The Coming of the Holy Spirit (All With One Acc)

Mr. Boggs and my wife and I were eating lunch together last Sunday noon, and Mr. Boggs asked me this question, what book have you read in the last year that has stirred you the most? I thought for a moment, and then I said, The Pursuit of God by A. W. Tozer. What a delight it is to have a man who knows God, loves God, honors God, and who, by preaching ministry and prayer, points the way to the living God. Dr. Tozer, we're so happy to have you for this afternoon address.

He says that when the day of Pentecost was fully come, we were all with one accord and one faith. We hear people pray, Lord send the Holy Spirit that we might be one. But we got to cart around in front of the horse, sir, because the Holy Spirit didn't come that they might be one, he came because they were one.

And it's always true that the Spirit doesn't come to unify us, he comes when we get unified. And suddenly there came a sound from heaven as of a rushing mighty wind. Now, it didn't say it was a wind, it said it sounded like a wind, that's all.

And it filled all the house where they were sitting. There appeared unto them cloven tongues like as of fire, and sat upon each of them. They were all filled with the Holy Ghost, and began to speak in other languages.

And they were dwelling in Jerusalem, Jews, devout men out of every nation. And it was noise abroad that the multitude came together, and they were confounded, because in his own language they heard everybody speak, and they were amazed. You notice? Confounded and amazed.

Nowadays, we're a church, there's nothing much to be marveled about except how dead we are. But they were marveled there, by God, it made them marvel, wonder. And there were part of them, indeed there were 17 languages represented, and they heard these people speaking their language.

It wasn't a mutter or a peep, it was language, they could understand it. And they were all amazed, and some of them doubted. You always have the doubter there, turned around, shakes his head.

And others said, what does this mean? I've got the mocker there, who sits in the seat of the scornful, and he says, he's a drunk. But Peter, standing up with the eleven, lifted up his voice. He said, ye men of Judea, all ye that draweth Jerusalem, this is known unto you.

Harken to my words. And then he went on to give a beautiful sermon. It wasn't very long, but certainly he had a lot in it.

He told them this was a fulfillment of Joel's passage, where he would pour out the spirit upon all flesh, young men, old men, women. They see visions and dream dreams, and on his handmaidens he said, and show wonders. Then he said, ye men of Nazareth, hear this, for ye men of Israel, hear this.

Jesus of Nazareth, a man approved of God among you by miracles and wonders and signs which brought his time, he was crucified, he said. In verse 32, this Jesus that God raised up, whereof we are all witnesses, and being by the right hand of God exalted, and having received the promise of the Holy Ghost, he hath set forth this which ye now see and hear. Therefore let all the house of Israel know assuredly that God hath made this same Jesus whom ye have crucified, both Lord and Christ.

Now, the verse that I want to use here, I don't know whether I'll use it in the way you tell us to do in Bible school, but I'll speak soundly anyhow, I never worry about that. I mean, tonight I hope I'll stay awake while I preach, and I hope you will. But in verse 14 it says, but Peter stood up and lifted up.

He stood up and he lifted up his voice and he said, hear me. Now, Peter here stands for the whole Church of God, the whole Church of God. He stood up and he lifted up his voice.

And as far as, and as long as, the Church, any Church, is the Church of God. It doesn't have to be named the Church of God, but it is the Church of God. If you name your Church the Church of God, it isn't the Church of God.

It may not be. So it's not in the name, it is in the content, spiritual content. And as far as any local Church is the Church of God, Peter represents it here, for he had with the others believed all the Lord's word, and he'd received confirmation in his own breath.

Now, this sounds old-fashioned and far removed from the modern, smooth doctrine of fundamentalism, but I believe in confirmation. I believe that everybody ought to have spiritual confirmation. Now, somebody said, you mean that you're saying that everybody ought to speak in tongues? I say, no.

I don't think the Lord puts ultimate proof in anything that's physical. No proof ever of spiritual things ever lies in physical things. That would be contrary to all the ways of God with man.

There is a confirmation that doesn't touch the flesh at all. It goes deep into the soul, and it's an inward knowledge that's beyond the intellect. There's a difference between knowing your faith because you figured it out according to the scriptures, and knowing your faith because you have an inward witness.

There's a difference, and it's a difference between a revived Church and another kind. It's a difference between, oh, the difference between the Alliance now and the Alliance back there 50, 60 years ago. See, we've been taken over by the Schofield Bible.

Now, I've worn out five of them, and I have one now where I can reach it whenever I want. But we got from, maybe not from Schofield, but at least from that school of thought, the idea that everything was by faith, only we took, we put an adjective in front of the word faith, and we called it naked faith. There's no such thing in the Bible mentioned as naked faith.

The Bible talks about faith, but not naked faith. You're saved by faith, but not by faith alone. You're saved by faith, and then your faith produces something.

