Divine Dynamite

or Power from on High

by
J. E. Conant, D. D.

Preface
The message of the following pages has been delivered in spoken address many times in the
author’s ministrations up and down the land, and it has been frequently called for in permanent form.
The reader will find the message more inspirational than doctrinal in form. While the aim is to be
constantly true to the doctrine of the Holy Spirit’s mission to and in the believer, the great desire of the
author’s heart is, that when the reader has finished reading he will be drawn to his knees to do such
definite dealing with God about the fulness of the Holy Spirit’s power in his life and service as shall result
in his being driven of the Spirit to the lost about him with the message of salvation.
In yielding to the desire to have this message in permanent form, it is the author’s prayer that the
same Holy Spirit Who gave the message shall use it widely to create a hunger and thirst after God that
can be satisfied only as one is filled by the Spirit with all the fulness of God.
J. E. Conant
Chicago, June, 1920.
“And ye shall receive the power of the Holy Spirit coming upon you, and ye shall be witnesses unto
me.” — Acts 1:8.
Power is the great quest of the modern man. In every realm of human activity men are reaching out
after it as a fever-stricken man reaches out after water. There has never been a tune in all human
history when men in all ranks of life seemed so insistent on getting power as they do today.
In the commercial realm men are driving their business by day and by night, on land and on sea, in
summer and in winter, until they are fairly tumbling over one another in their scramble after the dollar,
in order that they may gain commercial power.
In the political realm there are men who are taking their ease in our political parlors and basking in
the favor of a long-suffering public, whose characters are so rotten that they would have been unfit to
sneak down the back alleys of Sodom in the dead of night; and this is the price they have paid that they
might attain to political power.
In the scientific realm men are digging into the heart of the earth, they are diving into the depths of
the ocean, they are penetrating pestilential swamps, and they are sweeping the heavens with their far-
reaching telescopes, in their attempts to extract from nature her deepest secrets, and thereby attain to
scientific power.
In the literary realm men are tarrying long over the literature of the centuries, the classics of the
ages and the philosophies of the sages, in order that they may gain intellectual power.

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 And in the spiritual realm, from the humble mission hall to the stately temple, and from the
secluded cloister to the grand and imposing cathedral, men of every shade of faith are seeking for
spiritual power.
Is this quest right, or is it the disordered craving of a nature diseased and ruined by sin?
I answer in the light of the text, This quest is right, provided it be for the power from on high; for
this power both saves and glorifies all other forms of legitimate power whatsoever. This alone is the
Divine dynamite which is mighty to the pulling down of the strongholds of sin, self, and Satan. Indeed,
the word “power” in the text is “dunamis” in the Greek, from which our word “dynamite” comes. And
when a child of God once permits the power from on high to take possession of him, he becomes at
once the dynamite of God for the blasting of the battlements of the, enemy. The walls of Jericho are
sure to go down before those of whom God is permitted to have absolute control.
Now in the discussion of this vital theme, there are two or three lines of inquiry along which we will
proceed.

I. The Need of the Divine Dynamite.

Is there need of the power from on high today? For answer, take a brief look at the conditions both
outside and inside the church.

1. Glance at the Conditions in the World.

Look first at human history.
We all know, in a vague sort of way at least, that this world is the scene of the most terrific and
crucial struggle of all worlds and ages.
Free moral agents, under, a government like God’s, are sure to arrive, some when, some where, at
that one final moral question behind which it is impossible for a moral intelligence to go. That question
behind which there is no question is this: Is my will best, or is God’s will best? And when it has once
been asked, it must be answered.
It has been asked on this little earth of ours, and all the intelligences of the universe seem to be
engaged in arriving at the answer, with Christ leading on one side, and Satan leading on the other.
And it makes no difference whether we see the full meaning of the struggle or not, nor whether the
tides of battle may sway this way or that, the fierceness of the battle never ceases. For it has gone
raging down across the pages of history until now, and it will continue to rage until it is forever settled
that God’s will is best.
But there have been times — some of the darkest of them in the later centuries of human history —
when it seemed as though God was all but dead, and that Satan was carrying almost the entire human
race to destruction.
Look next at our age.
It began by the coming of the Divine dynamite upon a room-full of praying and waiting disciples, and
its centuries have seen some of the most mighty and marvelous manifestations of God’s grace and

