are as well as they ever were."

That is the reward of persistence, of a desire toward God. Your nature may have sent out just as deep a cry to God as my nature has, and still is doing. Is the cry to God continuous? Gradually as the forces of life concentrate themselves in line with that strong desire, the Spirit of God is operating through your heart, is being directed by that desire and concentrated on a particular line, intensifying every day because of the continuous desire of the soul to possess. The effect of that concentration of the Spirit of God on that soul is that by the grace of God there is brought to your soul all the elements necessary to formulate and create and fulfil the desire of your heart, and one morning the soul awakens to discover that it has become the possessor of the desired object.

Jesus started men on the true foundation. Many simply desire health, others temporal blessings. Both are good and proper, but bless God, Jesus started the soul at the proper point, to first desire RIGHTEOUSNESS, the righteousness of God, to become a possessor of the Kingdom. "Seek ye first," said Jesus, "the Kingdom of God and His righteousness, and all these things shall be added unto you."

Jesus was bringing forth and establishing in the world a new character, a character that would endure forever, a soul quality that would never fail, a faith that knew no possibility of defeat. In establishing such a character Jesus saw that the character could only be established in the depth of a Man's being, in the very spirit of his being. Then when once the soul was grounded in the paths of righteousness, then all the activities of the nature would be along righteous lines, and in harmony with the laws of God.

God has a call in His own Spirit. If we study our own spirit we will understand the nature of God. The call of the Spirit of God is the call of righteousness, the call of truth, the call of love, the call of power, the call of faith.

I met a young man on one occasion who seemed to me to be the most blessed man, in some ways, of all the men I had ever met. I observed he was surrounded by a circle of friends of men or women, the deepest and truest it had ever been my privilege to know. One day I said to him: "What is the secret of this circle of friends that you possess, and the manner in which you seem to bind them to you." He replied, "Lake, my friendships are the result of the call of the soul. My soul has called for truth and righteousness, for holiness, for grace, for strength, for soundness of mind, for the power of God, and the call has reached this one, and this one and this one, and brought them to me."

Over in Topeka, Kansas, in the year 1900, one morning a man stepped off the train, walked up the street, and as he walked up a particular street he stopped in front of a large fine dwelling, and said to himself, "This is the house." A gentlemen who happened to be out of sight around the building said, "What about the house?" and this story came out. He said: "For years I have been praying God for a certain work of God among Christians known as the Baptism of the Holy Ghost. In my researches I have visited every body of Christian people in this country that I knew of that claimed to be possessors of the baptism, but as I visited and examined their experiences and compared it with the Word of God, I became convinced that none of them possessed the Baptism of the Holy Ghost as it is recorded and demonstrated in the New Testament.

He said one day as he prayed, the Spirit of the Lord said, "Go to Topeka, Kansas." As he prayed he observed in the Spirit a certain house, and the Lord said, "I will give you that house, and in it the Baptism of the Holy Ghost will fall."

So he took the train and came to Topeka, walked down the street, and exclaimed as he passed by, "This is the house," and the voice around the corner replied, "What about it?" When the man had heard his story, he told him he was the owner of the house; that it had been closed for years. He asked him what he wanted it for, and he replied that he was going to start a Christian school. The owner said, "Have you any money?" He replied, "No." He said, "All right, you can have the house without money."

About an hour later a little Quaker lady came down the street, hesitated and looked around and said, "This is the house, but there is no one living there." After a struggle with her soul she went up and rang the door bell and the first gentlemen answered the bell and asked what she wanted. She said: "I live over in the country at such a place. As I prayed, the Spirit told me to come here to this house." He said, "Who are you?" She replied, "Just an unknown Christian woman." He said: "What have you been praying about?" She said, "About the Baptism of the Holy Ghost."

Beloved, in three weeks eighteen persons were brought to that house. They formed a little company and began to pray. The company grew to thirty-six. On New Years night, 1900, the Spirit fell on that company, and the first one was baptised in the Holy Ghost, and in a few weeks practically the whole company had been baptised in the Holy Ghost. And from there is spread over the world.

Yesterday morning a woman came to my healing rooms, a stranger in the city. She said, "I have been praying for healing and asking God to show me where I could be healed. I heard of friends in Chicago who pray for the sick, and I visited them, but when I arrived, the Spirit said, "Not here." She said, "I bought a ticket and was about to take a train back home, but as I sat in the station I was approached by a little lady on crutches, and pitying her, I turned to speak a kind word to her. While conversing with her I saw she was a Christian of a deep nature, rarely found. I told her my story." She said, "Oh, I know where the Lord wants you to go. The Lord wants you to go to Spokane, Washington." (3000 miles from Chicago) She asked her if she knew anybody in Spokane, and the lady replied, "Why yes, I know Mr Lake, I used to nurse in his home years ago."

I prayed for her, and told her the thing to do was to came in for ministry every day until she was well. She said she would. This morning I received a call on the telephone, and she said, "I am not coming up to the healing rooms." I said, "Oh, is that the kind of individual you are? The one that comes once and gets nothing." "No," she said, "I came once and got something, and I do not need to come back. I am healed, and I am going home."

There is a call of faith in this Church, that is reaching away out, far out and in unaccountable ways. Away at the other end the Spirit of God is revealing truth to this soul and that soul, and they are moving into this life, and coming into unity with this Church.

Is there a note of despair in your heart? Have you not obtained the thing your soul covets? Have you desired to be like that sinless, unselfish, sickless One? God will answer the call of your soul. You shall have your hearts desire. But before that call becomes answerable is must be the paramount call of your being. It is when it becomes the paramount issue of the soul that the answer comes. Jesus knew. That is the reason He said, "Blessed are they that hunger and thirst after righteousness, for they shall be filled." There is not a doubt about it. All the barriers of your nature will go down before the desire of the soul. All the obstacles that ever were will disappear before the desire of you soul. All the diseases that ever existed in your life will disappear before the desire of your soul, when that desire becomes the one great purpose and prayer of your heart.

I love to think of one great soul: he was not a great Christian, but he was a great soul. He was the son of a Church of England clergyman, and came to South Africa, thinking he might get his system back to a normal state of health. He came to the SSS diamond mines at Kimberley and took a pick and shovel and worked with them long enough to understand diamonds. Indeed, he studied diamonds until he knew more about them than any other man in the world. Then he went to studying Africa, until one paramount desire grew up in his soul. He said, "I will plant the British flag across the continent." Eventually, this is what he did. He told me that in the beginning his vision extended to the Vaal River, then to the Zambezi and then across the trackless desert. He also planned a railroad six thousand miles long. John Cecil Rhodes died before he could fully bring to pass the paramount issue of his soul!

"Blessed are they that hunger and thirst after righteousness."

Oh, if I had one gift, or one desire that I would bestow on you, more than all others, I would bestow upon you the hunger for God.

"Blessed are they that hunger." Hunger is the best thing that ever came into a man's life. Hunger is hard to endure. It is the call of the nature for something that you do not possess. The thing that will satisfy the demands of the nature and the hunger of a man's soul is the call of his nature for the Spirit of life that will generate in him the abundant love of God.

Years ago I was one of a family of which some member was an invalid in the house for thirty-two consecutive years. During that time we buried four brothers and four sisters. A call arose in my nature to God for something to stay that tide of sickness and death. Materia Medica had utterly failed. One after another the tomb stones were raised. The call arose in my soul for something from God that would stem the tide and turn it backward.

Nothing else but healing could have come to my life, no other thing but the knowledge of it. God had to bring from the furthest ends of Australia the man who brought to my soul the message of God and the manifestation of His power that satisfied my heart. And healing by the power of God became a fact to me.

We live that our souls may grow. The development of the soul is the purpose of existence. God Almighty is trying to obtain some decent association for Himself. By His grace He is endeavouring to have us grow up in His knowledge and likeness to that stature where as sons of God we will comprehend something of His love, of His nature, of His power, of His purpose, and be big enough to give back to God what a son should give to a great Father: the reverence, the love, the affection that comes from the understanding of the nobleness and greatness of His purpose.

Great Britain produced two marvellous statesmen, a father and his son. They are known in history as the old Pitt and the young Pitt. The young Pitt was as great a statesman as his father. The son grew to that largeness where, catching the vision of his great father his soul arose to it, and he became his father's equal. As I walked through the House of Commons I came across the statues of the old and young Pitt. I have forgotten the inscription at the bottom of the elder Pitt's statue, but at the base of the son's statue were these words: "My father, the greatest man I ever knew." Do you see the call of his soul for his father's largeness, for his father's nobility, for his father's strength and influence?

"Blessed are they that hunger." Bless God! What are we hungering for a little bit of God, enough to take us through this old world where we will have the dry rot and be stunted and then squeeze into heaven? "Blessed are they that hunger" for the nature and power and love and understanding of God. Why? They shall be filled.

Not long ago I stood before great audiences of the Churchmen of the world. They said, "Through all your ministry there is one note. It is the call for power." They said, "Do you not think it would be better if the Church was calling for holiness instead of power?" And I replied, "She will never obtain the one without the other. There is something larger than holiness. It is the nature of God." The nature of God has many sides. From every angle that the soul approaches God it reveals a new and different manifestation of Him: love, beauty, tenderness, healing, power, might, wisdom, and so on.

So the Christian who hungers and hungers, bless God, and lifts his soul to God brings God down to meet his own cry. The spirit of man and the Spirit of God unite. The nature of God is reproduced in man as God purposed it should be. There are no sick folk in God. There is no sickness in His nature.

There is an incident in the life of Jesus that is so marvellous. Jesus Christ demanded His right to heal a woman who was bound by Satan with a spirit of infirmity, and He was not satisfied until it was accomplished. Devil and Church and creed and preacher went down before the call of the Son of God to assert His right to deliver that soul from sin and sickness. "Blessed are they that hunger."

Christ Liveth In Me

That is the text, "Christ liveth in me." That is the revelation of this Age. That is the discovery of the moment. That is the revolutionising power of God in the earth. It is the factor that is changing the spirit of religion in the world and the character of Christian faith. It is divine vitalisation.

The world is awakening to that marvellous truth, that Christ is not in the heavens only, nor in the atmosphere only, but Christ is IN YOU.

The world lived in darkness for thousands of years. There was just as much electricity in the world then as now. It is not that electricity has just come into being. It was always here. But men have discovered how to utilise it and bless themselves with it.

Christ's indwelling in the human heart is the mystery of mysteries. Paul gave it to the Gentiles as the supreme mystery of all the revelation of God and the finality of all wonder he knew. "Christ in you." "Christ in YOU."

Christ has a purpose in you. Christ's purpose in YOU is to reveal Himself to you, through you, in you. We repeat over and over that familiar phrase, "The Church which is His body," but if we realised the truth of it and the power of it, this world would be a different place. When the Christian Church realises that they are the tangible, living, pulsating body, flesh and bones and blood and brain of Jesus Christ, and that God is manifesting through each one every minute, and is endeavouring to accomplish His big will for the world through them, not through some other body, then Christian service and responsibility will be understood. Jesus Christ operates through you. He does not operate independently of you, He operates through you. Man and God become united. That is the divine secret of a real Christian life. It is the real union, the real conscious union of man and God. There is no substitute for that relationship. You can manufacture all the ordinances on earth, all the symbols there ever were until you become dazed and you lose yourself in the maze of them, and still you must find God.

There is only one reality. That reality is God. The soul of man must contact God, and unless the spirit of man is truly joined to God there is no such thing as real Christian manifestation. All the processes of preparation, by which a soul is prepared by God for such a manifestation, are only preliminary processes. The final end is that man may reveal God and that God may not only have a place of residence but a right action in the body and spirit of man. Every Spirit-taught man in the world is aware of how gradually his own nature has become subjected to God and His will.

I was visiting with a gentleman who had a grouch on me. He said, "I wrote you a twenty-four page letter, and you have not received it. If you had you would not be here." I laughed. That man has been a Christian for thirty or forty years. Always a devout man, and I have spoken of him frequently to my wife and my friends as one of the most consistent Christian men I ever knew. Yet every once in a while we see how the big human just rises up above the spirit and spoils the beauty and delight and wonder of the life that is revealing God.

God's effort and God's purpose in us is to bring all the conditions of our being into harmony with His will and His mind. God's purpose is not to make an automaton. We see a ventriloquist operating a little wooden dummy, and the wooden dummy's lips move and it looks as though it was talking. It is just moving because another power is moving it.

Now God has a higher purpose than making man an automaton. God's highest is to bring out all the qualities of God in your own soul, to bring out all the individuality that is in your life, not to submerge or destroy, but to change it, to energise it, to enlarge it, until all your individuality and personality and being are of the nature and substance and quality of God.

You notice among the most devout Christians how continuously their thought is limited to that place where they can be exercised or moved by God. But God's best is more than that. Receive the Spirit, then use the Spirit for God's glory.

While I was in Chicago I met a couple of old friends who invited me to dinner. While at dinner the lady, who is a very frank woman, said, "Mr Lake, I have known you so long and have had such close fellowship for so many years, I am able to speak very frankly." I said, "Yes, absolutely." "Well," she said, "there is something I miss about you. For lack of words I am going to put it in Paul's words, 'I bear in my body the marks of the Lord Jesus.' You do not seem to have the marks of Jesus." I said, "That depends whether or not it is the marks of mannerisms. If you are expecting that the personality that God gave me is going to be changed so that I am going to be another fellow and not myself, then you will miss it. If that is the kind of marks you are looking for you will not find them. But if you are expecting to observe a man's flesh and blood and bones and spirit and mind indwelt by God, then you will find them, not a machine, not an automaton, or an imitation, but a clear mind and a pure heart, a son of God in nature and essence.

What is all God's effort with the world but to bring out the real man in the image of Christ, that real man with the knowledge of God, that real man reconstructed until his very substance is the substance of God. And when you stop to reason that to its proper conclusion, that is the only way that Jesus Christ Himself or God the eternal Father will have fellowship with man forever.

When one stops to analyse that fact, we see that God is trying to make us in all our nature and being and habits and thought, in all the structure of our life, just as beautiful and just as real and just as clear-minded and just as strong as Jesus Himself. Then we understand what Christ's redemption means. It is the bringing out of Christ IN YOU, until Christ in you is the One manifest: manifest through your eyes just as God was manifest through the eyes of Jesus, manifest through your touch just as God was manifest through Jesus. It is not a power nor a life separate from yourself but two lives made one, two natures co-joined, two minds operating as one: Christ in YOU.

In the Chicago conference I sat with an old coloured lady one afternoon after the meeting, and she told me of her woes and sicknesses, and they were many. After a time when she had grown somewhat still, I said, "Dear Mother, how long have you been a Christian?" She replied, "Since I was a child." Then I tried to show her that God expected a development of God and His nature and the working and action of God in her in transforming power through the agency of the Holy Spirit, and that there was a process of remaking and remoulding that should change her nature and life, and dissolve the rheumatism and Bright's disease and all the other difficulties, just as truly as long ago sin dissolved out of her soul.

After the conversation had gone on to the proper point, I said, "Dear Sister, anybody can see that Christ dwells in your spirit." Her eyes were lovely, delightful. "Let your mind extend just a little bit. Let your thought comprehend that just as Jesus dwells in your spirit and also possesses your soul, in just exactly the same way He is possessing your blood and your kidneys and your old rheumatic bones, and that the very same thing will happen in your bones when you realise that truth as happened in your spirit when you were converted at the altar." (She told me how she had prayed twenty-two days and nights until Christ was revealed in her soul as Saviour. She seemed to want to wait twenty-two days and nights for God to manifest Himself in the rheumatic bones, and I was trying to get her away from it.) She said, "Brother, lay your hands on me and pray for me, and I will be healed." I answered, "No, I want you to get well by realising that right now that same Christ that dwells in your spirit and your soul is in your bones and in your blood and in your brain." Presently the old lady hopped to her feet and said, "My God, He is." She had it. Christ had been imprisoned in her soul and spirit, now He was permitted to manifest in her body.

Brother Tom Hezmalhalch came into a Negro meeting in Los Angeles one day where they were talking about the Baptism of the Holy Ghost. He had picked up a paper and read of these peculiar meetings, and among other things that they spoke in tongues. That was new to him. He said, "If they do, and if it is real, that is an advance in the Spirit of God beyond what is common. I am going to get it." He went, and listened as the old black boy taught. He was trying to develop the thought of conscious cleansing, and he used a beautiful text: "Now ye are clean through the Word which I have spoken unto you." That became very real to Tom, and after a while they were invited to come and kneel at the altar to seek God for the baptism of the Spirit. Tom said unto me, "John, I got up and walked toward that old bench with the realisation in my soul of the truth of the Word, and that the real cleansing and cleanser was in my heart. 'Now are ye clean through the Word which I have spoken unto you.'"

He knelt down and he prayed for a minute or two, his soul arose and his heart believed for the baptism of the Holy Ghost. Then he arose and took one of the front seats. One of the workers said, "Brother, don't stop praying until you are baptised in the Holy Ghost." Mr Seymour said, "Just leave him alone. He has got it. You wait and see." A few days passed, and one day Tom said the Spirit began to surge through him, and a song of praise in tongues, angelic voice, broke through his lips.

An old preacher came into my office in Africa and said, "Brother Lake, there is something I want to talk to you about. There used to be a very remarkable manifestation in my life. It was the manifestation of tongues and interpretation. But I have not spoken for a year. I wish you would pray for me." I said, "No, go over and lie down, and get still and let God move in your life." I went on writing a letter. Presently I observed that something wanted to speak in me, and I turned my head just a little to see that the old man was speaking in tongues and I was getting the interpretation of it as I wrote the letter.

Don't you know Christians are stumbling every day over that fact. You are doubting and fearing and wondering if Christ is there. Beloved brother and sister, give Him a chance to reveal Himself. He is there. Probably because of your lack of realisation your soul is closed and He is not able to reveal Himself. You know God is never able in many to reveal Himself outside of the spirit or soul. The real secret of the ministry of healing is in permitting the grace of God in your heart to flow out through your hands and your nerves into the outer life. That is the real secret, and one of the greatest works God has to perform is to subject our flesh to God. Many Christians, the deepest Christians who really know God in their spirits and enjoy communion with God, are compelled to wait until there is a process of spiritualisation takes place in their bodies before God can reveal Himself through them. Do not imprison Christ in you. Let Him live, let Him manifest, let Him vent through you.

There is one great thing that the world is needing more than anything else, and I am convinced of it every day I live. Mankind has one supreme need, and that is the LOVE of God. The hearts of men are dying for lack of the love of God. I have a sister in Detroit. She came over to Milwaukee to visit us for two or three days at the convention there. As I watched her moving around, I said, "I would like to take her along and just have her love folks." She would not need to preach. You do not need to preach to folks. It is not the words you say that are going to bless them. They need something greater. It is the thing in your soul. They have got to receive it, then their soul will open and there will be a divine response. Give it to them: it is the love of God.

You have seen people who loved someone who would not respond. If there is any hard situation in God's earth, that is it, to really passionately love someone and find no response in them.

I had an English friend and was present at his marriage. Some years later he and his wife came to visit our home. He was the cold type of closed up Englishman, and his wife was the warm type. One day as they started out for a walk, I noticed the passionate yearning in her soul. If he would just say something that was tender, something that would gratify the craving of her nature for affection, but he seemed to go along absolutely unconscious of it. After a while they came back from their walk. I was sitting on the front steps. After the lady had gone into the house, I said, "Hibbs, you are a stiff. How is it possible that you can walk down the street with a woman like your wife and not realise that her heart is craving and crying for you to turn around and do something that shows you love her?" He said, "Do you think that is the difficulty? I will go and do it now." And everything subsided while he proceeded to do it.

What is it men are seeking? What is it their hearts are asking for when they are seeking God? What is their soul crying for? Mankind is separated from God. It may not be mountains of sin between you and God at all. It may be that your nature is closed and unresponsive. My! When the real love touch of God is breathed into your soul, what a transformation takes place. There is probably no more delightful thing on earth than to watch a soul praying into God, when the light of God comes in and the life of God fills the nature and that holy affection that we seek from others finds expression in Him.

That is what the Lord is asking from you, and if you want to gratify the heart of Jesus Christ, that is the only way in all the world to do it. You know the invitation is not "Give Me thine head." The invitation is, "My son, give Me thine HEART." That is an affectionate relationship, a real love union in God, a real love union with God. Think of the fineness of God's purpose. He expects that same marvellous spiritual union that is brought to pass between your soul and His own to be extended so that you embrace in that union every other soul around you.

Oh, that is what it means when it talks about being baptised in one spirit, submerged, buried, enveloped and enveloping in the one Spirit of God.

While I was in Milwaukee recently, I went out one morning with Rev. Fockler to make a call on a sick person. We stepped into one of the most distracted homes I have ever been in. A strange condition had developed in one of the daughters, and the household was distressed. They were the saddest group. They were German people. Fockler speaks German. Presently he began to talk to the household. I just sat back and watched. Presently I noticed the faces began to relax and the strain was gone. The girl was apparently insane. She came down the stairs, stood outside the door where she could not be seen except by me. He continued to converse with the family, and as their souls softened and their faith lifted, her eyes commenced to change. She was moved upon by the same Spirit until her nature responded, and in just a little while she stepped into the room. She had tormented that household. Nobody could get near her. She slipped up behind Fockler's chair, stood with her hands on the back of the chair. He understood and disregarded. After a little while she put the other hand on the other shoulder. And in fifteen or twenty minutes we left that home, and there was just as much distinction between the attitude of those dear people when we came in and when we left as between heaven and hell. If hell has a characteristic, it is that of distraction. If heaven has a particular characteristic, it is the presence of God, the calm of God, the power of God, the love of God.

There were days when the Church could club men into obedience by preaching hell to them, but that day has long passed. The world has outgrown it. And men are discovering there is only one way and that is the Jesus way. Jesus did not come with a club, but with the great loving heart of the Son of God. He was "moved with compassion".

This morning I lay in bed and wrote a letter, an imaginary letter to a certain individual. I was getting ready so that when I came down I could dictate the sentences that would carve him right. One of the phrases was, "You great big calf, come out of it and be a man." As I lay there I got to thinking, "If Jesus was writing this letter, I wonder what He would write?" But somehow it would not frame. My soul was not in an attitude to produce such a letter. So I came down this morning and called Edna and commenced to dictate, and I was trying to dictate a letter in the Spirit of Jesus. Presently I woke up to the fact that I was putting the crimp into it like a lawyer. After she had written it and laid it down for me to sign, I commenced to read it over. It was not what I wanted to write at all. The first two paragraphs had a touch of the right spirit but that was all. So I laid it aside. Then I went in and prayed a little while. After I had been praying for twenty minutes, the telephone rang. It was that fellow. He wanted me to come down to the Davenport Hotel. We had three of the best hours without being aware of the time.

We boast of our development in God; we speak glowingly of our spiritual experiences, but it is only once in a while that we find ourselves in the real love of God. The greater part of the time we are in ourselves rather than in Him. That evidences just one thing, that Christ has not yet secured that perfect control of our life, that subjection of our nature, that absorption of our individuality, so that He is able to impregnate it and maintain it in Himself. We recede, we draw back, we close up. We imprison our Lord.

The secret of a religious meeting is that it assists men's hearts to open. They become receptive, and the love of God finds vent in their nature for a little while, and they go away saying, "Didn't we have a good time? Wasn't that a splendid meeting?"

I wonder if there is anything that could not be accomplished through that love of God. Paul says there is not. "Love never faileth." That is one infallible state. Try it on your wife, try it on your children, try it on your neighbours.

Ah, sometimes we need to get things over on to the bigger love, the greater heart. It is a good thing to detach your soul. Do not hold people. Do not bind people. Just cut them loose and let God love them. Don't you know we hold people with such a grip when we pray for them that they miss the blessing. Why, you have such a grip on your humanity that it is exercising itself and the spirit is being submerged. Let your soul relax and let the Spirit of God in you find vent. There is no substitute for the love of God. "Christ in you." Oh, you have the capacity to love. All the action of the Spirit of God has its secret there.

I stood on one occasion by a dying woman who was suffering and writhing in awful agony. I had prayed again and again with no results. But this day something just happened inside of me. My soul broke clear down, and I saw that poor soul in a new light. Before I knew it I reached out and gathered her in my arms and hugged her up to my soul, not my bosom. In a minute I knew the real thing had taken place. I laid her back down on the pillow. In five minutes she was well. God was waiting on me until He could get to my soul the sense of that tenderness that was in the Son of God.

That is the reason that His Name is written in imperishable memory. And the Name of Jesus Christ is the most revered Name in earth or sea or sky. And I am eager to get in that category of folks who can manifest the real love of God all the time.

The real Christian is a SEPARATED man. He is separated forever unto God in ALL the departments of his life. So his Body, so his Soul and his Spirit are forever committed to God the Father. From the time he commits himself to God, his BODY is as absolutely in the hands of God as his spirit or his soul. He can go to no other power for help or healing.

An hundredfold consecration takes the individual forever out of the hands of all but God.

"Ye are not your own."

Discernment

1 Corinthians 12:8-12

My first great interest in Africa was stimulated when a child through reading of Livingstone's travels and exploration, and of Stanley finding Livingstone in the heart of Africa, and still more by reading of Stanley's trip across the Continent and down the Congo.

As the years of my boyhood passed, I became conscious of a certain operation of my spirit, which I shall endeavour to describe.

In my sleep, and sometimes during my waking hours, it seemed to me as if I were present in Africa instead of America. At such times I would note the geography of the country, the peculiarities of the landscape, the characteristics of the various tribes of native people. I became deeply sympathetic with effort of the Boers as I watched them endeavouring to establish their republics.

As I reached manhood these excursions in the spirit became more intelligent to me. On one occasion, while in the attitude of prayer, I approached South Africa from the Indian Ocean, and travelled through Zululand over into the mountains of Basutoland. I noted the distinctions of the tribal characteristics as I passed through these states, also the Orange Free State and the Transvaal from Basutoland to Johannesburg. This excursion, projection of spirit consciousness, or whatever it may be termed, occurred during hours of communion with God in prayer.

While meditating and praying while on the sea, on my way to Africa, I would become suddenly conscious of the political conditions of South Africa, would feel the struggles of the various political elements in their contest for supremacy. Then again I would realise the condition of the country financially, and still again see the religious aspects of the nation. I saw the predominating thought that bound the Boer people as a nation to the Dutch Church and the struggles of the civilised native people to attain a religious independence.

While in the spirit I comprehended not only present fact, but my consciousness would project itself into the future so that I saw the train of national events that are yet to take place, also the West coast of Africa, when they had become great commercial seaports, with lines of railways extending up into the Transvaal.

Much of this vision I have seen fulfilled at this writing, namely the uniting of the South African states into a national union (Natal, Orange Free State, Cape Colony and the Transvaal), the great religious upheaval, the settlement of political and financial problems, and so on. I saw the conquest of German Southwest Africa by the British, including some of the battle scenes of the present war there. (World War 1).

No one could realise, unless they had been associated with me in the work in Africa, how thoroughly this knowledge of the conditions in Africa was made to me. This was not the result of reading, for I had read practically nothing of Africa since my childhood.

In travelling through the country after my arrival, there was nothing new. I had seen it all in advance, and could recollect times and circumstances when in my visions of Africa I had visited one city or another.

This knowledge of affairs was of inestimable value to me when I was actually on the ground. Business men and statesmen alike frequently expressed surprise at the intimate knowledge I possessed of conditions in the land, little realising how this knowledge had come to me.

This spiritual consciousness of conditions, or gift of knowledge, continued with me throughout my fist years as President of the Apostolic Church of South Africa.

It was my custom to dictate my letters in the morning before going to my office, or out among the sick, for the duties of the day. At such times, if I wanted to write a letter, for instance to Cape Town, Peitermaritzburg, Pretoria, or some other place, I would bow my head in quiet before God for a few moments. While in this attitude there would be born in my consciousness of the conditions of the Assembly or district, or town, as the case might be. I could see the difficulties the brethren were having there, if any and hundreds of times have written revealing to them an inside knowledge of the conditions among them that they were sure no one knew about.

In the conduct of our native work, this feature was so marked that after a time, an adage grew up among the natives, "You can not fool Brother Lake, God shows him." Many, many times when the natives would come and present perhaps only one side of a matter, I would be able to tell them the whole truth concerning the difficulty.

On one occasion a man came from Robertson, made charges against a brother who was one of the elders in the work there. When he got through I said to him, "Brother, let us bow our heads in prayer." Instantly I seemed to be in Robertson. I observed the assembly, saw the various brethren there, noted their piety and devotion to God. I saw that the condition was almost the reverse as it had been presented. The man, himself, was the trouble maker.

On another occasion a woman came to me several times requesting prayer for her deliverance from drunkenness. I urged upon her the necessity for repentance unto God, confession of her sins, and so on. She assured me many times that she has done all of this. One day she came while I was resting on the cot. My wife brought her into the room. She knelt weeping by the cot. As usual she asked me to pray for deliverance. I said to her, "What about the two hundred and fifty pounds sterling worth of jewellery that you stole from such and such a home?" She threw up her hands with an exclamation of despair, supposing that I would deliver her to the police or tell the party from whom she had stolen it. I calmed her by assurance that as a minister of Christ no one should know from me concerning the matter. I regarded the knowledge as sacred before God because God had revealed it to me in order to assist her out of her difficulty. She was delivered from her drunkenness, and remained a sober woman, working earnestly in the vineyard of the Lord.

Some days afterward, a woman came to me, saying, I have heard that so-and-so (naming the lady of whom I have spoken) has been converted, and I know if she has must have confessed to you that she stole jewellery from my home. I explained to her that even if such a confession had been made, as a minister of Jesus Christ I could not reveal it and would not reveal it.

As we conversed I told her I believed God had sent her in order that we might discuss together the forgiveness of God. I showed her that God expected us to forgive, even as we are forgiven. Indeed, that we are commanded to forgive. The Spirit gave me such a consciousness of the forgiveness of God that as I presented it to her it seemed to flow in liquid love from my soul. She broke down and wept, asking me to pray for her that God would deliver her from her own sins, and establish in her a knowledge and consciousness of His presence and life. She left saying, "Tell so-and-so that as far as the jewellery is concerned, I shall never mention it again. There will be no prosecution, and by the grace of God I forgive her."

My wife possessed the spirit of discernment in a more marked degree than I did, especially concerning difficulties in peoples' lives, particularly regarding those seeking healing. She had the power to reveal the reason they were not blessed of God.

It was my custom in receiving the sick in my office, to let then stand in a line, and I would pray for them, laying hands on each as they passed me. Some would not receive healing, and their suffering would continue. Some would receive healing in part, and some were instantly healed. I would pass those who received no healing into the adjoining room, and when I had finished praying for the multitude, I would bring my wife into the room where these unhealed ones were. She would go close to one, and would say, in substance, "Your difficulty is that at such-and-such a time you committed such-and-such a sin which has not been repented of and confessed." To another perhaps it would be, "God wants you to make restitution for such-and-such an act that you committed at such-and-such a time." To another, "The pride of your heart and the love of the world have not been laid on the altar of Christ."

Upon hearing the inner things of their hearts revealed, many would bow at once and confess their sins to God. We would pray for them again, and the Lord would heal them. Some would go away unrepentant. Some would go through the motions of repentance, but it was not of the heart, and they would not be healed. Thus we were taught to value highly the gift of God of which Paul speaks in 1 Corinthians 12:10, "to another the discerning of spirits."

The Spirit of God is like the bread that the disciples held in their hands. When they broke it and distributed it to the multitudes there was more remaining than when they began. The Spirit of God is CREATIVE, GENERATIVE, CONSTRUCTIVE, and the more you give the more you receive. Jesus laid down a perpetual law when He said, "Give and it shall be given unto you."

The Habitation of God

God has been seeking a habitation a long time. God found a habitation in Jesus Christ, and He became the dwelling place of God. Christ's purpose for the world was that men like Himself should become the dwelling place of God. It was not purposed that Jesus Christ was to be a particular or special dwelling place of God. It was rather purposed that mankind should be just as much a holy and desirable dwelling place of God as Jesus Himself was. The purpose of the Gospel of God was that through Jesus Christ His Son many sons who would be begotten of God, should be begotten of Christ.

Christ's undertaking was to save mankind from their sins and transform them into sons of God like Himself. That is the purpose and work of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ.

In the 15th of 1 Corinthians we read of the consummation of His purpose, that is, the finality, the conclusion of that purpose, when Jesus Himself having subjected all things unto Himself, is Himself also subjected unto the Father, that God may be all in all. There will not be a dissenting voice nor a rebellious heart. The will of God has been received, and as a result of the will of God having been received, there is no longer a necessity for a Saviour, and Jesus Christ in His capacity of Saviour of the world has been completed. His mission is completed.

We are so liable to feel in this great struggle we see about us, and the struggle we recognize in our nature, that there can not possibly be a time of ultimate and final victory of the Lord Jesus Christ in the souls of men.

I want to encourage you, beloved. The Word of God portrays a time and conception of the purpose of Jesus Christ when the world, being redeemed unto Christ, no longer needs the redeeming merit of the Saviour. So Jesus having subjected all things unto Himself is Himself also subjected unto the Father, that God may be all in all.

God is not all in all, and never will be all in all, until the will of God rules in the heart of every man, in the soul of every man, until the redemption of Jesus Christ in its great and ultimate purpose becomes a reality, a finality.

I have always regarded the first and second chapters of Ephesians as two of the most remarkable in the entire Word of God. Perhaps no soul ever visioned the real purpose of God and portrayed it in words with more clearness than did Paul in these two chapters.

In the first chapter he begins by showing us that Jesus fulfilled the purpose of the Father. That as a reward for His consecration to the will of God, his death, resurrection, ascension and glorification, the power of God ruled in His nature, and in very truth He was the Son of God, to whom was committed all power, principalities and powers, Paul says, being subject unto Him.

Then, in the second chapter he begins to make this truth applicable to our own heart, and he undertakes to show us that just as Jesus Christ was dead and in the grave, so mankind, possessed and dominated by the powers of sin and selfishness, have become "dead in sin," that is, senseless to the Spirit of God. And as Jesus was raised from the dead, so He has purposed to lift the veil or could, the obsession or possession of sin, and cleanse the nature of man and unify him with God.

When he reaches this climax he puts it in this terse form: "For to make in himself of twain one new man, so making peace." He shows that the ultimate and final peace that comes to the soul of man comes as the result of a divine union having taken place between Jesus Christ and the Christian soul, and there is no longer any worry or discussion over commandments or ordinances. The soul has risen above them.

It has risen out of the region of commandments and laws, into a government of love. The soul joined to Christ in His divine affection, the spirit of man entering into Christ, the Spirit of Christ entering into man, causes such a transformation that the man becomes a new creature. All his impulses have changed, the ruling of his human nature ceases, and finally he is a son of God.

That is the wonder of the cleansing power and cross of Christ in the nature of man. The wonder is that Jesus purposed to make your heart and mine just as sweet and lovely and pure and holy as His own. That is the reason that He can accept the Christian as His bride. Who could imagine the Christ accepting Christians polluted, defiled, of a lower state of purity or holiness than Himself?

Tongues and interpretation: The Spirit of the Lord says that thus is the wonder of the redemptive power of Jesus Christ revealed to man and in man. Such is the transforming grace that through Him, through His merit, through His love, through His Spirit, the soul of man, cleansed, purified, beautified, glorified, becomes like the soul of Jesus Himself, and man and Christ meet as equals in purity. Blessed be His Name.

If you have felt, dear brother or sister, that you have been a sinner above all that dwelt in Jerusalem, as some did, be assured that the cleansing power of Jesus Christ is equal to your need, and the thoroughness and almightiness of His Spirit's working in you can make you a king and prince, lovely and beautiful, pure of heart and life, like unto Himself.

The triumph of the teacher is always in bringing his student to his own understanding, and even more than that, endeavouring to inspire within the student the possibility of going beyond himself in his search of knowledge and truth. Could we expect of Jesus a lesser purpose than that which we recognize in teachers everywhere? If Jesus is a redeemer, unto what is He to redeem us? What is the ideal, what is the standard to which Christ purposes to bring us? Is the standard less than that which He holds Himself? If so, it would be unworthy of the Son of God. He would not be giving to us the best of His soul.

Verily, the Word of God stands clear in one respect, that the blood of Jesus Christ, His Son, cleanses us from all sin. Bless God. We become clean in our nature, thoroughly infilled by His grace, every atom and fibre of the spirit and the soul and the body of man made sweet and holy, like unto Jesus Himself. Bless God.

Now this marvellous cleansing by the Spirit and power of Jesus Christ is for a definite purpose; it is a definite preparation. When we make an elaborate preparation of any kind, it is that something may follow. So this preparation in holiness and righteousness and truth in the nature of man by Jesus Christ, the Word declares, is that there may be a fitting climax; the climax is, THAT MAN MAY BECOME THE DWELLING OF GOD.

God demands a holy temple in which His holiness and through which His holiness may be revealed. Consequently it becomes a matter of necessity to the Lord Jesus Christ that if He is to reveal Himself in a hundred-fold measure through the Church to the world, He must have the ability to cleanse the Church and present her, as the Word portrays, "without spot or wrinkle or any such thing." Blessed be the Lord. She must be pure as Jesus is pure, beautiful within, beautiful without. The scars and wrinkles must disappear. So Christ will receive the really Christ-cleansed Church as His own virgin, the Bride. Blessed be the Lord.

The wonder of the grace of God is revealed in that, though we have sinned, though we have become polluted, though in our soul life we have practiced adultery with the spirit of the world, until the nature of the world has entered into our nature and soiled it and made it unlike the nature of Jesus Christ: and the wonder of His grace is revealed in that He receives us, cleanses us, purifies us, saves us, and being thus redeemed and cleansed by the Spirit of Christ, we stand sweet and lovely and holy in His presence, prepared to be His bride. One in which He can live, with whom He can fellowship, into whose nature He purposes now to come and abide.

If you will study with care the life of the apostles you will observe that there was a process that took place in their lives so thorough and complete that Jesus said unto them, just prior to His departure, "Now ye are clean through the Word that I have spoken unto you."

They had arrived in soul cleansing at the place where by the grace of God, they were prepared for the next experience and higher purpose of Jesus, which was that they might now receive the Holy Ghost. That is, that the Spirit of Jesus Christ might come from heaven to abide in them, and thus-in very truth cause them to become the dwelling place of God.

The purpose of Christ was that not only the twelve, and the hundred and twenty upon whom the Holy Ghost came at Jerusalem, and the Church at Samaria, and the household of Cornelius, should be cleansed and receive the Holy Spirit, but that every son of God should receive a like experience. The Church at Samaria was different from the Church at Jerusalem, in that it was composed of the wandering heathen tribes, and it was different from the household of Cornelius, which were intelligent Romans. But they all in common with all the race became the habitation, of God through the Spirit.

In common with these, the Ephesian elders in Acts 19 who were advanced in righteousness and holiness and entrusted with the care of others as shepherds of the flock likewise received the Spirit of the Lord.

In all these instances then, we see the purpose of God is not only to cleanse a man, but being cleansed to empower him, infill him, indwell him by His own blessed almighty Spirit. The Spirit of Christ present in a holy temple has appeared to reveal Himself through that person, dust as He did through the Lord Jesus Christ.

If we study the manner by which the Spirit of God revealed Himself through Jesus, then we will have the pattern or example of how the Spirit of God reveals Himself through all believers all the time.

The Spirit of God spoke through Him, the word of love, the word that brought conviction, the word of power. Through His nature there flowed a subtle something that no religionist but Himself and His followers possessed: the living Spirit of the living God, the anointing of the Holy Ghost, bless God, the one characteristic that makes Christianity a distinctive religion forever. It can never be identified with any other. So long as Christianity is dependent on the presence of the Holy Ghost it will remain distinctively the one religion, that of divine power and saving grace.

Prayer: God our heavenly Father, our hearts are asking that since the wondrous provision has been made, that we may seek with all the earnestness that should characterise men and women, for this blessed almightiness, that the cleansing grace and power to be revealed in our own life. May this not be just a beautiful vision tonight, but, oh, Lord, may we receive thee in this moment into our hearts as our Lord, our Saviour, our Redeemer, that the Word of Christ may be accomplished in us, and that in very truth we may look into the face of Jesus, knowing that our souls are cleansed. Amen.

When as a young man I stood in an aisle of the Methodist Church and was introduced to a young lady. As I touched her hand the marvellous moving of our natures was revealed. Presently something from her soul, that subtle something that Christians know and recognize as spirit, her spirit, passed to me, went through my person until presently I realised that my soul had rent itself in affection for that woman, and we never had looked into each others eyes in an intimate way before. From me went that subtle something to her. The result was that we were just as much soul mates and lovers in the next ten minutes as we were in the next seventeen years and had raised a family.

She was a woman of fine sensitive qualities, and she told me later that she had been in the habit of searching a young man's spirit to know if he was pure; but, she said, "In your case, the strange thing was, that my spirit made no such search. I just knew it."

I want to tell you in that matter she was not wrong, for when I was a boy, though I was surrounded by as vile a set of men as have ever lived, I determined in my soul that one day I would look into a woman's soul and tell her that I was pure.

If you held the hand of Jesus tonight, do you suppose your spirit would be capable of searching His soul to know whether He was pure? No, instinctively something in that purer spirit would cause you to know that it was your Lord.

Then I want to ask you on the other hand, suppose the Spirit of Jesus searched our own, what would He discern? That is the question, that is the big question that men are compelled continually to ask of themselves. What would the Spirit of Jesus discern in you? What would the Spirit of Jesus discern in me? Would the Spirit of Jesus be drawn to us, or would we repel Him because of unholiness?

The Word of God lays blessed and splendid emphasis in the fact we need the cleansing power of Jesus to make our spirit pure and sweet and lovely like His own. Then having cleansed us and sanctified us to Himself, then He Himself by the Spirit, the Holy Spirit, comes in to dwell in our nature and take up His eternal abiding and residence in us. This we welcome, bless God, the HABITATION OF GOD through the Spirit.

I sat one day on the platform of a great tabernacle in the presence of ten thousand persons who had collected to hear me preach. I had received a promise from God the night before for that occasion. The Spirit of the Lord had given in His own words an outline of the history of man's nature from the creation to the redemption and empowering by the Spirit of God. But the anointing from heaven that would make possible the presentation of such an ideal, and make it acceptable to the hearts of thousands who listened, had not yet come.

Presently from the soul of an old gentleman next to me, as I sat praying, I was conscious of the Spirit falling about me until my nature was overcome by it. I had difficulty to maintain my seat, waiting for the preliminaries to be finished so that I could get a chance to deliver the message.

That man became the agency of divine transmission of the Spirit of God to me, just the same as Jesus Christ was the agency of divine transmission, through which the Spirit of God was imparted to the people of His day.

Such is the marvel of the nature of man united to the Lord Jesus Christ, when all the abundant fullness, the ABUNDANT FULLNESS of His holy nature may come to you and me when our temple has been prepared to receive Him.

Beloved, if you have been getting along with an ounce of healing, bless your soul, if you have been getting along with a limited measure of blessing in your daily life, let me encourage you that the fountain will not be exhausted when your spirit is filled with the overflow.

The Spirit of God is like the bread that the disciples held in their hands; when it became filled with the Spirit of God it multiplied in their hands. When they broke off some there was more remaining than when they began. The Spirit of God is creative, generative, constructive, and the more you give the more you receive. There must be a great opening in the nature of man in order that he may be a large receiver, and the strangeness of it is that it depends upon whether you are large givers. Nothing like it in the world. It is a violation of every law of man, but it is the common law of the Spirit. Why? Because the Spirit, unlike other things, is creative. It grows, it magnifies in your soul, it multiplies as you distribute it to another.

So Jesus laid down a perpetual law: "Give and it shall be given unto you good measure, pressed down, shaken together and running over, so shall men give into your bosom."

In my experience of twenty-five years of healing ministry, I have known very few instances of a person being healed when they approached you with such words as these: "If I am healed, I will give the Church so much." or "I will make a large donation." You see the reason is that the Spirit is not received at that place. We are just entering into a knowledge of the law of Jesus Christ: "Give and it shall be given unto you." God tried through the Mosaic Law to demonstrate to man kind that the way of blessing was the way of giving. See old Isaac when he approached God, coming with his lamb or dove in his hand, or whatever the sacrifice was that he was about to offer on his behalf.

But beloved, Christianity has a deeper revelation of the same truth. We come, not with a dove, nor a lamb, nor a goat, nor a heifer. No we come with our LIFE, we come with our nature, we come with our all, offering it to the Lord. Not bargaining with Him, not endeavouring by a shrewd bargain to obtain the blessing. That is the reason many a soul loses its blessing. Quit it.

Very rarely have I known people to miss the blessing of God when they came openly, saying, "I desire to receive; I want to give." Their spirit, their nature has come into harmony with God's law, "Give and it shall be given unto you." Don't you know that is the secret of all affection between man and man, between the sexes. Men are not always seeking for some one to love them: they are seeking for some one that they can love. When two souls are seeking for the one they can love there is a union, and the world very gradually is learning that there are real marriages. There is a union of spirit so indissoluble that nothing on earth or in heaven will ever sunder them.

Christ is seeking for the soul that will receive His love, and the Christian, the real one, is seeking for the Christ who will receive his love. Bless God. Both are practicing the unalterable law of God, "Give, and it shall be given unto you."

Frequently we observe that sympathy becomes the door through which affection enters lives. I once talked with a nurse, and I asked her what the hardest thing in a nurse's life was. She said, "If you remain a woman and do not become steeled in your nature and hardened in your affections, you will find it most difficult to keep from permitting your affections to follow your sympathy."

And over and over, as a law of life, a woman will nurse a man, and before she is through she will love him. Why? Because sympathy for him has opened the door of her nature, and unconsciously has flowed out in affection to him.

There is a thing that is dearer to God than anything else, and the only thing that is worth while. It is the same thing that is dearer to every man. That thing is the affection of your heart.

You can see your son rise to a place of eminence and respect in the world, and yet he will disappoint your soul. Why? Because the soul of the real father is seeking something besides that. He is seeking the affection of the son, and if he fails to receive it, all the rest is barren.

Christ is seeking the affection of mankind, the union of their spirit with His, for without their affection there can never be that deep union of the spirit between God and man that makes possible a richness of life, made glorious by His indwelling. That is why the love of God is held forth in the Word as the one supreme attraction to draw the soul of man in returned affection.

And you can give to your Lord your money and your property and your brain, and all the other things that are usually considered to be very excellent, but if you withhold your affections from Him and give them to another, the Word says you are an adulterer.

Prayer: Our Father, teach us to love thee, teach us dear Lord its value, teach us its power, teach us our spirit's need, my God, in the richness of thy beautiful Spirit all the impoverished nature's need is supplied. In turn, if we can add to thy joy by giving to thee the affection of our heart, Great God, who could withhold? Amen.

So long as religion exists you will never be able to separate real religion from the emotions of the soul. The emotions will be an open door which the Spirit uses to gain access to your life. When you reduce religious life to a science, and take from it the warmth of Christ's affection, you have robbed of its charm and its almighty power.

