The Father promised the Spirit as a gift to His children. I do not know if this is right or not, but I think maybe God had in mind the love people have for their children. He did say, “If ye then, being evil, know how to give good gifts unto your children, how much more shall your Father which is in heaven give good things to them that ask him?” (Matthew 7:11). In making the Spirit the promise of the Father, I wonder if He did not want to show that you do not have to be afraid of the Holy Spirit?
It is quite difficult to get a Christian over the fear of the Holy Spirit. By that, I do not mean reverence for Him. You cannot reverence the Holy Spirit too much, but you can be afraid of Him. I am sure many people are afraid of the Holy Spirit. But if you could remember, He is the Father’s promise, given to us as the promised gift. Just as a man promises his son a bicycle for Christmas, and the boy remembers and comes back and reminds the father. Nobody is ever afraid of a promise of a father who loves him.
The members of the redeemed Church should be bound in the bundle of love for the Holy Spirit. The truth is, God never thought of His church apart from the Holy Spirit. We were born of the Spirit. We are baptized into the body of Christ by the Spirit. We are anointed with the Spirit. We are led of the Spirit. We are taught of the Spirit, and the Spirit is the medium, the divine solution, in which God holds His church. The hymnist portrayed the Holy Spirit as the “essence of the godhead uncreated.” God never dreamed of His people apart from the Holy Spirit, and accordingly made promises to them.
Let us note some promises He made.
He said, for instance, “Until the spirit be poured upon us from on high, and the wilderness be a fruitful field, and the fruitful field be counted for a forest. Then judgment shall dwell in the wilderness, and righteousness remain in the fruitful field. And the work of righteousness shall be peace; and the effect of righteousness, quietness, and assurance for ever.” (Isaiah 32:15-17).
Further on in Isaiah, He says, “For I will pour water upon him that is thirsty, and floods upon the dry ground: I will pour my spirit upon thy seed, and my blessing upon thine offspring:” (Isaiah 44:3).
Then consider that famous passage in Joel, “And it shall come to pass afterward, that I will pour out my spirit upon all flesh; and your sons and your daughters shall prophesy, your old men shall dream dreams, your young men shall see visions: And also upon the servants and upon the handmaids in those days will I pour out my Spirit” (Joel 2:28-29).
Now, those are the words of the Father, and Jesus interpreted these words and called them the promise of the Father. Stay close by the interpretation whenever our Lord interprets the Old Testament. Do not depend too much or lean too hard on the interpretations of man, because we can be wrong. But our Lord, the Man Christ Jesus, never was. He called this the “promise of the Father.” That is, the Father, through the years, had made a promise and now Jesus sums it up and calls it the “promise of the Father.” He says, “And, behold, I send the promise of my Father upon you: but tarry ye in the city of Jerusalem, until ye be endued with power from on high,” (Luke 24:49).
In John 14–16, you will find our Lord talking about the Holy Spirit and His coming to the Church. In the Church, in the Gospels, in Acts and over into the Epistles there are three periods that are discernible with respect to the Holy Spirit and His work in the Church.
Period of Promise
There is the period of the Promise. That is from John the Baptist to the resurrection of Christ. The marks of this three-year period include the disciples being called, commissioned and taught. If we could get together a congregation as spiritual as the disciples were before Pentecost, we would consider we had a very spiritual church. We would make bishops out of them. We would elect them to the boards and would write their lives and name churches after them, if we could find somebody just as spiritual as they were before the Holy Ghost came at Pentecost.
Many refer to these disciples as ignorant. Do you know these disciples had three years in the best Bible school in the world? There is not a seminary on earth that can equal the seminary with Jesus as the whole faculty. He was teaching them, instructing them, and sitting with them.
A university once consisted of Mark Hopkins on one end of a log and a boy on the other. A Bible school consists of our Lord Jesus Christ and a willing student. The disciples went to the best Bible school in the world. Now, they did not get a degree they could frame and put on their study wall, but they had a degree inside them. They loved Christ our Lord, living and dead and living again.