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saving power of any age in human history. And yet, in spite of the fact that this is the age of the right
hand of God’s power, look at the situation today.
It is nearly nineteen hundred years since a little detachment of heaven’s angelic choir stepped down
to heaven’s lowest doorstep and chanted in the ears of the amazed and awestruck shepherds a little
snatch of the hallelujah chorus from heaven’s oratorio of a redeeming Messiah, as they announced His
arrival by way of the Bethlehem caravansary; and yet, out of the sixteen hundred million people on the
face of the earth, ten hundred million of them have scarcely even heard that God has a Son, or that He
ever came to earth to die for man. There are almost as many who are following the Arabian camel-
driver, Mahomet, as are following the meek and lowly Nazarene.
There are more people bowing down to chunks of painted wood and stone than are bowing down.
before the Son of the Living God.
And for a thousand years, in the very heart of this age, men were held in a spiritual darkness so
dense as to rival the physical darkness of ancient Egypt, which was so dense it could be felt.
Look, again, at our day.
At the very time when men, in their insufferable pride, were lauding so-called human progress to
the skies, that very nation in which the Reformation and the recovery from the Dark Ages began; that
very nation which, because of that fact, was the most privileged of God in all modern times; that very
nation which might have become the great world-missionary, and might have given the Gospel to all the
inhabited earth;— that nation. so far departed from the rediscovered Word of God, and so fully turned
to the satanic doctrine of evolution, that she rose up in unsurpassed egotism and involved the most
civilized and Christianized nations on earth in the most awful and excuseless war of all ages; and the
very lands that might have been ringing with the good tidings of great joy through her heavenly ministry
were soaked instead with the tears of the sorrowing and the blood of slain millions through her hellish
malevolence.
And since the war the powers of perdition are increasingly destructive. Sunday is fast ceasing to be a
holy day, and becoming increasingly a holiday. Amusements are becoming more and more unblushingly
bad. Anarchy, nihilism, and lawlessness are rioting in every nation on earth. Crime, in spite of all the
powers that be, is steadily on the increase. Social sins and shameful divorces are fast destroying the
home life of the civilized nations of earth. The vast majority of the people have no use for the church,
and never enter a church door from one year’s end to another; while the church itself is fast losing out
to the world, the flesh, and the devil.
What is the trouble? In the first century of this Age, the battlements of the enemy could not
withstand the onslaughts of the church, but crumbled before her conquering arms until the whole
known world had become evangelized. But in the twentieth century, the church is not only not
advancing on the enemy, but the weak defenses she has tried to put up are fast crumbling before the
onslaughts of the world. What is the cause of this alarming condition? It lies in the lack of Divine
dynamite!

2. Glance at the Conditions in the Church.

Look first at the increasing apostasy.

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 The Reformation promised a church utterly surrendered to God and filled with His Spirit, going forth
with a completely recovered Bible to re-evangelize the earth; but the promise was not fulfilled. The
impetus of that movement was spent before the church had gone much more than half-way to that
goal, and for many decades past the drift has been set in the other direction. Spurgeon, even in his day,
was broken-hearted over it, but in our day the church is swinging away from the faith so fast that it fairly
makes us dizzy.
Members of our churches are drifting out into Christian Science, Russellism, New Thought,
Theosophy, Spiritism, while whole sections of them slip back into the world again, until there are literally
scores of thousands leaving our churches by the back door every year by lapse of church membership.
The infidelity that was outside the church in the days of Paine and Ingersoll is now inside the church
in the form of the New Theology and the destructive Higher Criticism, until the whole evangelical church
is being loosened from the faith of the fathers, and fast drifting into Unitarianism.
And the increasing popularity of the Social Service propaganda and the doctrine of salvation by
character is fast turning the pulpits of the land, that once rang with the Gospel of salvation by grace
alone, into forums for the exploitation of the products of Christianity in the place of the faith once for all
delivered to the saints.
And now all the evangelical churches are being tied into one bundle in great “world-movements”
that are headed by liberals and shot through and through with fundamental error, until it begins to look
as though it will not be long before those who believe the fundamentals of the faith will either have to
deny the Lord Who bought them, or get out of their denominations.
Look next at our church services.
When we meet on the Lord’s Day, the atmosphere of our services is not so surcharged with the
Divine Presence as to compel those who enter our doors to feel, “God is in this place!”
Our Sunday morning services are increasingly conventional, formal, and powerless; and as for our
Sunday evening services, churches in increasing numbers are being compelled to give them up
altogether, for lack of a congregation.
Our prayer meetings, in too many places, are little more than dull, dead, formal, and lifeless things,
with increasingly small attendance and no power.
Even our revival meetings are too often little: better than a travesty on the Day of Pentecost. with
“converts” — if there are any at all— that; become a millstone about the neck of the church, because
they have never been born of God.
Look also at our personal service for Christ.
In our praying for the lost, vast numbers of church members know nothing whatever of that old-
fashioned “burden of prayer” with which our fathers and mothers were gloriously familiar. The best that
most of the praying people can do seems to be to present to God their benevolent wish-so’s and hope-
so’s; and as for the “prayer of faith,” almost none even of those who are earnest Christians seem to
know anything about it.

