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PROLOGUE Luke is the writer and Paul the dictator. The hired house in Rome is the place and A.D. 61-63 the time. As Paul does not appear on the stand till the sixth Chapter, doubtless Luke availed himself of his ample opportunities in Palestine during Paul’s two years’ imprisonment in Caesarea, A.D. 58-60, to travel round over the country, visit Jerusalem, and spend much time with Peter, John, James and other apostles, prophets and saints; meanwhile he gathered up materials for this wonderful history of the Apostolic Church which he afterward wrote, pursuant to the dictation of Paul during his Roman imprisonment. Luke accompanied Paul on his long anticipated journey to Jerusalem to bear alms to the saints, having spent the winter of A.D. 57-58 at Corinth, setting out early in the spring and arriving at Jerusalem in the latter part of May. Paul, having been arrested by the roaring mob and dragged out of the temple, was only saved from a cruel death by the opportune intervention of Lysias, the Roman chiliarch, with his army. Having permitted him to stand before the Jewish Sanhedrin, and signally failing to find any charges against him criminal in Roman law, and having discovered a formidable conspiracy among the Jews to kill him, he nobly interposed and sent him away by night protected by an armed escort, and committed him to the custodianship and jurisdiction of Felix, the proconsul, at the same time presenting no criminal allegations whatever against him. Felix, unlike the noble Lysias, was unfortunately a great money lover, a notorious tyrant and a very corrupt man. On the first trial he saw, like Lysias, that the prisoner was utterly innocent; meanwhile, he became awfully convicted by his straight and terrible preaching, so that he trembled from head to foot under a mighty paroxysm of alarm. While it was his imperative office of duty, and Paul’s inalienable right, to release him without further procedure, yet the avaricious tyrant held him in prison two long years, actuated by the vain hope that money would be paid for his release; meanwhile he sat under the powerful preaching of Paul like millions of others, his terrible convictions resisted and the Spirit grieved away till the powerful preaching of Paul could no longer move him to repentance. At the expiration of two years the opportune removal of Felix out of office, his dethronement, degradation and arraignment before the emperor at Rome, providentially secured the release of Paul from his two years’ imprisonment at Caesarea. Festus, the successor of Felix in the governorship, was a hightoned Roman gentleman like Lysias. Finding Paul left in prison by Felix to purchase Jewish favor in his terrible calamities, he immediately brings him to trial, calling down the Jewish magnates from Jerusalem to prefer charges against him. Finding Paul perfectly innocent, astounded and convicted by his preaching, he declares the legal possibility of his immediate release. At this salient epoch, behold! Paul appeals to Caesar, pursuant to the inalienable right of a Roman citizen, thus forcing the governor to send him to Rome, there to stand before the imperial tribunal. Paul had long earnestly desired to visit the world’s capital and preach the Gospel in the great metropolis of all nations. This was a great undertaking in those ages when navigation was in its infancy, the steam engine and mariner’s compass as yet undreamed of. It was as great an undertaking at that time as it is now to travel round the world. In 1895 I traveled the very same route from Jerusalem to Rome in the short space of ten days. As Paul was utterly incompetent financially to make this trip, he availed himself of his right as a Roman citizen to stand at Caesar’s judgment bar, not that he cared anything about the verdicts of earthly tribunals, as our Savior, when He met him on the Damascus road, had already revealed to him a martyr’s destiny. Thus, using his wonderful natural sagacity, illuminated by the Holy Ghost, he avails himself of his right to appeal to Caesar, thus forcing his enemies at their own expense to carry him to Rome that he might preach the Gospel in the world’s metropolis. When Festus found that he had appealed to Caesar, and that Roman law compelled him to send him to the diagnosis of the world’s emperor, he regarded it a sine qua non that he also send the criminal charges against him, as the very novelty and inconsistency of sending a prisoner for trial with no bill of charges would expose his administration to criticism and burlesque at the imperial court. Hence he does his utmost, even availing himself of the co-operation of King Agrippa, an adept in all Jewish law. They both do their best to find criminal allegations against Paul, but signally and hopelessly fail. Hence Festus is forced to meet the issue and actually write a letter to the emperor stating that he had only sent the prisoner pursuant to his own right of appeal as a Roman citizen, there being no criminal allegation whatever against him. The letter of Festus and the exceedingly favorable report of Julius, the Roman centurion who had charge of the prisoners during the voyage, and saw the power of God on Paul during the awful shipwreck and miraculous deliverance, besides the wonderful miracles of healing wrought by him on the island of Melita, gave Paul an exceedingly favorable introduction to the authorities at Rome, at once commanding the unparalleled leniency of the imperial administration, virtually setting him free, making his imprisonment but nominal; meanwhile “unhindered” he proceeds to establish a great mission in the heart of the world’s metropolis. Having sailed from Caesarea in September, after his long and perilous voyage he arrives at Rome late in February, A.D. 61, inaugurates his gospel mission, in which he preaches two years; meanwhile he dictates to Luke this wonderful history of the Apostolic Church, founded on the day of Pentecost, entrusted with the responsible mission of preaching the gospel of the coming kingdom to all nations, thus preparing the world for the return of the glorious King. Why was Paul, at the expiration of two years, ruthlessly dragged out of his gospel mission, and, loaded with chains, brought a prisoner into the barracks of the praetorian army? This resulted from the death of Burrus, the commander-in-chief of the imperial guards, who, in lieu of the emperor, had received the letter of Festus and the report of Julius, and administered in the case of Paul on his arrival as a substitute for the emperor, being completely won over into sympathy with Paul and magnanimously protecting him as long as he lived. Now Paul’s only influential and powerful friend and protector at the imperial court having passed away, there is nothing left for him but the rigors of military despotism. During these memorable two years in his hired house, he not only preaches day and night, but dictates to Luke, his faithful amanuensis, the Acts of the Apostles, the epistles to the Ephesians, Colossians, and Philemon.

CHAPTER - DEDICATION 1 , 2 . We see that this book is dedicated to Luke’s friend Theophilus, to whom his Gospel is also dedicated. Doubtless this brother Theophilus, who is not elsewhere mentioned, was much beloved by Paul and Luke. While it is more than likely that some eminent saint is here personally addressed, it is pertinent to observe that Theophilus is a cognomen from Theos , God, and philos , a lover. Hence it means a lover of God, and is here to be understood not only as specific, but generic, and applying to all of the lovers of God in all ages. Hence, reader, take notice; if you are a lover of God, this book, as well as Luke’s Gospel, is dedicated to you, since it is dedicated to all the lovers of God of all ages and nations.

THE KINGDOM OF GOD 3. I am so sorry that nothing has been elaborately revealed appertaining to the precious ministry of our Lord with His apostles during the forty days of His glorified sojourn upon the earth between His resurrection and ascension. It is merely here stated that He spent the time “speaking the things concerning the kingdom of God.” Doubtless this explains the thrilling enthusiasm of apostolic preaching relative to the coming kingdom, and their incessant buoyant expectancy of their Lord’s return on the throne of His Millennial glory during their personal ministry. The kingdom of God is the Divine government. It was predominant in Eden, suffering total eclipse in the Fall. It was partially restored among the antediluvians, received a great impetus in the flood, flashed along the patriarchal ages, thundered out from Sinai, was predicted by the old prophets, preached by John the Baptist, our Savior and His apostles, and, during the Gospel dispensation, is to be heralded to all the nations on the face of the whole earth, calling out the elect and preparing them for the Lord’s glorious coming, when He will be crowned King of all nations and reign from the rising of the sun to the going down of the same, “and of His kingdom there shall be no end.” BAPTISM WITH THE HOLY SPIRIT 4 , 5 . One of the puzzles of all Christendom, a problem which none can solve, is why the Christian Church in all ages has not strictly adhered to the positive and unequivocal mandate of her Lord “not to depart from Jerusalem” till the Pentecostal enduement of the Holy Ghost and fire had descended on them. If she had faithfully obeyed this commandment of her ascended Lord she would have conquered the world long ago, preached the Gospel to every nation, and thus brought back her glorious King, restoring to the whole earth the Edenic state. This is the missing key-stone out of the fallen arches of all the great ecclesiasticisms that have ever risen upon the earth. When the Holiness people relax their grip upon this glorious mandate of our Lord, and send out unsanctified preachers like the worldly churches, it will then be pertinent to write Ichabod on our escutcheon.

KINGDOM OF ISRAEL 6. When Jacob was converted amid the wonderful vision of the ladder, he called the place Bethel, which means “the family of God,” commemorating the fact of his spiritual birth, as then and there he was born into the family of God. After twenty years of terrible conflict with inbred sin, especially assuming the form of that fatal iniquity of covetousness, which has slain its millions, not even sparing the apostles, but consigning poor Judas to the doom of the lost, Jacob, like all others, could only conquer in a second work of grace. Peniel means “the face of God.” He must meet God face to face and receive the wonderful fiery baptism on the bank of the Jabbok.

There victory came never to depart, and his name was changed from Jacob, which means “rascal,” to Israel, which means one that “prevails with God.”

In the grand restitution, when Satan is to be taken out of the world and Paradisian glory restored, the government of the world is to be given to the “princes of God,” who shall rule all nations as the subordinates of their glorious King.

TIMES AND SEASONS 7. Probably a better translation of these Greek words would be “periods and epochs.” You plant out a peach orchard. Then follows a period running over a number of years during which the trees flourish and yield their fruits.

Eventually they get old and diseased, and the fruit is not only imperfect in quality but much reduced in quantity, so that it no longer pays to perpetuate the enterprise. The fruit bearing period is past and a revolutionary epoch supervenes. You dig the trees up by the roots, make fuel of trunks, roots and branches, plough and harrow the ground as virgin soil and proceed to pitch another crop on an entirely different agricultural line. So, in the Divine administration, we see these periods occupying rolling centuries and wound up by miraculous Divine interventions, developing memorable epochs and superinducing a new order of things. The Eden period terminated in the sad calamity of the Fall; the antediluvian, with the Flood; the patriarchal, with Egyptian slavery, plagues, and destruction in the Red Sea. The Mosaic dispensation, launched amid the thunders and earthquakes of Sinai, adorned with many prophets, saints and martyrs, finally degenerated, like its predecessors, into dead formality and hollow hypocrisy, rushing madly into the bloody scene of Calvary, fast ripening for destruction by the invasion of the Roman armies. The Gospel dispensation, the last of all in the grand preparatory for the coming kingdom, though inaugurated amid the unprecedented glories of Pentecost, pursuant to prophecies has already degenerated into worldly ecclesiasticisms, fast ripening for destruction. “It is not your prerogative to know the periods and epochs, which the Father placed in his own authority.” The appointment of the day of His coming is fanatical, as this is known to the Father only. However, it is our privilege to know the time of the end, the precise time being known only to the Father, from the simple fact that it is probably impossible for any human being to know the exact chronology. Professors Totton and Dimbleby, evidently the greatest chronologists of the present age, define the expiration of the “Gentile times” in the last vernal equinox (1898). The lunar chronology finishes the “Gentile times” seven years ago; the calendar chronology, thirty-five years hence, and the solar chronology, in seventy years. If we take Daniel’s tribulation period, forty five years, to intervene between the rapture of the Bride and the coming of the King, we may certainly be on the constant lookout, because by the majority of chronologists the coming of the Lord to steal away His Bride is over-due. That we are living in the time of the end of the Gentile dispensation and in the Millennial dawn, is certainly indubitable.

THE HOLY GHOST HIMSELF, THE POWER 8. “But you shall receive power of the Holy Ghost having come on you.” The English version gives this very incorrectly, “you shall receive power after that the Holy Ghost has come upon you.” You find it beautifully corrected in the Revised version. I have heard and read many sermons from this text exhorting the people to seek power after the Holy Ghost had come on them. All this leads to superstition and fanaticism. The plain revelation is that the Holy Ghost Himself is the power, and there is no other. So never seek power, but seek the Holy Ghost Himself. When you have Him you have all the power you need to do anything that God wants you to do. So you have nothing to do but to get thoroughly sanctified and filled with the Holy Ghost, abide in Him, obey, and be true. So long as you thus abide, responsive to the gentle voice of the indwelling Comforter, verifying His will revealed by His Spirit, Word and providence, you will have all the power you need to do your whole duty, because you have Omnipotence to check on at will. After we are filled with the Holy Ghost we grow with paradoxical rapidity, and thus, with spiritual enlargement, become more and more capacious of God. Consequently, we should be always reaching for a more copious enduement of the Holy Ghost, ever seeking Him and depending on Him alone to impart the needed power. The word translated “power” here is not identical with the word “power” in the preceding verse.

There it is exousia , “authority”; here it is dunamis , “dynamite.” Hence, the literal reading: “You shall receive dynamite of the Holy Ghost having come on you”; i .e ., if you will receive the Holy Ghost as a personal, indwelling Sanctifier and abiding Comforter, He will supply you with all the dynamite you need to blow all sin out of you and to qualify you to blow up the Devil’s kingdom wherever you go, and enjoy an everlasting victory in your heart and life.

TESTIMONY “And you shall be my witnesses in Jerusalem, and in all Judea, and in Samaria, and unto the uttermost of the earth.” Here we see the beautifully defined and ordinary phenomena of the indwelling Holy Ghost. Such people are saved from false modesty and tormenting cowardice, so they are always ready to testify anywhere and everywhere. They have faith in the Holy Ghost to give them words. So they do not wait to study up something to say, but are always ready to open their mouths and meekly witness to the mighty works of God in their souls. The fallen churches are dumb like graveyards. The Pentecostal churches are vocal like graveyards on the resurrection morn, when tombs are bursting and saints leaping into the air with roaring shouts of victory. Dumb religion is the devil’s counterfeit.

God’s genuine opens the mouth and keeps it open.

THE ASCENSION 9-11. This is the grand climacteric fact of this chapter, suitable to impress it on the memory as the Ascension chapter. When I was at Jerusalem I was never satisfied walking over Mount Olivet where Jesus walked so much.

Whenever I had a leisure hour I would run away to Calvary or to Olivet, or to both. The memorable spot where the feet of my Lord did last tread the earth, how unutterably hallowed! That sacred Spot is left unencumbered with any superstructure to this day. It is free for the weary feet of loving pilgrims from all lands to tread. About ten paces from it a beautiful stone tower two hundred feet high has been erected for the accommodation of the Lord’s pilgrims who are anxious to follow Him just as far as possible in His upward flight. How I was delighted to climb that tower to its summit!

There I stood gazing up into the blue ethereal firmament of a Palestinian sky through which my Lord did fly away, and leave the world in darkness to mourn His absence and sigh for His return. As I gazed skywardly I imagined that I saw the opening heavens and the glory radiating from the shining presence of my descending King. The trumpet reverberated in my ears, and I saw old Mount Olivet bestudded all over with the tombs of patriarchs, prophets, saints and martyrs, breaking into fragments, thus liberating the long-imprisoned saints, leaping into the air and ascending with tremendous shouts to meet their glorious Lord. I enjoyed climbing that tower; but I did not like to come down. I longed for my wings, to fly away along the shining ethereal track whither my Lord had ascended up to Heaven. 11. “And they said, Galilean men, why stand ye gazing up into Heaven?

The same Jesus who was taken up from you into Heaven will so come in the manner in which you saw Him going into Heaven.” Such was the testimony of those radiant angels whose effulgent glory flashed out on the astounded multitude standing on the summit of Mount Olivet and witnessing the glorious ascension of our Lord. He went up amid the clouds, bright and glorious (as there are no rain clouds in Jerusalem in the summer time); so He will come again, riding on a brilliant white cloud, bright as the lightning. He went up accompanied by hosts of angels as well as redeemed spirits. So He will return, attended by mighty hosts of unfallen angels and all the disembodied spirits of the Bridehood, returning to the earth to receive their risen and glorified bodies. Zechariah beautifully corroborates the testimony of these angels: “His feet shall stand again upon Mount Olivet.” This is grand and conclusive, assuring us beyond the possibility of cavil that the very same transfigured and glorified body of Jesus which flew up from Mount Olivet is coming back again to put His feet on that mountain summit. The word of the Lord is unmistakable. The same Jesus who rode over Mount Olivet on the donkey is going to ride down on a cloud and put His glorified feet on the spot He evacuated to fly away to heaven. The very same Jesus who hung on the cross is going to sit on the throne.

THE UPPER CHAMBER 12, 13. The walled city of Jerusalem is a quadrangle about twice as long from east to west as wide from north to south. The population is now estimated at fifty thousand, the city without the wall containing the same, though occupying a much larger territory and growing rapidly, as the space within the wall is all densely filled up, crammed and crowded. The walled city stands on a great mountainous table-land, the four prominences of which are Mount Zion, in the southwest; Mount Moriah, in the southeast; Mount Bazetha, in the northeast, and Mount Akra, in the northwest.

Jerusalem is by nature the most impregnably fortified city on the globe, the Almighty with His own hand having prepared the site, high up on those great mountains, environed by the deep mountain gorges, designated the valleys of Gihon, Hinnom, Jehoshaphat, and Kidron, completely encompassing the city (really constituting one continuous abyss on all sides except the north). Hence invading armies in all ages have been utterly unable to approach the city except from the north. As it is the city of the Heavenly King, all the kings of the earth in all ages, conscious of the rivalry between this fallen world and heaven, have always held a grudge against Jerusalem and done their utmost to destroy it. Therefore Jerusalem has stood seventeen sieges and been destroyed seven times. After the Romans destroyed it, A.D. 73, the emperors, who were loyal worshipers of Jupiter, Apollo, Venus, Minerva, Diana and other Roman gods, and implacable enemies both to the Jewish and Christian religion, did their utmost to exterminate not only the existence but even the memory of Jerusalem from the annals of the world. Hence the Emperor Adrian in the second century dropped the very name “Jerusalem,” founded a Roman colony on the site, and named it Elia Capitolina, thus obliterating the very memory of God’s holy city. Two hundred years rolled away with no city on the earth called Jerusalem. When the Emperor Constantine, A.D. 325, was converted to Christianity, he and his queenly mother Helena went to Jerusalem and undertook its restoration, restoring the name and doing their utmost to identify the hallowed spots so dear and sacred to every Christian heart. Mount Olivet, east of Jerusalem, across the valleys of Jehoshaphat and Kidron, is the highest in all that region, being two hundred feet higher than Zion, Moriah, Bazenta and Akra on which Jerusalem stands. The city is so densely built as to disqualify the explorer from seeing much of it while within the walls. From the summit of Mount Olivet we enjoy a most capacious and satisfactory view of the whole city. When our Savior ascended into heaven from the summit of this mountain, pursuant to His emphatic mandate, positively prohibiting the disciples from their long cherished privilege of the world’s evangelization till they received the Pentecostal enduement of the Holy Ghost and fire, they returned to Jerusalem, “a Sabbath day’s journey” ; i .e ., three quarters of a mile.

Entering through the east wall, they travel on through the whole length of the city to that favorite upper chamber on Mt. Zion, in the southwest corner of the city, which memories had already hallowed, because Jesus had there so frequently edified them in His wonderful Bible-school. In this upper chamber not only the twelve apostles, but one hundred and eight disciples, male and female, assembled. Among them, the mother of Jesus and His brothers. 14. Our Lord’s brothers [doubtless the sons of Joseph by a former marriage], James and Judas, the latter in E.V. called Jude to contradistinguish him from Judas Iscariot, who had brought disgrace on the name. These brothers of our Lord are not mentioned in the catalogue of the original twelve ( Matthew 10). There are two named James in that catalogue, but neither of them the Lord’s brother. After our Savior’s inauguration into His official Messiahship by the baptism of John, He immediately began to astonish the world by His mighty works. All classes and nationalities are electrified and bewildered by His miracles, spontaneously clamoring, “Surely this is none other than Messias, the Shiloh of prophecy, the Christ of God, the Redeemer of Israel, and the Savior of the world.” Meanwhile, His elder brothers remained somewhat reticent, soliloquizing, “This is no one but our little brother Jesus, whom we used to rock in the cradle and entertain with flowers, while mother got dinner. He was always the best and sweetest child we ever saw, and so good and industrious to help us do the work, at an early day becoming quite an expert in the carpenter-shop. We do believe that He is a mighty prophet, like Moses, Elijah, and Elisha. They wrought stupendous miracles. But to say that He is the Christ of God, the Shiloh of prophecy, the Redeemer of Israel, and the Savior of the world, is certainly going too far. He is just one of us, and nobody but our own dear little brother.” Therefore His elder brothers, James and Jude, stand aloof and contemplate all the mighty works of their brother Jesus, till He is arrested, nailed to the cross, and they see Him expire. Then they say, “Our precious brother ventured too far; He had great power, to be sure; but He made a mistake in venturing so far as to let His enemies get their hands on him. So now he is dead.” But when they see Him walk out of the sepulcher and fly up to heaven, they utterly break down and fall into line with tremendous shouts of victory, “Glory to God in the highest, the thing is settled forever; after all, our dear brother Jesus is all that His disciples ever claimed for Him. He is none other than the Shiloh of prophecy, the Christ of God, the Redeemer of Israel, and the Savior of the world.” The Apostles hail the Lord’s brothers a happy welcome into the apostleship of their Lord, and honor James, the elder of the two, with the pastorate of the Alma Mater Church at Jerusalem.

SUICIDE, SUCCESSION AND DOOM OF JUDAS 15-26. Now Peter, in his recognized seniority, proceeds to have the vacuum created by the fall of Judas Iscariot supplied. The prophecies here quoted predicting the treason of Judas, did not necessitate him to perpetrate the atrocious crime. You must bear in mind that God is not tied to the prophecies, but the prophecies to God. The prophecies are in the past tense, from the simple fact that they are histories in anticipation, seen by the Omniscient Eye, with whom all events in all ages are present. Christ came into the world to die, a substitute for fallen humanity. If Judas had never been born, Jesus would have died a ransom for a lost world just the same.

In verse 17 we learn that Judas received a lot of the apostolic ministry. We can not conclude that our Savior ever sent out a sinner or a devil to preach His holy gospel. John 6:70: “Have I not chosen you twelve, and one of you is a devil?” If you will notice the gospel harmony you will find these words were spoken after about two years of the apostolic ministry had passed away. Unfortunately, Judas was the apostolical treasurer and financier, — a very dangerous office. The love of money fought Jacob with desperation twenty years, and would have conquered and sent him to hell if he had not triumphed in the Peniel experience after that memorable night of prayer, when the love of money and all other phases of depravity were sanctified out of him. We doubt not but poor Judas has an alarming ministerial following at the present day. Could you uncap the bottomless pit and look down upon Judas, doubtless you would see him surrounded by multiplied thousands of preachers and church officials who were ruined by the love of money, sold out their Lord for filthy lucre, and made their bed in hell. Jesus condemns the hireling shepherd and says he will play the coward when the wolf comes. No wonder Satan’s wolves at the present day are making awful havoc, slaying, devouring and scattering the Lord’s sheep when a hireling ministry is the established order of all ecclesiasticisms. Judas sold Jesus for fifteen dollars. Many a preacher nowadays sells Him for fifteen hundred, and not a few for fifteen thousand.

