(The Holy Spirit in the Book of Acts): Perpetuation of Pentecost

Beginning with verse fourteen and reading to verse twenty-one. But Peter, standing up with the eleven, lifted up his voice and said unto them, Ye men of Judea, and all that dwell at Jerusalem, be this known unto you, and hearken to my words. For these are not drunken, as ye suppose, seeing it is but the third hour of the day.

But this is that which was spoken by the prophet Joel. And here's what was spoken. It shall come to pass in the last days, saith God, I will pour out of my spirit upon all flesh, and your sons and your daughters shall prophesy, and your young men shall see visions, and your old men shall dream dreams.

And on my servants and on my handmaidens I will pour out in those days of my spirit, and they shall prophesy. And I will show wonders in heaven above and signs in the earth beneath, with blood and fire and vapor of smoke. The sun shall be turned into darkness and the moon into blood before that great and notable day of the Lord come.

And it shall come to pass that whosoever shall call on the name of the Lord shall be saved. Let's pray. Dear Lord, we are to hear and to speak.

Thy servant is not worthy to speak, nor the hearers to hear. We appeal to thee, the God of all grace, be gracious to us, we pray. Be, O be, thy loving Spirit into every troubled breast.

O Spirit of the Father and of the Son, do thou gather our thoughts in, enable us to think thy thoughts after thee, say to us what we should hear, eliminate what we should not, reduce the human element to a minimum, and let us hear the divine voice with maximum efficiency. Let grace be upon us for Christ's sake. Now, I have broken into the narrative here.

Peter used the term, the expression, the last days. It shall come to pass in the last days. And the last days is a technical term covering a period from Jesus' first coming to his second coming.

We're in the last days. We've been in that period of the last days since Christ came. That's what is meant here.

And before that period of the last days ends, there shall be a great demonstration of the divine wrath, blood and fire and vapor of smoke and signs in the sun and the moon. But during this entire period, from that first historic outpouring to the second coming of the Lord, during that entire period, these are the words that cover it. I will pour out my spirit.

And this is not a once-done act, but a continuous process. He said, rivers of living water. And a river, as it flows, is not a once-done thing.

It is a continuous thing. Now, God wills what I have called the perpetuation of Pentecost. And that's my topic tonight.

The perpetuation of Pentecost. Not a repetition of Pentecost, but a perpetuation of Pentecost. The little lad that was born tonight into the wreath home at 630 was born once.

Now, if he's a good, healthy boy, as we think he is, his life will be perpetuated for a normal span. His birth will not be repeated, but it will be perpetuated. And so when the Holy Ghost began to be poured out at Pentecost, he did that which he continues to do, not by repetition, but by perpetuation.

And it is God's will that his, this outpouring, should be perpetuated among companies of believers. Now, what God wills here tonight is that not that there should be a repetition of Pentecost, but that the conditions of Pentecost should be met by us, in order that Pentecostal power may be perpetuated in our midst. And as I have said at some other time, I don't remember which message, but I have said that God has given us power, and power means ability to do, to make service effective, to make it productive and fruit-bearing.

Now, there's a great deal of secret disappointment among the Lord's people. There's no question about that. Secret disappointment because of lack of ability to do.

We work without getting anything done, and labor without results, and children are brought to the birth and there's not strength to deliver, a most distressing situation. And this is the sad condition almost everywhere. It is the sad condition almost everywhere among the Evangelical Christians.

The children are brought to the birth, but there is not strength to deliver. Now, it is God's will that this flowing tide of power should be here, in order that we might know deliverance from Satan's power. God's people are being cuffed and pushed and hindered and mocked and stopped dead in their tracks almost everywhere.

And our very prayers and our efforts only tighten things up. You remember in the Old Testament when God began to pour out his great miracles on the land of Egypt and Moses began to demand deliverance from Pharaoh, it only made it worse. Instead of making it better, it made it worse.

They began to put greater pressure on than they had before, Pharaoh did. And the more miracles and the more insistence that Moses had that they should get out, the tougher the man Pharaoh became. And I want you to know that we are dealing with another Pharaoh by the name of the devil.

And the devil never bothers a quiescent and passive Christian. A Christian that has accepted the status quo built for him by the devil. The devil doesn't bother him particularly, but as soon as Christians begin to move a little and arouse themselves and say, listen, we've drugged in this mountain long enough, it's time that we should get up.