That was the period of the promise when they had not received anything yet. They only had been promised something. All this time until His death and even after, Jesus was creating expectation in them. He was telling them that there was a new kind of life coming to them. A life that was not to be poetic, psychic, or physical, but it was to be an afflatus from above. It was to be something to come to them out of the world beyond them, over the threshold of their beings into the sanctum sanatorium, into the pentralia, into the deep of their spirit. There He would live and teach them and lead them, making them holy and giving them power. Jesus taught that all the way through.
Wherever He could find a time, and the people were about Him and the circumstances were good, He would tell them these things. And as they came nearer to the end of His earthly life, He intensified this teaching. He told them that there was a new and superior kind of life coming. It was to be an infusion, an outpouring of spiritual energy. Then He left them.
Period of Preparation
The second period was the period of preparation. Of course, in some measure they were being prepared while He walked with them. After He had gone, they then began to prepare. They stopped their activities. You know what is the matter with us in our day? We are the busiest bunch of eager beavers I have ever known or have ever been, probably, in the religious world. The idea is that if you are not running in a circle, if you’re not breathing down the back of your own neck, you are not pleasing God.
When the Lord said, “Go ye into all the world and preach the gospel to every creature,” Peter leaped to his feet and scooped up his hat on his way out. He was going to go right now. He was anxious to go out and found something or start something. But the Lord said, “Peter, tarry ye in the city of Jerusalem until ye be endued with power from on high.”
I think a big mistake we make with our young people is, as soon as they are converted to Christ, we start them out right away in some Christian activity. My brethren, we are not prepared to do the work of the Lord when we are just born-again. The priest was born a priest but had to be anointed before serving. They had to be born of the tribe of Levi of the family of Aaron. They had to be born into the priesthood or they could not be priests. However, they did not serve until they had been anointed. Blood was put on their ears, on their thumbs, on their toes. And then on the blood was put oil, fragrant, sweet oil; a type of the Holy Ghost. After being anointed, they went to serve in the Old Testament priesthood.
But just as soon as a young person is born-again, we give him a bunch of tracts and say, “Now, Bud, get going.” And the result is Christianity has taken on the spirit of amateurism. I heard a former president of Wheaton College once say Christianity is suffering a rash of amateurism. And he was right, we surely are.
Christianity has levelled down and the high quality is gone. We are as light as butterflies. We flit around in the sunshine, imagining we are eagles flapping our broad wings above the rocks of God. Instead of that, we are butterflies. We are trying to work when we are not prepared to work.
I have said the church would be better off if we called for a moratorium on activity for about six weeks, and just wait on God to see what He would do for us. Just wait on God. The early church did that very thing. They cleaned up the loose ends and were united.
We pray, “Oh, God, send Thy Holy Spirit upon us so we’ll be united.” We might just as well repeat “Three Blind Mice.” God does not hear that kind of prayer because it has no sense in it. The Holy Ghost did not come upon the disciples to unite them. The Holy Spirit came upon the disciples because they were already united, “Being of one accord and in one place.”
Scholars tell us that “being of one accord” is a musical term, meaning harmony. The early Christians already were one. They were in harmony with each other when they were together in one place.
The trouble with some is that they are here, but not all here. Their mind is wandering around all over the place, but they are here in body. The disciples were together in one place. Someone said that we have yet to see what God can do with a man if He can get him together in one place.
Period of Realization
Then came the third period, the period of realization. The Holy Ghost came upon them suddenly. It was not until just lately that I noticed a word here in the book of Acts, the word “suddenly.” “And suddenly there came a sound from heaven as of a rushing mighty wind, and it filled all the house where they were sitting,” (Acts 2:2).
I smile to myself, because of that word “suddenly.” God’s people are so afraid of “suddenly.” They always want things to slip up on them a little bit at a time, slowly. Everybody is willing to be filled with the Holy Spirit provided God does it very gingerly and slowly, and does not take away their face nor embarrass them nor frighten them. But the scripture says, “Suddenly they were filled with the Holy Ghost.” It even says, “Suddenly there was with the angel a multitude of the heavenly hosts.” I think you will find that word occurring whenever God did a wonderful thing. He did it suddenly.