And if it doesn't produce something, it isn't faith. You can just figure on that. You don't eat the tree, you eat the fruit of the tree.

But you can't have the fruit without the tree, so that you can't have the fruit of salvation without faith, which is the tree, the root of salvation. But you can have a dry, naked faith without any fruit. Your faith can stand like a tree in midwinter, stark and barren without a leaf or a bud.

And most people do. We just stand there, our faith is naked. But Peter had confirmation in his own breath, and so he stood up and he lifted up his voice, and he became a witness on earth to things in heaven.

And if you will reduce it to its ultimate, I think that's about what we can say, that we are here to witness on earth to things in heaven. We are men of God, or among men of earth, and our witness is of earth, to men of earth, of heaven. Jesus said the things he saw, he told the people on earth, and he said you receive not my witness.

You don't hear me? He said, I can't explain it to you because I talk about things and you don't hear them. And we can say the same today. Peter was a witness on earth, I say, to things in heaven, and he became a witness of a power beyond the earthly and the human.

If you can explain a man, that's not God's man. The man that can be explained, he's psychological. But the spiritual man, you can't explain.

Paul said about the spiritual man, he said nobody understands him, but he has the mind of Christ, and he understands all things. He stands up there and looks everything over, and he can appraise it. He knows where he stands by an inward light, an inward illumination, but some people don't understand him.

They try to figure him out and can't. I remember once, Bruce Barton, the Madison Avenue hustler, salesman, he wrote a book on St. Paul. Dr. Schuman was editor of the Alliance Weekly, it was then, and he wrote me and asked me to review it.

And I read it, and I wrote him back, and I said, Brother Schuman, I can't review this book. This book is Adam trying to understand Christ. It's Esau writing a book about Jacob.

It's the Pharisee writing a book about the Spirit, and this man's a good writer, but he didn't know what he was talking about. You don't understand the spiritual man. He's a mystery and a wonder.

You can stand amazed at him, and astonished, and shake your head and say, what do these things mean? But you can't explain him. Just as soon as they put you on the couch and try to explain you, Brother, you better go back to selling life insurance, because you certainly aren't called a priest, or if you are, you're a bachelor. Because there was something celestial, something divine, something super-mundane, all above the earth, something of heaven about this man Peter, and about the Church in those days.

And they witnessed a power beyond the earth, and that power was interested in us men and women. I believe there's a power. Emerson wrote about what he called the Oversoul.

I read that essay a number of times, and still don't know what he meant. But he had a feeling that there was a sort of a gray Oversoul, something vast and huge and full of energy, palpitating and undulating and moving, and that it set down upon us. Well, one day that undulating energy said, when you pray, say, Our Father which art in heaven.

And he gave himself a name and said, I'm God the Father. I am undulating and moving and full of power, but I am not a thing. I am God the Father.

Call me Father. Well, that divine power to which Peter witnessed is Our Father which art in heaven. And thus Peter witnessed the things he had experienced in order that he might inform and influence the people to whom he spoke.

Now, if the Church, and you will notice that I am a Church man, that is, I believe in the Church of Christ. I love thy kingdom, God, Lord, the house above, the Church, our dear Redeemer, saved with his own precious blood. I don't think that we're doing God's service when we turn the Church into a music hall or a literary debating club or a place where we prove the word of God's truth by scientific films.

I don't think that's the Church at all. The Church is a place where people that love the Lord Jesus and have touched heaven and been moved by the things of heaven meet together and look at each other and say, Isn't it wonderful? And listen to the word expounded and give of their money and spend time in prayer and sing hymns together. They may be a little off-key, but they're singing hymns together about God and Christ and heaven to come and the regions beyond.

That's the Church, you know, that's it. Now, this isn't a Church here now. This is a convention, a gathering of people from many Churches, and I'm sure that our brother will agree if I say this, that if this is what you live for and this is all you live for, then you're just worth one week out of the year.

But if this is simply a place you come to get your fire kind of kindled, that's perfectly all right. I'm for it, I wouldn't be here. But if you're no good when you get back home, you're no good here and you're no good anyplace else.

God won't know what to do with you because theologians say you're justified and therefore you can't belong, you'll have to go to heaven, there's no place else for you. But if you're no good, you're just no good. And you're the Church, you see, it's the group, the people.

I believe in the assembly. Now, there are two groups that talk about the assembly, the Pentecostal people and the Plymouth Brethren. I don't belong to either group, and I know why.

I wrote an editorial called The Passion of the Assembly Concept from Christianity, and somebody wrote me a letter and said, any man that can write that editorial ought to be with us. You ought to be with us, and I wrote back and said, if they would agree with everything else in the Bible, I'd be with them. But I said, as it stands, I'm just as well off as I am.