Then we run into fierce and violent opposition from the devil. And so that your prayers will often make things worse. Now hear me, my brother.

Your prayers will often make things worse. Because, as it used to say in war times, things will get worse before they get better. Just as the insistent prayers of Moses made things worse until he finally got delivered, he went to God and he said, now listen, God, I have gone to Pharaoh and I have prayed to thee, and nothing has happened up to now.

That was in the fifth chapter. Nothing has happened up to now. He said, we're worse off now than we were before.

This was Moses talking to God. And he said, For since I came to Pharaoh to speak in thy name, he hath done evil to this people, neither hast thou delivered thy people at all. At all, he said.

And then the Lord said unto Moses, Now, now shalt thou see what I will do to Pharaoh. For with a strong hand shall he let them go, and with a strong hand shall he drive them out of his land. Then God spoke unto Moses and said, I am Jehovah.

And I appeared unto Abraham, unto Isaac, and unto Jacob by the name of God Almighty. But by their name Jehovah I was not known. But now I have heard the groaning of the children of Israel.

Wherefore, say unto the children of Israel, I am Jehovah, and I will bring you out from under the burdens of the Egyptians. Now, that pattern is repeated wherever God's people begin to pray. It is quite widely known by the praying people of God that when they begin to urge God for something, things get worse instead of getting better.

And one of the reasons for this is that the Spirit has not flowed in so as to deliver us. But it is the will of God that we should not be cuffed about and pushed about and hindered. Remember that if you get kicked around by the devil, it's your own fault.

You don't need to be. For the Lord is risen indeed, and he has all authority in heaven and in earth, and he is the one person of whom the devil is afraid. The devil isn't afraid of you and your whole family.

The devil isn't afraid of the whole Canadian army. He isn't afraid of all in the U.S. Navy. He isn't afraid of all the powers of the West or the East.

The devil isn't afraid of people at all. But there is one man that he trembles before, and that is the man Christ Jesus, whom God hath anointed and given him a name that is above every name. And the devil is afraid of him, all right.

And he turns pale when he sees that mighty, mighty man rise and move toward him. So we're not to be victims. We're not to be cuffed about.

You say, if praying makes things worse than I shall not pray. Well, if you don't pray, you're already bound and handcuffed and tied and boxed in and hermetically sealed. And it's when you begin to pray that God Almighty begins to move.

And when he begins to move by the flowing tide of power, then things begin to break. Now, our very prayers, I say, sometimes tighten things for us. And yet, he said, that there should be power.

Ye shall receive ability to do. You, you shall. And it's the will of God that this Church should not be on the verge of blessing, but that it should be in the tide of blessing.

It's the will of God that this Church should not be timidly praying for something and then backing away, but pushing and praying on until there's a breakthrough and things get better instead of worse. Now, the flowing tide of power, I want to talk about it a little bit. It rises and accumulates and carries over.

Do you know what the average Sunday services are? They're simply getting a restoration from the backsliding and coldness of the week. That's the way we do it. We regain territory last lost during the week.

During the week, starting about Monday noon, the average Church member begins to go backward a little. He's not conscious of it, maybe, but he's losing out a bit. He's busy and maybe he's not sinning, but he's losing a little.

Then if he's a good fellow, he's at prayer meeting Wednesday, and that's a little blood transfusion that helps him a little bit. But by Saturday night, he's bushed again, spiritually. So he thanks God for Sunday, and so do I thank God for Sunday, because if you're down, thank God for anything that gets you up.

But the people of God should not live this zigzag life, spending from Monday morning to Saturday night holding their own or maybe stepping back a little, and then using Sunday as a means of getting back up again and then going through the old rigmarole all the time. Back a little, up a little. They used to have a funny question they'd ask if a frog in a well hopped up one hop and fell back two hops and then hopped up two hops and fell back one hop, how long would it take him to get out? And you can make that as complicated as you want, and the poor frog is in the well when it's all over, because he hops up two and hops and falls back one.

And the church is like that. We have a revival campaign. We bring somebody in from Ireland or from somewhere else, and everybody goes all out.

And we have a wonderful time, so we think. And everybody is blessed during that time, and then he goes. And when he is gone, we slowly move backwards.

Some churches just literally carry on like that. They get a blood transfusion three times a year. They call it a revival meeting.