We are afraid of that. We want to grow in grace, because you can grow without embarrassment. If an altar call is given, and you go to the prayer room and get down on your knees and seek Almighty God, and God comes and fills you, and you get up and get your handkerchief out and daub your eyes and say, “Thank God the Comforter has come.” It is embarrassing. It takes a little bit away from your reputation. You got a feeling, “Look at me, I used to be the chairman of the board and I taught a Sunday school class, now for me to suddenly be filled with the Spirit and maybe even break down and cry or say, ‘Praise the Lord’ ... It would be awful.”
The result is we go on year after year, and learn to live with death. We learn to live with a spiritual corpse. We learn to live with our breath frosty and our cheeks pale, our toes frostbitten, without spirituality; yet we learn to live with that. We imagine that is normal. We write books to prove it is normal. It is not normal at all. It is subnormal, abnormal, below normal. The Holy Ghost is not on us and that is our trouble.
The period of the realization came suddenly, and the Father fulfilled His promise and the expectations were fully met and more. Always remember this: God is always bigger than anything God can say, because words are inadequate to express God and what God can do. Any promise God ever made, God has to fulfill it. The reason being, God is so great, His heart so kind and His desire so intense and tremendous that language does not express it. Not the Greek, not the English, no language expresses God. It cannot. If language could contain God then language would be equal to God.
So everything God says in the Bible must be understood to be a little greater than what He says, even as God is greater than language. God promised them that they should receive power and that power should be an afflatus from heaven above, which should come upon them; should cross the threshold of their spirits and enter the depths of their soul and dwell there forever, and should work within them, lead them, purify them, instruct them, teach them. We have to believe that the fulfilments will be greater than the promise, because the fulfilment of God and the promise are mere words.
I was at a convention in New York State, where a beautiful little Italian woman was in the audience. I preached from the Old Testament text that says, “What prayer and supplication soever be made by any man, or by all thy people Israel, which shall know every man the plague of his own heart, and spread forth his hands toward this house:”(1 Kings 8:38). I preached on the “Plague of a man’s heart.” I told them there was deliverance, there was a “balm in Gilead” and there was a “fountain opened in the house of David” to deliver us from the plague of our own heart. She, along with some others, came down to the altar.
Suddenly, she leaped to her feet; no wildness, no wild and woolly stuff. It was God. That lovely dark face of hers literally shown and she walked around saying, “Oh, I didn’t know it could happen to me. I didn’t know it could happen to me.”
She made a dash for an older man, threw her arms around him and hugged him hard. They had a little word together and then she turned away all tears and smiles. I learned afterward it was her father-in-law. They had a little quibble and she was just hugging him and making up, which is perfectly normal and right.
That is the fulfilment. She read it in the text and heard it preached; but what happened to her was so much greater than anything she had dreamed of, she could not believe it was happening, but it happened all right.
I am not one of these positive preachers. A preacher is supposed to be positive, to accent the positive and underplay the negative. Everybody who knows how to screw in a light bulb knows there are two poles in an electric circuit. The positive and the negative and you cannot have a light burning on one. It takes both. Everybody knows there are two sides to a dollar. Spilt it down the middle and there is no store anywhere who would take it. Both sides have to be there, the positive and the negative. There must be the negative, you have to get rid of some things.
I never had any time for these soft-handed, cake-eating pastors who look more normal with a teacup balanced on their knee then they do on their knees in the study. I never could see it, but they walk around smooth and sweet, hoping never to make any enemies as long as they live. Brother, a man is known by the enemies he makes and by the friends he makes. I want God’s friends to be my friends, and I am not so particular about God’s enemies whether they are my friends or not. I do not want to be friends of those that are enemies of God.
Sometimes I have to tear into things I do not believe are right. I would not do it except it hinders the people of God. Anything that hinders God’s people is my business, so do not say, “That’s none of your business.” I have been anointed by God to make it my business.
I heard an error abroad all my life. It is stated like this: the individual Christian is not affected by this promise of the Father. This happened to the Church once and is not to be repeated. Just as the birth of Christ happened once, and is not to be repeated. The death of Christ happened once, and is not to be repeated. The resurrection of Christ happened once, and is not to be repeated. Therefore, Pentecost happened once and the Church is no longer concerned that that has taken place. And so they try to brush us off.
