The Apostolic Ministry of Dr. John G. Lake

A TRUMPET CALL

By: Dr. John G. Lake

Standsure Ministries

The thirteenth 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 until after the thirteenth chapter of Acts. He had been an evangelist and teacher for thirteen years when the thirteenth of Acts was written, and the ordination took place that 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 is praying. 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 the 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, and 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 second 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 I was stoned, thrice I suffered shipwreck, a night and a day have I been in the deep; in journeying often, in perils of waters, in perils of 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 watching often, in hunger and thirst, in fasting 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, “He 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 such progress with the average preacher on that line. All too often, it is, “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 heavenly call; not the God call; not the death call if necessary. That is not the kind the Apostle Paul was, or was called to be.

Do you 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 and 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 back 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 wine. Old father Vanderwall, speaking for the company said, “Brother John, 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 our wives die. We are going back if we have to starve. We are going back if we have to walk back. 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 of those men, along with sixteen of their wives and children.

In my judgment, not one of them, if they had a few things a white man needs to eat, could 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 time 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 the pledges mean. Men have pledged themselves in the same cup from time immemorial. Generals have pledged their armies unto death. It has been a custom in the human race. Jesus Christ sanctified it to the church forever, bless God!

“My blood in the New Testament… Drink 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 is the New Testament.” That 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 across 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, twenty-two 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 him, he is a white man and he has not learned to walk barefooted.”

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 early church took. The victory route, whether by life or death. Historians declare, “The blood of the martyrs was the seed of her 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 endeavoring 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. There is another spirit that has come 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 colored people but white people. When my missionaries were on the field existing on corn meal mush, I could not eat pie. My heart was joined with them. That is the reason we never had splits in our work in South Africa. It is one country where Pentecost never split. This 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 Man do not split! They do not holler the first time they get a 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 with them and eat. 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 out 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 baptized 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 of pledge God will honor. That is the kind of consecration to which I would pledge Pentecost. I would strip Pentecost of its frills and follies.

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 the glorious Pentecostal Gospel. We salute you! You are brothers with us and with your Lord.

THE PLATFORM OF JESUS

By: Dr. John G. Lake

Spokane, Washington 1915

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 giving 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 Fogwell 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 purpose.

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 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 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 I thought of the day when she was carried in, practically dead, and that old man prayed for and she was healed. The company of other students who had lovingly escorted her to the station at Berean, 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 from all over the world, and she gladly told her story, the wonderful story, almost the same character of story that our Brother Zienke told you this morning, of the wonderful love of God, the tenderness of 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 the calling together once again the people of God, that it shall be to establish a work on a new plane. Indeed, a higher one than 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 has been raised in one of the country towns. He had disappeared from His community, gone down to the Jordan, and had been baptized 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 house 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 neighbors, 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 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 or 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, bless God, alike 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 everyday. 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 and unto the utter most parts of the Earth. 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 Bert Rice, of Chicago; my dear Brother Charles W. Westwood, of Portland, Oregon; and Brother 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, soul, and spirit, through the Lord Jesus Christ.

The third plank of 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 cannot 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 from his youth. In order to have relaxation for a time, he had paralyzed 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 healing 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 anyone of us, they will feel that they have met one of us, they will feel that they have met one who is able to reveal the Lord Jesus Christ to them. I believe that 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 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 dissipated 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 endeavor to do so, he shot himself, with the result that he is in the condition you see him in.” Presently, I began to observe that up from the audience there now 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 our 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, 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-laborers 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 savior, or saviors, for the Word of God says, “And saviors 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.”

MOSES’ REBUKE

By: Dr. John G. Lake

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’s 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, and probably four million slaves. In his effort to recall what he had done, he started after them with an army. In the mean time Moses had gotten down to the Red Sea. On the right and on the left were impassable mountains, and Pharaoh and his armies were 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 hindrance in our life for God. Most of us do just exactly as 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 thy 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 become 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 to stop for a moment and think of God throwing the responsibility of making a passage through the sea on Moses. God would not take the responsibility, it was for Moses to believe God; and act. God commands, “Lift thou 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, and 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 unto Him His twelve disciples, 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 the 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 (rod) 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 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 everywhere.”

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, 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 “hair-breadth 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 disciples to do; heal the sick.