We take a hold of one thing, you know, and ignore the rest, and I don't like that. Well, the Church is a living organism, and every Church should have in little what the whole Church has in large. Each Church should be a piece of the whole Church of Christ.

Now, if that Church, if any local Church, is to be an organic member of the redeemed body of which Christ is the head, then its teachers and its members have an obligation, a profound obligation, a crushing obligation, lying upon them. It is that they earnestly and sacrificially and with constant prayer strive to make its beliefs and practices new testaments. You see, you and I are always being wooed away from the scriptures, always.

Down the centuries, you can begin with when the Holy Spirit fell at Pentecost and traced the history of the Christian Church down the years, and you'll find that always, in every age, there was some movement or influence or power coming to try to move the Church away from the New Testament pattern. Move it away. There was a Judaizing brethren, and there were the Manicheans, and there were later on the Paganizers, and then there came the Roman Church.

So, we have powers. We know where they get their energy. They get it from below.

But it's always to move the people of God away from the New Testament pattern. It is the business of a preacher not only to preach twice a Sunday, hold a prayer meeting, dedicate to babies, and marry the living and bury the dead, but his job is to see to it that his Church is a New Testament Church, that its doctrines are New Testament, that its practices are New Testament, that its objectives are New Testament, that its methods are New Testament, that it goes back constantly to the grassroots and learns from the scriptures themselves what to believe, what to do. A lot of people don't know why they're here on earth.

They were taught that they were born again, and their citizenship is in heaven, but they don't know why they're on earth. You see, they don't know why they're here. There's a reason for your being here, my friend.

When you were born again, the seed of God came into you, and you belong in heaven. There's an old part of you, Adam's old part, that part that gets gray and wrinkled and gets a little liver trouble and flat feet, that part of you belongs down here. But the inner part of you belongs in heaven.

That's the eternal part of you. Thank God the other part won't last too long, and it'll get fixed up. One of the worst things God could ever say to me would be, Joseph, I have determined to let you live for eternity with the body you have now.

I'd say, please, God, no. No, Lord, give me health. I need health.

I don't want to go around with my feet hurting for the rest of eternity. No, I don't. I don't go around feeling tired.

This old clay frame that I have here, that's got a mortgage on it. Satan and nature, they're going to foreclose one of these days. When you get older, you don't care.

When you're young and the world looks big and you're going to conquer, you think that day's going to be a terrible day. But when you get older, you don't mind. When nature calls you up and says, now I'm going to foreclose, you say, foreclose, brother.

Help yourself. It's all right with me. There's a lot of you dear old saints sitting around here.

Actually, secretly, you wish that nature would foreclose. Because the better part of you is gone over there anyhow. You've got more up there than you have down here.

As long as you've got more down here than you have up there, you look to death and look at death with terrible fear. But as the proportions change, and you're slowly, first you've got 25% up there and 75% down here, and you want to stay where the biggest amount is. And then later on, when you get older, you get 75% up there and 25% down here.

And who wouldn't want to go where he had four times or three times as much as where he is? So, some of you dear old saints, this dear old sister down here, one of these times I'll come to Pittsburgh and they won't be here. Well, she's got 95% up there, and that's all right. One of these times she'll go up there and take it.

The Lord says, come on up, here's your heritage. Well, amen. And nobody worry about it, it'll be all right.

Now, we've got to make our church a New Testament church. Oh, I don't know. I'm fighting for that all the time, you know.

I claim what we need's not revival, we need reformation. Revival means you get more of what you have. Now, that'd be the worst thing that happened to some of you people, would be to get more of what you had, you know.

A little bit. You need sincerely to get rid of a lot that you have. Now, more in one way, I mean that too.

And you need to get rid of a lot that you have and get the right thing. Wouldn't it be terrible if Baxford and Church are aping their way of Elvis Presley and the world? And they say, Lord, give us more. I don't want any more of that.

I have too much now. I want the Lord to come and I want him to reform the church and bring us back to New Testament pattern, back to the simplicity, back to the power, back to the holiness, back to the purity. Now, we've got to see to it that we go constantly back to the grassroots.

I think it's good we ought to read the Book of Acts about once a year. Now I know what people tell us. They tell us the Book of Acts is a transitional book.

It doesn't belong to us. It wasn't for anybody. The people the Book of Acts wrote for, they never were and they ain't and they're never going to be.

They're just kind of floating, you know. The book's a relative book. They say it was a transitional period.

Get away, get away, go back to your Greek roots. I believe the Book of Acts is for us now, and I believe that in the Book of Acts, God was laying the pattern for the church for all time. Nobody's going to scare me out of it.

When I get blessed on a chapter, I don't want some Bible teacher to tell me that isn't for me. Of course it's for me. Anything's for me that makes me fat and healthy and good for me.

