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and resisted by the church of his day as the utmost heresy, and men paid for it with their hves. And it was much the same in Wesley's time. Now, here we are with the restoration of the very experience of Pentecost—with the "latter rain" (James 5:7), a restoration of the power, in greater glory—to finish up the work begun. We shall yet again be lifted to the church's former level, to complete her work, begin where they left off when failure overtook them, and, speedily fulfilling the last Great Commission, open the way for the coming of the Christ.

We are to drop out the centuries of the church's failure, the long, dismal Dark Ages, and telescoping time, be now fully restored to pristine power, victory, and glory. We seek to pull ourselves, by the grace of God, out of a corrupt, backslidden, spurious Christianity. The synagogues of a proud, hypocritical church are arrayed against us, to give us the lie. The "hirelings" thirst for our blood. The scribes and Pharisees, chief priests, and rulers of the synagogues are all against us and the Christ.

Los Angeles seems to be the place and this the time, in the mind of God, for the restoration of the church to her former place, favor, and power. The fullness of time (Galatians 4:4) seems to have come for the church's complete restoration. God has spoken to His servants in all parts of the world and has sent many of them to Los Angeles, representing every nation under heaven. Once more, as of old, they are come up for Pentecost, to go out again into all the world with the glad message of salvation. The base of operations has been shifted, from

Deeper Yet

old Jerusalem to Los Angeles for the latter Pentecost. And there is a tremendous, God-given hunger for this experience everywhere. Wales was but intended as the cradle for this worldwide restoration of the power of God. India but the Nazareth where He was "brought up." —Apostolic Light

Again I wrote in the same paper,

If ever men shall seek to control, corner, or own this work of God, either for their own glory or for that of an organization, we shall find the Spirit refusing to work. The glory will depart. Let this be one work where God shall be given His proper place, and we shall see such a work as men have never yet dreamed of. It would be a fearful thing if God were obliged to withdraw His blessed Spirit from us, or withhold it at such a time as this, because we tried to corner it. All our business is to get God to the people. Let us yield ourselves for this, and this alone.

Some of the "canker worms" of past experience have been party spirit, sectional difference, prejudices, and so on, which are all carnal, contrary, and destructive to the law of love, to the "one body" of Christ (1 Corinthians 12:13). "For by one Spirit are we all baptized into one body" (verse 13). Self-satisfaction will always cause defeat. Oh, brother! Cease traveling round and round your old habit-beaten path, on which all grass has ceased to grow. Strike out into pastures green, beside the living waters!

In the Way of Faith, I wrote the following:

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We are coming back from the "dark ages" of the church's backshding and downfall. We are living in the most momentous moments of the history of time. The Spirit is brushing aside all our plans, our schemes, our strivings, and our theories, and is Himself acting again. Many who have feathered their nests well are fighting hard. They cannot face the sacrifice involved in rising to meet these conditions.

The precious ore of truth, the church's emancipation from the bondage of man's rule, has been brought about in a necessarily crude form at first, as rough ore. It has been surrounded, as in nature, by all kinds of worthless, hurtful elements. Extravagant, violent characters have sought to identify themselves with the work. A great truth is struggling in the bowels of the earth, entombed by the landslide of retrograding evil in the church's history. But it is bursting forth, soon to shake itself free from the objectionable matter yet clinging to it. Christ is at last proclaimed the Head. The Holy Spirit is the life. The members are in principle all "one body"il Corinthians 12:13).

Again, some extracts from an article in the Way of Faith in early 1907:

We detect in these present-hour manifestations the rising of a new order of things out of the chaos and failure of the past. The atmosphere is filled with inspiring expectation of the ideal. But unbelief retards our progress. Our preconceived ideas betray us in the face of opportunity. They lead to loss and ruin. But the world is awakening today, startled from her

guilty slumber of ease and death. Letters are pouring in from every side, from all parts of the world, inquiring feverishly, "What meaneth this?" (Acts 2:12). Ah, we have the pulse of humanity, especially in the church of today. There is a mighty expectation. And these hungry, expectant children are crying for bread. Cold, intellectual speculation has had nothing but denials for them. The realm of the Spirit cannot be reached alone by the intellect. The miraculous has again startled us into a realization of the fact that God still lives and moves among us.

Old forms are breaking up, passing away. Their death knell is being sounded. New forms, a new order and life, are appearing. There is naturally a mighty struggle. Satan moves the hosts of hell to hinder. But we shall conquer! The precious ore must be refined after it has been mined. The "precious" must be taken "from the vile" (Jeremiah 15:19). Rough pioneers have cleared the way for our advance, but purer forms will follow. Heroic, positive spirits are necessary for this work.

Men have been speaking through the ages, but the voice of God the Spirit is calling us today. Since the early church lost her power and place with God, we have been struggling back. Up through "its" and "isms," theories, creeds, doctrines, schisms, issues, movements, blessings, experiences, and professions, we have come. The stream could rise no higher than its source. We need no more theology or theory. Let the Devil have them. Let us get to God. Many are cramped up in present experiences.