I seriously doubt whether any other apostle has a larger ministerial following than Judas. Reader, beware of filthy lucre; it sent an apostle to hell! There is no disharmony between Matthew and Luke as to the suicide of Judas, and their dissimilarity of phraseology but clinches the argument in favor of the veracity of both, as there is no probability that either had seen the record of the other. The statement in E.V. that Judas repented is not correct. When man repents in the true Bible sense, God always forgives, because a genuine repentance is the work of the Holy Ghost and the infallible antecedent to a free pardon. If Judas had repented, he would have been forgiven and saved. The Greek word does not mean repent, but “flooded with remorse,” an actual prelude of hell torment, so utterly intolerable as to precipitate him into suicide. For the same reason millions besides Judas have hurried to end their misery by suicide, a stratagem of the devil to expedite their damnation. Amid this horrific and unbearable remorse, Judas, seeking in vain to rescind the contract, throws down the money in the temple and runs away off to a rugged precipice beyond the deep valley of Hinnom [pointed out to me by my guide when I was there in 1895] with furious expedition, gets hold of a rope too weak to bear his robust, corpulent, Jewish body, ties it round his neck, swings off from the precipice, the rope breaks, he falls precipitately on the great rocks beneath, bursting in twain, as the Greek says, with a great noise, all of his internal organs gushing out. Thus he dies a most horrible death, weltering in his own blood. The popular superstition recognized the spot on which he fell as polluted, and, in modern parlance, haunted and unfit for human occupancy.

Hence, they satisfy the proprietor by paying for it with Judas’s money which he had thrown down in the temple, and erect on it a sepulcher for the interment of the homeless and friendless dying at Jerusalem. 20. “His episcopacy let another take.” Here we find that Judas was a bishop, like all the other apostles. The New Testament bishop is simply a pastor of the flock of Christ, the original word being episcopos from epi , “over,” and scopeoo , “see.” Hence it simply means an overseer, and applies legitimately and unequivocally to every class-leader, leader of a Holiness band or pastor in charge of a little bunch of Christians. The modern episcopacy is utterly unknown in the New Testament, and certainly a mistake in church economy, as out of it has developed priestcraft, prelacy, popery and the institutions of Antichrist which have girdled the globe with the abominations of spiritual Babylon. These facts do not necessarily preclude the legitimacy and the expediency of a judicious and Scriptural superintendency. They recognize but one qualification for the apostleship, and that is primitive and persevering discipleship with Jesus throughout His entire ministry. Now they present two candidates, both well qualified, and turn over the election to the Holy Ghost. The casting of lots, customary in that day, innocent, simple and recognized of God, was equivalent to drawing straws, a very simple and common method of decision at the present day. The lot having fallen on Matthias, he is at once recognized as a legal apostle, filling the vacancy created by the fall of Judas. This whole transaction has been severely criticized and condemned by theologians as destitute of divine authority, at the same time alleging that Matthias never served as an apostle, as we never hear of him afterward. This argument breaks down of its own weight, as the same may be said of the majority of the other apostles. Paul, with his vast learning, as a matter of course wrote up his ministry; while, for the very opposite reason, the other apostles wrote nothing, except four, and some of them but little; while we are dependent on secular history for our knowledge of the life, ministry and destiny of the majority. History informs us that Matthias entered courageously upon his great and responsible work. During the destruction of Jerusalem, A.D. 73, all the apostles, being Jews, with all other Jews and Christians who were nearly all Jews at that time, being driven out of Palestine went in all directions preaching the Word, doubtless like Paul each of them seeking a new field where he would build on no man’s foundation.

Matthias went on preaching, taking Africa for his field of labor, wandering far away into Abyssinia, where he preached faithfully till he was honored with a martyr’s crown. Mark also went to Africa and finally suffered martyrdom in Alexandria, Egypt, being dragged by a cruel mob through the streets till he expired. Matthew also spent his life preaching in Africa, finally suffering martyrdom in a city of Ethiopia. Luke, the faithful writer of this book, was hung on an olive tree in Greece. Paul was beheaded by order of Nero, about one mile west of the Roman wall. Peter was crucified on the Campus Martins in Rome, with his head downward. Andrew became the apostle of Armenia, where he faithfully preached till they crucified him on a transverse cross. Philip was crucified in Asia Minor.

Bartholomew preached faithfully in Phrygia till ordered by the king to leave his country forever. Failing to obey the order, the enraged monarch had him skinned alive. Jude, the brother of our Lord, wandered far away into Northwestern Asia, preaching in Tartary and perhaps in China till they put him to death by tying him up to a tree and shooting his body full of arrows.

James the Greater, the son of Zebedee and brother of John, was beheaded by Herod Antipas. James the Less, the son of Alphaeus, was precipitated from a pinnacle of the temple in Jerusalem, and then beaten to death with a fuller’s club. Thomas the doubter, all of his doubts and cowardice having been burned up when he received the fiery baptism, preached his way far out into India, where he faithfully preached and witnessed for Jesus till his enemies ran a cruel iron bar through his body and hung him up between two trees, thus complimenting him with a martyr’s crown. 25. “To receive a place of this ministry and apostleship, from which Judas departed to go into his own place.” So long as Judas was true to the ministry and apostleship of our Lord, he enjoyed a place in the kingdom of God. Unfortunately, Satan pulls and pulls incessantly on the mighty Archimedian lever of money-love, till he finally maneuvers to tilt him away from the safe anchorage of our Lord’s ministry and apostleship, the divine image evanescing from his heart and the Heavenly Dove retreating away.

Then Satan comes in and pollutes his spirit through and through, obliterating every trace of heavenly congeniality and fitting him only for hell. Just as Holiness gravitates all its possessors into heaven, their own place, where they meet none but congenial spirits; even so doth sin gravitate its victim hellwardly, till, like a millstone round his neck, it drags him into the bottomless pit, “his own place,” where everything and all the inmates are alike polluted with sin, and where alone in all the realms of eternal worlds, the sinner can find congeniality. The sinner has his own hell in him and carries it with him into hell. If he were to go to heaven he would carry his hell in him into the city of God. With hell in him, though in heaven, he would doubtless be, if possible, more miserable than in hell; so that even in heaven he would be irreconcilably dissatisfied and wretched so that he would long to get away, and, like the fallen apostle, go to “his own place.”

CHAPTER - PENTECOST 1. The Kairites (so named from the Greek word which means time and occurs in the phrase “times and seasons”) are scholarly critics who make times and seasons a specialty of investigation. These tell us the day of Pentecost was Sunday. Our Savior was crucified on Friday, April 14th.

This would make Pentecost the first Sunday in June, and the notable epoch on which the dispensation of the Holy Ghost was inaugurated. The celebrated Dr. Gordon denominated Pentecost “the birth of the Holy Ghost.” Though this strikes us as strange phraseology, yet it is not without a degree of plausibility. Of course, such a statement does not ignore the preexistence of the Holy Ghost, as He is none other than the very and eternal God, co-existent with the Almighty from all eternity. The same is equally true of the Son; yet He was born in Bethlehem. The Son of God was as real in the old dispensation as in the new, excarnate in the former and incarnate in the latter; but just as truly a Savior of the antediluvian as of the present generation. Before Pentecost the Holy Ghost was in the world in all ages; but it may be said that He operated on human hearts extrinsically, i .e ., from without. E .g ., while the minstrel played, the Holy Ghost came on the Jewish prophet. When Samson arose and shook himself the Spirit of God came mightily on him. As the Son of God when born in Bethlehem came into a human body, so the Holy Ghost in the day of Pentecost came into the bodies of the disciples, thus incarnating Himself in human bodies and inaugurating His own dispensation, whose crowning glory is the incarnation of the Holy Ghost. When the Holy Ghost radically purifies a human spirit and moves into it, thus incarnating Himself in a human being, a new order of administration and operation at once supervenes, in which the incarnated Holy Spirit operates intrinsically, i .e ., from within upon the external world, using the person thus occupied as a medium, spiritual, intellectual and physical, to transmit His omnipotent heavenly influences to all with whom He comes in contact. Hence you see that the incarnation was an indispensable prerequisite to make the church truly aggressive in the conquest of the world to Christ. Hence our Savior told His disciples that they would do greater works after He had gone to His Father; because He must go up and receive the Father’s approval of His expiation of a guilty world before the divine administration can be magnified by the incarnation of the Holy Ghost in the people of this world. This is really the glorious earnest of the grand restitution. When the Holy Ghost thus incarnates Himself in a human being, He brings in the “age to come” ( Hebrews 6:5), i .e ., the millennium, a prelibation of the glorious millennial reign of our descended Lord. The grand ultimatum of the gospel dispensation is this incarnation of the Holy Ghost, in which we are actually married to Him (because He is none other than the Spirit of Jesus), and this spiritual wedlock verifies the Bridehood of Christ, anticipatory of the glorious celebration of the heavenly nuptials in the presence of the Father and multiplied millions of unfallen angels at the marriage supper of the Lamb in heaven, which shall immediately follow the rapture of the bride, for which we are this day in constant outlook. Our Lord ascended into heaven on Thursday. Flooded with the thrilling anticipations of His glorious prophetical fulfillments in the descension and incarnation of the Holy Ghost, they go away to their mission hall on Mount Zion, thrilled with jubilant expectations. Some think the Lord will honor His ascension day and send the Comforter before the sun goes down. In this they are mistaken, and a night of prayer brings deep illuminations into their hearts.

Friday, ever memorable for the crucifixion of our Lord and the redemption of the world, brings a new inspiration to the rising tide of faith, intensified by Peter’s fervent exhortation: “Surely this is the glorious day when our Lord will baptize us with the Holy Ghost and fire!” Friday is fled and gone, and Saturday, the good old Jewish Sabbath, ushers in. James and John are eloquent, thrilling all with their inspiring exhortations: “Surely our Lord will honor the good old Sabbath of Moses and the prophets, and augment the hallowed memories of this glorious day by sending down the promised enduement.” Another night of prayer conduces to grander spiritual illuminations. Sunday ushers in. Mary’s eyes sparkle while eloquent inspiration leaps from her lips: “Surely our Lord will honor the glorious day of most hallowed memory when He broke the fetters of the tomb and arose triumphant over sin, death and hell!” These wonderful days, clustered about with the ineffaceable memories of stupendous miracles, unspeakably sacred to every loving disciple, have all flown away, and “hope deferred maketh the heart sad.” Monday ushers in, fraught with no inspiring memories.

Now prostrate on the floor they cry to God. The Holy Ghost, with the effulgent lamp of His infallible scrutiny, goes down into the profound subterranean regions of their fallen spirits, revealing to Peter his cowardice, to Thomas his doubts, to James and John their ambition, and to all the dark dens of hissing serpents, the dismal lairs of roaring lions, the filthy kennels of snapping dogs and the loathsome bogs of croaking frogs, swelling toads and poisonous scorpions, constituting the dismal debris of inbred sin, the Satanic heredity of Adam the first. Tuesday follows, redeemed by no hallowed memories. So they sink deeper into the dismal subterranean regions of original sin, contemplating with unspeakable mortification the gorgon horrors of hereditary depravity revealed to the quickened spiritual eye by the infallible Heart-Searcher. Wednesday is commemorated by a deeper sinking out of self and still profounder illuminations revealing the horrors of inbred sin. That day is commemorated in the experience of many reaching bottom-rock. Thursday ushers in like a sun-burst from a world of clouds. Many exclaim, “Glory to God, for the triumphant ascension of our Lord on this hallowed day one week ago!” Mary in advance of her dispensation had known the sweet experience of entire sanctification, sitting at the feet of Jesus, felicitously oblivious of all the world; as had Nathanael, an “Israelite indeed, in whom there is no guile.” Fortunately, these two disciples stand on the high plane of cloudless sunshine beneath the clear sky of Beulah land, roaring inspiring shouts to their brothers and sisters amid the swellings of Jordan’s terrifying floods. Old Peter is one of the first to heed the inspiring appeals of Mary and Nathanael, and dares to walk out in naked faith and trust the cleansing blood radically and thoroughly to purify his heart from all the vacillations and cowardice which had flooded him with intolerable disgrace ( Acts 15:9). John, with brilliant countenance, swings clear by faith alone. Now they follow in platoons. Finally, doubting Thomas, with faltering tread, dares to set down his foot on Jordan’s stormy billow. Friday floods them all with the ineffaceable memories of Calvary, when the Lord redeemed the world by His flowing blood. Hence, the blood has honored that memorable day from dewy morn till dusky eve. It is significantly a day of victory. Saturday, the good old Jewish Sabbath, literally signifying the perfect rest of the soul in Jesus, is truly a crowning day on the battlefield of faith so memorable the last nine days. Wonderful and glorious is the soul rest into which they sink away. The second Sunday morning of those memorable ten days now gilds the Oriental skies, while the fair-fingered Aurora, the daughter of the dawn, is moving on tip-toe over great Mount Olivet. This is our Lord’s glorious resurrection day. The battle has been fought on the bloody fields of consecration and faith and a ten days’ prayer-meeting without intermission. They have gone down to the bottom-rock of Consecration and prayed up to the triumphant altitudes of Faith. The battle is fought, the victory won and Hope has spread her eagle pinions ready for her celestial flight. They have spent the ten days on their knees and prostrate on the floor. But they are done praying. They have prayed up to the highlands, where heavenly visions, in seraphic splendor, roll in floods of unearthly glory, inundating that memorable mission-room with an electrical panorama of the long-anticipated descending Comforter.

Hark! the roar of a cyclone fills the firmament. Behold! forked-tongues of flaming fire sit on every brow and flood the room with an unearthly illumination. That mission-room can no longer hold the fire-baptized one hundred and twenty. What a stampede down stairs! all mouths wide open, stentorian voices roaring like lions, arouse the city, and one hundred thousand people rush from all directions to see what is the matter. I visited a great convocation of scholarly clergymen and high-steeple officials with long plug hats, sleek coats, tooth-pick shoes and golden-headed canes, with long faces and lugubrious countenances and deep sighs, consulting either with other, “How to reach the masses.” Here the problem is solved once for all. Get the baptism of the Holy Ghost and fire and they will reach you.

You need no advertisement but the stentorian shout of new-born souls and Spirit-filled pilgrims. Peter’s seniority is recognized in his leadership, complimented with the first gospel sermon on that wonderful occasion. O, that sermon! of which Luke gives us but a brief epitome. It was a clap of thunder from beginning to end, sheet-lightning flooded with dynamite.

Modesty and cowardice have been burnt up with the fire of the Holy Ghost.

So the illiterate fisherman faces kings and potentates, the combined authorities of church and state, panoplied by all the persecutionary power of earth and hell, and without a flicker looks them squarely in the face and arraigns them at the judgment bar of God Almighty, charged with the murder of His Son, the Savior of the world. The countless multitude stands appalled, as if the archangel of doom had come down and was blowing his mighty trumpet, waking the dead and gathering the world to the judgmentbar.

Amid the forked lightnings of this first gospel sermon, preached without preparation, grammar or logic, thousands fall prostrate, as if a battery of a hundred cannons had been simultaneously turned on them.

They make Jerusalem roar and reverberate, “What must we do?” Now that the lightning of conviction has sent panic to listening myriads, immediately the hundred and twenty-five baptized men and women disperse in all directions, preaching with the Holy Ghost sent down from heaven. Do you see Mary Magdalene mounted on David’s tomb preaching to the thunderriven multitude falling round her and crying for mercy? Look at Thomas the doubter, his doubts all burned up with Holy Ghost fire, standing on the wall of Jerusalem, with a voice like a lion, preaching to the appalled multitude! O, that wonderful day! never to be forgotten, memorialized by the incarnation of the Holy Ghost. The world had never seen such a day since from Sinai’s melting summit, amid lightning bolts, deafening thunder and heaving earthquakes, Jehovah God came down and launched the Mosaic dispensation. Again He is come in the culminating miracles of fiery Pentecost to inaugurate the last dispensation, destined to prepare the world for the glorious theocracy, never to go into eclipse.

TONGUES OF FIRE 3. The tongue symbolizes the gospel whose dispensation is here and now inaugurated. God has never given but one definition of His minister, — “a flame of fire” ( Hebrews 1:7). Satan is the great counterfeiter. He counterfeits everything that God does, in that way fooling the people till he can dump them into hell. The world is to-day chock full of the devil’s religion, in which he deceives people by millions, Pagans, Moslems, Papists and Protestants, making them believe he is God. Despite all the chicanery of hell, honest Bible readers, illuminated by the Holy Ghost, have no trouble to detect the devil’s counterfeit. The way to heaven is so plain “that wayfaring men, though fools, shall not err therein” ( Isaiah 35). God’s gospel is all fire. We need two tongues to preach it, corresponding with the two great works of grace in the plan of salvation.

As we see here, both these tongues are flames of fire; the one to preach hellfire to alarm them, bring them to repentance and keep them out of hell; and the other to preach heavenly fire to Christians to sanctify them wholly with the real fiery baptism, burning out of them everything that will not do for heaven, and thus sanctifying them wholly to dwell in the glorified presence of God, world without end. The most stupid ignoramus can discriminate between fire and ice. It is equally easy for honest people to distinguish between God’s religion and Satan’s. The former burns up all sin and fills you with heavenly fire, while the latter freezes you into an iceberg. The devil’s religion freezes you here and burns you in hell through all eternity.

Good Lord, have mercy on the north-pole churches, with their icebergy members and their cultured pastors. Who can contemplate the wholesale delusions of the devil in the icebergy churches and not recognize the awful fulfillment of the latter-day prophecies of our blessed Savior? “Because iniquity doth abound the love of many shall wax cold.

WITH THE HOLY GHOST 4. In the old dispensation the Holy Ghost operated extrinsically in the people. It is the crowning glory of the gospel dispensation to be filled with the Holy Ghost, in which case He operates on us intrinsically. The law must be satisfied before the glorious Retribution, back to the Edenic state in which God filled Adam and Eve like angels, can take place. The incarnation of the Son defeated the devil and magnified the violated law; thus sweeping every difficulty out of the way and lifting the flood-gate of perfect love to pour its Niagaras of full salvation into the consecrated believing heart.

Hence the crowning glory of the Pentecostal dispensation is the filling of the heart with the Holy Ghost. We find the gospel standard uniformly recognized throughout the history of the apostolic church. It was not only the indispensable qualification of the gospel herald, but it was a sine qua non in the deacon, entrusted with the temporal interests of the church, as well as the eldership, charged with the graver responsibilities of the immortal soul. At this point Satan long ago maneuvered to derail and thus blast the purity and blight the glory of the Christian Church; seducing the fair Bride of Christ to receive his black hand in wedlock, deck herself in all the ornamentation of the world, and verify the horrific prophecies pertaining to the harlot of Babylon. Revelation, 12th and 17th chapters. If the church had remained true to the Pentecostal doctrines and experiences she would long ago have enjoyed the honor of conquering the world and bringing back her glorified spouse to be crowned King of kings and Lord of lords. The filling is impossible unless preceded by a radical emptying, a complete evacuation of our spiritual being by all evil. This is the negative experience under the cleansing blood, the invariable antecedent of the glorious positive experience, i .e ., the impletion of the Holy Ghost. If you are true to the infallible Monitor, you can always have at your command the needed information relative to this glorious and extraordinary experience, as He is sure to reveal to you an emptiness in your heart, “an aching void” the world can never fill. Spirit filled people alone constitute the Bridehood of Christ ( Matthew 25). Our Lord proposes to rule the world during the coming millennial age through the instrumentality of His Spirit-filled, transfigured Bride ( Revelation 20:6). He is now depending on the Spirit filled members of the Bridehood to preach the gospel of the glorious coming kingdom to all nations, calling out the elect and thus preparing the world for His glorious return to reign in righteousness ( Matthew 24:14). Reader, I abjure you, by the infinite value of your soul and the infinitesimal glories of the coming kingdom, that you get truly filled with the Holy Ghost and by doubtless faith and martyr obedience keep filled, on tiptoe watching and waiting to hail your Lord descending on a cloud ( Revelation 1:7).

DOUBLE MIRACLE 5-9. On this occasion an unprecedented double miracle was wrought by the Holy Ghost on not only the speakers but all the hearers. This double miracle moved like a span of cyclones through the multitude, bringing the gospel with lightning velocity and unerring intelligibility to all. On the speakers was miraculously conferred the power to speak in all of the languages represented in that vast cosmopolitan assembly. Those “ignorant and unlearned” men and women preached fluently in languages which they knew not. Of course they knew substantially and experimentally what they were preaching, but they did not know the words and sentences they spoke.

In their dispersions the hundred and twenty men and women, all preaching with the Holy Ghost sent down from heaven, spoke in the language of the people with whom they were providentially associated. An illiterate disciple happens to encounter a multitude of people speaking the Coptic language, as they were citizens of Egypt. She preaches fluently in Coptic, though she knows not a word of it. Bartholomew happens to encounter a multitude from Rome speaking the Latin language, of which he knows not a word, yet he preaches fluently in Latin. Thus there is a thorough accommodation to all the dialect vicissitudes of that cosmopolitan audience. As Peter was the leading speaker and the Greek not only the vernacular of the apostles, but the great learned language of the world, of course he delivered that memorable introductory sermon in that language. Then the hundred and twenty, dispersing in all directions, preached with the Holy Ghost sent down from heaven in the language of the people they providentially met.

But there is another hemisphere of this wonderful double miracle wrought by the Holy Ghost in unutterable mercy to expedite the inauguration of the gospel dispensation and give it a supernatural impetus at the beginning, a glorious earnest of the coming millennium, as the filling of the heart with the Holy Ghost is really the millennial reign in the soul. Now the second hemisphere of this glorious miracle was wrought on that vast multitude “from every nation under heaven.” The supernatural power of the Holy Ghost wrought with the multitude a qualification in each human spirit, quickening the intellect and enabling every person to hear in his own native language. 8. E .g ., while Peter was preaching in Greek the Parthian heard him in his native Chaldaic tongue, the Median, the Elamite and the Mesopotamian each heard in his own native dialect. And regardless of the language spoken by any One, every auditor heard in his own language. To human apprehension this was miraculous superfluity, as either of these miracles covered all the ground, and to our diagnosis precluded the necessity of the other. But in this double miracle we have a wonderful manifestation of the divine beneficence and the superabundance of redeeming grace ( Romans 5:20).

This double miracle largely accounts for the paradoxical efficiency of the gospel on that wonderful occasion when the world saw a brilliant prelude, adumbrating the ineffable glories of the coming kingdom.

THE LOST TRIBES OF ISRAEL NOT LOST 9-12. Volumes have been written, and weary eyes amid nocturnal lucubrations have toiled through the intervening ages hunting the lost tribes of Israel. It is rather a joke on the hypercriticism characteristic of modern times. The Bible is the book of all books. When John Wesley got sanctified he says he became “Homo unius libri ,” — a man of one book. All other books must bend to the Bible, and they are only valuable as they corroborate and elucidate the Word of God. You have nothing to do but look at these verses and examine your dictionary, and you will find the socalled lost tribes all gloriously represented in this great national campmeeting, i .e ., the Pentecostal festival commemorative of the giving of the law on Mt. Sinai. The Jews had three great national camp meetings at Jerusalem every year, i .e ., Passover in April, commemorative of the emancipation out of Egyptian bondage, Pentecost in June, celebrious of the wonderful birth of the Mosaic dispensation, and the Feast of Tabernacles in September, reminiscent of their gratitude to God for His abundant harvests.

The Jews are the people of God’s providence; and consequently always have been and always will be the most enterprising people in the world.