I heard of one man who wired the evangelist. He said, Hurry, hurry, come immediately, the revival has broken out. And he wired back, Hold it until I arrive.

Well, this is going on all the time, and the people of God are paying for their little revivals and then backsliding again in a mild kind of way. Why is this? It is because we don't know what is meant here when the Lord says, I will pour out my spirit during this period, and I will perpetuate the miracle and wonder of Pentecost, and the flowing tide of power shall continue during the long period between Pentecost and the second coming of Christ. Now, that's the business and purpose of God, that we should as a people know this power.

Christians without this flowing tide of power are no more what Christians ought to be than a fish is without water. A fish without water is helpless and a hopeless thing. And the children of God without this flowing tide of Pentecostal power were a hopeless bunch, too.

But the terrible thing about it is that we have managed somehow to compromise this and to rationalize it and think our way out of it so that the average evangelical church has found a way to live in the dust and the sand without the flowing tide of power. But it's not the will of God. God says that his people, when they meet together, his people, when they meet in one place in one accord, they should know this perpetuation, this continuous flow of the tide of power.

But what is the difference? Well, I believe that sinners will be caught when the presence of God is nearer. See, Christianity is weak and pale and anemic because we're putting hot evangelism on without having the tide of power that makes evangelism effective. I mean that our churches every Sunday night we preach to sinners.

And the people who sit around, 95 percent of them are in desperate, critical need of a revival to bring them up, to make out of them what they ought to be in order they're good examples for the new converts that are made. Remember another thing, we cannot convert a man to God. Nobody can do it.

Not all of the preachers in the world can do it. Only the Holy Ghost can convert a man to himself. And if the Spirit of God is not flowing in a church, we only convert men to our own backsliding.

Two sick people, chronically sick, will have sick children. And a sick church, chronically sick, will have sick converts. And we'll count the numbers and take their offering and send in our report and feel we've done God's service.

All we've done is make cross lights to a church that doesn't know the flowing tide of power. Sinners will be caught. They'll come normally and naturally.

And they will be caught by the Holy Ghost. When he has come, he will convict the world of sin and righteousness and judgment. It's as normal for the Holy Ghost when he's in a neighborhood, when he is in a congregation of people.

It's normal for the Holy Spirit to lay hold on sinners. The church where I was pastor, often we wouldn't give an evening service invitation, but they would come and say, I want to be baptized. Why? When were you converted? And we find that they had been under such conviction of God that they went somewhere and got converted in their own bedroom or somewhere during the week or sent somebody home.

They'd found God and gave a sound, vivid testimony to conversion. The Holy Ghost, whenever he is free in a church, he lays hold of one here and he lays hold of one there and he gets hold of this young fellow here and this young lady here, and he wins them to himself. The Holy Ghost can do this and only he can do it.

And you get vigorous converts when there is a flowing tide of spiritual power in the church. You get vigorous and healthy converts. Another thing he does is give supernatural radiance.

Have you noticed that the Gospels are in the minor key and the Book of Acts in the major key? I mean by that that there is a difference in mood between the Gospels and the Acts. The Book of Acts is a radiant book. Its mood is the mood of joyous victory, where the Gospels are not.

They are looking forward to the cross, they are looking forward to being scattered abroad, they are looking forward to the Lord being taken from them, they are always looking forward to the shadows and the tomb. But after the Gospels are over and the Book of Acts has come, they are looking backward to the tomb, and the victory is now theirs. The Holy Ghost has come and he has brought to them the silver waters of joy.

And so the key is now in the major, and they sing with great joy. There is no longer the shadow of impending death across their hearts, but they rejoice, people. You will find in the Book of Acts that the Spirit of God made men generous.

There in the early chapters, they had an impulse of generosity. They are people of God that have to be milked, that have to be argued into giving, that have to be squeezed to give. I was in a convention one time, in the last convention, where a pastor was trying to take an offering.

And I was the evangelist, or the preacher, and he got up to take his offering. And he said, Now it is your duty to give. He said, You remember that you come here to church and you owe this church something, and so it was you owe this, and it's your duty to do this.

And I said to myself inside, I didn't want to hurt him, I hope he learned. But I said, This is no way to take offerings, it's no way to approach the people of God at all. Anybody come to me and look me in the eye and solemnly tell me what my duty is, you won't get any cooperation from me at all.