When we become the habitation of God, God lives in the mind, God lives in the brain, what will be the result? What will we do and what will we say or think? What will be the tenderness of our emotions, of our soul, and what will be the depth of our feeling? What will be the growth of our capacity to love?

When God lives in a man's spirit, the spirit of man reaches out into the boundless, touching the almightiness of God, discerning His nature, appropriating His power, securing His almightiness.

God living in a man's flesh, giving off a vibration of God life, God power: God indwelling his blood, God indwelling his hands, God indwelling his bones and marrow, a HABITATION OF GOD.

A real Christian woman will keep her heart clean and calm, a real Christian man will take a bath as often as he needs it, and a lot of other things. Otherwise he has a poor conception of the Son of God, who inhabits man. He will be beautiful within, beautiful without. You can not retain the dirt and filth and rottenness and Jesus Christ at the same time.

But if there begins a mighty war in your nature, the Spirit of God striving with devils, and God overcomes, then you will understand the power and redemption of Jesus Christ.

I was present in a meeting in Los Angeles one time, when the Spirit fell on a man and he fell prostrate on the floor, and a group of friends gathered around. That man would fight like a mad dog until he would actually swear. In the next two or three minutes that spirit would be overpowered by the Spirit of God, and he would pray like a saint and cry for help. Again that evil spirit would come into-evidence.

The brethren said, "Mr Lake, why don't you cast the devil out?" I replied, "There is someone else at that job." So we sat until four in the morning. At two-thirty the evil spirit departed and the glory of God broke forth, and the worship of the soul when he recognized his Lord was wonderfully sacred. The man arose, transformed by the indwelling of the living God.

Beloved, I want to say that if any unholiness exists in the nature, it is not there by the consent of the Spirit of God. If unholiness exists in your life it is because your soul is giving consent to it, and you are retaining it. Let it go. Cast it out, and let God have His way in your life.

Prayer: God my Father, as we kneel tonight, some may feel and do feel the Spirit of God coming in to overpower and cast out every unholy thing. Lord God we are glad that Thou hast made this divine provision for our deliverance. We would be Thine. We would be Thine alone. We would be Thine forever and forever. It is not that we may get to heaven when we die. We put away that littleness and that selfishness from our souls; and it is not, Lord God, that we may escape from punishment, for God we have put away that devilish littleness.

We would be Thine because it is worthy of a son of God to be like his Lord. We would be Thine because we have desired to join our hands and hearts in the biggest thing the world ever knew, the REDEMPTION OF THE RACE TO GOD FOREVER. My Father God, with such a vision we look to thee, asking that by thy grace thou wilt cleanse our hearts and make us indeed the dwelling place of God. Amen.

The triumph of the Gospel is enough to make any man the wildest kind of an enthusiastic optimist.

Man in God and God in man: one mind, one purpose, one power, one glory. The unifying of the nature of man and God is the crowning achievement of Jesus Christ.

The Ministry of Healing and Miracles

Divine healing is scientific.

Atonement through the grace of God is scientific in its application. Jesus used many methods of healing the sick. All were scientific. Science is the discovery of how God does things.

Jesus laid His hands upon the sick in obedience to the law of contract and transmission. Contact of His hands with the sick one permitted the Spirit of God in Him to flow into the sick person.

The sick woman who touched His clothes found that the Spirit emanated from his person. She touched the "hem of His garment" and the Spirit flashed into her. She was made whole. This is a scientific process.

Paul, knowing this law, laid his hands upon handkerchiefs and aprons. The Bible says that when they were laid upon the sick they were healed, and the demons went out of those possessed. Materialists have said this was superstition. It is entirely scientific.

The Spirit of God emanating from Paul transformed the handkerchiefs into "storage batteries" of the Holy Spirit power. When they were laid upon the sick they surcharged the body, and healing was the results. (Read Acts 19:12)

This demonstrates firstly that the Spirit of God is a tangible substance, a heavenly materiality. Secondly, He is capable of being stored in the substance of cloth as demonstrated in the garments of Jesus or the handkerchiefs of Paul. Thirdly, He will transmit power from the handkerchiefs to the sick person. Fourthly, His action in the sick man was so powerful the disease departed. The demonised were also delivered. Fifthly, both the sick and the insane were delivered and healed by this method.

Men received Jesus Christ into their hearts, as one receives a lover. It is an affectionate relationship. Men obey Him because they have received Him affectionately. He has become their soul's lover.

His love and power in them redeems them from sin and sickness, and eventually, we are promised in His Word, He will redeem us from death also. Redemption from sin, sickness, and death constitutes man's deliverance from bondage to Satan and his kingdom, and establishes the Kingdom of Heaven.

Jesus called his twelve disciples and commanded upon them power an authority to cast out devils and heal disease (Luke 9). He superseded this by declaring, "If ye shall ask ANYTHING in My name it shall be done." (John 14:14)

The first was a limited "power of attorney." The second was unlimited. This unlimited "power of attorney" was authorised before His crucifixion. It was to become effective when the Holy Ghost came. (Luke 24:49 and Acts 1:8)

On the day of Pentecost this "power of attorney" was made fully operative. The Spirit came. First, legally; they had His Word; then, vitally; He sent His Spirit.

Peter and John instantly grasped the significance of the Name. Passing into the temple they met a beggar-cripple. He was 40 years old, and had been crippled from birth. Peter commanded, "In the Name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth, rise up and walk." Heaven's lightning struck the man. He leaped to his feet, whole.

A multitude rushed up. They demanded, "in what name, by what name, by what power have ye done this?" Peter and John replied, "In the Name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth, whom ye slew, whom God raised up."

Matchless Name! The secret of power was in it. When they used the name, power struck. The dynamite of heaven exploded.

Peter and John were hustled to jail. The Church prayed for them in "the Name." The entire Church prayed that signs and wonders might be done. How did they pray? In "the Name." They used it legally. The vital response was instantaneous. The place was shaken as by an earthquake. Tremendous Name!

Jesus commanded, "Go into all the world." What for? To proclaim that Name. To use that Name. To baptise believers. How? In the Name (His authority: what He commanded). Amazing Name! In it was concentrated the combined authority resident in the Father, the Son and the Holy Ghost. Almighty Name!

The apostles used the Name. It worked. The deacons at Samaria used the Name. The fire flashed. Believers everywhere, forever, were commanded to use it. The Name detonated around the world.

More Bibles are sold today than any other one hundred books. Why? The Name is in it. It is finality. At the Name of Jesus, every knee shall bow and every tongue confess! Prayer in this Name gets answers. The Moravians prayed. The greatest revival till that time hit the world.

The grace and love of God in the soul opens the nature to God. Then they asked of the blind man, "What do you think of Him?" He replied, "He is a Prophet."

Later Jesus found him and said to him, "Dost thou believe on the Son of God?" The man asked, "Who is He, Lord, that I might believe on Him?" Jesus answered, "I that speak unto thee am He."

The struggle of the centuries has been to free the soul from narrow interpretations. Jesus has sometimes been made to appear as a little bigot, sometimes as an imposter. The world is still waiting to see Him as He is, Jesus the Magnificent, Jesus the giant, Jesus the compassionate, Jesus the dynamic, the wonder of the centuries.

Take the shackles off of God. Let Him have a chance to bless mankind without limitations.

As a missionary I have seen the healing of thousands of heathen. Thus was Christ's love and compassion for a lost world revealed.

And thus the writer was assisted into the larger vision of a world Redeemer Whose hand and heart are extended to God's big world, and everyman, saint and sinner, is invited to behold and love Him. In one of the letters received from readers, this question is asked: "Why are not all persons healed instantly, as Jesus healed?"

The writer of this letter is mistaken in thinking that Jesus always healed instantly. A case in point is the healing of the ten lepers, "as they went they were cleansed." The healing virtue was administered. The healing process became evident later.

Again, Jesus laid His hands on a blind man, then inquired, "What do you see?" The man replied, "I see men as trees walking." His sight was still imperfect. Then Jesus laid His hands on him the second time "and he saw clearly."

Healing is by degree based on two conditions; first, the degree of healing virtue administered; second, the degree of faith that gives action and power to the virtue administered. "The word did not profit them, not being mixed with faith in them that heard it." (Hebrews 4:2)

The miracles of Jesus have been the battleground of the centuries. Men have devoted their lives in an endeavour to break down faith in miracles. More believe in miracles today than ever before.

Psuedo-science declares miracles impossible. Yet the biggest men in the scientific world are believers in the supernatural and know that miracles are the discovery, the utilisation of which the material scientist knows nothing.

The miracle realm is man's natural realm. He is by creation the companion of the miracle-working God. Sin dethroned man from the miracle-working realm, but through grace he is coming into his own.

It has been hard for us to grasp the principles of this life of faith. In the beginning, man's spirit was the dominant force in the world. When he sinned his mind became dominant. Sin dethroned the spirit and crowned the intellect. But grace is restoring the spirit to its place of dominion. When man comes to realise this, he will live in the realm of the supernatural without effort.

No longer will faith be a struggle, but a normal living in the realm of God. The spiritual realm places man where communion with God is a normal experience. Miracles are then his native breath. No one knows to what extent the mind and the spirit can be developed.

We have been slow to come to a realisation that man is a spirit and his spirit nature is his basic nature. We have sought to educate him along educational lines, utterly ignoring the spiritual, so man has become a self-centred, self-seeking being.

Man has lost his sense of relationship and responsibility toward God and man. This makes him lawless. We can not ignore the spiritual side of man without magnifying the intellectual and the physical. To do this without the restraint of the spirit is to unleash sin and give it dominance over the whole man.

There must be a culture and development of the spiritual nature to a point where it can enjoy fellowship with the Father God. It is above mind, as God is above nature.

Man's intellect is ever conscious of supernatural forces that he can not understand. He senses the spirit realm and longs for its freedom and creative power but can not enter until changed from self and sin --the spirit enthroned and in action rather than the intellect-- spirit above BOTH MIND AND MATTER.

The Life of God, the Spirit of God, the nature of God, are sufficient for every need of man. In the highest sense of the word, he is the real Christian whose body, soul and spirit alike are filled with the Life of God.

Healing in any department of the nature, whether spirit, soul or body, is but a means to an end. The object of healing is health, abiding health of body, soul and spirit. The healing of the spirit unites the spirit of man to God forever. The healing of the soul corrects psychic disorder and brings the soul processes into harmony with the mind of God. And the healing of the body completes the union of man with God when the Holy Spirit possesses all.

The Secret of Power

Luke 24:49 and Acts 1:8

He is risen, He is risen! Hear the cry

Ringing through the land, and sea and sky.

'Tis the shout of victory, triumph is proclaimed

Heralds of God announce it, Death's disdained.

Shout the tidings! Shout the tidings! Raise the cry.

Christ's victorious, Christ's victorious can not die,

For the bars of death He sundered, Satan sees that he has blundered,

As the shouts of angels thundered, "He's alive!"

Catch the shout, ye earth-born mortals, let it roll,

Till it echoes o'er the mountains from the centre to the poles

That the Christ of earth and Glory death has conquered.

Tell the story, He's the Victor! He's the Victor! So am I.

For this reason that my ransom He has paid,

I've accepted His atonement on Him laid,

He, the Lamb of God that suffered all for me,

Bore my sins, my griefs, my sickness on the tree.

I am risen, I am risen from the grave,

Of my sins, my griefs, my sickness, and the waves

Of the resurrection life, and holy power

Thrill my being with His new life every hour.

Now the lightnings of God's Spirit burn my soul,

Flames of His divine compassion o'er me roll,

Lightning power of God's own Spirit strikes the power of hell.

God in man, Oh Glory! Glory! all the story tell.

I have proved Him, I have proved Him. It is true,

Christ's dominion yet remaineth, 'tis for you,

Let the fires of holy passion sweep your soul.

Let the Christ who death has conquered take control.

He will use you, He will use you. Zion yet has Saviours still,

Christ the Conqueror only waiteth for the action of your will.

Given in tongues by the Holy Ghost to John G. Lake, at 2 a.m. June 18th, 1910. Cookhouse C. C. South Africa

Sin in the Flesh

I want to bring you tonight a message taken from Romans 8:3. (1 Corinthians 6:18-20 and Matthew 15:16-20) I will read you the first verse:

"There is therefore now no condemnation to them which are in Christ Jesus, who walk not after the flesh, but after the Spirit. For the law of the Spirit of Life in Christ Jesus hath made me free from the law of sin and death. For what the law could not do, in that it was weak through the flesh, God sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh, and for sin, condemned sin in the flesh."

For a long time I wondered what these two expressions meant --sin in the flesh-- in the second verse. "For the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus hath made me free from the law of sin and death." And then what it meant about that God condemned sin in the flesh.

In the first place, we know that the physical body does not commit sin. It may be the instrument or weapon that does the thing, but there is no sin in the physical body itself. Sin lies in the will. If you choose to sin, then you can make your body do it. Now according to law there isn't any sin except it is performed by a physical act. You can think murder as much as you are a mind to: you are not a murderer in the sight of the law because you thought it. If you speak murder, that lays you liable; but the law recognises nothing that has not been translated into conduct, into an act.

Now there isn't any sin in your physical body, there is nothing wrong with your body. Your body is all right. It is you, the hidden man of the heart, that makes the body do things that are unseemly and are wrong. Then what does He mean by sin in the flesh? For a long time that bothered me. I think I have found a key to it in the 11th verse of this chapter, because it is all one argument.

"But if the Spirit of Him that raised up Jesus from the dead dwell in you, He that raised up Christ Jesus from the dead shall give life also to your mortal bodies by His Spirit that dwelleth in you."

He is not talking about the resurrection. He is talking about giving life, healing life, to our physical bodies. Our physical bodies don't need life unless they are sick, do they? That is the conclusion of the argument of Romans 8:1-11; that is a progressive single argument. What is he talking about? He is talking about disease and sickness and the sin that is in the flesh is the sin of a broken law in your body.

Now sin is breaking the law, some kind of law, and sin in the body is breaking a law of the body. Disease then is disease isn't it? Make it two words: dis-ease, broken law, wrecked ease, ease that has been destroyed. Ease is health. Dis-ease is sickness. There are three kinds of sickness; sickness in the body, sickness in the soul, and sickness in the spirit. The basic sickness is spirit sickness, I venture this; that if you could be healed in your spirit, every last one of you would be well in your bodies. But the whole problem is cleaning a man up in his spirit. Let me change it to business. If you can become a successful salesman in the spirit, you will put your bodies over. Do you know the place you are whipped first is not in your mind, not in your body. You say, "Oh, my body is so tired." Your body is tired the moment that the spirit is discouraged. Your body breaks down under it. As long as your spirit is triumphant you are a victor and go right on. A man is defeated only when he is defeated in his spirit. Let a man lose courage: and courage is not a product of the intellect. When he loses courage he is whipped, and the only way to put the man on his feet again is to renew a right spirit within him. That isn't the Holy Spirit; it is to renew the spirit that has been defeated and conquered, whipped.

Healing then is in three planes, isn't it? Spirit healing, soul healing, body healing. Basically, the sick person that is sick in body has been sick in spirit quite a little while likely, and after awhile it has gotten down into the soul, and passed through that into the body.

I can not tell you, brethren, what this truth I am telling you now has meant to my life. I now can trace every physical change in my body to a spiritual condition. My body responds to my spirit.

Now beloved, I want to give you something that is of infinite value. Just to illustrate it, I was called to a home to see a man 82 or 83 years of age, day before yesterday. He has been sick now two years. He had blood poisoning in his teeth and it went through his whole body, and when a man is past 80, it is bad you know. I went into his presence with a well spirit, a conquering spirit. Now I didn't think of this when I went there. When I went back today I saw the effect. I was there with a triumphant, victorious spirit. His spirit caught the contagion from me. He was whipped. He had sat there in that chair until he was whipped, just defeated. Well, I sat down by his side and began to open the Scriptures, and something in me --this is perfectly Scriptural-- out from your inner life, that is, your spirit, that is the inner being, shall flow rivers of living water. Out from my spirit went into his spirit healing for his spirit. I didn't see it because he is a Scotchman, very reticent, didn't respond much; but I knew in me that it had gone into him. I knew that. I talked to him a little while and opened the Word, and then prayed for him and left. This afternoon his beautiful, lovely, motherly wife, a woman along in years, called me up and said, "He wants to see you again. He is going to come down to the hotel to see you, because he doesn't think it is right to ask you to come away up here." Think of that, will you. I said, "No, I will go up." When I went into his presence this afternoon I carried into his presence --I discovered it in myself immediately after I left the house-- that I had carried into his presence health in my own mind, in my spirit. I had carried a dominating, victorious spirit, and that man responded to it. Do you know what happened? Before I left the house I saw the reactions in his physical body. Things had happened in his body. While I sat there and prayed for him his spirit had become adjusted: the spirit in me received its health from the Lord and I communicated something to his spirit and his spirit made contact. Just as you press the button and turn on light, you contact with God's Spirit, and when it did, healing came down into his body. Why he changed his whole outward demeanour, changed everything about him.

I have been defeated, and I am full of defeat, and that corroding defeat has come down over me and I have lost out; I have broken connection. Did you ever see a battery in an auto corroded with something, and it had eaten off the wires, and the starter didn't move. What is the matter? Something corroded there. You should have kept that clean.

Corroding cares come and get in around your spirit life, and it just covers you and breaks your connection with the Lord. This is true. The real first healing is the healing of your spirit, getting your spirit adjusted to the Lord. The spirit is the part that contacts the Lord. If the spirit is out of harmony and out of condition, and is sort of broken down, you can't get faith for healing, can you? No, you must become adjusted to the Lord.

I said to a young man a little while ago, he was in a desperate condition, required a first-class miracle to touch his life at all, I sat by his side and I said, "If you will accept Jesus Christ as your Saviour and confess Him as your lord, and you receive eternal life, you are healed." He said, "What do you mean?" I said, "Just the moment you are born again you are healed." I have never been afraid to promise that to any unsaved person. Why I didn't know that for years. Now I can tell you, the simplest thing in the world, the moment they are born again, eternal life comes into their spirit. That spirit then can come into the closest relationship with the Father, the great Healer, and the life of God then pours down into his spirit, and soul, into his body, and he is immediately touched and made whole.

You can not get healing for the body, as far as you are personally concerned, somebody else's faith may, but until your spirit is right you can not get healing for your body. May I call your attention to another thing? Faith is a product of your spirit, not of your intellect. Your intellect does not produce faith. Your knowledge may give you ground for faith, but faith is resident in your spirit.

Joy is something in your spirit. Happiness is something connected with your surroundings. You are happy because of your surroundings. You are joyful because you are in right relation with the Father. Now faith, love, joy, hope, all spring from your spirit being, the hidden man of the heart, all are products of your spiritual life. The reason people do not have rich beautiful faith is because their spirit is denied the privilege of communion and fellowship with the Father. You understand me? You don't read your Bible; you don't pour over it; you don't live in it; you don't spend any time in fellowship with the Father. Consequently your spirit is depleted and weakened. Faith springs out of it, and the faith that grows out of it is a sickly plant. On the other hand, your spirit life is fruitified and built up and enriched by communion with the Father and by reading His Word. And your spirit becomes strong and vigorous, there issues from it a faith that is triumphant and creative. I venture to say this; that the men and women who are weak in faith, that once were mighty in faith, are so because they have stopped feeding on the Word of God, and stopped close intimate fellowship with the Father.

Let me say to you with all frankness, brother, that you can not lose your faith until you have broken your fellowship. Just as long as your fellowship is rich and your spiritual life is at flood tide, faith is triumphant. I have followed that in my own life. For years I did not understand the law that governs it. I see it now. You see here is the thing that is mightily important, that the spirit life in man kept healthy and vigorous, and it is kept healthy and vigorous by three exercises. There are more ways, but three in particular.

One is feeding on the Word. Second, is a CONTINUAL PUBLIC CONFESSION of what you are and what Jesus is to you. I am not talking of sin; I mean confession of your faith in Christ, of what Christ is to you, of His fullness, His completeness, and His redemption. And the third thing is COMMUNION WITH HIM. Feeding on the Word, Confession, and Communion. Three simple things, aren't they? And yet they are the things that produce great spiritual life. You do not have it without them.

There are three planes of healing: spiritual, mental and physical. Now just for a bit I want to call your attention to another very important fact: the relation of your body to your spiritual life. Paul said, in the 9th chapter of 1st Corinthians, that he kept his body under, lest haply after he preached to others, he himself would be laid aside, not lost, but laid aside, no longer useable. Why? Because his body had gained the ascendancy over his spiritual life. If you become a glutton, and just live to gratify your appetite by eating and drinking, you will lose out spiritually. But if you will keep your appetite under control and your body under like Paul says he did, your spirit will have a chance to evidence itself.

Now let me state it again. You may be a great spiritual athlete, you may have been a great spiritual athlete, but somewhere you have stopped feeding on the Word. The Word lost its taste and flavour for you. You say, "How can it be?" It is. I know of preacher after preacher that had great power at one time, but they have lost all joy in the Scripture. How do I know? Well, I know by the way they act. When a man loves a woman, he wants her with him, doesn't he? He doesn't care to go off and spend evenings alone. And when a man loves his Bible you will find the Bible with him, in his arms, somewhere. He has gotten hold of the thing. He is holding it.

When I find a man along in years and his hair is growing grey, and I find he loves his Bible, I know that man is fresh in his spirit life. One of the mightiest men I ever fellowshipped with in my life in prayer, when he and I would be together in prayer, sometimes I would open my eyes and look at him, and he would be on his knees with his Bible and kissing it. Didn't want anyone to see him. Thought my eyes were closed. He was holding it just as a man holds his wife in his arms and kisses and embraces her, kisses and loves her.

Whenever I reach a place where I lose my appetite for the Book, and rather talk with people than read the Bible, or rather read books about the Bible than to read the Bible, then I know I am backslidden in my spirit.

You can trace the downfall of every spiritual giant that I have ever known in my life to these three things. One of the greatest men this country ever produced, I heard him when that Book was in his hand, when he preached like this, he drove me to my knees; every time I would hear him I would go out and get alone and pray if I could possibly do it. He just battered me and hammered me and drove me into my hole, so to speak; or else he filled me and thrilled me and lifted me. I saw him 20 years later, when his name was on the lips of every man, and I heard him preach, and I noticed that he quoted a good many Scriptures, but he never picked up his Bible; and I noticed he had a theory and philosophy of redemption instead of the old time simple exposition of the Word. And I saw that man whose name was known in every part of the world, with something like 60 Churches back of him, in a building that seated 3500, and the building was not half full. He had the greatest gospel soloist that this country has ever produced, but the meeting was dry and dead as any formal service imaginable. They utterly failed. I said to the singer, who left that field and came with me for a campaign or two. I said, "Charley, what is the matter with him?" "Well," he says, "I do not know, but he is no more like the man he used to be than anything in the world." There had no sin come into that man's life; his life was just as clean as it had ever been. But here is how it had come, somehow or other he had broken in his spiritual life with the food of the Spirit, the Bible. And the second thing, he used to have the most marvellous prayer life: he didn't have it any more. And the third thing, in that whole sermon I didn't hear one personal confession. Because he was preaching in a place where personal confession was taboo, people criticised it. If you said anything about yourself and your own experience, the ministers right off the first thing would say, "He is bragging about his own life, isn't he?"

Brother, you will brag about your own life if you have power with God, and you can't help this bragging; you have something to brag about. You really have. You walk in the fullness of the life and fellowship of your spirit with His Spirit, and you have something to talk about, haven't you? Fresh new experiences are coming into you all the time. You are walking in the realm of miracles. I knew that man when he walked in the creative realm of faith. I knew him when he moved down into the purely intellectual realm.

Healing is basically a spiritual thing. The power that heals the sick comes down from God through your spirit, out through your hands into that man or woman. And if you are having the right kind of spiritual fellowship you will have power with God, and there is no escaping it. But listen, brother, you can't get a powerful current of divine life from a little impoverished wire, can you? And you can't get it when the wire where it connects with you is corroded with world cares. Now we call in the electrician and say to him, "I want you to wire my spirit up with God. I want fresh equipment all the way through." Hallelujah.

You say, I will tell you what I want. I want to be able to stand about 10,000 volts. I want to be wired up to God so that the fullness of His power can pour down through me, through my soul, and out through my hands and voice to the people.

How does that come to you? Simplest thing in the world. Your spirit interlocks with His Spirit without any foreign substance intervening. One day my Reo car stopped right in traffic. A young lady sat with Mrs Lake and she said, "Let me try it." She worked the accelerator and it wouldn't work. She said, "Wait a moment." I jumped out of the car and I raised the hood. She said, "I can tell you where it is." She just opened up the distributor, and she said, "One of those points has got a fleck of dirt on it." She brushed it off with her handkerchief and put it on again. The car started right off. That point of the distributor had some little dust, something under it, some little corroding some way that just broke the current and it was a delicate little thing, it didn't take much.

It doesn't take much to break the connection of your spirit and His. God is a Spirit. You are a spirit. And something breaks the connection and the power no longer flows through. You say you want me to pray for you and I pray for you. There is no power. What is the matter? Something has broken the connection. The power comes down through the one who prays, but it can't get through your spirit and touch you. Or, there may be something in my spirit, and His Spirit wants to communicate with your spirit, but is hindered by something in my spirit. But suppose you and I are both right in our spirits. You will get your healing as sure as God sits on His throne. "And if the Spirit of Him that raised up Jesus from the dead dwell in you, He that raised up Jesus Christ from the dead" shall send healing through your spirit into your mortal flesh as sure as God is on His throne.

The second thing that must be done continually is, after you have fed on the Word, and your spirit is open to the truth of confession, you can't bottle God up. You can't lock Him up. It has been God's method throughout all the ages to speak to people through those that are in right relation with Himself, and when you are in right relation with Him, the most normal and natural thing is, that He will use you to communicate Himself to others, and so you act as the medium through which He is to pour His message, by song or by testimony or by prayer or by some other means; but you are His medium, you are His testifier; you are His spokesman, you are His instrument through which He is going to work. Beautiful, isn't it?

Now you see that keeps you in perfect communion, because you have to continually get new messages all the time form Him, so you live in perfect fellowship with Him, feeding on His Word, and telling out the things He does for you. And no Christian is safe that hasn't a NOW experience with the Lord, because sickness can come on you and you have no power to throw it off. You have your NOW experience in your spirit, and you are continually in contact, and the spiritual power is coming down and going back and forth continually. Things are coming down and things are going up, from Him to you and you to Him, down through your spirit. You have a beautiful picture. Angels ascending and descending. It is the thoughts of God coming down and your thoughts going back. He feeding on you, and you feeding on Him.

Now the relation of your body to your spiritual life is almost an unexplored tableland of possibilities. In Romans 6:12, Paul says, "Let not sin therefore reign as God in your death doomed body." Let not sin reign. What is sin? It is disease. He is not talking about sin, because if there is any sin in you it is not in your body. If there is any sin, it is in your spirit or in your soul, isn't it? It is somewhere active in your thinking processes. But he says, "Let not sin reign as God in that death doomed body." Sin is a broken physical law in your body; that is sickness.

I have a boil, and that boil gains the dominion and runs my body, my mind and my spirit, and all I do is to nurse that miserable, throbbing, aching enemy that is in there raising the devil. That is sin in my flesh, and sin has been condemned in the flesh. God condemned the thing, and now sin has broken out in there. What is rheumatism? Sin in the flesh. And sin shall not have dominion over you, in your body for you are no longer under law, but under grace, when your body has become the temple of God. Know ye not your body has become a member of Christ? Shall a member of Christ be made the member of a harlot? That does not necessarily mean a woman who is a harlot as we commonly use the word. It may be money, it may be gluttony, it may be a thousand things; but I have taken my body away from the Lord and the Lord's use, and I have committed it to some other use that should not be. "Let not sin reign in your mortal body as king." Hallelujah. "Neither present your members as weapons of unrighteousness." You turn your body over to be used by doctors to make money out of and surgeons chop you up for a splendid fee.

A woman said to me recently, "My daughter has determined that she will have an operation." I said, "What is the matter with her?" "The doctor doesn't know, but he thinks he ought to explore in there." Did you ever hear of it? And so he is going to cut her open and send in a Livingston in there to explore. Great, isn't it? Then the daughter will go, after she is all wrecked and ruined and she can't get any healing, then she will turn to the Lord. Then she will expect to get her healing without asking the Lord's forgiveness for turning her body over to some man for examination and experimentation. "Know ye not that your body is the temple of God?" Shall I take the temple of God, then, and turn it over to idols and to demons?

That body of yours is God's holy house, God's holy dwelling place. Why, it is the most sacred thing on earth. Now, the temple that God designed and gave to Israel in the wilderness, contained the Holy of Holies, the inner place, didn't it? And in that temple that Solomon was permitted to build for God was the Holy of Holies, for the Shekinah Presence dwelt there. The Shekinah Presence now dwells in your body. Can you imagine, brethren, here a beautiful Church which cost half a million dollars. Everything is in perfect harmony. Wonderful carpets and rugs, wonderful furniture, wonderful decorations and the most up-to-date lighting scheme, everything is perfectly beautiful and artistic. It is just a dream of architectural beauty. They dedicate it to the Lord and go home. They dedicate it on Saturday. Sunday they are going to hold their first services in it, and when they open the door they make the most awful discovery - a horrible stench rushes out to meet them. What has happened? I will tell you. A sacrilegious man opened the door last night and drove a herd of hogs into the sanctuary, and the hogs have been staying in the beautiful edifice during the night.

That is just what we do with these bodies of ours. We have dedicated them to God; and then we let a flock of unclean thoughts come in, and we let disease come in and settle in our bodies until these precious bodies that belong to God are filled with the children of these unclean things. Tuberculosis is the child of a thought; it is the product of a mental and spiritual condition. That is true, that when we are in right communion and fellowship with the Lord there is not power enough in all hell to put disease upon your little finger.

And we have permitted that flock of that dirty, develish herd of swine to come into our bodies and fill them with disease.

Now beloved, let us go into the thing a little bit further. Then the real healing of your life begins in your spirit, doesn't it? Hebrews 7:25; "Wherefore He is able to heal (save) to the uttermost all that come unto God by Him, seeing He ever liveth to make intercession for us."

Now brethren if God is able to heal to the uttermost, then there are no healings that are impossible, are there? Absolutely none. It doesn't make any difference how sick you are, there is healing for you if you are in contact with the Healer. I don't care how beautiful your fixtures are, if out side there, there is one of the fuses blown out, you won't get any light. And the fuse that lets the light of God into you is your spirit, and if that thing is diseased and weak and sickly, you can't get much of a current through it, can you?

A man had a vision. He saw a strange sight. He saw a piece of desert land and sickly flowers and trees growing on it. And he awakened and the picture persisted in following him. The next night he had the same picture come before him again, and it persisted for three nights, and then he said, "Lord, what is this?" And a voice answered, "Don't you know what it is?" And he said, "No, Lord, I don't know that I do." He sat looking carefully at it again, and he could see it, oh, so vividly. He said, "Lord, that is me, myself." And he said, "That desert is myself." And he said, "I can see that faith and love and peace and joy that should grow there are those weak sickly plants. The Lord said, "What would you do if your garden was like that?" He said, "I'd hoe it and cultivate it and irrigate it." And the Lord left him to think it over.

Now if your faith is weak and sickly, it is because your spiritual connection with the Lord is faulty. Maybe there is a fuse blown. Maybe a switch is out. But there it is. Now there must be a right adjustment of the soul to the body, and of soul and body and spirit. Now I am a threefold being, if I want to put it that way. To get the highest results my spirit must be dominant. My soul must be subservient to my spirit. My body must be under the control of my soul. Then when my body and soul and spirit are in rapport, when they are in perfect fellowship with each other, they can bring forth real results, can't they?

"Know ye not that your body is the temple of God?" Now when that comes to pass, then there comes two spirits. There are two spirits in your body now, there was one before. It was a renewed spirit, then the great mighty Holy Spirit came in. Now you have two spirits in your body, and one soul.

Now the Holy Spirit wants to dominate your spirit, and He wants through your spirit to communicate the unveilings of the Father through the Word to your intellect and bring your intellect and your affections up into perfect harmony with His will, and you yield yourself to Him, and you pour over the Book and take it as your own. You read it, you feed upon it, you eat it; more necessary than your daily food. "Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word," and you pour over the Word and you meditate on it, and you get at the heart of the thing, and your spiritual nature grows and develops until it dominates your intellect. But you just read intellectual things, read novels, and cheap stories, and your sickly intellect will absolutely dominate your whole life and break your communion with the Lord and leave your spirit life in darkness.

The way to health is back again to where we belong, isn't it? I venture this: that it is possible to re-build your spiritual life, as you can re-build a broken body. I have told you how many of the great athletes grow strong. One of them I met years ago given up to die of tuberculosis, Another of the great athletes, one of the great wrestlers, was given over to die of tuberculosis at 18. He became one of the outstanding wrestlers in America. What a man can do in his physical body he can do in his spirit, can be done with his intellect. There is absolutely no reason why our spiritual life should not be up to 100% efficiency.

I wish I was keen enough in my spiritual nature, I'd have a blackboard put behind us and I'd have some one come that understood art work. I would look over the audience, and I'd take each one of them, and I'd say to the artist, draw that man's spirit and let me show his spiritual condition, and you would see your spirit up there. If it was weak, sickly, puny thing, you would see it. Do you know some folks, if you could see them when they come in the meeting, their spirits are on a stretcher, emaciated, tubercular, no flesh on it, just a skinny, horrible looking living corpse, and a great big husky body, but the spirit is a shrinking, feeble, emaciated thing, and you come up and say, "What is the matter with me? I don't seem to have any joy with the Lord." Well, a tubercular spirit will have no special joy. "I know I have spiritual discernment." Imagine! I say, "Brother, you have spiritual tuberculosis. Your spirit is emaciated. I don't know whether it will survive the night."

Another comes to me and says, "What is the matter with me?" I look at him carefully for a moment. "Do you want me to diagnose it?" "Yes sir" "You have cancer. Yes sir, it is on your spirit, it is laying siege to the jugular vein of your spirit, and I don't think it will be but a little while before it will finish your spiritual life. It will kill you out right."

Another man says, "I will tell you what ails me." He said, "I will illustrate it, My little boy used to take his money to buy his lunch at the school. Instead of buying lunch, he bought candy and cheap soda water to drink, and he ate pie and cake and ate candy until by and by they found out." The man said, "I found out he would not eat meat, and he wouldn't eat vegetables, and we thought there was something desperately wrong with him, and there was. So we just put a spy on his track and we found out he was buying candy and eating it." Aha.

Now if your spirit has reached the place Where it has no appetite for the things of God, you have been playing hookey. You have been feeding on things that you ought not to eat, and you have compelled your poor spirit to feed on trash and cheap scandal and cheap talk and useless talk, wise cracking and everything, and you have never given your spirit any real healthy food for a long time, and the poor thing is dying of hunger.

Do you understand me now? You can't get your healing until you get your spiritual healing. If you get your healing, you will get it through the doctor's faith, don't you see? And you will lose it again. But if you get it through your own spirit being in perfect fellowship with the Lord, and somebody praying for you likely, or you praying for your self, or else nobody praying for you, you will be able to keep it.

The Doctor told of an experience he had down in Texas where a whole congregation had come, practically all of them for healing, and he said, "You just sit here and listen to me preach, and I won't pray for you at all." He said the largest percentage of that congregation were perfectly healed in just a little while. They came every day for 30 days. At the end of the 30 days there was only about 7% of the whole congregation that was not healed. All they did was get spiritually healed, and when you get spiritually healed, the chances are a hundred to one you will be healed physically. And I want to tell you this, I don't want to hurt your feelings, God bless you, but brother, do you know I have discovered this: there are quite a number of folks that come to be prayed for, and they are healed over and over again. The healing you want is not physical but spiritual. You get right, and get adjusted so you are feeding on the Word, and so you are giving public testimony, and you will be well or in a condition to get well.

The Strong Man's Way to God

Musicians talk of an ultimate note. That is a note you will not find on any keyboards. It is a peculiar note. A man sits down to tune a piano, or any fine instrument. He has no guide to the proper key, and yet he has a guide. That guide is the note that he has in his soul. And the nearer he can bring his instrument into harmony with that note in his soul, the nearer perfection he has attained.

There is an ultimate note in the heart of the Christian. It is the note of conscious victory through Jesus Christ. The nearer our life is tuned to that note of conscious victory; the greater the victory that will be evidenced in our life.

In my ministry in South Africa there was a young lady, one of the most beautiful souls I have ever known. She was baptised in the Spirit when perhaps only seventeen or eighteen years old. One of the remarkable developments in her after her baptism in the Spirit was, that the Spirit of God would come powerfully upon her on occasions, and at such times she would sit down at the piano and translate the music her soul heard. Other times the Spirit would come upon her so powerfully that she would be caused to sing the heavenly music in some angelic language.

God gave her the gift of interpretation, so that quite frequently when the Spirit would come upon her, she would re-sing the song in English, or Dutch as the case might be. Her father and mother were both musicians. They soon learned that when the Spirit thus came upon her, they could record the music. The father would stand at one side and take the words of the song as she sang them, while the mother stood at the other side and recorded the music as she played the music on the instrument. In this way a great deal of the music was preserved.

Some years later, Clara Butts, the great prima dona came to Africa. She was singing at the Wanderers Hall in Johannesburg. One evening after the concert, while being entertained at the hotel, I was introduced to her. She said to me, "Mr Lake, I have been very anxious to meet you, for I have heard that among your people is a remarkable woman who receives music in the Spirit, apparently of a different realm than ours." I said, "Yes, that is a fact." She inquired if it would be possible to meet her and so a meeting was arranged.

One evening, we went to her hotel, and as we sat down, Clara Butts said to the young lady," I wish you would sit down and play some of the music I have heard about." She did not understand that such music only came at such times as the Spirit came powerfully upon the woman. However, the young lady sat down at the piano. I said to the company, "Let us bow our heads in prayer." As we did and waited, presently the Spirit of God descended upon her, and then there poured through her soul some of that wondrous, beautiful, heavenly music. I waited to note the affect on the company. When the song was finished, I looked especially at Clara Butts, who was weeping silently. She arose to her feet, and coming forward to the piano she reached out her hands, saying, "Young lady. That music belongs to a world that my soul knows little about. I pray every day of my life God may permit me to enter. In that realm is the ultimate which my soul sometimes hears, but which I have never been able to touch myself."

Beloved, in the Christian life, in the heart of God, there is an ultimate note. That note which is so fine and sweet and true and pure and good that it causes all our nature to respond to it, and rejoices the soul with a joy unspeakable.

All down through the ages some have touched God and heard that ultimate note. I believe that as David sat on the mountainside as a boy, caring for s father's sheep, God by the Spirit taught him the power and blessing of that ultimate note., I believe at times that his soul ascended into God so that many of the Psalms of David are the real soul note of that blessed expression of heavenly music and heaven consciousness which came into the soul of the shepherd boy.

Mary, the Mother of Jesus, understood that note. I remember when I was a young man in a Methodist Bible Class, which I taught, we were discussing the subject of the Magnificat, that glorified expression which burst from the soul of Mary as she met Elizabeth, when the Spirit came upon her and revealed to her friend that she was to be the Mother of Jesus. In our worldly wisdom we decided of course that the Jewish women of necessity must have been educated to compose that character of poetry spontaneously.

Many a day afterward as I saw the Spirit of God descend upon a soul, and the soul break forth into a song of God, the song of the angels, in a note so high and sweet and pure and clear as no human voice ever had produced perhaps without it, I understood the marvel that was taking place in the soul of Mary when she broke forth into the heavenly expression of that holy song.

"My soul doth magnify the Lord, and my spirit hath rejoiced in God my Saviour," and so on.

It was the Spirit of the Lord. Her spirit had ascended, bless God, into the heavenlies. Her spirit had touched heaven's note. Her spirit was receiving and reproducing the song of joy that she heard, possibly of the angels, or perhaps intuitively from the heart of God.

There is a Christianity, that has that high note in it, bless God. Indeed, Christianity in itself, real Christianity is in that high note of God, that thing of heaven, that is not of earth and is not natural. Bless God, it is more than natural. It is the note of heaven. It comes to the earth. It fills the soul of man. Man's soul rises into heaven to touch God, and in touching God receives that glorified expression and experience into his own soul, and it is reproduced in his own life and nature.

Beloved, there is a victory in God, the victory that characterises the common walk of a high born Christian. It is the strong man's salvation. It is the salvation that comes from God because of the fact that the spirit of man touches the Spirit of God and receives that experience that we commonly speak of as the blessing of salvation from God.

But Beloved, the soul that receives from God into their spirit that heavenly touch, knows, bless God, he does not have to be told by man, he knows by the Spirit of God that he has become the possessor of the consciousness of union with the Spirit of God which has enlightened his heart, filled his soul with holy joy, and caused his very being to radiate with God's glory and presence.

The hunger of my soul for many a long day has been that I might be able to so present that high true note of God, that the souls of men would rise up in God to that place of power, purity, and strength where the presence and character and works of Christ are evidenced in and through them. There can be no distinction between the exercise of the real power of God as seen in Jesus and its reproduction in a Christian soul. There is a purity, the purity of heaven, so high, so holy, so pure, so sweet that it makes the life of the possessor radiant with the glory and praise of God.

During one of the periods of extreme necessity in our great work in South Africa, our finances became cut off for various reasons. I was anxious that there should be no letting down of the work we were then doing, and was trusting that it would not be necessary to withdraw our men, who had laboured and suffered to get the work established on the frontier.

However, not being able to supply funds to those on the front, I deemed it the only wise thing to do to get them all together in a general conference, and decide what was to be our future action. By great sacrifice, a sacrifice too great for me to tell you of this afternoon, we succeeded in bringing in our missionaries from the front for a council. I told them the existing conditions and we sat down in the night time to decide what would be our future policy. After a time I was invited by a committee to leave the room for a minute or two. While I was in the vestry the brethren in the body of the tabernacle continued their conference and went on discussing the general question. When I returned, they said to me, "Brother Lake, we have arrived at a decision." Old Father Van de Wall spoke for the company. He said, "We have reached this conclusion. There is to be no withdrawal of any man from any position. We feel that the time has come when your soul ought to be relieved of responsibility for us. We feel we have weighted your life long enough, but now by the grace of God we return to our stations to carry on our work. We live or die depending on God. If our wives die, they die, if our families die, they die, if we survive we survive, but we are going back to our stations. This work will never be withdrawn. We have one request. Come and serve the communion of the Lord's supper to us once more while we stand together."

And as I took the cup they arose and stood in a large circle. I took the bread and passed it. It went from hand to hand around the circle. When it came time to pass the wine I took the cup in my hand, and with the usual statement that Jesus gave in the committal of Himself to God, "My blood in the New Testament," I passed it on, and the next one, looking up to God, he said too, "My blood in the New Testament." And so it passed from hand to hand clear around the circle.

Within a few months I was compelled to bury twelve out of that company. Every one of them might have lived if we could have supplied the ordinary essential things they ought to have received. But beloved, we had made our pledge to God. We had declared by the love of God in our souls, and because of what Christ had done for us, that we would be true to Him, and that in the Name of Christ His gospel should be spread abroad as far as it was in our power to do.

Men have said that the Cross of Christ was not a heroic thing, but I want to tell you that the Cross of Jesus Christ has put more heroism in the souls of men than any other event in human history. Men have lived and rejoiced, and died, believing in the living God, in the Christ of God whose blood cleansed their hearts from sin, and who realised the real high spirit of His holy sacrifice, bless God. They manifested to mankind that same measure of sacrifice, and endured all that human beings could endure, and when endurance was no longer possible they passed on to be with God, leaving the world blessed through the evidence of a consecration deep and true and pure and good, like the Son of God Himself.

We see the note that was in the soul of Paul, and which characterised his message, when he made the splendid declaration which I read from Romans 1:16:

"I am not ashamed of the gospel of Christ; for it is the power of God unto salvation to every one that believeth; to the Jew first, and also to the Greek"

You see the note that touched the souls of men, the note that rang down through the centuries, and which rings in your heart and mine today. Christianity NEVER WAS DESIGNED BY GOD TO MAKE A LOT OF WEAKLINGS. It was designed to bring forth a race of men who were bold and strong and pure and good, blessed be God. The greatest and the strongest and the noblest is always the humblest.

The beautiful thing in the gospel is that it eliminates from the life of man that which is of himself and is natural and fleshly and earthly, bless God. It brings forth the beauteous things within the soul of man, the unselfishness, the life of purity, the peace, the strength and the power of the Son of God. How beautiful it is to have the privilege of looking into the face of one whose nature has been thus refined by the Spirit of the living God within. How beautiful it is when we look into the soul of one whom we realise God has purged by the blood of Christ until the very characteristics of the life and attitudes of the mind of Christ are manifest and evident in him to the glory of God.

Christianity is a strong man's gospel. Christianity, by the grace of God, is calculated to take the weak and fallen and erring and suffering and dying, and by applying the grace and power of God, through the soul of man, to the need of the individual, lift then up to the "Lamb of God which taketh away the sin of the world." Blessed be God.

"Down in the human heart,

Crushed by the tempter,

Feelings lie buried

That grace can restore,

Touched by a loving heart,

Wakened by kindness,

Chords that were broken

Will vibrate once more."

I care not how crushed the soul, how bestialised the nature, I care not how sensual, if touched by the Spirit of the living God, he will shed off that which is earthly and sensual, and give forth once again the pure note of the living God, heaven's high message, heaven's triumphant song, heaven's high note of living praise to the living God. Blessed be His Name.

God is endeavouring by His Spirit in these days to exalt the souls of men into that high place, that holy life, that heavenly state whereby men walk day by day, hour by hour in the heavenly consciousness of the presence of Christ in the heart of man all the time.

And the presence of Christ in the souls of men can only produce, first the purity that is in Him. For the "Wisdom that cometh from above is first pure," bless God. Purity is of God. Purity is of the nature of Christ. Purity is heaven's highborn instinct, filling the soul of man, making him in His nature, like the Son of God. Upon that purified soul there comes from God that blessed measure of the Holy Spirit, not only purifying the nature, but empowering him by the Spirit so that the activities of God, the gift of His mind, the power of His Spirit is evident by the grace of God in that man's soul, in that man's life, lifting him by the grace of God into that place of holy and heavenly dominion in the consciousness of which Jesus lived and moved and accomplished the will of God always. Not the earth-consciousness, born of the earth and earthy, but the Heaven-consciousness, that high consciousness, that holy consciousness, the consciousness of the living God, of His union with Him, which caused the Christ to walk as a Prince indeed. Bless God.

He was not bowed and overcome by conditions and circumstances about Him, but realised that the soul of man was a creative power, that it was within his soul, and common to his nature, and the nature of every other man, to protect, accumulate and possess, as sons of God; that through the creative faculty of His soul, the desires of his heart might be brought to pass. Blessed be His Name.