This day, though long driven from their own country, vagabonds among all nations, persecuted, scathed and pealed, they stand at the front of the world’s finances and rule the great kings of the earth, and through them the nations buy their money power. Only fifty thousand returned out of Babylonian captivity, responsive to the proclamation of Cyrus, under the leadership of Nehemiah. When I was in Palestine three years ago there were a hundred and twenty thousand there, in contrast with only ten thousand ten years previously. Thus we see how rapidly, in fulfillment of the prophecies of the latter days, they are gathering home. You have but to look at this Scripture and you will see that the Jews from every land of their captivity are here represented. In the old dispensation, as well as in modern times, the Jews migrated into all countries, and settled among all nations, pursuant to their industrial enterprises. Bear in mind once for all that this is a Jewish meeting in the metropolis of the Jewish world, and Gentiles have nothing to do with it. In reading your Bible you inadvertently leap to the conclusion that these different nations here mentioned are Gentiles, which is not true; they are “Jews and proselytes” (ver. 10). There is no mention of a Gentile in this vast assembly. The apostles and disciples are all Jews, the natives are all Jews, as are the visitors, as none but Jews came to the great national and ecclesiastical assemblies. Of course, there might have been a few Roman Gentiles incidentally there, but there is no mention of them. Who are the Parthians? They are Jewish delegates, bona fide members of the Mosaic church all the way from far-off Parthia, tenaciously adhering to the covenant of Abraham. Where is Parthia? It is a country in Persia, into which the Jews were carried in the Babylonian captivity. As only a small remnant returned under Nehemiah, the balance being settled and engaged in business so they did not see proper to leave, it does not follow that they repudiated the religion of their fathers; but on the contrary they stuck to it through all these intervening centuries, and now we find their delegates sent by their synagogues in the far-off land of their captivity and their adopted country. 9. Who are the Elamites? They are Jews from Elam, a country in Persia.

Who are the Medians? They are Jews from Media, a great country bordering on Persia and the Caspian Sea. These are the very countries into which they were carried in their Babylonian captivity. Now you see, instead of being lost, they have perpetuated their fidelity to the religion of their fathers through these seven hundred years since the first Babylonian captivity under Shalmanezer, and here we see their faithful delegates at Jerusalem in their places in the great national camp-meeting away down at the end of the Jewish dispensation. Follow this catalogue of names and you will find, as it says, that the Jews are here from “every nation under heaven” (verse 5). Whereas, the great problem of the lost tribes is poetical rather than real, one thing is true, and that is, that during their captivities they lost their tribehood, so that they did not return in their tribal identities and organizations. Doubtless many of the ten tribes returned with Judah and Benjamin in the exodus of Nehemiah, while countless numbers of Judah and Benjamin remained in the countries of their captivity. You must remember that the period of oppression expired very quickly after their captivity, under the conquest of Cyrus, the Medo-Persian who destroyed the Babylonian Empire, and not only emancipated all the Jews but rebuilt the temple with his own money. Of course, the Jews who remained were no longer in captivity, but bona fide and honored citizens of the Persian Empire. Therefore, while they lost their tribehood they retained their identity as loyal members of the house of Abraham; and the very fact that we see them all represented in this grand religious convocation away down at the end of the Jewish dispensation is demonstrative proof that they had retained their membership and perpetuated their fidelity to the Jewish religion through all of these ages. The Jews, by reason of their enterprise, had settled in all the prominent cities of the known world during the old dispensation, which in that respect is a grand dumbration of the new. The Jews in all ages are God’s peculiar people, whether under the smiles of loving approval or under the awful castigatory rod of His righteous judgments. Just as the Jews at the close of the Mosaic dispensation were dwelling in every country under heaven, and thus representing it, so they are now dwelling beneath every sky, speaking every language and dialect, cultured in the institutions of every nation, and thus under the providential hand of Abraham’s God, they are now in a wonderful though mysterious manner being prepared for the metropolitanship of the globe, when the elect remnant will be gathered from the ends of the earth, rebuild Jerusalem, receive with shouts of welcome their own glorious descending King, and come again as in former days to the front of the world, there to abide during the glorious theocracy which shall girdle the globe with salvation and holiness unto the Lord. Thus in the present age, God in a wonderful manner, in the dispersion and culture of the Jews in every nation under heaven, is preparing them for the millennial metropolitanship of all nations.

We must remember that the primitive church was all Jews, including apostles, disciples and converts. Here we have a catalogue of the most prominent nations of Asia, Africa and Europe, all represented by their delegates from the Jewish synagogues in their midst. These delegates represent all Israel in their dispersion, throughout the inhabitable globe. The very fact of their presence in this great national and ecclesiastical convocation, which has existed since the days of Moses, is demonstrative of their identity with the Jewish Church and nation during all by-gone centuries, seven hundred years since their first deportation into Babylon.

Away with the chimera of the “lost tribes.” They were not lost then; neither are they now lost. They simply lost their tribehood, which in no way affected the integrity of Israel. So is their tribehood still lost. We seldom now find a Jew in the Old or New World who knows to what tribe he belongs. In the final gathering into Palestine, only a remnant will come home ( Romans 9:27) but doubtless in that remnant all of the tribes will be represented, though they know it not.

ALL DRUNKEN 13. The E.V. says, “of new wine.” A mistake. Oinos , “new wine,” the simple grape juice, an innocent, reviving, nutritious drink, does not here occur: but glencos , “fermented wine,” which was a slow intoxicant. Satan had not yet invented alcoholic wine, the intoxicant of the present day. That oinos , “new”, wine, was what Paul recommended to Timothy for his health, as a valuable sanitary drink. The alcoholic wine of the present day would have made them drunk by nine o’clock, which was too early for their fermented wine to take effect, whereas the oinos , the simple expressed juice of the grape, was not an intoxicant.

LAST DAYS 15-18. Peter proves by Joel the fulfillment of the latter-day prophecies on that notable occasion. The Edenic dispensation has come and gone, winding up with the terrible calamity of the Fall. The Antediluvian dispensation ran its race and went into the dark eclipse of Noah’s flood. The Patriarchal culminated in Egyptian slavery, the awful plagues and the destruction in the Red Sea. The Mosaic launched from Sinai is now tottering like a drunken man and hastening to its awful slaughter by the Roman armies. Even the dispensation of our Savior’s ministry, a wicked world and a fallen church united to obliterate in the bloody tragedy of Calvary. On this notable day, as Peter proves by Joel, the last dispensation is inaugurated. It is the climacteric glory of all, since the plan of salvation emanated from Eden under the preaching of Jehovah, i .e ., the Excarnate Christ. The effulgent glory of this dispensation shines out in the faces of Spirit-filled saints. Man enjoyed the indwelling God before sin entered. Christ came to destroy the works of the devil ( John 3:8). Hence, humanity must get back to the Edenic glory of the indwelling God. Christ must be incarnated an as expiatory Sufferer under the law, before the Holy Ghost can be incarnated as an indwelling Sanctifier. Hence the descension and incarnation of the Holy Ghost is confirmatory proof of the validity of Christ’s atonement, the perfect satisfaction of the violated law and the coronation of Christ, Mediatorial King in heaven. While in the former dispensation a prophet here and there succeeds in looking through the dim lights of type and prophecy, and by a mighty supernatural faith bounding forward into the anticipatory Pentecostal experience, now the types and symbols have all gone into the eclipse of glorious fulfillment. Not only our illiterate boys and girls, but even our servants, both male and female, are to receive the baptism with the Holy Ghost and fire, be filled with the Holy Ghost and thus become burning incarnations of the Holy Ghost, before whose martyr heroism and seraphic light, princes and potentates pale and retreat and platoons of devils stampede. Aunt Amanda Smith comes from Southern slavery, by way of the wash-tub, to the front of the gospel ministry, where the princes of America, Europe, Asia and Africa learn wisdom at her feet. Bob Burkes, without a knowledge of the alphabet, gets sanctified, and edifies the multitudes, preaching alternate sermons with Dr. Carradine. Here we see that the Lord still speaks to His saints in dreams and visions; but these simple media of communication are even more prominent than in the former dispensation. In the latter all barriers are swept away. It is the glorious privilege of all God’s children to become the incarnations of the Holy Ghost, thus spiritually entering the glorious millennial theocracy and living anticipatively in the triumphs of the coming kingdom. We are well assured that we are not only living in the last days, which began at Pentecost, but we are in the time of the end. John said he was in the last hour; then we must be in the last moment. Totton and Dimbleby, the greatest chronologists of the age, expire the “Gentile times” with the vernal equinox of 1898. According to Lunar Chronology, used by the Jews and Mohammedans, the “Gentile times” expired seven years ago. The Calendar Chronology, generally used in Europe, runs them out in thirty-five years, and the Solar Chronology, used generally in America, runs them out in seventy years. Daniel’s period of the Tribulation (last chapter) is forty-five years. The Rapture of the Bride takes place before the Tribulation. Hence you see three out of four of these chronologies give us the Rapture overdue.

Besides, the world is literally flooded with fulfillments of the latter-day prophecies.

MIRACLES OF THE END 19, 20. These two verses describe the miracles of the end of the present age. You see how Peter couples them right on to the miracles of Pentecost; because he expected the Lord to return to the earth and set up His kingdom in his day. Matthew 16:28: “There are some of those standing here who may not [not “shall not,” as E.V.] pass away until they see the Son of Man coming in his kingdom.”

Also, Matthew 24:34: “This generation may not pass [not “shall not,” as E.V.] till all these things are fulfilled.”

From these and many other Scriptures we see the gracious possibility of our Lord’s return to the earth during the life-time of the apostles and their contemporaries. The Greek in these passages has the contingent tense.

There are no contingencies with God. The contingency was all on man’s side. As man always fails, so he failed in the Apostolic Age. There was a gracious possibility for man to preach the gospel to every nation during that generation; in which case our Lord would have returned on the throne of His millennial glory before that generation all passed away. All the apostles and saints expected to see the Lord return and “be caught up to meet him in the air,” which would have taken place if that generation had pushed to the ends of the earth and preached the gospel to every nation, as they could and should have done. These verses (19 and 20) describe the momentous miracles of the Tribulation. Luke Chapter 21), in his description of our Savior’s sermon on the judgments, preached on Mt. Olivet the day before He suffered, speaks of oceanic inundations during the Tribulation destroying multitudes. John describes the Armageddon wars deluging the world and heaping the battlefields with mountains of the dead. When the governments all fall ( Daniel 7:9) the rabble will rise, burn, rob and murder indiscriminately. Hence the bloody and fiery phenomena of the 19th verse. The smoke of conflagrations, gun powder and the vapor from the oceanic inundations and bloody battlefields will darken the sun and make the moon look red as blood. We have every reason to look out for these miracles immediately, as they are the next on the prophetic program.

TIME OF WAITING 21. “And it shall come to pass that whosoever may call on the name of the Lord, shall be saved.” If the Pentecostians had proved true to the wonderful enduement of the Holy Ghost, they might have peregrinated the whole known world and preached the gospel to every nation, in which case the Lord would have returned to the earth before that generation had all passed away ( Matthew 14:24 and 16:28.) But like humanity in all ages, they failed. Man has always been a failure and always will be. He failed in Eden, winding up with the Fall; he failed in antediluvian times, swept away by the righteous judgments of the flood; he failed in the Patriarchal dispensation, landing in Egyptian slavery; he failed in the Mosaic dispensation, culminating in the destruction of Jerusalem by the Roman armies and the dispersing of the Jews to the ends of the earth; he also failed in the Savior’s ministry, blindly rejecting and crucifying Him. The prophecies are equally explicit as to his egregious failure in the Gospel dispensation, plunging blindly and precipitately into the horrors of the great Tribulation. Is not this very discouraging? Does it not prove that the plan of salvation is a failure?

To both of these questions we respond an emphatic negative. The plan of salvation is a glorious success to all who willingly appreciate it. The very fact of man’s failure in all dispensations, and under all environments, is the grandest incentive conceivable, inspiring all truly and intelligently awakened souls to abandon humanity, world without end, and sink into God. Man never was created for independency. Hence whenever he undertakes it, failure and calamity inevitably supervene. When the Pentecostal generation failed to preach the gospel to every nation, a period came on, designated “the time of waiting.” Meanwhile the Son is waiting on the Father to verify His promise, “Sit thou on my right hand until I make thy enemies thy footstool” ( Acts 2:34.) At the same time the Son is waiting on the Church to preach the gospel of the kingdom to every nation ( Matthew 24:14); while the Church at the same time is anxiously watching and waiting the return of her divine Spouse, who flew up to heaven from Mt. Olivet.

During this period of waiting, in which the Father alone knows the end and the time of our Lord’s return, the commandment is repeated, rigid and explicit: “Watch therefore, for ye know neither the day nor the hour in which the Son of man cometh.” In this twenty first verse, we have a terse, clear and beautiful revelation of the gracious economy during the time of waiting. In our hurried rush to evangelize every nation on the globe, we have no time to bother with human ecclesiasticisms. They are utterly out of harmony with gospel expedition and New Testament simplicity. What do you mean by human ecclesiasticisms? I mean the human appropriation of the divine ecclesia . This word used by the Holy Ghost simply means the souls He has called out from this wicked world and separated unto God.

The Holy Ghost Himself in regeneration and sanctification brings the New Testament church into existence, Himself organizing the same with bishops, i .e ., pastors, elders, and deacons. The human usurpation of the ecclesia has girdled the world with popery, prelacy, and priestcraft, locking the nations in the Briarian arms of spiritual Babylon and dumping millions into hell. In this verse, oh! how beautifully, simply and unmistakably does the Holy Ghost define the gospel economy and the plan of salvation: “Whosoever may call on the name of the Lord shall be saved.” So what are we to do? Why! simply go to the ends of earth and prevail on the people to “call on the name of the Lord,” i .e ., to pray to God. All who fall in line, begin to pray and keep on to the end of probation, fly right up to heaven, as God’s Word is infallible as Himself. Instead of all the Christians on the globe running to the ends of the earth, preaching Jesus and getting all the people to pray, we have the nations humbugged by intriguing priests and tyrannized by ecclesiastical laws unheard of in the Bible. The apostles were “unlearned and ignorant men” ( Acts 4:13). Yet they were fully competent to the great work of the gospel ministry. Instead of wearing out your nerves, eyes and brain by poring over dry-boned theology, get the baptism of the Holy Ghost and fire, and run like Samson’s foxes, preaching hellfire to sinners till you get them all on their knees praying to God to save them from the burning pit. At the same time preach heavenly fire to Christians till you get them all on their knees crying to God for the baptism of the Holy Ghost and fire to sanctify them for heaven.

CHRIST, DAVID’S SUCCESSOR 22-35. We find in these Scriptures that Christ was predestinated to suffer and die to redeem the world. While this is true, it was perfectly optionary with Judas, the Jews and the Romans to betray and crucify Him pursuant to their own diabolical malice and turpitude. We must remember that God is not tied to the prophecies, but the prophecies to God, who sees the end from the beginning and with whom everything is present. We read in Samuel that when David came to Keilah in his flight from Saul, and the Keilites received him with gusto and enthusiasm, assuring him of their fidelity and support, illuminated by that spiritual gift, denominated in Corinthians 1:12, “discernment of spirits,” he read them like books and saw falsehood and treason in their countenances. Turning the problem over to God on his knees, he inquires of the Lord, “Will Saul come down to Keilah?” The answer comes promptly, “He will come down.” Then David proceeds to inquire, “Will the men of Keilah deliver me up?” The answer comes promptly, “They will deliver thee up.” David was acquainted with God’s method of dealing with man, he understood the perfect compatibility of human contingency with divine providence. Hence he understood “Saul will come and the Keilites will deliver you up if you stay.” Consequently he leaps from his knees, roars a loud bugle blast, orders march at doublequick, till they all precipitately skedaddle away from the traitors who were ready to purchase royal favor with the head of David and his men. From this inspired history we learn that even the divine predictions are compatible with the perfect freedom of the human will. What was the result? Saul, close on David’s track, heard that he had fled away from Keilah, turned his course in the direct pursuit of David and did not come down to Keilah.

Hence, we see that neither of these predictions ever took place; because David having fled, Saul did not come down, and, of course, the men of Keilah did not deliver up David to Saul. David understood the voice of the Almighty when He responded to him at Keilah, “Saul will come down and the men of Keilah will deliver thee up,” though there is no mention of any possible defalcation; yet David well understood, “He will come down” if you stay, and “they will deliver you up” if they have a chance. Hence, David immediately fled, thus preventing the coming of Saul to Keilah and his own betrayal by the Keilites. From this and innumerable Scriptures we learn the co-existence and compatibility of divine sovereignty and free agency, though our poor little minds may not be able to reconcile them. If Judas, Caiaphas and Pilate had never been born, nevertheless my Lord would have died to redeem the world with His blood. He came for that glorious philanthropy and, regardless of human or Satanic agency, would have verified it. 25. “I foresaw the Lord always before me, because he is my right hand that I may not be shaken.” These words are applied to Christ; like much of David’s testimony this is only applicable to David’s greatest Son. We must bear in mind that the humanity of Christ is our only exemplar. The great importance of sanctification consists in the fact that it saves us from human leadership, which is always uncertain, fraught with peril, conducive to the damnation of millions. Truly sanctified people have no Leader but Jesus and no Guide but the Word, Spirit and Providence. The carnal clergy in all ages have fought sanctification with uncompromising virulence, from the simple fact that it takes the people out of their hands and turns them over to God, thus interrupting their cherished ecclesiastical policy of human leadership. In the fact that the man Jesus is our great and only Exemplar, we are assured in this verse that it is our privilege to enjoy spiritual apprehension of His constant presence. As the advocate in criminal court stood on the right hand of the accused while he defended and delivered him from the hands of his enemies, so it is our privilege to enjoy a constant spiritual apprehension of the inspiring and consolatory presence of the great Deliverer. 27. “Because thou wilt not leave my soul in Hades neither wilt thou suffer thy Holy One to see corruption.” We have two words used by the Holy Ghost and translated “Hell” in E.V., i .e ., “Hades,” which in R.V. is not translated, but transferred very correctly to our language, while the other word Gehenna in R.V. is constantly and correctly “Hell.” The difference between the two is simply that of genus and species, Hades being a generic word simply meaning the “unseen world,” from Alpha , “not,” and aidoo to “see.” Hence Hades, the unseen, includes both heaven and hell. We have this illustrated in Luke 16, where the rich man and Lazarus are in the same world, actually enjoying conversational proximity. But Dives is tormented by the flame of fire. Hence he is in hell properly so called; while Lazarus is in that intermediate Paradise called Abraham’s bosom, because it was the receptacle of all the spiritual children of Abraham, i .e ., the Old Testament saints, saved in the Abrahamic covenant and there detained in a state of felicitous captivity ( Ephesians 4:8) till the Abrahamic covenant was sealed and ratified by the blood of Christ The dying thief went to this paradise the very day of the crucifixion, ( Luke 23:43), notwithstanding certain wicked heretics have had the audacity to even change the punctuation of the Greek in this passage in order to sustain the most senseless of all heresies which even brutalizes you by taking away your immortal soul. As our Savior assured the women in the garden that He had not yet ascended into heaven, though He had already, pursuant to His prediction on the cross, met the saved thief in paradise, i .e ., in Abraham’s bosom ( Luke 16), the intermediate paradise of the old dispensation, where the saints enjoyed unmingled bliss, awaiting the great redemption on Calvary, and their risen and glorified Lord to lead them all into heaven, throwing wide the pearly portals evermore to stand ajar while angels welcome every saint into the New Jerusalem, the city of God, the home of the angels and glorified saints. 1 Peter 3:19: “Being put to death in the flesh and quickened in the spirit, by which going, he proclaimed to the spirits in prison.”

This is the pillar of popery and modern theories of a second probation for sinners after they die in sin. It is radically and literally untrue as manipulated by those heretics. The capital S in “Spirit” in E.V. was put there by the translators, because they thought it meant the Holy Spirit, which is incorrect, as this construction would break up the antithesis with “flesh.”

The simple meaning is that while our Savior’s body was put to death, His human spirit, not the Holy Ghost, was quickened by the Holy Ghost, so that His human spirit leaving His dead body on the cross [poor soulsleepers even deny that Jesus had a soul] went down to the intermediate world and proclaimed to the lost millions of hell. The E.V. erroneously translates ekeeruxen , which simply means “proclaim as a herald,” “preach,” thus leading the people to believe that Jesus preached the gospel to the disembodied sinners in hell. The word which means to preach the gospel is not in this passage, but it simply means to proclaim as a royal herald. What did our Savior proclaim to the inmates of Hades? He proclaimed His own victory, gloriously and eternally won on the cross of Calvary. The devil had been after Him to kill Him all His life, vainly congratulating himself that if he could kill the man Jesus, the final victory would perch on his black banner, and he would have nothing to do but add this world to hell and reign forever without a rival. While the devil is paradoxically intellectual, his spirit is black as the midnight of hell, uncheered by a solitary ray. Hence he leaped to the conclusion that if he could kill the man Jesus, the last battle was fought and the final victory won. Therefore hell roared with shouts over the arrest of Jesus in Gethsemane, cheered and enthused more and more by the successive reports of His condemnation by Caiaphas, Herod and Pilate, meanwhile the black couriers constantly arrive from Calvary, reporting the bloody culmination of their hellish enterprise. Finally, Satan, sitting on his ebon throne in the center of the pandemonium, has ordered ten thousand tall demons to subscribe in glowing capitals, “Victory,” on the black walls all round the palace of damnation. Demoniacal hands have half written the word. Suddenly thunderclaps and lightnings flash from the opening portals of the pandemonium appalling all the inmates of the bottomless pit. Lo! Hark! Who comes there? It is none other than the human soul of Jesus. He has left His dead body on the cross and now walks into hell, the herald of his own victory won on Calvary. He proclaims in the face of all devils hell’s eternal defeat and the redemption of the world. With the tread of a conqueror He walks round the pandemonium, with His Own hands pulling down the trophies of four thousand years of successful warfare and treading them beneath His triumphant feet. The tall peers of the pit wail on all sides, acknowledge Him conqueror and beg Him to depart. He now approaches Satan, the King of Darkness, sitting on his ebon throne in the center of the pandemonium; seizing him by the throat and dragging him down, puts His foot upon his neck, thus verifying the first promise made by Jehovah to Adam and Eve in fallen Paradise: “The seed of the woman shall bruise the serpent’s head.”