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 In our witnessing for Christ, all but a small handful in the average church are stark afraid to stand up
in prayer meeting and tell their fellow Christians what God has done for them, and fewer yet ever think
of bearing witness for God out in the world, where ringing testimonies count for most.
And in our work for lost souls, some one had it right when he said that only half the members of the
average church ever go to church services, only half of those ever go to prayer meeting, only half of
those ever take any part in prayer meeting, and only half of those are ever able to win a lost soul to
Christ. The actual soul-winners in the average church are so few that it takes a fine-tooth comb to find
them.
A prominent pastor, who, before he went to his Lord, was widely used of God in soul-winning, told
me that one Sunday night he had seven respond at the close of the sermon, to the invitation to accept
Christ. He asked several of his deacons to talk and pray with part of them, and lead them out into the
light. But all those deacons could do was to kill time while he went from one to another and finally led
them all to an intelligent surrender to Christ. Could you have done any better than those deacons did?
Look, once more, at our inner lives.
Only here and there in the church can we find those who have entered into the life of victory in
Christ, most of the Lord’s people living an up-and-down life that resembles an intermittent fever more
than it does a normal Christian experience.
We are perpetually yielding to our besetting temptations — to touchiness, temper, selfishness,
jealousy, pride; and it is not the fruit of the Spirit but the works of the flesh that are most manifest in
our lives. And when the enemy seeks to overwhelm and defeat us, the hand that held back the Red Sea
for the escape of Israel from Pharaoh and his hosts does not seem to be there to hold back the power of
Satan and make a way for our escape.
And as to our communion with God, most of us have to look back, and some of us a good ways back,
when we seek to recall the brightest hours of our Christian experience, in spite of the promise that the
path of the just shall shine more and more unto the perfect day. But instead of enjoying the brightest
hours and the closest fellowship with God right now, as would be the case if there were not sin in our
lives, most of us are compelled to confess to our condition in the lines of that hymn,
“Where is the blessedness I knew
When first I saw the Lord?
Where is the soul-refreshing view
Of Jesus and His Word?”
And when it comes to the testimony of our lives before a godless world, when lost men watch us
live, instead of saying, “I would give anything if I could live a life like that,” they say of many of us, “If
that is the Christian life, I hope I’ll never be unfortunate enough to become a Christian.”
What is the trouble with the church today? Why is the church being filled with worldliness? Why are
the unregenerate slipping into her membership? Why are our Christian schools being captured by
rationalism and infidelity? Why are unsaved men standing boldly in our pulpits and denying the truth of
the Lord Who bought them? The cause lies in the lack of Divine dynamite!

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 What is to end this appalling lack and satisfy this insistent need of the power of God? There is only
one thing that can do it. We must turn to the source of supply.

II. The Source of the Divine Dynamite.

Where is the source of supply? Where will the needed power come from?

1. It Does Not Come from among Men.

But why not? On every hand man’s power is accomplishing marvellous results, and what is to hinder
his getting results here?
Well, if man can accomplish results in this realm, in what will we find it?
Is it in eloquence?
There certainly is power in eloquence. Brought up in a college town, I have many a time sat in the
college chapel and listened to the most famous orators of a generation ago, as they appeared from
season to season on the college lecture courses, and have time and again found myself utterly oblivious
of time, and place, and surroundings, and have even at times found my emotions running over at the
eyelids, as some orator has thrilled, and moved, and fascinated me by his masterful oratory. There is
nothing in all the realm of nature, unless it may be music, that will move me more. There is power in
oratory; such power that there is scarcely a human being who could not be brought beneath its sway.
For oratory quickens the pulse-beat, literary charm exuberates the mind, and eloquence melts the
emotions. But the power we inquire for is not here.
Then is it in music?
There is magic power in music. The music in sounds rippling forth from the fingers of the musician
has as great a power over humanity as the music in words flowing with liquid eloquence from the lips of
the orator. What would the church have been in the past, and what would she be today, without music?
All the music worthy of the name has been inspired by the church, and she has sung her victorious way
down through a hostile world until this hour, winning her conquests in the thrilling atmosphere of
rapturous music that will one day merge its inspiring melody into the song of Moses and the Lamb
around the eternal throne. But the power the church needs is not here.
Then is it in sociability?
And there is power in sociability. If you were to make choice between a church that was formal,
conventional, and unsociable, and one that was heartily genial, friendly and sociable, you would be
drawn to the sociable church as sure as you are a normal human being. An unsociable church bears false
witness to Him Who was the loving, sympathetic, and approachable Friend of sinners, and such a church
will repel, where a warm-hearted and sociable church will greatly attract. There is power in sociability.
But the power we are seeking is not here.
Then is it in organization?
There is indeed great power in organization. Without it in business, many a business man has been a
failure, and with it, many a man has turned a small business into world-wide trade. And it is sadly
needed in the business of the church today. The great business of the church is to organize all the
members to take the Gospel to all the unsaved in their field, for that is precisely the meaning of the
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Great Commission. It does not say to the unsaved, “Come ye out of all the community into our church
and hear the Gospel preached;” but it does say to the Lord’s disciples, “Go ye into all your field and
preach the Gospel to every creature.” There is no command for the unsaved to go to church after the
Gospel, but there are plenty of commands for the church to go to the unsaved with the Gospel. But how
many churches are organized to carry on that business? One of the proofs that the church is more than
a. human institution is the fact that she has succeeded, even as well as she has, with such a lack of
organization for the carrying on of her business as would drive any business house on earth to the wall
in six months. And when a church even approaches an organization for the taking of the Gospel to all
the lost in their field, what an amazing power in the world it becomes at once. But the power God
promises is not in organization.
Then is it in money?
There certainly is power in money. We are in the habit of thinking that none of the work of the
church could go on — yes, that even the church herself could not go on — without money. You certainly
would not have your church building in which to preach the Gospel if it were not for money. You could
not support a pastor, you could not hold church services, you could not help the missionaries to take the
Gospel to the heathen without money. Money has such power that it is thought to be the all but
indispensable thing in the work of the church. But the power we are looking for is not here.
No, it is not in any of these things, nor in any others like them, nor in all of them put together.
Then where is the source of the power we are seeking?