I am going to ask some questions now, and let you do your own preaching. You will have made your own decision about it. I have got about six questions I want to ask you, and you answer them.
The first question is, was the Father’s promise for the first century Christians only? This promise of the Father that was to come, was that for the first century Christians only? Or, did that carry over to the second, third and fourth centuries?
My early theological education came out of the Scofield Bible. Scofield says the period Joel had in mind when he says, “it shall come to pass in the last days that I will pour out my spirit upon all flesh,” began at Pentecost and continues until Christ returns. We are living in the period of the last days when that text of Joel is active, efficacious and applicable to you and me.
I quote Dr. Scofield because often he is quoted as not being on the side of the Spirit-filled life, but he was an honest man and said that, “we are now living in those latter days when God will pour out His Spirit upon all flesh.” That is what he believed.
Dr. R. A. Torrey said, “When Peter said ‘believe on the Lord Jesus Christ and receive the gift of the Spirit which the promise is unto you and to your children and to as many as are far off,’ it was not for that first generation only. You and your children and as many as are far off”
That is the first question. Now you settle it, brother. If I try to make you believe something you will go away and if you meet a man that is a better arguer than I am, he will make you believe the opposite. That is always the reason why I believe in the witness of the Spirit. If you can argue a man into believing he is filled, he will meet another man that will argue him out of being filled. If you can argue a young fellow into thinking he is born again, he will meet someone who will argue him out of it. So, I never argue with anybody. I point to the Lamb of God that taketh away the sin of the world, and after that God and the man are on their own. Then, if I drop dead or get hit by a Volkswagen, he will have the promise of the Father. He will not have to go back to me to find out whether it is so or not.
The second question, does the new birth of the first century Christians make my new birth unnecessary?
The Lord said that we would have to be born again and we were to be filled with the Spirit. Now they come along and tell us that meant they were to be filled with the Spirit back there. All right, grant they were filled with the Spirit. But I happened to be born a few hundred years too late for that first century. Here I am high and dry, hanging on a wire. If I did not live back then I am finished, I do not have any hope at all.
I will not listen to that kind of teaching. Does Peter being born again do it for me? Peter was filled with the Spirit, then does Peter being filled with the Spirit do for me?
Would a breakfast that Peter ate in 30 A.D. nourish me today? Peter ate his breakfast and was nourished in 30 A.D. I am living now and I have to have my breakfast. I have to eat now if I am going to be nourished now. Peter being born again will not help me today. I must be born again now as he was born again then. Peter being filled that day will not help me now; I must be filled now as he was filled then. Is there any difference between that and the outpouring of the Spirit?
Another question, what is it to the church in Toronto that the church in Jerusalem was filled with the Holy Ghost. Sometimes it seems to me that the Lord’s people need to have somebody gently rub their heads. They get such weird ideas. They need something to shake their head and get it working. This idea that the church being filled with the Spirit back there in the first century made it unnecessary for the church to be filled now.
How silly can you get? None of us was living in the first century. I wasn’t. Nobody I know around here was. We were not even in the minds of our great grandfathers yet. Some of you are so proud of your ancestry. As the brother said in the House of Lords in London, “You were eating acorns in the forests of Brittany back there at that time.” I do not know where my ancestors were, in the black forests of Germany somewhere, I guess, digging roots. But way back of that is the hour when the Holy Ghost came upon the Church. The Church went out in a blaze of fire to preach the gospel to the world in the first hundred years.
They also insist that at conversion we receive what they received back there at Pentecost. I want to ask you, have you ever seen anybody that received at his conversion what Peter received in the upper chamber? Have you ever met anybody like that? Do you know anybody like that? When you were converted, did you have the power Peter had when he preached? Didn’t the average Christian in the early Church have something that apparently we do not have in this day? I think they did.