Having proclaimed His victory in hell, He now crosses that abyss impassable to finite beings, but not to Him, intervening between the flaming hell of Dives and the Abraham’s bosom of Lazarus ( Luke 16:26), and there, pursuant to His promise on the cross, meets the thief before midnight, while it is yet Friday, the Crucifixion Day. As the thief died under the old dispensation, he went to that intermediate paradise, i .e ., Abraham’s bosom, the jubilant rendezvous of all the souls saved under the Abrahamic covenant in the former dispensation, there in joyful anticipation to await the verification of the covenant by the blood of Calvary. The thief runs to meet Him with a tremendous shout, Father Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Job, Jeremiah, Isaiah, Ezekiel, Daniel, the Hebrew children and all the mighty hosts of Old Testament saints rend the firmament with triumphant shouts congratulating King Jesus on the victory won. Now the good old Jewish Sabbath sets in, the most wonderful they had seen in four thousand years. Oh! what an ovation! Golden harps are impoverished in the attempted proclamation. The first day of the week supervenes at midnight, eternally commemorated by the abolishment of the intermediate paradise, the emancipation of all the captives ( Ephesians 4:8), and the resurrection of our glorious Lord. Here begins that wonderful ascension ( Ephesians 4:9), when our Lord “descended into the lower parts of the earth” [which never did mean the grave], the Savior leading the way with the patriarchs and prophets on His right and on His left, followed by the mighty hosts of Old Testament saints, jubilant and ecstatic, reaching the sepulcher at daydawn, calling His body into life and re-entering it; meanwhile the sacramental host, all invisible because they are disembodied spirits, accompanying our risen Lord the forty days of His abiding with His disciples, and ascending with Him from Mt. Olivet, constituting the mighty trophy of His victory, whom He leads into the heavenly metropolis and presents before the Father. David’s prophetic eye in Psalm 24 caught a glimpse of this wonderful scene, while our Lord, accompanied by the mighty hosts of Old Testament saints, sweeps through trackless ether, passing rolling worlds, glowing suns, wheeling spheres, and flaming comets, finally draws nigh the celestial gates, saluted by seraphic voices: “Lift up your heads, O ye gates; and be ye lifted up, ye everlasting doors, and let the King of Glory come in.” “Who is this King of Glory?” “he Lord, mighty to save and strong to deliver.”

The pearly gates fly high and swing wide, multiplied millions of celestial seraphs shout long and loud, “Welcome home, welcome home, welcome home, O King of Glory, Conqueror of Mt. Calvary. Heaven is stirred with such an ovation as archangels never knew, infinitely eclipsing the tremendous shout of the sons of God at creation’s birth. Amid the jubilant congratulations of angelic millions, the triumphal procession, led by King Jesus, moves through the city and halts before the great white throne, “Father, here am I, and the children thou hast given me.” Now Abraham mounts a celestial pinnacle and testifies, followed by the thrilling witnesses to the wonders of redeeming grace, while multiplied millions of unfallen angels listen spell bound. Since our Lord has led the way, heaven is now accessible to every disembodied saint, nothing to do but die, and sweep with a shout into glory.

HEAVENLY CORONATION 29-35. When I was in Jerusalem and visiting this spot, on which they were praying when the Holy Ghost fell on them, my guide pointed me out David’s tomb right there in full view. Silly heretics have construed the statement (verse 34), “For David has not yet ascended into the heavens,” as an argument for soul-sleeping, i .e ., that David had no soul to go to heaven.

It is a humiliating illustration of the perversity of human sectarianism to sacrifice all truth, reason and intelligence to sustain their poor little foolish creed. The obliquity of sectarians is always ready to bend all of the Bible to their creed, instead of bending their creed to the Bible, or throwing it away altogether, as certainly God’s plain Word is all the creed and all the authority His children need or have any business with. The Bible, like all other good books, is in harmony with practical truth and common-sense.

There is no allusion whatever to the soul of David, which had long ago left the body; but Peter at this point is simply speaking of the resurrection of Christ, simultaneously showing that this prophecy could not refer to David, though spoken by him, because his body had not yet risen, which he proved by pointing out his sepulcher. 30. “Therefore being a prophet and knowing that God swore to him with an oath that one from the fruit of his loins should sit upon his throne.” Peter uses this testimony of David to prove the kingship of Christ. He was born King of the Jews. Paul says ( Romans 2:28,29): “He is not a Jew as one outwardly, neither is circumcision that it is outward in the flesh; but he is a Jew who is one inwardly and circumcision is that of the heart; in the spirit and not in the letter, whose praise is not of men but of God.”

Hence, you see that Jesus was born King of Saints. When Pilate wrote this superscription on His cross above His head in Hebrew, Greek and Latin, the language of religion, learning and law for everybody to read, “This is the King of the Jews,” he wrote an eternal truth. That was the reason why he could not change it afterwards at the request of the Jews. The word Inri , which you so frequently see above crosses at Roman Catholic grave-yards and other places, is a combination of initials and stands for Jesus Nazarenus , Rex Ioudiourum , — “Jesus of Nazareth, King of the Jews.”

David, the brightest type of Christ in the Bible, powerfully symbolizes Him in His regal capacity. As David had two coronations, — first, he was crowned king of his own tribe at Hebron, and seven and a half years afterward he was crowned king of all the tribes of Israel at Jerusalem, — so Christ in His first advent was crowned King of Saints when He ascended up to heaven, when He comes in His glory He will be crowned King of all the nations upon the face of the earth. David never occupied an earthly throne. His kingdom was the divine theocracy centralized in heaven and overlapping on the earth. God said: “I have found David, the son of Jesse, a man after my own heart, who will do all my wills.” The reason why David was a man after God’s own heart was not because he was infallible, for he was not, but because he had one fixed and settled policy and purpose in all his administrations, and that was not to do his own will but the will of God ( Acts 12:22). Much has been said about the perpetuity of David’s throne; great volumes written in an attempt to substitute other dynasties, even of other nations, in lieu of what is regarded as the forfeited throne of David, and thus fulfill the Scriptures. When we undertake to help out the Bible, we always make a mistake and get into trouble. The Bible, like God, does not need any help. If you will throw away your creeds and part company with the devil, the Bible will do its own talking. Here it is positively specified that Jesus, the lineal descendant of David, was born King of the Jews in David’s royal line. To be sure, He never reigned on earth. Instead of crowning Him King they killed Him, but here Peter proves demonstratively that he was crowned in heaven King of the Jews and successor of David to sit upon his throne. The Bible is clear in this succession of David and perpetuity of his kingdom on the mediatorial throne in heaven. As to David’s earthly throne, instead of all these efforts to find it perpetuated among the Gentiles, which is utterly chimerical, turn with me to the Jerusalem council of apostles, elders and brothers, highest authority this side of heaven, and you find the matter fully explained and the problem solved. < 441516> Acts 15:16: “After these things [i.e., the preaching of the gospel to all the Gentiles in the present dispensation] I will return and build again the dynasty of David or the throne which hath fallen down, and will rebuild the ruins of the same and set it up again.” Here we see positively that the temporal wing of David’s throne had an interregnum at the time of Christ and the apostles, which is to continue until the King returns in His glory. Then He is going to rebuild the throne of David, restore his kingdom on the earth, destined, as the same Scripture goes on to say, “to encompass all the nations of the globe.” Hence, we see that David’s kingdom in the earth is to have this interregnum , which obtained in the former dispensation and continued to the end of the gospel age.

Therefore it is a great mistake to think we have to find David’s kingdom perpetuated in the earth, as this would preclude the interregnum which the Scriptures positively reveal. Hence the conclusion of the problem is the simple fact that Jesus Christ, the lineal Son, royal Heir and Successor of David, was born King, and, though prohibited and crucified on earth, He was crowned King when He ascended into heaven, and actually there sitteth on the throne of David, thus perpetuating his kingdom forever. Since David really had no earthly throne, but as king of the divine theocracy, his throne was in heaven, the capital of his kingdom, while it overlapped down in the earth and gave Israel a prelibation of the blessedness of the heavenly kingdom, of which Jerusalem, in the glory of David and Solomon, proximately symbolize heaven, and David’s earthly throne was but the temporal counterpart of the heavenly. Hence the temporary dilapidation of David’s earthly throne does not invalidate the eternal perpetuity of his kingdom, realized in the mediatorial administration of Christ in heaven and destined in the coming millennial age, adumbrated in the days of David, to reach down and girdle the globe in the glory of the heavenly kingdom. We find interregnum s in many of the time-honored kingdoms of the earth, such as Rome and Britain; but these interregnum s do not invalidate the perpetuity of these kingdoms. Neither does the interregnum of David’s throne on earth invalidate the eternal perpetuity of his kingdom, especially in view of the fact that the heavenly nucleus of that kingdom is literally perpetuated in the glorious reign of King Jesus. The very fact that God said to Jesus on His congratulation and coronation, “Sit thou on my right hand till I make thine enemies thy footstool,” involves the unequivocal promise on the part of the Father to shake down every rival potentate in all the earth, whether political or ecclesiastical. The incarnation of the Holy Ghost on the day of Pentecost was a positive confirmation of the coronation of Christ in heaven, as the law must be fully satisfied before the promised restitution can be consummated in the incarnation of the Holy Ghost, actually restoring the human to full spiritual freedom and ushering in the millennial victory. Of course, Luke here gives us but a brief epitome of Peter’s sermon, i .e ., the salient points. God in the Abrahamic covenant promised the gift of the Holy Ghost. That covenant must be sealed with the blood of Christ before the Holy Ghost, the Restorer and Comforter, can be given. 33. “Therefore, exalted at the right hand of God, having received the promise of the Holy Ghost with the Father, he has poured out this which you see and hear.” You see Peter’s logic. The discussion of the Holy Ghost filling the disciples is demonstrative proof that Christ has satisfied the Father with His atonement, actually been received and ratified in heaven, crowned at the right hand of God Mediatorial King, received the Holy Ghost and sent Him down His own Revelator and Successor whom He had promised to send down.

THE AWFUL INDICTMENT Now the illiterate fisherman faces the multitude, boldly arraigns hierarchs and politarchs for the awful crime of murdering the Son of God. The mighty logic of the Holy Ghost sweeps away all the human and Satanic refuges of lies. 36. Peter with the boldness of an archangel certifies and proves by David and Jacob that God has received, crowned and sceptered that same Jesus whom they had crucified both Lord and Christ. Thus he charges the mighty men of church and state with the blackest crime that ever cursed humanity.

Nothing but the supernatural presence of the Holy Ghost in Peter kept them from killing him on the spot. See an illiterate fisherman prove more than a match for all the power of earth and hell.

CONVICTION The supernatural presence of the Holy Ghost, indisputably manifest in Peter and the one hundred and twenty, despite the combined powers of church and state, earth and hell, settled down on that multitude a superhuman conviction like a nightmare from the eternal world, paralyzing resistance, confounding contradiction, demolishing the impregnable citadels of deepseated prejudice, smashing the mighty bulwarks of tradition and priestcraft, undermining and demolishing mountains of church-pride and ploughing the very foundation of the hierarchy, flooding the multitude with a Niagara of consternation, uncoping hell and unveiling the devil, revealing the Gorgon horrors of the bottomless pit, the matchless altitudes of glorified humanity and the transcendent possibilities of the glorified Christ and the incarnate Holy Ghost. The flashed lightnings of conviction sweep away all decorum, annihilate all sense of propriety and dumfound all the courtesies inspired by an audience of one hundred thousand delegates from all the Jewish synagogues beneath the skies. 37. Peter is shouted down by a swelling tide of mournful wails: “What must we do?” PLAN OF SALVATION 38. Peter interjects uproariously amid the heterogeneous clamor like ten thousand ocean billows breaking against the rock-bound shore. 38. “Repent ye, and let each one of you be baptized in the name of Jesus Christ unto the remission of your sins, and ye shall receive the gift of the Holy Ghost.” As Peter’s introductory sermon is broken up by the uproarious wailing of eight thousand penitents, amid whose bitter cries soon mingle the vociferous shouts of three thousand new-born souls, the one hundred and twenty take the work into hand, dashing in all directions, preaching and expounding the way of salvation, the Holy Ghost wonderfully using their joyous instrumentality, utilizing the double miracle, empowering every one to hear in his own language and every disciple to speak fluently in all of the languages of that heterogeneous throng, thus restoring all the confusion at the Tower of Babel. Sad to say, heretic, Catholic and Protestant have woefully perverted this beautiful 38th verse, adroitly turning it to support the Popish dogma of baptismal regeneration, which has deluded and sent multitudes to hell. In the E.V. “repent and be baptized” are grammatically and logically co-ordinated — a bald error. In the Greek, “repent” is second person, plural number and imperative mood, applying to the entire multitude, while “be baptized” is third person, singular, applying only to the subject of “repent.” Hence, none are to be baptized but those who have repented. That simple fact knocks the Popish dogma of baptismal remission beyond the North Pole. “Repent” is metanousate , from meta , “change,” and noos , “the mind.” Hence, it means “change your mind.” You have no right to give this or any other Scripture a more metaphysical interpretation, from the simple fact that the Bible is not a metaphysical, but a spiritual book. Consequently, unspiritual preachers in all ages have run it into heresy and nonsense and made it a passport to hell.

When God created man He put His mind in him. The devil, in the fall, succeeded in knocking it out and putting his old filthy carnal mind in its place. Hence, change of mind, indicated by the word “repent,” means to get rid of the carnal mind and receive the mind of Christ. The churches abound in people as ignorant of repentance as baboons, — hosts of preachers in the same dilemma. You remember that sermon by John Wesley, which all Methodist preachers are required to study, captioned “The Repentance of Believers”? That is in harmony with the true meaning of the word. You have the carnal mind till you are sanctified wholly. It is conquered and bound in regeneration, but destroyed in sanctification. The repentance of a sinner and the consecration of a Christian are generally identical but specifically different. They are both a giving up. The sinner in repentance gives up all of his bad things to the devil and leaves him forever; the Christian in consecration gives up all of his good things to God to be used for His glory forever. This is what John Wesley meant by the repentance of a believer, i .e ., his entire consecration of all to God for time and eternity.

Hence, when repentance has finished its work you are not only converted but sanctified wholly. I heard so many sermons preached from this text by unconverted preachers when a boy I do thank God for His mercy which alone protected me from the horrific hell-traps they set to catch poor ignorant people like me. “Misery likes company.” They were in the devil’s trap of water regeneration, and they did their best to catch all they could.

Although repentance not only invariably secures remission of sins but prepares you to receive the gift of the Holy Ghost, the glorious positive side of entire sanctification and the climacteric achievement of the gospel dispensation launched at Pentecost. If the Hydrolators (i .e ., water worshipers, as abominable in the sight of God as any other form of idolatry) would only take the whole verse, press and receive the gift of the Holy Ghost they would come out right after all. But they pervert the first clause and throw away the second. Consequently they have nothing left but the water. “For remission,” E.V., does not necessarily mean “in order to remission,” as the Hydrolators construe it. When I was in California last winter a man was hung for murder. He was not hung in order to commit murder, but because he had already committed it. Hence “for remission,” not in order to get it, but because you have it. The E.V. is right in harmony with the Greek. There we have it, “and be baptized every one of you — unto the remission of your sins,” i .e ., confirmatory of the fact. You can not confirm a thing till you have it. We see from this wonderful verse which rings out the keynote of that salient response to the cries of the panic stricken multitudes, the two distinct marks of grace in the plan of salvation, i .e ., remission of sins as a result of repentance and confirmed by water baptism and the gift of the Holy Ghost, the glorious hyperbole of the gospel dispensation. Mark the word “gift” here in the singular number. The Holy Ghost confers gifts on the sinner, i .e ., conviction, repentance, regeneration, justification and adoption to bring him into the kingdom. Then when you are truly converted, it is your glorious privilege to receive from the Father and the Son the “gift of the Holy Ghost,” i .e ., the Holy Ghost Himself as an indwelling Sanctifier and Comforter. This was the crowning glory of the Pentecostal experience, consummating full salvation. After you have received the “gift of the Holy Ghost,” and thus been sanctified wholly, it is still your precious privilege to receive the greater gifts of the Spirit, nine in all ( 1 Corinthians 12), by which you are enabled to save others, these gifts of the Spirit constituting your impregnable panoply and preparing you for the Lord’s battle-field.

FOR ALL AGES AND NATIONS 39. “For the promise is to you and to your children, and to you who are afar off, so many as the Lord our God may call.” This verse is positive, unequivocal and unmistakable, confirmatory of the great New Testament truth that the promise of the personal incarnated Holy Ghost appertains to every human being on the globe whom the Lord may call by His Word, Spirit and Providence to come and participate in the glorious gospel feast, now ready and free to every fallen son or daughter of Adam’s ruined race.

While the concession of God’s pardoning mercy, extended to all, is generally conceded, ecclesiastical autocrats and theological heretics pertinaciously repudiate the second great work of grace, i .e ., the reception of the personal Holy Ghost as an indwelling Sanctifier and Comforter. Not only is this verse clear and unequivocal, but Peter at the house of Cornelius and in his testimony before the apostles at Jerusalem most unequivocally certifies that the Gentiles received the same identical spiritual enduement which the apostles received on the day of Pentecost. While these Scriptures are so positive, clear and conclusive as to preclude the possibility of misapprehension and leave no conceivable apology for cavil; yet it is a significant fact that bold heretics this day from Dan to Beersheba are persistently and indefatigably laboring to convince the people that no one but the apostles ever did receive the Holy Ghost, whereas a hundred and eight of the original disciples who received Him on the first morning of Pentecost were not apostles, and a number of them were women. Why do these bold heretics labor so hard and so persistently to flatly and positively contradict and refute the plain and unmistakable Word of God? Brother Godbey, what is heresy? And who is a heretic? The original meaning of heresy is to separate; thence a heretic is one who separates himself from God and takes issue with God; while heresy is doctrine dissimilar to God’s Word and out of harmony with it. The martyrs were all stigmatized heretics and burnt for heresy, because they separated from the corrupt clergy and the fallen church. If you will retain in your mind the definition of heresy, i .e ., separation from something, the analysis is plain and easy. When a church becomes corrupt and heretical because it is separated from God, it invariably falls into the hands of carnal ecclesiastical autocrats and despots who are ready to persecute all who dare to separate from them. You must not forget that Satan is the great counterfeiter and counterfeits all truth. He calls evil good and good evil; hell, heaven, and heaven, hell; and calls himself God, and he is the god of this poor fallen world ( 2 Corinthians 4:4). His intelligence so far transcends that of every human being as to enable him to cunningly manipulate the greatest intellectualists and the most profound scholars. He has but one available competitor, and that is God.

So infinite is the devil’s intellectual perspicacity above that of all human beings that he has no trouble to radically and completely deceive all classes from the simpleton to the philosopher, from the barbarian to the most scholarly theologian on the globe. Hence the only possible availability against his devices is to receive the light, wisdom, word and personal incarnation of the Holy Ghost. So long as He dwells in you, though you be an illiterate Hottentot, you will prove more than a match for an army of devils. If you let God conquer you, capture and move into you, you can then conquer “the world, the flesh and the devil.” If you do not let God conquer you, you can be conquered by most insignificant things, e .g ., a filthy old cigar, the sickening quid or the nauseating old pipe, or almost any other silly and senseless device of the devil. As an independency, man never has stood and never will. The devil puffs him up with egotism and inflates him with the silly delusion of personal independency, merely that he may gouge his eyes out, wrap him around his black fingers, toss him for a foot-ball, the sport of demoniacal millions to kick around the black walls of hell through all eternity. Since the Fall, Satan has been “the god of this world,” and so few people have been acquainted with God that the leaders of church and state, blinded by the fogs of hell and led away by the sophistries of the pit, have literally developed a general tergiversation of the maxims and dogmata of all ages and nations, political and ecclesiastical.

The devil takes the very phraseology of the Bible, radically perverting and cunningly manipulating it to the damnation of the superstitious votaries of religion. Consequently the devil’s deluded ecclesiastical tyrants in all ages have hounded, persecuted and martyred the children of God under the vociferous and odious imputation of heresy. As heresy means separation, and the saints of God could not be true to Him without separating from the wicked rulers of fallen ecclesiasticisms, of course they were heretics from their standpoint but not in the sight of God and the light of His Word. With the above exposition of Satan’s counterfeit applications and interpretations of heresy and heretics, you are prepared to put your eye on Jesus and His Word and receive the true interpretation of heresy and see who the actual heretic is. God alone is true and right. Hence all spiritual leaders who separate from Him are heretics in the divine estimation and in the light of all Christian intelligence. Since the Bible is the only book of truth in all the world, other books only being true so far as they harmonize with it, therefore all departure from God’s revealed Word is heresy. During the first three centuries, while martyrdom was the order of the day, the expectation of every Christian and the glory of the church, there never was a schism.

When the Emperor Constantine professed the Christian religion and suddenly elevated the despised, down-trodden, persecuted church from the lion’s mouth and the burning stake to the palace of the Caesars, they immediately assembled in the council at Nice, Bythinia, the Emperor Constantine presiding over the council, sitting in a golden chair. They proceeded to make a human creed, thus formulating the celebrated Nicene Creed, the prolific mother of all the creeds of Christendom, which have multiplied upon the face of the earth like the Grecian warriors springing up from the dragon’s teeth sown by Cadmus. The martyrs were burnt for disharmony with the creed interpreted by the sinister policy of a corrupt clergy. When the holiness people go into creed-making the shroud of the grand movement is ready for her interment. Every deflection from the plain Word of God is heresy. The Old Testament abounds in beautiful and instructive symbolisms, all of which are literalized in the New. Hence the New Testament, in whose dispensation we live and which really contains all the truth of the Old, focalized, literalized, verified and elucidated, is the creed of Christendom. It is plainer and more easily understood than any of the human creeds. Hence there is no apology for their existence. If your creed is in harmony with the Bible you can well afford to drop it and use the Bible. If it is out of harmony with the Bible, throw it away quickly or the devil will get you. A sectarian is the devotee of a human creed, whether written or unwritten. He is a poor, deluded idolater, worshipping a silly, pusillanimous human dogma, hatched in the bottomless pit and propagated on earth for the delusion and damnation of souls. Any man will die for his god, whether he be a Christian martyr, worshipping the true God in heaven and earth, or a bloodthirsty Mussulman, worshipping the false prophet, or the Pagan devotee of Brahma, Buddha, Grand Llama or Foh. The present age is awfully cursed with human heresies. Our Savior describes them, “compassing sea and land to make one proselyte, simultaneously making him two-fold more the child of hell!” Well said, because they have no power to take away his old sins: all they can do is to administer to him the rites and ceremonies of theirs, persuading him that he is a Christian when he is not, thus making him a hypocrite as well as a sinner, and doubling the mess for devils to devour in the barbecues of hell. We would all do well to emulate the zeal and perseverance of the devil. Oh how his preachers run to the ends of the earth, undergo hardships and surmount difficulties to propagate their heresies and make proselytes. Now, reader, I hope henceforth you will know no authority but God’s Word, taking it as it is, zealous least any one explain it away. Paul calls it a two-edged sword. If you give it a chance it will cut the heads off your idols till not one survive, and thus you will have nothing left but God and His sweet precious Word.

Why do preachers with fine collegiate educations hold on weeks together preaching themselves hoarse to convince the people that they can not receive the gift of the Holy Ghost, thus flatly contradicting God’s plain and unmistakable Word? There is but one possible solution, and that is, that these are verifying Paul “For such are false apostles, deceitful workers transforming themselves into the apostles of Christ. And no wonder: for Satan himself is transformed into an angel of light. Therefore, it is no surprise if indeed his ministers are transformed as ministers of righteousness, whose end shall be according to their works.” ( 2 Corinthians 11:13,14) The world is thronged with the devil’s preachers, as the Holy Ghost through Paul so faithfully warns us. They tell you you can not receive the Holy Ghost, and that no one has received him since the apostles. Why?

Because they are personally ignorant of the Holy Ghost in His regenerating and sanctifying power as a personal indwelling Illuminator and Comforter; they judge all others by themselves. They are like the African king who said that all the people in the world were black, from the simple fact that he had never seen a white man. Now, reader, will you be stupid enough to follow Satan’s ignorance instead of the blessed Savior and God’s infallible Word, which, as you see here, positively certifies this promise of God to bestow upon His children the gift of the Holy Ghost, — “is to you and to your children, and to you who are afar off, so many as the Lord our God may call” ? If you are puzzled amid the clamor of contradictory sectarian shibboleths, just get on your knees and ask the blessed Holy Spirit, while you open your Bible and read it, to reveal it to you. If you are truly honest, your creeds and idols all dead, and yourself dead to everything but God and His Word, you will have no trouble, but always receive the needed light.

