In doing this work he proclaimed the kingdom of God is at hand, and “preached the baptism of repentance for the remission of sins.” And many people were prepared for the Lord, and finally he is acknowledged, from the eternal world, as the Son of God, while he is yet in the presence of all those who were present at his baptism and heard John say, “Behold the Lamb of God, who taketh away the sin of the world.” The Savior now calls about him twelve disciples, and they make and baptize many more disciples. John the Baptist and Jesus Christ, as prophets, were under the influence of the Holy Spirit, and were engaged in the grandest work ever known among men. But, so far as a wicked world was concerned, it must be redeemed from moral pollution first, and then await the day of Pentecost for the gift of the Holy Spirit. Thus keeping before our minds his relations to men, we ask what was his work and relations from Pentecost and onward? On that day he came upon the disciples, who were already converted and pardoned; so it was not for those purposes that they were baptized in the Holy Spirit. Jesus had said to them, long before this, “Now ye are clean through the words which I have spoken unto you.” And the wicked Jews had “closed their eyes and stopped their ears, lest they should see with their eyes and hear with their ears and understand with their hearts and be converted and healed.” And Satan himself [pg 207] took the word out of the hearts of some “lest they should believe and be saved.”
And all this took place before the Holy Spirit was given to any, whether good or bad. So we must look outside of sinners for the presence and wonderful work of the Spirit of God, and also outside of their conversion for its immediate and direct agency. Jesus said to his disciples, “If I go away I will send you another comforter, even the Spirit of Truth, whom the world can not receive.” And again, he said, “Howbeit, when he, the Spirit of Truth, is come, he shall guide you into all truth.” “He will show you things to come.” “He shall take of the things of mine and shall show them unto you.” “He shall testify of me.” Does this look like extraordinary work? Was it to be continued? Did it not belong to a creative period, that was to be followed by the existence of a system, or government, in which law and order would take the place of the extraordinary operations of the Spirit of God?
I wish to present the promise of God which relates to the baptism of the disciples in the Holy Spirit upon Pentecost, that we may discover, upon an analysis of its terms, its nature and place in the reign of favor. It is in these words: “And 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 prophecy, 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.” Jesus gave his disciples the great commission to go into all the world and preach the Gospel to every creature, but said, “Tarry ye in Jerusalem until ye be endued with power from on high.” After the Savior ascended it is said that he received the promise of the Father and shed forth that which was seen and heard on the day of Pentecost. What was the result? They spake with tongues. They prophesied. They healed the sick. They raised the dead. They bestowed spiritual gifts. They were guided into all truth. They “preached the gospel with the Holy Spirit sent down from [pg 208] heaven;” and in this fact we have the beautiful figure of rivers of living water flowing out of their hearts, for Jesus said, “He that believeth on me, as the scripture hath said, out of his belly (From the Heart, inward part) shall flow rivers of living water.” This, the historian says, “He spake of the spirit which they that believed on him were to receive, because the Holy Spirit was not yet given, for Jesus was not yet glorified.” Hence, we are authorized to look for its fulfillment at Pentecost, and also in the preaching of the gospel of Christ. Paul says, “My speech and my preaching was not with enticing words of man's wisdom, but in demonstration of the Spirit and of power: that your faith should not stand in the wisdom of men, but in the power of God.” Here is the basis of our faith.
All those who believe on Christ through the words of the apostles have a faith that stands in the power of God. The apostle further adds, “Now we have not received the spirit of the world, but the Spirit which is of God; that we might know the things that are freely given to us of God. Which things also we speak, not in the words which man's wisdom teacheth, but which the Holy Spirit teacheth, comparing spiritual things with spiritual.” Before the Savior left the world he breathed upon his apostles and said, “Receive ye the Holy Spirit,” adding, “Whosesoever sins ye remit they are remitted unto them, and whosesoever sins ye retain they are retained.” So it pleased the Father to “save men through the foolishness of preaching.” And Paul said, “We preach not ourselves, but Christ Jesus the Lord; and ourselves your servants for Jesus's sake. For God, who commanded the light to shine out of darkness, hath shined in our hearts, to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ. But we have this treasure in earthen vessels, that the excellency of the power may be of God, and not of us.”