Because there's something better than duty, ladies and gentlemen. There is such a thing as an impulse of joyous generosity. And the Holy Ghost comes on a man, he doesn't have to have somebody read him a lecture on his ethical duties.

He does what he does because he's happy to do it, and he's a pleasure to do it. The Christian Missionary Alliance has always been great missionary people, great missionary givers, but outside of that one time, I never heard anybody get up and lecture on our duties. Why, my brother, it's a privilege, a great privilege to serve God.

It's a privilege to give of our money, it's a privilege to give and to serve and to sacrifice. But you'll never know that until the Spirit of God teaches it to you. So they brought everything they had and they threw it down at the apostles' feet.

Then the Holy Spirit gives a certain heavenly insignia. Back in Israel, it was the cloud and fire that stood over. There was the cloud and the fire.

I get out among a great many Christians, a great many Christian groups everywhere, and I do my best, I try. Well, I'll tell you, putting live chickens under dead hens never makes the hen live, but it kills the chicks. And there's an awful lot of preaching good, live truth among people that are so dead that the truth dies before the meeting's over.

But there's something wonderful and marvelous about when there's a flowing tide of power in the Church. You don't have to do so much advertising. I think it's all right to tell the people we're here, and I've always done it, and I think it's right we should do it.

But to get PR men, you know, public relation men, to give a good image to the public. Let the public have a good image of you. Brother, if you were right, the Holy Ghost would see that the world gets the image, the right image.

When the Spirit came at Pentecost, an old public relation man got up and started his double talk. But one blunt man got up and said, You know what this is? This is that that was prophesied by the Apostle, by the Prophet Joel. And then the Spirit of God laid hold on men, and the insignia was on them, the mark of the Spirit of God.

I have prayed and earnestly prayed, and I believe in some major, God has heard it, that when I preach, I want heaven to be sort of open so that people are conscious they're not listening to a man only but that there's a little something of overtone of heaven about it. And I wouldn't want to preach five minutes or anywhere in the world any time unless I could know that the Blessed Holy Ghost was giving a bit of that evidence, that proof of his presence. Now, how can we cooperate with him in this as a people? Well, first of all, we've got to put away all doubts.

Cold reason and past defeats and twisted theology and all these things, we've got to put them away. Faith will receive. And so we've got to have faith.

If we could just sort of turn over in our poor bed and try new sides once. But we're in the rut pretty much. Toronto's in the rut.

We know what we're going to find when we get to church. We know what we're going to hear. We know about the mood that people are going to be, about 68 Fahrenheit.

And we know what it's going to be like. A little low, a little chilly, but bearable. And so we judge what is to be by what is, and we judge what is by what was, and so we're caught and we never go on.

We've got to be exercising some faith. Definitely exercising some faith and daring to believe that God is going to do something. But you say it's hard to get everybody in that mood.

Well, let me reassure you that a revival does not wait for all the people to get in the mood of believing. A certain number, God will honor the faith of numbers. I don't suppose ever in the history of the Church has there been a time when everybody, unless it was at Pentecost, when they were all together in one place, and a limited number of them, 120.

But as the Church wore on and time went on, this history of God's working down the centuries would seem to indicate that if he can get a core, the word nucleus, I don't like it, but we use it now. If God can get a nucleus of people, he will honor that nucleus, that core of people, and will bless others for their sakes. Then I would say we must put away all divisions in the body.

Rifts in the body prevent the perpetuation and the flowing tide of power. There must be unity of many minds, but not on all things, only on the things that matter. Remember that.

The Spirit of God does not require us to be all trimmed down until we look like so many hundred cookies cut out with the same cookie cutter. We can have our individuality and our differences, but as long as we agree where it matters, the Holy Spirit accepts that as unity. You know it.

You know that. Harmony, unity, is identity at points of contact. And where the people of God meet and where there is moral and spiritual contact, if we are one there, then the blessed Holy Ghost comes in power.

We may differ on other things. He does not require that we all like the same colors, that we all like the same food, that we all enjoy the same songs. He does not require that we all have the same tastes, but he does require that in Christ we all want the same thing, that we all serve the same Lord, and that there is no gaps, no gaps that divide.

If there were a river flowing, but there were places in the river where there was no water, what kind of river would it be? All the fish would die as one lump of water went along before the other lump arrived. Rivers have to be continuous and perpetual. So if the people of God are divided, there can be no power.