The reason why the masses of religious people are so easily manipulated by the devil’s preachers is because they know so little about God’s Word. The blessed Holy Spirit will invariably shed the light on His precious Word, necessary to guide the honest, humble soul in the way of all truth and righteousness. If you are truly walking with God in the light of His Spirit shining on His Word you can detect heretics at once, because they bend the Bible to their creed, thus incurring the awful woe pronounced on the man who “handles the Word of God deceitfully.” It is awfully wicked to tinker with God’s Word and bend it to your creed, whether written or unwritten.

The Bible, like God, bends to nothing, while everything in all the world is to bend to it. How blessedly consolatory that the way to heaven is so plain, “that wayfaring men though fools may not err therein.”

THREE THOUSAND CONVERTED 42. To what were they converted? They were all converted to the Christhood of Jesus. Doubtless very many of them knew the God of Abraham in a happy personal experience of His saving power. They are called “devout men” (verse 5). The word translated devout is never applied to a sinner. It is applied to Ananias, the good preacher sent to minister to the penitent Saul. It is translated holiness ( Acts 3:12). Now you must remember that Pentecost was a great annual Jewish camp-meeting, to which the synagogues in “every nation under heaven” sent in their delegates.

These pious Jews from all the Gentile world had not heard the reports about Jesus. They were staunch worshipers of Abraham’s God and trusting the Christ of prophecy for salvation. Now they are suddenly and unexpectedly inundated with the wonderful news that the Christ of prophecy, anticipated four thousand years, typified by millions of bleeding beasts and birds on Jewish altars slain, has already made His advent into the world, suffered and died to redeem lost humanity, ascended into heaven, received and crowned by the Father on David’s throne King of the Jews, and has received the promise of the Holy Ghost from the Father, whom He has poured out on them in His wonderful fiery baptism and sanctifying power.

Hence these mighty hosts of pious Jews, who had nothing to do with the crucifixion of Christ, but had come hither from afar to worship the God of their fathers, had nothing to do but hail the glorious tidings of the longexpected Redeemer’s advent, and be converted to the Christhood of Jesus, no longer simply worshipping the Christ of prophecy, but hailing with joy unutterable the Christ of prophecy and proclaiming Him to the world. As we have many zealous professors of religion now who are not real possessors, so doubtless many of the Pentecostian converts actually got religion that day for the first time, having never hitherto personally known the Lord. Meanwhile, doubtless a goodly number of them were Jerusalemites and actually guilty of the blood of the Lord. Of course they must have a bottom-rock regeneration to save them from hell. The Greek says nothing about conversion, but simply says, “Therefore so many as received His Word were baptized, and they were added unto them that day about three thousand souls.” The three thousand were added to the hundred and twenty disciples, who constituted the remnant of old faithful Judaism, the orthodox holding-over members, who, surviving the apostatizing wreck, became the nucleus of the New Testament church, still abiding in the “good olive tree,” while the unbelieving Jews were broken off ( Romans 11). Therefore to these faithful one hundred and twenty now representing the kingdom of God, perpetuated out of Judaism into Christianity, the three thousand were added. Doubtless a large element of the three thousand who had not been contaminated with the rejection of Jesus, as they came from afar and had not heard of Him, and as bona fide members of the Abrahamic covenant, were experimentally acquainted with the God of their fathers, and consequently not sinners, but true Israelites, actually received the Holy Ghost in His sanctifying power on that occasion and were sanctified instead of converted. Meanwhile, doubtless many of the three thousand had never before known the Lord in personal salvation, and not a few of them were those wicked Jerusalemites who had imbued their hands in the innocent blood of Jesus. Of course, all such needed and received a glorious conversion to God in the true gospel sense. In times of corrupt ecclesiasticism religion is always purer as it radiates far away from the corrupt center. Hence, doubtless, the teeming thousands of pious delegates from the myriads of synagogues not only in the remoter parts of Palestine, but throughout the Gentile world, as we see in Asia, Africa and Europe, were well represented there, not by Gentiles but by Jews. Of course, a purer type of piety prevailed in synagogues of these distant regions uncorrupted by the intriguing priesthood so influential at Jerusalem.

Hence, while some of the three thousand were converted to God, and others were gloriously sanctified, they were all converted to the Christhood of Jesus. 42. “And they were persevering in the teaching of the apostles, and in fellowship, in the breaking of bread and prayers.” The three thousand were suddenly and unexpectedly caught in the whorls of this Pentecostal cyclone, warped in oblivion as to their distant homes and plans of speedy return, thrilled and enraptured with the new teaching of the apostles, revelatory of all the wonderful and paradoxical events connected with the history of Jesus, the Christ of prophecy, who had already in fulfillment of the prophecies come into the world, suffered and died, ascended into heaven, been crowned and sceptered King of the Jews and poured out the Holy Ghost on them, the Omnipotent Successor and Revelator of the ascended Christ, thus inaugurating the glorious gospel dispensation, predicted by inspired seers four thousand years. The three thousand all have the same wonderful experiences of personal salvation. Hence unutterably sweet their fellowship, as they are filled and thrilled with the edifying word; they are constant in prayers and daily partake of the holy eucharist instituted by our Lord to commemorate His vicarious sufferings till He shall ride down on the throne of His millennial glory.

MANY MIRACLES 43. The occasion is rife with the miraculous manifestations of the Divine presence. The supernatural audience of every man in his own language and equally supernatural utterance of the one hundred and twenty in all the diversified languages spoken by the nations of the globe as the Jews in their dispersions then and now speak the language of the nation whither they sojourn, “and there was a great consternation on all,” regardless of age, sex, rank or nationality, a mighty consternation from God out of heaven overawed the multitudes, all electrified through and through with the realization that God Almighty has Jerusalem in His hand.

COMMUNITY OF GOODS 44, 45. A number of concurrent events superinduced this community of goods: (a) The suddenness of the Pentecostal revival catching thousands of those delegates from Jewish synagogues in “every nation under heaven,” who had only brought supplies for their expeditious peregrinations, and were consequently dependent on the Jerusalem saints for support; (b) amid the rage of men and devils, the magnates of church and state arrayed against the despised Nazarenes and determined to crush them in blood, obliterating the very memory of Jesus from the earth, there is every probability of forfeiting their estates by confiscation; (c) all the primitive Christians were on the constant outlook for their Lord to return from heaven and take them away, as He had said with His valedictory lips, “Behold! I come quickly.” In that case, of course they would have no use for their estates. Amid these environments and inspirations we do not wonder at the forty-fifth verse, i .e ., “They continued to sell their real estates and private properties and distribute the same to all as any one had need.” Should all Christendom practice the community of goods? It would certainly be very pertinent as well as altogether probable amid the circumstances which peculiarize the Pentecostians. But remember God makes the circumstances; they are His providences, and we have no right to make them.

HOUSEHOLD PREACHING 46. “And they were daily persevering with one accord in the temple and breaking bread from house to house; they received their food with gladness and purity of heart, praising God and having grace toward all the people.” Here we find that the hundred and twenty, augmented by the mighty force of the three thousand converts, turned loose on the metropolis and the surrounding country, preaching from house to house. This explains the reason why five thousand more were speedily converted, at once swelling the Pentecostal church to eight thousand. The great delinquency of the present age is this original policy of preaching to people in their homes.

Here we see that they entered family circles indiscriminately, preaching and praying till they convert them to the Christhood of Jesus, the great salient truth and fact of apostolic preaching, then they seal their profession of discipleship by baptism and confirm them by the eucharist. This is the grand open field for the holiness people to win a crown of glory, evangelize the world and bring back our King. So let us go preaching from house to house as they did at Pentecost. When I was sanctified thirty years ago I at once became an indefatigable household preacher. I ran all over my circuit regardless of membership in my church or any other, entering every house and preaching the living Word. My conference soon fell into the habit of sending me to the hardest and deadest appointments in all the land. While I ran into every house, prayed and preached in every home, prevailing on them to come to my meeting, which I kept running the whole year, God came down, shook the whole country with the tread of a spiritual earthquake, mighty revivals swept like cyclones, and while all the churches in my boundary were signally blessed and received many additions to their membership, I used to go up to my annual conference at the end of the year and report in my own pastorate three times as many members as I began with. Sad to say, the apostolic household preaching in the church of the present day is a lost art. The preacher goes round calling on his own members only, talks to them a few minutes about “Vanity Fair” and does not so much as pray for them. He would better stay at home. Such pastoral visiting is an insult to the common salvation and a grief to the Holy Ghost.

CHURCH-JOINING 47. “And the Lord was adding daily unto them those being saved.” You all see the R.V., in harmony with the Greek, leaves church out of this passage.

Doubtless the word was added by some of the ecclesiastical conservators of the Dark Ages. A considerable amount of the interpolations which have been added during the intervening centuries have an ecclesiastical signification, plainly illustrating the indisputable fact that they were put in by the clergy to augment and sustain their authority. The Greek Testament gives not a solitary instance of the modern church-joining. It simply says, “The Lord added unto them,” i .e ., unto the apostles, the visible representatives of God’s spiritual kingdom, without the slightest intimation of church-joining. “Such as should be saved,” in E.V., is incorrect. The true reading is, “Those being saved,” i .e ., the people who are in the process of salvation, the Holy Ghost having them in hand and moving forward His work of their personal salvation. Regeneration is primary salvation; sanctification is full salvation; while glorification [which is reached in two ways, i .e ., transfiguration and resurrection] is final salvation, hence no one is saved in a final sense till soul and body are both glorified and reunited.

Then probation is forever ended and we are finally and eternally saved, even from the liability of falling, as some of the angels did while they were on probation; as we will not be on probation when we go to heaven, having passed through our probation here, never to be again tried. Modern church joining, as preaching from the popular pulpit, is not only utterly unscriptural, but an awfully dangerous heresy. It leads people to believe that they get into the Church of God in that way, and that when they join the Church they actually have entered the Church of God, which is utterly untrue. The Church of God, in the language of the Holy Ghost in the New Testament, is called Ecclesia . It is from ek , “out,” and kaleoo , “call.” The Holy Ghost is the only Caller, however. He may use a human being to call you out of this world, which “all lieth in the wicked one,” i .e ., the devil ( 1 John 4:19). Therefore, when you respond to the call of the Holy Ghost and leave the world, identifying yourself with God, you then and there enter and become a member of the divine Ecclesia , which is the only Church of God in all the world. The Church of God is identical with God’s family. Just as your children are all born into your family, and not joined in, hence a genuine regeneration wrought by the Holy Ghost makes you a member of God’s Church without ever giving your hand to the preacher or receiving water baptism. It is certainly your privilege, and may prove a means of grace, to identify yourself with a visible organization of God’s people; but such a transaction has nothing to do with making you a member of God’s Church. He Himself attends to that when He regenerates your soul. It is a deplorable fact that the popular mind in modern times has been literally hallucinated by the heresy of church joining. Multiplied millions are thus deluded with the idea that they are members of God’s Church when they are simply members of a human organization, which in countless instances has no record in the Lamb’s Book of Life. What is the visible Church? It is the material bodies of the children of God on the earth. Do you believe in church organization? Certainly. God is a great organizer. He organizes everything in the universe. When regenerated people are properly officered, so as to be fully efficient in the illumination and evangelization of the world, they constitute a well organized church. What are the officers of the Church of Christ? The bishop, having charge of the spiritual interest; the deacon, having charge of the temporal interest, and the eldership, comprised of persons possessing spiritual seniority, having charge of the general interest, and all to be filled with the Holy Ghost and invested with the spiritual gifts ( 1 Corinthians 12:8-11) necessary to qualify them for the duties of their offices. How shall we find these officers? The Holy Ghost knows them all. If we will be true to Him and of one accord on our knees, He will point them out to us in due time. (See Vol. 3, on Pastoral Epistles.) God help us all to see this fatal heresy of modern church-joining.

Millions of people join a popular church and take a false comfort, believing they are in the Church of God. While we have no criticism for the enrollment of names for the convenience of the deacon or bishop (pastor), we do deplore the emphasis which is laid on it and the importance attached to it, causing millions of people to rest in carnal security, vainly congratulating themselves that they are in the Church of God, when they are not within a million of miles of it. The emphasis should be laid on the spiritual birth, which alone and of itself brings you into the Church of God; while sanctification confers on you full rights and privileges as a bona fide member, making you eligible to the offices of the Church. I joined the Methodist Church before I was converted, and the devil strove hard to acquiesce me and to get me to depend on that membership. Fortunately, grace prevailed and I got powerfully converted out in the woods all alone.

Then and there, in the absence of every human being, I entered the Church of the First-born. The roll is not kept on the register of a popular church, but in the Lamb’s Book of Life. Good Lord deliver you from the silly superstition that men or devils can turn you out of a church! The only way to do that will be to steal Jacob’s ladder, climb up to heaven, purloin the Lamb’s Book of Life and cancel your name from its shining columns.

Good Lord, give sense as well as religion, so we will not be bamboozled by Satan’s demagogues calling themselves preachers. Remember, all who leave this world members of the Church of God are sure of heaven, and none others. So you must hurry up and settle this problem of your church membership. If you belong to the grandest church in America, and are not truly regenerated and sanctified, instead of going to heaven when you die, devils will drag you into hell. Can regenerated people go to hell? No.

Though regeneration of itself, without a preacher, a drop of water or an official board, makes you a bona fide member of God’s Church, yet it only adapts you to a state of probation which is confined to this world. “Without the sanctification no one can see the Lord” (R.V., Hebrews 12:14). You can not keep regenerated unless you seek holiness according to your light.

In case of delinquency, you forfeit regeneration and fall into a backslider’s hell. If, seeking holiness according to your light, you have not received entire sanctification till God calls you away, He, in mercy, takes the will for the deed. Like the infant, you pass out under the blood, which cleanses you from all unrighteousness, giving you the full benefits of the atonement. As the old theologians say, you are sanctified “in articulo mortis ,” i .e ., “in the article of death.” Thus, while regeneration makes you a bona fide member of the Church on earth, it does not qualify you for the heavenly state; since membership in the Church militant is compatible with the depravity incurred by the Fall (which, even in regeneration, is kept subjugated): the heavenly state requires entire sanctification ( Hebrews 12:14). Hence, regeneration constitutes you a bona fide member (not an officer) of the Church militant on earth; while entire sanctification alone qualifies you for membership in the Church triumphant in heaven. Water baptism, eucharist and church register are simple visible signs of your membership in the family of God.

The signs are all right in their place, but in no way essential to the reality, which frequently exists in blessed reality without them.

CHAPTER - 1-10. Mt. Zion, where the Holy Ghost fell on the disciples, is in the southwestern part of the city, which is, throughout, the most densely built I ever saw; the streets eight to sixteen feet wide, and frequently arched over, and a house directly over the middle of the streets; while in front of the Temple, on Mt. Moriah, in the southeastern part of the city, there is a large area, said to contain thirty-five acres, and nicely laid with stone, the constituted receptacle of the vast multitudes which convene during the great annual camp meetings, Passover in April, Pentecost in June, and Tabernacles in September. From these considerations the afternoon meeting is moved from Mt. Zion to Mt. Moriah, where they avail themselves of the temple campus for the accommodation of the countless multitudes. The Beautiful Gate stands in the east wall of the city, directly eastward of the temple, in full view of Solomon’s porch. When I was there in 1895 I gave especial attention to this gate. I found it closed and fastened with such quantities of iron that nothing but battering rams and dynamite could open it. My Arab guide told me that the Moslem prophets lifted their warning voices when Caliph Omar captured Jerusalem, A.D. 637, solemnly warning him to close the Beautiful Gate and keep it closed, as he could only hold the city while that gate was closed; consequently it was promptly closed and made as sure as iron and brass could fasten it; and the Mohammedans, who think their salvation depends on holding Jerusalem, have kept it closed during this wonderful prophetic period, 1,260 years. As a confirmation of this statement of my guide, he pointed me to the tombs immediately outside the gate, jammed up against it. They looked as old as the great rocks of Mt.

Moriah. While Mt. Olivet is covered with Jewish tombs, the Mohammedans bury on Mt. Moriah, outside the wall of Jerusalem. All these facts corroborate the testimony of my guide, i .e ., that the Beautiful Gate has been closed 1,260 years. According to the same prophecy, it will certainly soon be opened as he prophet period of the Moslem power, according to Bishop Ussher, expired in 1897. Totten and Bimbleby say it is too short, and the true period will expire in 1899. Rest assured, Turkdom is tottering and liable to fall any moment. Daniel ( 8:25) says: “He shall be broken without hand,” i .e ., not by military power, but by the power of the Almighty. This throws light on the tardiness of Islam’s fall. Is she not fallen already, and merely kept in status quo by her Christian neighbors for state policy? Jerusalem swarms with beggars. Yet every beggar has his place. When I was there I went to the exchangers twice a day and got a supply of beggar money, so I could pass them. The Turks have about a half-dozen coins ranging from one-fourth of a cent to five cents, very convenient to give to the beggars, as I could not afford to give them the large coins. A man can live fat at Jerusalem on goat’s milk and barley bread bought from the Arabs for five cents. This beggar, more than forty years old, had his regular place at the Beautiful Gate, where his friends carried him every morning and set him down to beg through the day, no doubt they sharing in the benefactions. Doubtless he had seen Jesus pass through that gate ever and anon. He had heard Him preach and believed on Him (verse 16). Why was he not healed? God makes no mistakes. He is reserved for this important occasion. He is the best-known man in the kingdom. All of the people come to the temple and at the same time pass through this gate.

Hence they all get acquainted with him. Peter says, “Silver and gold have I none; but such as I have I give unto thee. In the name of Jesus Christ, the Nazarene, arise and walk.” In a great ecclesiastical council, one of the popes came along and saw wagon loads of money poured into the coffers of the church. Pausing, he observed, “No longer can the church say, ‘Silver and gold have I none.’ ” Thomas Aquinas, his eccentric cardinal, standing by, responded, “Neither can she any more say, ‘Arise and walk,’ ” thus sadly illustrating the loss of power with the loss of poverty. While the Methodists were poor and despised, they swept this continent like a tornado, more than a match for earth and hell. Since we have become rich, evacuated the old log meeting-house for the gorgeous edifice, and exchanged the illiterate pioneer circuit-rider for the collegiate graduate, we have lost our power and lamentably verified Wesley’s fears expressed on his death-bed that Methodism would become a dead sect like others. 8. The Greek describes the man leaping out of his place like a frog, and continuing to run round and round, following Peter and John into the temple, attracting the attention of everybody, because in forty years he had become better known than the king. 10. So the multitude all “ran to him, filled with astonishment and delight.” The Greek word which is translated “delight” is ecstasy , a very strong word. Oh, how his old acquaintances are astounded and thrilled! Why, only look yonder at Ben Israel! Did you ever see the like? How he leaps, skips and runs around! The news flies on the wings of the wind: “Old Ben Israel is healed — that man who has not walked a step in more than forty years.” “Oh, you don’t say it!” “I dare you to go and see for yourself.” The wonderful tidings fly to all parts of Jerusalem. Thousands of people leap and shout. “If Ben is healed, as you say, I am an out-and-out Nazarene.”

Nearly all of them had ever and anon dropped a penny in his hat. See him leap like a monkey and run like a race-horse! 11. Now the apostles have entered Solomon’s porch, running the entire width of the temple, fronting eastward. Meanwhile the ecstatic man so miraculously healed at the Beautiful Gate is holding them by the hand in adoring gratitude, leaping and skipping and shouting aloud, while the vast multitude running from all directions are gazing with unutterable bewilderment upon the scene, as the Greek says, “exceedingly excited.” 12. Meanwhile, Peter responded to the people: “Israelitish men, why do ye gaze upon us as that by our power or holiness we have caused this man to run around?” Remember that the Greek word here translated “holiness” is simply the noun form of the same word applied to the Jewish delegates who came from their synagogues in all the Gentile world to represent the God of Abraham at Pentecost. It is also applied to Cornelius and to Ananias, the good old local preacher in Damascus sent to comfort the penitent Saul of Tarsus. 13. Here Peter boldly certifies to the multitude that the same Jesus of Nazareth, whom they had crucified, had so miraculously restored the notable cripple at the Beautiful Gate. 14. He reminds them of their uproarious demand for the release of Barabbas, the robber-chief, as a substitute for Jesus. Now, reader, if you are ever going to follow Jesus up to heaven, you must travel the very road He traveled. Just as they preferred Barabbas to Jesus, so will the people of this wicked world and fallen churches prefer bad men to you, if you get sanctified wholly. Be not surprised if they actually prefer and honor the saloonkeeper in your town above you, somehow so deluded by Satan as to believe him a better man than yourself. As in the case of Jesus, Barabbas went up in the popular estimation and He went down, so you will find it in your own case if you get truly sanctified and profess it straight and clear. 15. “And you slew the Prince of Life.” Here is a beautiful allusion to our Savior’s royalty. He is not only our wonderful Savior and perfect Sanctifier, but our glorious coming King.

FAITH 16. “And upon the faith of his name, his name hath restored this one whom ye see and know, and faith through him hath given him this soundness in presence of you all.” From this verse it is very clear that the healed cripple was well acquainted with Jesus. He was a mature man in life’s meridian when Jesus began to visit Jerusalem, preach and do His mighty works, as it was His custom to preach all day in the streets of Jerusalem, and go away to Mount Olivet, where from His own testimony He doubtless lodged on the bosom of the earth which He had created, holding secret communion with His Father. In His constant peregrinations hither and thither, from the temple to Mount Olivet and back to the metropolis, He passed through the Beautiful Gate, turning many a loving smile, accompanied by words of truth and wisdom, on the poor beggar.

Hence, when Peter commanded him in the name of Jesus of Nazareth to arise and walk, instantaneously his faith took hold on the loving Sympathizer he had so often seen and heard, spiritually apprehending Him as the Omnipotent Healer of that decrepitude which had all his life utterly disqualified him to stand on his feet. Hence, pursuant to his faith in Jesus of Nazareth as the Omnipotent Healer, he leaps instantaneously into perfect restoration. We see from this verse that he was healed by faith in Jesus, who said, “As your faith is, so be it unto you.” This wonderful proclamation, on which hangs the world’s redemption, is as true of the body as the soul. Sure as the infallibility of our Jesus, we receive just what we have faith for, whether involving body or soul. Though the beggar had seen Jesus passing by, day by day, during the three years of his ministry, his healing was reserved for this salient epoch, when it was so much needed to boom the popular faith in the Christhood of the risen Jesus. At the same time we recognize in the flash radiating from the countenances of Peter and John, replete with buoyant faith, and the stentorian voice roaring in his ears, and the herculean grip of Peter’s hand, a potent inspiration to the faith of the cripple, which, responsive to these collateral incentives, leaped at once into electrical activity, apprehending in the humble Nazarene, about whom he had thought so much, the actual Omnipotent Shiloh of prophecy, Christ of God, Redeemer of the world and Healer of the body.