I remember, I remember, I remember, what was his name? Neal Trotter, that great thing, that great soul, that soul in there. He got converted, you know. I think he was in jail or got out or something.

Anyway, he was in a mess and he got converted. And he just loved the Lord so, you know, he didn't pay much attention to dispensation. He was out in California one time, and he was giving a testimony, and he came to the park where he got saved, and he said, so I got on my knees and I said, God have mercy on me a sinner.

And he said, the Lord saved my soul. Well, afterwards somebody came up to him and said, Brother Trotter, nice to gladly hear your talk, I'm glad you're converted. But he said, you know, you're dispensationally all mixed up.

Said that passage, God have mercy on me a sinner. He said, that wasn't for you. That's not intended for you at all.

You never should have prayed that passage. Well, he said, I suppose not. He said, I guess you're right theologically.

But he said, I didn't know it at the time. And he said, furthermore, the fix I was in, God would have saved me if I'd said Mary had a little lamb. He said, I wouldn't have done anything until Mary had died with me.

You know, God doesn't listen to your theological outline. He listens to your heart. Can you imagine, can you imagine dispensationless when Peter said, Lord, help me? And he's up to his waist in water.

He was thinking, Lord, help me. That's no way to pray. You're supposed to pray the way the theologians tell you.

Well, Peter could have been drowned in bubbles coming up long before he got around to it. But Peter's heart prayed, Lord, save me. And Peter saved him, brought him up, put him back on the surface and said, walk along.

And Peter walked to the boat and got in. So I'd rather have something from God and have the theologians out to get me, than to have the theologians smiling benignly down on me and not have anything but empty soul disappointment, wouldn't you? I'm a theologian, too. I believe in theology, the doctrine of God.

But I believe that we ought not to get so narrow that we can't find ourselves in the dark. We ought to see to it that our Church has experience, that it has spiritual experience. And we ought to see that the Church is living a life of heaven right here upon the earth.

We make too many excuses for ourselves, I tell you. We excuse ourselves all the time and say, oh yes, but now remember, we're living here in the flesh. But Peter said that even though we were living here in the flesh, now we were supposed to live a holy life.

And that Jesus Christ can't make us live right now. I'm not speaking about sinless perfection. I've never met anybody that I thought was sinlessly perfect.

And the man that thought he was, wasn't. And he had one more sin than you and I have, because he had a deception to thinking that he was perfect. I don't believe in perfection and in that, but I believe that if we walk in the Spirit, we'll not fulfill the lusts of the flesh.

And I believe that it's entirely possible to live with love and joy and peace and righteousness and all those good virtues right in us now. Now, now, when the devil sold the idea to the Church that because we were carnal and born in sin, conceived in iniquity, therefore we had to live like the devil until we died and went to heaven, when he sold that big rotten deal of goods to the Church, he did us tremendous harm. And I'm not going to let him tell me that.

I know better. I have met men and women of God that would die rather than sin, that would die rather than do wrong. Well, we've got to live there at the Church.

Book of Acts Church, Book of Romans Church, Book of Colossians Church. And we would teach our people that they are to put loyalty to Christ first. Loyalty to Jesus Christ our Lord.

Now, such a Church as I've described here is not likely to be a very popular Church. I warn you against popularity. I warn you against the time when the public will begin to tell you that you're all right, when they begin to pat you on the back and say, you're just one of us, only you say it differently.

Look out for them, brother, because just as soon as you're popular, you've lost the the disgrace of the cross from your life. The cross was never popular and never will be popular. The electric chair isn't popular, the hangman's noose isn't popular, neither is the cross.

The cross is a place where people go to die, and that's never popular. They want to put on the cross as a button on the outside and call us all up. Then they say, now he's a fine Christian, but he's not such a bad fellow after all.

That's one of the worst things you can say about a man, that he's a good fellow. Nobody could say it about Jesus Christ our Lord. Nobody could say it about Paul.

Who would slap Dr. Simpson on the back and say, he's a good fellow, he's one of us? Never, never. Perhaps those deep, deep fiery eyes that looked far into the distance and saw things that were not as though they were, wasn't too easy to be around. I remember when Dr. Jeffrey, I ate with him one time years ago, and he'd just come in from New Guinea, from, not New Guinea, it wasn't open yet, but from Indonesia, and I tried to hold conversation with him.

You couldn't hold conversation with that man. He'd turn around, look down at me, and I had to mindedly answer my question, and then go on dreaming about getting the gospel to more people. He was an absent-minded fellow, preoccupied, taken up with things of heaven, and the people that were lost, ought to live like that.

Then they'll say that you're other-worldly. That's all right, that's the kind of person to be, an other-worldly person. I'd like to drop a word right in here, and I'd like to clear my garments of this, and that is the difference between a program and a present.