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They are actually afraid to seek more of God for fear the Devil will get them. Away with such foolish bondage! Follow your heart! Believe in your own heart's hunger, and go ahead for God. We are sticking to the bottom. We need the fire of God. Straightjacket methods and religious rules have nearly crushed out our spiritual life altogether. We had better grieve all men rather than God.

Before the Azusa outpouring, everything had settled down in concrete form, bound by man. Nothing could move for God. Dynamite—the power of the Holy Spirit—was necessary to free this mass. And this God furnished. The whole mass was set free once more. Our Year of Jublilee had come. The last one had been realized in the great revival of 1859, fifty years before.

Chapter 4

Travelieg Ministry

The latter part of March 1907, I received an invitation to come to Conneaut, Ohio, with a check enclosed for fifty dollars. They wanted Pentecostal meetings there. The leader wrote me that they were hungry for Pentecost. I felt it was a call from God to go east but could not help wondering if they really knew what they were inviting for themselves. The letter seemed full of enthusiasm, the very thing John Wesley so strongly discouraged. Wesley's definition of fanaticism was, "expecting the end without the means."

I did not cash the check, fearing lest they might be disappointed when they got through with me. They had to learn that Pentecost meant the dying out to the self-life, carnal ambition, pride, and so on. It meant for them to enter into the "fellowship of his sufferings" (Philippians 3:10), not simply to have a popular, good

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time. This I felt they did not realize. A real Christian means a martyr, unavoidably, in one way or another. Few people are willing to pay the price to become a real Christian, to accept the ostracism, false accusation, and condemnation of others. But God has only one standard. Present-day profession of faith is for the most part a mere sham. Only a small percentage of it is real.

A man once asked Luther to recommend a book that was both agreeable and useful. "Agreeable and useful!" replied Luther. "Such a question is beyond my ability. The better things are, the less they please."

"Except a man forsake all," said Jesus, "he cannot be my disciple." (See Luke 14:33.) This may require some qualification, or explanation, as to positive action, but the principle remains the same for all. The church, since her fall in the early centuries, has had an altogether mistaken idea of her calling and salvation. All believers are called to a 100 percent consecration. God doesn't have two standards of consecration—one for the foreign missionary, and another for the Christian at home. We cannot find it in the Bible. One is called to consecrate his all as well as the other, as God's stewards in their own places and callings. It takes three to make a missionary. One goes, one prays, and one gives. "This is a hard saying; who can hear zY.?" (John 6:60).

God has had but one purpose and interest since the Fall. That has been to bring man back to Himself. The whole old dispensation, with its providential dealings, was unto this one end. God had one recognized people, the Jews. He had one purpose in this nation. All their operations were to one end. All their

worship pointed to that one end—to bring the nations to the true knowledge of God and to bring in the Messiah of the world. Jesus Christ had but one interest in coming to this earth. His second coming waits for this one thing also. When this Gospel shall have been preached in all the world, "then shall the end come" (Matthew 24:14) and the curse be lifted.

Is the church working, with all her resources, for this one purpose and to this one end? That certainly does not mean the selfish heaping up of property and riches, more than we really need. It does not mean getting all we want for ourselves and then tossing the Lord a dollar we do not need. We have had the order totally reversed since the early church's fall. God requires of everyone exactly the same consecration.

Here is where the Ananias and Sapphira business has come in. Not "one-tenth" in this dispensation, but "all." Our bodies are the temple of the Holy Spirit (1 Corinthians 6:19), and we are to be 100 percent for Him at all times. We belong to Him. He has created us and bought us back, redeemed us after we had mortgaged His property, not ours, to the Devil. In no sense are we our own. We are redeemed back with the blood. How long would it take, or have taken, to evangelize the world under this rule? Think on these things! Is the church moving normally, in divine order? The politico-religious system, since the early church, and today, is largely a hybrid, mongrel institution. It is full of selfishness, disobedience, and corruption. Its kingdom has become "of this world," rather than a "heavenly citizenship," with spiritual weapons.

The doctrinal issue has also been a great battle. Many were too dogmatic at Azusa. Doctrine, after all,

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is but the skeleton of the structure. It is the framework of the "body." We need flesh on the bones, the Spirit within, to give life. What the people need is a living Christ, not dogmatic, doctrinal contention. Much harm was done to the work in the beginning by unwise zeal. The cause suffered most from those within its own ranks, as always. But God had some real heroes He could depend upon. Most of these sprang from the deepest obscurity into sudden prominence and power, and then as quickly retired again, when their work was done. Someone has well said, "Men, like stars, appear on the horizon at the command of God." This is a true evidence of a real work of God. Men do not make their times, as someone has also truly said, but the times make the man. Until the time, no man can produce a revival. The people must be prepared, and the instrument likewise.

The historian D'Aubigne has well said,

God draws from the deepest seclusion the weak instruments by which He purposes to accomplish great things; and then, when He has permitted them to glitter for a season with dazzling brilliancy on an illustrious stage, he dismisses them again to deepest obscurity. God usually withdraws His servants from the field of battle only to bring them back stronger and better armed.

And this was the case with Luther, shut up in the Wartburg, after his glittering triumph over the great ones of earth at Worms.