Is modern fundamentalism a satisfactory fulfilment of expectation raised by the Father and Christ? Our heavenly Father promised the gift of the Holy Ghost to come upon His children. Jesus promised that we should have the Spirit, that He would come. He should take the things of Christ and make them known unto us. He should bring all things to our memory. We should have power when the Spirit came. He promised all this, and I look around at cold, dead, dry-up fundamentalism. Textualism hanging out to dry. Then they want me to believe that what they have is what they had back then. I just cannot do it. We Christians now are a scrub lot compared to those Christians back there.
Then, does your heart, personally, witness that what you now enjoy is what our Lord promised to His people? Does your heart now bear witness that what you now have is all that God meant when He painted that wonderful picture of the fullness of the Spirit? Or, is there something more for the Church?
Somebody wants to ask the question, now. “We don’t know this man Tozer. What is he? Is this Pentecostalism? Is he preaching tongues?” No, absolutely not. It is only what the Christian and Missionary Alliance has always believed. It is only what Dr. R. A. Torrey believed. It is what Billy Sunday believed. It is what Billy Graham believes, although Billy was gifted of God to preach to sinners. He does not enter this too much because his gift is different and he preaches straight to sinners. It is what D. L. Moody believed.
Years ago on the Southside of the city of Chicago, there was a little home. In the home lived an elderly woman full of the Holy Ghost named Mother Cook. A young fellow was converted in the city and he would have made a good salesman. He was very busy. He loved to run in circles. He went everywhere running in circles. His name was Dwight Lyman Moody. One day Mother Cook saw Dwight and said, “Son, I would like you to come over to my house sometime. I want to talk to you.”
Moody went over to her house. She sat him down on a chair and said, “Now, Dwight. It is wonderful to see you saved so beautifully. It is wonderful to see you so zealous. But do you know what you need? You need to be anointed with the Holy Ghost.”
“Well,” Moody said. “I want everything God has for me.”
“All right,” she said, “get down here.” He got down on the linoleum and they prayed awhile. She prayed, “Oh, God, fill this young fellow.” Moody died out there, opened his heart, brought his empty vessel to the Lord and took the promise by faith, but nothing happened.
A few days afterward, he was in Philadelphia. He said, “As I was walking down the street suddenly God fulfilled the promise He had made to me in that kitchen.” And down on him came a horn of oil and the Holy Ghost came on him. He said he crawled up an alley and raised his hand and prayed, “Oh God, stay your power or I’ll die.” Then he said, “I went out from there preaching the same sermons with the same texts but oh, the difference now.” The Holy Ghost had come. Now, the Holy Ghost had been there. He had caused him to be born again. “If any man have not the Spirit of Christ he is none of His.”
It is one thing to have the Spirit as my Regenerator and quite a different thing to have the horn of oil poured out on my head. The reason I can talk about it with a good deal of authority is I went through it and I know what I am preaching about. I did not learn this at any seminary. The Holy Ghost did this. God did this, so I am giving it to you.
You ponder these things. There is not any use to try to push you into anything. When you push God’s poor children around the result is we get many weird monstrosities instead of saints. I do not want to do that. I want you to set aside some time, search the scriptures and see whether these things are so.
Some people say they are not so. Some people say that all I am doing is confusing people. I wrote a series of articles for a magazine on the Holy Spirit and a fellow has been after me since. He published things about me showing that I am confusing the saints.
I wrote him a letter and said, “My dear brother, if the Lord’s people were as eager to be filled with the Spirit as they are to prove they can’t be, the Church would be quite a different church.” He published that, too. But, it is true.
I am not preaching a thing that our Baptist brethren do not believe when you press them. I am not preaching a thing that the Methodist brethren do not believe. I am not preaching a thing that the Salvation Army does not teach. I am not preaching a thing that our Puritan Fathers did not believe. Therefore, I do not apologize.
Set aside time and search the Scriptures. And if the Scriptures do not convince you that the Church and the individuals in the Church ought to be living a happy, Spirit-filled life, then do not listen to me. Because if I preach five hours straight and I do not preach according to the truth found in the Bible, I am wrong no matter how eloquent I try to be. Pray, yield, believe, obey and see what God will do for you over the next weeks.