We're programming ourselves to death these days. What's your program, they ask? I haven't got any program. I know you're supposed to preach, and pray, and sing, and give us your money to aid yourself, and help the poor, and do good to all men, and speak to them that are full of faith, and preach the gospel to every creature, and outside of that, I've got no program.

What's your program? I heard the one church spent $10,000 for spatial music, you know, just to hear people put on little caterwauling trios, and so on. Well, if you want a program, the theater's got your beat. Now, why don't I get honest about it? If what you want is entertainment, any theater in the city of Pittsburgh will give you a far more professional job than ever you can put on.

When the church tries its programming, I got a word there that I'm too much of a gentleman to use, but it's in my mind, I'll tell you that, about that kind of a church. It's just no good, brothers and sisters, no good. Programming, no, no.

It says in the 13th of Acts that once they were met together, gathered under Jesus Christ, worshiping the Lord and praying. And while they were worshiping the Lord, the Holy Ghost said, separate me, Barnabas, and Saul for the work whereunto I have called them. I don't think God ever called a missionary out of a program yet.

If he did, he called him in spite of it, not because of it. You've got to have a program. You know, there was a day when all you had to have was a Bible and a hymn book, and you didn't have to have the hymn book.

You could memorize a lot of good hymns. But if you had a Bible and a hymn book, you had it made, you know. All you had to have over that was limber knees.

Bend your knees, get out there and preach. The old Methodists used to be so poor, all they had to preach in would be they took a blanket and cut a hole in the middle, stuck it down over the head through the hole and what was on underneath was nobody else's business. And they preached in power.

The Holy Ghost was on them. And nowadays you've got to be an engineer to know how to run the gadget, and you've got to be a prop man to know what to do with the props. I held a meeting in a tent one time north of Chicago, and all I had was my new Testament, you know.

And the fellow was to follow me. I closed on Saturday, and he was to open on Sunday. I'm not naming him, but I went to the platform Saturday night meeting, and here was enough stuff to fill a good-sized truck.

And I said, What's this? He said, That's the material for the fellow that's coming for next week's meeting. He had all this. I had my Bible, and he had enough of stuff here to fill a van, you know.

You had to have all that for Jesus' sake. And so he had the program and the entertainment and the fun and all the rest. But I don't believe it's necessary.

Peter didn't have it. What would have Peter done if he'd had to have a truck? There weren't any trucks. How many donkeys would he have to load with trash in order to get them around from place to place? But Peter stood up and lifted up, and he stood up and lifted his voice, and preached.

And that was that. God always blesses preaching, always blesses preaching. If it's good preaching, and he blesses singing, if it's good singing like these two men can do.

But that's about it. When you preach and sing, there isn't much to do except look around for your heart, because the meeting's over, you know. You preach and sing, and then the Holy Ghost takes the preaching and the singing and drives it home to the hearts of the people, and changes them, changes them.

He does change. He takes the Word and changes people. So I get older, more and more I see that the Word of God, not the order called, although I believe in order called, too, but not the order called, but the Holy Ghost is doing the work.

And I've had them come to me in ones and twos and say, I was converted last week. You were converted last week? Yes, I want to be baptized. He hadn't been to any altar.

He'd heard the Word and believed and changed his life. Well, I called up in the middle of the night and said, eleven thirty. Well, it's the middle of the night for me, but for some people it's still early.

But it was eleven thirty, and he said, Brother Toten is all broken. He said, I just couldn't go to bed until I told you that I'm converted. I got born again tonight.

He got born again. Well, I'll tell you, he was having himself a time, and the Lord was blessing him he'd been born again. Now, he hadn't come to the altar.

He had been born again in his room. And Dave Enloe does the news for The Alliance Witnesses, a member of the church in Chicago, also the editor of Contact magazine, a Christian businessman's magazine, a good friend of mine, a Floridian, by the way. Maybe you know him.

Well, Dave took on a fellow, Wilbur. And Wilbur was, his difficulty was that his head was in his way. He had intellectual difficulties.

When I find a fellow, a young fellow with intellectual difficulties, I don't take him too seriously. The average fellow with intellectual difficulties has an intellect not to give him any difficulties. He knew the truth, you know.

But he said, Dave, you have difficulties. This man had difficulties quite a long while, and he was in his old bachelors and thirties, and he's having difficulties. And our good friend Dave, if you know Dave Enloe, he's just about this you know.

He stands up there about this high and about this wide. Yeah, but he's a serious-minded Christian young man. He prays for people, wins them to the Lord.

So, one night after he's patient to it, I think I just thrown Wilbur out. I didn't know, you know. My patience gets used up early.

But he seemed to have plenty of it. And he kept the fellow turning back, sliding, turning, and back. They never got anywhere.