That is the reason God dared to talk as He did to Moses. That is the reason God dared to rebuke a man when he stopped to pray. That is the reason God said, "Why standst thou here and criest unto me? Lift up the rod that is in thy hand, and divide the waters."

Beloved, your soul will never demonstrate the power of God in any appreciable degree until your soul conceives and understands the real vision of the Christ of God, whereby He knew that through His union with the living God His soul became the creative power through which He took possession of the power of God and applied it to the needs of his own soul, and the needs of other lives.

"I am the resurrection and the life," bless God. Lazarus was dead. The friends were weeping, but the Christ was there, Bless God. Opening His soul to God in a cry of prayer the Spirit of God so moved within him that the consciousness of his high dominion in God so possessed Him, that He gave forth that wondrous command, "Lazarus, come forth," and the dead obeyed the call, and the spirit that had gone on into the regions of the dead returned again, was joined to the body, and Lazarus was restored by the power of God. Blessed be His Holy Name.

When a boy, I received my religious training in a little Methodist class meeting. I wish there were some old time Methodist class meetings in these modern days, the kind that had the power of God, and the needs of men's souls were met in them; where people could open their hearts and tell of their temptations and their trials and victories and receive council from one who guided the class.

In such a class meeting, and to such a class meeting, I owe a great deal of the development which God has brought forth in my life.

In one of these class meetings one day, as I sat listening to the testimonies, I observed that there was a kind of weakening trend. People were saying, "I am having such a hard time," "I am feeling the temptations of the world so much," and so forth. I was not able at the time to tell people what was the difficulty. I was only a young Christian. But when they got through I observed the old class leader, a grey headed man. He said something like this, "Brethren, the reason we are feeling the temptations so much, the reason there is a lack of the sense of victory, is because we are too far away from the Son of God. Our souls have descended. They are not in the high place where Christ is. Let our souls ascend, and when they ascend into the realm of the Christ, we will have a new note, it will be the note of victory."

Beloved, that is the difficulty with us all. We have come down out of the heavenlies into the natural, and we are trying to live a heavenly life in the natural state, overburdened by the weights and cares of the flesh and life all about us. Bless God, there is deliverance. There is Victory. There is a place in God where the flesh no longer becomes a bondage. Where, by the grace God, every sensuous state of the human nature is brought into subjection to the living God, where Christ reigns in and glorifies the very activities of a man's nature, making him sweet and pure and clean and good and true. Bless His Holy Name.

I call you today, beloved, by the grace of God, to that high life, to that holy walk, to that heavenly atmosphere, to that life in God where the grace and Spirit and power of God permeates your whole being. More, where not only your whole being is in subjection, but it flows from your nature as a holy stream of heavenly life to bless other souls everywhere by the grace of God.

There was a period in my life when God lifted my soul to a wondrous place of divine power. Indeed, I speak it with all conservativeness when I say that I believe God gave me such an anointing of power as has seldom been manifested in modern life. That anointing remained with me for a period of eight months. One of the evidences of the power of God at that period was that God gave me such a consciousness of dominion to cast out evil spirits that the insane were brought from all quarters of the land, slobbering idiots. In many instances as I approached them, the Spirit of Christ would rise up in me in such dominion that when I got to them I could take hold of them, and looking into their face, would realise that God had given me power to cast it out. Hundreds of times the insane were healed instantly right on the spot.

I have been a student all my life. Not just a student of letters, but of the things of the soul. God helped me by His grace to take note of and analyse the conditions of my own soul. I noted that when that high consciousness of heavenly dominion rested upon my life, there was one thing that stood uppermost in all my consciousness. That was the vision of the triumphant Christ, the Son of God, as pictured by John in the first chapter of Revelation, where He stands forth in the mighty dignity of an overcomer, declaring, "I am He that liveth and was dead, and behold, I am alive forevermore. Amen; and have the keys of hell and of death."

Beloved, I want to tell you that the soul joined to Christ and who exercises the power of God, ascends into that high consciousness of heavenly dominion as it is in the heart of Jesus Christ today, for He is the overcomer, the only Overcomer. But yet, when my soul is joined to His soul, when His Spirit flows like a heavenly stream through my spirit, when my whole nature is infilled and inspired by the life from God, I too, being joined with Him, become an overcomer, in deed and in truth. Glory be to God.

I am glad that God has permitted man, even at intervals to rise into that place of high dominion in God, for it demonstrates the purpose of God. It demonstrates that He purposes we should not only rise into the high place at intervals, but that this should be the normal life of the Christian who is joined to God every day and all the time.

Christianity is not a thing to be apologised for. Christianity was the living conscious life and power of the living God, transmitted into the nature of man until, bless God, man's nature is transformed by the living touch, and the very spirit, soul and being is energised and filled by His life. Thus you become indeed, as Christ intended, a veritable christ.

That startles some people. But the ultimate of the gospel of Jesus Christ and the ultimate of the redemption of the Son of God, is to reproduce and make every man who is bound by sin and held by sensuousness and enslaved by the flesh, like Himself in deed and in truth, sons of God. Not sons of God on a lower order, but sons of God as Jesus was.

Paul declares, "He gave some apostles, some prophets, some evangelists and some pastors and some teachers." What for? "Till we ALL come into the likeness of the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ." Bless God. Not a limited life, but an unlimited life. The idea of Christ, the idea of God was that every man, through Jesus Christ, through being joined to Him by the Holy Spirit, should be transformed into Christ's perfect image. Glory be to God. Christ within and Christ without. Christ in your Spirit, Christ in your soul and Christ in your body. Not only living His life, but performing His works by the grace of God, That is the gospel of the Son of God. That is the thing that Paul was not ashamed of. He said, "I am not ashamed of the gospel of Christ, for it is the power of God unto salvation to every one that believeth. To the Jew first, and also to the Greek."

If any man has a question within his soul of the reality of the Baptism of the Holy Spirit as it has been poured out upon the world in these last ten years, that question ought to be settled in your soul forever by one common test. That test is, that it has raised the consciousness of Christianity to realise what real Christianity is.

If any one wants to analyse the development that has come into Christian consciousness during the last two hundred years, all they have to do is to begin and follow the preaching of the great evangelists who have moved the world. Think of Jonathan Edwards, who thundered the terrors of God and what hell was like until men grasped their seats and, hung on to them, fearing, they were falling into hell itself. Men were moved by FEAR to escape damnation. That was believed to be Christianity. Any coward wanted to keep out of hell. He might rot have had one idea in his soul of what was the real true earmark of Christianity.

After a while others went a step further, and you can note the ascending consciousness. They said, "No, saving yourself from hell and punishment is not the ideal of the gospel. The ideal is to get saved so as to go to heaven." And so men were saved in order to get to heaven when they died. I have always had a feeling in my soul of wanting to weep when I hear men pleading with others to become Christians so they will go up to heaven when they die. My God, is there no appeal outside of something absolutely selfish.

Beloved, don't you see that Christianity was unselfishness itself. It had no consideration for the selfish individual. The thing held up above everything else in the world, and the only ideal worthy of a Christian was that you and I and He Himself might demonstrate to mankind one holy, high beauteous thing, of which the world was deficient, and that was a knowledge of God. So Jesus said, "Unto all righteousness" and He wrote it on the souls of men and branded it on their conscience, and stamped it on their heart until the world began to realise the ideal that was in the soul of Jesus.

"Unto all righteousness" becoming like Christ Himself, a demonstration of the righteousness of the living God. That is Christianity, and that only is Christianity, for that was the consecration of the Christ Himself.

The test of the Spirit, and the only test of the Spirit, that Jesus ever gave, is the ultimate and final test. He said, "By their fruits ye shall know them." That is the absolute and final test. "Do men gather grapes of thorns, or figs of thistles?"

So I say to you, if you want to test whether this present, outpouring of the Spirit of God is the real thing, the real pure Baptism of the Holy Ghost or not, test it by the fruit that it produces. If it is producing in the world, as we believe it is, a consciousness of God so high, so pure, so acceptable, so true, so good, so like Christ, then it is the Holy Ghost Himself. Bless God. No other test is of any value whatsoever.

I want to tell you beloved that the ultimate test to your own of the value of a thing that you have in you heart is the common test that Jesus gave, "By their fruits ye shall know them." "By their FRUITS ye shall know them. Do men gather grapes of thorns, or figs of thistles?"

Men tell us in these days that SIN is what you think it is. Well, it is not. Sin is what God thinks it is. You may think, according to your own conscience; God thinks according to His. God thinks in accordance with the heavenly purity of His own nature. Man thinks in accordance with that degree of purity that his soul realises. But the ultimate note is in God. The finality is in God.

When men rise up in their souls' aspirations to the place of God's thought, then bless God, the character of Jesus Christ will be evident in their life, the sweetness of His nature, the Holiness of His character, the beauty of the crowning glory that not only overshadowed Him, but that radiated from Him. Blessed be God. And the real life of the real Christian is the inner life, the life of the soul.

"Out of the heart," said Jesus, "proceedeth evil thoughts, fornications, adulteries" and so forth. These are the things common to the flesh of man. Out of the soul of man, likewise, proceeds by the same common law, the beauty, virtue, peace, power and truth of Jesus, as the soul knows it.

So he whose soul is joined to Christ may now, today, this hour, shed forth as a benediction upon the world the glory and-blessing and peace and power of God, even as Jesus shed it forth to all men to the praise of God.

Prayer: My God, we bless Thee for the ideal of the gospel of Christ which Thou hast established in the souls of men through the blessed Holy Ghost. God, we pray Thee this afternoon that if we have thought lightly of the Spirit of God, if we have had our eyes fixed on outward evidences instead of the inward life, we pray thee to sweep it away from our souls.

May we this day God, see indeed that the life of God, His inner life, the true life, God's holy life, His practical purpose, that from a race of sinful men saved through the blood of Christ, cleansed by the power of God, cleansed in the inner soul, in every department of their nature, that the Christ-life is to be revealed and the Lord Jesus through them is to shed forth His glory and life and benediction and peace and power upon the world. Blessed be Thy precious Name.

So my God, we open our nature to heaven today, asking that the Spirit of the living God will thus move in our own soul, that by His grace we shall be so perfectly, truly cleansed of God that our nature will be sweet and pure and heavenly and true, so that we can receive from God indeed the blessed sweetness of His pure, holy, heavenly Spirit, to reign in us, to rule in us, control us and guide us for ever more. In Jesus' Name. Amen.

Spiritual Hunger

My text tonight, is:

"Blessed are they which do hunger and thirst after righteousness, for they shall be filled." Matthew 5:6

Hunger is a mighty good thing. It is the greatest persuader I know of. It is a marvellous mover. Nations have learned that you can do most anything with a populace until they get hungry. But when they get hungry you want to watch out. There is a certain spirit of desperation that accompanies hunger.

I wish we all had it spiritually. I wish to God we were desperately hungry for God. Wouldn't it be glorious? Somebody would get filled before this meeting is over. It. would be a strange thing, if we were all desperately hungry for God, if only one or two got filled in a service.

"Blessed are they which do hunger and thirst after righteousness."

Righteousness is just the rightness of God, The rightness of God in your spirit, the rightness of God in your soul, the rightness of God in your body, the rightness of God in your affairs, in your home, in your business, everywhere.

God is an all-round God, His power operates from every side. The artists paint a halo around the head of Jesus to show that there is a radiation of glory from His person. They might just as well put it around his feet or any part of His person. It is the radiant glory of the indwelling God, radiating out through the personality. There is nothing more wonderful than the indwelling of God in the human life. The supremest marvel that God ever performed was when He took possession of those who are hungry.

"Blessed are they which do hunger."

I will guarantee to you that after the crucifixion of Jesus there was a hundred and twenty mighty hungry folks at Jerusalem. I do not believe if they had not been mightily hungry they would have gotten so gloriously filled. It was because they were hungry that they were filled.

We are sometimes inclined to think of God as mechanical; as though God set a date for this event or that to occur. But my opinion is that one of the works of the Holy Ghost is that of preparer. He comes and prepares the heart of men in advance by putting a strange hunger for that event that has been promised by God until it comes to pass.

The more I study history and prophecy the more I am convinced that when Jesus Christ was born into the world He was born in answer to a tremendous heart-cry on the part of the world. The world needed God desperately. They wanted a manifestation of God tremendously, and Jesus Christ as the Deliverer and Saviour came in answer to their soul cry.

Daniel says that he was convinced by the study of the books of prophecy, especially that of Jeremiah, that the time had come when they ought to be delivered from their captivity in Babylon. The seventy years was fulfilled but there was no deliverance. So he diligently set his face to pray it into being. (Daniel 9)

Here is what I want you to get. If it was going to come to pass mechanically on a certain date, there would not have been any necessity for Daniel to get that awful hunger in his soul, so that he fasted and prayed in sackcloth and ashes, that the deliverance might come.

No sir, God's purposes come to pass when your heart and mine get the real God-cry, and the real God-prayer comes into our spirit, and the real God-yearning gets hold of our nature. Something is going to happen then.

No difference what it may be your soul is coveting or desiring, if it becomes in your life the supreme cry, not the secondary matter, or the third, or the fourth, or fifth or tenth, but the FIRST thing, the supreme desire of your soul, the paramount issue, all the powers and energies of your spirit, of your soul, of your body are reaching out and crying to God for the answer, it is going to come, it is going to come, it is going to come!

I lived in a family where for thirty-two years they never were without an invalid in the home. Before I was twenty-four years of age we had buried four brothers and four sisters, and four other members of the family were dying, hopeless, helpless invalids. I set up my own home, married a beautiful woman. Our first son was born. It was only a short time until I saw that same devilish train of sickness that had followed father's family had come into mine. My wife became an invalid, my son was a sickly child. Out of it all one thing developed in my nature, a cry for deliverance. I did not know anything about the subject of healing, notwithstanding I was a Methodist evangelist. But my heart was crying for deliverance; my soul had come to the place where I had vomited up dependence on man. My father had spent a fortune on the family to no avail, as if there was no stoppage to the train of hell. And let me tell you, there IS NO HUMAN STOPPAGE because the thing is settled deep in the nature of man, too deep for any material remedy to get at it. It takes the Almighty God and the Holy Spirit and the Lord Jesus Christ to get down into the depth of man's nature and find the real difficulty that is there and destroy it.

My brother, I want to tell you, if you are a sinner tonight and away from God, and your heart is longing, and your spirit asking, and your soul crying for God's deliverance, He will be on hand to deliver. You will not have to cry very long until you see that the mountains are being moved, and the angel of deliverance will be there.

I finally got to that place where my supreme cry was for deliverance. Tears were shed for deliverance for three years before the healing of God came to us. I could hear the cries and groans and sobs, and feel the wretchedness of our family's soul. My heart cried, my soul sobbed, my spirit wept tears. I wanted help. I did not know enough to call directly on God for it. Isn't it a strange thing that men do not have sense enough to have faith in God for all their needs, do not know enough to call directly on God for physical difficulties as well as for spiritual ones? But I did not.

But bless God, one thing matured in my heart, a real hunger. And the hunger of a man's soul must be satisfied, it MUST be satisfied. It is a law of God; that law of God is in the depth of the spirit. God will answer the heart that cries; God will answer the soul that asks. Christ Jesus comes to us with divine assurance and invites us when we are hungry to PRAY, to BELIEVE; to take from the Lord that which our soul covets and our heart asks for.

So one day the Lord of heaven came our way, and in a little while the cloud of darkness, that midnight of hell, that curse of death was lifted, and the light of God shone into our life and into our home, just the same as it existed in other men's lives and other men's homes. We learned the truth of Jesus and was able to apply the divine power of God. We were healed of the Lord.

"Blessed are they which do hunger."

Brethren, begin to pray to get hungry.

At this point I want to tell you a story. I was out on a snow-shoe trip at Sault Ste Marie, Michigan, where they used to have four and five feet of snow. I tramped for thirty miles on my snow shoes. I was tired and weary. I arrived home and found my wife had gone away to visit, so I went over to my sister's home. I found they were out also. I went into the house and began to look for something to eat. I was I was nearly starved. I found a great big sort of cake that looked like corn broad. It was still quite warm and it smelled good. I ate it all. I thought it was awful funny stuff, and it seemed to have lumps in it. I did not just understand the combination, and I was not much of a cook. About the time I had finished it my sister and her husband came in. She said, "My you must be awful tired and hungry." I said, "I was but I just found a corn cake and ate the whole thing." She said, "My goodness, John, you did not eat that?" I said, "What was it, Irene?" "Why that was a kind of cow bread, we grind up cobs and all." You see it depends on the character and degree of your hunger. Things taste mighty good to a hungry man.

If you wanted to confer a peculiar blessing on men at large, it would not be to give them but to make them hungry, and then every thing that came their way would taste everlastingly good.

I love to tell this story because it is the story of a hungry man. A short time after I went to South Africa and God had begun to work very marvellously in the city of Johannesburg. A butcher who lived in the suburbs was advised by his physicians that he had developed such a tubercular state he might not live more than nine months. He wanted to make provision that his family be cared for after he was gone, so he bought a farm and undertook to develop it that when he died his family would have a means of existence.

One day he received a letter from friends at Johannesburg, telling of the coming of what they spoke of as "the American Brethren," and of the wonderful things that were taking place. Of how so-and-so, a terrible drunkard, had been converted; of his niece who had been an invalid in a wheel chair for five years, had been healed of God; how one of his other relatives had been baptised in the Holy Ghost and was speaking in tongues; other friends and neighbours had been baptised and healed of the powerful change that had come in the community, and all the marvels a vigorous work for God produces.

Dan VonVuuren took the letter, crawled under an African thorn tree. He spread the letter out before God, and began to discuss it with the Lord. He said, "God in heaven, if you could come to Mr So-and-so, a drunkard, and deliver him from his sin and save his soul and put the joy of God in him; if you could come to this niece of mine, save her soul and heal her body and send her out to be a blessing instead of a weight and burden upon her friends; if you could come to so-and-so, so they were baptised in the Holy Ghost and speak in tongues; Lord, if you can do these things at Johannesburg, you can do something for me too." And he knelt down, put his face to the ground, and cried to God that God would do something for him. And don't forget it, friends, I have a conviction that that morning Dan VonVuuren was so stirred by the reading of that letter that His desire to be made whole got bigger than anything else in his consciousness. His heart reached for God, and bless God, that morning his prayer went through to heaven and God came down into his life. In ten minutes he took all the breath he wanted; the pain was gone, the tuberculosis had disappeared, he was a whole man.

But that was not all, he not only received a great physical healing, but God had literally come in and taken possession of the man's life until he did not understand himself any more. In telling me he said, "Brother, a new prayer from heaven was born in my spirit. I had prayed for my wife's salvation for eighteen years, but I could never pray through. But that morning I prayed through. It was all done when I got to the house. She stood and looked at me for two minutes, until it dawned in her soul that I was gloriously healed of God. She never asked a question as to how it took place, but fell on her knees, threw her hands up to heaven, and said, "Pray for me. Dan, for God's sake, pray for me. I must find God today," and God came to that soul.

He has eleven children, splendid young folks. The mother and he went to praying and inside of a week the whole household of thirteen had been baptised in the holy Ghost. He went to his brother's farm; told the wonder of what God has done; prayed through and in a little while nineteen families were baptised in the Holy Ghost.

God so filled his life with His glory that one morning God said to him, "Go to Pretoria. I am going to send you to different members of Parliament." He was admitted into the presence of Premier Louis Botha. Botha told me about it afterwards. He said, "Lake, I had known VanVurren from the time he was a boy. I had known him as a reckless, rollicking fellow. But that man came into my office and stood ten feet from my desk. I looked up, and before he commenced to speak, I began to shake and rattle on my chair. I knelt down, I had to put my head under the desk and cry to God." Why he looked like God; and talked like God. He had the majesty of God. He was superhumanly wonderful. Then he went to the office of the Secretary of State, then to the Secretary of the Treasury. Almost the same thing took place in every instance. For eighteen days God kept him going from this one to that one; lawyers, judges and officials in the land, until every high official in the land knew there was a God and a Christ and a Saviour, and a baptism of the Holy Ghost, because VonVuuren has really hungered after God.

"Blessed are they which do hunger."

I was sitting here tonight before the meeting and began reading an old sermon I preached to a men's club at Spokane, Washington eight years ago, entitled "The Calling of the Soul." In it I observed I recounted the story of the original people who came to the Parham School in 1900, and whom in answer to the cry of their soul God came and baptised them in the Holy Ghost. All the Apostolic Faith Churches, and Missions, and Assemblies of God, and other movements are the result.

I knew Brother Parham's wife and his sister-in-law, Lillian Thistleweight. She was the woman that brought the light of God for real sanctification to my heart. It was not her preaching or her words. I sat in Fred Bosworth's home one night before Fred thought of preaching the gospel. I listened to that woman telling of the Lord God and His love and sanctifying grace and power, and what real holiness was. It was not her arguments or logic; it was herself; it was the divine holiness that came from her soul; it was the living Spirit of God that came out of the woman's life. I sat way back in the room, as far way as I could get. I was self satisfied, doing well in the world, prosperous with all the accompaniments that go with successful life. But that night, my heart got so hungry that I fell on my knees, and those who were present will tell you yet that they had never heard anybody pray as I prayed. Bosworth said long afterward, "Lake, there is one instance that I shall always remember in your life; that was the night you prayed in my home until the rafters shook, until God came down, until the fire struck, until our souls melted, until God came in and sanctified our hearts." All the devils in hell and out of hell could not make me believe there is not a real sanctified experience in Jesus Christ; when God comes in and makes your heart pure and takes self out of your nature, and gives you divine triumph over sin and self, blessed be the Name of the Lord!

"Blessed are they which do hunger."

Beloved, pray to get hungry.

Coming back to Dan VonVuuren. For several years before I left Africa he went up and down the land like a burning fire. Everywhere he went sinners were saved, sick were healed, men and women were baptised in the Holy Ghost, until he set the outlying districts on fire with the power of God; and he is going still.

Here is a point I want to bring to you. As I talked with Lillian Thistleweight, I observed the one supreme thing in that woman's soul was the consciousness of holiness. She said, "Brother, that is what we prayed for, that is what the baptism brought to us."

Later Brother Parham was preaching in Texas. A coloured man came into his meeting by the name of Seymour. In a hotel in Chicago he related his experience to Brother Tom and myself. I want you to see the hunger in that coloured man's soul. He said he was a waiter in a restaurant and preaching to a Church of coloured people. He knew God as Saviour, as the sanctifier. He knew the power of God to heal. But as he listened to Parham he became convinced of a bigger thing, the baptism of Holy Ghost. He went on to Los Angeles without receiving it, but he said he was determined to preach all of God he knew to the people. He said, "Brother, before I met Parham, such a hunger to have more of God was in my heart that I prayed for five hours a day for two and a half years. I got to Los Angeles, and when I got there the hunger was not less but more. I prayed, God, what can I do? And the Spirit said, pray more. But Lord, I am praying five hours a day now. I increased my hours of prayer to seven, and prayed on for a year and a half more. I prayed God to give me what Parham preached, the real Holy Ghost and fire with tongues and love and power of God, like the apostles had." There are better things to he had in spiritual life but they must be sought out with faith and prayer. I want to tell you God Almighty had such a hunger in that man's heart that when the fire of God came it glorified him. I do not believe that any other man in modern times had a more wonderful deluge of God in his life that God gave to that dear fellow. Brother Seymour preached to my congregation, to ten thousand people, when the glory and power of God was upon his spirit, when men shook and trembled and cried to God. God was in him.

"Blessed are they which do hunger for they shall be filled."

I wonder what we are hungering for? Have we a real divine hunger, something our soul is asking for? If you have God will answer; God will answer. By every law of of the Spirit that men know, it is due to come. It will come! Bless God, it will come. It will come in more ways than you ever dreamed of. God is not confined to manifesting himself in tongues and interpretation alone. His life in man is rounded.

When I was a lad, I accompanied my father on a visit to the office of John A. McCall, the great insurance man. We were taken to McCall's office in his private elevator. It was the first time I had ever been in a great office building and had ridden on an elevator, and I remember holding my breath until the thing stopped. Then we stepped into his office, the most beautiful office I had ever beheld. The rugs were so thick I was afraid I would go through the floor when I stepped on them. His desk was a marvel, pure mahogany, and on the top of his desk, inlaid in mother of pearl, was his name, written in script. It was so magnificent that in my boyish soul I said, "I am going to have an office just like this and a desk like that with my name on it when I am a man."

I did not know how much of an asking it was in my nature, and it seemed sometimes that it had drifted away, until I was in my thirtieth year, I was invited to come to Chicago to join an association of men who were establishing a Life Insurance Association. They said, "Lake, we want you to manage this Association." We dickered about the matter for three weeks until they came to my terms, and finally the president said, "Step into this office until we show you something. We have a surprise for you." And I stepped into an office just exactly the duplicate of John A. McCall's office, and there in the centre was a desk of pure mahogany, and instead of the name of John A. McCall, it was John G. Lake, in mother of pearl. I had never spoken of that soul desire to a person in the world.

Friends, there is a something in the call of the soul that is creative. It brings things to pass. Don't you know that when the supreme desire of your heart goes out to God, all the spiritual energy of your nature and the powers of God that come to you begin to concentrate and work along that certain line, and form and form, and there comes by the unconscious creative exercise of faith into being that which your soul calls for. That is the creative action of faith, you and God together working out and evidencing the power of creative desire.

Tongues and Interpretation, by Mrs Jas. Wilson and Brother Myreen: Ye shall receive the desire of your heart if you come before Me in prayer and supplication, for I am a God that answers my children. Go ye forward in the battle for I shall be with you and fulfil the desire of your heart, Yes, pray that ye may become hungry.

Call and I shall answer, for I am a God that hears. I shall answer your call. Come before Me; humble yourselves before My feet, and I shall answer your call.

Be ye diligent before Me, and pray, yea, be ye in prayer and supplication, for ye are living in the last days, and my Spirit shall not always strive with men. But ye that humble yourselves before Me will know I shall be your God. I shall strengthen you on the right hand and on the left, and ye shall understand and know that I am your living God.

When Moses stood at the Red Sea he tried to back out of that relationship God was establishing and tried to throw the responsibility back on God. He was overwhelmed. It was too marvellous. Surely God must not have meant it. But God knew. When he began to recognise himself as an individual and God as another it was offensive to God. He thought he could back up and pray for God to do something for him the same as God used to do in the old relationship. He could not do it. When he got down to pray, in the mind of God the idea of Moses not backing water and getting out of that close place, that inner relationship, that divine symphony of Moses' soul and God's, it was offensive to Him. And God said,

"Wherefore criest thou unto me?"

In other words, shut up your praying. Get up out of there.

"Lift thou up, thy rod, and stretch out thine hand over the sea, and DIVIDE IT." (Exodus 14:15-16)

God did not say, Moses you stretch forth your hand, and I will divide the sea. But He said,

"Stretch out thine hand over the sea, and divide it."

Moses, you and I are one, stretch forth your hand and divide the sea. You have all there is of me and I have all there is of you. We are one and indivisible. God and man becomes one. The heart of man, the mind of man, the soul of man enters into God, and God into him. The divine fires of the eternal Christ, by the Holy Ghost, come from heaven, and the lightnings of Jesus flash through the life, bless God, and the power of Christ invigorates and manifests and demonstrates through that relationship.

God revealed that to my soul in the days when I first went to Africa, within six weeks after my feet touched the soil, and before God had given me a white Church to preach in. I said, "Lord, when you give me a Church in which to preach this gospel, I will preach the highest and holiest thing God's Spirit reveals to my heart. I do not care if anybody else believes it or sees it; I am going to preach the vision the Son of God puts in my soul."

Bless God, He put the high vision of the glorified Christ and the glorified Christian: not a man simply saved from sin, but a man saved from his sins, sanctified by His power, infilled with His Spirit, re-created with and in Jesus Christ, one in nature, character and substance. My heart began to preach it, and my mouth gave the message, and my soul sent forth the word, and my spirit called such that wanted to be that character of man to come to the feet of the Son of God, and receive His blessing and receive His power. And, beloved, I tell you that in all the modern world there never was another hundred and twenty-five preachers who went out of a Church to proclaim the power of God with greater power than that first hundred and twenty-five men did. The thing that was in my soul fired Dan VonVuuren's soul and kindled the faith of the people. Where ever it spread it set men on fire for God.

Friends, we need a coming up into God. This Church, and the Church around the world needs to come up into God. We have been travelling around in a circle, and digging our noses in the ground, and we have had our eyes on the ground, instead of up in the clouds, instead of up at the throne. Look up to the glorified One! If you want to see His bleeding hands, look to heaven where He is to see them. Do not look back to Calvary to see them. He is the risen, regnant, glorified Son of God in heaven, with all power and all authority; with the keys of hell and of death! He is the divine authority, the eternal overcoming, manifestation of God in Heaven. And you and the regnant, glorified Christ as one, are the divine manifestation of God. Come up to the Throne, dear ones. Let the Throne life, and the Throne love, and the Throne power and the Throne Spirit, and the Holy Ghost in heaven possess you, and you will be a new man in Christ Jesus! And your tread will be the march of the conqueror and your song the song of victory, and your crown the crown of glory, and your power the power of God.

A Trumpet Call

The 13th Chapter of Acts tells us the story of the ordination and sending forth of the apostle Paul, his ordination to the apostleship. Paul never writes of himself as an apostle until after the 13th chapter of Acts. He had been an evangelist and teacher for thirteen years when the 13th of Acts was written, and the ordination that took place is recorded there. Men who have a real call are not afraid of apprenticeships.

There is a growing up in experience in the ministry. When Paul started out in the ministry he was definitely called of God and was assured of God through Ananias that it would not be an easy service but a terrific one, for God said to Ananias:

"Arise and go into the street which is called Straight, and inquire in the house of Judas for one called Saul of Tarsus for, behold, he prayeth; He is a chosen vessel unto me, to bear my Name before the Gentiles, and kings, and the children of Israel: For I will show him how great things he must suffer for my Name's sake."

That is what Jesus Christ, the crucified and glorified Son of God told Ananias to say to the Apostle Paul. He was not going to live in a holy ecstasy and wear a beautiful halo, and have a heavenly time and ride in a limousine. He was going to have a drastic time, a desperate struggle, a terrific experience. And no man in Biblical history ever had more dreadful things to endure than the Apostle Paul. He gives a list in his letter to the Corinthians of the things he had endured.

"Of the Jews five times received I forty stripes save one. Thrice I was beaten with rods. Once was I stoned, thrice I suffered shipwreck, a night and a day have I been in the deep; in journeyings often, in perils of waters, in perils of robbers, in perils by mine own countrymen, in perils by the heathen, in perils in the city, in perils in the wilderness, in perils in the sea, in perils among false brethren. In weariness and painfulness, in watchings often, in hunger and thirst in fastings often, in cold and nakedness."

They stripped him of his clothing, and the executioner lashed him with an awful scourge, until bleeding and lacerated and broken, he fell helpless, and unconscious and insensible; then they doused him with a bucket of salt water to keep the maggots off, and threw him into a cell to recover. That was the price of apostleship. That was the "price" of the call of God and His service. But God said, "They shall bear my Name before the Gentiles and kings, and the children of Israel." He qualified as God's messenger.

Beloved, we have lost the character of consecration here manifested. God is trying to restore it in our day. He has not been able to make much progress with the average preacher on that line. "Mrs So-and-So said so-and-so, and I am just not going to take it." That is the kind of preacher, with another kind of call, not the heaven call, not the God call, not the death call if necessary. That is not the kind the Apostle Paul had.

Do you want to know why God poured out His Spirit in South Africa like He did no where else in the world? There was a reason. This example will illustrate. We had one hundred and twenty-five men out on the field at one time. We were a very young institution; were not known in the world. South Africa is seven thousand miles from any European country. It is ten thousand miles by way of England to the United States. Our finances got so low under the awful assault we were compelled to endure, that there came a time I could not even mail to these workers at the end of the month a $10 bill. It got so I could not send them $2. The situation was desperate. What was I to do? Under these circumstances I did not want to take the responsibility of leaving men and their families on the frontier without real knowledge of what the conditions were.

Some of us at headquarters sold our clothes in some cases, sold certain pieces of furniture out of the house, sold anything we could sell, to bring those hundred and twenty-five workers off the field for a conference.

One night in the progress of the conference I was invited by a committee to leave the room for a minute or two. The conference wanted to have a word by themselves. So I stepped out to a restaurant for a cup of coffee, and came back. When I came in I found they had rearranged the chairs in an oval, with a little table at one end, and on the table was the bread and the wine. Old Father Van der Wall, speaking for the company said, "Brother Lake, during Your absence we have come to a conclusion; we have made our decision. We want you to serve the Lord's supper. We are going back to our fields. We are going back if we have to walk back. We are going back if we have to starve. We are going back if our wives die. We are going back if our children die. We are going back if we die ourselves. We have but one request. If we die, we want you to come and bury us."

The next year I buried twelve men, sixteen wives and children. In my judgment not one of the twelve, if they had had a few of things a white man needs to eat but what might have lived. Friends, when you want to find out why the power of God came down from heaven in South Africa like it never came down before since the times of the apostles, there is your answer.

Jesus Christ put the spirit of martyrdom in the ministry. Jesus instituted his ministry with a pledge unto death. When He was with the disciples on the last night He took the cup, "when He drank, saying." Beloved, the SAYING was the significant thing. It was Jesus Christ's pledge to the twelve who stood with Him, "This cup is the New Testament in my blood." Then He said, "Drink ye all of it."

Friends, those who were there and drank to that pledge, of Jesus Christ, entered into the same covenant and purpose that He did. That is what all pledges mean. Men have pledged themselves in the wine cup from time immemorial. Generals have pledged their armies unto death. It has been a custom in the race. Jesus Christ sanctified it to the Church forever, bless God.

"My blood in the New Testament." "Drink ye all of it." Let us become one. Let us become one in our purpose to die for the world. Your blood and Mine, together. "My blood in the New Testament." It is my demand from you. It is your high privilege. Dear friends, there is not an authentic history that can tell us whether any one of them died a natural death. We know that at least nine of them were martyrs, possibly all. Peter died on a cross, James was beheaded, for Thomas they did not even wait to make a cross: they nailed him to an olive tree. John was sentenced to be executed at Ephesus by putting him in a cauldron of boiling oil. God delivered him, and his executioners refused to repeat the operation, and he was banished to the Isle of Patmos. John thought so little about it that he never even tells of the incident. He says, "I was in the Isle called Patmos, for the Word of God, and for the testimony of Jesus Christ." That was explanation enough. He had committed himself to Jesus Christ for life or death.

Friends, the group of missionaries that followed me went without food, and went without clothes, and once when one of my preachers was sunstruck, and had wandered away, I tracked him by the blood marks of his feet. Another time I was hunting for one of my missionaries, a young Englishman, 22 years of age. He had come from a line of Church of England preachers for five hundred years. When I arrived at the native village the old native chief said, "He is not here. He went over the mountains, and you know, Mr, he is a white man and he has not learned to walk bare footed."

That is the kind of consecration that established Pentecost in South Africa. That is the reason we have a hundred thousand native Christians in South Africa. That is the reason we have 1250 native preachers. That is the reason we have 350 white Churches in South Africa. That is the reason that today we are the most rapid growing Church in South Africa.

I am not persuading you, dear friends, by holding out a hope that the way is going to be easy. I am calling you in the Name of Jesus Christ, you dear ones who expect to be ordained to the Gospel of Jesus Christ tonight, take the route that Jesus took, the route the apostles took, the route that the early Church took, the victory route, whether by life or death. Historians declare, "The blood of the martyrs was the seed of the Church." Beloved, that is what the difficulty is in our day: we have so little seed. The Church needs more martyr blood.

If I were pledging men and women to the Gospel of the Son of God, as I am endeavouring to do tonight, it would not be to have a nice Church and harmonious surroundings, and a sweet do nothing time. I would invite them to be ready to die. That was the spirit of early Methodism. John Wesley established a heroic call. He demanded every preacher to be "ready to pray, ready to preach, ready to die." That is always the spirit of Christianity. When there is any other spirit that comes into the Church, it is not the spirit of Christianity. It is a foreign spirit. It is a sissified substitute.

I lived on corn meal mush many a period with my family, and we did not growl, and I preached to thousands of people, not coloured people, but white people. My missionaries were on the field existing on corn meal mush, I could not eat pie. My heart was joined to them. That is the reason we never had splits in our work in South Africa. One country where Pentecost never split. The split business began to develop years afterward, when pumpkin pie eating Pentecostal missionaries began infesting the country. Men who are ready to die for the Son of God do not split. They do not holler the first time they get the stomach ache. Bud Robinson tells a story of himself. He went to preach in the southern mountains. It was the first time in his life that no one invited him to go home and eat with them. So he slept on the floor, and the next night, and the next night. After five days and five nights had passed, and his stomach began to growl for food terribly, every once in a while he would stop and say, "Lay down, you brute" and he went on with his sermon. That is what won. That is what will win every time. That is what we need today. We need men who are willing to get off the highway. When I started to preach the gospel I walked twenty miles on Sunday morning to my service and walked home twenty miles in the night when I got through. I did it for years, for Jesus and souls.

In early Methodism an old local preacher would start Saturday and walk all night, and then walk all night Sunday night to get back to his work. It was the common custom. Peter Cartwright preached for sixty dollars per year and baptised ten thousand converts.

Friends, we talk about consecration, and we preach about consecration, but that is the kind of consecration that my heart is asking for tonight. That is the kind of consecration that will get answers from heaven. That is the kind God will honour. That is the consecration to which I would pledge Pentecost. I would strip Pentecost of its frills and fall de ralls. Jesus Christ, through the Holy Ghost, calls us tonight not to an earthly mansion and a ten thousand dollar motor car, but to put our lives, body and soul and spirit, on the altar of service. All hail! Ye who are ready to die for Christ and this glorious Pentecostal Gospel, we salute you. You are brothers with us and with your Lord.

Guidance

Oh, Soul, on the highway, from earth unto glory

Surrounded by mysteries, trials and fears;

Let the life of thy God, in thy life be resplendent;

For Jesus will guide thee; thou need'st never fear.

For if thou wilt trust me, I'll lead thee and guide thee

Through the quicksands and deserts of life, all the way.

No harm shall befall thee; I only will teach thee

To walk in surrender with Me day by day.

For earth is a school to prepare thee for Glory;

The lessons here learned, you will always obey.

When eternity dawns, it will be only the morning

Of life with Me always, as life is today.

Therefore, be not impatient, as lessons thou'rt learning;

Each day will bring gladness and joy to thee here;

But heaven will reveal to thy soul, of the treasure

Which infinitude offers, through ages and years.

For thy God is the God of the earth and heavens;

And thy soul is the soul that He died to save;

And His blood is sufficient, His power eternal;

Therefore rest in thy God, both today and alway.

Given in the Spirit in tongues with interpretation to John G. Lake at Johannesburg, South Africa, 1908.

Compassion

I wonder if you ever settled in your own mind what is the greatest blessing, or revelation of the Spirit or power of God. I believe the greatest thing is that Jesus showed the world how to exercise compassion for one another. The law of Moses, that preceded Jesus, was exacting in its demands, as all law is. That is the nature of law. And Jesus undertook to reveal the Father-heart to the world. The greatest movement in the soul of God Himself was that movement of compassion for a needy world, which was so great, that the Word says, that "God so loved the world, that He gave His only begotten son, that whosoever believeth on Him, should not perish, but have everlasting life."

We are inclined to think, sometimes, that God is careless about the world. Not so. "For God so loved the world, that He gave His only begotten son, that whosoever believeth on Him, should not perish, but have everlasting life. For God sent not His son to condemn the world, but that the world through him might be saved."

When the multitude had followed Jesus into the wilderness, He was moved with compassion for them, for they were like sheep without a shepherd. The disciples said, "Now Lord, let us send them away." Jesus understood men's humanity. He understood the fact that they were hungry, and the heart of the Christ was moved with compassion for them. He said, "No, get them to sit down. All there is in the company is 5000 people, beside women and children. You get them to sit down." When they were seated, He took the five loaves and the two fishes, blessed them, brake, and gave to His disciples to give to the multitude. Jesus taught the world to have compassion. Men have loved to have compassion on the lovable, and on the beautiful; but Jesus taught the world to have compassion on the unholy, the sinful and the ignorant. One day they brought to Him a sinful woman, and. they said, "According to our law, she should be stoned." According to the law there was nothing else for her; but the compassion of Jesus covered that soul and He said, "Go, and sin no more."

Someone told me this incident: A lady who lives in the country, a widow, who had one daughter, was labouring for small wages; her great ambition was to be able to educate her daughter. She had toiled, and worked, and invested the money in Liberty Bonds, to hold for the education of her daughter. Recently she came down from one of the country towns to Spokane, to make a few purchases for the daughter, that would be necessary for the girl's new life and school. She stood at one of the counters of the Crescent Store; she turned her back for a moment and presently discovered that the little treasure was gone. The savings of a whole life, the struggles of a mother's heart! The endeavour to gratify the one big love of her soul in the education of her daughter. In spite of the assistance of the officials of the store, she was unable to find any trace of it. At last, she sat down and wept bitterly. A lady, the widow of a banker who saw her, told her to come up on the balcony with her and sit down. Another lady joined them, and the lady who first saw her said, "Now come, we are going to sit down together and believe God on behalf of this soul. We are going to believe that God will move the soul of the person who took that little treasure, until his soul sees that thing like this mother sees it." Men are learning, blessed be God. And they sat down together, to pray for that soul. The mother returned to the country, and in the mail following her came a letter with the little treasure, and a little note, saying: "I couldn't keep it; forgive me, and may God forgive me." Compassion reaches further than law; further than demands of judges. Compassion reaches to the heart of life, to the secret of our being. The compassion of Jesus was the Divine secret that made Him lovable. Religious people are exacting; good people are exacting; but good folks have to learn to exercise compassion just like others do.

We remember the incident with the disciples and the Samaritans. The Samaritans did not want Jesus and His disciples to come. They said, "We have heard strange stories: how this thing happened, and how that thing happened. How a great amount of swine were drowned," and so on. They had heard about the pigs, but they probably had never heard how the widow's son was raised from the dead, how the water had been turned into wine. The disciples loved their Lord; they were exercising His power, they were ministering to the sick, they were endeavouring to alleviate the sufferings of the world; but still that sense of insult was so overpowering, that they said, "Master, shall we call down fire from heaven, to consume them?" My, how the big thing in your soul gets hurt; and how easy it is for us to feel the righteousness of the issue, rather than the compassion of the Son of God. There is no limit to the compassion of Jesus.

Two blind men were crying by the wayside, calling on the Lord to have mercy on them. And He stopped, and asked what they wanted. They answered, "Lord, that we may receive our sight." And He healed them. And if you want the real explanation for His saving men out of their sins and sicknesses, it is in the love of His soul; that Divine compassion of God, and His desire to help men out of their sorrows and difficulties, and back to God.

Jesus' example on the Cross is set forever and ever as the very peak, and the very soul of the compassion of God, through Christ. After they had pierced His hands, and pierced His feet, when with His last breath He prayed to God, "Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do." When a man is able to look upon his own murderers, and speak such words as these, surely it shows that he speaks beyond that which the human heart is capable of giving, and is speaking only that which the soul of God can give.

How long should we endure? How long should we endure the misunderstandings of friends without rebuff? If we consider these things, surely we see the secret of the life that He endured all the way. And unto the very end, and also in the very end, He was blessed by God. His triumph was there. The ignorant crucify you, and trample over the loveliest things of your soul, like they bruised the soul of Jesus. The triumph is there.

In the Divine fullness of the heart of God in Christ is the revelation of a Divine conception that alone endures, even unto death, and through which the nature and love of God is revealed to a dying world. When Jesus was trying to give us balance in the life of God, He gave us, once more, a beautiful parable; the parable of the Good Samaritan. "A certain man went down from Jerusalem to Jericho, and fell among thieves which stripped him of his raiment, and wounded him, and departed, leaving him half dead. And by chance there came down a certain priest that way." And one should have expected compassion of a priest; but when he saw him, he passed by on the other side. And the Levite, the holy man of the people came down, and he looked upon him, and passed by on the other side. But the poor Samaritan, the dog in the mind of the Jew, "When he saw him, he had compassion on him, and went to him, and bound up his wounds, pouring in oil and wine, and set him on his own beast, and brought him to an inn, and took care of him. And on the morrow when he departed, he took out two pence, and gave them to the host, and said unto him, 'Take care of him; and what-so-ever thou spendest more, when I come again, I will repay thee.'" He did not do the best thing, but he did the best thing he knew, and Christ commended it. How often you have had the loveliest things of your soul trampled upon? Not by some drunken person, but probably by the one nearest to your heart; probably by the one who ought to have understood more than any other.

And do you not see the manner in which we wound the soul of Jesus continuously, through our lack of holy compassion? There is a something a man has never divined, and probably that a man never will be able to divine; that subtle something in the nature that can be touched and moved by Divine compassion. It takes down the bars of our life, and lets the Divine love of God flow through our soul.

How often you and I have stood or knelt by the side of the dying and disease smitten, and have waited and prayed, ineffectively, until, within our own heart, something melted, something dissolved, and something richer than tears came from our souls, and by the grace of God, we saw the answer to our prayers before our eyes.

There is such a thing in the world as stigmata, that is, contemplating something so much that it actually becomes a fact in your own being. It is well explained by telling an incident from the life of St Francis, who had contemplated the Cross of Christ with such intensity, and it so moved him, that he said to his follower, "When I am dead, open my body, and you will find the impress of the Cross of Christ on my heart." And sure enough, after his death, when they opened his body, there was the impress of the Cross of Christ on his heart. There is an inner life, an inworking of God.

The compassion of Jesus was illustrated when He broke up a funeral procession one day, as He passed along in that little city of Nain. He was named by these tender terms; the only son of his mother, and she was a widow. When Jesus looked on that procession, something broke loose in His soul. He stepped up to the bier, being moved with compassion, and said, "Young man, I say unto thee arise." The sorrows of others moved the soul of Jesus, and touched His heart. Lazarus, His friend, died, and four days later the Lord went there, and hearing that He was approaching the village, one sister came to meet Him; and she said to Him, "Lord, if Thou hadst been here, my brother would not have died." The other sister poured out her heart to Him in a similar manner. Eventually, He stood by the grave of His friend. And Jesus wept. Something terrific was moving in His soul He said, "God, I thank Thee that Thou hearest me always." Then He cried. with a loud voice, "Lazarus, come forth." And he that was dead came forth.

Once in South Africa, we were praying for a sick lady, for a time without result. Then I said, "I will take my sister and go and pray for her." We prayed again, and there was no victory. A day or two afterwards, we were down in the city, in one of the large department stores. As we stood there, the Spirit of the Lord said to me, "Go to her now." I said to my sister, "As soon as you are through, we will go over and pray for that sick lady." We went and I watched her writhe in pain and agony, until I put my arms about her, and cuddled her head close to my heart. And then, presently, something broke loose in my soul; and then in one moment, (I hadn't even started to pray) she was lifted out of her agony and suffering. A Divine flood moved her, and I knew she was healed. Then I laid her down on the bed, and took my sister's arm and we went away, praising God.