2. It Comes from God Alone.

For it is that Divine dynamite that took possession of the waiting one hundred and twenty in the
upper room on the Day of Pentecost, filled them with power, set them on fire, loosened their tongues,
broke up their prayer meeting, drove them out among the lost, and set them to witnessing, in other
languages, to the wonderful works of God.
It is that power that conquered the passions, prejudices, and pride of a God-hating world, overthrew
ancient systems of faith, and swept aside all opposition, until the whole then known earth had been
evangelized, as the endued disciples went on through the first century turning the world right side up
for God.
It is that power that enabled them to transcend all the political power of pagan Rome, make
continuous conquest over all opposition, and steadily propagate a faith that is utterly against all the
insistent demands of the natural heart of man, until the Gospel had penetrated even to Caesar’s
household.
It is that power that enabled them to bring the philosophers of Athens and of Greece to the faith
that the Light of this world is a. rejected and crucified Jew, and that what He said was the only wisdom
the world had ever heard from human lips.
It is that power in which they went to the worshippers of Isis and Osiris, of Thor and of Woden, of
Jupiter and Apollo, and brought them to the faith that the only God Who could save was a despised
Galilean Carpenter, Whom His own nation refused to believe in and put to death as an impostor.

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 It is that power in which they made the shameful cross the means of conquest and of victory, when
to even speak the word “cross” was such a disgrace that those who dared to do it were ostracized from
the circles of polite society.
But it is power we are talking about, not influence.
The Son of God Himself had no influence. He didn’t have influence enough to keep off from a
malefactor’s cross nor out of a malefactor’s grave. But, thank God, there was power enough, even after
they had put Him in a grave, to eternally burst the bands of death, and bring Him forth from the tomb
leading captivity captive and giving gifts unto men.
The disciples had no influence. They didn’t even have influence enough to keep out of jail. But there
was power enough, even though they were jailed, to let them loose again, and keep them doing the very
thing for which they were jailed.
The early church had no influence. And everything was against them, no matter which way they
turned. They had no prestige, no social standing, no money, no buildings, no priesthood, no press, no
history, no literature, no universities, no learning — nothing but the power from on high; and yet,
lacking everything we countessential to success, and having only the Divine dynamite, they went on
from conquest to conquest until the Gospel of the despised and crucified Jew had literally transformed
the earth and changed the history of nations.
But look at the church today! She has great wealth, fine buildings, entrancing music, popular
preaching, social standing, mighty universities, unlimited literature, commanding influence, but no
power.
She is rich and increased in goods, and thinks she has need of nothing, and knows not that apart
from the power from on high she is wretched, and miserable, and poor, and blind, and naked.
She is trusting in human mechanics, and imagines she has no need of the Divine dynamics. She
relies on what great sociability, superb organization, entertaining services, sensational preaching, special
attractions, and social service will do, and is forgetting to rely on what the Gospel of a crucified, risen,
and coming Saviour will do, when preached in the Holy Spirit sent down from heaven.
This is why the church is slowly dying under the curse of increasing multitudes in her membership
who are like the rivers that flow into the Arctic Ocean — frozen at the mouth. There are already in the
church too many frivolous tongues, hot-tempered tongues, gossiping tongues, tattling tongues,
slanderous tongues, lying tongues, but, oh, how few are the flaming tongues of testimony that are
bearing witness, in the power of the Spirit, to Him Who died that men might live!
But the God of Pentecost is not dead, and twentieth-century Christians are sure to repeat first-
century history, and give testimony to Christ in first-century power whenever they are willing to
surrender to God and let Him turn the power on. For an empowered Christian simply cannot keep still
about the Son of God.
Sit down at a pipe organ and put your fingers on the keys. There is as much air in the organ as there
is in the room around it, but it refuses to speak. Why? Because the power has not been turned on. The
organ has the air within it, but it is not empowered by the air.

