Published in the Pentecostal Evangel, March 11, 1944.

Let us read together the 11th chapter of Hebrews. This is a wonderful passage. In fact, all the Word of God is wonderful. It is not only wonderful, but it has power to change conditions. Any natural condition can be changed by the Word of God, which contains supernatural power. In the Word of God there is the breath and the very nature and power of the living God, and His power works in every person who dares to believe His Word. It is as we lay hold of God’s promises in simple faith, that we become partakers of the divine nature. As we receive the Word of God we come in touch with the living force that makes dead things live.

In Hebrews 12.2 we read, “Looking unto Jesus the author and finisher of our faith.” As we look unto Him we receive life, and faith springs up in our hearts. And as we continue to look unto Him, He will perfect our faith. He Himself will become the very power of our lives.

We see that when the disciples were let out of prison, the angel of the Lord said to them, “Go, stand and speak in the temple to the people all the words of this life.” The message of the gospel, that Christ died for our sins, that He was buried, and that He rose again, is the word of life. There is only one Book that has life. In his Word we find Him who came that we might have life, and have it more abundantly. By faith this life is imparted to us. Drink, my beloved, drink deeply of this Source of life.

“Faith is the substance of things hoped for.” Someone said to me one day, “I wouldn’t believe in anything I couldn’t handle and see.” Everything you can handle and see is temporal and will perish with the using; but the things not seen are eternal and will not fade away. Are you taken up merely with tangible things? or have you set your affections on things that are eternal, the things that are made real to faith? I thank God that through the knowledge of the truth of the Son of God, I have within me a greater power, a mightier working, an inward power, a vision of the truth more real than anyone can know who lives entirely in the realm of the tangible. God manifests Himself to the person who dares to believe.

As we receive life in the new birth, and the more abundant life that Christ delights to give in the fullness of the Spirit, we receive a nature that delights to do the will of God. As we continue to believe the Word of God, a well of water springs up within our hearts, an overwhelming spring that issues out in rivers of living water. A spring is always better than a pump. It was a well of water, springing up, to the woman at the well, but to the person who has the Holy Ghost it is flowing rivers. Have you these flowing rivers? To be filled with the Holy Ghost is to be filled with the executive of the Godhead, who brings to us all the unlimited resources of the Father and all that the Son of God desires that we should have. As we are filled with the Spirit God will cause us to move in His authority and reign by His divine ability.

“God ... hath in these last days spoken unto us by His Son, whom He hath appointed heir of all things, by whom also He made the worlds.” By the Son of God, the Word of God, all things were created. The things which are seen were not made of things which do appear. The Son of God created everything that is seen out of things that were not there when He spoke. I want you to see that as you receive the Son of God, as Christ dwells in your heart by faith, there is the incoming of divine force, the power of limitless possibilities within you, and that as a result of this incoming Christ, God wants to do great things through you. If we receive and accept His Son, God brings us into sonship; and not only sonship, but joint heirship, into sharing together with Him all that the Son possesses.

Every day I live I am more and more convinced that very few who are saved by the grace of God have the right conception of how great is their authority over darkness, demons, death and every power of the enemy. It is a real joy when we realize our inheritance on this line.

I was speaking like this one day, and someone said, “I have never heard anything like this before. How many months did it take you to get up that sermon?” I said, “Brother, God pressed my wife from time to time to get me to preach, and I promised her I would. I used to labor hard for a week to get something up. I would give out my text and then sit down and say, ‘I am done.’ O brother, I have given up getting things up. They all come down, and the sermons that come down stop down as long as He wants them. Then they go back to God, with fruitage, for the Word of God declares that His Word shall not return unto Him void. If you get anything up, it will not stay up very long. But when it comes down from above, it takes you down with it.”

The Son of God was manifested in this world to destroy the works of the devil; and it is His purpose that the sons of God should also be manifested on this present earth to destroy the works of the devil.