And yet one more incident; and I want to give you this for your own help and blessing. I knew a man in South Africa, who was an ardent Methodist. He had ten sons, all Methodist (local) preachers, and three daughters, three beautiful daughters, holy women, a wonderful family: one of the most wonderful families I have ever known. The old gentleman had been stricken with disease, and the agony of his suffering was so great that there seemed to be only one way, and that was to drug him into insensibility. As the years passed, he became a morphine fiend. He told me that he smoked 24 cigars, drank two quarts of whisky, and used a tremendous quantity of morphine every day. Think of it. So the old man, until he was 73 years old, was drugged into senselessness most of the time. I prayed for him unceasingly for 16 hours without result. William Duggin, one of my ministers, hearing of the situation, came to my assistance; and I remember how he stood over him and prayed for him in the power of God. Somehow there was no answer. I watched that man in convulsions until his daughters begged me just to let them give him morphine, and let him die senseless, rather than to see him suffer longer. And I said, "No. I have had your pledge and his too, that life or death, we were going to fight this battle through." Presently, as I stood there, and was watching the awful convulsions, particularly in his old bare feet that were sticking out at the bottom of the bed, this came to my mind, "Himself took our infirmities." And I reached out and got hold of them, and held them as in a grip of iron; and that thing, that is too deep for any form of expression that we know, broke forth in my soul: and in a single moment I saw him lie still, healed of God. Many a day after that I have walked with him over his three vast estates, on which there were 50,000 orange trees and 50,000 lemon trees, and the old man told me of his love for God, and of the richness of His presence, and I had my reward, blessed be God.

If this Church ever succeeds in doing that big thing, that great thing, that unspeakable thing that God purposes that we should do, it can only be when we enter into that Divine compassion of the Son of God.

Reality

Hebrews 2.

When I read this chapter there is a thrill that goes down through my soul, and I would to God that the real spiritual truths of it could forever be established in the minds of men.

I once listened to an eminent divine preaching from the text, "What is man?" When he got through I had a feeling that man was a kind of whipped cur with his tail between his legs, sneaking out to throw himself into the lake, and saying, "Here goes nothing." I said, "He has never caught the fire of the thing Jesus is endeavouring to teach through the apostle; that man was the crowning creation of God, that God endowed him with a nature and qualities that by the grace of God can express more of God than any other of God's creations, that God purposed by the Holy Spirit to make the salvation of Jesus Christ so real in the nature of man that "He that sanctifieth" (Jesus Christ) "and they that are sanctified" through His grace are both of one nature, of one substance, of one character, one in life, one in the righteousness of His death and one in the consequent dominion that came because of His resurrection and glory.

"For both he that sanctifieth and they who are sanctified are all of one: for which cause He is not ashamed to call them brethren." (Hebrews 2:11)

Brethren of the Lord Jesus Christ! He, the elder brother, we the younger members of the family of the same Father, begotten by the same Spirit, energised by the same divine life of God, qualified through the Holy Ghost to perform the same blessed ministry.

"He took not on Him the nature of angels; But He took on Him the seed of Abraham."

I wish I could write these things in your soul and brand them in your conscience.

When the purpose of God in the salvation of man first dawned upon my soul, that is when the greatness of it dawned upon my soul. Experimentally I knew God as Saviour from sin; I knew the power of the Christ within my own heart to keep me above the power of temptation and to help me live a Godly life; but I say to you that when I knew the purpose of God and the greatness of His salvation, life became for me a grand new thing.

When, by the study of His Word and the revelation of His Spirit, it became a fact in my soul that God's purpose was no less in me than it was in the Lord Jesus, and is no less in you and me as younger brethren than it was in Jesus Christ, our elder brother, then, bless God, I saw the purpose that God had in mind for the human race. I saw the greatness of Jesus' desire. That desire that was so intense that it caused Him as King of Glory to lay down all that glory possessed for Him, and come to earth to be born as a man, to join hands with our humanity, and by His grace lift us in consciousness and life to the same level that He Himself enjoyed. Christ became a new factor in my soul. Such a vision of His purpose thrilled my being so that I could understand then how it was that Jesus, as He approached man and His needs, began at the very bottom, called mankind to Him, and by His loving touch and the power of the Spirit through His word, destroyed the sickness and sin that bound them and set them free in both body and soul, lifted them into union and communion with Himself and God the Father. Yea, bless God, by the Holy Spirit indwelling the souls of men, Christ purposed to bestow on mankind the very conditions of His own life and being, and to give to man through the gifts of the Spirit and the Gift of the Spirit, the same blessed ministry to the world that He Himself had enjoyed and exercised.

The old song that we used to sing became new to my heart. Its melody runs through my soul:

"Salvation, O the joyful sound,

In a believer's ear

It soothes our worries, heals our wounds

And drives away our fears."

And lots more, bless God.

I could then understand what was in Charles Wesley's heart when he wrote his famous hymn, "Jesus Lover of My Soul," and penned its climax that marvellous verse:

"Thou, O Christ, art all I want,

More than all in Thee I find;

Raise the fallen, cheer the faint,

Heal the sick and lead the blind.

Just and holy is Thy name;

I am all unrighteousness,

Vile and full of sin I am,

Thou art full of truth and grace."

The same thing was in the spirit of Isaiah when in the beautiful thirty-fifth of Isaiah his exultant soul broke forth in the shout of praise, "He will come and save you. Then the eyes of the blind shall be opened, and the ears of the deaf shall be unstopped. Then shall the lame man leap as an hart, and the tongue of the dumb sing."

I could understand then the thrill that must have moved David, when he sang the 103rd Psalm.

"Bless the Lord, O my soul, and forget not all His benefits: Who forgiveth all thine iniquities; Who healeth all they diseases."

The vision that has called forth the shouts of praise from the souls of men in all ages is the same vision that stirs your heart and mine today. The vision of the divine reality of the salvation of Jesus Christ by which the greatness of God's purpose in Him is revealed to mankind by the Spirit of the Living One, transformed and lifted and unified with the living Christ through the Holy Ghost, so that all the parts and energies and functions of the nature of Jesus Christ are revealed through man, unto the salvation of the world. Bless God.

The vision of God's relation to man and man's relation to God is changing the character of Christianity, from a grovelling something, weeping and wailing its way in tears, to the kingly recognition of union and communion with the living Son of God. Yea, bless God, to the recognition of the real fact that the Word of God so vividly portrayed in the lesson I read. That "in the bringing of many sons into the world" not one son in the world, but in the bringing of many sons into the world, "it became him to make the captain of their salvation perfect through suffering." Blessed be God.

I am glad, bless God, that the Scriptures have dignified us with that marvellous title of "sons of God." I am glad there is such a relation as a "Son of God" and that by His grace the cleansed soul, cleansed by the precious blood of Jesus Christ, filled and energised by His own Kingly Spirit, that he too by the grace of God has become God's king, God's gentleman indeed and in truth.

The Spirit of the Lord says within my soul, that the kingly nature of the Son of God is purposed to be revealed in the nature of every man, that Christ's kingliness may be prevalent in all the world and govern the heart of man, even as it governs the heart of those who know Him and have entered into His glory.

(A young man called up from audience.)

I listened to this young man's testimony on Friday night with a thrill in my soul. I want him to tell you what God had done in him and for him.

"I do not know whether I can tell it all or not. I am sure there is a good deal I can not tell. When I was a lad of about 14 years old, I was forced into the mines to work, and I worked a great deal in the water, which brought on rheumatism. I was crippled up for years in my younger days, and gradually grew worse. I could walk around, but you could hardly notice where I was afflicted. It was in the hips and back.

"A great many physicians said there was no relief for me. When I came down here to Spokane and was labouring on anything, I could not stoop down. When I would drop my pick or shovel, I would have to pick it up with my feet and reach for it with my hands.

"I came to this meeting last fall, and with one prayer by Brother Lake I was healed in thirty minutes of rheumatism, which had been a constant torture to me for years. Later on I contracted tuberculosis, and was examined by the county physician, Stutz, who advised me that the best thing to do was to go to Edgecliff. Also other physicians said I was very bad, and they did not think I could live more that six or eight months, unless I went out there right away.

"I took the same thing for it. I went to the healing rooms for prayer, also Brother Peterson prayed for me, and in three weeks I went to Dr Stutz and he could not find a trace of it. I have gained eleven pounds, and I never felt better in my life."

That is a simple story isn't it, but that story is a revealer of the question that has probably caused more debate in Christian life than almost any other, and of which the world has little understanding. That is that the Spirit of God is a living force that takes possession of the nature of man and works in man the will of God, and the will of God is ever to make man like Himself. Blessed be His precious Name.

It would be a strange Word indeed, and a strange salvation if Jesus was not able to produce from the whole race one man in His own image, in His own likeness and of His own character. We would think that salvation was weak, would we not?

If the world were nothing but cripples, as it largely is, soul cripples, physical cripples, mental cripples everywhere, then I want to know what kind of a conception the world has received of the divinity of Jesus Christ, of the Power of His salvation? Is there no hope, is there no way out of the difficulty, is there no force that can lift the soul of man into union with God, so that once again the life of God thrills in his members?

Our purpose, by the grace of God, is to reveal to the world that that is the real truth and purpose and power of the salvation of the Lord Jesus Christ. My soul rejoices every time I see a man set free, for I say within my heart, "There is one more witness to the divine fact that the Christ of God is a living power, taking possession of the nature of man and transforming man's being into His own image."

The mere fact of our brother's deliverance from suffering and inability to help himself, and a possible premature death, is a very small matter in itself, in comparison with the wonder it reveals to us. The revelation of the power of God at the command of man, to be applied to the destruction of evil, whether spiritual or physical, mental or psychological, shows us Christ's purpose and desire to bring man by the grace of God once more into his heavenly estate, where he recognises himself a son of God. Blessed be His Name.

Years ago I found myself like my brother, but worse crippled than he when my legs drew out of shape and my body became distorted by the common curse of rheumatism. My pastor said, "Brother you are glorifying God," and my Church said, "Brother, be patient and endure it. Let the sweetness of the Lord possess your soul." And I was good enough to believe it for a long time, until one day I discovered that it was not the will of God at all, but the will of the dirty crooked-legged devil that wanted to make me like himself. And then, bless God, everything was changed and I laid down everything and went to Chicago to the only place where I knew then that a man could get healed. I went to John Alexander Dowie's Divine Healing Home at 12th and Michigan Streets, and an old grey haired man came and laid his hands on me and the power of God went through my being and made my leg straight, and I went out and walked on the street like a Christian.

Do you know when my legs straightened out it taught me the beginning of one of the deepest lessons that ever came to my life. It taught me that God did not appreciate a man with crooked legs any more than He does with a crooked soul. I saw the abundant power of the gospel of salvation, and that it was placed at the disposal of man to remove the unchristlikeness of his life, and if there was unchristlikeness in the body, we could get rid of the curse by coming to God and being made whole. For there is just as much unchristlikeness in men's bodies as in men's souls. That which is in the inner life will also be revealed in the outer life. That which is a fact in the mental and psychological will become a fact in the physical also. And, Bless God, that which is the divine fact of all facts, that the spirit of man and the Spirit of God are of one substance and one nature, and his mind and body take on of the spiritual power imparted, until it too becomes Christlike. Blessed be His holy Name.

The Spirit of the Lord speaks within my soul and says:

"Within the breast of every man is the divine image of the living God, in whose image and likeness he was made. That sin is a perversion, and sickness an imposter, and the grace and power of God through the Holy Ghost delivers man from all bondage of darkness, and man in all his nature rises into union and communion with God and becomes one with Him the truest sense. One in the thoughts of God, one in the aspirations of God, one in the Spirit of Jesus Christ as the Saviour of man and man then gives himself a Saviour also lifting man by the grace of God to the Lamb of God that taketh away the sin of the world."

Blessed be His holy Name.

"There's a wideness in God's mercy,

Like the wideness of the sea;

There's a kindness in His Justice,

Which is more than liberty.

But we make His love too narrow

By false limits of our own,

And we magnify His strictness

With a zeal He will not own.

There is welcome for the sinner,

And more graces for the good;

There is mercy with the Saviour;

There is healing in His blood.

For the love of God is broader

Than the measure of Man's mind;

And the heart of the Eternal

Is most wonderfully kind.

If our lives were but more simple,

We should take Him at His word;

And our lives would be all sunshine

In the sweetness of our Lord."

So the divine realities remain. The reality of God a living power. The divine assistance, the heavenly nature known to every man who enters by the Spirit through the door, Christ Jesus, into a living experience. The man who doubts is the man on the outside. The man on the inside has not questions to settle that do not comprehend God, as that soul that has never been in contact with His life and power. But Christ invites mankind to enter with Him into the divine knowledge and heavenly union that makes the spirit of man and the Spirit of God to be one indeed and in truth. Bless God!

Man is the divinest reality that God has given in His great creation. Man in the image of God, man renewed by the life of God, filled with the Holy Spirit, revealing and giving forth by the living Spirit, transformed eyen as himself has been transformed. Blessed be His name.

God has made us in the truest and highest sense co-partners and co-labourers with our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ. He has not withheld one possibility that was manifested in Jesus from any man, but on the contrary invites mankind to come forth in the dignity and power of sons of God, and to that Christ and in Christ join in the mighty wonder of the salvation of the world over sin and sickness, and the power of death and darkness and hell. Bless God.

Salvation to my heart is Christ's glorious reality. Under a tree away back in Canada one night I knelt and poured out my heart to God and asked Him, by His grace, to take possession of my life and nature and make me a Christian man, and let me know the power of His salvation. And Christ was born in my soul. Such a joy of God possessed my heart that the leaves of the trees seemed to dance for months following, and the birds sang a new song and the angels of God witnessed of the glory of heaven in my own heart. Blessed be His Name.

Salvation is a progressive condition. The difficulty with Church has been that men were enduced to confess their sins to Christ and acknowledge Him as a Saviour, and there they stopped, there they petrified, there they withered, there they died, dry rotted. I believe in these phrases I have expressed the real thing that has taken place in 85% of professing Christians in the world. Oh, bless God, we never saw Christ's intention. That day away back there, when the glory light of God first shone into my soul, was a glorious day, the best I had ever known to that moment. But, beloved, it would be a sorrowful thing in my life if I was compelled to look back to that day as the best. No, bless God, there were better days than that. There were days when the Lord God took me into His confidence and revealed His nature, and revealed His purpose, and revealed His love, and revealed His nature, and revealed His ministry. Yea, Bless God, there came a day when God once more in His loving mercy endowed me with the Spirit of God, to be and perform the things that He had planted in my soul and had revealed in His own blessed Word and life.

I invite you to this life of divine reality. I invite you to enter into the Lord Jesus. I invite you to enter into His nature that you may know Him, for no man can say that Jesus is the Lord, but by the Holy Ghost. It is through the revelation of the Spirit of Christ in the soul of man that he is privileged to know Jesus as the Lord. Blessed be God. We may know Him as an historic character, we may know Him as the ideal man, we may know Him as the Christ and Saviour, but we do not know Him as the living God who imparts His own nature and life and power to us, until we know Him as the Scripture says in the Holy Ghost. Bless God!

He who has lived and felt that religious life was a dream or a myth or an abstract something that was hard to lay your hands on, an intangible condition, has been mistaken. I bless God. In the bosom of the Living One is the divine realities of God, filling and thrilling the soul of Christ Himself, filling and thrilling the soul of every recipient of the life of the Lord Jesus.

And the Spirit of the Lord once more speaks within my heart and says that, "the joys of God and the glories of heaven and the understanding of angelic existence and being are only known to him who is privileged in consciousness to enter that life and realm. That God by His grace has purposed that man in his nature and consciousness shall live in union and communion with our Father God, and with the Lord Jesus Christ, His Son, the innumerable company of angels and the presence of just men made perfect and we shall know the power and wonder of the blood of Jesus that speaketh better things than that of Abel."

And the Spirit of the Lord speaks yet again and says that as Jesus was the Prophet of all prophets, because of the completeness of the union of His nature with God, that man in turn becomes the prophet of prophets as his spirit assimilates with the Spirit of Him, the divine One; that man becomes the lover of all lovers, even as Jesus Christ was the lover of all men, thrilling men with the intensity of His affection in the union of spirit with Himself, binding them by the love of His nature as the bond-salves of Christ forever.

So the Christian draws to himself the love of men, not because he slavishly desires it, but because of the fact that he obeys Christ's divine law, "Give and it shall be given unto you, full measure, pressed down and shaken together and running over, so shall men give into your bosom." Blessed be God.

And I want to tell you that this little Church is one of the most loved of all Churches in all the world. I want to tell you that more hungry hearts are turned in longing toward this little company of people than to any other company of worshippers in the land. Why? They have heard that God is here and the longing of the nature of man to know God causes them to turn their hearts and their faces toward the source of heavenly blessing. Shall we give it to them, or will we disappoint them? Shall they receive the blessing of God through our heart, or will they turn away hungry and dissatisfied? Yea, I know your answer, for I know the answer of the Spirit, "Give and it shall be given unto you." Blessed be God. The greatest giver is the greatest receiver. He who gives most receives most: God's divine law. The reverse of God's law is always evidenced in the soul of man as selfishness. Always getting, always getting, always getting, until the nature contracts and the face distorts and the brain diminishes and the life that God gave to be abundant becomes an abomination, that men are compelled to endure.

Spiritualism

"And Samuel said to Saul..." (1 Samuel 28:7-19)

The old prophet appeared and proceeded to tell what was going to take place and what was going to happen to Saul and his sons in the battle to come.

Now then we read a surprising thing. He had light in the promise of Christ's redemption. Where did he get it? The word says "sheol" or the regions of the dead. They were there without something. What was it? The deliverance of the Son of God.

The prophets prophesied concerning the deliverance the Son of God was to bring, and after Jesus Christ entered into the regions of death and liberated those who were held by its chains, those who had died in the hope of the promise, those who had died in the fullness of faith that the Redeemer was to come. He came and the actual deliverance from the power of death took place. "He led captivity captive, He ascended up on high" and their place of residence was transferred from that place (sheol) governed by the power of death and the angel of death to where-ever the Lord Jesus Christ went. "They ascended up on high" and their place of residence was changed. We do not know where those who went with Jesus stopped. You call it Paradise, but so far as Jesus is concerned, it is perfectly plain in the Word that He never stopped until He came to the Throne of God.

You go through the Book and find where anyone was ever called down out of heaven, and you won't find it. Those who have their residence with the Lord Jesus Christ, from the day of His resurrection and onward, would have to be called down, not up.

Now one of the things we have lost out of our Protestant faith from the days of the Reformation onward has been the wonderful truth of the ministry of Jesus in the Spirit to the dead. Do you get it? The ministry of Jesus to the dead. "For this cause was the Gospel preached to them that are dead." Oh, you mean dead in this world, and dead in sins? Not at all, because the rest of the verse explains.

"For this cause was the gospel preached also to them that are dead."

Why?

"That they might be judged according to men in the flesh." (1 Peter 4:6)

On the same grounds that men in the flesh were. They heard the words of Jesus. They received the words of Jesus, or they rejected the words of Jesus, just as men in the flesh do. Well, what does it mean? You ask, "Are you preaching on the subject of a second chance?" No, brother, but I am calling attention to the state of the dead before Jesus came. They died in the hope of the promise. Jesus came and the promise was fulfilled. He fulfilled it on the cross of Calvary, and went into the regions of the dead and fulfilled it to them, and delivered them and took them out the power of death and transferred them to His kingdom.

"He led captivity captive, and gave gifts unto men." (Ephesians 4:8)

With the above thoughts I have laid a kind of foundation. There is no such thing in the whole New Testament as a re-occurrence of those instances I have just read. No such a suggestion or its possibility in the New Testament. It belonged to a day and an age and a state that ceased to be when Jesus Christ the Lord and redeemer came.

Tongues and interpretation, by one Fred Wilson: Oh, listen to the Word, the living Word of God that is coming forth. You shall live, you shall live throughout eternity; but deny the living Word and ye shall go down, ye shall go down into the pit. Believe the Word and ye shall live.

A number of years ago when I was a missionary in Africa I formed the acquaintance of W.T. Stead, who later was one of the victims of the Titanic. I came to London at his invitation and expense for a personal interview. He took me to his office and after he had become acquainted he introduced this fact. He maintained a spiritualistic bureau associated with his great work known as the Julia Bureau. Julia was a friend who had died, and he believed after she was dead he could contact the spirit of Julia. So eventually he published a book entitled, "Letters From Julia." Later he changed the name to "After Death," and these letters from Julia are published in this book.

Stead presented me with a copy of the book and requested that I should read it carefully. I did so and made notations of the various letters, and when I got a chance to talk to him I said, "Julia in a very cunning manner indeed avoids the deity and divinity of the Lord Jesus Christ. Now in order that you may see it, I went over the different letters where reference was made to the Lord Jesus Christ." I said, ''You listen, Stead, that cunningness is altogether out of harmony with the other statements in the other letters of the book." When it came to that subject of the divinity of Jesus the peculiar cunningness of wording was observable, even to the most ordinary mind, by which she carefully, studiously avoided any reference to the divinity or deity of Jesus Christ. I said, "Stead, I am going to put you up against the Word on this matter; 'Every spirit that confesseth not that Jesus Christ is come in the flesh. is not of God.'" (1 John 4:3). W.T. Stead was a big man and a great soul. He thought that he might convince me if I were at all reasonable.

Finally a meeting was arranged between Sir Oliver Lodge, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, W.T. Stead and myself. I want to say a word concerning these two great men. Both have been knighted by the King as knights of the Realm because of their contributions to scientific knowledge.

When a knight is knighted he kneels before the King; the King touches him and says, "Rise, Sir Knight," and so forth. What I want you to see is that a man must have contributed something of unusual value to the Empire in order to be knighted. He must also be able to maintain his social status as a knight. Both men were great men, great as men speak of worldly greatness; great men intellectually; great men in the secrets of science.

After we had spent a whole night reviewing these varied things (experiences) that we considered vital, I said, "Gentlemen, I want to tell you of one experience that I think goes further than any of these you have told me. My late wife died in South Africa. I buried her on Christmas Eve, 1908, at Johannesburg. The following sixth of May, which was the anniversary of her birthday, as I sat at the table I occupied an hour telling the family incidents of their mother, and trying to fix the memory of their mother in their young minds. The baby was only eighteen months old and the eldest only fourteen years when she died. Later I went to the Post Office, and a lady tapped me on the shoulder and said, "When you are through with your business, come up to the office," and handed me a card with the address. When I was through I strolled up to the office. I recognized her as one of the members of my audiences. There was a couple of gentlemen in the room, one a Frenchman, Massalie, and another Frenchman.

As we sat talking I wondered why she had asked me to come up. I observed as I watched her she seemed to be distressed, and one side of her face was purple with erysipelas. I stepped over and asked her if it was because she was sick that she had asked me to come, and she said, "Certainly." I laid my hands on her and began to pray, and as I prayed I was conscious of the Spirit coming in power, and that purple disappeared as I watched it. The healing was so remarkable that the gentlemen were surprised.

Massalie said, "Mr Lake, what is that?" I said, "Massalie, that is God." He replied, "Oh, everything is God. I lived among the East Indians and everything is God." The phrase was offensive to my spirit and I said, "Well brother, I do not want to discuss it." He said, "Well if it is God, I'll tell you how to prove it." He said, "I put over a bad business deal, was very angry and in a high temper one day. Instead of opening the door gently, I opened it with a push. A lady happened to be behind the door. It took her an awful blow on the side of the head, she became unconscious, and in a few days we discovered the skull bone was fractured. Not only that, but the optic nerve had been detached and the eye became blind." He had spent quite a fortune on the woman, but nothing availed. The eye remained blind. He said, "If that is God, you put your hands on her eye and pray sight back into that eye." The Spirit was resting on my soul. I stepped over and began to pray. Instantly the Spirit came upon her until she was absolutely submerged in the Spirit. She remained in that condition a little while and this strange thing took place.

She arose from her chair, her eyes quite shut, and came in my direction. I got up and moved my chair. She walked right around and came to me. She slipped her fingers down, gave me a little chuck just like my late wife would have done, and said, "Jack, my Jack, God is with you all the time. Go right on. But my baby, my Teddy, I am so lonesome for him, but you pray so hard, you pray so hard."

After Mrs Lake died, the little boy fell into a decline, and it required all the energy of my soul to keep that boy alive for months. Eventually he survived.

After the incident had passed I asked her to write it. You get people to write things down so you can analyse them.

Listen, it is not dragging spirits up, and it isn't dragging some spirits down. There is nothing about calling spirits down from God in the Word; only about calling them up out of the depths. The Apostle Paul says he was "caught up to the third heaven." (2 Corinthians 4:4) The attractive power is where the Lord Christ is. Jesus Christ is the attraction of the blood washed soul. If you are going to travel anywhere, you will go His way.

All right, some where in my files I have that incident as she gave it to me. After a while she sat down and the Spirit came upon her. Presently she said it seemed as if she escaped out of herself and travelled so far and so fast. Presently she said, "I observed I was being approached by a beautiful lady who was tall (and she gave a general description of her.) She said her name was Jene. It is sympathy that brings me. I had a visual defect and the Lord healed me. You come with me and I will take you to Jesus, and He will heal you. She linked her arm in mine, and we travelled together. As we went along I observed the most wonderful landscape. Presently we came to a mountain, and while we stood there this lady repeated to her the entire 35th chapter of Isaiah: "The wilderness and the solitary place shall be glad for them; and the desert shall rejoice and blossom as the rose," and so on.

This dear woman did not know there was such a chapter in the Bible, until I told her it was the 35th of Isaiah. Then they came to a broad stretch of water and on the opposite side were groups of angels, and Jesus stood in the midst of one of these groups. The lady took her to within a respectful distance and bowed her into the presence of Jesus. She said He looked on me sympathetically and said, 'Wherefore didst thou doubt? I am the Lord that healeth thee,' and He stooped down and took the waters of the river and bathed my eyes and bade me see."

All this took place as we sat in the office. Presently her eyes opened and she became normal. Her employer asked her what had happened, and if she could see. She looked out across the street to the market square and proceeded to read the signs on the wall. Then he brought a book of ordinary type and she read that. He handed her a Persian Bible he had on his desk. It had very fine type. She opened the book and began to read.

Well that was the story I recited to W.T. Stead and the others as we five sat together that night is Stead's office. They said, "Mr Lake that is the most wonderful thing we have ever heard. That is the best case of spiritualism we know of. If you will just give us the privilege of publishing that story."

I said, "Brethren, you have not seen the secret of that. Nobody came up to give that message, and nobody came down." And they opened their eyes. That dear soul got through. She was a child of God and she started straight for the Lord. And so would you. The day that God sets your spirit free from this old temple, bless God, you will go straight to the Lord Jesus Christ.

Now let me review a moment. Spiritualism is trying to drag the dead up to you. CHRISTIANITY, bless God, is making the blood-washed spirit free to go to the Lord. Just as opposite as night and day.

Last Sunday night a lady came into this audience from upstairs for the first time and got under conviction and was saved and gave her heart to God. On Wednesday night she was sanctified by the precious blood of Jesus, and on Friday night she was baptised in the Holy Ghost. Last night I talked to her for a few moments. She said, "Oh, brother, if I could just tell you the delights of my soul during these last thirty-six hours. If I could only explain how my spirit has found a freedom in God and how it seems to me my heart would rush to Him!"

Would it not? Where do you think it would go? Who occupies your mind? Who keeps your soul? Where is your treasure? In heaven, bless God! Well, you will go where your treasure is. You will go where the attraction is.

Don't confuse yourself with a lot of Old Testament Scriptures concerning the dead. In the Old Testament you read, "the dead know nothing at all", but you never read it in the New Testament. Something happened to the dead when Jesus came. They changed their place of residence, and after that you begin to read "to be absent from the body, is to be present with the Lord."

Now I want to fix this in your mind. The blood-washed always go there, and if you ever talk to any one that is over there you will GO TO THEM. They are not going to leave the throne, but they will say, Brother, come up here. That is the only way you will ever communicate with them.

In these days when this stuff is being proclaimed around the world by men like Lodge, Doyle and others who have been recognized as leaders of thought, naturally people are ready to listen.

But after a night with them in their office, I said, "Dear God it is absolutely impossible to make an unenlightened, unsaved soul to understand the difference between the Spirit of God and every other spirit. The Spirit of God is the attractive power that animates the Christian heart, and they do not want to listen to anything else. "My sheep know My voice."

Years afterward as I considered these things, and discussed them with a brother, he said, "Lake, you had a wonderful opportunity. Tell me, what was the effect in your own soul of that night that you spent with these men?" I said, "Brother, I left there next morning with profound sympathy in my heart. I said as I walked away, 'Dear God, here are the greatest intellects in the world, but concerning the things of God and the light of the Spirit they are just as blind as though their eyes were sealed.'" And their eyes were sealed concerning the light of God.

Men come in the name of science. Naturally there is a certain reverence for knowledge, but don't you be fooled. Just because somebody comes along with the light of worldly knowledge, no matter how minute and wonderful it may seem, the knowledge he has is worldly; the knowledge you have is heavenly. The knowledge that his soul possesses is material; the knowledge that your soul possesses is divinely spiritual, bless God. It comes from the heart of the Son of God.

So when I came to Portland and Sir Oliver Lodge was announced to speak I did not take the train a day sooner in order to hear him. I would not take the trouble to go across the street if I could listen to every one of them, because they could not tell me anything that is vital. The vital things belong to the Kingdom of God, to the knowledge of Jesus Christ. The vital things belong to the Holy Ghost.

It would take too long to tell of the thousands that have gone to spiritualism. I mean people honestly deceived. Just one instance. I had a little friend, Jude and his dear old wife. They were old fashioned Methodist people. They had one dear daughter who died at sixteen. I was absent most of the time in the city, but our home in the country joined theirs. Some friends said to me one night, "You know our old friends Jude whose daughter died, some months past a spiritualistic medium came to South Bend and they began attending. They have gone wild over the thing. We did not know how to help them, and wondered if you can not help them. I went over and had a talk with them, and went with them. At the proper time this gentleman was supposed to be giving them a message from their daughter. After they got through I said, "I would like to talk to her," and I began to talk to this spirit. I said, "Are you Miss Jude? Where were you born? Where did you go to school?" "The Willow Street School." Where did you attend Church? "The Willow Creek Methodist Church." The answers were perfectly correct. Finally I said, "I remember a night as the Willow Creek Methodist Church when a very wonderful thing happened to you. Do you remember what that was?" She did not know a thing about it. I said, "Your memory doesn't seem to be good. Don't you remember when a revival meeting was being conducted and you sat with Mr Lake and myself, and when the altar service came I invited you to go and give your heart to the Lord, and you did, and the glory of God came into your soul?" She did not remember anything about that. I said, "That is strange. Don't you remember on certain occasions you used to come to our home and we used to kneel and the glory and presence of God came on your soul?" She did not remember anything about that. I said, "You are not the spirit of Miss Jude. You are an old liar. In the Name of Jesus Christ you get out of here." And it got out. Beloved, do not be fooled by every voice you hear.

One other thing, Conan Doyle is greatly distressed about President Coolidge, and he thinks the proper thing to do is to immediately confer with the spirit of the late President Harding and be directed about the things of state, or he will make some blunder. This is the advice of one of the greatest scientists of all the world, a man who has been knighted by the King of England because of his knowledge of scientific methods. Strange council, a darkened soul. Bright mind filled with knowledge of this world, but a darkened soul without a knowledge of eternal things. Do you see the distinction?

The instance I told you of has been the practice of men whenever they have had opportunity to go to such matters. One of these days, the first time I hear somebody announcing that they are going to confer with President Harding, I am going to present myself. In case of a public man, his speeches are on record and they have been available to everybody. Here is an example. In Edenburgh I attended a seance where the medium was giving a wonderful message, supposedly from the spirit of the late W. E. Gladstone. I put in my pocket several copies of Gladstone's addresses. I had a stenographer take down the message, and I took the old addresses I had in my pocket and this one that had come through the medium and compared them. I said," It seems to me that something terrible has happened to W. E. Gladstone if he is the author of this message. The thing is not comparable with the things he uttered in his life. It looks to me as if dying has had an awful bad effect on him." They were very much surprised. Most mediums have gotten wise now. Comparison is a wonderful thing.

There is one source of knowledge; that is God. The sin of Spiritualism is in this fact; God said to His ancient people Israel," Thou shalt not seek unto them that peep and mutter." This describes the conditions prevalent in any seance. What should they do? "Shall not a people seek unto the Lord their God?" This Word of God does not even give me the privilege of seeking guidance of angels, let alone the spirit of the dead, or the spirit of a living man either. It gives me one privilege. There is One Mind that knows all, that is the mind of God, and if I am His child, and if my heart is made pure by the blood of His Son, then I have a right to come into His presence and secure anything my heart may want.

I do not believe the world has ever began to conceive of the treasures of the wisdom of the heart of God. Our conception of the possibility of receiving wisdom and knowledge from God is very limited. Here is an experience from my own life.

In the course of my preaching in Africa I observed I would begin to quote things from historical records that I had never heard. I could not understand it. After a while I became troubled about it and I must stop the practice. I was going on the record as part of my sermon, and I felt if you quoted something historical you ought to be able to lay your hands on the record in order to be convinced. Then I observed there was difficulty when I checked these utterances.

Then I told my stenographer that when these unusual things would come, I would raise my finger and she was to put a special mark on these paragraphs. After a while I had quite a collection of them. When I came to the United States I had them with me. I was visiting in the office of Senator Chamberlain, talking with his secretary, Grant. As I sat talking with Grant I showed him the list and told him my experience. He was a Holy Ghost baptised man. He said, "That is an easy matter. We have the most phenomenal man in the Congressional library here. You give him a quotation from any book, and he will tell you where to find it." We sent the list into him one evening and left it with him overnight. The next day when we returned he told us just where we could find each one of these quotations.

Beloved, who knows the facts? Some wondering mind somewhere? Some mind of a dead man? No sir, they were in the mind of God and the soul that enters into the mind of God can get them at any time. But, Beloved, it is the blood of Jesus Christ that enters there. "In Him are hid all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge."

Oh, God, some day may we become big enough to know God, to appreciate our Christ, and our Saviour and the wonder of His soul and the Christian privilege of entering there!

Reign as Kings

I want to bring you a message that came to me today. I have been for years on the verge of this message, but never did I receive it until this morning. In the fifth chapter of Romans and the seventeenth verse in another translation there is a remarkable rendering:

"For if by the trespass of the one, death reigned as king through the one, much more shall they who receive the abundance of grace and the gift of righteousness reign as kings in the realm of life, through Jesus Christ."

That means that the moment you accept Jesus Christ, God becomes your righteousness. That is the "gift of righteousness." Let me read it again: "For if by the trespass of the one, death reigned as king through the one, much more shall they who receive the abundance of grace and the gift of righteousness reign as kings in the realm of life through Jesus Christ." It means everyone of us that have been born again come into a kingly and queenly state, and we are accepted by God to reign as kings and queens in the realm of life.

We have reigned as servants in the realm of spiritual death. We have passed out of death, Satan's realm, into the realm of life, into the realm of the supernatural, or the spiritual, or the heavenlies.

Here are some significant facts. Man was never made a slave. He was never made for slavery. He was made to reign as king under God. If you noticed, I showed you this, that the kingly being that was created was created in the image and likeness of God, that he was created on terms of equality with God that he could stand in the presence of God without any consciousness of inferiority.

I quote you from the eighth Psalm in which this expression is used:

"What is man that thou art mindful of Him? And the son of man, that Thou visitest Him? For Thou hast made him but little lower than God; and crownest him with glory and honour."

(In Psalm 8:4-5 the word "angel" is from the Hebrew "Elohim" and is the name of God in the first five chapters of Genesis.)

What does it mean? It means that God has made us as near like Himself as it is possible for God to make a being. He made you in His image. He made you in His likeness. He made you the same class of being that He is Himself.

He made Adam with an intellect, with such calibre that he was able to name every animal, every vegetable, and every fruit, and give them names that would fit and describe their characteristics. When God could do that with man, then that man belonged to the realm of God.

Adam had such vitality in his body that even after he sinned and became mortal he lived nearly a thousand years: 930 years before mortality got in its work and put him on his death bed. Methuselah lived 969 years. Life was so abundant, so tremendous in their minds and spirits that it conquered century after century.

Jesus said:

"I am come that ye might have life, and that ye might have it abundantly."

More abundantly! Jesus made the declaration: "I am come that ye might have life."

The thing that was forfeited in the garden was regained. God gave him dominion over the works of His hand. God made him His understudy, His king, to rule over everything that had life. Man was master. Man lived in the realm of God. He lived on terms of equality with God. God was a faith God. All God had to do was to believe that the sun was, and the sun was. All God had to do was to believe that the planets would be, and they were. Man belonged to God's class of being: a faith man. And he lived in the creative realm of God. Friends, if you believe what I am preaching, it is going to end your impotence and weakness and you will swing out into a power such as you have never known in your life.

Man lost his place by high treason against God. He lost his dominion in the fall. With the fall went his dominion over spirit and soul. But universal man over yearned for the return of his dominion.

Brother, do you hear me? Here is one of the most tremendous facts that we have to face, that never a single primitive people that has ever been found that has not yearned for dominion. Not a single primitive people has been found that did not have a Golden Past where they had dominion, a Golden Future where dominion was going to be restored. That is the tradition of universal man.

Man has craved dominion. Man has shrunk from bondage. Man has rebelled against it. Man has yearned to gain the mastery again over physical loss, over mind loss, and over the loss of spirit. This long ago desire to gain the lost dominion is seen in his offerings, in his drinking blood, in his priesthood that he has appointed.

I want to enter this a little bit with you. Darwin foolishly said that the reason man drank blood was because the blood was salty and he craved salt. Friends, human blood was never desirable to any people. Why did they drink it? They drank it in order that they might be like God. They drank it that they might become eternal, immortal.

The desire of immortality of the physical body lies latent in the heart of universal man. And for that reason they drank it, believing if they drank it they would be like God. They took the animal or man, and they laid it upon the altar of their god or gods, and when they did they believed that the offering became identified with their god. Then they said, "If we drink the blood of the man or animal, we drink the blood of God, and if we drink enough of it, we will be God."

How far is that removed from the communion table? Do you see the analogy? The communion table is practically unknown as yet to the majority of Christians.

Now the ancients believed this, and the people of Africa, and it caused them to become cannibals. It was not because they loved human blood, but they believed if they could eat the flesh and drink the blood that was given to their god, they would be like God. You will find that all through the legends and poetry of the old world.

Universal man feels the lost dominion can be regained. They have a conviction that it is going to be regained. And this faith of universal man, reaching Godward, finally challenged God to make it a possibility. He believes that union with God will give him this dominion. He hates defeat. He wants to conquer death. He dreams of immortality. He fears death and disease.

Let me recapitulate. This universal man has believed that somewhere God was going to give him this lost dominion. He believed that that dominion would come through His union with God, if that union could be effected. Can you understand now? It was the universal knowledge and the universal need and the universal cry of man for union with Deity that caused the incarnation.

Let me come a step closer. On the ground of what Jesus Christ did, the substitutionary sacrifice, God is able to redeem us from our sins. He is able to impart to us His very nature. He is able to give us eternal life, take us into His own family, so that we can call Him, "Father." Not by adoption only, but by an actual birth of our spirit, so we come into actual relationship and union with God, and the age old cry of universal man has been fulfilled. Do you see? The new birth has brought us into vital union with Jesus Christ.

This thing I am teaching you about our union with God is not known in the great body of Christians. All they have is forgiveness of sin. There is no actual union with God. They do not know that the new Birth is a real incarnation. They do not know that they are as much the sons and daughters of God Almighty as Jesus is. The great body of the Christian Church has no dominion, does not know it. They have the most befogged concept of what God has done and what God is to them and what they are to God.

Another step. The incarnation that God has given through the new Birth has bestowed upon us the lost authority of the Garden of Eden. And only here and there has a man known it or preached it or dared to assume it.

Let me break in here. J. Hudson Taylor, after his first visit to China, was walking in England and a voice said, "If you will walk with Me, we will evangelise Inland China." He looked and there was no one there. An unseen angel had spoken to him. Then his heart caught the vision and said, "Lord, we will do it." He was the founder of the Great Inland China Mission.

Taylor was returning on a sailing vessel and they were going through the Yellow Sea. It was in the section where the seven winds come at eventide, but from a certain hour in the day until evening there is no wind. One afternoon the Captain said to Mr Taylor, "Take this." And he took the glasses and looked. He could see they were nearing land. The Captain said, "The worst pirates in all this awful section of the ocean are there. Our vessel is in the clutches of the tide and in three hours will strike the rocks and there is no hope of saving it." J. Hudson said, "Are you a Christian?" He said, "I am." Taylor asked, "Are there any other Christians here?" He said, "Yes, the cook and the carpenter and another man are Christians." Taylor said, "Call them, and let's go pray." He called them and the five or six of them went to their respective places. They had not been praying but a little while when he heard commands being given on board and men rushing about. He came up, and he could see the wind breaking on the sea that had been so glassy. In a few minutes the wind had filled the sails, three hours before nature would have sent it.

In my own experience I have seen God many times set aside natural law. I told you one day about one miracle. We were putting on a roof on one of our buildings. A storm came up. The boys had unwisely torn off too many shingles for us to cover before the storm reached us. I saw that storm go around us and leave ten or fifteen acres where the rain did not fall for more than one-half hour, and the water flowed down the gutters past our buildings. Those boys worked and sang and shouted. When the last shingle was in place the water fell on it, and we were drenched to the skin. I have seen God perform His prodigies in answer to believing prayer. What God does for one He can do for another.

This inferiority complex that makes men seek God and create religions and priesthoods is a relic of the fall and comes because man is conscious that once somewhere he had power, he had dominion, and he galls under it. Like a mighty athlete that feels his strength leaving him, until by and by he becomes helpless as a little child. Oh, the agony of the thing!

Every man has within him the entire history of every man. That cry of agony of the athlete, that cry of agony of the man that once had physical and mental health is the cry of universal man, crying for the lost authority and dominion that he once enjoyed. He seeks through rites a new birth, a re-creation that does not come. How many lodges and secret societies have a rite, a symbol of the New Birth. I can not mention them, but you look back. You are initiated into such and such an organisation. I can name four that have a New Birth rite. It is latent in the universal man.

Every religion has some kind of re-creation. Why? Every man has a consciousness (I am speaking of men who think) down in them. There is something that cries out against death, against sickness, against sorrow, against defeat, against failure. There is something that revels against the bondage of fear and that cries for rebirth, a recreation that will give them dominion and mastery over the forces that have held them in bondage.

Our redemption is God's answer to this universal hunger. We saw God's hunger creating man; now you see man's hunger bringing God to recreate him. Can't you understand it, men, that the hunger in the heart of God drove Him, forced Him, until He spoke a world into being for the home of His love project, man. It has driven Him to create universes to hold this world by the law of attraction and make it a safe place for man.

Then when man fell and lost his standing and became a slave and subject to Satan, then this universal cry went up until the very heart of God bled for this broken human. Then He made provision whereby this man that He had created, and had sinned and had de-created, might come back into fellowship with Him of a higher, holier sort than he had lost at the beginning.

I want to take you through some scriptures. Go with me to Romans 5:17:

"For if by the trespass of one, death reigned as king, through the one, much more shall they who receive the abundance of grace and the gift of righteousness, reign as kings in the realm of life through Jesus Christ."

By the New Birth you have passed out of Satan's dominion and Satan's power and you have come over into God's dominion, and you have come over into the kingdom of the Son of His love.

You will pardon me, but I have this consciousness when I am preaching: there comes up a wave from the congregation of a kind of stultified unbelief. Do you know where it comes from? It comes from all the years you have sat under false teachers. You have been taught that to be humble you have got to say you are a sinner, you are no good, you don't amount to anything. You sing:

"Weak and sickly, vile and full of sin I am."

I do not like to preach one thing, and Charles Wesley another. If you are born again, you are a son of God. And for you to tear yourself out of your sonship, your relationship and the righteousness of God, and put yourself over in the realm of death, and tell God you are dirty and unclean, that His blood has not cleansed you, and His life has not been delivered you, it is a monstrous thing. It is all right to sing that as an unregenerate, but it is not the experience of the sons and daughters of God.

Here is our position through Jesus Christ. God has become our righteousness. We have become His very sons and daughters, and you sing weakness, and you talk weakness and you pray weakness, and you sing unbelief, and you pray and talk it, and you go out and live it. You are like that good old woman. She said: "I do love that doctrine of falling from grace, and I practice it all the time." Another man said, "Brother, I believe in the dual nature. I believe that when I would do good, evil is always present with me, and I thank God that evil is always there." You live it and believe it, and God can not do anything with you. You magnify failure and you deify failure until to the majority of you the devil is bigger than God. And you are more afraid of the devil than you are of God. You have more reverence for the devil than you do for God. It is absolutely true. If any saint would dare to say, "I am done with disease and sickness; I will never be sick again," ninety percent of you would say, "Keep your eyes on that person. He will be sick in a week. The devil sure will get him." You believe the devil is bigger than God. Your God is about one and a half inches high and the devil is one and a half feet high. What you need to do is to change gods and change gods quick. There have been only a few folks that had a good-sized God.

You go over in Genesis and you see the size of God. It is a full-sized photograph. You see Jesus Christ rising from the dead, and you have seen the God-sized photograph of redemption. We "reign as kings in the realm of life." And what is the reaction in you? You say, "That is all right and I wish that was true in my case. I would like to reign as king." And you think this moment how you are whipped, and you think how you have been defeated, and how weak you are, and you will be defeated all the next week. You reckon on the strength of the devil, and on your own sickness, You say, "If he had what I have he wouldn't talk like that." How can the potter of God come through such a mess of unbelief? How can God get near? Ninety percent of those who have received the Spirit have made God a little bit of a side issue, a sort of court of last resort. When you get where the devil can do no more, you say, "God, catch me. The devil has finished his work." God is simply a Life Insurance Company that pays the premium at death.

Turn with me to Ephesians 1:7.

"In whom we have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of our trespasses, according to the riches of his grace."

For months and months that scripture has been burning its way into my soul. "In whom we have our redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of our trespasses," and it is "according to the riches of his grace." It is illustrated in Israel coming out of Egypt, with the Red Sea before them, with vast desert stretching its burning waste between them and their promised land. We do not have any such redemption in our religion. I'll tell you what we need. Have you been in Canada? Do you know when we went to Canada for the first time there was one thing that struck me peculiarly. The signs would read, "John Brown, Limited." Everywhere I saw that sign. That is a Scotchmen's caution. I was holding meetings in the old St. Andrews Church in Sidney. I asked them one night why they did not put their national symbol on their Churches. They wondered what I meant. I said, "Every other business house is 'LTD.' Why don't you put it over the Church?" An old Scotchman said, "We don't have to. Everybody knows it." Limited? Sure it is limited. Limit God, limit ourselves, limit His grace, limit the Word. Sure, our God is a little bit of a god. Most of us could carry Him in our vest pocket, and it wouldn't bulge the pocket. Our God with the "LTD" on him.