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 Now turn the power on, and let the organ become air-filled, and it fairly groans for a chance to
speak. Touch the keys, and instantly it speaks forth in a voice of melody and sweetness.
And you do not speak in power for Christ because you are not filled with power. You have the Spirit,
if you have been born again, but you have not been filled with the Spirit, and so whenever you try to say
something for Him it is like working a force pump in an empty well.
But once let God turn the power on, and if you try to keep still you will be like Jeremiah when he
tried the same thing. For he said, “I will not make mention of Him, nor speak any more in His name. But
His Word was in my heart as a burning fire shut up in my bones, and I was weary with forbearing, and I
could not stay.” Neither will you be able to stay when God has turned His power on, and filled you with
His Spirit.
God has no interest in our mechanics. He isn’t looking for methods, He is looking for men. He isn’t
after our plans, He is after us. He isn’t calling for our talents or our possessions, He is calling for
ourselves.
And then when He gets absolute possession of us, He will use what we have in our hands, as He did
the sling of David, to break the power of the enemy, and put to flight the hosts of darkness. And pouring
out His power, not. through oratory, but through the orator; not through music, but through the
musician; not through sociability, but through sociable men and women; not through organization, but
through His people; not through money, but through those who use it in His Name, and thereby
transforming the powerless into Divine dynamite, He will use them, by means of what they have in their
hands, to blast the defenses of the enemy, and drive the powers of darkness before His conquering
arms.
Now we have reached the point where we can discover how the power from on high flows through
the channel of surrendered disciples. This brings us to the last point o£ our inquiry.

III. The Operation of The Divine Dynamite.

How does this power, of which God alone is the source, operate through His surrendered people?

1. Power Possesses Us.

Some people ask the question, How can I get possession of this power? That question is wrong end
to. You can never get possession of this power.
For the power of God is not some subtle, all-pervasive, impersonal influence, like gravitation. Power
is a Person. Power is the Holy Spirit Himself. And so God cannot hand power out to us apart from the
Person of the Spirit, as goods are handed out over a counter and taken away and used by the buyer.
Neither is power some mystic and mysterious Divine force proceeding from the Father, as electricity
proceeds from the dynamo. It is this conception of the third Person of the Trinity that causes some
Christians to pray, “Oh, Lord, pour out thy Spirit upon us, that it may bless us,” and so on. There are two
glaring blunders in such a prayer. The Holy Spirit is here; He was poured out on the Day of Pentecost,
and has never left. And He is not “it” any more than God or Christ are “it.” He is a Person, as much as
God and Christ are Persons.