In the story of Saul, (1 Samuel 10: 6 & 7), among other things the prophet Samuel says to him:

“The Spirit of the Lord will come upon thee, and thou shalt prophesy, 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.

The lesson I know God wants us to see tonight is this, that 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 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, he 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, that 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 Cornelius when an angel came to him and said, “Cornelius, 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 endowment 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 that the angels, and hast crowned him with glory and honor. Thou madest him to have dominion over the works of thy hand, thou hast put all things under his feet.” Man God working together, co-laborers, co-workers. Blessed be God!

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 “Practicing 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 inconsequence is not present with us now.

I want to show you how wonderfully the Scriptures emphasize 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 nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost.”

He ended this statement with these words:

“And lo, I am with you always, even unto the end of the world.”

It would seem naturally 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 promised His omnipotent presence with us always, Christ’s omnipresence, 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 shown 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 Savior to deliver him from him 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; or they will not receive thy testimony concerning Me.” Paul endeavors 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 counseling and indwelling and infilling of the 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 magazine for some months called, “The Comrade”. It has the sense of comradeship that makes the Lord Jesus not only a Savior in the ordinary sense, but a Savior 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 a 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 didn’t 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.”

We sat all night and talked about the ordinary things that were going in the world about us. It was the first time he had any outside news in several years. We sat fellow shipping during the night.

Before I went away the next 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 purposed to occupy in the Christian life. That piece 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 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 Savior, 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, revolutionizing 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.

Now 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 marvelous the power that takes possession of the soul of man and accomplishes the will of God, in His absolute transformation into 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 emphasizing this truth, the apostle again puts it into a different form, He says, “Until Christ be for me 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 Savior Jesus Christ.

His was the perfect character. Consequently every other character, that can be 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 in 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 chapters of John. He climaxed it with that marvelous high priestly prayer of the l7th chapter. He endeavored 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 relationship as brother should be.

When we examine the human heart and endeavor 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 & INTERPRETATION OF TONGUES

“When the precious Christ enters into the unregenerated heart, He becomes the very center of their being. He becomes the very acme 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 Sympathizer 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 realize and He realizes 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 cannot 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 realized 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 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 your 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 than 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 spirit.

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 life 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 conditions 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 realize 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.

REIGN AS KINGS

By: Dr. John G. Lake

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 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 that every one of us that have been born again, comes 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 kingly being that 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 are mindful of Him; and the son of man, that Thou visiteth him? For Thou hast made him but a little lower than God; and crowned him with glory and honor.”

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 caliber 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 live nearly a thousand years, 930 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 have 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 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 ever 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 as 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 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 be 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.

The 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. That 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 visit to China, was walking in England and a voice said: “If you will walk with Me, we will evangelize 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.” He said, “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 and pray.”

He called them and the five or six of them went to their respective places, and 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 priesthood, is a relic of the fall and comes because man is conscious that once, somewhere, he had power, he had dominion, and he falls under it like a mighty athlete that feels his strength leaving him until by and by 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 recreation that does not come. How many lodges and secret societies have a rite, a symbol of the New Birth. I cannot mention them, but you look back. You are initiated into such and such an organization, I can name four that have a new birth rite. It is latent in the universal man.

Every religion has some kind of recreation. 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 rebels against the bondage of fear and that cries for rebirth and creation, 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, this universal cry went up until the very heart of God bled for this broken human. Then He made provision where by this man that He had created who had sinned and had decreased 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, and 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, pray, talk unbelief, and you go out and live it.

You are like that “good only” 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 you believe it, and God cannot 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 have 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 you eyes on that person. He will be sick in a week. The devil will sure 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 folk 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 it were 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 power 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 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, for 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, for the forgiveness of our trespasses,” and it is “according to the riches of His grace.” It has been 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 I went in Canada, there was one thing that struck me peculiarly. The signs would read, “John Brown, Limited.” Everywhere I see that sign. That is a Scotchman’s caution. I was holding meetings in the old St. Andrews Church in Sydney. 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 forevermore, and have the keys of hell and of death” Rev 1:18

He had gone to 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 as 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 tumors 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 the 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 say 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 ever was 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.

Everyone 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 7’6”. 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 valor 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 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 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.”