Brother, sister, that challenge comes to us today to let God loose. There are a few places where they have let God have His way, and how the blessings have come.

"In whom we have our redemption."

Have you? If you have your redemption it means that to you Satan has been defeated. Jesus conquered the devil as a Jew before He died. Then He let the devil conquer Him on the cross and send Him down to the place of suffering with our burden and guilt upon Him. But after He satisfied the claims of justice Jesus met the devil in his own throne room and He stripped him of his authority and dominion. And when He arose He said:

"I am He that liveth, and was dead: and, behold, I am alive for evermore, and have the keys of hell and of death." Revelation 1:18

He had gone into the throne room, taken Satan's badge of dominion and authority that Adam had given him in the Garden of Eden. And every man that accepts Jesus Christ was identified with Him when He did it. He did it for you. He did it for me. He died as our substitute and representative. When He put his heel on Satan's neck, He did it for you, and you were in Christ. And to you who believe, Satan is conquered and Satan is defeated. Satan can holler and bellow as much as he wants to, but you withstand him in the faith of Jesus Christ.

I saw a picture this morning. I was reading an article. I saw a company of men walk out, and I saw all the diseases and all the crimes and agonies; I saw cancers and tumours and tuberculosis; and I saw a company of men and women walk down in the midst of it, and I heard them say, "Here come the sons of God: here come the conquerors." And the sons of God said to disease, "In the name of Jesus, depart," and disease fled. It fled as it did before the Son of God. It obeyed because the Son of God sent them out and gave them His name as authority. I saw the company of men enter into the lost dominion. They put upon them the garments of their authority and dominion and walked out conquerors over death and hell and the grave. They were masters. They were rulers.

Then I saw another picture. I saw David in the old cave of Adullam. I saw men coming down that were broken and in distress and in debt, and men that were in awful physical conditions. And they gathered four hundred strong around David. And out of that crowd David developed and trained the most invincible army that was ever seen. Then my mind passed over a few years of struggle. And I saw from that company some mighty men come forth. I saw one man come forth and go where there were thousands and thousands of Philistines; men that were shoulders above him; men that wore shields. I saw that man go among those giants and he slew hundreds of them. And I piled them up in hundreds until I had piled eight hundred.

Every one of those mighty men of David were simple men of extraordinary ability. There was no mark to indicate that they were more than common Jews, 5' 11", but they knocked down men 6' 6" and 6' 8". They conquered them because they were blood covenant men.

That is the type of the Church of Jesus Christ. And I said, "Where are God's mighty men today?" Then I saw a picture. David sat there a little way from the spring of Bethlehem, and the Philistines had got control of the water. David said, "Oh, that I had a drink." And those three men came forth. He said, "Where are you going, boys?" They just waived him off, and those three men conquered the whole company of the Philistines, filled their pitchers with water, and set them down at David's feet.

I cried, "My God, my God, where are the mighty men of valour of today, the men that can assail the forces of Satan?" God says they are coming out of you; they are going to arrive. God has in training some men and women that are going to do exploits for Him. Will you not come up and live in your realm?

This is the trouble with most of us. We live up in the faith realm, but we have gone down the back stairs into the reason realm, and a lot of you are hugging your old devilish reason right now.

God help you, brother, this afternoon to throw your reason out that has led you into all kinds of doubt and fear, to throw it to the wind and say, "God, here goes. We trust in your omnipotence to put it over."

Sanctification

Reading Lesson: 1 Thessalonians 5.

Beloved, the thought that is in my spirit tonight is the truth from the words we have just read, the sanctification of spirit and soul and body. Paul says,

"I pray God your whole spirit and soul and body be preserved blameless unto the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ. Faithful is he that called you who also will do it."

Most of us in our reading of the Scriptures have this difficulty, and it is a perfectly natural one, of recognising body and soul only. And man is generally spoken of as a duality of body and soul. However, the Scriptures do not recognise man as a dual being, but a triune being, like God Himself.

Therefore, the Apostle says, "I pray God your whole spirit and soul and body be preserved blameless unto the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ."

One difficulty we have in the study of this subject is that in the common translation of our English Bible there is very little distinction made between soul and spirit. It is one of the most difficult things in the world to express the common truths we teach in another language. Paul coined seventeen distinct words in his letter to the Ephesians to express the fine distinctions of soul and spirit.

Paul declares in the book of Hebrews the possibility of divisibility of soul and spirit. He says:

"For the Word of God is quick, and powerful, and sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing even to the dividing asunder of soul and spirit, and of the joints and marrow, and is a discerner of the thoughts and intents of the heart." (Hebrews 4:12)

Beloved, the spirit of man is a great unknown realm in the lives of the most men. My judgement is that the spirit lies dormant in most men until quickened by the living Spirit of God and until fertilised by the real Spirit of Jesus Christ. But when touched by the Spirit of God, a quickening takes place. The spirit of man comes into activity and begins to operate within him. It not only discerns things in this life, like the spirit of another, or in another, but it reaches way beyond this present life, and becomes that medium by which we touch God Himself and by which we know and comprehend heavenly things.

In my judgement, the spirit of man is the most amazing instrument of God that there is in all the world. We have this declaration in the book of Job concerning man's spirit:

"There is a spirit in man, and the inspiration of the Almighty giveth him understanding."

When a soul comes to God and surrenders his life to Him, we say he is converted, and by that we mean changed, born again of God, so that the common things which were evident in life as a fleshly being fell away and were gone, and the spiritual life appeared in him, and in the truest sense he began his walk as a child of God I believe a real conversion is the awakening of the spirit, of man to the consciousness of the Fatherhood of God through Jesus Christ. In order to be aware of that consciousness of union with God, it is necessary that everything be removed that hides that consciousness and dims the knowledge of God.

Sin is that peculiar thing in the life of man which dims the consciousness of man so he can not comprehend God. When sin is removed the veil over the soul of man is gone and the spirit of man looks into the face of God and recognises that God is his Father through the Lord Jesus Christ. Bless God, the spirit of man ascending into union with God brings into our soul the consciousness that God is our all and in all.

The SOUL of man is that intermediate quality between body and spirit. The soul, in other words, comprehends all the action of our mental powers, the natural mind. The soul of man is that which reaches out and takes possession of the knowledge that the spirit has attained and expresses that knowledge through the outer man. The soul of man is the governing power in the constitution of man.

I feel in my heart that one of the things we need to learn very much is this, that the soul of man, not the spirit, has a marvellous power.

If I were to endeavour to define in terms I feel the people would understand, I would speak of the action of the soul of man as that which is commonly spoken of by students as the subconsciousness. As you read the writings of psychic authors, you will observe the actions and powers they define are not the powers of the spirit in union with God but the action of the soul of man. The soul of man is the real ego. When the Word of God speaks of the salvation of the soul, it speaks in truly scientific language. For unless the soul, the mind of man, is redeemed from his own self into the spirit of God, that man is, in my judgement, still an unredeemed man.

Sanctification is calculated to apply to the needs of all our nature, first of the spirit, second of the soul, third of the body. Over and over again I have repeated those blessed words of John Wesley in his definition of sanctification. He said, "Sanctification is possessing the mind of Christ, and all the mind of Christ."

The ultimate of entire sanctification would comprehend all the mind of Christ. Christians are usually very weak in this department of their nature. Perhaps less pains have been taken by Christians to develop their mind in God than almost anything else.

We pay attention particularly to one thing only, the spirit; and we do not comprehend the fact that God purposed that the things God's Spirit brings to us shall be applied in a practical manner to the needs of our present life.

I was absolutely shocked the other day beyond anything I think my spirit ever received. A dear lady who professes not only to live a holy life but to possess the real baptism of the Holy Ghost, and who discusses the subject a great deal, was guilty of saying one of the vilest things I ever heard concerning another. I said in my own soul, that individual has not even discerned the outer fringes of what sanctification by the Spirit of God means. I do not believe there is even an evidence of sanctification in that life. Certainly a mind that could repeat such a damning thing gives no evidence whatever but of a very superficial knowledge of God, very superficial indeed.

It shows us this thing, that people are placing their dependence in the fact that in their spirit they know God, that they have been saved from sin, and are going to heaven when they die, but they are living like the devil in this present life, talking like the devil. It is an abomination. It spells a tremendous degree of ignorance. It shows that the individual does not comprehend the first principles of the breadth of salvation as Jesus taught it to the world: a holy mind, a sanctified spirit.

Beloved, I tell you with all candour, a holy mind can not repeat a vile thing, let alone be the creator of the vile suggestion. It is an unholy mind that is capable of such an act. And I say with Paul, mark such a person. Put your finger on him. Just note it. He can talk, but he does not know God. He does not comprehend the power of his salvation.

But bless God, here is the hope, here is the strength, here is the power of the gospel of Jesus Christ, that the power of God unto salvation, applied to the mind of man, sanctifies the soul of man and makes the mind of man like the mind of Christ.

Who could imagine from the lips of Jesus an unholy suggestion that would jar the spirit of another? The mind could not conceive of such a thing. Never could the mind conceive nought from God but the outflow of a holy life, quickening his mind, infilling it with love and purity and peace and power.

Beloved, in our home, in our life, in our office, wherever we are, we leave the impress of our thoughts there. If our thoughts are pure and holy like Christ, people will walk into that atmosphere and instantly discover it.

Prayer: God, I pray that the power of God will come upon the Christian people, that they may feel, oh God, the necessity of submitting the wicked, accursed, vile mind of man to the living God to be purged and cleansed and remoulded, that it may become in deed and in truth the mind of Christ.

If there is any particular place in our lives where as a rule Christians are weak, it is in the consecration of their minds. Christians seem to feel as if they were not to exercise any control over the mind, and so it seems to run at random, just like the mind of the world.

Real Christianity is marked by the pureness, by the holiness of the thoughts of man, and if Christianity, the kind you have, does not produce in your mind real holiness, real purity, real sweetness, real truth, then it is a poor brand. Change it right away.

Beloved, there is relief for such; there is a way of salvation. It is in the submission of that mind to the Lord Jesus to be remoulded by the Holy Spirit so that that mind becomes the pure channel of a holy nature.

Beloved, surely we who profess to know the living God, who profess to live in union with Him, ought to present to the world that attitude of mind, that pureness of mind, that holiness of mind which needs no recommendation. The people know it, they feel it, they smell it. They know it is the mind of Christ. I love that definition of John Wesley's which says, "possessing the mind of Christ and ALL the mind of Christ."

Prayer: Oh God, I ask thee that thou wilt help me and the soul of this people to submit our minds to God so that they may be remoulded in love and sweetness and purity and holiness, so that in the name of Jesus they are the minds of Christ.

Beloved, we are going a step further: the effect of a pure mind on the body of man and in the flesh of man. Do you know that the sins of vileness in men's lives originate in the mind? A man's life will be of the character of his thought. If he thinks evil, he be evil. If he thinks holy, he will be holy. His outward life will be as the inner impulse is. Jesus said,

"From within, out of the heart of men, proceed evil thoughts, adulteries, fornications, murders, thefts, covetousness, wickedness, deceit, lasciviousness, an evil eye, blasphemy, pride, foolishness; all these evil things come from within, and defile the man." (Mark 7:21-23)

They were troubled because Jesus and the disciples were eating and drinking from dishes which were not ceremonially cleansed. Jesus was trying to teach the great lesson of the deep and inner life. He said, "Out of the heart cometh evil things." "That which goeth into the mouth can not defile a man."

Beloved, our minds need to be stayed in Christ kept by the power of God, infilled with the Holy Spirit of Christ, so that we reflect his beauty, we show forth his love, we manifest His sweetness and evidence His power.

Long ago I learned this splendid lesson. One night I was in a strange city and was sick. I wanted somebody to pray for me. A person was present, and they suggested that they would pray. I knelt by a chair on the floor and they put their hands on me, and I arose from that chair with one of the most tremendous passions in my nature, one of the most terrible conditions of sensuousness in me. It was days before I felt that I got back again where I was pure and holy in the sight of God. I did not understand it at the time, but afterward that individual came to me with the confession of the character of the their life, and I understood then. I received the condition of that nature, and in my receptive attitude I received of the vileness of that person in my nature. It seemed my soul was soiled for days in consequence.

That taught me, beloved, to be careful who laid their hands on me. After that, I waited until the Spirit of the living God indicated in my soul that the person who offered to perform such a ministry was pure.

Isn't it marvellous, beautiful, wonderful to realise that mankind can receive into their nature and being the power and spirit of the living Christ which contains the purging power to drive forth from the being every particle of evil, every sensuous thing in the thought and nature, so that the man becomes what Jesus was. That is what the blood of Jesus Christ is calculated to do. That is what the spirit of Christ is purposed to do in the soul of a man: the cleansing of a nature from the power and dominion of sin.

Beloved, the inflow of Holy life into our body MUST PRODUCE holiness in the body, just as it does in the soul. We can not even think beautiful thoughts, we can not think holy thoughts, without them leaving their impression in our nature, in our very flesh.

That same divine power in us dissolves disease, restores diseased tissues; our flesh is purged by the divine power being transmitted from our spirit, through our soul, into our body.

I have always loved to think of the Holy Flesh of Jesus, not just His beautiful mind, not just the pure spirit; but is it not blessed and sweet to contemplate the flesh cleansed and purified until His very body, His hands, His feet, His Person, were just as pure by the Spirit of God as His pure soul and His pure spirit were.

That is why Jesus was the wonderful channel He was. The Spirit of God would flow through Him just as freely, just as fully, just as powerfully as it was possible for it to flow through a holy, purified personality.

I like to contemplate the Lord Jesus on the Mount of Transfiguration and think of the radiant glory that came through his flesh, not just the illumination of His spirit, but the holy glory emanating through His flesh until He became white and glistening, until His clothes were white and his face shown as the light. It is that radiant purity of God that my soul covets. It is that radiant power, evidenced in the pureness of my spirit, my mind, my very flesh that I long for.

So, Beloved, we see that when something impure, of the character of disease, appears on your flesh and mine, and we feel we are being soiled by an unholy touch, in the name of Jesus our spirit reaches up and rebukes that devilish condition, and by the spirit of the living God we stand, believing that the Holy Spirit of God will flow through the spirit, flow through the soul, through the flesh and remedy and heal that difficulty that is in the person.

An old Baptist brother was in to see me about his wife. As I sat reasoning with him, I said, "Brother, I would just as soon have my brother commit a sin as to have sickness in his person. One is the evidence of an impure mind, the other is the evidence of an impure body. And the salvation of Jesus was intended to make him pure in spirit, in soul and body."

"I pray God your whole spirit and soul and body be preserved blameless unto the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ. Faithful is he that calleth you who also will do it."

There is a stream of life that God permits to flow from your nature and mine to all men everywhere. That blessed stream will be either sweet and pure as the stream that flows from the throne of God, or it will be soiled and foul, according to the condition of our nature. The value of the precious blood of Jesus Christ to you and me is that through it that life stream that flows from us may be made holy, that same holy living life stream that causes the Tree of Life to bloom.

Of all the pictures that the Word of God contains, the one described in the 22nd of Revelation is the most beautiful:

"He showed me a pure river of water of life, clear as crystal, proceeding out of the throne of God and of the Lamb..."

Beloved, if your life has not been satisfactory, if you have not recognized the holy character that Christ expects from a real Christian, then this call of the Spirit comes to your soul. "The Spirit and the Bride say come." Come up, come into the real life, the high life, the life hid with Christ in God.

"I will be within thee a well of water, springing up into everlasting life."

Science of Healing

"In Him was life, and life was the light of men." (John 1:4)

There is a difference between Christianity and philosophy. (I presume some folks are inquiring why it is that there is always that key note in my addresses.)

God gave me the privilege of living in the heart of philosophic South Africa, where we have one million five hundred thousand, who are ministered to by Buddhist, and Brahman priests. Every imaginable cult has its representatives there. I was amazed to discover that the whites were gradually assimilating the philosophy of the East, just as we Westerners are assimilating the philosophy of the East, and have been doing so for a long time.

When you take the philosophies, Christian Science, New Thought, and Unity today and examine them, you discover they are the same old philosophies of India, Egypt and China from time immemorial.

The difference between philosophy and religion, particularly the religion of Jesus Christ, is in the words I have quoted from the Scriptures, "In Him was Life, and the life was the light of men." Philosophy is light. It is the best light the individual possessed who framed the philosophy. But it is not a LIFE GIVER.

But from the soul of Jesus there breathed holy, living life of God, that comes into the nature of man, quickens him by its power, and by the grace of God he has the life of Jesus in him, eternal life. Many of the ancient philosophies have a marvelous light. One of the Indian philosophies, Bavgad, was written five hundred years before Isaiah. In it they predicted the coming of a Son of God, a Redeemer, who was to come and redeem mankind.

Buddha presented his philosophy five hundred years before Jesus. Pathergoris wrote four thousand years before Jesus Christ. In each one of them you will find many of the teachings of Jesus. The teachings of Jesus were not unique in that they were all new. They were new because they contained something that none of the rest possessed. It was the divine content in the word of Jesus Christ that gave His teachings their distinguishing feature from the other philosophies. That content (element) is the LIFE of God. "In Him was LIFE, and the LIFE was the light of men."

Beloved, the real Christian, and the real Christian Church, undertakes to bring to mankind the life of the Lord Jesus, knowing that when the LIFE of Jesus comes, the light of civilization and Christianity will follow, but the LIFE is the first thing.

As men traveled from God, and as the world traveled from God, men naturally fell into their own consciousness and soul states, and proceeded in the common way of the world to endeavor to bless the world through LIGHT. But LIGHT never saved a world. Light will never save the world. There must be a divine content from on high that comes to the soul to enrich it and to empower it, to illuminate it, and to glorify it, and more, to deify it! For God's purpose through Jesus Christ is to deify the natures of men, and thus forever make them like unto, not only in their outward appearance and habits of life, but in nature and substance and content, in spirit and soul and body, LIKE THE SON OF GOD.

Jesus never intended Christians to be an imitation. They were to be bone of His bone, and blood of His blood, and flesh of His flesh, and soul of His soul, and spirit of His Spirit. In this He becomes the Son of God, and a Redeemer forever.

In my youth I took a course in medicine. I never practiced medicine, for I abandoned the whole subject a few months before the time of my graduation, when it came to the piece where diagnosis became the general subject for examination. It was then that I discovered that the whole subject of diagnosis was very largely a matter of guesswork, and it so remains.

Consequently, throughout my life, there has remained in me somewhat of the spirit of investigation. It has never been easy to accept things readily, until my soul stepped out inch by inch and proved them for myself.

When I approached the matter of baptism, I did so with great care, but I approached it as a hungry soul; my heart was hungry for God, and one day the Spirit of the Lord came upon me. God flooded my life and baptized me in His Holy Spirit. Then began in my heart a new and powerful working of God, which has gone on for fifteen years, until Christ has become to my soul a divine reality.

Having had former acknowledgment as a medical student, it is still my privilege to attend a medical clinic, which I frequently do. I submitted myself at one time to a series of experiments. It was not sufficient to know that God did things, I had to know HOW God accomplished these things.

So, when I returned from Africa, at one time I visited at the John Hopkins institution, and submitted myself for this series of experiments.

First, they attached to my head an instrument to record the vibrations of the brain. This instruments had an indicator that would mark according to the vibrations of the mind. I began by repeating soothing things, like the Twenty-third Psalm; then I repeated the Thirty-seventh Psalm and then the thirty-fifth chapter of Isaiah, the ninety-first Psalm; and Paul's address before Agrippa. Then, I went into secular literature, and I repeated the Charge of the Light Brigade, Poe's Raven, with a prayer in my heart that somehow God would connect my soul in the Holy Ghost. My difficulty was that while this was going on I could not keep the Spirit from coming upon me, and when I got through with Poe's Raven, they said, "You are a phenomenon. You have a wider mental range than any human being we have ever seen." But it was this, that the Spirit of God kept coming upon me in degree, so I could feel the moving of the Spirit within me.

But I prayed in my heart, "Lord God, if you will only let the Spirit of God come like the lightnings of God upon my soul for two seconds, I know something is going to happen that these men never saw before."

So I closed the last lines. All at once the Spirit of God struck me in a burst of praise and tongues, and the old indicator on the instrument went to the end of the rod and I haven't the least idea how much further it would have gone if there had been an indicator to record it. The instructors said, "We have never seen anything like it!" I replied, "Brethren, it is the Holy Ghost!"

Now in order to get the force of what I want to tell you in this next experiment is something of the processes of digestion. I want to explain the assimilating power of your nature, your capacity to assimilate God and take the life of God into your being, and keep it in your being. I am not talking to you about what I believe. I am talking about what I know.

For twenty-five years God has kept me so that sickness, nor the devil, were able to touch me, from the day that I saw in the ninety-first Psalm a man's privilege of entering into God, not only for healing, but HEALTH, and having God and the life of God in every fiber of his being.

Scientists tell us that in a single inch of a man's skin there are one million five-hundred thousand (1,500,000) cells. They have almost doubled that statement now. But be that as it may, I want you to see that the whole structure of man's life is one wonderful cellular structure. Your body, your brain, your bone is just one great cellular structure.

In the process of digestion it is something like this. The food we eat is reduced to vegetable lymph before it is absorbed by the body. But no scientist in the world has ever been able to satisfactorily explain what it is that changes the lymph and makes it life. Something happens when it is in the body that changes it to life.

I want to tell you what grew up in my soul, and how I proved the fact. I could feel sometimes in the attitude of prayer, just as you have felt hundreds of times, the impulse of the Spirit moving down through your brain and your person to the end of your fingers just little impulses of God's presence in your life. And I have said, "If there was an instrument powerful enough I believe men could see the action of the brain cells, and see what took place.

Here is the secret of digestion. When from the spirit of man, and through the spirit of man there is being imparted to every cell of your body waves of light, waves of life. It is the movement of your spirit. Spirit impulses passing from the cortex cells of the brain to the very end of your fingers and toes, to every cell of your body. And when they touch that vegetable lymph it is transformed into life. That is common transmutation.

In the material world you can dissolve zinc and attach a wire, and transmit it to the other end of the wire. They dissolve that zinc, and the battery at the one end, and transmit the zinc to the other end of the wire, where it is deposited. How is it done? There is a process of transmutation. That is what it is called. There is change from one form to another.

My brother, you listen to me, if that is not true in the spiritual world, there is no such thing as divine LIFE. There is no such thing as salvation through the Son of God. For that which is soulish must be transformed by the Spirit of God in us, until it becomes spiritual, until it is of God. Jesus sat with His disciples and ate with them, both bread and fish. He went to the mount and ascended before them to Glory. What happened to the fish and bread that He ate? I tell you there is a transmutation. That which is natural becomes spiritual. That which was natural is changed by the power of God into the life of God, into the nature of God, into the substance of God, into the glory of God.

So when I returned to this country this time, I submitted myself for this experiment. They attached to my head a powerful instrument that could take some kind of picture one after another, in order to see, if possible, what the action of the brain cells would be. Then I repeated things that were soothing and calculated to reduce the action of the cortex cells to their lowest possible action. Then I went on into the scriptures to the better and richer things, until I came to the first of John, and as I began to recite that, and the fires of God began to burn in my heart, presently once again the Spirit of God came upon me, and the man who was at my back touched me. It was a signal to keep that poise until one after another could look through the instrument. And finally when I let go, and the Spirit subsided, they said, "Why man, we cannot understand this thing, but the cortex cells extended so that we can hardly imagine it possible to a human brain."

Oh, I'll tell you, when you pray, something is happening in you. It is not a myth. It is the action of God. It is scientific that the almighty God comes into the soul, takes possession of the brain, lives in the cortex cells, and when you will or wish, either consciously or unconsciously, the fire of God, the power of God, that life of God, that nature of God, throbs through your nerves, down through your person into every cell of your being, into every million five-hundred thousand cells in every square inch of your skin, and they are alive with God.

Men have treated the Gospel of Jesus Christ as though it were a sentiment and foolishness. Men who posed as being wise, have scorned the simple things that were taking place every day. But I want to tell you that no dear old mother ever knelt before the Throne of God, and raised her heart to heaven without demonstrating the finest process of the wireless of God that ever was produced.

In these days they are now able to transmit by wireless from six to seven thousand miles, and even twelve thousand miles recently (1920). Once again they have been able to demonstrate that in one-tenth of a second they can transmit the first section of thought twelve thousand miles. Think of it! There is practically no such thing as time.

Beloved, the very instant your soul moves with your heart cries, that yearning of your soul, it registers in the soul of Jesus Christ, and the answer comes back.

I said to them, Gentlemen, I want you to see one more thing. You go down in your hospital and bring a man who has inflammation in the bone. So they brought up a man with inflammation in the bone. I said, "You take your instrument, and attach it to that fellow's leg, but you leave enough space to get my hand on his leg you can have it attached on both sides." So when the thing was all ready, I put my hand on that man's shin, and I prayed just like Mother Etter prays. No strange prayer, but the cry of my heart to God. I said, "God, kill this devilish business by the power of God, let it live in him, let it move in him." Then I said, "Gentlemen, what is taking place?" They replied, "Every cell responds." All there is to it is that the life of God comes back into the part that is afflicted, and right away the blood flows in, and the work is done.

My soul has grown tired long ago of men treating the whole subject of Christianity as though it were child's play. We have our physical sciences, we have our psychological sciences, the action of the mind, taught in the great schools of the land, but there is something greater. One of these days there is going to be a new chair. It will be the chair of pneumatology, the science of spirit, by which men will undertake to discover the laws of God. And by the grace of God, men shall know that God is alive, and the living Spirit of God is no dream.

In my healing rooms at Spokane, there came one day a dear woman whose name is Lamphear. She is the wife of a merchant in the city. She had fallen down a stairs, causing a prolapses of the bowels and stomach. She had been an invalid for eleven years. On top of that she had become tubercular. On top of that the poor thing developed inflammatory rheumatism, until she was terribly deformed. She was going to die. The doctors said there was nothing they could do for her. They advised that she be taken to Hot Lake, Oregon, and perhaps that would do her some good. So they put her in hot baths there and she suffered just as much as ever. So they thought they would try super-heated baths. They put her in water hotter than any human being had ever been in before. The results was that instead of having any healing effect, the left leg developed an abnormal growth, and it became three inches shorter than the other leg. It is a simple condition of sarcoma. The foot became an inch longer. She came away from the institution worse than when she went. She got as far as Portland. Her parents were living in the Dalles. She wanted to see her parents before she died. Her husband carried her in his arms onto the ship. As he did so, a Pentecostal missionary stepped up and said, "Dear woman, we understand now why God told us to take this boat. The Lord told us last night to take the eight o'clock boat for The Dalles." He had called up on the telephone and found the fare was $1.80, and as that was all the money they had, they went without their breakfast so as to be able to take the boat.

As she lay crying with her suffering, they said, "When we get to The Dalles, we will pray for you." (They were timid folks.) Eventually they reached The Dalles and went to a hotel. The two knelt to pray for her. She says as they prayed and put their hands on her knees, their hands became illuminated until they looked like the hands of Jesus, their faces looked like the face of Jesus, and she was afraid. But something happened. The pain went out of her.

Strangely, she retained the tuberculosis and the struggle for breath. The leg remained the same length.When she examined herself, she was surprised that it was not shorter. She said, "Pray again that the Lord may make it the same length as the other," but the poor missionary was staggered. He said, "Dear Sister, the pain is gone. You be satisfied and give praise to God."

So she went on three and a half years coughing her lungs out and with her leg longer than the other. One day she came to the healing rooms and was ministered to by Mr. Westwood, and she felt relieved. She said, "Mr. Westwood, I saw breath clear down into my stomach." He said, "I'll pray for that." "But," she said, "the man told me I should be satisfied that the pain was gone." Mr. Westwood said, "He had not grown up in God yet." Mr. Westwood put his hands on that lump and prayed, and God Almighty dissolved that lump of bone, and that leg shortened at the rate of one inch a day, and she wears shoes like anyone else.

There is a difference between healing and miracles. Healing is the restoration of diseased tissue, but miracle is a creative action of the Spirit of God in a man's life. And the salvation of a soul is a divine miracle of God. Every time Christ speaks the word of LIFE to a man's heart there is a divine creative miracle of God in him, and he is a new man in Christ Jesus.

One day I sat in Los Angeles talking to old father Seymour. I told him of an incident in the life of Elias Letwaba, one of our native preachers, who lived in the native country. I came to his home, and his wife said, "He is not home. A little baby is hurt, and he is over praying for it." So we went over and got down on our knees and crawled into the native hut. I saw he was kneeling in a corner by the dying child. I said, "Letwaba, it is me. What is the matter with the child?" He told me that it had hurt its neck. I examined it and saw that the baby's neck is broken, and I said to Letwaba, "Why, Letwaba, the baby's neck is broken." I did not have faith for a broken neck, but poor old Letwaba did not know the difference, and I saw he did not understand; but he discerned the spirit of doubt in my soul. I said to myself, "I am not going to interfere with his faith. He will just feel the doubt and all the old traditional things I ever learned, so I will go out" and I did. I went out and sat in another hut and kept on praying. I went to bed at one o'clock at three o'clock Letwaba came in. I said, "Well, Letwaba how about the baby?" He looked at me lovingly and sweetly and said, "Why brother, the baby is all well." I said, "The baby is well! Take me to the baby at once." I went to the baby and took the little black thing on my arm, and I came out and prayed, "Lord, take every cursed thing out of my soul that keeps me from believing the Lord Jesus Christ."

In my meeting in Spokane is a dear man who told us he was dying of pellagra. He came from Dallas, Texas, to sister Etter's meetings. Apparently, he died on the train and they laid his body at the station house and covered him with some gunny sacks, but, they discovered in the morning he was still alive. So they carried him to Mother Etter's meetings and she came down off the platform and prayed for him.That man is living, and has been preaching the gospel for seven years at Spokane.

Why, there is more science in the Son of God in five minutes than the ignorant old world ever knew. "In HIM was LIFE, and the LIFE as the light of men." The LIFE of God is that which the mind of men, and the keenest of them, never knew, and never discovered. "The world through wisdom knew not God." They could not discern His death nor understand the marvels of His life, until the Lord Jesus came and lived and died and entered into Hades and destroyed the powers of darkness and liberated the souls of men; liberated them from the chains of darkness and came forth into the world to speak God's word and reveal God's power and show God's nature. And by the grace of God, we have been privileged to enter into the nature of Jesus, and the fires of God burn in his soul like they burned in the soul of Jesus. The scientific world has been startled by one of the English scientists who has come forward with a formula for transmuting the grosser metals into gold. It did not work. Years ago this knowledge was known to the world, but somehow it disappeared from the world. Recently men again have attempted to change lead, silver and iron, transmuting them into gold.

Beloved, that is the thing that Jesus Christ has been doing all the time. It is as old as Christianity, and as old as the Son of God. He has been coming to the hearts of men, taking the old base conditions of the nature, and in the mighty action of the Holy Ghost, they have been changed into pure gold of God. If there never was another blessing that came to the world through Pentecost but this one, all the price that men could pay would be as nothing for it. For I want to tell you there has been more real divine researching by the Holy Ghost into the nature of God and the nature of men in these last fifteen years that there ever was in the whole world. When anyone comes to me with the statement that there is nothing in the Holy Ghost but a psychological manifestation, I say, "Brother, sister, come with me and see the gems of God and the beautiful gold that has come out of the dross and the dirty lives, and then you will know."

In my assembly at Spokane is a dear little woman who was totally blind for nine years. She had little teaching along the line of faith in God. She sat one day with her group of six children to discover that the dirty brute of a husband had abandoned her. A debased human being is capable of things that no beast will do, for a beast will care for its own. You can imagine what that little heart was like. She was broken and bruised and bleeding. She gathered her children around her and began to pray. They were sitting on their front porch. Presently the little one got up and said, "Oh, Mama, there is a man coming up the path, and he looks like Jesus. Oh, Mama, there is blood on His hands and blood on His feet!" And the children were frightened and ran around the corner of the house. After a while the biggest one looked around the corner and said, "Why, Mama, He is laying His hands on your eyes!" And just then her blind eyes opened.

And Beloved, if we could have seen the reason, we would have seen that there were some Christians at Zion City or some other place who were praying the power of God on a hungry world, and Jesus Christ in His search, rushed into her life and sent her forth to praise God and teach the Gospel of Jesus.

I would not have missed my life in Africa for anything. It put me up against some of the real problems. I sat upon the Mount of Sources one night, and I counted eleven hundred native villages within the range of my eyes. I could see the color of the grass on the mountains sixty miles away. I could see the mountains one hundred and fifty miles away. Then I began to figure, and I said, "Within the range of my eyes there lives at least ten million native people. They've never heard the name of Jesus. In the whole land there are at least one hundred million people, perhaps two hundred million. They are being born every day at a tremendous rate. Do you know there are more heathen born every day than are Christianized in fifty years? When are we going to catch up by our present method of building schools and teaching them to read? Never! I tell you it will never come that way. It has got to come from heaven by the power of God, by an outpouring of the Holy Ghost.

That is the reason that in my heart I rejoice in the blessed promise. "In the last days," saith God, "I will pour out my Spirit upon all flesh." And every last one of the two hundred million poor black people are going to hear and know of the Lord Jesus Christ. And beloved, I would rather have a place in the kingdom of God to pray that thing into existence, and to pray the power of God upon them, than anything else in the world.

Africa is said to be the first settled country in the world, and we believe it is six thousand years old. Africa has been settled for five thousand years. Two hundred to four hundred million have died every century. Split the difference, and say that three hundred million have died every year for five thousand years.

I began to pray. I said, "Has God no interest in these people, and if He has an interest, why is not something done for them? What is the matter with God?" My heart was breaking under the burden of it. I said, "God, there is an explanation somewhere. What is it, Lord? Tell me about this thing."

After a while the Spirit said, "The Church which is His Body," and I knew that was God's answer. I said, "Yes, the church should have sent missionaries and built schools and done this and that. " The Church, which is His body. And I sat and listened to that voice repeat that sentence for a half hour. I said, "My God, my soul begins to see. The Church is the generating power of God in the world; the Church has been negligent in one thing. She has not prayed the power of God out of heaven."

Then I saw that which has become a conviction in my soul from that day. There never was a soul born to God in the whole earth at any time until some soul in the world got hold of the living Spirit of God and generated that Spirit in saving grace and creative virtue, until it took possession of a soul, no difference if it was a million miles away.

When I try to induce men to forget their little squabbles and little differences and go praying, it is because my soul feels the burden of it. Mother Etter has been like a marshal for fifty years. The sick have been healed, people have been converted and blessed. But beloved, when I heard of Brother Brooks shutting himself up night and day to pray the power of God on a world, I said, "That is where she gets her fire; and from where it comes to my soul; that is from where it comes to every other soul."

Look how beautifully this hall is lighted. Do you know the world lived in darkness for five thousand years and they had no way of lighting a place except by torches. But there was just as much electricity five thousand years ago as there is today. Somebody found how to handle it, discovered the laws that govern it. To this day there is not a man who can tell us what electricity is, or what its substance is. We know we can control it this way and guide it that way, and make it do this and that, but what it is, nobody can tell us. But down somewhere on the river there is a thing that is called a dynamo, and its draws the electricity out of the air, and transmits it over the wires, and these days they are even sending it wireless.

Do you know what prayer it? It is not begging God for this and that. The first thing we have to do is to get you beggars to quit begging until a little faith moves in your souls. PRAYER is God's divine dynamo.The spirit of man is God's divine dynamo. When you go to pray, that spirit of yours gets into motion, not ten thousand revolutions or one hundred thousand. The voltage of heaven comes to your heart, and it flows from your hands, it burns into the souls of men, and God Almighty moves on their behalf.

Over in Indiana some years ago was a farmer who used to be a friend of Brother Fockler and myself. His son had been in South America, had a dreadful case of typhoid fever, had no proper nursing and the result was a great fever sore developed until it was seven inches in diameter. The whole abdomen became grown up with proud flesh, one layer on top of another layer, until there were five layers. The nurse would lift up those layers and wash then with an antiseptic to keep the maggots out of it. When he exposed the body for me to pray for him, I had never seen anything like that before. I was shocked. As I went to pray for him, I spread my fingers out over that sore. I prayed, "God, in the name of Jesus Christ, blast this curse of hell and burn it up by the power of God." Then I took the train and came back. The next day I received a telegram saying, "Lake, the most unusual thing has happened. An hour after you left the whole print of your hand was burned into that thing a quarter of an inch deep, and it is there yet."

You talk about the voltage of heaven and the power of God. Why, there is lightning in the soul of Jesus.The lightnings of Jesus heal men by its touch, sin dissolves, disease flees when the power of God approaches.

And yet, we are quibbling and wondering if Jesus Christ is big enough for our need. Let's take the bars down. Let God come into your life. And in the name of Jesus your heart will not be satisfied with an empty Pentecost, but the light of God and the lightnings of Jesus will flood your life. Amen!

The Second Coming

Reading: Revelation 5

Prayer: Oh, God, upon our souls we call the blessing of the Holy Spirit today to quicken every instinct of our being that by thy grace we may comprehend the power of Thy Word and the might of Thy Spirit. And we pray that the Spirit of the Lord Jesus Christ may be present in every heart that we may realise, oh God, not only the elevation and crowning of our Lord and Saviour, but our own elevation and crowning with Him as sons of God.

Somehow the minds of men the world over have ever been concentrated around the cross of Christ. One of the strangest things to me in all Christian life has been the manner in which the souls of men cling to the cross of Calvary. And I have sometimes felt that that is one of the great reasons why there has been so little progress made in the higher Christian life.

While we revere the cross of Calvary, while the soul of man will ever love to think of Him who gave His life for us, yet I believe the triumph of the Christ began at the cross and ends only WHEN THE RACE, LIKE HIMSELF, HAS RECEIVED FROM GOD THE FATHER, THROUGH HIM, THE GRACE, POWER AND GLORY OF GOD THAT MAKES THEM SONS OF GOD LIKE HIMSELF.

It is a long way between the cross of Calvary and the Throne of God, but that is the way that Jesus travelled, and that is the course for every other soul of man. Bless God. I am glad that God is never hurried. He has plenty of time. A few years makes much difference in this life, but God has plenty of time for the elevation of the soul, for the perfect tuition of every heart, until that heart comes into such complete and perfect unison that the nature of man is absolutely changed into the nature of Christ.

The triumph of Jesus, as we see it outlined in the Scriptures I have just read, has always been one of the splendid inspirations of my own soul. It seems to me if we had not been permitted to have that fore-view of that final triumph of the Son of God, there might have been the conception in the minds of many that after all the life and death of our Lord Jesus Christ was not the perfect triumph that it ought to have been. It seems, therefore, that no one can have the highest appreciation of the real Christian life, and the consciousness that real Christianity brings, unless they see the triumph of the Christ.

Yea, none. It is only as we become possessors of that consciousness ourselves, and as the knowledge of his triumph grows in our own souls and takes possession of our heart, that we are able to comprehend what Christianity really is.

If we stop to think that one-half of the great Christian world is still carrying a little crucifix representing a dead Christ, we will realise how the mind of man is yet chained to the cross of Calvary, to a dead Christ, to a tomb not empty; but the tomb that contains the One they love.

Beloved, that is not Christianity. Christianity, bless God, is the singing triumph that began on the morning of the Resurrection and ends when the race of man has come to the understanding, knowledge and consciousness of God Himself.

Christianity is not a dreary outlook. Christianity is the singing, splendid triumph of the mind of God. Christianity is the blessed victory that the individual feels in his own heart of the consciousness of the presence and power of God within the soul, which makes man the master now and gives him the consciousness of mastery over the powers of sickness and death. Yea, bless God, the greater consciousness by which the soul of man comprehends the life eternal because the forces of darkness and sin and death have been conquered in his own heart through the presence and power of the Lord Jesus Christ in him. Bless God.

I have always wondered how a Christian could be anything less than an optimist. It is a sad thing when you hear Christians with a groan in them. When I meet the grocer I say in my heart, "God, move the man on into the place where he comprehends what Christianity is."

The Christian with a groan in him never moved this world except to groans. In a divine healing meeting some months ago, as I was teaching I tried to develop the thought that as a man thinketh in his heart, so is he; and I was endeavouring to show the people that the spirit of victory in Christ Jesus in one's heart not only affected the attitude of one's mind, but likewise his soul. In fact, through the nervous system, man's mental attitudes are transmitted clear through his body.

The attitude of our soul has much to do with, not only our mental states and spiritual life, but likewise our physical health. Indeed, it seems to me that as the spirit of man is tuned with God, all the outgrowth of his life will be in harmony with his spirit. The attitude of his mind will be in accordance and the condition of his body will be a revelation of the attitude of his mind. That is the reason I have always endeavoured in my preaching to bring before the mind of man the consciousness of triumph, the consciousness of victory, the power of mastery. It seems to me there is a great deal of superficial endeavour in the world to pump oneself up to a certain state of consciousness, which is similar to man taking himself by the bootstraps and trying to lift himself over the fence.

Beloved, the secret of Christianity is the secret of the Christ possessing the heart of man; man being yielded to Him so that His victory, His consciousness, and His power possess your spirit and mind. Then, bless God, we are kings: not because we say we are kings, but because we know we are kings, and because we feel we are kings by the grace of God and His inworking power.

We speak of mastery, not because we are endeavouring to lift our consciousness into the place where we can possibly conceive of mastery, but because the spirit of mastery is born within the heart. The real Christian is a royal fighter. He is the one who loves to enter into the contest with his whole soul and take the situation captive for the Lord Jesus Christ.

They tell a story of an old time English officer, He was a very important individual, and it would never do for him to speak out his command so they could be understood. He had a new Irishman whom he was endeavouring to break in. They were engaged in a sham battle. Presently the officer let a certain kind of roar, and the Irishman broke down from the ranks toward the supposed enemy, and grabbing a man by the neck, brought him with him. The officer said, "Hold on. What are you doing?" "Well," he said, "I did not know what you said, but it felt as if you wanted me to go for him. And I did."

When the Lord Jesus Christ is born indeed in the soul of man, when by the grace and power of the Son of God, you and I yield ourselves to God until our nature becomes the possession of that spirit that is in Christ, then, bless God, we begin to realise the spirit of mastery that Jesus possessed when He said,

"I am He that liveth and was dead, and behold I am alive forevermore, and have the keys of hell and of death."

That is the reason I do not spend much time in talking about the devil. The Lord took care of him, bless God! He has the keys of hell and of death, and He has mastered that individual and that condition one and for all. If you and I have as much faith to believe it as we have to believe that the Lord Jesus Christ is our Saviour, we would have mighty little trouble with the devil or his power while we walk through this old world. It is not worthwhile talking about a man after he is whipped out.

It is a hard thing for the Christian mind to conceive that the power of evil is really a vanquished power. When I think of examples of Christian triumph, my mind very frequently reverts to a minister I have spoken to you about many times. He was a great soul. The consciousness of Christ's dominion seemed to dwell in the man's heart intensely.

I was with him on one occasion when he was called to a dying man down in the slums. It was late at night. It was always interesting to me to watch the sparkle of his eye and to note here and there the splendid flash of his spirit. We were walking through the streets, and I said to him, "Do you know anything about is man's condition?" "Well," he replies, "the message told me the man was in a state of great suffering and likely to die. But he is not going to die." I said, "Amen."

You see, there was the ring of conscious mastery in his soul that made it possible for such a splendid burst of confidence to come forth from his spirit. I said to myself that night, "There is not going to be much difficultly tonight. The fellow has the victory in his soul in advance." When we finally knelt by the man's side, and he put his hands on him and called on the mighty God to deliver the man, I felt the flash if his spirit, and I knew before I arose from my knees that the man was healed, and he was. Beloved, you and I have bowed our heads before a vanquishing enemy. We have failed through lack of faith to comprehend that the Christ is the Master. But he dares by the grace of God to look into the face of the Lord Jesus Christ known within his own souls the divine mastery that the Christ of God is exercising now.

The power of God through which men are blesses is not an individual after that belongs to you or to me. It is the conscious presence of the living, risen Son of God dwelling in our hearts by the Holy Ghost, which causes you and I to know that the power of God is equal to every emergency and is great enough for the deliverance of every soul from every oppression.

There are times when it seems to me it is not fitting even to pray. There is a life of praise. Once while in conversation with Dr Myland, the pastor of the Christian and Missionary Alliance Church at Columbus, Ohio, I happened to mention the fact that I had not prayed concerning a certain personal matter. Turning to me he said. "I have not prayed for myself for four years." That sounded very strange to me at the time. I did not understand. He said, "No, I passed beyond the place of praying, brother, into the place where I am ready to accept what the Lord Jesus Christ has wrought and to receive the power of His Spirit in my life so that the thing that He has wrought for me should become evident through me." And that man had walked for four years in the conscious victory.

And the Spirit of the Lord says within my soul that he who trusteth in the living God shall never be confounded. Yea, according to the Word of God, he shall mount up on wings as eagles. He shall run and not be weary, he shall walk and not faith.

Bless God, there is a place of strength, or security, of victory, a life of triumph.

An hour of consternation came to the prophet John as the might God unfolded to him that which was to occur in the future. A book appears, a marvellous book, sealed with seven seals. An angel with a trumpet voice proceeds to utter a proclamation, "Who is worthy to open the book, and to loose the seven seals thereof?" And mankind stood dumbfounded. No man in heaven nor on earth was able to loose the seals or to open the book. And it seemed to the prophet as if a great disappointment was at hand. He says, "I wept much." But presently the angel guide said to him, "Weep not, behold, the LION OF THE TRIBE OF JUDAH, the root of David, he hath prevailed to open the book." John says, "I looked and behold as if were a Lamb." Blessed be God. The real overcomer does not always evidence his overcoming power with much noise. In this case His overcoming was in the consciousness that was in his heart. He was as a lamb; gentle, sweet, loving, tender and true.

But the consciousness of power was all the Christ. When others stood dumbfounded, when others stood baffled, the Christ appears. He takes the book, opens the seals and discusses its contents. Beloved, the triumph of the Christ of God is not the triumph of the loud shouting. It is the triumph of what you know is your own soul. The victory of the Christ and the victory of the soul is in the knowledge of the relationship between your soul and the soul of the Christ.

He, into whose heart there comes the Spirit of the living God, has within himself the consciousness of the One who has overcome and who is set down at the right hand of God, triumphant over every power of sickness and death and hell. Beloved, the triumph of the Gospel is enough to make any man the wildest kind of an enthusiastic optimist.