Do you remember the day when the Lord laid His hand on you? You say, “I couldn’t do anything but praise the Lord.” Well, that was only the beginning. Where are you today? The divine plan is that you increase until you receive the measureless fullness of God. You do not have to say, “It was wonderful when I was baptized with the Holy Ghost!” If you have to look back to the past to make me know that you are baptized, then I fear you are back-slidden. If the beginning was good, it ought to be better day by day, until everyone is fully cohvinced that you are filled with the fullness of God! I don’t want anything less than being full, and to be fuller and fuller until I am overflowing day by day. Do you realize that if you have been created anew and begotten again by the Word of God, that there is within you the same word of power, the same light and life that the Son of God Himself had?

God wants to flow through you in marvelous power and divine utterance and grace, until your whole body is a flame of fire. God intends each soul in Pentecost to be a live wire. So many people who have been baptized with the Holy Ghost came in because there was a movement, but so many of them have become monuments, and you cannot move them. The Baptism in the Spirit should be an ever-increasing enlargement of grace. Jump in, stop in, and never come out; for this is the Baptism—to be lost in it, where you only know one thing, and that is the desire of God at all times. O Father, grant unto us a real look into the glorious liberty Thou hast designed for the children of God who are delivered from this present evil world, separated, sanctified, and made meet for Thy use; whom Thou hast designed to be filled with all Thy fullness!

Nothing has hurt me so much as this: to see so-called believers have so much unbelief in them that it is hard to move them. Everything is possible to them that believe. God will not fail to fulfill His Word, wherever you are. Suppose that all the people in the world did not believe, that would make no difference to God’s Word. It would be the same. You cannot alter God’’s Word. It is from everlasting to everlasting, and they who believe in it shall be like Mount Zion which cannot be moved.

God heals by the power of His Word. But the most important thing is this: Are you saved? Do you know the Lord? Are you prepared to meet God? You may be an invalid as long as you live, but you may be saved by the power of God. You may have a strong, healthy body, but may go straight to hell because you know nothing of the grace of God and salvation. Thank God, I was saved in a moment, the moment I believed. And God will do the same for you.

The Spirit of God would have us understand there is nothing that can interfere with our getting into perfect blessing except our unbelief. Unbelief is a terrible hindrance. As soon as we are willing to allow the Holy Ghost to have His way, we shall find great things will happen all the time. But oh, how much of our own human reason we have to get rid of! How much human planning we have to become divorced from! What would happen right now if everyone believed God? I love the thought that God the Holy Ghost wants to emphasize truth. If we will only yield ourselves to the divine plan, He is right here to do great things, and to fulfill the promise in Joel 2.21, “Fear not, O land; be glad and rejoice: for the Lord will do great things.”

How many of us believe the Word? It is easy to quote it, but it is more important to believe it than to quote it. It is very easy for me to quote, “Now are we the sons of God,” but it is more important for me to know whether I am a son of God, When the Son of God was on the earth He was recognized by the people who heard Him. “Never man spake like this man.” His word was with power, and that word came to pass. Sometimes you have quoted, “Greater is He that is in you, than he that is in the world,” and you could not tell just where to find it. But, brother, is it so? Can demons remain in your presence? You have to be greater than demons. Can disease lodge in a body which you touch? You have to be greater than the disease. Can anything in the world stand against you and hold its place, if it is a fact that greater is He that is in you than he that is in the world? Dare we to stand on the line of the Word of God and face the facts?

Have faith in the fact that Christ indwells you, and dare to act in harmony with that glorious truth. Christ said, “Have faith in God. For verily I say unto you, That whosoever shall say unto this mountain, Be thou removed, and be thou cast into the sea; and shall not doubt in his heart, but shall believe that those things which he saith shall come to pass, he shall have whatsoever he saith.”

If you have been begotten of the Word and the Word is in you, the life of the Son is in you, and God wants you to fully believe. He says to you, “What things soever ye desire, when ye pray, believe that ye receive them, and ye shall have them.”

Labels: 1944, Pentecostal Evangel