Then we are to stir up our desires. We have as much as we desire. I think that we have some, but we have only as much as we really desire.

Then we must begin to expect and work along with the Holy Ghost. That's what the company of Christians can do. But what about the individual? What shall we do? Any company of Christians is an aggregation of individuals.

And as I have said before in other contexts, that the company will only be what the individuals are that make up the company. Any choir director knows that his choir will be what the individuals that make up the choir, what they are. And if you take a hundred people without any voice, the fact that there are a hundred of them won't enable them to sing.

They've got to have a voice. And if you have fifty out of the hundred that have no voice or bad voices, and the greater the number of bad voices, the worse the choir. The greater the number of good voices, the better.

It's the individual voices that make the choir. And it's the individual Christians that make the company. And it's the individuals baptized and anointed and filled and flowing in this tide of power that gives tone and spirit and power to a company, to a congregation.

And what God will do for this church depends upon what he can do for the individuals that make it up. Now, God waits expectantly, and sometimes at any rate, if one person, if one person breaks through, if one person meets God's conditions and breaks through, it's encouragement to other persons. This often happens.

It's great encouragement to other people. So God waits for us, and he waits for us to expect. And then God waits expectantly for us to expect.

And what is this all? It's a sudden baptism of the loving nearness of Christ instantaneously bestowed upon a congregation. It raises the level of that congregation. It raises the temperature of it.

It raises the moral tone of it. It raises the emotional tone of it. And it changes it to something more wonderful, nearer to God and nearer to the heart of God.

There isn't anything more distressing than to hear a bunch of half-dead Christians singing, Fill me now, fill me now. Jesus, come, fill me now, fill me now. I've been around the church now, it seems to me, for a hundred years, and I have never known anybody yet ever got blessed singing that song.

We still sing it, you know. We just drone through it. We say, Oh God, forgive us, we're miserable.

Fill me now, fill me now. Well, we can sing that song, and others like it, but it's pathetic, really, pathetic. Because there's no faith there, no expectation there.

If he ever did it, we'd have to stop singing it. We're not going to stop singing it. We're going to keep complaining to God that we'd like to be filled, but we wouldn't be filled.

If the Lord would come and say, Now listen, Deacon Jones, you have been singing now for 23 years come this Easter. You have been singing, Fill me now, fill me now. This morning I'm going to fill you.

Thank you, Lord, you're going to fill me. But, Deacon, there are conditions to be met. You're carnal.

I'm what? You're carnal. You're proud of your position in the church. You're a dictator.

You make it tough for the pastor. You're like the Mr. Chairman of business here and there. You're a boss.

You've got to get rid of that and humble yourself. You've been praying, Fill me now, for 23 years now I've come. I'm going to fill you, but you're going to have to get rid of that.

Another thing, you snap at your wife. You grumble at the toaster's bunch. You've got to get rid of that.

You've got to go home and tell honey that you're sorry that you've been praying, Fill me now, for 23 years and living like a grouchy bear. Deacon Jones begins to reconsider. He says, Excuse me, Lord, I was just singing.

I didn't really mean it because I'm not going to confess to my wife that I haven't been living right. And I am not going to be run over by any board. I was put in there by the people.

I was trusted. They trusted me and elected me and I'm going to stand up for my rights. And God walks sadly away and the old deacon goes back to his off-key singing of Fill me now, fill me now every Sunday night.

Another 23 years of his health holds out. He'll sing that same song and he'll never be filled because he will not meet God's condition. I've said and I repeat, nobody was ever filled gradually and nobody was ever filled who didn't know it.

But our trouble here is unbelief. People come to me and say, Mr. Toaster, I have put myself on the altar. What shall I do? They write me and they come to me.

What shall I do? Well, unbelief is a chronic thing, a chronic thing. It's like anemia. You've got it and you don't know you've got it.

It's there. And unbelief is always ready to read biography and believe that God filled men with the Holy Ghost back, say, in Luther's day or Wesley's day, some other day but not now. They believe that the Lord filled the Moravians with the Holy Ghost or the Methodists, somebody else but not us, somewhere else but not here, some other time but not now.