It is said of Napolean Bonaparte that when he was the first Counsel of France, he proceeded to proclaim himself Emperor of France. And one day one of the statesmen came and asked him, "By what authority do you have to proclaim yourself Emperor of France?" He replied, "By the divine right of ability to govern." The consciousness of power was in the soul of the man. He knew in his own soul that he was qualified to govern.

The Christian has the consciousness if that character of soul. Within the soul of the real Christian there is born the consciousness of capacity to govern. And the first place to apply it is in his own life. For no man ever successfully governed another life until he was first able to govern himself. "Greater is he that ruleth his own spirit than he that taketh a city." The poise of the father of the household will be revealed in the mind of every child of his family. The attitude of the mother's mind will be evidence in everyone of the household.

A dear brother came to me recently and said, "I do not know what is the trouble. I have worked so hard, and I am not able to accomplish the thing I am trying to do." I replied, "My friend, the difficultly is in your own soul. You have not attained the mastery of that condition in your own heart. The same condition of confusion that is in your soul is begin evidenced in the soul of others about you. It is transmitted from you to them."

How often have you and I walked into the presence of a man whose calmness gave instant strength? How often in life when the minds of men were driven to confusion, we have seen a single soul maintain his poise in God and become a balancing power in society. History records that at the death of Lincoln, when the news of his assassination became known in New York, the city was almost on the point of breaking up into a mob. Three men lay dead on the streets when James A. Garfield appeared on the veranda of one of the hotels. Raising his hands, he spoke these simple words which brought a calm to the whole mob and the whole city and was transformed all over the nation. "God is our King, and the government at Washington still lives." There flowed over the nation the calm of poise in God.

It is said at the time of the Great Chicago fire that the day following two hundred men committed suicide in the city. The old Chicago Tribune came out with a big, red letter headline, "Any coward can suicide, but it takes a man to live under these conditions." And the whole things stopped. There were no more suicides. That wave of cowardice was broken up. The consciousness of one real soul who had the poise of God within his heart was able by the grace of God to transmit it to other lives.

The success of your life as a child of God will be in exact accordance with the consciousness of the Christ and the power of God that is in your heart. The old prophet arrested the great wave of human despair that was sweeping over the nation, on one occasion, with these magnetic words, "Underneath are the everlasting arms." Bless God. The nation was not going to pieces. The world was not going to ruin, for underneath were the everlasting arms in which the souls of men could rest down with confidence, and God brought the victory.

When the souls of men learn to rest in confidence upon the living God, peace will possess this world that will be like unto the Kingdom of God: heaven on earth. Most of our difficulties are the difficulties that we anticipate or fear are coming tomorrow. How many people are worrying about the things of today? But the world is in consternation concerning tomorrow, or the next day, or the next day. Jesus said, "Sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof." Do not worry about tomorrow. Rest down in God. The mighty arms of the living God will be underneath tomorrow. Just as they are today.

The Spirit of God says within my heart that the Kingdom of Christ, for which every child of God looks, is characterised by the peace of God possessing the souls of men, so that worry and care cease to be because we trust in His arms.

If I could bring to you today one blessing greater than another, it would be the consciousness of trust in God. "Fear not, nether be thou afraid, for I the Lord Thy God is with thee whither-so-ever thou goest."

A little woman came into the healing rooms recently weeping so that I could hardly talk to her. She said, "I am the mother of three children. I am afraid I am going to die. The doctor said so-and-so; there is no hope for me. I must leave my husband and my children."

I said, "The doctor is a liar." And that woman is sitting in the audience today a well woman. Beloved, she might have been dead. We might have been celebrating another funeral. But confidence in the living God brought the confidence of power over the thing that was crushing the life out of that soul, and it went by the grace of God. No case is too hopeless.

Last evening in the Healing Rooms, just at six o'clock, I was visited by a woman who I met four or five months ago in the Deaconess Hospital. The dear lady had been given up to die. She had been examined by x-ray, and a large cancer in the stomach was discovered. They told he there was nothing to be done for her. So the dear husband sent for me to speak a kindly word to his supposedly dying wife. I did not understand what I had been sent for and when I got to the dear soul I supposed I had been called to pray the prayer of faith for healing.

I said, "dear Mother, you do not have to die." "But," she said, "the doctor says so. The x-ray shows such a sized cancer. I guess, brother, I will have to die." And I said, "It is a lie. You do not have to die." For two or three months we battled against the condition in the woman's soul. The Spirit of God would come upon her every time we prayed. Her pains would disappear, she would go to sleep, and so on, but she was not really healed. That went on week after week and month after month until I was almost worn out before her soul raised to take the victory. But last night she walked into the Healing Rooms. She told me that she weighed only seventy-five pounds when I met her and that now she weighs one hundred and twenty pounds. She went to the hospital this week and had the same physician x-ray her. When they saw the pictures they said, "There must be some mistake." And they got the original and examined it. They could not understand it.

She said, "Doctor, I found a new Physician, the Great Physician, the Christ of God, and I do not care about your plates. I know the cancer is gone." But the plates showed it was gone. The woman has gone back home a happy woman. But, Beloved, the victory only came when the consciousness of the power of the living Christ took possession of that woman's heart. Blessed be God.

Not a dead Jesus, but a living Christ! Not a sepulchre with a dead man in it, but the glorious, risen, present Christ in your heart and mine. The Christ lives, bless God, not only at the right hand of God, but the Christ lives in your soul and mine. The victory that He attained is evidenced not alone by the declaration, "I am He that liveth and was dead, and behold I am alive forevermore;" but the victory of the Christ that gives the son of God its gladness now is the consciousness that the Christ lives and the Christ reigns and that by the power of God, sin, darkness and death and hell become obedient to the Christian through the Christ that is in him.

Testimony of Mrs. Peterson: "I was healed when dying. I was in a state of death forty minutes. My womb and ovaries had been removed in an operation, and at my healing God restores them, and I am a normal woman."

I want to give some of you folks a conception of what a battle for a life means. This soul kept up the fight for her life until her forces weakened and she lapsed into unconsciousness. The last thing she said to Brother Westwood was, "I can fight no more. You have got to do it for me or I will die."

And God Almighty healed her through and through, and she stands before the world today a marvel of the power of God because he refused to be beaten. This is a miracle, not a healing only. The work of God in her was creative. To one is given by the Spirit the gifts of healing, to another the working of miracles.

The conception of the Lord Jesus Christ that we are battling against in these days is that which the poet has framed in these beautiful words, and I say this with all reverence:

"Gentle Jesus, meek and mild, look upon a little child."

In that child-thought of Jesus there is no conception of the triumphant Son of God, who entered into death and took the victory, who established eternal life in the souls of men. Bless God for the Christ who dares to enter into the very jaws of death and to grapple with the enemy that no man had ever dared to tackle, and come forth the victor. He took him captive, and broke his power and bound him in chains, and declared liberty to a world that was crushed and bound by the consciousness of the power of death.

That is the reason that John saw in his vision of the Revelation, a day of triumph, when all that were in the earth and the sea and under the sea, when heaven, earth and hell united to send forth a shout of triumph that will ring through the eternities, because the Christ of God had become the acknowledged Master, Ruler, Prince and King of the race.

If the blessed Spirit of God keeps on revealing the mighty power of the living Christ in the souls of men, we will have to have a new hymn book. We will have to have a new class of poets in the world. It will come, too, as sure as you are born. They used to sing dreary old hymns in the little Scotch Church when I was a boy, and I remember one particular hymn.

Hark! From the tomb a doleful sound,

Mine ear, attend the cry.

Ye living men come view the ground

Where You must shortly lie. Ah.

Afterward I learned that "ah" was Amen, but I did not know it then.

Oh, bless God for the revelation of the living Christ is in the souls of men that lifts the consciousness of men from the place of defeat into the place of power, the exultant, present, mighty power of the living God.

One Sunday afternoon a tall Englishman walked into my Church in Johannesburg, South Africa. He was six feet, two and a half inches high and twenty-six inches across the shoulders. He had a top of the red hair that him as conspicuous as a lion. He walked up the aisle and took a seat quite near the front. My old preaching partner was endeavouring to explain the mighty power of the living Christ as best he could, and this man listening. Presently he arose, saying, "Old man, if the things you are talking about are all right, I am your candidate."

He said, "I used to be a Christian. I came from Port St. Mary's, Isle of Man, and I was a Christian boy. I came to Africa and lived the usual African life, and the results is that for three years I have been unable to do anything, and my physicians say I am incurable. If you mean what you are talking about, tell me what to do."

My old partner said, "John, what shall we do?" I said, "call him up; we will pray for him right now." We stepped off the platform, put our hands on William T. Dugan, and instantly, as a flash of lightning blasting a tree or rock, the power of God went through the man's being, and the Lord Jesus Christ made him well.

A few days afterward he came down to my house in the middle of the day, and said, "Lake, I want you to show me how to get a clean heart." I took the word of God and went through it with him to show him the mighty cleansing, sanctifying power of the living God in a man's heart. Before he left he knelt by a chair and consecrated his life to God. Raising his hands to heaven he said, "Lord God, I receive into my life the sanctifying power of God to dissolve every condition in my nature that is adverse to the living God." And bless God, he received it from heaven, just as he received his healing.

Three months passed. One day he called and said, "Lake, I have had a call from God." I knew it was. There was no mistaking it. The wonder of it was in his soul. He went down into the country where a great epidemic of fever was on. Some weeks afterward I began to receive word that people were being healed. Hundreds of them. Bless God. So one day I concluded I would go down and join in the same work a couple of hundred miles from where he was. Somehow the news travelled that I was at Potgristersrust, and he came there. The next afternoon we were called to the home of a man who said his wife was sick with diabetes. We prayed for the wife and several other persons who were present. Then the man stepped out into the kitchen and said, "Would you pray for a woman like this?" When I looked at her I saw she had club feet. The right foot was on an angle at forty-five degrees, and the left one at right angles.

Dugan replied, "Yes, pray for anybody." He said to her, "Sit down," and taking the club foot in his hands he said, "In the name of Jesus Christ become natural." And I want to tell you, that man is in the glory presence of God today. I am going to stand there some day with him. Before I had a chance to take a second breath that foot commenced to move, and the next instant that foot was straight.

The he took the other foot up, saying, "In the name of Jesus Christ become natural."

Beloved, it was not only the voice of the man, or the confidence of his soul, but the mighty divine life of Jesus Christ flashed through him, and it melted that foot into softness, and it instantly became normal by the power of God.

Beloved, we have not known to touch the fringes of the knowledge of the power of God. However, I want to encourage your hearts. I know you soul and my soul is hungering after the living God. I am glad we can say, what perhaps has never been said in the Christian world from the days of the apostles to the present time, that since opening of this work in Spokane, about sixteen months ago, ten thousand people have been healed by the power of God.

Is Jesus dead? No, bless God. Is He alive? Is He alive in glory? Is He alive in your heart? Bless God, that is the place to crown the Christ. That is the place, in your soul and in my soul.

We are just beginning to grow up. The old prophets were so big in their soul, so gigantic in their spirit life that when a poor soul sinned, or the whole nation sinned, the prophet removed his clothes, shaved his head, and put sackcloth on his body and ashes on his head, and went down before God. He said, "Lord God, I have sinned. We have sinned." And he poured out his soul before God until the nation returned in repentance and love to the feet of the Holy God. I trust one day we will grow up big enough in God that we can do things like that.

Some three or four years ago, when one of the marvellous anointings of the Holy Ghost was on my life, a man came into my Healing Room one day to tell me how he was in a dying state, and hopeless. As I put my hands on him and prayed I was conscious of the Spirit of God going through him like a stream of light and presently he jumped up vibrating under the power of God until his teeth rattled.

When his surprises was over, I said to him, "Brother, how about your pain?" That was the first he had thought about it. He said, "my pain is gone." I said, "Did you feel the power of God?" He said, "It went through me like buck shot."

Beloved, one of the sorrows of my soul is this, that though we rejoice in the fact God is healing a multitude of people, even in this city, and now they are coming to this city from all quarters of the land, yet some of them have not been healed at all, and they should have been healed. Some have had to come to the Healing Rooms twenty times instead of once. But bless God, there is a day coming when the power of God will come upon your soul and mine mightily, so it will be like it was with Christ. They will not have to come back a second time. At the touch of Jesus the mighty power of God flashed through their life until the disease in them was gone forever. Blessed be His precious Name. I do not want to give you an idea that there are not people who are instantly healed. There are lots of them, but not all.

(Mr Greenfield comes on the platform)

Mr Greenfield was in the hands of physicians for tuberculosis of his kidneys. He was compelled to leave his work. He was just a poor man, and it meant that he should become dependant on his family instead of being the support of the house. When he came to the Healing Rooms he talked this over a little. He said, "The doctors say I must die." I said, "Greenfield, don't you believe it. There is a God in heaven." After I laid my hands on him and prayed, I said, "Greenfield, go back to your work." Bless God, he did and he does not look much like a man dying of tuberculosis now.

Oh, hallelujah; there is a living Christ. There is a triumphant Son of God. There is a living Spirit of the living God, which will flow through the soul of a man just as it flowed through the soul of Jesus. The trouble is with the soul of man. The trouble I am having is with the soul of this man. And the prayer of my life every day and hour is, "Mighty God, purify the soul of this man like the soul of Jesus was pure, and give my soul the consciousness of faith in God like the soul of Jesus possessed." Then, Beloved, you and I can say in deed and in truth, we are Sons of God. Blessed be His name.

All that Jesus was to the world He purposed that the Church of Christ should be. First, He blessed the world through His own physical personality. Second, He established a physical body, composed of many members, joined in one by the Spirit of God.

When He established the second Body, the Church, He never intended that it should be a lesser authority or of lesser power than the first. It was His real purpose that the second Body, the Church, should exercise, and fully accomplish all that the first had done.

The Resurrection

The resurrection of Jesus Christ is the greatest event in the human history, without any doubt. I believe that every sane man, every man who is accustomed to think through on the great problems of life, wants to believe that Jesus rose from the dead. I can not believe that any man who is accustomed to weigh evidence can be happy as a sceptic.

The resurrection of Jesus Christ furnishes a solution of the human problem. By the human problem, I mean man's being here. We may say what we will, the fact that man is tremendous. His ultimate end, the reason for His being, reaches up and grips our minds and holds us in deadly embrace. And if Jesus is not the Son of God, there is no solution of the human problem. It is an enigma.

If Jesus rose from the dead, the human problem is solved. We understand it. It solves the sin problem and that is the paramount problem. The universal man is conscious of the guilt of sin. I know by the altars that are built that cover the earth, by its universal priesthood. Thirty million priests in India. Why? Because India, with the rest of mankind, is conscious of guilt. Man's consciousness of guilt has made him formulate religions.

These are weighty matters I am bringing you tonight, gentlemen. These are the great basic problems of life. This is the solution of the sin problem. No religion among the religions of the world has ever offered a solution for the sin problem. Jesus Christ alone has brought the solution.

There is another problem that Jesus answers. Universal man has craved union with God. He has not only wanted to get rid of the sin problem and the sin burden and the sin guilt, but he wanted to be able to partake of the life and nature of God.

Man became a blood drinker. We call them cannibals. He became a blood drinker because he believed that if he would drink the blood of the victim who lay on his altar, he would partake of the God-nature and never die. You can see the Lord's table behind that, can't you?

The out-reachings of man after God are among the saddest of all the facts of human life. Man is God-hungry. Jesus is the solution of that problem. Through Jesus Christ we become partakers of the divine nature.

If Jesus arose from the dead, then redemption is a fact. If Jesus arose from the dead, man can go to heaven. At first that may not seem much to you. But you know, men, whether you have thought it through or not, the universal man believes in the life beyond the grave. Human religion has never had an adequate conception of hope.

What do I mean by human religion? The religions of India; Hinduism, Brahmanism, Buddhism. All are human religions. Christian Science is a human religion, purely based upon philosophy. The very first step is to destroy the personal God, the conviction and concept of a personal God. I want to say with all candour that I believe that the men and women who have written against Christian Science, New Thought and Unity, have made the greatest mistake that was ever made in the world of apologetics. They have ridiculed it, but they have missed the crux of the matter.

Christian Science is built upon atheism. The communism of Russia has been atheistic. Christian Science as a religion is atheistic. The very first step is the destruction of the personal God. God is a person. They destroy that utterly, and when they destroy that, aren't they atheists? If some man would write a book proving that Christian Science is atheism, it would destroy Christian Science in a great measure.

I am going to carry you through some facts that I want you to study with me tonight. If you are going to have a bonafide resurrection, it is necessary that you have an absolute death. You can not have a genuine resurrection without a genuine death. I remember that Mr Anderson, who was a disciple of Mr Ingersol, wrote a book and that I found it one day on the desk in one of my students rooms. In it Mr Anderson made this assertion, that Jesus did not die, that He was in a state of coma. I want to refute it.

Turn to the nineteenth chapter of John. First, the Jewish Sanhedrin accepted the verdict of the Roman government that Jesus was dead. The Roman government pronounced Jesus dead, the Jewish Sanhedrin that had caused the death of Jesus accepted the verdict of the Roman government. But I want to give you something else.

John 19:31, Jesus is on the cross.

"The Jews therefore, because it was the preparation, that the bodies should not remain upon the cross on the, Sabbath day, (for that Sabbath day was an high day), besought Pilate that their legs might be broken, and that they might be taken away."

It was customary when they wanted death to come quickly to a crucified man that they would break his legs. That jar upon the nervous system would act upon the heart so that they would die suddenly.

"Then came the soldiers, and brake the legs of the first, and of the other which was crucified with Him. But when they came to Jesus, and saw that he was dead already, they brake not his legs; but one of the soldiers with a spear pierced his side, and forthwith came there out blood and water."

Let us get the picture clearly. Jesus is hanging on that cross. He has been there on the cross since three in the afternoon. It is now almost sunset. The Roman soldiers come, and the two men who were crucified with Jesus are not dead. They are hanging there moaning, and the soldiers break their legs. Death comes mercifully. One of the soldiers comes to Jesus, and his head is hanging forward. The body is cold and stiffened, and the soldier stands there and looks up at Him and then takes his spear and pierces the left side, not the right side that all the artists paint. Then he lifts on it. That spear head, that is 4 to 6 inches wide, sharp as a razor, penetrates the side of Jesus; it goes up into the body, pierces the sack that holds the heart, and the miracle happens. Water flows out, and from that wide wound, 4 to 6 inches across, rolls great clots of coagulated blood. What happened? Jesus died of a ruptured heart. That last cry was the death agony cry. His heart had ruptured, and when it ruptured the blood came pouring in from every part of the body to the heart and filled it; and as the body began to grow cold, this blood gathered there separated. The red corpuscles came to the top. The white serum settled to the bottom, and then when that soldier pierced the body and reached the heart sack, the water poured out first, and that is what John saw then: the blood.

Jesus was dead. His heart had been ruptured. The prophesy of the 22nd Psalm had been fulfilled. It was written a thousand years before Jesus died, and it is the most graphic picture ever written. I want you to note now, that Jesus was dead.

Read the last part of this chapter beginning with verse 38.

"And after this Joseph of Arimathea, being a disciple of Jesus, but secretly for fear of the Jews, besought Pilate that he might take away the body of Jesus; and Pilate gave him leave. He came therefore, and took the body of Jesus. And there came also Nicodemus which at first came to Jesus by night, and brought a mixture of myrrh and aloes, about an hundred pound weight. Then they took the body of Jesus, and wound it in linen clothes with the spices, as the manner of the Jews is to bury."

What was the custom of the Jews? The wealthy Jews followed the processes that they had learned in Egypt. And all of the wealthier Jews had slaves that had learned the art of embalming the human body. It was not the total process.

So they took the body of Jesus from the cross. Joseph of Arimathea was wealthy. Nicodemus was wealthy, And they washed that precious body. Then they took the linen cloth and they tore it up into strips, one and a half to two inches wide, and they took this sticky substance, a hundred pounds weight, and they smeared that cloth as you would a salve. Then they took a toe and wrapped it. Then the foot, then the leg, then the fingers and hands and arms. Then the body was wrapped round and round until they used one hundred pounds of that sticky substance. And they used linen cloth enough to use one hundred pounds. Jesus weighed likely 200 pounds before His crucifixion. He must have been a perfect man, six feet, broad of shoulders, deep chest. He was God's crown of creation: the master man, and He stood a king and peer among men.

If He weighed 200 hundred pounds, he must have shrunk twenty pounds at the crucifixion. He would be one hundred and eighty pounds, plus one hundred pounds. Jesus body would weigh two hundred and eighty to three hundred pounds. The body was hermetically sealed. Across the chest it must have been three inches thick, perhaps more. One hundred pounds smeared like that over the body would be over one inch thick.

The entire body was covered except the face. That was left for loving hands to embalm, and the women came down to finish the embalming. If Jesus had not died of a ruptured heart, and had not died of the spear thrust, after the body had been covered as I have indicated by that substance, hermetically sealed, so no air could get to it, He would not have lived four hours. I want you to know that Jesus was dead. Rome pronounced Him dead. The Sanhedrin pronounced Him dead. The spear had found a ruptured heart. Blood and water had flowed out of it. He is now hermetically sealed and put in a tomb, and that tomb is as dry as it is around Los Angeles in the summer time. And that body put in that place, it would only take a little while until the grave clothes would harden. You know that cloth would shrink more or less and tighten on the body.

Jesus is dead, in Joseph's tomb, and his body is hermetically sealed, and just that little place around the face is uncovered.

Turn with me now to the twentieth chapter of John. Do you know anything about the value of narrative evidence before a jury or judge? Suppose a man has been killed down here on the street in a brawl, and the trial has come. Here is the value of narrative evidence. The trial goes on, and finally a little news boy goes on the witness stand. He is fearless in the presence of the judge. He knew the judge. He knew the lawyers. He had sold them papers. He stands there unabashed in the presence of the judge, and presently the prosecuting attorney says, "Tell us what you saw." And in the vernacular of the street he begins to tell. He says, "I saw that guy over there and the man that was killed quarrelling. Mickey and I were shooting craps, and we heard the scrap and we saw that fellow there, judge. I saw him pull out a knife and stab and then run."

What do they do with that kind of evidence? That is narrative evidence. The boy describes it exactly as he saw it. The judge sits and listens, the jury sits, and listens, and the court draws out of that child the whole picture. You can not bring any kind of rebuttal. That boy's story has been the evidence. The boy saw it. That settles it; he saw it.

Here is narrative evidence. Here is the type of evidence that has been overlooked by people trying to prove the deity of Jesus.

"The first day of the week cometh Mary Magdalene early, when it was yet dark, unto the sepulchre, and seeth the stone taken away from the sepulchre. Then she runneth, and cometh to Simon Peter, and to the other disciple, whom Jesus loved, and saith unto them, 'They have taken away the Lord out of the sepulchre, and we know not where they have laid Him.' Peter therefore went forth and that other disciple, and came to the sepulchre. So they ran both together, and the other disciple did outrun Peter and came first to the sepulchre. And he stooping down, and looking in, saw the linen clothes lying; yet went he not in. Then cometh Simon Peter following him, and went into the sepulchre, and seeth the linen clothes lie, and the napkin, that was about His head, not lying with the linen clothes, but wrapped together in a place by itself. Then went in also that other disciple, which came first to the sepulchre, and he saw, and believed." (John 20:1-8)

Now what was it John saw that made him believe in the resurrection? "For as yet they knew not the scripture, that He must rise again from the dead." Not one of the disciples believed that Jesus was going to rise from the dead. And after He arose from the dead they doubted it, and Jesus upbraided them for their unbelief.

Now what was it that made John believe? Let us go back and look at the story. Mary and the other women came down to finish the embalming of Jesus. Three days had gone by, and before the face lost its beauty to them, they were going to cover it like the rest of the body. A napkin had been lying on the face. But when Mary arrived she found someone had been there and opened the sepulchre. She did not stop to look in. Filled with anger and indignation, for to the Jew the dead is sacred, she starts back to the city to tell Peter and John. Down through the city she runs, burst into the room where they were, and says, "They have taken away the body of the Lord, and I do not know where they have laid Him." Then Peter, who had gone through hell for three days and three nights because he had denied Jesus in the face of the Sanhedrin said, "John, let's go." Peter is large and heavy of body, and they run and John outruns him, and he comes to the sepulchre hewn out, and a big stone had been rolled against it and sealed, but the stone is away now. And John drops on his knees and looks in. John has in him that refinement that you can feel through his writings.

But when Peter comes, he is a coarser type. He ducks his head and goes into the sepulchre. Then John reverently follows him. John SAW something that made him believe. When God revealed this thing to me, He revealed it to a sceptic. I had been preaching for years, but in my secret heart I had questions about the resurrection of Jesus.

Come now, we will step inside the sepulchre. If John, when he went in, had seen that someone had come and ripped down that thing, he would not have believed. If John had seen that some wild animal had torn those grave clothes to shreds, would he have believed? No! Well, had John gone in and had seen the grave clothes intact and that Jesus had come out of that cocoon without destroying the rest of it, what would John have done? What would you have done? You would have believed.

I want to tell you what I did when I saw that empty cocoon, and I saw that the broad shoulders of Jesus had come out of that aperture for His face, that had hardened like a board. I slipped off my chair on to my knees, and I said what Thomas said, "My Lord and my God!" I knew Jesus had risen from the dead. I submit this to you. This is perfectly in harmony with Jewish custom of burying. It is within reason.

Josephus tells us there were more than a million visitors in Jerusalem. It was one of the cycle years when the Jews came from all over the world to make their sacrifices. Outside the city booths were built. Jews who were commercial travellers had come to their old home in Jerusalem. There was one thing that filled the very air: the story of Jesus. Thousands, ten thousands, had gone out and had seen the dead body of Jesus hanging on the cross. He was crucified early in the morning, and the city was shaken to the foundation. Everybody was talking about it.

And when Peter and John came down over the hillside to the cemetery where Jesus was buried, what do you think they did? What do you think impulsive, warm-hearted Peter did? Did he keep it quiet? Peter rushing down to the first man he met, what do you suppose he said? What do you suppose John said? I know what you would say; I know what you would say, "He is risen." You would not have to say "Jesus is risen."

In an hour's time the whole city of Jerusalem was stirred to its foundations. It stirred under the impulse of the new miracle. What did they do? Do you suppose they stood and talked, or do you think they made a rush for the sepulchre? You can see them going. If it had been in Portland, a hundred thousand people would have visited it that day. A hundred thousand Jews visited that hillside and smote their breast and tore their hair, and they went back to tell it. All that day the empty cocoon preached and told the story that Jesus had risen from the dead. It went on day after day and week after week until forty-nine days, less three. For forty-seven days the clothes on the hillside preached, and countless thousands of men were stirred and shaken to the foundation.

And then after that forty days, John says, "I saw Him!" Peter says, "I saw Him," and 500 men followed Him to Olivet and saw Him ascend. What do you suppose the 500 men told the multitude of visitors? There was no other subject talked about. That goes without arguing.

Then fifty days later another staggering thing happened. Early in the morning they heard the rushing, mighty wind, like a thousand aeroplanes over the town. God had planned the drama.

One hundred and twenty men and women in that great square filled with people, and they heard those men and women speaking in tongues and glorifying God, telling of the resurrection of Jesus. Every man and woman hears in his own language. Every man hears the first message of Jesus in his own tongue and from the lips of Galilean fisherman. Some laugh, but others were serious. It was the climax that for fifty days had rocked Jerusalem and staggered the Jewish nation.

Peter stands forth. In the presence of whom? The Sanhedrin, the Senate, and the elders of Israel. Who is Peter? He is a humble fisherman. He is an untutored man. He has the same reverence for the high priest that the Roman Catholics have for the Pope. The Sanhedrin was sacred to him. He bowed before it. He feared it. The High Priest was sacred to him.

Yet, Peter stands out there in the presence of the Sanhedrin, and he indicts first the Roman governor as having murdered the Son of God. Second, he indicts the Sanhedrin, then the Senate and priesthood as murderers of the Son of God, His indictment is the most severe, the most amazing ever uttered.

Peter speaks only about 25 or 30 minutes, not longer than that, and what happens? Three thousand Jews broke with Judaism and accepted Jesus Christ of Nazareth as the Son of God and were baptised.

Where did he preach that sermon? Within the very shadow of that cross, within ten or twelve minutes of where Jesus hung stark naked one day crowned with thorns as an outcast. And three thousand Jews broke with Judaism. And every Jew who accepted Jesus Christ indicted the Sanhedrin, the Senate and the Roman government with the murder of Jesus.

That was the most dramatic thing that ever happened in history. There is nothing like it. Why say, if that thing was not true, all Ananias or Caiaphas had to do was to stop it, raise his hand and say, "Gentlemen, we know where the body of Jesus is. It has never raised." But Caiaphas never raised his voice. Caiaphas knew Jesus had risen from the dead. The Sanhedrin could have wiped out the whole thing in one day, but they dared not move, until finally two thousand more Jews accepted Christ Jesus. In the next two or three days five thousand and a large company of the priesthood swung into line.

They had Peter and John arrested because they healed a man. I want to read to you from Acts 4:5:

"And Annas the high priest was there and Caiaphas, and John, and Alexander, and as many as were of the kindred of the high priest."

This was the same crowd that crucified Jesus. And Peter, filled with the Holy Ghost, said unto them:

"Ye rulers of the people, and elders, if we this day are examined concerning a good deed done unto an impotent man, by what means this man is made whole; be it known unto you all, and to all the people of Israel, that in the Name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth, whom ye crucified, whom God raised from the dead, even in him doth this man stand here before you whole. He is the stone which was set at nought of you builders, which is made the head of the corner."

If we have been arrested and locked up for healing a tramp, a beggar, an outcast, for a good deed, be it known unto you and to all the people of Israel, that in the Name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth, whom YE crucified, whom God raised from the dead, even in him doth this man stand here before you whole.

That is the most masculine piece of frenzy ever used in the world.

"And in none other is there salvation; for neither is there any other name under heaven, that is given among men, whereby we must be saved."

And when they heard it, they could say nothing against it; and they sent them out, and said:

"That indeed a notable miracle hath been done by them is manifest to all that dwell in Jerusalem; and we can not deny it. But that it spread not further among the people, let us straitly threaten them, and that they speak henceforth to no man in THIS NAME."

You can preach anything you want to, but don't preach in THE NAME. The Name has dynamite in it. The name will raise the dead, heal the sick, cast out devils. The Name; it is Jesus again on earth.

What are you going to do with that kind of evidence? Did Jesus rise from the dead? Before Jesus died He said something that would forever brand Him as an impostor. He said, "after I am gone I am going to give you legal right to the use of my Name," and "Whatsoever ye shall ask the Father in my name, I will do it."

No other human being ever dared to talk like that. When a man was dead, he was dead. But here was a man that was going to do bigger things after He died than when He was alive, and He was going to give us the legal right to use His Name. "Just whisper my Name, and whatsoever you say, it will be done." That was the most staggering thing that was ever said. That brands Jesus as the very Son of God or as an impostor.

What happened? Did His Name have power after He was Dead? Jesus is the Son of God. I think I have made my case, haven't I?

I believe, gentlemen, that this thing is only a little fragment out of the body of truth. I believe that if it were given to the world that 90% of our scepticism would cease to be.

I want to make a few deductions. What are the implications if Jesus Christ rose from the dead? What then? Here are three things. We know He is the Son of God. We know that "He died for our sins according to the Scriptures, and rose again for our justification." We know that every man who accepts Jesus Christ, God redeems that man, and we know that Romans 3:26 is true:

"That He might be righteous, and the righteousness of him who has faith in Jesus."

God automatically, when you confess Jesus and accept Him as your Lord, becomes your righteousness. And the moment that God becomes your righteousness, that moment your standing is like the standing of the Son of God.

For years I hunted for this thing I have given you tonight. That sense of unfitness and unworthiness (or as they call it in psychology, that inferiority complex) swamped me. But when I saw that God became my righteousness, I said, "I want you to know, Satan, that you have lost your case." I know what I am now.

"Him that knew no sin he made to be sin for us; that we might become the righteousness of God in Him." (2 Corinthians 5:21)

You, by the new birth, have become the righteousness of God, and God has become your righteousness. God could not make it any stronger than that.

I say to you reverently, friends, that if you have accepted Jesus Christ and are born again, you are standing in the presence of the great eternal Father God as Jesus is. You have just as much right to step into the presence of God Almighty as Jesus has. Don't you see what that means? It means that Satan can not stand before you any more than he can stand before Jesus. Not only that, Jesus gave you the legal right to use His Name. And the first thing He tells you to do is to cast out demons. The first thing He told the twelve to do was to cast out demons. When He sent the seventy out, He told them to cast out demons. When He gave the great commission He said, "They that believe shall cast out demons." This is the first thing. Why?

The devil is the opposer, and as long as the devil reigns over the sinner, the sinner can not do anything. It is your business to break his power. Can't you see sickness is called sin in the flesh, and "God has condemned sin in the flesh, that the righteous requirement of the law might be fulfilled in us, who walk not after the flesh, but after the Spirit."

Your sickness has been condemned, indicted, and found guilty before the high court of God. And it has no more right in your body than I have a right to be in some other man's house or store that is locked up. And if I am found there, I will be arrested. And that disease has no right in your body, and you have no right to leave it there, to sympathise with it, or to harbour it, or to console it. You are consoling the enemy of God that is under indictment and condemnation. It is a serious thing I am bringing, gentlemen. Jesus Christ has absolutely redeemed you for He rose from the dead, and disease has no right in your body and no power to stay there. If you take sides with Jesus, you have a right to your healing, to redemption, to victory. You have a right to prayer. You have a right to your Father's fellowship.

The Sabbath

During the Conference I was asked by the brethren to deliver a discourse on the subject of the Sabbath Day for the guidance of the workers.

It is not my purpose to deal with the subject in an argumentative manner, but rather in the form of a pronouncement of the position of the Church.

The Word of God is sufficiently clear. It has already defined the position for the Christian in the most emphatic way. The second chapter of Colossians is perhaps as clear a portion of Scripture on this particular issue as any portion of the Word. It seems most difficult for Christians to understand and realise, in our entrance into Christ Jesus by the reception of the Spirit of God who abides within, our Christian experience has been moved into a different place from that in which we lived before.

I have tried at different times to define the operation of the Spirit of God in the different dispensations that we may get a clear basis on which to rest. I will review that this morning in a word.

In the Patriarchal Dispensation God seems to have been approaching man from this standpoint, as if man was far removed from God, and as if God was endeavouring to reveal Himself to man. Abraham perhaps furnishes the best example in the Word, and to him God appeared twice, twenty years apart. There was a lapse of twenty years, in which Abraham heard nothing from God. Then God spoke to him again. Now, that is the best revelation from God to man that is given to us in the Patriarchal dispensation. And it seems as if the position was, "God revealing Himself to man".

The Mosaic Dispensation was different. It was a fuller revelation. It did not destroy any of the revelation of God that the Patriarchs had known. So God was present with the Jewish people in the Pillar of Cloud and the Pillar of Fire, and the Shekinah over the Mercy Seat, an ever-present God.

When the temple was built, the Lord abode in the Holy of Holies. In it there was no artificial light, The holy place was lit by candles, but in the Holy of Holies there was neither window nor door, nor artificial light of any kind. The presence of God illuminated the Holy of Holies, the continuous presence of God with man.

Patriarchal revelation was "God to man," and the Mosaic revelation was "God with man," but the Christian revelation was greater than all. Jesus said in His own words, "He dwelleth with, and shall be IN you." And the revelation of God to the Christian is "Christ within you" by the Holy Ghost, not "to" man nor "with" man but "in" man. Man becoming the embodiment of God.

It will be readily seen, then, that our conception and standard must be in accordance with the revelation that God gave to us, and the Christian can not base his standard of life upon the Mosaic law in any way. Jesus lifted us up above that standard; as high as the heavens are above the earth.

When the Christian, then, endeavours to go back and live under Christ Jesus and the communion of the control of the law, he has descended from the standard of the Spirit of God abiding within, and has placed himself in the same position where the Mosaic people were.

Over and over again Paul warns us about this thing, and to the Galatians particularly he gives this wonderful warning "that having begun in the Spirit they were now going to return to the flesh." And that is the danger with many Christians these days, that having begun in the Holy Ghost, they might return to obedience to Commandments.

Then someone says, "What about the commandments?" We can see what Jesus says of them in the Sermon on the Mount, Matthew 5. Jesus said, "It was said by them of old time, "Thou shalt not kill." But Jesus lifted that standard miles above where Moses placed it and said, "But I say unto you, that who-so-ever is angry with his brother without a cause is in danger of the judgment." That is to say, he is a murderer. (1 John 3:15)

Under the Mosaic law they had to commit an act in order to be guilty. Under the law of Christ the presence in the heart of the desire is sufficient to condemn. So in every instance the Lord raised the standard.

The commandment says, "Thou shalt not commit adultery." Jesus says, "That whosoever looketh on a woman to lust after her, hath committed adultery with her already in his heart." Jesus took it out of the regime of commandments into the regime of the heart experience, and, "as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are My ways higher than your ways and My thoughts than your thoughts." Isaiah 55:9.

The greatest debate that has come through these fifty years, between those who contend for the observance of the Sabbath Day (the Seventh), and we who accept the Christian Sabbath, has ever been on that one point. Are we still bound by the law or has Christ made the Christian free from the force of the commandment? And it seems to me what the Word of God makes this clear as daylight, that the Word places our feet emphatically on this ground that to us, in the Holy Ghost, the law has become a dead thing.

Indeed, it has been spoken of as blotted out (Colossians 2:14), even that which was written on stone (2 Corinthians 3:7-17).

The first chapter of Colossians deals with the history of the fact of the indwelling of Christ, and after establishing this fact Paul goes on to review the subject of our to the law. Commencing with the 13th verse of the 2nd chapter, we have the declaration of the expulsion of the law, "And you, being dead in your sins and the uncircumcision of your flesh, hath He quickened together with Him, having forgiven you all trespasses; blotting out the handwriting of ordinances that was against us, which was contrary to us, and took it out of the way, nailing it to His cross; and having spoiled principalities and powers, He made a shew of them openly, triumphing over them in it. Let no man therefore judge you in meat, or in drink, or in respect of an holy day, or of the new moon, or of the Sabbath Days; which are a shadow of things to come; but the body is of Christ."

Thus far the interpretation is given of the destruction by Christ of the ordinances and laws that were contrary to us, by having established within us by the Holy Ghost of His own indwelling, He having been the Lord of the Sabbath, and we, as sons of God and joint heirs with Jesus Christ, will also enter into that place of dominion, where we, too, in Him, become lords also of the Sabbath and every other commandment. Blessed be God!

The 16th verse: On Thursday last, among the questions that were asked, was this; "Do we advocate the partaking of a meal in connection with the Lord's Supper?" And in this thing once again we see the Christian's failure to separate between the Old and New Dispensations. For, when Jesus partook officially of the last Passover Supper that was ever given to mankind, and by that act forever closed the Jewish Dispensation, there was nothing further to do but make the sacrifice on the Cross; and the instant after the closing of that Supper the Lord instituted a new ceremony, the one we observe today, the communion of the Lord's Supper. No longer the Passover feast and Passover Lamb, but the Christ of God, Who now pledges Himself to shed His own blood for the salvation of the world.

Between these two acts there is as great a distance as between East and West. The one was the mark and stamp of that which was old and ready to decay (Hebrews 8:13), and the other was the birth of mankind through the shedding of the blood of Jesus Christ.

And so, beloved, when the Christian undertakes that his life shall be governed by commandments, he is going back again into this old life, into the old realm, forgetting his state with Jesus Christ.

It does not mean we shall turn Anarchists and that to us there is no law, but rather that we are now obedient unto the higher law by the Son of God.

On the subject of the Sabbath itself; all the other Commandments are spoken of in the New Testament and reiterated, but the Sabbath Commandment not; and that no doubt for this reason, that the prophecies all along had pointed to the Son of God, who was Himself the fulfilment of the law. "I came not to destroy the law, but to fulfil it" (Matthew 5:17). "For the law was our schoolmaster to bring us unto Christ." When we got to Christ, beloved, we were beyond the sphere of the law. The law was a schoolmaster to bring us to Christ (Galatians 3:24). Blessed be His Name.

So with Sabbath. Christ Himself, the Eternal Rest into which the Christian enters, not to abide on the Sabbath Day, but to abide always, every day, and forever. He is our Sabbath alone.

When we live in the Son of God we have come beyond the sphere of commandment, for the law was made for the unlawful and unholy, for murderers of fathers and mothers, for whoremongers, and so on (1 Timothy 1:9-10). Upon our statute books today there are no doubt a thousand laws that you and I know nothing about, and we care less. Why? They are of no interest to us. We hardly pay any attention to the law of murder, nor can we tell the details because of the fact that being sons of God we are living in love and are not interested in what the law says of murder. There is no murder in our hearts. Blessed be God! We have passed on.

And so the Christian who has entered into Christ Jesus and is abiding in Him and is a possessor of the Holy Ghost, has moved beyond the regime of the law and commandments. They are of no value to him. He lives in obedience to one law and one commandment, the Eleventh. This includes all the rest in one; "That ye love one another as I have loved you." (John 15:12) Blessed be His Name.

Henry Drummond, I believe it is, in his "Greatest Thing in the World" gives an illustration that is so fitting. He says that he visits at a friend's home. He finds that he and his wife have lived together in the most beautiful unity for many years. But a friend of his is still anxious that he shall be a strict observer of the law, and he sits down and writes a code of rules for the government of this man and wife who have always lived together in unity. He says, "Thou shalt not kill her. Thou shalt not bear false witness against her. Thou shalt not steal from her" and so on through the other commandments. He takes it up and laughs. Of what value is such a code to him? Has he not for all the years past been giving to his wife his heart's affection that makes it impossible for such things to enter his soul? And there is just that much difference between the Christian standard and the standard of the law. May God help us that we shall not take backward steps but realise our positions as sons of God. We shall live in Him and abide in the Holy Ghost and realise the freedom of sons, not the bondage of servants. Blessed be His Name. Nevertheless, to the man outside Christ the commandment still stands. As on our statute books today the law of murder applies to the man who commits murder, but the man in Christ has passed beyond that sphere. "Let no man therefore judge you in meat, or drink, or in respect of an holy day, or of the new moon, or of the Sabbath days; which are a shadow of things to come; but the body is of Christ." Blessed be His Name! Blessed be His Name!

Now, we will never get the force of the 2nd chapter of Colossians where the Word portrays the exaltation of the Son of God, even to the sitting down at the right hand of the Father in the heavenly places far above all principality, and power, and might, and dominion, and every name that is named (Ephesians 1:19-23), and the second chapter of Ephesians portraying our lifting up out of the regime of death and sin into the same exaltation of the Son of God, until we realise our high privileges in Christ Jesus.

Indeed, I have this in my heart that the low state of Christian experience that is common among men is mostly accounted for by this one fact; that Christians have failed to grasp the exalted place into which Jesus Christ puts us when we have been made sons of God. May God write that deep in our soul, that we may not keep the Seventh Day (which was a shadow of good things to come, but the BODY IS OF MUST), not the commandments, but by holy Christian privilege keep one day sacred to God, and that without any commandment at all, but out of the gladness of the Christian heart. Blessed be His Name! One day is set aside in commemoration of His resurrection; but with the Christian, and in the life in Christ Jesus, every day is as holy as every other day, and there is no distinction of days whatever, for the life is in the Son of God, and He is the same every day. Blessed be His Name.

But, beloved, have we not cause to rejoice that in Christianity there has been established a day of commemoration of His resurrection, and that altogether the Christian world unites in exalting the Son of God by keeping that day holy? We may not let down on our reverence for the First Day of the week; but may we as Christians exalt the day, not by obedience to commandments, but, as Jesus Himself did, by making it a day when His life was given forth for the benefit of others; and I know God will bless us.

Now, I hope that forever this question is settled in our hearts. That, so far as our Church is concerned, God has helped us to come together to recognise the fact that every man has the privilege to be led by the Spirit, not to observe all the law, but to be led by His Spirit.

"The stone which the builders refused is become the head stone of the corner. This is the Lord's doings; it is marvellous in our eyes. This is the day which the Lord hath made; we will rejoice in it and be glad." (Psalm 118:22-24)

When did the rejected stone become the head of the corner? When Jesus rose from the dead on that wonderful resurrection morning. This is the day the Lord hath made; we will rejoice in it and be glad. This is one reason we worship on the day of His resurrection. It is the Sabbath of the New Covenant.

The Victory of the Resurrection

Christianity through Jesus Christ stepped into the arena of world religions as a challenger. The Son of God, just as the ancient athlete did, threw down His gauntlet on the ground and challenged the religions of the world to take it up. Heaven's challenge still stands. Sophisticated religions, uncertainties, philosophic illusions and delusions, have claimed the world's interest, but Heaven's challenge stands, just as vigorously today, as it ever did.

So long as the blessed Word of God lives in the world, so long shall that challenge endure. Other religions were old, whiskered and ancient religions. Zoroaster had lived, taught his "purification by fire" and worshiped the sun, the fire god. Zoroaster could conceive only one possibility, a purifying of the human soul, a process of fire cleansing. There could be no other. That was the conclusion of the ancient world.

Buddha followed about 500 BC., but with no better hope that Zoroaster. His ideal was oblivion, personality lost, individuality gone, merged into the great whole, without distinctive consciousness, vacuity.

Mohammed came at a later period, about 550 years after Jesus Christ. His heaven was a haven, the possibility of everlasting sensuality. Then, in modern days, Mormonism followed with its "spiritual marriages" and dream of eternal polygamy, all abominable to the Spirit of the Son of God and unlike Christianity as anything could be.

Into the muck and the mess and the darkness came the Son of God with the glory of holiness, with divine righteousness, with heavenly purity, with angelic estate, never ceasing consciousness, perpetuated individuality, life forevermore, resurrection from the dead, man's enjoyment of God eternally, yourself a son of God, like the Son of God Himself, in His likeness immortalized.

Heaven stood aghast, earth stood aghast, and hell stood aghast, when Jesus Christ stepped into the arena. Could he accomplish the thing He talked about? Was there power in heaven or on earth to revolutionize the nature of man, change the darkness, take away sin and obliterate the night from his soul? Could the darkened soul be lightened from on high? Could the spirit of man, begotten in iniquity, be changed into loveliness, heavenliness and holiness? Could the personality of man be preserved? Were Christians going to die just like others die? Did He truly possess eternal life? Could He impart it to others? Was Jesus Christ a boaster, or a Savior?

Christianity did not come to the world to apologize for its existence or to beg for a place to live. It came as heaven's champion: it has the champion soul. "It shall bruise thy head, and thou shalt bruise His heel" (Genesis 3:15). That champion consciousness is in the soul of the Christian. Being born of God, he is champion of the Son of God and a demonstrator of His salvation. He is the champion of God. He cannot be anything else. "As He is, so are we in this world."

