“And when the day of Pentecost was fully come, they were all with one accord in one place. And suddenly there came a sound from heaven, as of a rushing mighty wind, and it filled all the house where they were sitting. And there appeared unto them cloven tongues like as of fire, and it sat upon each of them. And they were all filled with the Holy Ghost, and began to speak with other tongues as the Spirit gave them utterance.” Acts 2:1-4.
Listen!
High overhead there is a sound!
Momentarily it gathers in momentum and volume!
The sound emanates from Heaven, and is “as of a rushing, mighty wind”’!
Surging, sweeping, shouting it comes, with awesome suddenness, straight to the Upper Room!
The house in which they are assembled is shaken!
Every corner of the room is filled with that mighty, rushing sound! Like tiny chips caught in the vortex of a stream so infinitely greater than themselves, what must have been the emotions of the hundred and twenty?
Fear?
Seareely. They had lived with the Man of Miracles for three years. Come not this wind from out His hand?
Suddenly, tongues like as of fire appear before their enraptured gaze. The leaping, blazing, consuming, kindling glory of it fans their faces. And, lo! a fiery tongue rests upon the head of each of them, and flames brightly there.
The flame seems to fill them; to consume, to transform them!
They are galvanized into action, charged, sur charged with power; energized and as completely motivated and dominated by this new, this wondrous force, as is an erstwhile inert electric wire, when the power is suddenly turned on.
Doubting Thomas shall doubt no more.
Denying Peter shall ne’er deny again.
Oh, the glory of it!
Oh, the wonder, the tremendousness, the definiteness of it all!
Had there been any question in their minds as to whether the Spirit would enter so gently, and so indefinitely announce His coming, that they might entertain serious doubts as to whether or not they had received Him, those questions were answered now.
Doubt it?
Never! Even though the earth should cease to roll around the sun, and the tide forget her trysting place!
“T indeed baptize you with water unto repentance: but He that cometh after me is mightier than I, whose shoes I am not worthy to bear: He shall baptize you with the Holy Ghost, and with fire.” Matt. 3:11.
This, then, was the “‘Baptism with Fire’ to which the flaming prophet had referred.
And they were indeed baptized, plunged, submerged, immersed within this all-enveloping Baptism of glory. It flooded in, surged in, poured in, till they were filled to the overflow.
They could hold no more!
Their hearts were filled to the bursting!
The joy and the glory of the Lord o’erwhelmed.
How could they ever thank Him; how adequately praise His Name?
What mortal words could compass so great a theme; what mortal tongue give utterance to worthy adoration? Theirs were but the tongues of humble villagers.
Suddenly, like a brimming bow], beneath a full flowing fountain, they began to run over. Melodiously, copiously, joyously, exultantly, audibly they began to overflow!
Hark!
They all break into speech at the same moment.
The sound of their exultant voices fills the room, overflows into the streets, and carries far to the amazed ears of startled listeners. Eloquently, volubly, unhesitatingly, and with great power and unction, their words flow forth in unbroken rivers. Those rivers emanate not from their halting lips and minds, but from the supernatural source of some great hidden outlet which breaks forth into rivers within their innermost being. Though they are all speaking at one time, there is no confusion — there is no discord.
“God is not the author of confusion, but of peace, as in all churches of the saints.”’ I Cor. 14:33.
It is rather as the sounding forth of a multi-toned organ under the hand of a mighty musician; or as the melody of an aeolian harp when its strings are simultaneously swept by the invisible fingers of a celestial breeze. All hearts are in tune with the Infinite. All are of “one accord.” No jarring notes are herein sounded.
“What are they saying?” you ask.
Sufficient to know that they are ““magnifying God,” “giving thanks well,’ and “speaking the wonderful works of God.” Acts 10:46, I Cor. 14:17, Acts 2:11.
Whence acquired they this sudden spontaneity of utterance? Whence these prolific words of fiery eloquence?
The answer lies in the fact that their words were not of their own volition. The “tongues” with which they spake were not their own. They “spake with other tongues, as the Spirit gave them utterance.” Even the language was not their own. When the Spirit took hold of the bell, its tongue chimed forth a tune of His own fashioning.
When He took up the trumpet, the instrument had naught to do with the sounds produced therein. It had but to yield itself under His mighty breath. Many, perhaps all, were speaking a language differing from that spoken through the lips of their neighbors. Kighteen different and widely diversified languages are enumerated in Acts 2:9, 10, 11. Yet they who spake were all Galileans, who had never learned the languages which they now spoke so fluently. In all likelihood they knew not that whereof they spake. I Cor. 14:14.