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 And so it is impossible for us to possess power. If there is to be any power manifest in our lives,
Power must possess us. Some people think there are certain favored ones who have been granted a
monopoly on God. But the truth is the other way around: God has a monopoly on them. And it is the
immeasurable privilege, not of the favored few, but of whosoever will give God the utter control of his
life, to be possessed by Power.
Listen to an Old Testament illustration of it. The enemy of Israel must be defeated, and God finds
Gideon ready to be used. And so, according to a close, literal translation of the passage, “The Spirit of
the Lord clothed Himself with Gideon.” That is, the Holy Spirit put Gideon on as a suit of clothes, and
wherever the Spirit went, Gideon went; and whatever movements the Spirit made, Gideon bent to
those movements; and the Spirit was the acting Personality in all that Gideon did.
Listen to a modern illustration of it. In an eastern State there is an old cannon in a public park that
has been wound with ten miles of copper wire, and turned into one of the most powerful magnets in
the world. When demonstrations of the power of the magnet are made, a soldier stands at the muzzle
of the gun and the electricity is turned on. Instantly spikes, bayonets, and pieces of metal in endless
variety, and even cannon balls that he could not lift become attached to his person. But he does not
possess the magnetism; the magnetism possesses him. And so it is not the man that draws the metal,
but the magnetism possessing and working through him. The instant the magnetism is cut off from his
person, that instant every piece of metal drops away from him, for the power is not in him, but in the
magnetism that possesses him.
If a man can be so empowered in the natural realm when possessed by a blind, impersonal force
proceeding from a dynamo, is there any limit to what may be done in the spiritual realm through the
maul who has the Dynamo inside?
And when the Spirit; takes possession of us, we shall know it by evidence that is unmistakable. The
evidence is not in some burst of ecstasy, some thrill of emotion, or some overwhelming experience.
These things can be too easily counterfeited. All kinds of thrills and emotions await us on every hand.
There are plenty of thrills at the card table, in the theater, on the dance floor. There are many thrills in
the latest novel, the news of the day, or the gossip over the back-yard fence. There are still other thrills
in the church service that may come to us by way of impassioned oratory, entrancing music, or an
appeal to the emotions. At the close of a service in Philadelphia in which I had spoken on the theme of
this message, a lady came to me with what she intended as a compliment. She said, “As you were
speaking, I felt thrill after thrill go over me.” I tried not to show they disappointment in my face as I
lifted my heart and said, “Oh, my Father, is that all that my message did? Give me such a Divine enabling
that my messages will produce action, not thrills.” A thrilling experience, no matter how wonderful, is
never the divinely given evidence that we are possessed by the Holy Spirit. Experiences are sure to come
to Spirit-filled Christians, not only of joy, but also of suffering, as they engage in the work of intercession
for the lost; but experiences, no matter of what kind, are never an evidence that we have been filled
with the Spirit.
But there is an evidence that cannot be counterfeited, by which God confirms to us the empowering
of the Spirit. And that evidence is infallible, for it is found in the never-failing result that the empowering
produces. We may know with utmost certainty whether, we have been empowered by the Spirit or not,

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by the presence or absence of this result. And we know what this result is from the words of Christ
Himself, when He says, “Ye shall receive the power of the Holy Spirit coming upon you, and ye shall be
witnesses unto Me.”
Ah, that’s it! Witnesses. It makes no difference what experiences you have had; if the craving for
reaching lost men for Christ is not the all-consuming passion of your life, don’t tell me you have been
empowered by the Spirit. I cannot believe you. The evidence isn’t there. If you would count it a great joy
to go any distance to a camp-meeting, a convention, or a Bible conference, but would count it a
disappointment and a hardship to stay away from such a gathering that you might accept a sudden
opportunity to win your next-door neighbor to Christ, your profession that you have been endued with
the power from on high isn’t worth the breath you make it with. The one who is filled with the Spirit
finds infinitely more attraction in lost souls than he can find in sermons, songs, or services, attractive
and necessary as they may be. Indeed, when he attends a service and listens to a sermon, its value to
him will be just in proportion as it can make of him a more successful soul-winner.
A young lady came into the study in one of my pastorates, and said she wanted to know how to be
filled with the Spirit.
I said, “Why do you want to be filled with the Spirit?”
“Well,” she said, “you know I have a fierce temper, and very frequently it gets control of me, and I
say things, and then I get into a very unhappy state. I want to be filled with the Spirit so I may be happy.”
“But,” I answered, “Christ said that the empowering of the Spirit was for the purpose of making us
witnesses unto Him, and that, means that He fills us with the Spirit in order to make us soul-winners.
The Spirit does not fill us so we may be happy, but so that we may be enabled to win lost men to Christ.”
But witnessing is not all there is of this evidence. We will be witnesses unto Christ. There are too
many in our churches now who are witnessing unto their denomination, their doctrines, their
ordinances, their church standards, their programs of service, their wonderful experiences, but too few
who are witnessing unto Christ, and passionately seeking, by lifting Him up, through life and lip, to win
the lost to Him.
Dr. Alexander Duff, that veteran missionary to India, went home to Scotland to die. In great
feebleness he stood before the Scotch Presbyterian Assembly, and pleaded for missionaries for India. In
the midst of his appeal he fainted, and was taken into another room. After physicians had worked over
him for some time, be finally recovered consciousness, and when he realized where he was, he said,
“I didn’t finish my appeal; take me back and let me finish it.”
But they told him he could do it only at the peril of his life.
He said, “I’ll do it if I die.”
So they led back that white-haired veteran into the Assembly hall, and as he appeared at the door,
they all sprang to their feet as one man to greet him, and then sat down and listened in tearful and
breathless silence to that grand old hero of the cross.
With trembling voice he said, “Fathers and mothers of Scotland, is it true that you have no more
sons to send to India? There is money in the bank to send them, but where are the laborers who will go
into the field? When Queen Victoria calls for volunteers for her army in India, you freely give your sons,