In our day, we have almost come to the place where, the world is being taught to believe that the message of Christianity is morality. Be decent, don't act like a pig, and keep the beast under control. That is about the message of modern Christianity. Jesus Christ never wasted His time establishing mere morality. Jesus Christ, the Son of God, declared IMMORTALITY to be the goal of Christianity, its attainment, the purpose of God for you and me.

"I will raise him up at the last day," said Jesus. "I will give him eternal life." "The dead in Christ shall rise first."

No religion in the world except Christianity ever suggested resurrection its declared intent. Who in the world was ever bold enough to suggest a resurrection? What dying creature could? It was only the Son of God Himself, out of heaven, with the knowledge of immortality and eternal life that would dare to suggest such a climax for mankind.

If there were no other evidence of Jesus Christ's eternal superiority but that, it would be sufficient. "Who only hath immortality." "In Him was LIFE, and the LIFE was the light of men." "He that liveth and believeth in Me shall never die." "Destroy this temple and in three days I will raise it up." Marvelous Redeemer!

Christianity stands today, absolutely unique. No other religion of earth has our hope, or our consciousness, or our power. I fear sometimes that we moderns somehow have lost the spirit of the original Christianity. We have lost the smash of it. We have lost the overcoming power of it. We are begging the devil for a place in the world, apologizing for our faith in God, trying to conform our religion to the mind of the world.

Salvation is the transforming power of God. Jesus Christ looked upon the world, which was saturated with sin, sharpened in iniquity, and said that the task was not too great for Him.

The biggest contract in this universe was undertaken, back in the eternal ages, when one time, in the council of the Godhead, Jesus Christ, the responsible Creator, became the responsible Savior and settled the sin question, by offering Himself as the Savior of the world. He wrought our redemption. "He that believeth on Him that sent Me hath everlasting life." (John 5:24)

His dying on the cross was the first incident in connection with our redemption, but it was not the conclusive proof. If Jesus had died on the cross and the process of salvation had ceased then, there would not be a redeemed sinner today.

David was sitting on the mountainside, one afternoon, watching his sheep, and his spirit traveled out into the regions of God. He began to observe, as a seer does, the things that were taking place; and he broke out shouting, "Thou has ascended on high, thou hast led captivity captive; thou hast received gifts for men, yea for the rebellious also that the Lord God might dwell among them." (Psalm 68:18)

"Lift up your heads, oh, ye gates, and be ye lifted up ye everlasting doors, the King of Glory is coming in." (Psalms 24:7)

That is the Christ of God; that is His salvation!

This was a battle of worlds. It was not a battle of earthly religions. It was the battle of every power of light and darkness in heaven and earth. Jesus Christ, the champion of righteousness and salvation, had to make good or, like the philosophers, pass into oblivion at the grave. Instead of being the life giver, He would have just been the profounder of another philosophy.

The resurrection morning came. Jesus, discussing His life had said, "I have power to lay it down, and I have power to take it up again." (John 10:18)

He took it at His will. He commanded life! He lived and death became a captive. Jesus Christ, the Son of God, was victor and there is none like Him in all the universe. He came out of the battle with the "keys of death and of hell." (Revelation 1:18)

No other soul in heaven or on earth ever had such an experience. None other had ever challenged death. No other has ever taken death and hell captive. Jesus Christ stood unique in earth, in hell, and in heaven.

When Jesus came forth in the resurrection, something breathed and throbbed and pulsed in Him that had never breathed or throbbed or pulsed before. It was the new, eternal life.

He used a new vocabulary. The ordinary language was not big enough. He said, "All power is given unto Me in heaven and in earth." Who else in the universe had ever experienced such a thing? None but the Son of God.

"All Power" language is Christian vocabulary only. Christianity came from the heart of the Glorified. Christianity is a heavenly triumph. Christianity is one hundred percent supernatural, that is, God possessing man.

Just as God breathed the breath of life into Adam, so Jesus Christ breathed upon His disciples. If He could breathe into them this heaven-born life, they would be heaven-born like Himself. If he could breath this consciousness of triumph into them, they would become triumphant also. If they could take the deathless life of Christ, they would become deathless likewise. "He breathed on them, and said unto them, 'Receive ye the Holy Ghost'" (John 20:22)

In Peter's Pentecostal sermon, he gives a revelation that no other writer gives us. Peter's broken heart was penetrative. He saw into the glory. He saw Jesus ascending to the throne of God, He saw the Almighty God receive Him at the throne. He observed what took place. He said, "Having received of the Father the promise of the Holy Spirit, He hath shed forth this, which ye now see and hear."

He saw Him get the eternal saving marvel for universal distribution to all mankind. Right then, Jesus became the world's Savior. The Savior of all mankind. He now possessed the saving grace, the Holy Spirit. God had fulfilled His promise. It was completed. His Savior had done it. It made Him heaven's High Priest. He had qualified as High Priest of things eternal. It was His right, now, to pour out the Holy Spirit on every hungry heart that was ready to receive. They were baptized in the Holy Spirit. So may you be.

Results of Believing Prayer

HEALED OF INSANITY

A woman, holding the infant of Mrs Lloyd McLaughlin, was asked to stand.

Mr Lake: This baby is just one month old. When the baby was born the mother was given twilight sleep, which resulted in insanity, as it often does. This Church has been praying for the dear woman. On Monday a group of our people went aside to particularly pray for this dear mother. I called them on the phone about five o'clock and asked one of the sisters, "What is the answer from heaven?" She replied, "Well, brother, we have the answer. Our hearts have the victory, and we know the woman is healed." Yesterday morning the woman awoke, healed, praise the Lord.

CHILD HELPLESS AND DUMB HEALED

There was another case I want to present at this time, but the mother is delayed. This dear mother comes from Grangeville, Idaho. Here baby was injured in the birth, due to the child being delivered by instruments. The principle object of instruments these days is the $25 extra that is charged. God has had babies born for five thousand years without any of their accursed use. This little one had the usual thing that takes place in such cases; an injury so terrible that the child was never able to walk or speak. Apparently it was a partial detachment of the spinal chord from the brain. The mother testifies the baby has begun to walk and talk now.

PARALYSIS IN PROCESS OF HEALING

A dear young business man of the city, who has been paralysed from the neck down for six years, is walking now.

HEALED WHEN TOTALLY PARALYSED

Some of you will remember Mr Kelly who was totally paralysed from the shoulders down. He, his wife and their new baby were present in the meeting last night, and he testified to his perfect healing.

MRS RAYMOND

We have inquiries regarding Mrs Raymond, who was dying of tuberculosis. Day before yesterday she was outdoors for three and a half hours for the first time. Her mother says she is healed. She was delivered from very death.

ANOTHER DELIVERANCE

We have a dear mother in Wooster. Four years ago her son broke down and went out of his mind. We ministered to him, and the Lord healed him. Recently, almost the same thing has taken place with the daughter. Here is a telegram asking us to pray for her. The daughter is greatly recovered since we prayed for her, but the mother says she still suffers from bad dreams, fear of fire, and fear of death. (Rev. Thompson was asked to present this case to the Lord.)

SCRIPTURE READING WITH COMMENTS

"And Miriam and Aaron spake against Moses because of the Ethiopian woman whom he had married … and the Lord heard it." Numbers 12.

A great many people lose the blessing that they might have had by sticking their nose into other people's affairs. The Lord has been trying, from the very beginning, to get folks to learn this truth. This is one of the most severe lessons in the Word of God on the disadvantages of sticking your nose into other people's affairs. The Lord somehow succeeds in looking after most people who put their confidence in Him and regulating them fairly well. You like to be governed by the Spirit of the Lord Himself, and so do I, so we must accord the same privilege to the other party.

"Now the man Moses was very meek, above all the men which were upon the face of the earth." Verse 3.

No other man in all history has so many reasons to get puffed up, if he had been puffable. The little fellow puffs up, the big fellow puffs down. No man ever listened to such words as the Lord spake to Moses. No one was ever dignified by the same commission that God gave to Moses. When God called Moses to His service and sent him to Egypt, He spoke these most startling words to him; "Thou shalt be as God." He was endowed with all the authority of God, and was sent with the commission to deliver His people from the hands of Pharoah. His word became the Word of God, his action became the action of God. "Now the man Moses was very meek, above all the men which were upon the face of the earth."

Aaron was the brother and Miriam the sister of Moses. When Moses was called at the burning bush, he began to make excuses because of his slowness of speech, and God gave him his brother Aaron, saying, "He will be thy spokesman unto the people."

"Behold, Miriam became leprous, white as snow. And Aaron looked upon Miriam, and, behold, she was leprous." Verse 10.

Some time ago I was called to minister to a leper in the State of Montana, ex-senator Willets, who had been confined several years. It was the first time since leaving Africa that I had a chance to examine a leper with care. So I went with him to his rooms and had him strip. The leprosy was as white as snow. His fingers were dead, and swollen three times the normal size. When he would put wood on the fire he would burn his fingers and not know it. His feet were in the same condition. He wrote me afterward that the first evidence of healing he noticed was in his toes. The colour and feeling returned.

"The cloud departed off the tabernacle; and behold, Miriam became leprous, white as snow, and Aaron said unto Moses, 'Alas, my lord, I beseech thee, lay not this sin upon us, where in we have sinned' ... And Moses cried unto the Lord, saying, 'Heal her now, O God I beseech thee.'"

Moses' prayer is characteristic of so many of the prayers of the Bible. It is brief. It contains only eight words, "Heal her now, O God I beseech thee." But with Aaron's whole hearted confession, the heart of Moses was moved even as the heart of God.

LECTURE ON PRAYER

I want to talk to you a little about this subject of prayer. It seems to me that this prayer of Moses is a wonderful example of that remarkable teaching of Jesus on the subject of faith in the eleventh of Mark. After cursing the fig tree, Jesus utilised the instance to give voice to His marvellous teaching of faith in God.

He said, "Verily, verily." When an oriental used the words "Verily, verily," he raised his hand, and it gave it the solemnity of an oath. "With the solemnity of an oath, I say unto you. What things soever ye desire, when ye pray." You are to do something. "When you pray, BELIEVE that ye RECEIVE them, and ye shall have them." (Mark 11:23-24). The Revised Version gives greater force to it. "When ye pray believe that ye HAVE received." When? Why bless your soul, "When you pray."

HEALING OF APPENDICITIS

Mrs Ferguson will you kindly stand? (Woman stands). A week ago Saturday, Brother Wiggins, Doogan, Mrs Lake and myself were just leaving the Healing Rooms on our way to Forest Grove, Oregon when a gentleman came in, and told us of this woman's suffering and begged us to come. We went, laid our hands on the woman, and in one minute the Lord delivered her. I put my fingers into her side, holding the appendix between my fingers, to demonstrate the perfectness of the healing. Observing how the Lord touched her body, she said, "Brother, I want to give my heart to God." So we called in her sons, and the other man, a cousin, and our sister gave her heart to God. Last Sunday she became a member of the Church, and today is present to give public thanks to God for her salvation and healing.

"When ye pray, believe that ye receive, and ye shall have," or "believe that ye HAVE received," you have it; that is what it means. We used to have a little Englishman in our evangelistic party who would say to the people when they were praying, "Now let us stop praying for five minutes and BELIEVE God, and see what will happen." It is perfectly amazing the wonderful things that will happen when people believe God.

THE SOUL CRY OF A BROTHER

There is an attitude of faith, an opening of the soul to God, a divine laying hold in the Spirit. I can imagine the soul cry in the prayer of Moses under those circumstances. Miriam, his own sister, now smitten and leprous "white as snow," what were the feelings of his heart! I have sometimes thought that there is no other circumstance in my own life that ever called out so much faith in God and determination of soul to see God's will done as in the healing of a sister. One of my sisters was a little older but was my chum. The vision of Christ as the Healer had just opened to my soul.

She was dying of an issue of blood. My mother called me one night and said, "John, if you want to see your sister alive, you must come at once." When I arrived my mother said, "You are too late, she is gone." I stepped to her bedside and laid my hand on her forehead; it was cold and dead. I slipped my hand down over her heart, and the heart had ceased to beat. I picked up a small mirror and held it over her mouth, but there was no discolouration. The breath was gone. I stood there stunned. Her husband knelt at the foot of the bed weeping - her baby asleep in a crib on the opposite side of the room. My old father and mother knelt sobbing at the side of the bed. They had seen eight of their children die; she apparently was the ninth. My soul was in a storm.

Just a few weeks before my wife was healed when almost dead. Just a few weeks before my brother had been healed after having been an invalid for twenty-two years. A short time before my older sister with five cancers in the breast, who had been operated on five times, and turned away to die, was healed. As I looked at my sister I said, "God, this is not the will of God, and I can not accept it. It is the will of the devil and darkness." "He that hath the power of death, that is the devil."

I discovered this fact, that there are times when your spirit lays hold of the spirit of another, and they just can not get away from you. Somehow I just felt my spirit lay hold of the spirit of that woman. And I prayed, "Dear Lord, she just can not go." I walked up and down for some time. My spirit was crying out for somebody with faith in God that I could call on to help me. That was twenty-five years ago when the individual who trusted God for healing was almost insane in the mind of the Church and the world. Bless God, it is different now. That is the advantage of having people who trust God, and walk out on God's lines, come together, and stay together, put their hands and hearts together, and carry one another's load, and form a nucleus in society which has some force for God. I have no confidence or faith in these little efforts that people run after here and there. Most of them go up in vapour. If you want something done for God and humanity, put your hearts and your hands together and your souls together. Organise your effort.

That baby's mother (referring to the baby in the audience) would not have been healed, except that a little nucleus determined to pray until the woman was healed, and they stayed in prayer all day Monday. At five o'clock they had the victory. It took them all day. I wish we had spirituality and faith enough to look through the mists and see what was taking place all that day long, until the powers of darkness were dispelled, and the healing came.

As I walked up and down my sister's room, I could think of but one man that had faith on this line. That was John Alexander Dowie, six hundred miles away. I went to the phone and called the Western Union, and told them I wanted to get a telegram through to Mr Dowie, and an answer back as quickly as possible. I sent this wire:

"My sister has apparently died, but my spirit will not let her go. I believe if you will pray, God will heal her."

I received this answer back:

"Hold on to God. I am praying. She will live."

Oh, God, I have said a thousand times, what would it have meant if instead of that telegram of faith I had received one from a weakling preacher who might have said: "I am afraid you are on the wrong track," or "Brother, you are excited," or the days of miracles are past."

It was the strength of his faith that came over the wire that caused the lightnings of my soul to begin to flash, and while I stood there at the telephone and listened, the very lightnings of God began to flash in my spirit. I prayed, "This thing of hell can not be, and it will not be. In the Name of Jesus Christ I abolish death and sickness, and she shall live." And as I finished praying, I turned my eyes toward the bed, and I saw her eyelids blink. But I was so wrought up I said, "Maybe I deceived myself." So I stood a little while at the telephone, and the lightnings of God's Spirit were still flashing from my soul. Presently I observed her husband get up and tip-toe to her head, and I knew he had seen it. I said, "What is it, Peter?" He replied, "I thought I saw her eyelids move." And just then they moved again. Five days later she came to Father's home and the Lake family sat down to Christmas dinner, the first time in their life when they were all well.

PERSISTENT PRAYER SOMETIMES NECESSARY

Beloved, it is not our long prayers, but believing God that gets the answer. However, I want to help somebody who finds persistent prayer a necessity, as we all do sometimes. We have not the least idea, Paul says, of the powers of darkness we are praying against.

"We wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against power, against the rulers of the darkness of this world, against spiritual wickedness in high places." Ephesians 6:12.

And sometimes you have to lay hold of God, and stay before God, and stay through the blackness and through the darkness and through the night of it, until the faith of God penetrates, Bless God, and the work is done.

DANIEL'S EXPERIENCE

Do you remember the experience of Daniel, One of the finest in the Book? He had to hear from Heaven. He fasted and prayed for twenty-one days. On the twenty-first day an angel came to him right out of heaven, and the angel said, "Daniel, a man greatly beloved, from the first day thy prayer was heard." Not the last time you prayed, but the very first.

"O Daniel, a man greatly beloved, understand the words that I speak unto thee, and stand upright, for unto thee am I now sent ... Fear not, Daniel, for from the first day that thou didst set thine heart to understand, and to chasten thyself before God, thy words were heard, and I came for thy words. But the prince of the kingdom of Persia withstood me one and twenty days: but, lo, Michael, one of the chief princes, came to help me; and I remained there with the kings of Persia. Now I am come to make thee understand what shall befall thy people in the latter days." Daniel 10:11-14.

Michael is spoken of again as the warrior angel. He made way against the devil and cast him out of heaven. Get the circumstance. Daniel had prayed, and God heard his prayer and answered it by sending an angel messenger, but the messenger himself was held up on the way by the power of darkness, until reinforcements came and God dispatched Michael, one of the chief angels to his help. I wonder what was necessary to be accomplished in the mind of those interested, before God could answer that prayer?

You are praying for somebody, you are praying for your friend, or your brother, or your son, or your daughter who needs your love and faith. Beloved, have you faith in God to stay and pray until the Spirit has a chance to work out the problem? That is the issue. Keep right down to it. Do not let go. It is the will of God, you have a right to an answer.

There is a ministry of intercession that comes from heaven. Oh, it is prayer by the Spirit of God. It is entering into the prayer spirit of the Holy Ghost. He prays, He prays for you, He prays for me, "with groanings that can not be uttered." Our spirit in union with His we enter into oneness of faith, reaching out into the ether of God, and the love of His Spirit, and taking that power of God and fashioning the power of God into the souls desire. A lot of folks stop when half through. You hold on to God and pray through.

Then there are times like the one when my sister was restored, when the faith and power of God comes like the lightning flash, and to Moses when he prayed, "Heal her now O God, I beseech thee," and the healing is instant.

There are times when it is only your humanity that prays. You know these times yourself, when you soul does not enter into your prayer, much less your spirit. There are times when your soul prays. People these days do not even have much conception of the realm of the SOUL, or psychic. It is a marvellous realm. People pray in the psychic. Then there is a prayer in the Spirit, that deeper quality of your life, deeper than the psychic, or soul. Oh, bless God, there is still a prayer where the spirit of man and the Sprit of God unite and become one.

Now one can imagine as Moses prayed that day how his soul must have been stirred. Here is his own sister, the woman that had stood by the river side when he was a babe, had put him in a basket, hid him in the bullrushes and watched over his welfare. Don't you think she was interested in him? Sometimes I have sympathised with Miriam. She had a sisterly and motherly affection for Moses. She wanted to keep him straight. She was afraid he had made a great mistake in his marriage.

Say beloved, you are a father probably, or you are a mother, or a sister or brother, and you have laid hold so tight on the other one that you are afraid to leave them in the hands of God. That is one of the hardest things folks have to learn, to just take their hands off the other and let God have them. There is no record that God had any quarrel with Moses about his wife.

THE EXPERIENCE OF STEPHEN MERRITT

Stephen Merritt was a godly old undertaker in the City of New York. His dear old wife and himself had lived a godly life. They had raised one son, and if there was ever a reprobate it was that son Charley. Charley would get into some disreputable affair, and the police would come and say, "Charley has done so and so. It will take so much money to get him out of the difficulty." The next week another would come along with something else, and so it went on and on. And the two old grey heads were praying and pouring out their tears for that boy's salvation. Stephen Merritt had a habit of receiving people into his office and helping them. John G. Wooley was one that he helped, He handed Wooley five dollars and said, "You meet me at such and such a camp ground." Wooley was a drunkard. He had not been accustomed to being trusted with money, and he met the old man there and found God.

One day as he sat in his office he was praying about his son, and the floor was wet with his tears, when he heard the voice of God saying, "How long have you been trying to save Charley?" So many of us are trying to save Charley, and we have gotten in the way of the Lord. He replied, "Lord, a long time." The Lord said, "Now if you are through, I will undertake." The old man considered, and it worked out in his soul this way.

The police came and said, "Charley did so and so." He asked, "Who is Charley?" "Why he is your son." "No, I have no son, Charley." That day as he knelt there he said, "Lord, He is not my son any more. I give him over to you until he is saved." So he told the police, "No, I have no son." They looked at him and shook their heads. Then they sent another officer. But it was no use to go to him any more. It looked as if the old man had gone crazy.

About nine months passed and one day an officer came and said, "Charley has jumped off the Brooklyn Bridge and finished." He wanted the old man to have the river dragged to obtain the body. But he said, "Oh, no, I have no son, Charley. Drag the river if you want to." So they dragged the river, but the body they found was not Charley's. Three months more passed, and one day a clerk said, "There is one of your friends in the office." And when he came in it was Charley. He was beautifully dressed, clean faced, everything indicating the light of God, and when the old father came in the son fell at his feet, kissed them, and asked his forgiveness. He said in explanation, "Three months ago I was saved in a mission, but I did not want to come and see you until I came as a man."

THE HUMAN CLUTCH

Not only is it so in your prayers for others, but in your prayers for yourself. Some of you are holding to your sickness, or difficulty, with such a clutch, and are so everlastingly conscious of it, that God can not get it out of your hands. You are in the very place spiritually where old Stephen Merritt was. He was so determined to save his boy that he was just doing it himself, and God was not getting a chance.

Open your hands, let go of the old difficulty. I was praying for a woman who had appendicitis, and as I prayed I saw she was holding on to it mentally so hard I had to do something. So I told one of the craziest stories I ever told, and finally she burst out laughing in spite of the pain, and when she got through the pain was gone. She just opened her clutch.

Maybe you are holding on to sin with that same clutch. Maybe you are holding on to disobedience to God with that same clutch. Maybe it is your sickness. If there is something that is keeping you from being blessed, let clear go and let your hands and heart open..

When I was a boy I used to visit the Soolocks at Sault Ste. Marie, Michigan, where my home was. One day a sailor was up in the masts, he lost balance and shot over the ship into the water. Another sailor stood on the railing of the ship and watched him. He went down and came up, and went down and came up again, and everything was in foam around him. Still the fellow stood there. Then the chap went down the third time, limp, and just as he was disappearing he shot down into the water and came up with him. A couple of gentlemen standing by, one remarked, "That fellow has taken men out of the water before." He just waited until the kick was all out of him. Otherwise both might have drowned.

A lot of us have to thresh and struggle and fight until the kick is all out of us before we are ready to let God take us. As a young fellow I was as proud as Lucifer--every Lake I ever knew was. Robert Burns wrote with his diamond on the window of a Highland Inn, "There's nothing here by Highland pride, Highland pride and poverty." It did not make any difference how poor they were.

The hardest thing I had to do was to make my surrender to God. I heard Riley tell the other night of having been a dope fiend, and gambler, and of how God saved him. I never knew anything about that kind of life. Never touched whisky in my life, never used tobacco, never committed an unholy act in the moral sense, but that proud heart of mine had to struggle like a drowning man until I was ready to say, "Lord, you save me." The final consummation came when I knelt behind an old elm tree and poured out my heart to God, and made my surrender to Him. The light of heaven broke into my soul, and I arose from my knees a son of God, and I knew it.

Let God have you. Quit sweating, quit wrestling. About the most difficult class in the world to get healed is Christian Scientists. Why? Because they are working at it so hard. They have been reading so many lessons and concentrating their mind on healing, until almost exhausted. You have to lead them away from it all to that place where, "It is not TRY but TRUST." That is the secret of Christ's healing; that is the secret of Christ's salvation. It is trusting Him for it, and believing HIM when He says he will do it, and the mind relaxes and the soul comes to rest.

There is a wonderful help in disarming people. I read a story of the healing of Mr Leake. He had become a most notorious drunkard. He bought whisky and buried it until he filled his whole lot with buried whisky. It was a mania. Everybody who tried to help him would say, "Leake, just make one promise, that you will not drink any more." Finally he went to a woman who was wiser than the others. Before he went out of the room she said, "I want you to promise one thing." He said, "I will promise you anything, except that I will not drink whisky. I'm nearly crazy for a drink now." She said, "I want you to promise that every time you feel like taking a drink of whisky you will do so." "Sure I will." Do you get the secret of that? She disarmed him right away. The thing he was clutching all the time was the fear that someone was going to make him promise not to drink whisky. One morning when he awoke he discovered that the cursed appetite was gone.

Say, dear hearts, let go! Open your clutch! Let God take you. Let God have you, whether it is for your spirit, whether it is for your soul, whether it is for your body. No matter what, just let go. "It is not TRY, but TRUST." God bless you.

Articles and letters

Latest News From Africa

Printed in The Pentecost, Indianapolis, Indiana, September 1908

39 Van Beek St.

Doonfontein, Johnnesburg, S. Africa

God has wonderfully blessed the work here in South Africa. Manifestations of the Spirit have been intense in their power and depth of character beyond anything I have known. Some of the most striking things have occurred. In the meeting at Pretoria two weeks ago two-thirds of the congregation—the entire hall being filled—were prostrate under the power of God at one time, saint and sinner alike. Such confessions of sin, even of crimes, I have never before witnessed.

At one meeting we laid hands on I think not less than forty persons for healing and the baptism. The sick were instantly healed and the power of God came upon them in such a degree that they fell on the floor and lay under the power for hours. The same thing occurred with those for whom we prayed for the baptism. Bro. Lehman and I believe that 75 per cent of all the people we have prayed for have been instantly healed.

This morning we were called to pray for a dying woman given up to die of pneumonia. God instantly healed her, and when I left the house her pain was all gone, her fever had disappeared, and she was perfectly well though weak. It has been so every day. We have been having conversions and sanctifications at every service, and a great many have received their baptism. In fact it is the most wonderful Apostolic Faith work I have yet seen.

The seats in the Zion Tabernacle where we are now conducting services on Sunday evenings are not only filled, but hundreds stand throughout the entire service, and on week nights the seats are filled and usually large numbers have to stand.

I have never before had such messages from the Lord as I have received this week. The message on Wednesday night was the most remarkable the Lord has ever spoken through me. It was a message to the Jews. From 200 to 300 Jews attend every service. The message was from the 22nd Psalm, Zechariah 12:10, see also Zechariah 13:6, Luke 2, and the first chapter of Revelations.

I am conscious that the prayers of the saints at home are being answered in our behalf in a mighty manner. I have but one desire in my soul and that is to do the whole will of God.

Missionaries who have lived here ever since the town commenced to build thirty-three years ago, assure us every day that Johannesburg was never so religiously stirred before. Some of the very hardest men in the city have been saved. In fact many times at night when I come home from the meeting men are waiting at the house to be pointed to the Lord. When I get up in the morning others are there. I have hardly been able to eat, let alone sleep, and the only danger in the whole matter is, that the incessant, constant strain may wear me out physically. It is just the same with Bros. Tom and Lehman.

Praying the blessing of God upon every saint at Indianapolis, and asking that you pray earnestly for me that I shall keep low at Jesus' feet that all His will may be wrought out in me. I am yours till He come.

Salvation Shall Flow as a Tide: The Healing of Our God as a Mighty River

What God is doing in South Africa

Extracts from a letter written by John G. Lake

Printed in The Latter Rain Evangel, November 1908

I FEEL that we are but reaping the result of the prayers of a multitude of precious saints of God, whose prayers have gone before, and have followed us night and day. At the Missionary Training Home, Alliance, Ohio, the entire school spent one hundred and twenty days and nights in continuous prayer for missions.

I have felt that from the day my foot touched African soil, I passed under an anointing of God hitherto unknown by me.

God promised me in a message from heaven the second night I was in Africa, that Salvation should flow as a tide, and the healing of our God as a mighty river, and verily it is so.

I have a pile of testimonies of marvelous healings in answer to the prayers of the congregation such as I have never seen before anywhere, in the same period of time.

In my personal work it has not been my experience as in former times to preach conviction for sin upon people by long and hard effort. The Spirit of God has already convicted them. On Thursday last I visited three homes; fourteen persons were converted, and four instantly healed, one of them a woman that had a tumor of twenty pounds weight.

Under this new anointing that came upon me as I reached South Africa, I have been enabled to take hold of God with a living faith that I never before possessed in the same degree. We have ceased to ask people before praying for them, whether they are Christians. We have simply accepted the commission as given in Luke 9:1-6 and Mark 11:22-26, and have assumed that when Jesus spoke these words He spoke them to the disciples and not to the people.

Seventy-five per cent out of every hundred who come are healed. To lay your hands on a woman with dropsy, with legs as large as a big stove pipe, and see them diminish and become natural while you pray has been the experience of the past week, a Hebrew at that.

To see a tumor of twenty pounds burst and run off as you pray is another manifestation of the power of God.

This week I have seen the blind receive their sight, the deaf hear, and the paralyzed walk. One day my wife and I prayed for a girl who was paralyzed for seven years. She immediately rose and walked two hundred feet. The following day Brother Tom and I prayed for a woman who had not stood on her feet for nine years. She immediately rose and walked. Mrs. Dr. Davey of Vryheid, writes me that she has seen one hundred people healed in a day in that place.

As the first member of our Board of Trustees the Lord gave us a Mr. Schumann, the editor of the Transvaaler, an independent secular Dutch paper with a weekly circulation of 5,000. One time in his life he had been an ordained Dutch preacher, but became a notorious drunkard, demon possessed and unable to control himself. The demons were cast out, God saved him, and he at once resumed his place as editor of the Transvaaler, and there has been added to the paper a four-page religious supplement, entirely devoted to this work.

Praise God, He is moving! Another is the Rev. van de Wal, at one time a very influential Dutch Reformed preacher in South Africa and the head of the Dutch Reformed College at Capetown. He had been a drunkard for ten years. God saved him. He is a strong preacher of the precious blood that has delivered him.

Rev. von Marle, a Hollander who never had a conversion under his ministry, but since he has been baptized in the Holy Spirit, conversions occur in every meeting. Some of the most marvelous healings occur under this man's ministry.

God has given us a wonderful boldness of faith such as I never knew before. To illustrate, last Sunday night a hypnotist who had a patient with what he called extreme rheumatism, brought her to the meeting. He sat on the front seat with a hard-looking crowd of followers. He gives performances at the theatres, but had not been able to help this girl at all; she was a great sufferer.

I told her to come up on the which she did with assistance, and asked her to point out the hypnotist to me.

I showed the people that hypnotism was not just the exercise of a natural faculty, but a natural faculty energized by Satan, just as a baptized child of God is energized by the Holy Spirit; that Satan hypnotizes, but Jesus heals. He laughed at this.

I went on to emphasize "Greater is He that is in you, than he that is in the world." We prayed for the young woman. She was instantly delivered from all suffering. I told her to walk. She walked about me platform praising God.

Then I said to the hypnotist, "In the name of the Son of God you'll hypnotize no more," and leaning over the front of the platform commanded the demon in Jesus' name to come out of him. I said, "Hypnotize now, if you can." He said, "Do you mean to tell me I can't?" He worked at it all night, but accomplished nothing. Early in the morning he came to my home, and said, "This thing is my bread and butter, I have engagements at the theatres," and wanted me to give him back the power to hypnotize.

We finally had prayer together. He left under great conviction for sin, but had not yielded to God.

Johannesburg, S. A., Sept. 12, 1908.

A Call For Helpers

Printed in The Pentecost, Indianapolis, Indiana, December 1908

Johannesburg, Transvaal.

DEAR SISTER SMOCK :--

I want to make this letter strictly business. I know your soul is wrapped up in missionary work, so is mine. I want you to realize in some degree what I can only tell you that Johannesburg is unquestionably the greatest field for missionary work in the known world. In the last three or four years the natives from the very interior of Africa have been coming up to Johannesburg to work on the mines. They live in the compounds and on any Sunday forenoon YOU CAN ADDRESS 2500 NATIVES in most of the compounds.

About 150 mines are in operation, each of which employs from 1,000 to 3,000 natives who are accommodated in compounds, buildings built in a square with a court in the center, where an additional building is placed as a kitchen. These compounds are scattered along the railroad at the various mines for fifty miles.

The thing that my heart is on is this, that some of these souls who have been waiting and preparing and praying and praying, and apparently getting nowhere, get into God's order of getting things from Him and come as God has called them, and commence to use the faith they have got, and as they use it they will get more.

Oh, beloved, God is doing a wonderful work here. I cannot tell you what wonderful manifestations of the Spirit of God that we see every day, in depth of character a hundred times beyond anything I have ever seen anywhere. But there is such a demand for workers at this time. I could place a hundred workers today if they were only here.

Sister Smock, in Jesus' name do get a hold of some of the home people and get them into clearer light and real faith in God and believe Him for coming here. There are FIFTY THOUSAND CHINESE HERE. They live in compounds too. The Chinese Missionary from Canton who ministers to them was baptized with the Holy Ghost at one of our cottage meetings a week ago last night. He is a precious fellow. One of the Baker Missionaries, Bro. Ingram, has received his baptism. A Dutch Missionary next door to where we live, Mr. van Marile, has received his baptism.

The Congregational Church at Pretoria, after observing the healings there, haw commenced to pray for the sick, and one young man in the last stages of consumption was healed in answer to their prayers. One of the Baker missions has commenced to pray for the sick. Two sick natives were brought to their meetings and were instantly healed and praised God in a wonderul way.

I do have it in my soul that GOD WANTS TO USE YOU in America as a recruiting officer and to take up some of these people who have calls and get them out here. These people that are wondering about where they are called to, if they have got a call anywhere, God can use them here. There are not only hundreds of thousands of natives, and Chinamen, but there are thousands of Mohammedans and natives of India all over Africa. If they have got a call to India, this is India enough. If they have a call to China, this is China enough. But dear Sister Smock, one thing that I can be assured of, you will not encourage anyone of doubtful or insincere experience to come.

Your brother in Christ,

John G. Lake

Roman Catholics Healed and Saved

(News from South Africa)

Printed in The Pentecost, Indianapolis, Indiana, December 1908

To illustrate to you how God works, two women came to our home last Thursday to be prayed for. One had female diseases and the other rheumatism, both of years standing. Neither of the women were Christians. They were both instantly healed. They then gave their hearts to God.

The next morning, before I was up, two men came. I had to let them wait I was so worn out. They waited two hours. When I came down I said, "Brothers, what can I do for you?" They said, "Show us how to get saved." They were both soundly converted. One was the son of one of the women who had been healed and the other was the husband of the other woman. They said the women were perfectly healed. These four were Dutch Roman Catholics. All were baptized last Lord's Day morning when I baptized twenty-five. I baptized thirty-six one other Sunday a short time ago.

Ever so many Roman Catholics have been saved and healed. I was totalling up last week and found that thirty-five Roman Catholics have given themselves to God in and out of our meetings. Glory to God!

Hypnotic Devil Cast Out

(News from South Africa)

Printed in The Pentecost, Indianapolis, Indiana, December 1908

God has given us a wonderful boldness of faith such as I have never knew before. To illustrate: A hypnotist had a young lady with what he called extreme rheumatism under his treatment, and could do nothing for her, brought her to the meeting. He sat on the front seat with a hard looking crowd of followers. He gives performances at the theatres, but had not been able to help this girl at all.

I told her to come up on the platform, which she did with assistance, and asked her to point out the hypnotist to me.

I showed that hypnotism was not just the exercise of a natural faculty but a natural faculty energized by Satan, just as a baptized child of God is energized by the Holy Spirit; that Satan hypnotizes, but Jesus heals. He laughed at this.

I went on to emphasize, "Greater is He that is in you than he that is in the world." We prayed for the young woman and she was instantly delivered from all suffering. She walked about the platform praising God.

Then I said to the hypnotist, "In the name of Jesus Christ, you'll hypnotize no more." He said, "Won't I?" I leaned over the front of the platform and commanded the demon of hypnotism in Jesus' name to come out of him. I said, "Hypnotize now, if you can." He said, "Do you mean to tell me I can't?" He worked at it all night, but accomplished nothing. Early in the morning he came to my home and said, "This thing is my bread and butter. I have engagements at the theatres," and wanted me to give him back the power to hypnotize.

We finally had prayer together. He left under great conviction for sin, but did not yet yield to God.

Two Infidels Saved

(News from South Africa)

Printed in The Pentecost, Indianapolis, Indiana, December 1908

A young man, Jerry Kritzman, a noted infidel, came to the meetings at night. He went home with our singer, Mr. John Armstrong, to Bro. Tom's home. (Bro. Tom and Mrs. Tom are away at Natal holding meetings.) As they knelt to pray, or rather knelt while Armstrong prayed, suddenly the power of God descended on Kritzman and for hours he fought and struggled against God, but Jesus was victor. He was saved, sanctified, and baptized and spoke in tongues at 2:30 a.m.

Another young infidel, Mr. Chapman, was saved this week and testified in power at the meeting last night. (Oct. 25.)

Healed of a Worm In His Foot

(News from South Africa)

Printed in The Pentecost, Indianapolis, Indiana, December 1908

A young man came last night who had a worm in his foot. He has been prayed with in one of the meetings about a month ago. This worm was in the flesh and wound itself round and round the foot. I have forgotten the name of the worm and have never heard of anything of this kind before. It seems to be something peculiar to Africa. He had been treated by all the prominent physicians in the largest cities of Africa and had been to Europe to specialists there. No hope could be given him, all medical aid had failed. As we prayed with him we commanded in the name of Jesus that the thing should die and cease to be. He said last night "The thing is absolutely gone and I am perfectly healed." He never felt the thing from the moment we prayed. His foot is now just like the other one. I mention this simply as an example of what God is doing. Instantaneous healings used to be the exception, today they are the rule.

Spread of the Gospel among the Natives

(News from South Africa)

Printed in The Pentecost, Indianapolis, Indiana, December 1908

God is opening up work among the natives here in the City of Johannesburg at present. The natives are getting extremely hungry and are anxious to know about the whole truth of the gospel, and as a result of their hunger they convened a meeting last Saturday night where several denominations were represented in order to have the Apostolic truths presented to them. The outcome of the meeting was most gratifying, as I am convinced that it shall lead into the securing of a large hall where we can accommodate hundreds if not thousands of these hungry souls of the various tribes of this dark land. Such glorious and victorious testimonies were given in that meeting of salvation, sanctification and healing.

Among them was one whose one eye was absolutely blind and in one of our Sunday afternoon meetings he was prayed for and he testified to having been healed instantly. Before he was prayed for he could not even see the sun with that eye, but immediately after prayer he could see the sun and everybody and also see to read as well as anyone else.

When these kind of healings occur among the natives it creates a tremendous stir in their midst.

God is working, and Johannesburg with its surrounding towns is being stirred properly. We are expecting God to work more mightily as we keep humble at His feet.

Asleep in Jesus

Printed in The Pentecost, Indianapolis, Indiana, January 1909

Just as we are going to press we are in receipt of a letter from Bro. John G. Lake, 4 MIllbourn Rd., Bertram, Johannesburg, South Africa, one of the party of missionaries who left Indianapolis last April for missionary work in South Africa, that his wife has been called home to be with Jesus. While we feel the loss of our dear sister deeply, and especially does our heart go out for Bro. Lake as he is left alone to wage this Christian warfare, yet we are glad that we shall see her again on that glorious day when this corruption shall put on incorruption and we shall arise together with those who are now asleep to Him to be forever with the Lord. Bro, Lake's letter follows:

My dear Bro. Flower and all the dear friends in America:

I write to tell you that my precious wife was called home to heaven, December 22nd, at 9 p.m.

I was absent in the Orange Free State holding native conferences in connection with Bro. Inahon, when I received a telegram from Allie, my oldest son, saying, "Mamma is ill, come." I took the first train but she was dead when I got home. Horace (14) and Johnnie (4) were mixed up in a bicycle accident a month ago and were knocked unconscious for quite a long time. Both recovered, but the shock seemed to take hold of Mrs. Lake so she could not eat properly after I had gone away on my last trip. She wrote me Friday, Dec. 18, saying that she was not very well but urging me to remain until the conference closed and I received a little rest.

That evening she sat on the porch late, took a chill, rheumatic fever developed, and before she or our friends or any one realized she was really ill, it went to her heart and she was dead. She just went to sleep and never woke up here.

Oh! I cannot express what it means to us with our seven babies, but Alexander, my oldest son (16) has been such a strength to me in the trial.

I cannot explain the marvelous way the dear Lord has used Mrs. Lake here. Her spiritual life, that was always deep and clear, seemed to deepen and deepen into God day by day until she seemed for months to be more on the other side than this.

More people have been baptized under her ministry here than any one of the party. As her dear body lay in our home, the people whom God has blessed, saved and healed, and baptized, came in hundreds to offer a last token of love.

One woman, who was blind and healed four weeks ago when Mrs. Lake prayed for her, came to kiss the dear cold hands. Another, the wife of one of the large merchants, who was healed when dying of appendicitis at the Kensington Sanitorium, and many, many more. I mention these cases as they are exceptionally pathetic ones.

I can only go on and trust God. However, I am determined, by God's help, not to permit the children to be scattered. We will maintain our home at all hazards; but oh, beloved, only those who have known our stormy life know the loss that has come to me. In all our battles, whether the devil roared or the world frowned or hissed or fawned at our feet, she was just the same, and while I cannot understand His ways in permitting her to leave my side, my faith is unshaken, my confidence is in Him and I am going forward. But the problems that were large before are larger now.

On Tuesday night, one week before her death, at the close of the cottage meeting at our home, Miss Radford, a missionary from Natal, was baptized and spoke in tongues as Mrs. Lake and she prayed together. It was a great anxiety to her that any member of our household should not be baptized by Jesus with the Holy Ghost. When Miss Radford was baptized, she was the last of those who worked with us in our home work except Pete, the native kitchen boy, a young man of twenty-five years. About four hours before she left us, she sent for Pete to come and pray. As he knelt at her bedside, she put her hands on his head and prayed and Jesus baptized him, and when Miss Radford returned to her bedside, Mrs. Lake and Pete were both speaking and praying in tongues.

The Dutch people here called her "The Missus who Prays." They come inquiring for the "Missus Who Prays" yet. Oh, dear one, do bear me and our family up in your prayers.

I cannot stop. I must go on.

Two months ago, one day as I sat at the desk, she was standing near me. I was looking at the marvelous spirituality of her face when she suddenly turned, and kissing me, said, "Poor Jack, you did not know you brought me to Africa to die, did you?" Then she kissed me quickly and was gone before I realized the import of what it meant.

Though I was hundreds of miles away, I knew, through the spirit, what was transpiring, though I could not reach her.

Her life was a sacrifice for others. During the awful press of this work, when we were worn out for want of sleep, she would come and say, "Now Jack, you go to bed and let me pray with the rest of these people," and though I had ne special liberty to leave home the last time, she made the arrangements so that I was practically forced to go. She hoped I would return rested.

Oh I feel that she gave her life for others. Dear ones at Indianapolis, you knew her. You will pray for me I know. Also the other dear friends in America.

Your Brother in Jesus, our coming, conquering King,

John G. Lake.

P.S.—The last vision Jesus gave her was just a short time before she fell into her final sleep. She said to Sister Tim, "Oh, I see a beautiful pure white marble cross." The boys and myself are determined we will have a small white marble cross for her grave. She is buried in Bramfontein Cemetary, Johannesburg, South Africa.

Bro. Tom was absent in Pretoria at the time of her death, also Alexander, Horace and Otto, our oldest sons. She never knew she was going apparently. She never said a word about it to any one. She just fell asleep in Jesus.

Extracts from a very Important Letter from Bro. J. G. Lake

Printed in Confidence, Great Britain, March 1909

"Missionary Faith Home."

4. Millbourn Road.

Bertrams, Johnannesburg,

South Africa, Jan. 15th, 1909

In order that you may have a better understanding of what the Lord is doing here, I will say that in the past fifteen days we have been asked to become overseers of thirty-five thousand native people and five thousand Dutch and German, in one locality, in giving them divine guidance and direction (these five thousand are in German South West Africa), which with the people that we ordinarily touch in the progress of the work in Johannesburg, Pretoria, Krugersdorp, etc., and many other places too numerous in detail, makes at least fifty thousand who are now looking to us for divine guidance and direction in the Word of God. . . . The Lord is raising up a strong band of strong Christian workers right here on the field. These new workers already speak English and at least Dutch. Dutch is absolutely necessary for personal ministry in South Africa. Many of these people have been so associated with the natives from their childhood that in not a few cases they speak as many as four, some six native languages, and most everybody here can speak at least one native language; and so, brother, the thing that is in my heart is that, as missionaries equipped for the field, these people whom the Lord is raising up and baptizing with the Holy Ghost are a better class of missionaries than the average foreign missionary. . . .

The mightiest man of faith that I have seen developed in any country I have seen here from the rank and file of our baptized, Pentecostal people. Brother, think of a young man who never read the Bible, and whose life was spent as a professional athlete, being baptized in the Holy Ghost before he ever opened the Bible. But, brother, when he did so it was the Word of God to him, not to be reasoned about or discussed, but to be believed and obeyed. I know of five people, deaf and dumb, three of them born so, who have instantaneously received their HEARING AND SPEECH as this young man has prayed. I have sent him to dying people, both far and near, who have been instantly healed when he prayed for them. God uses him not alone in the ministry of healing, but in the mighty preaching of the Word unto the salvation of souls. We have at least a dozen more who have developed in this work who are phenomenal in faith in God, and whose ministry the signs do follow.

I am not pleading so much for missionaries as I am pleading that you and others will take the burden of this field upon your hearts in prayer that God will furnish us in His own way from somewhere the means with which to get these people in the field.

Sanctification and Holy Living

Printed in The Pentecost, June 1909

I have seen that there is much confusion and apparent misconception of the teaching of sanctification and the teaching of holy living as taught by some of the advanced teachers, I feel compelled to write a short article calling attention to the actual difference in this teaching, believing that it may be a blessing to others who have tried to live a holy life and really practice holy living to the best of their ability and have been unable to satisfy their own hearts that their present experience is in the will of God. Salvation, healing and holy living has been the standard of Christian teaching among many, and many have struggled to live a holy life who have found it impossible to be holy according the the Bible standard and their own conscience. This article is written in the hope that these may be able to see and enter into the real inwrought experience of a real sanctified life in God; that will make it possible for them to live a holy life.

Holy living as taught among modern Christian teachers has meant that in our outward every day living we shall imitate the life of Christ; that we shall be clean men and clean women; that the purity of our life shall be unquestionable; that in all our acts we shall act like Christ.

This is really Christian Ethics and is not scriptural holiness.

Holiness of heart and ethics are very closely connected. They correlate and interact. Their right adjustment and mutual development is the problem before us.

At one time in the world's history ethics was exalted above inward experience as though purity of heart was caused by holy living. This has been the great error. At another time inward experience was exalted above ethics as though purity of heart existed independent of holy living. For two hundred years the pendulum has swung, first to the one extreme, then to the other. Both of these theories come of limited one-sided views of Christianity; the former obtained before the Wesleyan reformation. Thomas A. Kempis in his book, "The Imitation of Christ," was the first great teacher of holy living. Excepting the Bible, this book is declared to have been translated more often and more widely read than any other book. It is said to have reached five hundred editions. This book was published in the latter half of the Fourteenth century. In 1650 Bishop Jeremy Taylor published his "Holy Living and Dying." This followed in the line of "The Imitation of Christ."