One has not to look far between the lines of this amazing second chapter of the Acts of the Apostles, to picture the beginning of that which was to become such a far-flung sequence.
Look!
Thronging feet throb in the thoroughfares. Like rivers of ants when a nest is disturbed, or sugar is scattered, the populace begins to run together in one direction.
The house wherein the Upper Room is enshrined, stands upon the side of a steep embankment. The lower floors are reached by a descending stair. The Upper Room opens its wide casements upon the cobbled street. The history of the place dates back to King David, and the house is well known. Curious, excited, exclamatory hosts gather in such increasing numbers that thousands crowd into the narrow thoroughfare.
What drew this multitude together?
Curtosity?
Doubtless, curiosity was a powerful advance agent which drew their feet irresistibly to the scene of action. Curiosity is like sticky fly-paper. Once one has put one foot in, one puts the other down to extricate the first, and ofttimes before aware, one is in altogether.
The Joy of the Lord?
The “shout in the camp” has ever been the best publicity for the Gospeller. A score of ice wagons may pass our street, and none will turn to look; but let just one fire wagon pass and everyone within hearing or seeing distance will turn to watch it. And a goodly per cent will leave all and run after it crying: “Where’s the fire?”’
The cold and rigidly formal church can never succeed in arresting the diversified interests of the human tide which flows past her doors, or rivet that attention upon the living Word of the risen Christ, until she has received this transforming, electrifying power from on high and is galvanized into action!
Well directed publicity?
Not as the modern church knows the term.
The Holy Spirit Himself proclaimed to an astounded populace the happenings in the Upper Room, and so piqued their curiosity that they “came running”’ together. Publicity today is well enough in its place; but when the Church becomes so aflame that the fire of God’s Spirit blazons the news abroad in tongues of livid flame through yielded lips of clay the difficult question is how to find room to accommodate the throngs which pour out, rain or shine to hear the Word.
A carefully worked up revival?
The revival on the Day of Pentecost was not “worked up.” It was ‘prayed down.”
All of our workings, strivings and laborings are of small avail without the Spirit.
The steamship may be planned and builded and painted and rigged from stem to stern, her new engines may be oiled and ready for the fuel; but without the kindling of the flame, the ship shall scarcely cross the ocean.
The automobile may be assembled, the engine installed, the hood gleaming with high polish, and the wheels shod with excellent tires; but without the gasoline and the spark which ignites it, the chariot shall be “‘hard pushing,” as the old farmer said when he rolled his first car up the hill.
The securing of a well-known speaker?
No widely advertised theologian had been announced to give a mighty learned address on the Day of Pentecost.
A fisherman, who had but recently washed his hands in the Galilee and presented his body a living sacrifice unto the Lord, was the instrument used. ’T was not the human speaker, his charm, personality, past triumphs or fame. It was God!
Oh! listen, Brother!
Harken, Sister!
Can you not hear that great shout still echoing around the earth?
I can hear it, and my soul is thrilled to the depths at the sound. I long to bind my sandals upon my feet and run, run to join that company, to partake of their joy.
Listen to them!
No gentle little reading from a book of prayers which another has written for them; but a gushing, tempestuous overflow of prayer and praise that rises and flows like a new oil well when it has just been “brought in.”
“Hallelujah!”
“Glory! Glory! Glory to God!”
“Unto the risen, living Christ, be praise and honor forever!’
“Amen! Amen!”
Do you not wish that everyone of our churches might have an experience like that today? Would you not like to see our buildings shaken with the power of God and hear our Parsons and their Boards of Elders and Trustees and their Congregations walking up and down the aisles praising and glorifying God?
Why not?
Afraid they would think you mad?
Perhaps they would, at first. They thought the hundred and twenty either mad or drunken with wine. But they came to look and to listen. They were convinced of the power of God, and were converted by the thousand.
The typical modern church of today, far from being called ‘‘mad,” is considered by the man of the world as being ‘“‘dead.”’ Better have the world think we are ‘mad’ and come to see why and how, than have them never come near to hear the blessed Gospel at all.
When filled with the Holy Spirit, your message will be like that of the Apostle Peter —so sound, so balanced, so filled with the wisdom of God, that what might first be termed madness, will soon be recognized as inspired wisdom from on High.
“The hundred and twenty were over-wrought and their unbridled emotionalism regrettable and certainly not to be emulated,” said a preacher friend some time ago during a discussion of the happenings of that. day.
“But tell me,’’ I said, “if we criticise the manner in which they gave evidence of the coming of the Spirit, do we not criticise the Spirit Himself? And if we criticise the Spirit and His methods, do we not criticise the Christ who sent him, and the God from Whom He emanated?”