Hence, pursuant to his faith, he leaps, skips and runs for the first time in a life of more than forty years. 17. Though, as Peter says, “The Jews blindly and ignorantly slew the Prince of Life,” yet they were awfully criminal in the sight of God because they had yielded to the lies of Satan and spontaneously turned away from the light. 18. “But those things which he proclaimed through the mouth of all his prophets that his Christ should suffer, he thus fulfilled.” We see from this verse how the Jews and the Romans in their condemnation and crucifixion of Christ were literally fulfilling prophecies so obviously that it is astonishing that they could not recognize it. The very men who stood at the head of the church, having studied the prophecies at the feet of their great theologians, and preached on them all their lives, were so blinded by Satan that they could not see them; but in the black darkness of their wicked unbelief, these great preachers went right ahead, fulfilling the prophecies to their own condemnation. Oh! how history repeats itself! Visit in the great ecclesiastical assemblies of the present day. You find the mighty men of talent and scholarship standing at the head of the popular churches, all counseling together, even different denominations, like Pilate and Herod in the crucifixion of Christ, waiving their old animosities and uniting their wisdom and power to crush out the Holiness Movement [which is simply the Holy Ghost religion in contradistinction to the devil’s counterfeit, i .e ., dead churchism]. They all unite their forces, take up every sanctified preacher, carry him away and set him down in a region of icebergs, sending in his place a theological refrigerator to freeze out all the holy fire. What is this but the literal fulfillment of Daniel’s prophecy, “When they shall have accomplished to scatter the power of the holy people, then shall the end come.”

The holiness people are doing their best to spread Scriptural holiness throughout the world. But it is hard to tell which party is actually doing the more to scatter the holy fire — our friends or our enemies. When the latter, with the malignant rage which rankled in the carnal hearts of the great preachers who nailed Jesus to the cross, martyred Stephen and did their utmost to crush out the Nazarenes in blood, now violently interpose, reach forth the strong hand of ecclesiastical tyranny, pick up the holiness preachers, send them to the north pole and supply their places with the worst anti-holiness preachers they can command, what is the result? I am an eye-witness to what I write — have seen it verified repeatedly. They simply give the sanctified preacher a new, fresh field upon untrodden virgin soil — the very opportunity he needs to do a mighty work for God, preaching entire sanctification and instrumental in saving and sanctifying multitudes.

Meanwhile the fire in his former field is too hot for the devil’s ice carried in by the plughatted D. D. The accumulated fire of God’s red-hot cranks melts all of his ice. It is a well-known fact in chemistry that a sufficient intensity of heat will not only melt ice, but decompose the water into its constituent elements, oxygen and hydrogen, the latter the most combustible in the world, and the former the great supporter of combustion. Hence all the ice imported by the new preacher is simply a supply of fuel to augment the flame. The result is he gets gloriously sanctified; the revival which they sought to freeze out takes new fire, and sweeps over the land like a cyclone.

If you will read the prophecies and open your eyes to the ecclesiastical phenomena of the present day, you will be astounded at the wonderful fulfillment of prophecies. As the preachers standing at the head of a church in Jerusalem, blinded by Satan, rejected and killed the Son of God and did their utmost to exterminate His followers, we see the same tragedy at the present day going on throughout Christendom. Jesus was simply the incarnation of holiness. His disciples were nothing but simple-hearted, humble holiness people. Grace, as well as sin, is uniform and identical in all ages. Hence, at the present day, the proud, autocratic, carnal clergy in the leadership of popular religion are doing their utmost to antagonize the Holy Ghost and Spirit-filled people, thus literally fulfilling the prophecies as in the days of Christ.

PLAN OF SALVATION 19. “Repent, therefore, and turn unto the blotting out of your sins, in order that times of soul-renewing may come from the face of the Lord.” In repentance the sinner gives up all of his sins to the devil, where he got them, and leaves Satan’s kingdom forever. We must become honest before we can be saved. This honesty extends even to the devil. We must make an honest and final settlement with him, thus giving him back all we ever got from him, i .e ., all of our sins. How very few people ever do that! They endeavor to carry some of their sins with them along the heavenly road, which is utterly impossible. The devil holds you tight so long as you have anything that belongs to him. Whenever you give back to him all your sins, all your meanness, and everything you ever got from him, then he has no more use for you and will not let you stay with him another minute. So then you get off with a big shout, moving heavenward at a race-horse speed.

The E.V. erroneously says in this passage, “be converted,” as the verb is in the active voice, and literally means “turn.” While “repent” and “turn” and “the blotting out of sin” are all specific, they constitute conversion, which is generic. Here we see that the sinner has just two things to do — first, leave the devil and all of his sins in the devil’s kingdom, where they belong.

Then turn to the Lord with all his heart, soul, mind and strength, casting his lot with Him for time and eternity. In that case, the Lord freely and eternally blots out all of his sins from heaven’s chancery, so they never can be found again to bring back the blush of shame. Thus the vilest reprobate and the blackest debauchee, rescued and washed, can shout as loud as Gabriel on the golden streets, and defy all the archangels to find anything against him.

In vain they ransack the heavenly archives. The records are all destroyed; so the blood-washed slumites shine as bright and shout as loud as the cherubim and seraphim. When the sinner by repentance has left the devil and all of his sins with him forever and turned to the Lord, soul and body, heart, spirit, life and influence forever, and all his sins are blotted out, this consummates the grand negative work in the plan of salvation. Now the glorious positive side supervenes. The Holy Ghost raises him from the dead, giving him the very life of God in regeneration; then the Holy Ghost Himself makes him His happy incarnation, moving in to abide forever, thus verifying this beautiful promise, “In order that times of soul-renewing may come from the face of the Lord.” RETURN OF CHRIST 20. The E.V. erroneously has a semicolon between the 19th and 20th verses. The inspired original, spoken by Peter and written by Luke, has no stop whatever between these verses. Then what will our brethren do who are unwilling to preach the second coming of Christ, as there is not even a comma here, much less a period, on which they may slide out? Inspired Peter preaches the glorious spiritual economy of full salvation and the second coming of Christ in the very same breath. Hence, if you preach the former and leave out the latter, you will certainly grieve the Holy Spirit by breaking one of His sentences in two in the middle without His authority.

Good Lord, help us to be true to His Word and not get wise above what is written: “And he may send forth unto you him who has been preached unto you as the Messiah, namely Jesus,” 21. “Whom it behooveth heaven indeed to receive until the times of the restitution of all things which God spoke through the mouth of his holy prophets from the beginning.” This Scripture reveals the fact most unequivocally that Peter was enthused with the glowing anticipation of seeing his Lord return to the earth, before he exchanged his silver trumpet for a golden harp. This expectation would have been verified if the Pentecostal generation had preached the gospel of the kingdom to every nation, calling out the Bride of Christ and preparing her to meet her coming Lord. In this they failed, thus postponing our Lord’s return. You see here that Jesus is to remain in heaven “until the time of restitution of all things spoken by the prophets from the beginning.” You know the prophets have most unequivocally predicted the restoration of the world back to the Edenic state. The Son of Man “came to destroy the works of the devil.” This world once existed without a devil in it. The prophet John tells us positively that the devil is to be taken out, so we will again have this world without a devil in it as in Eden times. The prophets certify over and over, “The desert shall rejoice and the wilderness bloom”; “Springs of water shall break out in the wilderness and streams in the desert.” Hence the millions of acres of valuable lands in Asia, Africa and America, now desert-wastes for the want of irrigation, will have ample supplies of water and flourish as the very gardens of the Lord, abounding in perennial fruits and flowers. I believe it inspired Peter and all of his apostolical comrades and saints that our Lord is coming back and will “restore all things” as spoken by the prophets. This wonderful sentence (including vs. 19-21) reveals succinctly, lucidly and comprehensively the gracious economy of full salvation, and in the same breath the return of the Lord to the earth. “What God hath joined together, let no man separate.” Woe unto the audacious hand that dares to divorce what God has married! Then let us go to the ends of the earth preaching this wonderful salvation, and at the same time the most potent of all inspirations to a holy experience and life, i .e ., our Lord’s return to the earth on the throne of His glory, visiting awful retributionary judgment on the wicked, and crowning His faithful, expectant Bride to sit with Him on His throne.

While holiness to the Lord is the grand trunk line of the heaven-bound railway running up to the New Jerusalem, yet we must not depreciate the great tributaries, and especially that potent and inspiring incentive to entire sanctification, i .e ., the constant outlook for our coming King. 22. “Indeed Moses said that our Lord God will raise up unto you a prophet from your brethren like unto me; him you will hear as to all things so many as he may speak unto you.” This prophet is none other than Jesus. Moses is the brightest type of the Mediatorial Christ, himself the honored mediator of the old dispensation, symbolizing so potently our Lord in His glorious mediatorial office in the new dispensation.

TRIBULATION 23. “And it shall come to pass that whosoever may not hear that prophet will be cut off from the people.” “May hear” in this verse is in the subjunctive mood, revealing contingency, which is peculiar to man alone, as there are no contingencies with God. While we all fully recognize human free agency, yet the present dispensation, like all of her predecessors, is fast hardening into infidelity, grieving the Holy Spirit away, passing the dead line and ripening for destruction. God knows every person who will hear His Son when He comes in His glorious kingdom. He equally well knows every one who will reject Him. During the great tribulation, when the Ancient of Days shall descend on the throne of His righteous retributive judgments ( Daniel 7:9), He will hackle out of the world everything that will not do for the coming kingdom; so that when the Son rides down on the throne of His millennial glory, He will find none but the elect, i .e ., saved and savable people, on the earth. The first work of the transfigured saints will be the preaching of the gospel of the kingdom to all the survivors of the tribulation on the whole face of the earth ( Acts 15:17). Then shall be verified that notable prophecy, “A nation shall be born in a day.” This verse is clear and unequivocal that the non-elect, i .e ., the people who have crossed the dead-line and are unsavable, shall all be cut off during the tribulation. 24. “And all the prophets from Samuel and successively so many as spoke also proclaimed these days.” How significantly true! The second coming of Christ is a most prominent thing with all the prophets in all dispensations.

Even Enoch, in antediluvian times, was a powerful preacher of the Lord’s second coming ( Jude 14, 15). Read it and you will find a most vivid description of the great tribulation. Job, the oldest writer in the Bible, living in the patriarchal dispensation, preached powerfully on the Lord’s second coming: “I know that my Redeemer liveth, and that he shall stand in the latter days upon the earth, — and with mine eyes I shall see God, whom I shall know for myself and not a stranger.”

The E.V. says, incorrectly, “not another.” The truth of it is, Job claims a happy acquaintance with his Redeemer, so that when He returns to the earth in the latter days and stands upon it, Job, a member of the Bridehood coming up in the first resurrection, will joyfully recognize Him. Shall we not preach a truth which constituted a glowing theme of all the prophets in all dispensations? 25. “Ye are the sons of the prophets and of the covenant which God established with our fathers, saying to Abraham: Truly in thy seed shall all the families of the earth be blessed.” You all know “seed” here means Christ ( Galatians 3:16). Hence we see that God covenanted with Abraham that all the families of the earth shall be blessed in his seed. That wonderful promise is far from verification at the present day. The people who live and die wicked in gospel lands find an infinitely more terrible hell than lost heathens, because damnation is in proportion to the light rejected.

There is not the slightest probability that this prophecy will have a premillennial fulfillment. Truly its fulfillment will inevitably bring the Millennium. When Jesus shall reign in every home, blessing all the members of every family on the earth, then will millennial glory girdle the globe. Reader, do you believe that the time will come when this promise which God made to Abraham, “that all the families of the earth shall be blessed in Christ,” will be literally fulfilled? I hope you do believe it, as you can not afford to be an infidel. Abraham’s faith ought to put the modern church to the blush. If he could stand beneath the starry canopy of a Palestinian sky four thousand years ago and believe this promise, which has not yet been fulfilled, but is reserved for the millennial ages, oh! how faithless the present generation! standing away down at the terminus of this gorgeous rainbow of God’s infallible promise to the Father of the Faithful.

If Abraham could believe it four thousand years ago, certainly we, standing on the remotest verge of pre-millennial centuries, flooded on all sides with the signs of our Lord’s near coming, ought to believe it with joyful enthusiasm. Reader, would you be a truly happy Christian? Then believe everything God tells you in the Bible. If you understand it, Amen! If you do not understand it, believe it none the less and shout the louder. I am a son of Abraham, and rejoice with him in the sure word of prophecy, and contemplate with glowing anticipation the good time quickly coming, when “all the families of the earth shall be blessed” in our glorious Christ. I hope, reader, if you are wearing the critic’s cap, that you will get such a baptism of fire as to burn it up. My critical cap was burnt up when God baptized me with the Holy Ghost and fire thirty years ago. From that day, instead of criticizing God’s Word, I have believed it; my creed is all dead and buried.

If you want the shout to come into your soul, never to go out, do you begin to believe all the Bible, not because you understand it, but because God said it. Good Lord help you to sink away into God, dead to everything but Him and His Word. 26. Peter’s afternoon sermon in Solomon’s porch, like his forenoon sermon on Mt. Zion, is climacteric in the enforcement of these two great cardinal gospel truths, i .e ., entire sanctification and the coming King.

CHAPTER - APOSTOLICAL SUCCESSION 1-3. Here we find Peter is interrupted in the midst of this glorious sermon by the priests and the captain of the Levitical temple guards and the Sadducees, the most wealthy and consequently influential sect of the Jewish church, though quite heterodoxical in their theology, and even rationalistic in their teaching; so here, while the multitude are spell-bound and edified by the truth, Peter preached. The anti-holiness preachers and the carnal men of wealth and influence constituting the official board can stand it no longer.

Consequently, with the acquiescence of the Romans, who are willing to purchase Jewish favor with the persecution of the poor Nazarenes, they break up this precious meeting by an open assault on the preachers, laying violent hands on them and incarcerating them in prison. A world-wide controversy has rolled down the ages ever since the Constantinian apostasy, Roman Catholics, Episcopalians and many others disputing over the apostolical succession, each party claiming to have it to the exclusion of all the rest. Now, behold the scene! Platoons of theologians, with plug hats, pigeon-tail coats and toothpick shoes, cigars in their mouths, rings on their fingers and golden-headed canes in their hands, all disputing with each other over the apostolical succession, each party claiming to have it and ostracizing and anathematizing all the balance. The Bible is a plain book.

Why will intelligent, educated men thus stultify themselves, becoming laughing-stocks for devils? Now with an open Bible you have nothing to do but read the plain record and here see the apostolical succession. The way the apostles went is open and free for all. You have nothing to do but walk in their footprints. They first received a clear conversion, the Savior Himself assuring them that their names were written in heaven. Then after a ten days’ prayer meeting they were gloriously baptized with the Holy Ghost and fire, and thus sanctified wholly; then beneath the burning sun [for there never was a Christian church built till A.D. 150] they preached all day amid roaring mobs, preachers mad because they preached holiness, stirring the rabble and interrupting them, and finally to spend the night in jail. So you see clearly the way of apostolical succession. Your experiences, your ministry and your life must be like those of the apostles; otherwise your claim to succession is farcical and false. Good Lord, help us to read our Bibles and learn some sense. Now, take all these clamorous and disputatious claimants to the apostolical succession who have racked the church with controversy the last fifteen hundred years. Do you not see the silly nonsense and the ridiculous falsity of the whole matter? The succession is free to all who will receive it. It leads through the crucible, regeneration, Pentecost of fiery baptism street-preaching all day amid rocks, mud, clubs, eggs, mad preachers and church officers, and a jail to sleep in at night. So these big preachers that have been quarreling over it these last fifteen hundred years can all have it. But there is the trouble — they don’t want it. They will not have it. Then why not quit their nonsense?

FIVE THOUSAND CONVERTED 4. This wonderful accession augments the Nazarenes to eight thousand.

While doubtless many of them were born from above for the first time in life, you must remember that the great salient fact is conversion to the Christhood of Jesus. Among the thousands of “devout” Jews (remember, this word is not applied to sinners) come from every nation under heaven; it certainly follows as a legitimate sequence that many of them know experimentally the God of Abraham and Moses, and as they had never heard of Jesus the Nazarene, of course they were perfectly innocent of His crucifixion. That doubtless large element of the Pentecostal crowd needed only to be converted to the Christhood of Jesus; while all of the Jerusalemites who were guilty of His blood, had to be justified and regenerated, as well as converted to the Christhood of Jesus. I trow not a few of this number, who had formerly known the God of Israel by happy experience, were actually baptized with the Holy Ghost and sanctified wholly in that Pentecostal revival.

SANHEDRIN 5-7. The judgment hall of the Sanhedrin stands on Mt. Zion, about a thousand rods from the city wall, on the brow of that mountain. I was in it three years ago, my guide certifying to its identity. Jesus was arraigned there. Here we see both Annas, the high priest, endorsed by the Romans, and Caiaphas the high priest, endorsed by the Jews, and all the magnates belonging to the family of the high priest, as well as the Scribes and the Elders, were assembled in this council. Why were two illiterate rustics more than a match for this grave assembly of learned preachers and doctors of divinity, having on their side of the controversy all the scholarship, official dignity, ecclesastical authority and money power of the age? There is but one answer: Peter and John were men “full of the Holy Ghost”; so, “fear not, little flock, it is your Father’s good pleasure to give unto you the Kingdom.” If you are filled with the Holy Ghost you are more than a match for all the powers of earth and hell. God has never changed. Good Lord, help us to get back to the Acts of the Apostles.

JESUS ONLY 11, 12. Can we not learn this truth? There is salvation in none but Jesus.

If you differ from this you are an idolater. Our Jesus needs no help to save a soul. Some worship a water-god; others, a day-god, and still others worship gods of wood and stone in the form of a fine edifice, while many worship creeds and sects, Mammon and style. Jesus warns us to beware of the leaven of the Pharisees, which is hypocrisy, i .e ., modern orthodoxy; the leaven of the Sadducees, which is rationalism, i .e ., higher criticism; and the leaven of Herod (a royal dynasty), which is spread-eagleism, i .e ., the worship of political gods. Oh, how few worship Jesus only! The true God is only revealed in Jesus by the Holy Ghost. Reader, be sure you adopt the creed Jesus only.

ILLITERACY OF THE APOSTLES 13. “Seeing the boldness of Peter and John, and observing that they are unlearned and ignorant men, they continue to be astonished and recognize that they were with Jesus.” No ingenuity of scholarship can evade the force of this statement of the Holy Ghost. The Greek for unlearned is agrammatoi , from a , “not,” and gramma , “a letter.” Hence, it literally means unlettered, i .e ., without a knowledge of letters. They had no common schools in that day. The word translated “ignorant” is idiootai from which have we idiot. Hence, it means that they were idiots, so far as human learning was concerned. They were rude, illiterate rustics, and there is no reason whatever to believe they could read or write. After our Savior called them they may have learned a little about letters. Of this we have no information, as Peter dictated his two brief Epistles to an amanuensis. John outlived all of the other Apostles a whole generation, doing his writing doubtless by an amanuensis when nearly an hundred years old. Why did our Lord select unlearned and ignorant men to preach the gospel to a dying world? He could just as easily have put His hand on the learned rabbis and have commanded the highest culture of the world. (a) It was safer to use blank paper on which to write the messages destined to save the world, and thus obviate the innate tendency of humanity to incorporate some of their own wisdom along with the precious truth revealed. (b) The gospel heralds, exposed to all the rigors of polar snows and equatorial heat, ocean waves and sand storms, lodging beneath the stars for a cover, with a stone for a pillow, needed the physical constitution of a hippopotamus and the activity of a kangaroo, which can only be developed by the toils, privations, exposures and hardships of a rough-and-tumble life. (c) Their example to all their successors is indispensable. God needs an army of evangelists this day like that of Xerxes to save the world. Do you not know if the Apostles had all been collegiate graduates, no others would have the courage to respond to the call, shoulder the responsibilities, brave the dangers, brook the contempt and go to the ends of the earth to save the lost? So fast as church-members grieve away the Holy Ghost and backslide, they confine the preaching of the gospel to the learned. So long as Methodist preachers “were unlearned and ignorant men,” depending on Brush College for their education, they had power to shake heaven, earth and hell and roll a tide of salvation like a sweeping cyclone wherever they went. We do not depreciate learning when sanctified by the Holy Ghost (for unsanctified, it is dangerous and has sent many to hell); but we need all to save a lost world. So we will take the unlearned and not excuse the learned.

ECCLESIASTICAL USURPATION 15-22. Here we see the preachers in authority at Jerusalem determine to crush out the holiness movement started by Jesus of Nazareth and perpetuated by His Apostles. So they issue to Peter and John a positive prohibition to preach any more, augmenting that interdiction by terrible threats in case of persistence. 19. “Peter and John responding, said unto them, If it is righteous before God to hear you rather than God, judge ye.” Lord, help us all to follow the example of the Apostles, and in every case “obey God rather than men.” When ecclesiastical law is in harmony with God as revealed to us by His Word, Spirit and providence, then we are in harmony with the rulers of our church. When their decision is out of harmony with God’s truth and will thus revealed to us, if we do not follow the Apostolical example and “obey God rather than men,” we will have trouble at the judgment bar. I propose to take mine here, God helping me. This very ordeal is spurring on the holiness people this day from the Atlantic to the Pacific. God help us to be true. My disciplinary obligation administered to me in my ordination vows reads: “Following most gladly their godly judgments.” Suppose their judgments are not godly, i .e ., contrary to the will of God as revealed to me by His Word, Spirit and providence, do you not see the legitimate force of my ordination vows? They simply require me to obey my rulers when in harmony with God, but with equal force am I obligated to disobey them when out of harmony with God. We are living in the last days, which try men’s souls. Every young preacher is brought face to face with the ordeal of Peter and John, “Will you obey God or man?” When you obey God, of course you obey all human authority which is in harmony with God. Here at Jerusalem we have the pastors and leading preachers in the popular church arrayed against the followers of our Savior and doing their best to prohibit them from preaching. We have parallel cases this day on all sides claiming to be the true ministers of God and doing their utmost to prohibit the spread of the gospel. What were the apostles preaching? The doctrines and experience which Jesus taught and they received at Pentecost; for they were, in fact, in the midst of Pentecost. You can not gainsay the identity of the cases; we have the inspired record of Pentecost. Preach it as we read it.

The people enter into the experiences. The clergymen in authority oppose us and forbid us to preach in what they call their territory, just like they forbade the apostles at Jerusalem. What shall we do? We here have the answer given by Peter and John, “Obey God rather than men.” I tell you, brethren, if you will be true to God, you can always know the divine guidance. It is three-fold, — His Word, Spirit and providence. His Word is for your intellect, His Spirit for your spirit, and His providence for your body. If we give way to the ecclesiastical usurpation, now everywhere interdicting the full, free gospel, we will offend God and lose our souls.

Good Lord, help us to be true and “obey God rather than men.” If we do not, God will cast us away and give the glory to others. God helping me, I will be true and “obey God rather than men.” There is no such a thing as ecclesiastical law per se . God is the only Law-giver and the Bible the only code of laws in all the world. As all the truth symbolized in the Old Testament is literalized in the New, and we are living under the New Testament dispensation, therefore we may consider the New Testament as our code of laws for church and state. It is bad enough for the wild beast governments [for such are all human governments, according to Daniel and John] to employ drunken legislators to enact laws instead of enjoying the benignant government of our Heavenly Father, who desires to rule all of His creatures in righteousness and love. This state of things we must endure till the Ancient of Days descends to execute righteous judgments against the wicked nations and fallen churches ( Daniel 7:9). But it is simply preposterous for the Church of God to assume legislative power. All such assumption is usurpation and rebellion. No ecclesiastical court has a right to enact a law de novo . All they can do is to recognize and enforce the laws of God, plainly written in the New Testament. Modern ecclesiastical councils are bold to enact laws not only unknown in the New Testament, but positively antagonistical to the letter and spirit of the same. All such socalled ecclesiastical laws deserve only the contempt of God’s people.

