04.06. Soul Winning Only Through the Holy Spirit

The power of the Holy Spirit is the only way to have a revival and the only way to win souls. Someone says, "Brother Rice, how am I going to know whether or not I am filled with the Holy Spirit? How am I going to know whether or not I am baptized with the Holy Spirit?" Well, I will tell you how. It is not going to be very difficult to tell you. In the first place, what are you looking for? What do you want ? You say, "Oh, I want to feel as light as a feather. I want to hear angels’ wings flapping. I want to see a great light shining around. I want to feel electricity come in my head and run out my fingers and toes." Well, you are talking about something entirely different from what the Bible is talking about. I am not interested in that. If everybody here today were to hear angels’ wings flapping, were to see a great light shining, were to feel electric shocks running through their bodies, I would not give the snap of my finger for all that. If God wants to do that, all right. But that is not what He is talking about here at all. If everybody here were to fall under a spell and fall down, I would not be interested in that. That is not what the Bible is talking about. Let God do whatever He wants to do; I will make no complaint. But that is not what the Bible here is talking about. It is talking about being endued with power from on high. Do you see? What do you want? Do you want to know what it takes? Do you want to know what the sign is? What do you want?

You say, "Well, I want to be better than everybody else." That is not the point here. I say this, whatever there is in sanctification -- and there is a Bible doctrine of sanctification on which we might not agree as to all the details--but whatever it is, that is not what happened to these people here at Pentecost. Whatever it is, that is not what God is talking about. God is talking about power to win souls. Now wouldn’t you know if you had power to win souls? You say, "What signs? What signs?" Well, listen to this: I tell you, my friend, you can know as I knew last Saturday night when I preached in Portland and sixteen people came to Christ. I knew Sunday night when I came in great weariness after having missed two nights of sleep, after having slept what I could with my clothes on on a bench and on the plane, and then on the straight seats coming up on the train from Portland another night. I came with a good deal of fear and trembling and burden, but God was here and we had a great number of grown men and women saved Sunday night. I knew God’s breath was on me. I am not making any boast, for I am not worthy of anything. But I needed no other sign but that.

If we have Seattle broken down and the power of God comes; if Sunday night, or Sunday afternoon or Saturday night, or if tomorrow night, or if any other time the power of God is on me to win souls, I will know. That is what I am talking about. That is what I am praying for. That is its own sign. If you win souls, that is what you want, isn’t it? That is the sign itself. What is the sign of the fullness of the Holy Spirit? Acts 1:8 gives it: "Ye shall receive power, after that the Holy Ghost is come upon you." What is the sign? The power! Power to do what? "And ye shall be witnesses unto me both in Jerusalem, and in all Judaea, and in Samaria, and unto the uttermost part of the earth." That is the point. Do you see that? This is the only way to have revival.

I have sometimes thought, Wouldn’t Paul the apostle feel good if he had the chance I have to be on the radio so many times! (I have preached so many times on the Christian Business Men’s program in Chicago. I have preached, I suppose, on a hundred or maybe more different radio stations. For years I carried on a daily program. And in my revival campaigns I preach somewhere nearly every day of the year on the radio.) My, wouldn’t Paul the apostle envy my getting to preach to all those people! Paul, you know, had to walk. And he did not have even a church house in which to preach. He usually preached in the synagogue in a city until he got kicked out of there. He preached on the temple porch. He preached out on the street. He preached in a loft. My, I am so much ahead of Paul! He just did not have opportunities to compare with what I have!

Then there is Peter. I am satisfied that if Simon Peter could have been editor of a paper such as The Sword of the Lord and have 45,000 families read it very week, and have the gospel go out that way with the principal preachers in America as contributors, he would have felt proud. But in his time, he could not do it. Wouldn’t Peter have been glad if he could have printed one tract such as my little booklet, "What Must I Do to Be Saved?" If he could have gotten out three million copies of that booklet alone and heard from about 2,400 people who had been saved through that little twenty-four page pamphlet alone, wouldn’t Peter have been proud? I am sure ahead of him in opportunity, am I not?

I came to preach here with all of these preachers backing me. Why, I am so much ahead of Bible Christians! Yes, I am -- in the way I am talking about. We have good church buildings, the apostles did not. We have organized Sunday Schools. We have literature. We have degrees and seminary training and help. We are in good standing in the community. Why, preacher brethren, we have everything, don’t we? We have so much more than the apostles had. Yes, we have everything but the one thing that counts. We have everything these days except the power of God. We have everything except the power of the Holy Ghost. We have everything except the only thing that matters! Do you see what I am talking about? Our trouble is not whether we have physical equipment. We have that, but it never did bring revival, and it will not bring it now! I would like to have had a larger neutral auditorium for this meeting, but if we had had it, that would not have brought a revival. No! No! We lack the one essential, and that is the power of the Holy Ghost on His people. I do not care what you call it, but you had better have it. Are you filled with the Holy Ghost?

You say, "Brother Rice, I talked to some about coming to the meetings, but I just could not get them here." How many of you have tried to get somebody to the meetings, but they would not come? Let me see your hands. All right. Now what was the matter? You must not have had the power of God on you. How many of you have children, or a husband, or a brother, or a sister, or a mother, or a father, or someone you love whom you have tried to get converted, but you could not do it? Let me see your hands. Now, what is the matter? Is the gospel no good? Is there anything wrong with the gospel? Is that it? Is God dead? Is the gospel out of date? Is the Bible now passe’ and not for this age? What is the matter? Or is it simply that you do not have the power of God on you? Now what do you say? Do you see where the trouble lies? Oh, I wish God would help us to believe it and to understand it. D. L. Moody said, "How wicked and how foolish it is to do the work of God without the power of God!"