“Nevertheless,’ he insisted petulantly, “we of the present day are far too rational and controlled in spirit to countenance such a demonstration of emotion!”
I sat and looked at the man, astounded.
I thought of his tiny church, his steadily dwindling congregations, his dry, prepared sermons, his empty altars, his teas and his socials and of the great denomination which he represents —a denomination which, alas, frowns upon any effort of its ministers to preach the Pentecostal Baptism of the Holy Spirit according to Acts the second chapter —and my heart ached!
What a blessing it would have been could he have fallen to his knees in such a spirit of prayer and tears as once shook strong men such as Wesley, Finney, Knox, and Cartwright! How one should have rejoiced to have heard him lift his voice in real prayer and praise; and preach with the tears of real, melting devotion streaming down his face!
But no!
He would go back to his emotionless religion, his emotionless audience and preach his emotionless sermons.
He would sow seed with the kernel removed, and the husk alone left.
He would pump on and on at a waterless cistern.
He would serve them the polliwogs and tadpoles of an evolutionary doctrine, instead of the real meat of the Spirit; withered fruit from the barren desert of his own soul rather than the giant grapes of Eschol.
As he left the room, I found myself shaking my head and saying:
“Dead, and doesn’t know it!’’
The expression referred to a favorite story.
It seems that once upon a time two Irishmen came to this country. They saw, one day, for the first time, a snake.
“What is it?” cried Pat.
“T don’t know,”’ answered Mike, “‘but I don’t like the looks of it. Let’s kill it!”
So they got stones and began to throw them at the reptile. But the more they stoned it, the more it squirmed and wriggled.
They cut off its head; but still it writhed. _ Pat stood looking at it for a moment then scratched his head doubtfully.
“Ts it dead, Mike?” he queried.
“Shure and faith and it’s dead!’’ came the ready reply.
“Tt’s dead, but it doesn’t know it!”
_When I think of those ministers who dare to criticise the Acts of the Disciples upon the day of Pentecost; and when I compare in my mind some of the empty churches of our land and the bloodless religion which they preach, with the flaming, living, active, glorious, community-shaking, soul-satisfying Gospel preached through those Disciples by the power of the Holy Spirit which descended that memorable day, and when I read of the thronging thousands who came to hear and remained to be converted, I cannot help thinking of the story:
“Dead, and doesn’t know it!”
How terrified we are of the word “emotionalism.” The devil has taken that word and set it up like a scarecrow with empty arms flapping in the wind, to keep God’s starving children from the corn of the land. Yet, when one walks up to it and touches it, there is no real cause for alarm. I speak now of Godgiven, sanctified, Spirit-moved emotion. It is exactly what we need today —sanctified emotion. Take emotion from the family life, and what have we left? Imagine a family where every member is so afraid of displaying any emotion, that they never, by word or deed, express any love or affection for each other. Picture an emotionless mother — one who never laughs and never cries over her babe — one who is ever cold, calculating and mechanical. One might as well bring up one’s children in an incubator! Certainly ‘mother songs” would soon perish from the earth.
At a coronation men shout and praise the King. Enthusiastic demonstration is in order at election time. Fans are unashamed of their applause and shoutings at a ball game. In fact, everywhere except in the praise of the King of Kings, emotions may be deeply stirred and openly expressed with no stigma attached to the demonstration. But let a saint shout “Hallelujah,” or cry ‘Praise the Lord,’ and immediately someone decries it as regrettable emotionalism.
Only when Jordan overflows her banks are the surrounding fields refreshed and quickened. And, if our emotions are so meagerly stirred by the Spirit of God that they never rise up from within us nor overflow in spontaneous and abundant utterance and joy, the world is neither enriched or edified.
“T feel it in my heart,” say some, “‘but I am not of a demonstrative nature.”
God does not expect us to ‘“‘make”’ durselves demonstrative. The experience which the hundred and twenty received in the Upper Room was not a ‘‘worked up” emotion. It was as reactionary as the roaring concussion which follows the explosion of a charge of dynamite. It was as natural and unforced as a cry uttered when one is falling, or the laughter which rings forth at some sudden, sweeping joy.
The Master never said: ‘‘You shall feel it in your heart, but the joy which I bestow shall never rise to the lips that the world about you may know of your infilling.”’
The Master said: “Out of your innermost being shall flow rivers of living water.”’
At full flood the “‘rivers’’ overflowed and swept out through the decadent desert on that birthday of the Dispensation of the Holy Ghost and verily the desert blossomed as a rose. Pools adorned the wilderness and floods embraced the dry land.