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and say nothing about the trying climate of that land. But when the Lord Jesus calls for volunteers, you
say, ‘We have no more sons to give.’”
Then turning to the Moderator of the Assembly, he said, “Mr. Moderator, if it is true that Scotland
has no more sons to give to Christ for India, then, although I lost my health in that land and came home
to die, I will be off tomorrow, and go back to the shores of the Ganges and lay my life down as a witness
for Christ, to let them know that there is at least one Scotsman who is ready to die for them.”
What was the matter with Alexander Duff? Was he an irresponsible fanatic? Or had he gone clean
crazy?
There was nothing the matter with him. He was simply filled with the Spirit, and his passion for lost
souls, putting their salvation above his own life, was the evidence. This is the one evidence that a man is
filled with power from on high that cannot be counterfeited. So do not imagine you are filled with the
Spirit if you are not possessed by this same passion for lost men.
Oh, child of God, it is not an experience you need, it is power — power to reach the lost for God.
And Power is a Person, not a thrilling emotion. And so what you need is more than a blessing, it is the
Blesser; it is not simply a baptism, it is the Baptizer; it is not sanctification, but rather the Sanctifier; it is
not holiness so much as it is the Holy One. For when you are possessed by Christ, all He is will fill you,
and He Himself will be in you your character for daily living and your power for daily service. He
Himself, in His indwelling through the fullness of the Spirit, is made unto us sanctification. Our
sanctification is a Person rather than an experience. So be not content with a blessing. Don’t stop short
of being utterly possessed by the Blesser Himself, through the filling with the Spirit, for only so will there
be in your life an ever-flowing fountain of power for reaching the lost for Christ. And don’t take any
experience, however wonderful, as the final evidence that you are filled with the Spirit, but watch for
the operation of the saving power of the Indwelling One, which is certain to be manifest in answer to
your obedient faith.

2. Power Uses Us.

When we are possessed by the Spirit, we are usable by God — and He never fails to use us when
we are ready.
He looked down at the darkest hour of this age and saw Martin Luther ready to be used, and forging
him into a red-hot thunder bolt of spiritual fervor He hurled him against the error, darkness, and
superstition of Apostate Rome, and the Reformation was born.
He looked again and found John Knox on his face crying, “Oh, God, give me Scotland, or I die,” and
freeing that land from the grip of “Bloody Mary” He sent His surrendered servant forth as a flaming
torch of evangelistic zeal, and used him mightily for the saving of men.
He looked again and found the Wesleys and Whitefield, and filling them with the Divine dynamite
He used them for blasting out the dead formality and exclusive selfishness of a lifeless and non-
missionary church, and the modern revival and missionary movements were born.
He looked again and found Charles G. Finney yielded and ready, and filling him with such a passion
for lost men as none but the God-possessed ever know He used him mightily in the Great Awakening of

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’57 to ’60, until there were such scenes of mercy and salvation from one end of this land to the other as
will be the cause of thanksgiving among the ransomed as long as heaven shall last.
He looked again and found Dwight L. Moody longing for God to show the world what He could do
through one man who was utterly yielded to Him, and filling him with power from on high. He set such
mighty streams of blessing flowing through his life as are destined to bless the world increasingly until
the Lord comes back to reign.
It was this same power using men who were ready that wrought such wonders of grace in New York
in 1831. A committee of Christian men went to the lessee of old Chatham Street Theater and said they
would like to buy the lease of the theater.
The owner of the lease said, “What do you want it for?”
They replied, “For a church.”
“For wh-a-a-t!” exclaimed the owner. “For a church,” they said.
“All right,” said the owner, “you may have it, and I will give you a thousand dollars to help you on in
your work.”
Then Arthur Tappan stepped to the stage of the theater as the actors were closing their morning
rehearsal and said, “There will be preaching here tonight on this stage,” and then gave out and sang
with such people as were there, that old hymn:
“The voice of free grace cries,
Escape to the mountain,
For all who believe Christ
Has opened a fountain.”
Then they turned the bar-room into a prayer-meeting room, and there were eight hundred present
at the first meeting. And for seventy successive nights there were such scenes of heart-broken
repentance and Divine forgiveness as shall never be forgotten unto the ages of the ages.
It was this same power that was manifest in the Great Awakening of ’57 to ’60. An awful financial
panic had thrown this nation helpless upon her face before God, and men everywhere cried for Divine
help.
Engine-houses, ware-rooms, factories, museums, and hotel parlors were opened for prayer and
preaching.
New York legislators met at half-past eight in the morning, in the room of the Court of Appeals in
the Capitol at Albany, and held a meeting for prayer and praise.
Fishermen knelt among their nets and sailors among their hammocks, quarrymen knelt among the
rocks and weavers among their looms, school teachers knelt among their classes and waiters among
their tables at the close of the day’s work, and called on God for His saving grace, until salvation spread
from the Atlantic to the Pacific, and from the Great Lakes to the Gulf of Mexico.
The captain of a ship coming into New York harbor reported that he and all his crew had been
converted to God after they left New Orleans.