Oh, in Bible times people had the power! I wish I could preach as John the Baptist did! Do you know why John the Baptist won so many souls? Jesus said, "Among them that are born of women there hath not risen a greater than John the Baptist." He preached in the spirit and power of Elias. Do you how why? He was filled with the Holy Ghost, so that many of the people of Israel did he turn to the Lord their God, the Scripture says (Luk 1:16). That is the only way anybody could ever have a revival. Do you know how the Lord Jesus won souls? I remind you that you cannot find a word about Jesus’ winning souls until He was thirty years of age. He lived a perfect, sinless life. But from the time Jesus was baptized and prayed and the Holy Ghost came upon Him, He went with the Spirit of God on Him, with the power on Him. And oh, the marvel of His gracious words! He was endued with power from God. Jesus is, of course, the Son of God; but He emptied Himself of His glory as the Second Person of the Trinity, and then came in the power of the Holy Spirit to preach. He loved to call Himself the Son of man. He made Himself a model for us. Jesus did His miracles and His wonders in the power of the Holy Spirit. Do you know how it was at Pentecost? They waited. They all continued with one accord in prayer and supplication with the women and with Mary the mother of Jesus, and with His brethren. They waited and prayed until they were all filled with the Holy Ghost; then they won three thousand souls in one day. A ten days’ prayer meeting! We preach ten days and try to pray an hour; then we wonder why we do not have a revival. If we would pray ten days and then have one good day of preaching, we would have something happen here. Don’t you see that?

What is the trouble these days? Listen to me. Lay aside your talk about fanaticism. Lay aside your talk about signs and wonders. Let me ask you a solemn question. Do you believe you are filled with the Holy Spirit? Listen to what the Bible says: "And be not drunk with wine, wherein is excess; but be filled with the Spirit." Are you filled with the Holy Spirit? If you are not what excuse do you have? Jesus commanded that. The Bible commands that. Christians ought to be filled with the Holy Spirit. It is a joke to you about coming to the choir; it is a light matter to you about bringing somebody with you to church because you are not filled with the Holy Ghost. You have not the burden and passion He would give you. That is why your loved ones do not come. When you talk with them, nothing happens. That is why your own children do not believe in your religion. That is why you do not have boldness and fire and power in your witnessing. What we need is for the Holy Spirit of God to have His way with us. Revivals, I say, come through the power of the Holy Spirit and no other way. In 1936 I drove, with my family, through New York City. We saw many of the interesting sights. We went down to the Battery and saw the Statue of Liberty. We saw the aquarium. We saw Fifth Avenue. We saw Brooklyn Bridge. We went over the George Washington Bridge. We went through the Holland Tunnel. We saw Riverside Drive, Riverside Church, Grant’s Tomb, the Little Church Around the Comer, the lower east side -- we saw all those things. Then we drove down Wall Street. As I sat looking down that little narrow canyon of a street only two or three blocks long, I choked up, and team filled my eyes. I said to my children, "There is the financial center of the world." But that was not what I was thinking about. There was the stock market. There were J. P. Morgan’s headquarters. The financial center of the world was down that little short block and that little narrow street, but that was not what I was thinking about. I remembered that D. L. Moody came once to seek some gifts for one of his schools. As he visited from office to office, he said, "Oh, my heart was not in the begging for money. I was thirsty for something else!" Down there in that little narrow street the Spirit of God came on him in power, and he was overwhelmed. Somebody with him said, "Are you sick, Mr. Moody? Shall I call a doctor?" "No! No! Leave me alone! Leave me alone!" "Well, what shall I do?"

"Don’t do anything. Leave me alone!" "Well, how can I help?"

"Get me in a room, and get everybody’ out and leave me by myself!"

They put him in a room and he said there the waves of God’s power seemed to overwhelm him and overflow him and run over him. Finally Moody said, "Lord, You will have to stop or I will die! I’ve got all I can hold! God, it is about to kill me!" Later he said, "I would rather lose everything in the world than to lose what I got then!" When he went to preach he said he used the same outlines, he used the same Scripture; the preaching wasn’t any different. But where there had been seven or eight saved, now there were hundreds! The difference was in the power! Do you know D. L. Moody’s secret? It was not personality. It certainly was not education. He said "ain’t." He mispronounced many of his words. He had gone to about the fifth grade in school. What was the secret of his power? He was filled with the Holy Ghost. That was it! That is the Bible term "filled with the Holy Ghost."

Oh, how God’s power came on Charles G. Finney! Soon after he was converted, he would go to meetings and take time off to pray all night, and the power of God would come on him. One time he walked into a mill, and a girl there saw him. She suddenly began to tremble and could not do her work. Then she began to sob and fell down on her knees and began to cry. Other workers felt the power of God so that they could not go on with their work. The unconverted mill owner said, "Everybody stop the machinery. Better have the power of God on us than to have the mill running. Mr. Finney, preach to us." He did, and many were saved. Why? Because the power of God was on him. That is it; the miracle-working power of the Holy Spirit. That is what we need. That is what R. A. Torrey had. That is what made great soul winners. The power of God is what we need. You cannot explain Billy Sunday with education. You cannot explain Billy Sunday with brains. His sermons were good sermons. Most of them he did not write himself but hired a man to work with him getting material. Then this man helped write out the sermons and Billy Sunday memorized most of them. But even at that, they were not profound. It was not Billy Sunday’s brains. It was not education. He had a good personality, but it was not personality. The truth of the matter is, there came a time that when Billy Sunday preached he did not have the crowds, he did not have the power, he did not have people saved. I knew him in those days. What I am saying is that the secret of the great revivals always has been one thing, a supernatural enduement of the power of God on His people. God’s people had the power of the Holy Spirit. They were filled with the Holy Ghost. That is the point. I say, that is God’s secret for revival.