SECOND PENTECOST 23-31. During the imprisonment and trial of Peter and John the one hundred and eighteen, with quite a host of the Pentecostal converts, are pushing the battle for God and souls on the great temple campus on Mt.

Moriah in the east end of the city, the judgment hall, where Peter and John and Jesus were tried, being on Mt. Zion, in the west end. When constrained by popular sentiment to release Peter and John they reluctantly discharged them through fear of an insurrection. Then the apostles go immediately to the great meetings on the temple campus and report the persecutions of the preachers and official board and the intervention of the Almighty through the people for their acquittal. Now they quote the prophecy in Psalms 2, which had actually been fulfilled in the crucifixion of Jesus, and is still being verified in the rage of the clergy and official board against the apostles. They allude to the union of Pilate and Herod in the crucifixion of Christ, despite their former and long-standing animosities either to other.

How signally is the same prophecy fulfilled to-day in the reconciliation and co-operation of the hitherto warring sects, forgetting all their bitter hatred either to other, and uniting against the holiness movement! Amid the implacable animosities of church and state combined against the poor Nazarenes and determined to exterminate them and even obliterate the very memory of their leader from the memory of the world, there is much fear on the unsanctified young converts. Hence they need another Pentecost to bring down the baptism of the Holy Ghost and fire, consuming all their cowardice and filling them with the perfect love, casting out fear. Therefore they all fall on their knees, unite their hearts and cry to God for the sanctifying power. Behold! the place is shaken and another Pentecost comes down from heaven, gloriously filling and flooding them, sanctifying all the fear out of the young converts and weak believers, so that “they were all filled with the Holy Ghost and continued to speak the word of God with boldness.” This glorious second Pentecost gave a wonderful new impetus to the revival Niagara already shaking the metropolis with a spiritual earthquake. This second Pentecost gloriously sanctifies the converts of the first, raising up hundreds of new preachers to herald the living Word, thus broadening the revival into paradoxical dimensions, till it rolls its mighty inundating wave out from Jerusalem into all of the surrounding country, not only inundating all Palestine, but sweeping over Samaria like an avalanche and rolling out its irresistible tide into heathen Syria.

THE UNIFICATION OF GOD’S PEOPLE 32. “Of the multitude of those who believed there was one heart and soul.” The power of God’s salvation to literally unify all its recipients, regardless of race, color, sect or nationality, has been the puzzle of wicked people and counterfeit professors in all ages. God made religion, which is the same in all hearts, in every land, beneath every sky, whether the sable children of Ham with unshod feet treading the burning sands of Africa, or the brown sons and daughters of Shem, populating the time-honored empires of the Orient, or the beautiful children of Japheth thronging the mighty cities of Europe and spreading over the virgin soils of America. While the grace of God is uniform in every nation, church and people, the devil’s counterfeit religion, which is sectarianism, is heterogeneous, contradictory and false, bringing to its votaries only disappointment, ruin and damnation. Man is a trinity, consisting of body, mind and spirit. False religions all recognize man as a duality consisting of but the two elements, thus eliminating the third story of humanity, depriving him of his immortal spirit, which is homogeneous to God, and the element on which the Holy Spirit operates, through the human spirit reaching the mind and body. False theologies identify mind and spirit, thus eliminating the latter and substituting mentalities for spiritualities, and thus ignoring the absolute necessity of supernatural intervention in the plan of salvation. Since man is a trinity, consisting of body, mind and spirit, and none but his spirit suffered total ruin in the Fall, a residuum of mentality and materiality survived the catastrophe of Satan’s victory in Eden. Therefore men and devils in all ages have been building up systems of counterfeit religion on this residuum of mind and body which survived the Fall; such religion being destitute of true spirituality, and of course independent of the Holy Ghost. Such are the great popular religions of the world today, whether Pagan, Moslem, Papal or Protestant. Their stock consists in fine edifices, pomp and ceremony, intellectual culture and eloquent sermons. All this is a superstructure built on the residuum of mind and matter which survived the Fall. Since it is destitute of true spirituality, it is independent of the Holy Ghost, and always ready to wage an exterminating war against the true religion, which comes only through the supernatural agency of the Holy Spirit. The Bible is clear on total depravity, everywhere recognizing the sinner as “dead” ( Ephesians 2:1). The word for regenerate is zoo-opoieoo , which is a compound word and means to create life. Hence the conversion of a sinner is a de facto creation as real as the creation of a world. As there is but one Creator, therefore God alone can regenerate a soul. Popular religions in all ages have practically eliminated the supernatural, which alone has salvation.

The true religion is not morality, philanthropy nor churchanity. It is all spirituality wrought by the personal Holy Ghost in the heart. Consequently, Holy Ghost religion is the only one in all the world characterized by true spiritual life. Between the living and the dead religions of the world there has always been an irrepressible conflict, — an exterminating war, — and always will be. Whenever a church dies spiritually, she is ready to fight Holy Ghost religion, from the simple fact that she is possessed of the devil, who is the uncompromising enemy of God. The “soul,” as used in the Bible, means the mind; the “heart” means the affections, and is really included in “spirit,” which is a much more comprehensive term, signifying the immortal being, the highest element of humanity homogeneous to God Himself. While the animals all have souls, i .e ., minds, they are not immortal. The reason the human soul is immortal in contradistinction to the animals, is because the immortality is conferred by the human spirit. When God created man, he consisted of soul or mind and body, homogeneous to the animal creation. Subsequently “God breathed into his nostrils the breath of life,” thus imparting to him His immortal Spirit, as the Hebrew word ruach not only means spirit, but breath, the symbol of the spirit. Of course man had animal life before this divine inbreathing imparted to him a living spirit, conferring life and immortality on his soul. The human spirit is constituted of three faculties, i .e ., the conscience, which survived the Fall, and is the voice of God in the soul; the will, which is the king of the man and in the hands of Satan while a sinner, but in conversion wrested from the devil and turned over to God forever to rule; and the affections, which are the predilections, inclinations and incentives constituting the “heart.”

These are only conquered in regeneration and retained, subordinated to the regenerated will, by grace, it being reserved for the wonderful efficacy of the cleansing blood in entire sanctification to radically expurgate them of all native evil and the refining fire of the Holy Ghost, in the “one baptism” ( Ephesians 4:5), to consume all the surviving debris of the Fall. The unpardonable sin and the blasphemy against the Holy Ghost ( Matthew 12:31) supervene when the devil succeeds in blowing off this third story of the human superstructure by the tornadoes sent up from the bottomless pit.

In these latter days of superabounding infidelity and abnormal wickedness, millions on all sides are actually permitting the devil to destroy this third story of their being by grieving away the Holy Spirit, thus crossing the dead line and sealing their doom in hell, while yet reveling amid the sunshine of temporal prosperity and sensual delectation. In this way the world is fast ripening for the awful tribulation. The mind consists of the intellect, the memory, the sensibilities, and the judgment. In case of salvation, the mind with its wonderful resources is attracted up to the spirit, identified with it and subordinated to it, with its mighty resources of both mind and spirit, all consecrated to God for time and eternity. In case of the wicked, in the awful ultimatum of the sad forfeiture of their spiritual susceptibilities, and the transcendent achievements and glories of gracious possibilities, this third story of humanity, which God built for His own occupancy, being blown off by the devil, the vast resources of mentality are dragged down and subordinated to the body, which in ipso is a mere animal. In that case man becomes a demonized brute, unfortunately immortal and capable only of misery to himself and others, all focalized in demonized self, in which is concentrated not only the ruin of the Fall, but the very virus of Satan and the torments of hell.

BARNABAS 33-37. Here we have another allusion to the community of goods, practiced by the Apostolic church, necessitated by the suddenness and improvidence of the Pentecostal revival, and inspired by the hostility of their environments and the vivid anticipation of the Lord’s speedy return.

Barnabas, which is but a cognomen, a Syriac word, meaning son of consolation, while his real name was Joseph, though a Levite, was a farmer off in the beautiful isle of Cyprus, in the Mediterranean Sea. He was a bright young man of liberal education, a friend and acquaintance of Saul, the celebrated Tarsian, doubtless having been his school-mate in the Greek colleges in the city of Tarsus, the Capital of Cilicia, a border-land of Asia, near his home in Cyprus. This bright and promising young Levite is an honored delegate of a Cyprian synagogue, sent to represent them in the great annual camp-meeting at Jerusalem, denominated Pentecost, without the vaguest dream of the heavenly cyclone destined to catch him in its inextricable whorls. Now that he is wonderfully converted to the Christhood of Jesus, I trow, having formerly known the God of Israel, he is a most joyful recipient of the Pentecostal baptism. Therefore he sells out his Cyprian farm, with all its appurtenances, brings the money and tumbles down every penny at the apostles’ feet, simultaneously importuning, “Will you not take Barnabas also?” Behold the contrast between primitive Christianity and the present age! I am constantly accosted by brothers and sisters in the kingdom of God, testifying to a call to preach and a burning enthusiasm to start at once if they only “had the money.” Behold the contrast! In the Apostolic age, the first thing they did after receiving a call was to sell out all they had and turn over every cent to the church, giving themselves, too. The monetary difficulties arise from the misapprehension that they actually need it in their humble efforts to glorify God in the salvation of souls. The apostles and their evangelistic comrades all walked everywhere they went, trusting the Lord to feed them like He feeds the birds. Therefore they needed no money except such as the Lord would supply in their peregrinations, as they had no fares to pay. Consequently, in order to disencumber themselves of all temporal care, that they might be perfectly free to go preaching, like Barnabas, they sold out everything they had, turning the proceeds over to the apostles. We would enjoy much better health, live longer and be more useful if we would let the railroads alone and all walk, as in the Apostolic age. We need multiplied thousands of walking itinerants, full of faith and the Holy Ghost, to preach the gospel from house to house, pursuant to the primitive economy.

CHAPTER - IDENTITY OF THE TRINITY 3, 4 and 9 (also Romans 8:9). These Scriptures prove clearly the identity of the Holy Ghost, the Spirit of Christ, and the Spirit of the Father.

In verse 3, Peter accuses Ananias of lying to the Holy Ghost. In verse 4, he accuses him of lying to God. In verse 9, he accuses him of tempting the Spirit of the Lord, i .e ., of Christ. Hence we see that all these are used synonymously, proving their identity. Romans 8:9: “But you are not in carnality, but in the spirit, if the Spirit of God dwelleth in you. And if any one has not the Spirit of Christ, he is none of his.”

In this verse we find the Spirit of God and the Spirit of Christ used synonymously, and both synonymous with the Holy Ghost. I have met much inquiry and know many people exceedingly puzzled and muddled along these lines of revealed truth, some having actually digressed into the tritheistic heresy, i .e ., the doctrine of three Gods, because they too idly discriminate between the three persons of the one God, becoming somewhat oblivious to the fact that there is only one God, of whom the Father, Son and Spirit are three distinct persons, executive of the different departments in the gracious economy, and accommodatory to our finite apprehensions of the incomprehensible Divinity. I am editor in the morning, teacher in the afternoon, and preacher at night, day by day, in my industrial life; thus exhibiting three distinct characters and working on three separate lines. Therefore you see in me a human trinity. Yet I am only one man.

ANANIAS AND SAPPHIRA 1-11. In that country the summers are very hot [and this was June], superinducing very quick and rapid putrefaction, necessitating a speedy interment of the dead, especially in a vast multitude. They had no grave to dig, as they did not use them. The sepulchers were always ready for the deposition of the dead. From this history of the mournful fate of Ananias and Sapphira, we learn an exceedingly valuable and eminently profitable symbolic truth, pertinent to all ages; i .e ., that if we do not radically and truly consecrate all to God, spiritual death will inevitably supervene.

Horace, the celebrated Roman lyric poet, says: “Retribution, though with lame foot, will inevitably overtake the criminal.” Though the irrelevancy of the heathen poet, how significantly true! The Holy Spirit is omniscient, seeing every thought, feeling and motive of our being. Hence we can not deceive Him. Millions try it and fall dead [spiritually] like Ananias and Sapphira. Reader, profit by this awful warning. You can not deceive God. Now and evermore submit unreservedly, be loyal as an angel, your watchword ever ringing, “Thy will be done.”

APOSTOLICAL SUCCESSION SPIRITUAL AND NOT OFFICIAL 13. “And no one of the rest dared to identify himself with them, but the people magnified them.” The popular mind has found a contradiction between this and the following verse, which states that “believers continued to be the more added unto the Lord.” There is no contradiction, but perfect harmony. While the conviction on the multitude was wonderfully augmented and intensified by the sudden death of Ananias and Sapphira, and consequently the revival took new impetus, spreading more rapidly than ever yet, as certified in verse 13, they all recognized superhuman power in the apostles, peculiar to themselves alone, which did not appertain to the disciples. Hence the long-agitated controversy and the boasted ecclesiastical dogmata of apostolical succession are utterly without foundation, as the apostles never had any official succession in the sense claimed by the churches. In Ephesians 4:10, Paul mentions apostles in the catalogue of God’s ministers, along with evangelists, pastors and prophets throughout the gospel dispensation. But we must bear in mind that all these ministerial offices belong to the Holy Ghost alone, as it says He gives them. Hence official succession in an ecclesiastical sense is precluded. God made Bishop Taylor an apostle to Africa, and Hudson Taylor to interior China. And many others are leading forth the embattled host at the present day, as apostle simply means “one sent” as a pioneer.

While all of these officers are still efficient on the earth, perpetuating the ministry of the church in her primitive beauty, spirituality and glory, yet they are given by the sovereign, discriminating power of the Holy Ghost alone, never having been transmitted to any ecclesiasticism. The Holy Ghost became incarnate on the day of Pentecost, and has so remained ever since, taking some to heaven, and filling and using others, thus perpetuating His church upon the earth. In contradisctinction to the human ecclesiasticisms, really Satan’s counterfeits and constituting spiritual Babylon, Rome, the old harlot mother, and the fallen Protestant churches, her daughters, constituting the counterfeit Bride, contrastive with the true, simple, humble, meek and lowly Bride of Christ, the sympathetic companion of the suffering Savior, left on the earth to represent Him and prepare the world for His coming kingdom. The Apostolic Church remained pure through bloody centuries of Pagan persecution, till by Constantine promoted from the lion’s mouth and the burning stake to Caesar’s palace, precipitating the great apostasy into Roman Catholicism.

From the fatal epoch of the great Constantinian apostasy, God had a true people perpetuated in the novations, A.D. 250. During the middle ages they were denominated the Waldenses, and afterwards the Moravians, who became instrumental in the conversion and sanctification of John Wesley after he had preached ten years in the Episcopal Church, perfectly honest, exceedingly zealous, and awfully persecuted for having too much religion, while he did not have any; thus illustrating the blindness with which Satan beclouds human ecclesiasticisms. When carnal men appropriate the church, the Holy Ghost leaves it and lets the devil have it. Meanwhile, the Holy Ghost moves right on perpetuating His work, independently of human officers and institutions. While all these ministerial officers are still in the church, and always have been, they are the creations of the Holy Ghost, dispensed in different ages and nations, pursuant to His infallible wisdom, superabounding grace, and discriminating providence.

DIVINE HEALING 15, 16. While the revival tide is inundating Jerusalem and rolling into the surrounding country like an ever-widening sea, we see as in all ages a corresponding prominence given to divine healing — “and a multitude of the cities around Jerusalem came together, bringing their sick and those tormented by unclean spirits, who all continued to get healed.” Bodily healing is the legitimate overflow and outgrowth of the spiritual life. “He that raised up Christ Jesus from the dead will also quicken your mortal bodies by his Spirit dwelling in you” ( Romans 8:11).

Divine healing is normally for those who are filled with the Holy Ghost, who is always ready to repair any dilapidation of His own house, that it may be competent to answer the purposes of His occupancy, becoming His efficient instrument in His labors of love through our mortal instrumentality. Though we are very diligent to repair the houses in which we live, perpetuating their adaptations to the enterprises of our Occupancy, yet the time comes when it is no longer expedient to repair the breaches in the old house. In that case we desist from any further repairs, take it down and build a new one. Divine healing only reaches the body in this life in an earnest of the glory that awaits us when this mortal shall put on immortality in the transfiguration, received either by translation, as Enoch and Elijah, and all of the saints at the rapture, or in the resurrection, as final and complete bodily healing must eliminate mortality, which is the very element of physical ailment and death. The doctrine of divine healing, so prominent in the New Testament and practical in the Apostolic ministry, is especially valuable as a tributary to the spiritual life, furnishing a powerful incentive to all to be filled with the Holy Ghost, and to keep filled, receiving perpetually an increasing enduement of the blessed indwelling Comforter, who, pursuant to our perfect submission, obedience and humble faith, will keep His own tenement in good repair, adapted to the work He has given us to do, pouring on us a thousand blessings through our surviving physical infirmities, preparing us for translation when our Lord descends.

HIGH PRIEST AND OFFICIAL BOARD 17, 18. “And the high priest and all those with him, being of the sect of the Sadducees, were filled with envy, jealousy and prejudice, and laid hands on the apostles and put them in the common prison.” Tell me not that the high priest did not, in all good conscience, sign the death-warrant of Jesus Christ, believing that he was doing God service. We have no right to impeach the honesty of these leading preachers and official members at Jerusalem. You have nothing to do but look at their successors at the present day. Their name is legion. They doubtless feel it to be their duty to crush out the Holiness Movement, whose votaries are preaching the Incarnation of the Holy Ghost, the Baptism of the Holy Ghost and Fire, Entire sanctification, Divine Healing, and the Coming of the Lord. We are preaching precisely the doctrines which the apostles preached in Jerusalem.

This can not be denied. We prove it constantly with an open Bible. Why do they oppose and interdict us, forbidding us to preach in their jurisdiction?

While we have no right to impeach the candor of the high priest and his coadjutors, we know they did the work of Satan, believing they were obeying God. We have the same phenomena throughout Christendom this day. The logical sequence is irresistible. Just as the leaders of Judaism blindly resisted the Holy Ghost, so the leaders of fallen Christianity at the present day ostracize and interdict the holiness people, who are preaching just what the apostles preached. I am willing to preach in any of their churches, with the understanding that I am to be put out the moment I deflect from the New Testament. We challenge all of the anti-holiness preachers and officers to convict us of departure from the Word of God.

But they do not charge us with antagonism to God’s Word, but simply forbid us to preach in their territory, when God has commanded us to “preach the gospel to every creature.” Of course, we are not going into their houses uninvited; but how dare they mark off a certain territory, and let drunkards; harlots, thieves, murderers and the devil into it, and then order God’s gospel herald out of it! We come to wage war with the devil and sin, and nothing else. Why forbid us thus, protecting the devil and sin in said territory, while they drag the people into hell by the wholesale? No doubt but these very preachers and church officers who antagonized the apostles at Jerusalem are down in hell. Look out! The Judgment Day is coming, when God will call the holiness evangelist to stand on the witness block and testify that he went, responsive to Jehovah’s bidding, to that wicked town to preach the gospel and warn those wicked people to flee from the wrath to come, and a certain clergyman ran him away. Will not that man be guilty of the blood of those souls? Better for him that he had never been born.

Remember, there will be no dignitaries at the Judgment bar, but every tub will stand on its own bottom.

THE PEOPLE TRUER THAN THE PREACHERS The preachers in charge of the orthodox Jewish Church at Jerusalem, availing themselves of the acquiescent civil arm, imprison the apostles. God sends His angel to open the prison and let them out. Having convened the Sanhedrin in the judgment hall on Mt. Zion and failed to find them in the jail, upon notification that they are standing in the temple and teaching the people, 25, 26 . “The captain of the temple guards along with officers, goes and brings them out by force, because they feared the people, lest they may be stoned.” When the church is in the kingdom of God, the leaders as a rule are better than the people, living nearer God, and thus leading the people on to grander achievements in the divine life. Et , vice versa , when the church is fallen and preachers and people out of the heavenly road and on a downward trend, as is true in case of apostasy, then the preachers are worse than the people. During all the martyr ages the preachers led the bloody persecutions. From Stephen, the first, when Saul of Tarsus, the top of the clergy, led the mob that stoned him, to the anti-holiness rally of the present day, the preachers have opposed and persecuted the holy people.

Here doubtless they would have killed the apostles if they had not feared the people.

CONFLICT OF DIVINE AND HUMAN RULE 29. “Peter and John, responding, said, It behooveth us to obey God rather than man.” This is the salient point. When there is a conflict between the authorities, human and divine, we must “obey God rather than man.” If we do not, hell is our doom. God help us. That has been the battlefield in all ages. Two hundred millions of martyrs have sealed their faith with their blood. They all died rather than be untrue to God. The truest saints on the globe today are brought face to face with this very issue: “Will you obey God or man?” When men want you to disobey God, you may know they are not in harmony with God. If they were, there could be no conflict. I charge you, reader, as I shall meet you at the judgment bar, dare to be like the apostles, “Obey God rather than men.” God’s will is revealed by His Word, Spirit and providence to your intellect, spirit and conscience. Jesus says: “He that willeth to do his will shall know the doctrine.” If you are really fully consecrated to God, He will see that you have all needed light.

When they were burnt, the priest, i .e ., their own pastor, went out to the burning with Bible in hand, exhorting the martyr to give up heresy and live.

The ignorant, illiterate saint, with radiant face and eloquent lips, nobly resisted and shouted in the flame. You must remember that the man who opposes the discharge of your conscientious duty to God is not with God.

We must, like the apostles and martyrs, be true to God at any cost.

REPENTANCE AND REMISSION 31. “Him hath God exalted a Prince and a Savior at his right hand to give repentance and remission of sins to Israel.” Prince refers to the regal office of our Lord, and Savior to His atonement. He expiated our guilt on the cross, thus triumphing over sin, death and hell in His first advent. So the Father crowned Him mediatorial King at His right hand. During His absence the church is to preach the gospel of the kingdom to every creature, thus preparing the world for His second advent in glorious power, when He will be crowned King of all nations. If you want salvation, you must humble yourself before God till He gives you repentance. The true repentance is given of God, wrought in the heart by the Holy Ghost. The old style of seeking the Lord till you find Him is correct. The old colored people in the South used to sing over the mourners: “When I was a mourner just like you, I prayed on till I prayed right through.” The great trouble in these days of superficialism is that the people are manipulated through, instead of praying through. We should seek till God gives us repentance. Remission of sins and repentance are like Siamese twins — inseparable. They always live and die together. “What God hath joined together let no man separate.” Truly neither men nor devils can separate them. Here is the radical deficiency in the religions of the world.

Pagans, Moslems, Romanists, Greeks, Arminians, Syrians and Copts seem to have lost every trace of evangelical repentance, while the Protestant churches are close on their track. There has been a general collapse at this point in the last twenty-five years. Surely the last days are upon us.