His head was in his way. But one night, after being at church now, not being at the conference or being in the meeting, but I mean the prayer meeting, the prayer room. But he got home.

He called Dave up, and he was all broken, tears, and excited. And he said, Dave, it's happened. What's happened, Wilbur? I'm converted.

He said, born again, I'm converted. The Holy Ghost had taken the word of God and converted that man. Well, he not only got converted, he got married.

And now he's a happy, happy fellow. And when I left Chicago, Amy Blythe came up to me, and she was a young year. And she said, shall I tell him, Wilbur? Wilbur, you tell him.

And you can guess, you know. And he started out a miserable fellow in his middle thirties, without a job, without a wife, without a child. Now he's converted, got a wife, and going to have kids.

That's wonderful, you know. And God does those things for people, you know. He does.

And the power of God does this, you know. And if you're attached to the program, I don't know what anything will ever happen. Well, now I say that you won't be popular.

You'll always be looked upon as being just a little bit queer. But these fruits will bound to follow if you're a true church of God. The people will be a joyful people.

The Lord's people ought to be the most joyful people in the world. They ought to be. And you shouldn't have to work it up, you shouldn't have to work it up.

They ought to be the most joyful people in the world. Because, you see, there are two sides to the grave. There are those who are moving toward the grave, and those who've been down in and come out and are moving away from it.

And the sinners are all moving toward it, and the Christians are all moving away from it. In Christ, we're moving away from the grave. I think I preached a sermon about twelve years ago here, if I recall, and it said that they all left the grave and ran to tell the story.

And my sermon was that that's the direction of the church, away from the sepulcher. It had been toward the sepulcher before, but now Christ had risen and it was away from the sepulcher. All these God's children face the rising sun, and the sun never goes down on their upturned faces, because they've been to the grave and come out of it.

Oh, the old mother nature, as I said, if the first foreclosed, we'll go to the grave and mourn a little and say, he was a dear saint, wasn't he? And it'll be all right. But that's the old clay, that Christian, that's the old tabernacle he lives in. You ever see a bird's nest in the summertime? A bird's nest.

A robin will come in all round-eyed and brown and red-breasted, and he'll tear up a piece of the cloth and he'll steal strings and rubber bands and he'll make himself a nest, along with his little wife. And then she'll lay four pretty blue eggs with the sky purple in color, and she'll sit there four long weeks. I've often wondered why mother nature made it so hard on the poor thing.

Four long weeks, twenty-eight days she had to sit there and just wait. At the end of the twenty-eight days, four little robins stick their little heads out. A little restless looking thing, a miserable little blob of life.

And give them three or four hours, and they get dry, and then give them a day and they start getting fat. And the mother then starts, she gets up off her nest and she starts gathering bugs, worms, and everything that can be eaten, and brings it. And they just never get enough, just never get enough.

And after a while, it gets so that they crowd each other out of the nest and sit around the edge and push and shove, and finally they learn to fly. Well, now, there isn't anything more pathetic than that robin's nest along about November 15th. The winds and the storms and the rains have broken it up partly, and the old dead leaves have gotten down in it and gotten wet and rotted, and it's a miserable looking old thing.

But the four robins are singing and soaring somewhere where the grass is green and the sky is blue and bright. They're not there anymore, so there's nothing more pathetic than to see the body of an old saint being lugged out to the cemetery. Is there? Poor old fella.

There he is, you know, his chin and his nose have gotten chummy, and they're getting close together, and his cheeks have fallen in, and what little hair he had now doesn't show up very well. That's the old bird's nest, you know. It's kind of miserable and old.

But where's he? Oh, he's soaring and seeing where the skies are blue, and the sun shines all the day on the mountaintop. He's not there anymore. He's not there.

The grave didn't get a hold of him. Now, none of God's saints can ever go to the grave. Dear brother Jeffrey, dear brother Thomas, and any another that you and I know and love and that have gone, they're not there.

That old robin, that's the old bird's nest. It ain't so with the Lord. Amen.

So the people, God's people be a happy people. But see, if you have to wait on a guitar and a banjo and a half-saved cowboy to make you happy, so as he gets out of town at your expense, why, uh, you won't be happy anymore. You'll get up Sunday morning and say, oh, goody, goody, goody, Bob's coming.

Well, who's Bob? He's a half-converted cowboy with a bigger hat, and he's a schooner. It's a three-dollar bill, not only in his clothing, but in his accent and in his spiritual life. But he's learned how to, uh, how to take the people, you know, and so he's twingy, twangy, twingy, twangy.

And when it's all over, you've been blessed, you know, but you haven't been blessed at all. You've been cheated. You've been cheated.

The songs our brother's been leading us in since I've been here, they have content. You get a song like that into your soul, and you can live on it and die on it. And when the trumpet sounds, you can rise, singing it to the right hand of God.