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 A noon-day prayer meeting in Jayne’s Hall, Philadelphia, wired Fulton Street prayer meeting in New
York, and asked, “What hath God wrought?” and the answer came back, “Two hundred souls saved in
our meeting today.”
And all up and down the land men cried for mercy, until it became impossible to keep the count of
the scores of thousands of lost men and women who crept on bended knee into the presence of a
redeeming Christ and received the forgiveness of sins.
It was this same power that was present when Dr. J. Wilbur Chapman went, as a young man, to his
Philadelphia pastorate. After his first service an old man came hobbling down the aisle on a crutch, and
said there were some who were afraid he was too young to succeed.
“But,” he said, “there are four of us who went on our knees and signed a pledge that every day you
are pastor of this church we will pray for you.”
Dr. Chapman saw the four grow to ten, then to twenty-five, then to fifty, then to a hundred, then to
two, and three, and finally to four hundred men. And many a Sunday morning he would be on his knees
with four hundred men, and they would pray, “Oh, God, bless our pastor today. Make him a. soul-
winner. Enable him to preach in the power of the Spirit.” And when he stood up to preach, he saw
before him four hundred men who would die for Jesus Christ and for him. And so it is no wonder that
over twelve hundred found Christ and came into the church during his pastorate, the majority of them
being men.
And it is this same power that is continuously reaching hundreds of the lost through the Spurgeon
Tabernacle in London, Paul Rider’s church in Chicago, Dr. W. B. Riley’s church in Minneapolis, Dr. Mark
A. Matthews’ church in Seattle, and many others throughout Christendom.
Are you ready to yield to God and let Him turn the power on? The hour is dark; the apostasy grows;
and it seems as though God were calling as never before for those who will go with Him into the final
conflict of this age.
“We are living, we are dwelling
In a grand and awful time;
In an age on ages telling;
To be living is sublime.
“Hark! the waking up of nations;
Gog and Magog to the fray;
Hark! what soundeth is creation’s
Groaning for the latter day.
“Will ye play, then? Will ye dally
With your music, with your wine?
Up! it is Jehovah’s rally!
God’s own arm hath need of thine.
“Worlds are charging, heaven beholding;
Thou hast but an hour to fight.

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 Now, the blazoned cross unfolding,
On! right onward for the right.
“Oh, let all the soul within you
For the truth’s sake go abroad.
Strike! let every nerve and sinew
Tell on ages, tell for God.”
History tells its how Napoleon planned his masterly campaign to defeat the Austrians at Marengo.
On the 20th of May he was on the heights of St. Bernard. On the 14th of June, after working awful
havoc among his foes, and having sent Desaix forward on the right, he advanced to consummate his
plan of campaign.
But Desaix was hindered by the suddenly swelling waters of the River Po, and Napoleon was
compelled to stand on the field of battle and see his old guard giving way.
Just as the day was lost, Desaix came sweeping across the field at the head of his forces. He had with
him a little drummer boy he had picked up on the streets of Paris.
As the column halted, Napoleon shouted to the boy, “Beat a retreat.” But the boy never stirred.
Again Napoleon shouted, “Gamin, beat a retreat!”
The boy stepped forward, and gasping his drum sticks a little tighter, he said, “Sire, I don’t know
how. Desaix never taught me that. But I can beat a charge. Oh, I can beat a charge that would make the
dead fall into line. I beat that charge once at Mount Tabor; I beat it at the Bridge of Lodi, and I beat it at
the battle of the Pyramids. Shall I beat it here?”
Napoleon turned to Desaix, and said, “We are beaten; what shall the do?”
Desaix said, “Beat them! There is time enough yet to win a victory. The charge! The old charge of
Lodi and the Pyramids!”
And a moment later, following the gleaming sword of Desaix and the furious roll of the boy’s drum,
his forces swept down on the hosts of Austria, drove the first line back upon the second, and the second
upon the third, and though many of them died, the line never faltered. And when the smoke of battle
cleared away, the boy could still be seen in the front of the line, beating his furious charge.
Oh, hosts of the living God! By the sweeping victories of the early centuries and the decreasing
conquests of modern days; by the appalling crisis of a badly-weakened church and a fast-advancing
world; by the tragic cries for deliverance arising from millions whom Satan has taken captive at his will;
the nail-scarred and blood-stained Son of God is thundering the challenge to His battered and retreating
army to accept the -unconquerable re-enforcement of Power from on high, unsheathe the Sword of the
Spirit, which is the Word of God, and advance to conquest in the strength of that Almighty Arm that
never knew defeat! There are too many victories inscribed on His banners for His army to falter and flee
when the day grows darker! Hosts of the God of battles, follow Him who knows not how to retreat, and
on with the charge!

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