Evangelical repentance and the witness of the Spirit always come and go together. The popular so-called tearless repentance never brings the witness of the Spirit, from the simple fact that the Spirit never witnesses to a falsehood. Get the people to seek on till they find it out for themselves.

They will then make everybody else know it. Good Lord, save us from counterfeit repentance.

THE GIFT OF THE HOLY GHOST 32. Here we find that the Holy Ghost is given to them that obey God. The Greek for obedience and faith is the same word, which is also true of unbelief and disobedience, illustrating the fact that they are one and inseparable. A true faith always obeys, while disobedience is demonstrative evidence of unbelief. The Holy Ghost will not abide where He is not scrupulously obeyed. He is keenly susceptible of the slightest disobedience, evanescing unconsciously. So you wake to find the heavenly dove flown away out of your heart, leaving an aching void the world can never fill. It is a wonderfully delicate matter to obey God. It is easy, if you pursue the right method, but impossible on any other line. What is the right method? The Bible is the guide-book. If you are truly interested in the Guide, you will be thrillingly interested in the guide-book. With thorough abandonment to God, perfect commitment of your creeds, opinions, theories, notions and enterprises to Him, bereft of every care, sit meekly and lowly at the feet of Jesus, while the Holy Ghost teaches His blessed Word. If you say yes to God, and no to Satan, all the time, you will have no trouble to obey God, and in that case He gives you His Holy Spirit to dwell in your heart, giving you a sweet heaven in which to go to heaven. “My yoke is easy and my burden is light” — this you will always find true if you will let God have His way in all things. Your life will become a cloudless sunshine.

DIVINE INTERVENTION 33-42. Now they reach a grand culmination. The Preachers in charge and the official board are signally defeated, “cut through,” so they are counseling to kill the apostles. They have condemned and imprisoned them a second time, ordering them positively to preach no more in their territory.

All their orders are disobeyed. Jails will not hold them. They determine to settle the matter by killing them by the Roman civil arm, bought over for Jewish favor. Why did they not kill them? They all finally wore martyrs’ crowns, except John, who, according to Justin Martyr and other Christian Fathers, was honored with a translation. The simple solution of the matter is, their work was not done. A vile reprobate once pointed a gun at me, which fired all right a few minutes previously. When he pulled the trigger it only snapped. Why? My work was not done. So God’s saints are immortal until their work is done. So God puts His hand on Gamaliel, their giant, the greatest man of the opposition, their biggest preacher, and raises him up to deliver the apostles and prolong their lives till their work is done. Twenty years ago, in the time of the Temperance Crusaders, when holy women in our cities were miraculously closing Satan’s saloons by their prayers, immense was the excitement! A number of saloons have been closed. The holy Crusaders were praying in a large saloon. Satan’s mob came to break up the meeting, led by a huge ruffian. A holy woman rises from her knees, slips out and meets the mob, looks this gigantic, diabolical leader in the face, saying, “Will you please be so kind as to attend to the men and see that they do not interrupt our meeting?” Immediately he whirls on his heel and roars: “Back, fellows! back, fellows! We must have order here. You can not disturb this meeting. I will die for these good women.” So he commands and quells the mob. So God puts His hand on the giant theologian of the Sanhedrin, the tallest bishop standing at the head of the hierarchy. To the unutterable surprise of all, Gamaliel takes command of the situation and suggests that the apostles be sent out of the hall. Now he delivers a thrilling oration to the Sanhedrin, calling their attention to Theudas, the impostor, who a few years previously had made a great commotion among the people, receiving a large following, but had utterly evanesced with all of his adherents, leaving not a vestige. Then he reiterated the brilliant career of Judas, the Galilean impostor, in the days of the Roman enrollment, preparatory to the taxation of imperial Caesar. He with his adherents has also vanished away like the gossamer which recedes before the effulgence of an Oriental sun. Here he fortifies a stalwart argument, driving his logic with sledgehammer blows, and clinching the conclusion with the grip of a giant. Of course Luke gives us but a mere epitome of Gamaliel’s unanswerable oration. The fac simile thus culminates: Theudas, Judas and other impostors have risen, created great commotions and received large followings, stirring Judea and Western Asia. These have all vanished away, leaving not a trace nor a track. Now, if Jesus of Nazareth is also an impostor, He and His followers, with all this mighty commotion which is shaking the powers of church and state from center to circumference, will break down of its own weight, vanish away, utterly evanesce and sink into oblivion, like other impostors who have preceded. This is the negative side: If Jesus of Nazareth is an impostor as you say [“and He was one of them”], He will evanesce and go into oblivion with all of His following and work, like Theudas, Judas the Galilean, and multitudes of impostors who have risen and are now buried in oblivion, utterly unknown, not a vestige of their former greatness surviving. Hence the utter superfluity of all of this effort to put down Jesus and His followers, as certainly, on the hypothesis that they are impostors, they will inevitably play out, without any effort on the part of the ecclesiastical authorities. Gamaliel proceeds to evolve the positive side of his argument, which flashes with the forked lightnings of divine retribution: If Jesus of Nazareth is truly the Christ of God, as He and His disciples claim, the combined powers of earth and hell can never prevail against Him. Besides, in that case, “you will be found fighting against God,” and the unhappy victims of His righteous judgments and awful indignation, certain to overtake the impudent audacity so diabolically impetuous as to antagonize the Almighty. This discourse delivered by the master-spirit of the Sanhedrin was followed by a decisive negative verdict in reference to the preceding counsel to kill the apostles. However, they give way to their implacable hatred, beating them cruelly before they release them. Having thus suffered the deep humiliation, disgrace and torture of an unmerciful thrashing in presence of the multitude, the apostles depart from the Sanhedrin, shouting aloud, exultantly praising God for permitting them to enjoy the privilege of taking a cruel whipping in His name.

APOSTOLICAL SUCCESSION 41, 42. This chapter winds up Luke’s diurnal history of the Pentecostal revival, graphically describing the wonderful events of the first three days and two nights. Here you see clearly and unequivocally a solution of that vexed question among the warring sects, called Apostolical Succession.

The last fifteen hundred years since the great Constantinian apostasy, as the centuries roll by we see the robed priests and plug-hatted clergy of all ages and denominations crossing swords and fighting over the Apostolical Succession, like dogs over a bone, each one claiming it, and anathematizing all of his competitors; all ridiculously stultifying themselves and advertising to the world the egregious folly and silly nonsense characteristic of human ecclesiasticisms. Reader, look here at the inspired record and see, once for all, the fac simile of Apostolical Succession. It certainly means to succeed the apostles, doctrinally, experimentally and practically. The way is open to all who will enter: Get a sky-blue regeneration, assuring you that your name is written in Heaven. Then get sanctified with the baptism of the Holy Ghost and fire, as all the apostles did on the day of Pentecost. Then preach the gospel with the Holy Ghost sent down from heaven, on the streets, and from house to house, like the apostles, who had no church edifices. Preach and testify, without fear of men or devils, amid roaring mobs, rocks, mud, clubs, eggs, et cetera , spending the night in jail. When they cruelly thrash you like dogs, in presence of the mocking multitude, go away with bleeding backs and roaring shouts, transported with delight, because you are counted worthy to suffer for Christ’s sake. Then you will be in the regular Apostolical Succession. It is free. All who want it can have it. What about the clerical aspirants, going puffing tobacco-smoke and disputing over Apostolical Succession? Not one of them will touch it with a forty foot pole. Luke again here puts to record the facts so prominent in the Apostolic ministry, of preaching from house to house. This is the way to convert the heathen millions and evangelize the slums and the jungles. The Holy Ghost is calling for a round million to volunteer on this primitive Apostolic line of street and household preaching. Who will respond?

CHAPTER - HELLENISTS AND HEBREWS 1. Do not forget that the gospel began among the Jews exclusively, the Gentiles having nothing to do with it; hence the Christian Church, originally like the Jewish, was purely Judaic. With the roll of a century, it underwent a radical somersault, eliminating the Jewish and incorporating the Gentile element. “Grecian” in E.V. leads to the conclusion that they were Gentile Greeks, which is incorrect. They were Jews, native and proselyte, who spoke the Greek language and used it in their synagogue worship in contradistinction to other Jews [doubtless nearly all native], who spoke the Hebrew language, using it in their synagogues. It was natural to recognize a degree of preference for these native Jews and pure Hebrews, though, doubtless inadvertently, holding them in a degree of estimation above the Greek-speaking Jews, largely proselytic; hence the complaint that the Hellenistic widows were neglected in their daily ministration. Christian widows, unencumbered with families at that time, got filled with the Holy Ghost, turned preachers, being eminently useful as soul-savers; thus devoting all their time, with no means of support, they lived on church charities. What a pity in this respect, the church of the present day does not go back to first principles! How eminently useful our unencumbered holy widows would be if thus utilized, preaching the gospel in family circles, mission-rooms and on the streets. Dr. Carradine, in his last pastorate in St.

Louis, used them much to the glory of God and the salvation of souls, recognizing the policy of the Apostolic Church. At this time the Greek language [spoken by these Hellenistic Jews] was the language of the world, having through the Alexandrian conquests reached all nations and become universal. While reading the Old Testament, we all see the hand of the Almighty on the Jews, but intuitively drift to the conclusion that it was not on the Gentiles. In this we are egregiously mistaken. The difference is that we have the inspired history of the Jews and not of the Gentiles. B.C. 32, Alexander, a youth of one and twenty years, succeeded his father Philip on the throne of Macedonia, a small country in northern Greece. Finding but thirty-five thousand dollars in the royal treasury, and thirty-five thousand men in the army, the first transaction of his regal administration was to divide out the money equally among the soldiers, giving each man a dollar apiece. Observing that the young king left himself moneyless, a bystander asked, “Now, king, what have you left for yourself?” The sanguine youth responded, “My hopes.” “What are your hopes?” “Why, that I shall conquer all the world.” At that time the Persian Empire reached from India to Ethiopia, containing a hundred and twenty-seven States, nearly all of the known world which was sufficiently important to appropriate, except Greece, which, though small, had simply proved too heroic for the Persian conquest, even under the leadership of Xerxes, with his two million and five hundred thousand warriors, the largest army ever mustered on the globe. Alexander succeeds in inspiring his little band with the same paradoxical hope of conquering all the world. Consequently he invades the great Persian Empire, is met by the royal army on the plains of Granicus. A terrible battle ensues, leaving forty thousand Persians dead on the field, while Alexander didn’t lose a man. This stunned the mighty Persian monarch and woke him up to recognize in the young Grecian no child at play. Great preparations were now made, feeling sure they would capture the impudent youth with his audacious followers and settle the matter once for all. Alexander meets them on the plains of Issus. where an awful battle is fought, lasting three days. One hundred thousand Persians are left dead on the field, while Alexander’s loss was simply nothing. This awful defeat sent panic throughout the Persian Empire. King Darius gives the matter personal attention. An innumerable army is rendezvoused from the one hundred and twenty-seven States of the Empire. The sons of royalty from the diversified kingdoms encourage the army with their personal presence.

King Darius is on hand, commander-in-chief. The powers of earth are combined against the paradoxical foe they find in the haughty young Grecian. They meet on the plains of Arbela, which, I trow, proved the greatest battle the world ever saw. It lasts a solid week. Rivers of blood deluge the fields. Mountains of the dead accumulate. Three hundred thousand Persian warriors are left dead on the field. The Greek is everywhere triumphant. Darius flies for his life, his vast army utterly demolished and disorganized. Alexander overtakes the fugitive monarch on the banks of the Indian Ocean. Darius now pleads for his crown, proposing to Alexander that they divide the world half and half. Alexander points to the sun, then in his noon-day glory. “Do you see that sun? Could the world endure two suns? You know they would burn it up. So this world can not have two kings. I must have it all.” Now, account for the fact that this boy of one and twenty, with no money and a handful of men, conquered all the world and wept because he couldn’t find another one to conquer. God was in it. This wonderful Greek language, the finest the ages ever knew, the culmination of that climacteric Greek learning in which they excelled all nations, astonishing the ages with their achievements in poetry, oratory, philosophy and the fine arts, thus eclipsing all the nations of the earth and becoming the honored teachers of the young kings resorting thither from every land and clime to learn wisdom at the feet of the Greek philosopher.

Why these great wonders? God, through these poets, orators, philosophers and scholars, was manufacturing the Greek language, the beauty, precision, and vivacity of those mechanism is the riddle of modern scholarship. God thus prepared it — His chosen vehicle, in which to preach the gospel to every nation. He gave Alexander the conquest of the world that he might turn over every government on the globe to the cultured Greeks, who established their wonderful language in the learned circles of every nation under heaven, thus through these wonderful providences preparing the world for the reception of the gospel. Again we have the significant fact that in the early centuries of the Christian era this wonderful language was taken out of the mouths of all nations like the Hebrew of the Old Testament at an earlier day, lest the nations of the earth might corrupt them. Therefore we have the inspired archives of the Hebrew and Greek kept in their pristine purity, locked up in these dead languages, whither we can all go and find the unadulterated truth as it is in Jesus, and transmit it to the world. Oh, the wonders of the divine administration!

THE DEACONATE 2-5. God is a great Organizer. Hence He has given the New Testament Church a simple, perfect and beautiful organization. The bishop is the leader of the holiness band [for such were all of the Apostolic churches], while the deacon has charge of all the temporal interests of the church in every respect, and the eldership, originally in Israel consisting of seventy, instituted by Jethro, the father-in-law of Moses, when he visited the children of Israel in the wilderness, and transferred by the apostles into the Christian dispensation. Spiritual seniority constitutes the basis of the New Testament eldership, which is a judicatory body having charge of the general interest of the church. Hence the church is not a democracy, but has an organized government. The deaconate is prominent among the Baptists, who give that office its Scriptural attitude. If they would only adhere to first principles and invest none with the deaconate unless they are “full of the Holy Ghost and wisdom,” verse 3. The Presbyterians give prominence to the eldership, honoring the New Testament in that office. If they would only see that none serve as elders except those who are filled with the Holy Ghost. If the Holiness Movement does not glorify God by coming back to first principles, and revealing to the world New Testament simplicity, she will forfeit her crown, and God will give it to another. This we can not afford to do. As it is very doubtful whether any of the great reformations have ever reached primary truth and institutionality since the Constantinian apostasy, it becomes the more imperative that we divest ourselves of every weight and run for the prize set before us. How strange that every church in Christendom does not gladly drop all of her human inventions and come back to first principles! since an awful woe is pronounced against both addition and subtraction. The popular churches are burdened to death with institutions of their own creation, alien from the Bible, and, in many cases, antagonistical to it. These grieve the Holy Spirit away and turn them over to the enemy. The New Testament is plain on all doctrines and institutions.

We need nothing else. Human creeds and institutions divide the people of God, build up warring sects, grieve the Holy Spirit, alienate the people from God, and do a world of mischief, which the Judgment Day can alone reveal. So long as the apostolic church professed and preached entire sanctification she had neither creeds nor schisms. There are always green pastures somewhere in the Church of God, whither the sheep may go, eat and be filled and lie down by the still waters. Human creeds and institutions are the devil’s fences dividing up Emmanuel’s laud, shutting up many poor sheep in dry and desolate pastures, where they starve to death in piles. God has raised up the Holiness Movement to knock down the devil’s fences and lead all of the sheep to the green pastures and still waters, where they may prosper and glorify God.

ORDINATION 6. “Whom they placed before the apostles, and praying, laid hands on them.” Here is all the ordination you can find in the New Testament. It is very simple, and I see much of it among holiness people in my peregrinations. The Lord’s elders, bishops, deacons and saints gather around the dear ones, whom the Holy Ghost has called to go and work in His vineyard, lay hands on them, pray, bless and send them forth. There is but one qualification specified in the New Testament for a Christian worker, preacher, officer, and that is, to be filled with the Holy Ghost. In the E.V. prominence is given to the church ordination, through mere courtesy to the Episcopal Church, under whose auspices the translation was made. You will find as a rule where the E.V. uses the word ordination, it is not in the Greek. We have no objections to the word if used in this same, primitive New Testament sense, designating the gathering of the saints around the candidates for the Lord’s work, and praying for them with the imposition of hands. 7. “And a great multitude of the priests were obedient to the faith.” Here we find, much to our encouragement, that amid the sweeping victories of the Pentecostal revival, a large number of the regular preachers got religion.

Good Lord, save us from the Satanic humbuggery that would recognize preachers as Christians simply because they are preachers. I wish it were true in case of half of them, and the other half, too. But, working in the clear light of God’s Word, Spirit and providence, we are forced to the concession of many unconverted preachers. Of this number, not a few have been truly converted, but grieving the Holy Spirit, rebelling against sanctification, becoming secular and popular, have sunk into a grievous antinomian spiritual death. Lord, make us useful in the conversion of preachers, as well as other people. God forbid that at the devil should get the dear preachers.

STEPHEN’S MINISTRY 8-15. Though Stephen was but a poor, uncultured layman, honored with the office of deacon, i .e ., permitted to sweep the floor, and light the lamps, and collect money to support the evangelistic widows, they complimented him with this office because he was “full of the Holy Ghost and wisdom.” Yet, like all of the disciples in the Apostolic age ( Acts 8:4), he preached the living Word. He did not have to get a license; the apostles had none for themselves nor anybody else. Thus far the plug-hatted clergymen who invented license had not been born. As Stephen is identified with those Hellenistic synagogues in which the Greek language is spoken, he goes to preaching in them with all his might. The representatives of these synagogues, dispersed in all heathen lands, had come to Jerusalem to attend the great Jewish feast of Pentecost, which so miraculously and unexpectedly by divine intervention was transformed into the most memorable revival the world ever saw and memorialized with the incarnation of the Holy Ghost, and the embarkation of the gospel ship.

These synagogues, here represented by their delegates, were the Libertines, i .e ., the freed people, consisting of Jews who had been carried to Rome as slaves, but afterward liberated by the Emperors; the Cyrenians from Cyrene, a large city in northern Africa, on the coast of the Mediterranean Sea, where there were many Jews; the Alexandrians, from the city of Alexandria, the capital of Egypt, where the Jews dwelt in great numbers and were much encouraged by Ptolemy Philadelphus, who had the Hebrew Bible translated into Greek, known as the Septuagint, for the benefit of his Jewish subjects; and the Greek-speaking Jews from Cilicia and Asia. Here we find the first indirect mention of that celebrated man, Saul of Tarsus, destined in two more chapters to come to the front and prove the hero of this inspired history. Since he was born to rule, depend on it, he was the speaker of the opposition against Stephen, with the delegates from all of these prominent cities holding up his hands while he pressed the battle to the awful ultimatum of Stephen’s martyrdom. 10. “And they were not able to resist the wisdom and the spirit with which he spoke.” Oh! what a contrast we here have between the wisdom, intellect, learning and resources of the world and the wisdom of God! Here, with the greatest intellectualist and scholar the world could produce, surrounded by a platoon of preachers, one humble, uncultured layman proves more than a match for them all; as the Holy Ghost says they were “unable to resist the wisdom and spirit with which Stephen spoke.” See the whole crowd with their mighty leader, Saul of Tarsus, put in total eclipse and literally snowed under by a solitary layman. Therefore, to their ineffaceable shame, they resort to bribery, raising up false witnesses that they may bring an accusation against him. Stephen preached the perfect sufficiency of Jesus, His vicarious atonement and cleansing blood, received and appropriated by the Holy Ghost, of course relegating the types and shadows of the Mosaic dispensation to bygone years, no longer significant because superseded and verified by the great Antitype. This they construed as inveighing against the law of Moses. This notable history has a thousand parallels at the present day. We can not preach the perfect sufficiency of Jesus only and the omnipotence of the present Holy Ghost in full salvation and the perfect sufficiency of God’s Word, doctrinally, institutionally, legally and every other way, without at least indirectly reflecting on the human institutions and bogus legislation of fallen ecclesiasticisms. Then they cry out that we are inveighing against the church, whereas we are defending the church of God with all our might, precisely as Stephen did, when they charged him with disloyalty to the church and killed him for it. He was the first martyr, leading the way and showing the people how to die for the truth. Two hundred millions have followed in his bloody track, like Stephen, dying under charges of disloyalty to what carnal preachers call the church, as they did in case of Stephen. If they had the co-operation of the secular arm these defenders of what they call the church would kill us this day, as they did Stephen and the mighty host of his successors. Beware of the clamor of church loyalty! That is the very shibboleth that piled the rocks on Stephen, fed the martyrs to the lions and burnt them at the stake. It is impossible to be loyal to God and disloyal to His church. When they talk to you about loyalty to God, open your Bible and shout Amen! When they talk to you about loyalty to the church, look out! that is the old hackneyed cry of persecution, from Stephen down to the present day. 15. “And all who were sitting in the Sanhedrin, looking upon him, saw his countenance as the face of an angel.” Now, remember, that the popular preachers, standing at the head of the churches, persecute Stephen unto death. Why did they not desist when they see the very glory of God radiant in his countenance? The solution is very simple, they did not have the discernment of the Holy Ghost, hence they mistook the very glory of heaven radiant from his countenance for his own mean, stubborn, selfwilled, contrary spirit, which convinced them the more that he deserved to die for disloyalty to the church.

CHAPTER - EXPATRIATION 1-7. Despite the awful doom of the antediluvians, the people after the flood soon became terribly wicked. While they constantly ploughed up the bones of their antediluvian predecessors, fear and trembling appalled them so they were constantly resolving to be good. Ah! the road to hell is strewn with good resolutions. The postdiluvians had inherited evil hearts from their predecessors. Hence a wicked life inevitably followed, as it always will unless we go to God and receive a new heart. Despite the grand boom given to holiness in the flood, when all of the wicked were taken out of the world and righteousness ruled the only surviving home, yet wickedness so increased that God found it necessary in the third postdiluvian century to begin de novo , calling Abraham to leave the world and identify himself with God alone. In the home of his childhood, in the beautiful alluvial plains of Mesopotamia, that delightful rich, level country between the Tigris and the Euphrates, the cradle of the postdiluvian world, first settled by the sons of Noah after the deluge, where at a later date Nimrod gave himself imperishable notoriety by attempting to found a human government independently of the Almighty (though nowadays all the governments on the globe are Nimrodic without a blush). Such was the wickedness of his native land that God required Abraham to leave his kindred and country and follow whither He led. This is now and has ever been the first step in a true heavenly pilgrimage. A prophet is without honor in his own country.

Expatriation as a rule is a sine qua non in a really fruitful ministry for God and souls. “Full many a gem of purest ray serene, The dark unfathomed caves of Ocean bear; Full many a flower is born to blush unseen And waste its sweetness on the desert air.” As a rule, you must leave your native land if you would be eminently useful.

REGENERATION AND SANCTIFICATION 8. While the physical birth emblematizes regeneration, it is equally true that physical circumcision typifies sanctification. The Jewish law was to circumcise eight days after birth, illustrating the fact that we should get sanctified about eight days after conversion, thus giving a little time to receive light on inbred sin and intelligently seek its removal. John Wesley has a powerful sermon on the Circumcision of the heart, preached from Deuteronomy 30:6: “I will circumcise thy heart, so as to love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, soul, mind and strength, that thou mayest live.”

Here we see that the circumcision of the heart is necessary to perfect love, which is the condition of spiritual life and admission into heaven.

JOSEPH TYPICAL OF CHRIST 9-16. The symbolism of Joseph is entirely in the royal line of Jesus. In his deep disgrace and humilia