But the tranquil, tranquil with the guitar accompaniment, you can't live on them. You can die on them, though, and lots of churches have. Well, that church I'm describing, now that's only going to be half of my sermon.

I'm going to have to quit, break it off, and have me preach the rest some other time to get around to it. I say the proof that I'm describing will be joy, and another thing about a church that's the true church of God, you can easily distinguish them from the people of the world. One of the griefs I have is, you can put 25 Christian young women up one side, and 25 sinner young women up on the other, and you won't know which is which, because they all just look alike.

I think the Lord's children ought to show it by the way they look. Do we come to that, to the north side of Pittsburgh, that you can only get one-A college-educated man on that, brother? I think we ought to, we ought to. And I think the children of God now, they're in their living room, and they're all grugging and bleary-eyed, 15 years old, but they're faithful, and they love it, and all up until midnight.

And if anybody says anything like this, they say, he's old-fashioned, but he's clean. My brother, not being old-fashioned, it's just having a little spiritual insight. Some of the dear saints of God, now, if you've got that old one-eyed monster sitting in your house, in God's name, keep it off Saturday, and keep it off midnight.

Get your sleep, get your prayer, get your Bible reading in. Meditate and think on God. The world is organized to keep you from meditating, to keep you from thinking, to keep you from being alone with God.

When thou now enters into thy chamber, turn on that, no, no, no. When thou enters into thy chamber, pray unto thy Father which is in secret. A lot of you enter into your chamber and turn it on, and you keep right there till you fall over and are tired, and then go to bed, and the next day you're no good.

Well, God's people ought to be different from the other people. Amen. Amen.

That's what I'm talking about. And then I'll tell you another thing about a church like I'm describing, such as I'm describing. There's going to be influential in all other churches.

Incidentally, Pittsburgh, North Park has been a very influential church. The church in Chicago was influential, influential in the city. I had nothing to do with this one, I had a little to do with that.

I believe that every church ought to be influential. I told them last Sunday in Avenue Road in Toronto that I feel that Avenue Road Church ought to take over the spiritual leadership, the spiritual ascendancy, and because it's full of that and the joy of the Lord, ought to become the most influential church in the city. And instead of going from other churches, we contribute to those churches, because we contribute something that'll last forever.

And the Lord's people will be enabled then to live good lives and to die well. He said about the Methodists that they died well. Oh brother, they died well.

You know you can't die well unless you live right? Can't do it. The old Methodist bishop, he said, I've preached the gospel now for I forget how many fifty so years, and he said seventy-five percent of the people that I have seen die weren't ready to die. He said they had to pack and cram for their final exams the last few minutes of their lives.

Somebody came to him, Bishop, weren't you just a little overshooting it? You mean seventy-five percent? Yes. He said, I mean that in my Methodist parish over my long ministry, fully seventy-five percent of the people weren't ready to die. I mentioned the Methodists only because that Methodist bishop said it.

Could have been a Presbyterian, a Christian Missionary Alliance, a Nazarene, it's a question of what denomination, it's just a question of the condition. Everybody ought to be able to go soaring off to heaven without anybody having to gas him up. Get him started.

Everybody. Children of God ought to be ready to take off on a minute's notice. Yes sir.

But if you've been, if you've been truly not doing your homework, when you're suddenly panicked with the fact that the examination's coming up, you're going to have to cram. Most people have to cram because they haven't lived right. They want to die right, but they haven't lived right.

But the church that I'm talking about, its membership, ought to be living right. Amen? And I'll close by saying that a church that doesn't live right isn't the church of Christ. No matter what they've got, how many pipe organs, how much they've got, if they're not living right, they're not a New Testament church.

For the people of God are good people. They're good living people. They may be a little bit dumb, you know.

Lots of the Lord's dear sheep are a little bit dumb. The Lord has his treasures in earthen vessels, and you'll find the crust one occasion, you know. It's all right.

But I'm not saying that we're, we're great, we're great, and the world views it. But I'm saying that we're good. We ought to be good.

We ought to live good. The Holy Spirit in a man will make him a good man. Good man.

He may not know Shakespeare, and not know Bach, you know, from something else, but he's a good man. Good man and full of the Holy Ghost. If it could be said about me, when I finally stumble over somewhere, and they gather up the 140 pounds or something, and carry it out, if it could be said about me, he was a good man and full of the Holy Ghost.

I don't want anything else. I don't want anybody to say, he wrote this, and he preached there, and he had this office. That won't matter a thing where I'm going.

Nobody will ask me what I wrote where I'm going. Nobody will ask me whether I've ever lectured or not, and if so, by what majority. Nobody will ask me that where I'm going.