The mystery of Christ was revealed to all nations for the obedience of faith. Paul says, the mystery of God's will was made known according to his good pleasure which he purposed [pg 209] in himself, and that he was “made a minister according to the dispensation of God which was given to him for us, to fulfill the word of God, even the mystery which had been hid from ages and from generations, but now is made manifest to his saints. To whom God would make known what is the riches of the glory of this mystery among the Gentiles; which is Christ in you, the hope of glory, whom we preach, warning every man, and teaching every man in all wisdom, that we may present every man perfect in Christ Jesus.” “Whereunto,” he says, “I also labor, striving according to his working, which worketh in me mightily.” From all that we have before us it appears that all things in the gospel of Jesus Christ constitute, simply, “the ministration of the Spirit written upon the hearts of New Testament apostles and prophets, or teachers, by the Spirit of the living God, and that we have in their preaching and teaching the rivers of living water, flowing out from the throne of God to slake the thirst of a famishing world, and that all this is attributable to the descent of the Holy Spirit upon them.” Such being the case, “the gospel is the power of God unto salvation unto every one that believes.” And in it Jesus Christ, the Sun and Lord, in the moral and spiritual universe, shines forth with all his satellites as the light of the world. The creative period is now past. The extraordinary efforts of the divine Spirit are past. “The darkness is past and the true light now shineth.” The ordinary has taken the place of the extraordinary. What good would it do to have a repetition of the extraordinary? Would it give us another gospel, and confirm it by signs and wonders and divers miracles? Would it give us another Christ? Would it give us other rivers of living water? or another word of reconciliation? What good would be accomplished by a repetition of the energies of the Divine Spirit, as they are known in the history of the new creation? Do we need these to dispel the darkness? “The darkness is past.” Do we need them to give us light? “The true light now shineth.” Do we need them to give us more truth? Jesus said of the Spirit: “He shall guide you into all truth.” The [pg 210] Roman Catholic priest, in his discussion with Mr. Chillingworth, planted himself upon this promise, made by the Savior to his apostles, as the proof of the claim of Romanists to the attribute of infallibility. Said he: “If the attribute of infallibility is not in the possession of the church, the promise of the Savior has failed.” To this Mr. Chillingworth replied: “It would be well for us to determine who is meant by the pronoun ‘you,’ found in the language, before we put up the high claim to infallibility.” The promise was fulfilled to a jot, and we have the “all truth” in the teachings of the apostles. Let those who extend that promise to themselves meet the Catholics' argument upon it and save themselves if they can. We now enjoy the Spirit of God through faith along with all the beneficial, practical and comforting and redeeming results of the baptism of the apostles and first Christians in the Holy Spirit. What more do we need? Faith lays hold upon Christ; upon the Holy Spirit; and upon God. The just live by faith, and drink of the rivers that flow from the great fountain of the Holy Spirit, which was created in the hearts of the apostles and New Testament teachers. The effects of their baptism in the Spirit are ours through faith. And all the world may have them through faith. They are free to all. The government of God is now set up. Order and law reigns throughout. Jesus said, “So is the kingdom of God, as if a man should cast seed into the ground, and should sleep, and rise night and day, and the seed should spring and grow up, he knoweth not how, for the earth bringeth forth fruit of herself; first the blade, then the ear, after that the full corn in the ear.” The kingdom of God now bringeth forth fruit of herself, the good seed, the word of God, having been cast into it. Its glorious blessings are open to all men. The prophet says: “Ho, every one that thirsteth, come ye to the waters, and he that hath no money, come, ye, buy, and eat; yea, come, buy wine and milk without money and without price. Wherefore do ye spend money for that which is not bread? and your labor for that which satisfieth not? Hearken diligently unto me, and eat ye that which is [pg 211] good, and let your soul delight itself in fatness. Incline your ear, and come unto me; hear, and your soul shall live.... Let the wicked forsake his way, and the unrighteous man his thoughts; and let him return unto the Lord and he will have mercy upon him; and to our God, for he will abundantly pardon.” “The Spirit and the bride say come, and let him that is athirst come, and whosoever will let him take of the waters of life freely.” Yes, freely. There is no obstruction. All are without excuse.
Credibility Of The Evidence Of The Resurrection Of Christ.
Our senses are the means by which we were made competent witnesses. They are the bed-rock of evidence. We know facts and truths, both comprehensible and incomprehensible, by the same means. We are as competent to testify of that which we do not comprehend as we are to testify of the most ordinary fact. As competent to bear testimony to the fact of a sweeping tornado as to the fact of a gentle breeze. As competent to bear testimony to the fact that water freezes and becomes hard as to testify to the truth of its being a fluid. As competent to testify to a fact that we never before experienced as to one that we have. Without this competency no man could be justly held responsible for slander or perjury.
We gain knowledge by means of our senses, and all lying and perjury is outside of our senses, having no connection with them. We can, in truth, testify to that which we have seen, heard, tasted, smelt or felt, and to such only. That which somebody else thus witnessed may be testified by him, but not by me, unless I, too, was connected with it by means of my senses. Wise men may be deceived in some things, but fools can not be deceived in others. Things addressing themselves to our senses are things about which we can not be so deceived as to truthfully deny that they ever occurred. I know a live man when I see him by the same means I know a dead man.
Being competent to bear witness to a new fact, to one heretofore unexperienced, I would have been competent to bear witness to the death, burial and resurrection of the Christ, in case I had lived in his day, and had been as familiar with him as his witnesses. By which I mean to say, they were competent witnesses; every way qualified to know assuredly whether the Savior rose from the dead. They could not be deceived about the matter. They were not. If they were honest men they told the truth, for they say, We saw, and heard, and our hands have handled. Then the entire Christian religion, with its immortal blessings, stands or falls upon the honesty of the Savior's witnesses. Martyrdom has been universally conceded to be an evidence of sincerity; there may be a few exceptions to this general rule, but even they are not parallel cases. There is a story of a man who endured with great fortitude all the tortures of the rack, denying the fact with which he was charged. When he was asked afterwards how he could hold out against all the tortures, he said: I painted a gallows on the toe of my shoe, and when the rack stretched me, I looked on the gallows, and bore the pain to save my life. This man denied a plain fact under torture, but he did it to save his life.