That's unbelief, kind of respectable unbelief, but it's unbelief nevertheless. Dear man and woman, when God has all of you and there's no more fighting and there's no more resisting and no more wanting your own way and there's perfect willingness to confess where confession is necessary, make restitution where restitution is necessary, straighten things out where you need to straighten them out, when you arrive at that place in utter humility before God, then you must exercise the belief that anything God ever did for anybody, he'll do for you. That anything God ever did any time, he'll do now.

And that anything God ever did anywhere, he'll do here. Now, how many of you are in an optimistic, expectant mood? I venture not many. Because you see, the mood of the reticence, the mood of what we have seen, we don't expect anything better and we really don't want anything better because the cost is too high.

It's going to cost you something, really cost you something. Occasionally there are, few are here and there throughout the country. And as I've said, denominational men, one after the other.

Last week I told me in Philadelphia about it, not only the men I mentioned here, but others I didn't, that God is meeting them one at a time. I yearn over you, as a mother over her children, as a father over his family, that the Holy Spirit is present and he's here and there's no repetition of Pentecost needed. There is a perpetuation of Pentecost.

The carrying on of the flowing tide of power which came back there and has never left the earth. What about it? Are you a seeker, thirsty, thirster, hungry, longing after God? You are. It shall come to pass in the last days, those are these days, that I will pour out my Spirit upon all flesh.

Pouring out is a continuous pouring out. Wherever he meets anybody, finds anybody that meets his conditions and dares to be with him. Oh, that this congregation might know this, that we might play less and eat less and fool less and believe more and pray more.

We'd be more of a church and less of a social organization. Is that what your heart wants, what mine wants? Easy to slip into a social organization that keeps itself up, frantically flapping its little wings in banquets and all the rest. I say they're all right occasionally, but some churches just have to have them or they'd fall apart.

The rule is if you need them, they're doing you harm. If you don't need them, you can have them, they won't harm you. We keep our church together by flapping our tiny featherless wings and announcing we do this Thursday, we do this Wednesday, we do this Tuesday, we do this Monday, we do this at four o'clock, we do this at five o'clock, and all the time we're flapping our little featherless wings.

Oh, brethren, that we might know the power of the Holy Ghost coming upon us, that we might be a Spirit-filled church. Have I got anybody on my side on this? Are you with me on this? That we might know what this is. It doesn't make fools of you.

It doesn't make you act weird and queer. It doesn't make you climb a tent pole. It lets you into a tide of power.

It puts you where a fish is put when he's thrown back into the river. You're in your environment then. The Spirit of God is moving and working from class to class, from one group to another group, from pastor to people, from people to pastor, from deacon to elder.

He moves and flows, and instead of trying so hard, we're getting more done. Oh, our Lord Jesus, we've entered into what men call Holy Week, and we're going to be thinking this week about thy suffering and thy death. The next Lord's Day, we're going to celebrate thy resurrection.

Oh, blessed Lord Jesus, we thank thee of all that is past, and while we may commemorate it now, it doesn't repeat. It's not repeated. Thou art not going to die Friday, nor rise Sunday, nor send the Holy Ghost 50 days later.

All that's history and done. We're the beneficiaries of it all if we only dared believe it. Help us to believe it, O Lord, and forgive us for doubting.

We are the recipients of all that it cost thee, and all that thou didst bring by death and suffering and tears and groans and sweat, and by resurrection and by ascension to the Father's right hand. We are the heirs of the ages. Upon us the ages have converged.

We, O Lord, are richer, richer than angels. Thou didst do this not for angels, but for men. We are thy church, Lord.

We are a people set aside here that have met in this corner, in this building, which thou hast graciously provided for us. Here we are, Lord. We're waiting, Lord.

We're expectant, Lord. We need help, Lord. O Lord, we pray thee, put thy arms about us and squeeze us together so tight that there be no pockets between us, no non-conducting elements that ground or hinder the power from flowing.

Let it be this week, let it be on over Easter, let it be for the days ahead. We beseech thee, O Lord. Let one after another of us, we pray, O Lord, find a secret place in their wake with our open Bible until our vessels are clean and empty and we are waiting and believing and that we believe that one after the other thou will give power.

And we're looking forward, Lord Jesus, to that moment when there shall be a sudden nearness of the Savior instantaneously bestowed, lovingly bestowed upon a thirsty people. Save us, we pray thee, from the cheap pattern of the worldly churches. Bring us back to Calvary, back to Pentecost, back to all that they meant and mean and have now perpetuated for us.

O blessed Lord Jesus, amen.