But if it could be said, here is a man, a good man, full of the Holy Ghost, I'll be delighted then. Amen? Now, there's another half to this sermon. Maybe we'll get that, maybe tomorrow, I don't know.

All right. Dr. Ira E. David, who for many years wrote the Sunday School Lesson and the Alliance Weekly. Dr. David was a man wholly committed to God.

All that he had was invested in the things of God. D.J. Sands said, I tell you, when the Lord comes, he said, that man, David, is going to go up like a piece of paper. He didn't have anything that was holding him to earth.

I always think of that. A man totally committed to God. Let's sing, All for Jesus, 123.

Mr. Barnes and my wife and I were eating lunch together last Sunday noon, and Mr. Barnes asked me this question, what book have you read in the last year that has stirred you the most? I thought for a moment, and then I said, The Pursuit of God by A. W. Tozer. What a delight it is to have a man who knows God, loves God, honors God, and who by preaching ministry and pen points the way to the living God. Dr. Tozer, we're so happy to have you for this afternoon address.

He says that when the day of Pentecost was fully come, they were all with one accord and one faith. When you hear people pray, Lord send the Holy Spirit that we might be one. But we got to cart around in front of the horse there, because the Holy Spirit didn't come that they might be one, he came because they were one.

That is always true, that the Spirit doesn't come to unify us, he comes when we get unified. Suddenly there came a sound from heaven as of a rushing mighty wind. Now, it didn't say it was a wind, it said it sounded like a wind, that's all.

And it filled all the house where they were sitting. They appeared under them, clothed in tongues like as a fire, and sat upon each other. They were all filled with the Holy Ghost and began to speak other languages.

And they were dwelling in Jerusalem, Jews, devout men out of every nation. And it was noise abroad that the multitude came together, and they were confounded, because in his own language they heard everybody speak, and they were amazed. You notice? Confounded, amazed.

Nowadays, in the Church, there's nothing much to be marveled about except how dead we are. But they were marveled there by God, it made them marvel, wonder. And there were partians in need, there were seventeen languages represented, and they heard these people speaking their languages.

It wasn't a mutter or a feat, it was language, they could understand it. And they were all amazed, and some of them doubted, you always have the doubter there, he turned around and shaked his head. And others said, what does this mean? I've got the martyr there, who sits in the seat of the scornful, and he said, these men are drunk.

But Peter, standing up with the eleven, lifted up his voice. He said, these men of Judea, all these that draw the Jerusalem, give it known unto you, hearken to my words. And then he went on and gave them a beautiful sermon.

It wasn't very long, but certainly had a lot in it. He told them this was a fulfillment of Joel's passage, where he would pour out his spirit upon all flesh, young men, old men, women. They'd see visions and dream dreams, and on his handmaidens he said, and show wonders.

Then he said, ye men of nature hear this, or ye men of nature hear this, Jesus of Nazareth, a man approved through God among you, by miracles and wonders and signs brought this by him, and he was crucified, he said. In verse 32, this Jesus that God raised up, whereof we are all witnesses, and being by the right hand of God exalted, and having received the promise of the Holy Ghost, ye have set forth this which ye now see and hear. Therefore let all the house of Israel know surely that God hath made this same Jesus whom ye have crucified, both Lord and Christ.

Now, the verse that I want to use here, I don't know whether I'll use it in the way you tell us to do in Bible school, but I'll speak soundly anyhow, and you'll worry about that. I mean, tonight I hope I'll stay awake while I preach, and I hope you will. But in verse 14, it says, But Peter stood up and lifted up.

He stood up and he lifted up his voice and he said, Hear me. Now, Peter here stands for the whole Church of God, the whole Church of God. He stood up and he lifted up his voice.

And as far as and as long as the Church, any Church, is the Church of God, it doesn't have to be named the Church of God, but it is the Church of God. If you name your Church the Church of God, it isn't the Church of God. It may not be.

So it's not in the name, it is in the content, the spiritual content. And as far as any local Church is the Church of God, Peter represents it here. For he had, with the others, believed all the Lord's word, and he'd received confirmation in his own breath.

Now, this sounds old-fashioned and far removed from the modern, smooth doctrine of fundamentalism, but I believe in confirmation. I believe that everybody ought to have spiritual confirmation. Now, somebody said, you mean that you're saying that everybody ought to speak in tongues? I say, no.

I don't think the Lord puts ultimate proof in anything that's physical. No proof ever of spiritual things ever lies in physical things. That would be contrary to all the ways of God with man.

There is a confirmation that doesn't touch the flesh at all. It goes deep into the soul, and it's an inward knowledge that's beyond the intellect. There's a difference between knowing you're safe because you figured it out according to the scriptures, and knowing you're safe because you have an inward witness.

There's a difference, and it's a difference between a revived Church and another kind. It's a difference between, oh, the difference is