Following Jeremy Taylor's "Holy Living and Dying," seventy-five years later, came William Law's "Serious Call to a Devout and Holy Life," and his "Practical Treatise Upon Christian Perfection."

These books are the foundation of the teaching of holy living and are written from the standpoint of Christian ethics. They emphasize purity of heart, but fail to particularize the act of faith by which the heart is cleansed from sin. "And put no difference between us and them, pufifying their hearts by faith." (Acts 15:9) "To open their eyes, and to turn them from darkness to light, and from the power of Satan into God, that they may receive forgiveness of sins, and inheritance among them which are sanctified by faith that is in me." (Acts 26:18) Nor God's act of faith by which the heart is instantly cleansed from indwelling. "Knowing this, that our old man is crucified with him, that the body of sin might be destroyed, that henceforth we should not serve sin." (Rom. 6:6) "For the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus hath made me free from the law of sin and death." (Rom. 8:2) "And the very God of peace sanctify you wholly; and I pray God your whole spirit and soul and body be preserved blameless unto the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ." They bent their force upon holy living and this left the impression that purity of heart would result from holy living. Influenced by these books, John and Charles Wesley in 1729 followed after holiness and incited others to do so.

In 1737 they saw likewise that men are justified before they are sanctified. (Methodist Discipline, page 13.) Here it appears that John Wesley aimed at holy living for eight years before he ever saw that he must be first sanctified by the blood of Jesus before he could be holy either in heart or life. How many of us have made the same error? How many of us have tried and tried to live a holy life with the old nature of sin still in our breast. When the heart is purified from all sin then the outer life will manifest it.

Is it any wonder that people failed when the author of "Holy Living and Dying" did not even profess justification. He says on pages 292-3, "A true penitent must all the days of his life pray for pardon and never think the work completed until he dies, . . . and whether God hath forgiven us of no, we know not." In the face of this teaching, the clear cut teaching of John Wesley on the nature of entire sanctification wrought in an instant by a divine act conditioned alone upon a specific act of sanctifying faith in the Blood of Christ, followed by endless growth in holiness of heart and life, stands forth in marvelous grandeur. In fact, for putting the clear evenly balanced, well-rounded, all-including, ever-abounding scriptural holiness, John Wesley has no equal. With him as with us, holiness was "having the mind of Christ" and walking as Christ also walked, even having not some part only but all the mind which was in him and walking as he walked, not only in many or most respects, but in all things, so that the purpose of God is really made a fact in our lives. (See Eph. 1:4) "According as he hath chosen us in him before the foundation of the world that we should be holy and without blame before him in love." "And you, that were sometime alienated and enemies in your mind by wicked works, yet now hath he reconciled in the body of his flesh through death, to present you holy and unblameable and unreproveable in his sight." (Col. 1:21-22)

Oh, glory! He can do it. He can do it. He has done it for me. Hallelujah! Hallelujah!

Lake's Reply to Dr. Elwood Bulgin

(This letter was printed in the leading daily newspaper in Spokane, Washington, 1920)

Spokane, Washington

February 28, 1920

Dr Elwood Bulgin,

Spokane, Washington

Dear Brother in Christ:

It was my privilege to be present at your meeting at the St. Paul Methodist Church at Spokane last Monday night and listen to your sermon. I was deeply impressed by the masterful manner in which you marshalled your facts, and the spirit in which they were presented to your great audience.

Your presentation of the deity of Jesus Christ, and the sharpness with which you brought the facts of the denial of the deity of Jesus by the Christian Scientists, were striking. The masterful handling of the whole subject commanded my admiration, and I believe the admiration of a great majority of your audience.

Men can speak with frankness to each other, particularly when their interest in the Kingdom of Jesus Christ are identical. You have lived, loved, and denied yourself, and suffered for the cause of the Kingdom of Christ in the earth. I, too, have loved and suffered for my fidelity to the vision of the redemption of Jesus Christ which God revealed to me.

For twenty-five years I have laboured, as few men in the world have laboured for so long a period, to bring before the world as far as I could the magnificent truths of the redemptive blood and life and power of the Son of God.

Your methods and my methods have been different. You, in your forceful, philosophical manner, have undertaken to destroy faith in Christian Science through opposition, ridicule, and exposure of what you believe to be its fallacies. On the other hand I have undertaken by specific revelation of the truth of Jesus Christ concerning the healing power of God and its availability for all men today to show the world that there is no need for any man to leave any stable Christian body in order to secure the benefits of salvation and healing specifically declared by Jesus Christ Himself to be available for every man.

Jesus, in contrast with the ancient philosophers and reformers of the past and present, first gave Himself in consecration to God, body, soul and spirit, thereby establishing the pattern consecration for all Christians forever. His baptism was the dedication and commitment of Himself "unto all righteousness." He undertook to reveal the righteousness of God. Note the nature of this revelation.

Having definitely committed Himself, His body, His soul, His spirit, to God forever, immediately there descended upon Him the witness to His hundredfold consecration. The Holy Ghost came from heaven as a dove and abode upon Him, as it ever will upon every man who will meet Almighty God with the same utterances of real consecration to God, of spirit and soul and body. This reveals the demand of God upon the Christians' person and conscience, and the answer of God from heaven to this fullness of consecration.

Being thus definitely equipped, He proceeded to the wilderness for testing by Satan to see if this consecration of body and soul and spirit would endure.

He overcame all the efforts of Satan to tempt him in the specific departments of His life; first, the body; second, the soul; third, the spirit. He overcame through reliance on God and His word, and came forth in the power of the Spirit. He announced the constructive platform of His life and ministry, containing the following six planks:

"The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because He hath anointed me."

First- "To preach the gospel to the poor."

Second - "He hath sent me to heal the broken hearted."

Third - "To preach deliverance to the captives."

Fourth - "Recovering of sight to the blind."

Fifth - "To set at liberty them that are bruised."

Sixth - "To preach the acceptable year of the Lord."

God's acceptable year had come. No more waiting for the year of Jubilee and all its consequent blessings. God's never-ending Jubilee was at hand in Jesus Christ.

He then went throughout all Galilee teaching in their synagogues, and preaching the gospel of the Kingdom, and healing all manner of sickness and all manner of disease among the people, and so established forever the ideal of Christian ministry for the Church of God.

Then He empowered twelve men, and "sent them to preach the Kingdom of God, and to heal the sick." Profiting by their experience, and advancing in faith and knowledge of the power of God, He "called seventy others also." But in sending forth the seventy He reversed the order of instruction. To the seventy He said, "Go into the cities round about. Heal the sick that are therein, and say to them, the Kingdom of God is come nigh unto you." And they returned rejoicing that even the devils were subject to them "through thy name."

Then came His Wonderful entrance into death, His redemption on the cross, His resurrection from the grave, His interviews with His disciples, His last commission in which, according to Mark, He established in the Church of Christ, to be born through their preaching in all the world, the very same ministry of salvation and healing that He himself during His earth life had practiced. That ministry contained the message of Jesus to all the world and the anointing with power from on High, just as He had received it at His baptism. Indeed He commanded them to wait in Jerusalem until "Ye shall be baptised with the Holy Ghost, not many days hence."

He declared to them that certain signs should follow, saying, "These signs shall follow them that believe." Every one, every Christian soul, was thus commissioned by Jesus to heal the sick and sinful from sickness and sin.

"In my name shall they:"

First - "Cast out devils."

Second - "They shall speak with new tongues."

Third - "They shall take up serpents."

Fourth - "And if they drink any deadly thing, it shall not hurt them."

Fifth - "They shall lay hands on the sick and they shall recover."

The same Holy Spirit of God which flowed through Jesus Christ, the anointing that was upon Him and which flowed through His hands and into the sick, was an impartation of God so real that when the woman touched the hem of His garment she was conscious of the instant effect of the healing in her body through it. "She felt in her body that she was healed of that plague," while Jesus Himself was likewise conscious of an outflow. He said: "Somebody hath touched me, for I perceive that virtue is gone out of me."

Divine Healing is the particular phase of ministry in which the modern Church does not measure up to the Early Church. This failure has been due to a lack of knowledge of the real nature and the real process of Christian Healing. The above incident reveals the secret of what the power was, how the power operated, by what law it was transmitted from the disciple to the one who needed the blessing. The power was the Holy Ghost of God, both in Jesus Christ after His baptism in the Holy Ghost, and in the disciples after the baptism of the Holy Ghost came upon them on the day of Pentecost. It flowed through the hands of Jesus to the sick, it permeated the garments He wore. When the woman touched even the hem of His garment there was sufficient of the power of God there for her need.

The disciples healed the sick by the same method. Indeed, the apostle Paul, realising this law, permitted the people to bring to him handkerchiefs and aprons that they might touch his body, and when they were carried to the sick, the sick were healed through the power of God in the handkerchiefs, and the demons that inhabited their persons went out of them.

Herein is shown the secret of the early Church, that which explains the whole miracle-working power of the apostles and the early Church for four hundred years. The same is evident in branches of the modern Church. Herein is revealed the secret that has been lost. That secret is the conscious, tangible, living, incoming, abiding, outflowing Spirit of God through the disciple of Christ who has entered into blood-washed relationship and baptism in the Holy Ghost.

This is the secret that the modern Church from the days of the Reformation onward has failed to reveal. We have, however, retained a form of godliness, "but have denied the power thereof."

When Jesus laid His hands on people, the Holy Ghost was imparted to them in healing virtue. When the disciples and early Christians likewise laid their hands on the sick, the Holy Ghost was imparted through them to the needy one. Likewise the Holy Ghost was imparted to preachers "for the work of the ministry," including healing. Primitive Church history abounds in examples of healing in the same manner. Paul specifically enjoins Timothy to "forget not the gift (power) that is in thee, that came through the laying on of my hands." It was an impartation of the Holy Ghost to Timothy for the work of the Christian ministry.

In the whole range of Church history we have retained the form, but have lost its power in a great degree. The pope lays his hands on the head of the Cardinals, the Cardinal lays his hands on the head of the Bishops, the Bishop lays his hands on the head of the Priest, the Priest lays his hands on the head of the communicants when he receives them as members of the Church.

In the Protestant Church in all her branches, the laying on of hands in ordination for the ministry is practiced. But in the early Church it was not the laying on of hands alone, but through the laying on of hands the impartation of the definite living Spirit of the living God to the individual took place. Through its power in him he was constituted a real priest, a real elder, a real preacher with grace, healing power and faith anointed of God from on High.

God gave the blood of Jesus to the Christian Church. God gave the power of healing to the Christian Church in the Holy Ghost, and as long as they lived under the anointing of the Holy Ghost and exercised the faith of Jesus in their hearts, the healing power of God manifested and is still manifest where this condition exists. Christian Science exists because of the failure of the Christian Church to truly present Jesus Christ and His power through the Spirit and minister it to the world.

Robert G. Ingersoll assailed the Holy Scriptures, laughed at the Christian God, destroyed the faith of men, wrecked their hopes and left them stranded and abandoned amid the wreckage. Through this means he brought the just condemnation of the world upon himself. The world condemns him to this hour in that he destroyed the faith of men without supplying to their souls something to take its place, as he should have done, and as any man who is honourable and true must do.

You recommended Divine Healing in one breath and denied its potency in the next. You have attacked Christian Science, the followers of Dowie, and others and arraigned them at the bar and condemned them, without giving to men a tangible way by which the healing of God might be brought to them. Why do you not study and practice Jesus Christ's own way of healing and so make your ministry constructive? What are you going to do with the multitude of dying that the doctors can not help? Leave them to die? The doctors have got through with them. And in many instances even though they are still prescribing for them and are perfectly aware of their inability to heal the sick ones and are candid and willing to say so. Dr Bulgin, what have you got for these? What have you given to these?

If a man were walking down the street with a very poor set of crutches and a ruffian came along and kicked the crutches from under him and let him fall, every honest soul would rise in condemnation of the ruffian's act and demand reparation.

You come to the dying, kick their hope from under them, and let them fall to the ground, and leave them there to die without bringing them the true healing power in the blood and Spirit of Jesus. It is not sufficient to say "I believe in Divine healing." If they are sick they must be healed.

This must not be construed as a defence of Christian Science. It is not given with that thought, nor in that spirit. It is given rather in the hope that as an influential man in the Christian Church, you may see the weakness of your position and of the position of the Church, and by the grace of God call the Church back again to faith in Jesus Christ, the Son of God, for healing for every man from every disease, as Jesus Christ intended it should be and as the scriptures definitely, positively teach, and make proper scriptural provision for a definite healing ministry.

In the hope of supplying this need of the Church, the Protestant ministers of the city of Los Angeles have agreed in formal resolution to begin the teaching and study and practice of healing, How has this come to pass, and why? They have been whipped into it by the success of Christian Science.

A recent issue of a New York daily paper announces that the pastors of New York have likewise undertaken to teach the people the power of God to heal.

The Protestant Episcopal Church is endeavouring through the ministry of a layman of the Church of England from the old country, a Mr Hickson, to educate their people in the truth of healing through the atonement of Jesus Christ, the Son of God, by the laying on of hands and the prayer of faith. In a few days the gentleman will appear at All Saints Cathedral, Spokane, for that purpose, and the sick will be invited to be ministered to in the name of the Son of God and healed through His blood purchase. The Church of England in England and also in Africa for ten years has been endeavouring to organise societies, not to teach their people Christian Science, psychic therapeutics, or mental healing, all of which belong to the realm of the natural, but to teach and demonstrate the pure power of God from Heaven by the Holy Ghost, purchased by the blood of Jesus Christ, to heal diseases.

Frank N. Riale, a secretary of the Presbyterian Board of Education of New York, with sixty-three universities and colleges under his control and supervision, is the author of a remarkable book, "The Sinless, Sickless, Deathless Life," in which he recounts in a chapter entitled "How the Light and the Fire Fell" the marvellous story of his own conversion. He was a minister of the Gospel and a graduate of Harvard. He found his Lord at the hands of an Indian in Dakota. He tells of the light of God that came to his soul in sanctifying power through the ministry of a Salvation Army officer, Colonel Brengle. He related his marvellous healing, when a diseased and dying wreck, through the reading of a religious tract on healing and his experience in seeing many healed of all manner of diseases by the power of God. You are a Presbyterian, my Brother. You need not go out of your own Church for the truth of God concerning healing.

The question before the Church, now that the break toward healing has come, and it has come, is who is prepared to teach and demonstrate the truth of God concerning healing? Will it be a fact that in the absence of knowledge of God by the ministry of the Church for healing, will the Church in her blindness and ignorance and helplessness be overwhelmed by Christian Science, New Thought and the thousand and one cults which teach psychological healing?

There is the prophet of God who should come forward, teach and demonstrate the pure spiritual value and power of the Holy Ghost, secured for men because Jesus Christ, the Son of God, gave His blood to get it for them? Is it not time that such men as yourself arise in the dignity of Christ and throw off the shackles of formal religion and by the grace of God enter into the real life of living power through the Son of God in the Holy Ghost, and rescue the Church out of her present degradation, re-establishing forever Divine Healing on its true and scriptural basis, the atonement of Jesus Christ?

Twenty-five years ago the light concerning healing came to my soul, after four brothers and four sisters had died of diseases, and when four other members of the family were in a dying state, abandoned by the physicians as hopeless, and after my father had spent a fortune trying to obtain human help. One man of God who had the truth of God in his heart came to the rescue. All four sick ones were healed. I was an ardent Methodist. I loved my Church. My parents were members of an old Scotch Presbyterian Kirk, The Presbyterian Church had no light on the subject of healing; the Methodist Church had no light on the subject of healing. I received my light through a man who had been a minister of the Congregational Church. He knew God. He knew Christ the Lord. He knew the power of God to save, and the power of God to heal.

When I accepted this blessed truth and saw my family healed out of death, what was the attitude of the Church? Just what the attitude of all the leading Churches has been. When I declared this truth before our conferences, she undertook to ostracise me; and from that day to this many, of her ministry, who have prayed through to God and secured the blessing and power of God upon their soul to heal the sick, have been forced out of her ministry.

Dr Bulgin, is it not time to quit attacking forms of faith, whether good or bad, and turn your attention and the attention of the Church to the only thing that will deliver her out of her present wretchedness and inability to bless, and to bring her back again to Christ, to the foot of the cross, to the blood of Jesus, to the Holy Ghost from on High, to the power of God and the real faith including healing, "once delivered to the saints." Through this healing ministry the Church at Spokane reports 100,000 healings by the power of God through five years of continuous daily efforts and the kindred blessed fact that the majority of those healed were saved from sin also. The dying world is stretching out her hands for help. The Church on account of her laxness in this matter opens the doors for the existence of Christian Science and all the thousand and one worn out philosophies that follow in her train. Let the manhood of the Church arise, take the place of the prophet of God, call her back to the ministry of real salvation, a blessed salvation not alone for men after they are dead, or that will give them bliss in heaven when they die, but to a salvation that gives eternal life in Christ, health for the mind, and health for the body, and supplies likewise the power of God for the immediate need, for the need of the sick, for the need of the sinful, the wretched and dying and sin-cursed and disease smitten.

Let the Church return in the glory of God and the power of Christ to the original faith as clearly demonstrated in the New Testament, as perpetuated forever in the Church through the nine gifts of the Holy Spirit, demonstrating beyond controversy that as long as the Holy Spirit is in the Church so long are the gifts of the Holy Spirit, not only present but exercisable through faith. See 1 Corinthians, Chapter 12.

"For to one is given by the Spirit"

First - "The word of wisdom."

Second - "The word of knowledge."

Third - "Faith by the same spirit."

Fourth - "The gifts of healing."

Fifth - "The working of miracles."

Sixth - "To another prophecy."

Seventh - "To another discerning of spirits."

Eighth - "To another divers kinds of tongues."

Ninth - "To another the interpretation of tongues."

The unchanging order of government, spiritual enduement, and ministry of the gifts of the Spirit are further declared as follows; "And God hath set some in the Church, first apostles, secondarily prophets, thirdly, teachers, after that miracles, then gifts of healing, helps, governments, diversities of tongues."

When the Church exercises these gifts then she may condemn Christian Science, Dowieism, or New Thought; then she may condemn every other philosophical cult; then she may condemn Unitarianism, and everything else that you preach against. Though she will not need to. Jesus never did. There were just as many strange philosophies in His day as in ours. The constructive righteousness of Christ, the presence of the living Son of God to save and heal, the revelation to the world of His divine power, will stop the mouths of every 'ism' and manifest one glorious, triumphant, all-embracing power of God through Jesus Christ, His Son, and its everlasting superiority. Neither will you be compelled as you are to glorify doctors, medicines, surgery, and so on, when the greatest physicians on earth have deplored their inability to deliver the world from its curse of sickness. Then you can not only teach the theory of the atonement of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ but demonstrate its reality and power to save both soul and body.

All the abstract criticism in the world is powerless to stop the drift from the Churches to Christian Science so long as Christian Science heals the sick and the Church does not. Men demand to be shown. When the authority of Jesus to forgive sins was challenged, He met the challenge with the healing of the palsied man, not with negations and criticisms. He said: "Whether is it easier to say, thy sins be forgiven thee or to say, arise and walk? But that ye may know I say arise and walk." He was too big for abstract criticism. So must the Christian and the Church become.

John G. Lake

Letter from Bro. J. G. Lake

Printed in Confidence, August 1909

SOUTH AFRICA: ORANGE RIVER COLONY, &c.

DEAR BROTHER IN CHRIST,

I am writing this letter from Heilbron, Orange River Colony, South Africa. I have been so overwhelmed with work that I could not write.

But tonight I write while waiting for the meeting to begin. We are here holding native meetings. We are making a tour of the Free State, among the natives particularly. There are six in our party—five white and one native brother. God is blesslng us. We see souls saved and healed every day. The Baptism is falling in various parts also. Word just comes of the Baptism having fallen again at two of the Johannesburg meetings in different sections of the city. At Kliprivers there were 10 baptized in the Holy Ghost last week; these were all members of the Dutch Reformed Church. From Natal, Miss Radford, an Australian missionary, writes that in her brother's mission there several have been baptized in the Holy Ghost, both native and white, her brother's wife being one of those to receive her baptism. This is one of the branches of the American Zulu Mission which belongs to the American Congregational Church. In our work here the following will illustate:— The night before last a cripple native woman came to the meeting on her hands and knees. She had been in this condilion several years. We prayed for her. Jesus instantly set her free, so she arose and walked, praising God. Several gave their hearts to God at that time. We make them pray through until God fills their souls with Himself. This morning another woman came with violent pains in her head, chest, and back, apparently pneumonia. We prayed for her. Jesus instantly healed her; she burst into tears. The Spirit came upon her, and she was saved right there. Bless God. Salvation and healing is not the work of meetings only. THE SICK AND SINFUL come at all hours; in fact, those who are saved and healed through personal work during the day exceed those who are blessed in the meetings. Now I am leaving for the meeting. It is 7 p.m.

10.30 p.m. I have just returned. A glorious meeting. The old woman who was healed (the cripple) was there, walking straight, praising God. The other woman who was saved and healed at the same instant was there too. The old man at whose house the meelings are held was baptized with the Holy Ghost, and we ordained him a local preacher. We leave him in charge of this branch. We sleep on the bare floor tonight. We roll ourselves in our blankets, and praise God if he only saves souls and heals and baptizes the people. Oh, brother, how I long for God to lay the burden of this work on the people's hearts in Old England. Oh, how one's heart bleeds to see these people dying when a few pounds would save so many. We need an African ox-team of eight yoke of oxen and AN AFRlCAN WAGON so greatly. We could then sleep in our wagon, and eat there too. Horses are not safe here, there are so many horse diseases. We want to go into Basutoland on this trip. If we do we must walk 100 miles and carry our packs with us. If we only had £200 to buy an ox-wagon outfit how much better we could get along, so much better and faster. Oh, I pray God will lay this on the people's hearts at home. We could use five ox-team outfits right now if we had them. We have the men to send if the dear Lord would only help us to get to them. To show you the awful deathrate among the natives while at Potgeitertrust, Western Transvaal, I asked one native man who came with two blind children to be prayed for, "How many wives have you?" He replied "Three." "How many children have you?" "Five." I said, "Is that all your children?" noticing his wives were in middle life. "Oh, no," he said, "I have twenty children dead." I asked another man with three wives, "How many dead children have you?" He said, "Eighteen." Brother, pen cannot describe the awful conditions of disease among the natives in the Waterburg district. The Native Commissioner at Potgeitertrust told me that he believed 20,000 out of the 30,000 natives in that district were diseased of syphilis. They have gotten it from the whites, and it has run rampant among them. Oh, if you could only see the hundreds of blind natives, the eye-balls bulged out and turned hard as bone, not a particle of life left in the eye. All sorts of awful sufferings, the reult of this dire disease. I prayed for hundreds, perhaps 1,200, on one trip. We have seen Jesus heal all kinds of them; but my brother, my brother, one's heart runs out like water as one sees this awful Tide of Hell swallowing up a nation of people. Where we are now in the Orange River Colony the natives are a fine healthy lot, and are clothed. In the Waterburg district they are naked mostly, except for an apron of goat skin. Oh, God is doing such mighty things among them. At Potgeitertrust a dead child came back to life when our native evangelist prayed seven hours after it died. At a children's meeting (native children) a choir of angels appeared (angel children), and sang "Suffer little children to come unto Me." Many dying were healed, and when I went there they came rejoicing to shew me how Jesus had helped them.

Your Brother in Jesus Christ,

John G. Lake.

4, Millbourn Road, Bertrams,

Johnnesburg.

REV. J. J. LAKE "TO CURE LEPER"

(Wrong middle initial printed in newspaper, The Spokesman Review, March 23, 1921)

Going to Heal Ex-Senator Willets, Quarantined on Montana Ranch, He says.

USE 'LAYING ON OF HANDS'

Expects to Submit to Fumigation by State Health Authorities, He Declares.

"I have been called in to cure former Senator Willets of Montana who is quarantined on his ranch at Alberton in that sate and shall at once give the senator divine healing to cure him of leprosy," said the Rev. John G. Lake, overseer of the Church at Spokane last evening. The Rev. Mr. Lake is at the home of his daughter, Mrs. Ray Ferguson, S713 Grant street. He arrived yesterday from his headquarters in Portland.

"Yes, I shall treat the senator with the laying on of hands," the Rev. Mr. Lake Continued. "In South Africa during my seven years residence there I cured a great many lepers by divine healing and laying on of hands. I was authorized by the South African government to administer the treatments. The people I cured were permitted to return to their usual vocations. In South Africa the medical restrictions do not interfere with us of the divine healing school.

"It is true I shall have to meet Montana medical requirements in treating Senator Willets, that is, I shall have to be fumigated after I have finished the course of treatments before again mingling with folk not afflicted with leprosy.

"For me there is absolutely no danger in handling lepers. Where medicine has failed, as in the case of Senator Willets. I am confident of success. In the leper colony five or 10 miles off Capetown I visited the lepers' quarters, administered my cures and brought gladness to the people."

The case of Senator Willets has been widely written up. Under the direction of Montana health authorities he has been permitted to remain on his farm on the Milwaukee railroad, about 35 miles west of Missoula. He has been afflicted for many months. He served in the Philippines during the the Spanish-American war, where he is supposed to have contracted the disease.

Testimony of Rev. Charles B. Le Doux

Printed in The Spokesman Review, May 19, 1918

Minister of the Church at Sandpoint

Written at Sandpoint, Idaho, for the glory of God, Feb. 11, 1918:

In my thirty and fourth year I was sick with pneumonia. I became emaciated and weak; my flesh consumed exceedingly with fever. I was nigh unto death. I had sought physicians, but in vain. Exhausted in resources during the conflict, one evening two physicians declared to my three sobbing brothers and the nurse, "He can not live until morning."

Some time in the night the light went out. Mortifications set in all over my back. Neighbors were sent for to sit up with the corpse; but while death crept over me and seized my body, Christ came and stood by my bed. I shall never forget that presentment. Truly, it was the "King of Kings," "Lord of Lords," the "Son of God."

He pointed to the earth with His left hand; I turned to see where He pointed, and I saw an empty grave, deep and dark. Looking back into the face of my Savior His eyes were as a flame of fire piercing into mine. At this my eyes opened and I saw Him walk out. But His touch had healed me; I was every whit whole.

CHARLES B. LE DOUX.

Testimony of Harriet Petersen

Printed in The Spokesman Review, May 19, 1918

To JOHN G. LAKE

Overseer The Church at Spokane

June 10, 1916

Dear Brother Lake:

To the glory of God I hereby certify that the following testimony is a true statement:

After suffering tortures for many years and undergoing three operations my condition had become critical; and I was on the verge of another operation when I turned to the Lord for help and was miraculously healed, and am now a healthy woman. Praise His Holy name!

Since I was eleven years of age I had suffered with rheumatism, and of late years had been bedridden many times. My suffering has been intense, and those in attendance have had to fight for my life, as it would attack my heart.

About eighteen years ago I had a severe attack of bronchitis, which weakened my bronchial tubes to such an extent that the slightest cold would settle there, causing me weeks of severe coughing, until finally the physicians said that I had consumption and advised a change of climate. I made the change. They told my sister that I would not live two months. The change seemed to benefit me until the last few years, when the old trouble returned with renewed violence, finally developing into bronchial asthma and hemorrhages.

About this time my home was burned to the ground, after which I had a nervous breakdown. I could only speak in a whisper, and scarcely made myself understood then. The doctor again advised a change in climate as my only chance of relief, but this time I grew steadily worse. I would cough all night and until the hot blood would spurt from my mouth, then the bronchial tubes would collapse and I would fight for breath. These spells would sometimes last for hours, not only exhausting me, but were very trying to my relatives with whom I was staying.

I finally went to the hospital, where I remained for several weeks. Dr. Hein succeeded in checking the cough at that time, also the night sweats, and my nerves became greatly improved. As soon as I became strong enough it was thought best to remove a large fibroid tumor form the uterus. It was necessary to perform an operation known to physicians as historectomy. They said I would never menstruate nor have change of life after these organs were removed.

For seven years I had suffered tortures form gall stones, the attacks becoming more frequent and severe and of longer duration until the agonies became so great the doctor had to give me hypodermies of morphia to relieve me, and sometimes after giving me all the morphia he dared he would have to resort to chloroform to stop the dreadful spasms.

Last October, while in charge of the emergency hospital at Potlatch, I had a severe attack that lasted eight days. During most of the time I was under the influence of morphia and the doctor said I could not stand another ordeal like that one, so on November 7, I submitted to another operation for the removal of gall stones. Such an experience! I was on the operating table for four hours. They were working to keep me alive and still remove the gall stones. Then those long, weary days of suffering when I had to lie on my back without moving a particle while the draining tube was in my body through the incision to drain the gall bladder. It is no wonder that my hair turned almost perfectly white.

I did not recover as I should have done; there was some obstruction in the eystic duct which prevented the bile from entering the gall bladder. The opening or the incision through which the tube passed would not close and a fistula formed which drained constantly, keeping me in a weakened condition. Sometimes it would close for few hours and I would suffer terribly until it would open again.

Many, many times I lay on the operating table during those four long months while the doctor would probe or lacerate that fistula, trying to remove the obstruction or cause it to heal, but to no avail.

I became very jaundiced and my whole system was poisoned with the accumulation of bile. I became very weak and nervous; often becoming hysterical. The jar caused by walking became unendurable. I was losing ground every day.

I finally went to see five of the best physicians in the city of Spokane; they all agreed that there was just one chance by operating again and removing the gall bladder, which some of them said was filled with pus, while others feared that my liver had become cancerous, and there was no time for delay; so the following day was set for the operation, but my sister persuaded me to go to see Rev. Lake. At this time you were out of the city and Brother Westwood received me. I am still thanking God each day for giving me such a counselor and guide. With what patience and tenderness he pointed me to Christ, the Healer. How faithfully he ministered unto me until I became convicted of my sins and became fully consecrated to God. I could never have reached this blessed peace but for his faithful ministry, so that now I can say with David, "Bless the Lord, O! My Soul! and all that is within me, bless His Holy name." Of course, I had my times of trial, and had to pass through the "fire."

I found I had many things to make right between myself and God, but with patience he brought me through until I became fully consecrated.

Eight days before my healing took place the incision healed on the outside and I suffered the most excruciating pains and spasms until upon the seventh day it broke open and the bile actually boiled out. In just a few hours we used more than a dozen bath towels, besides my clothes, but it drained constantly for about twenty-seven hours and until Brother Westwood came and laid his hands upon me and prayed, and the draining ceased almost instantly, changing from a deep orange color to a bright green. By this time I was in a fearful condition; I was having muscular contractions and nervous chills and my heart only beat at intervals. At one time they could discern no pulse or sign of life for more than forty minutes, but with unswerving faith Brother Westwood kept on praying until the Lord rewarded him with a perfect victory, for when I regained consciousness I was healed. Praise His Holy name.

I had not been able to retain anything on my stomach for many days, but now I could eat anything and inside of two days was a new woman; could run up and down stairs and grew stronger all the time.

All my life I had suffered from chronic constipation, but this left, along with bronchial asthma, rheumatism and all my other ailments, and the next week, to my great amazement, I menstruated as naturally as when a girl, with no suffering whatever. I could scarcely credit my own senses until the next month the menses again appeared, and I knew that the Lord, through Brother Westwood's ministry, had made me a perfect woman through His wonderful creative and healing power.

The wonderful transformation that has taken place in my soul is the greatest blessing of all. God has been so good in forgiving all my sins and raising up such precious friends and ministers in my behalf that I can only consider the new life He has given me as belonging solely to Him and I want to live henceworth but for His glory.

Since early childhood I had become a member of the Episcopal church, but had always had such a hunger in my soul that was never satisfied until I was baptised by triune immersion and accepted as a member of your church. Since that time the Lord has wonderfully blessed me and baptised me in the Holy Ghost. Blessed be His precious name. How I wish I had words with which to express my appreciation for the loving kindness and patience with which you and Brother Westwood have always shown me and the marvelous blessings which I have received through your ministry.

My earnest prayer is that this humble testimony may be the means of bringing many more to you to be guided into the way of Truth and Righteousness and hearing the full Gospel of the Living Christ.

MRS. HARRIET PETERSEN

W2017 Pacific Avenue, Spokane, Wash.

Testimony of Louise Reinbold

Printed in The Spokesman Review, May 26, 1918

Davenport. Wash

May 20, 1918.

Rev. John Lake.

Spokane, Wash

I, Louise Reinbold of Davenport Washington have been an invalid three years and six months, as the result of an operation for supposed appendicitis. I became afflicted with catalepsy and would fall under its power and become unconscious. These spells became more and more frequent until I was in a pitiable condition.

Three years ago our physician declared that both my sister and myself had appendicitis and must be operated upon at once. We were hurried to the hospital. My sister's operation was performed December 10, 1915, and she was again operated upon on the second of January, her death following almost immediately.

I was operated upon with the result that I lost my speech, and for three years could only whisper in an indistinct manner. My friends could not understand what I wanted to say until they became accustomed to me.

After the operation I suffered constantly with a violent pain in my side until life became unbearable. Doctors could give me no relief and gradually I sank in despair until I was persuaded to visit Rev. Lake at his Healing Rooms in Spokane. I was ministered to through prayer and laying on of hands each day for a month as was perfectly healed May 16, 1918.

I praise god for the Christ I have found: not a dead Savior in the grave; but my Lord who has healed me. Now I can talk just as I used to do, and sing as I did before my operation. I thank God with all my heart, also Rev. Lake and all his dear ministers who so lovingly prayed for and ministered the Spirit of God to me, and to my Jesus who made me every whit whole.

LOUISE REINBOLD.

Testimony of Rev. F. J. Osborne

Printed in The Spokesman Review, August 18, 1918

Rev. F. J. Osborne, a Methodist minister, stationed at Addy, Wash., pronounced incurable by several physicians of Bright's disease, a patient at the Deaconess hospital, Spokane. Analysis showed 15% albumen. HEALED UNDER DIVINE HEALING MINISTRY, and preached and testified of his healing at the Masonic Temple, Spokane, eight days after being ministered to. The doctors said: "He will die." The nurse said: "You're a fool to think you can be healed without medicine." Osborne said: "I am going to trust God, and regard this discouragement as the voice of the devil." He received the reward of his faith. Preacher said: "God does not perform miracles of healing now." A druggist said: "Drugs are no good to him, but I believe God can heal him." Men from Addy, Wash., who were not Christians, sent words of encouragement and faith, saying: "GO TO IT. If there is a God, he ought to be healed. If Jesus ever healed, He can still heal." (continues below)

Mrs. Osborne and Three-Months-Old Son

Ten months after he was healed this beautiful son was born to bless his home; a living testimony of his father's health and healing, and today Rev. Osborne has returned to visit his old church and friends and Addy, Wash., where he and Mrs. Osborne are conducting blessed Gospel meetings, and from his healing until now many have been healed of God and delivered from sin under his ministry.

Testimony of Grover Ridson

Printed in The Spokesman Review, September 29, 1918

In Paul's MATCHLESS defense before Agrippa, the governor, he exclaimed: "Why should it be thought a thing impossible that God should raise the DEAD?"

His knowledge of God and the conscious almightiness of the Holy Spirit's power was so real in him that doubt had disappeared and limiting of God had ceased.

The modern world has not yet acquired that unlimited spirit of faith in God. But here and there throughout the world we see a soul coming to maturity in faith. They have an advanced vision. They declare a possibility. They demonstrate a superiority of faith. They manifest a greater measure of Spiritual power.

John Knox prayed for a nation and received an answer. He prayed "Give me Scotland or I die." He saw Scotland renewed in the life of God.

Martin Luther prayed for his friend, David Melanthon, when he was dying, and God healed him.

St. Patrick of Ireland, a man of apostolic power, prayed for the deliverance of Ireland from Druid worship and the banishment of snakes that then infested the island and destroyed many lives. Druidism gave place to Christianity. The snakes disappeared and have never returned and a testimony of the power of prayer, and faith in God was established in the character of the people of Ireland.

John Wesley, the found of Methodism, prayed not only for the healing and salvation of men and received the answer, but also for his lame horse, and the horse was instantly healed.

Rev. Lake and his associates prayed for Grover Ridson of 914 Rockwell avenue, Spokane, and God performed one of the most remarkable miracles of healing that is known to history. When Baby Grover was born, he was found to have a closed head; the opening in the top of the head that permits the skull to expand was closed. The brain grew, forcing the skull UPWARD THREE INCHES, like the ridge of a house roof. The forehead was forced upward in the same manner and the back of the head likewise.

The pressure on the brain caused paralysis of the right side and leg, also the foot. the CHILD WAS DUMB, and could not speak.

Medical science could give no relief or offer a cure.

Surgical science said: Wait unitll he is 10 years old then we will cut the skull into eight sections and put a plate over his head to cover the brain.

Surgeons frankly said: "We fear such an operation may destroy his life, but it is his only chance."

Then the parents in distress turned to the church and pastors, but they told them, "God does not hear prayer for healing now; that was to prove to the people in Jesus' day that He was divine."

The father said: "If he healed my stricken son it would prove to ME that He is DIVINE NOW."

Then hope came. The mother (who was severely afflicted) came to Rev Lake's Healing Rooms and was Healed. FAITH GREW. Her daughter Alice was partially blind, and could only see by the use of the most powerful glasses. She was stricken with appendicitis. When suffering tortures, his hands were laid upon her in Jesus' name, and she was healed .

Then Grover was brought to the Healing Rooms. As Rev. Lake ministered to him the second time the paralysis was destroyed. He could walk like other children. Then the head began to come down and expand normally in a short time he could speak like other six-year-old children.

God's work is perfect. He is wholly well. And the boy, his parents, his family, the neighborhood, the city of Spokane, and the world is better because Jesus Christ was honored as savior and healer still.

Our Reply to All Critics and Inquirers at Masonic Temple, Sunday, June 23, 1918

Printed in The Spokesman Review, June 30, 1918

We Promised to Present 100 Cases of Healing on Sunday Last. 267 Persons Testified by Standing, to Having Been Healed by the Power of God. 32 Persons Gave Public Oral Testimony to the Following Miraculous Cures.

Rev. T. Armstrong, a Methodist minister of N2918 Columbus avenue, healed of a saracoma growing out of the left shoulder three times as large as a human head.

Rev. Thomas B. O'Riley, 430 Rookery building, healed of fits so violent that it required seven policemen to overpower and confine him in the hospital. Instantaneous healing.

Baby Agnes Young, N169 Post street. Patient at Deaconess hospital for six months for malnutrition; weighted six pounds at birth, at 9 months weighed five pounds. Was removed from hospital; ministered to in prayer; perfectly well in six weeks.

Mrs. Chittenden, Truth church, Coeur d'Alene, Idaho, healed of cancers of the breast.

Mrs. Everetts, 1911 Boone avenue—Varicose veins; suffered for 38 years; veins enlarged the size of a goose egg; is perfectly healed.

Mrs. Constance Hoag, Puyallup, Wash.—Broke her kneecap and bone protruded through the flesh. Applied an anointed handkerchief. Was perfectly healed in an hour. Knee just as well as the other.

Mrs. Walker, Granby Court—Incurable internal cancer; severe case of neuritis; healed through prayer.

Mrs. Harriet Petersen, 2815 Illinois avenue—Was operated on and organs removed. Operated on the second time for gallstones. Bad recovery. Perfectly healed when in a state of death. Is now a healthy, normal woman.

Asa Hill, Palouse, Wash.—Rheumatic cripple for 15 years; instantly healed, now works his farm.

Mrs. Wolferman—Injured in G. N. R. R. wreck. Awarded large damages by court. (see court record.) Physicians testified her injuries were such that they destroyed the possibility of motherhood. Healed in answer to prayer. Gave birth to a son at Dr. William T. Penn's private hospital.

Miss Pearl Payne, E827 Rockwell—Came to Spokane to die. Disease, diabetes, healed, and is working every day.

Miss Jennie Walsh, Union Park, S116 Fiske street—Gallbladder filled with pus. Physicians insisted on immediate operation. Was instantly healed through prayer.

Mr. Flieshman, Leland, Idaho—Kidney was filled with pus. Physicians said kidney must be removed to save his life. Ministered to and healed when hands were laid upon him.

Mrs. Lamphear, 115 1-2 Sprague avenue—Invalid 11 years. Prolapsus of stomach, bowels of stomach and uterus. Tuberculosis and rheumatism. While taking treatments at Soap Lake her left leg grew three inches longer than the other and her foot one inch too long. A bone as large as an orange developed on inside of left knee. Was ministered to at healing rooms. Tubercular lungs healed, leg shortened at the rate of an inch a week, and the bone growth on knee disappeared. Limbs are of equal length. She is perfectly well.

Miss Adelia Koch, 1115 First avenue—Pronounced incurable by 73 physicians (regulars). Later was taken to osteopathic institute at Los Angeles. Was a patient there three and a half years. Returned to Spokane in the same dying condition. Had been operated on 26 times. Her father testifies that the doctors got his three houses in Davenport, a valuable wheat ranch of 160 acres, 147 carloads of wood, and all the money he had. Is healed and earning her own living.

Mrs. Carter, wife of Policeman Carter, W31 Pacific avenue—Was examined by seven physicians who pronounced her condition due to a large fibroid tumor which they estimated would weigh 15 pounds. Was perfectly healed in four ministrations at the healing rooms.

Mrs. O. D. Stutzman, Hansen apartments—Invalid 13 years. Lay in Sacred Heart hospital with a 20-pound weight attached to her foot for 32 days while suffering with inflammatory rheumatism. Begged to be taken home. Preferred to be a cripple rather than endure the torture any longer. Was instantly healed when Mr. Lake laid his hands upon her and prayed.

Mr. John De Witt of Granby Court—Testified on behalf of his friend, Mr. Fred Narnard, who is 32 years of age. Was injured in babyhood, caused curvature of spine. Was perfectly healed at healing rooms in six days. Height increased one inch. Passed army medical examination and is now in England with troops.

Mr. and Mrs. Harry Lotz stand holding their baby in their arms. Baby developed pus in kidneys and was pronounced incurable by physicians. Instantly healed in answer to prayer.

God in Surgery.

Mrs. Gilbertson, N4115 Helena Street—Hip came out of joint through disease and would turn like the leg of a doll, showing it was entirely out of socket. Was prayed for at the healing rooms while she was suffering in her home, four miles across the city. As prayer was offered the power of God came upon her and the joint was perfectly set.

Remarks by Rev. Lake when testimony was given; do you hear it, you folks who worship a dead Christ? You doctors, hear it? You preachers, hear it? You doubters, hear it? God set the woman's hip. Because faith in God applied the blessed power to her life.

One of the most remarkable cases in history—The Risdon family stand holding their 6-year-old son on their shoulders. This boy was born with a closed head. In consequence the skull was formed upward like the gable of a house, also the forehead was the same. Through the pressure on the brain the right side became paralyzed and the child could not speak. Under divine healing ministration the bones softened and spread out, the shape of the head became perfectly normal and the paralysis disappeared and he received the power of speech.

Remarks by Rev. Lake—I want you to see that in the spirit of God there is a science far beyond what is termed science and the man or woman who enters into spirit relation with God and exercises. His power is most scientific.

Mr. Allen, pastor of Pentecostal mission, was dying of pellagra. Was carried from the train into the baggage room as dead. Was instantly healed through the laying on of hands and prayer.

Mrs. Lena Lakey, W116Riverside avenue—Instantly healed of violent insanity. An absess in her left side, from which she had suffered for 15 years, disappeared in 24 hours. A heavy rheumatic boner deposit between the bones of the fingers and the joints of the toes disappeared in 48 hours. She is perfectly well.

Mrs. Holder—Healed of insanity while at Medical Lake institution.

(At this point, the newpaper is damaged and mostly unreadable, but many more testimonies followed, including healings from stomach cancer, drunkenness, neuritis, and swollen legs. As this is a list of testimonies of God's healing power, the editor saw fit to include what was available rather than nothing at all.)

(This is a copy of the invitation referenced at the opening of this section.)

You have just finished one of our most popular Pentecostal titles. More are available in the Jawbone Digital Bookstore. Books have been categorized to help you find more books that may be of special interest to you!

http://www.Store.JawboneDigital.com

Table of Contents

The Collected Works of John G. Lake

Introduction

An Education in Faith

Teaching on the Subject of Healing for the Body

Adventures in God

Foreword

Adventures in God

How the Lord Sent Me to South Africa

How I Came To Devote My Life to the Ministry of Healing

More Adventures in God

Dominion

John G. Lake's Consecration Statement as A Christian.

Adventures in Religion

LECTURE ONE

LECTURE TWO

LECTURE THREE

LECTURE FOUR

LECTURE FIVE

LECTURE SIX

LECTURE SEVEN

LECTURE EIGHT

LECTURE NINE

LECTURE TEN

LECTURE ELEVEN

LECTURE TWELVE

The Grace of Divine Healing, and The Secret of Miracles

The Grace of Diving Healing

The Secret of Miracles

Collected Sermons and Teachings

God's Way of Healing

Triune Salvation

The Platform of Jesus

Have Christians a Right to Pray "If It Be Thy Will" Concerning Sickness?

Divine Healing

Christian Consciousness

Ministry of the Spirit

Spiritual Dominion

The Real Christian

Christ Liveth In Me

Building on a Firm Foundation

Moses' Rebuke

The Power of Consecration to Principle

The Baptism of the Holy Ghost: Part 1

The Baptism of the Holy Ghost: Part 2

The Baptism of the Holy Ghost: Part 3

The Baptism of the Holy Ghost: Part 4

Healing Consciousness

The Offense of the Cross

The Spirit of God

Behold, I Give You Power

The Believer

The Vision

The Power of Divine Healing

Christian Communion

The Calling of the Soul

Christ Liveth In Me

Discernment

The Habitation of God

The Ministry of Healing and Miracles

The Secret of Power

Sin in the Flesh

The Strong Man's Way to God

Spiritual Hunger

A Trumpet Call

Guidance

Compassion

Reality

Spiritualism

Reign as Kings

Sanctification

Science of Healing

The Second Coming

The Resurrection

The Sabbath

The Victory of the Resurrection

Results of Believing Prayer

Articles and letters

Latest News From Africa

Salvation Shall Flow as a Tide: The Healing of Our God as a Mighty River

A Call For Helpers

Roman Catholics Healed and Saved

Hypnotic Devil Cast Out

Two Infidels Saved

Healed of a Worm In His Foot

Spread of the Gospel among the Natives

Asleep in Jesus

Extracts from a very Important Letter from Bro. J. G. Lake

Sanctification and Holy Living

Lake's Reply to Dr. Elwood Bulgin

Letter from Bro. J. G. Lake

REV. J. J. LAKE "TO CURE LEPER"

Testimony of Rev. Charles B. Le Doux

Testimony of Harriet Petersen

Testimony of Louise Reinbold

Testimony of Rev. F. J. Osborne

Testimony of Grover Ridson

Our Reply to All Critics and Inquirers at Masonic Temple, Sunday, June 23, 1918