DAubigne wrote.

There is a moment in the history of the world, as in the lives of such men as Charles II

Traveling Ministry

or Napoleon, which decides their career and their renown. It is that in which their strength is suddenly revealed to them. An analogous moment exists in the life of God's heroes, but it is in a contrary direction. It is that in which they first recognize their helplessness and nothingness. From that hour they receive the strength of God from on high. A great work of God is never accomplished by the natural strength of man. It is from among the dr\' bones, the darkness, and the dust of death that God is pleased to select the instruments through whom He designs to scatter over the earth His light, regeneration, and life.

Strong in frame, in character, and in talents, Zwingle had to see himself prostrated, so that he might become such an instrument as God loves. He needed the baptism of adversity and infirmit>^ of weakness and pain. Luther had received it in that hour of anguish when his cell and the long galleries of the convent at Er-furth reechoed with his piercing cries. Zwingle was appointed to receive it by being brought into contact with sickness and death.

Men must come to know their own weakness before they can hope to know God's strength. The natural strength and ability of man are always the greatest hindrance to the work of God, and to God's working. That is why we had such a deep d>ing out, especially for the workers and preachers, in the early days of the Azusa Mission. God was preparing His workers for their mission.

In answer to prayer, the Lord opened the way for me to take my family with me when I went east. I

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preached in Denver at the Hohness headquarters, where we had been members and labored before we had come to Cahfornia. We had a powerful time. Several souls were saved, among them one whole family, and the saints were wonderfully built up. Some received the baptism of the Spirit. I had three meetings in all.

God wonderfully used two little girls there. They both had the baptism and a real ministry of prayer. Their pleadings with the unsaved broke up the house, while their freedom from self-consciousness was a powerful lesson to us all. It was a strange work and ministry of God. Heartfelt conviction was upon the unsaved. "Unless you become as a little child," we learned anew. (See Mark 10:14.) Evidently modern evangelistic methods are not altogether essential for the salvation of souls. We had better stick to our peculiar gift, though it be a "strange work" (Isaiah 28:21). We will succeed better at that. Let God have His way. In those days the power and presence of God among us often converted sinners in their seats. We did not have to drag them to the altar and fight with them to get them saved. They did not come to the altar to fight God. There was much of the "singing in the Spirit" at Denver, as at Azusa. This gift seemed to accompany the work wherever it broke out.

We finally reached Conneaut, Ohio, on April 30 in a snowstorm. The presence of the Lord was with us from the start. It was a Hohness mission. We really had little to do but to look on and see God work. The Spirit took the meetings. In fact, we were on our faces most of the time in prayer. I could hardly keep off my face; the battle was the Lord's. And no one else could have fought it there, for we came up against most

Traveliog Ministry

stubborn resistance. The Lord had warned me of this condition before we left Los Angeles. The leader who had written inviting me had not the slightest idea what Pentecost meant, just as I had feared. He wanted a good time, with a big increase in the mission, to build up the work in numbers, and so on.

The meetings had not gone far until we found him wedged squarely in the way. One sister prayed without ceasing under a travail of soul for him. He was fleshly, proud, and self-important, and would not let the meetings go deeper. We could go no further. He did not seem to have the least idea of humbling himself along with the rest of us. But he had to come down. God showed me I must deal with him. I had to obey or quit. There was no use going any further. We were eating at his table and sleeping in his beds. It was a hard thing to have to do, but I went after him. We locked horns, and he resisted me fiercely. God, however, brought him down. The Spirit convinced him, and he fell in a heap. He almost jarred the building when he fell. He lay under a bench for five hours and began to see himself as God saw him. The Spirit took him all to pieces and showed him his pride, ambition, and so on. Finally, he got up without a word and went home. There he locked himself in his room and remained until God met him. He came out from that interview as meek as a little lamb and confessed his shortcomings. The hindrance was out of the way, and the meetings swept on in power. He got the baptism himself some time later, after we had gone.

The Lord worked very deeply. Several were under the power all night on one occasion. There was no closing at 9 o'clock sharp, as the preachers must do in order to keep the people. We wanted God in those

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days. We did not have a thousand other things we wanted before Him. And He did not disappoint us. One sister sat and spoke in tongues for five full hours. Souls were saved, and the saints wonderfully built up and strengthened by the presence of the Lord. A number received the baptism in the Spirit, and the mission became full-fledged for Pentecost.

One Sunday night the hall was packed, clear out to the middle of the street. I went to the hall the next morning to look for the folks who had not gone home. Several had stayed all night. I found them lost to all but God. They could not get away. A very Shekinah glory filled the place. It was awesome, but glorious.

Our next meeting was at Youngstown, Ohio. Here I preached for the Christian Missionary Alliance (C.M.A.). Some nights we were held in the hall until daylight. We could not leave. God was so near that no one felt tired or sleepy. I had much real soul travail here. In some meetings suppressed groans were about all one could hear. Much prayer characterized the services. The Spirit was waited upon for every move, and He took complete control. No two services were alike. In one meeting, the very silence of heaven took possession of us for about four hours. Scarcely a sound was uttered. The place became so steeped in prayer and so sacred that we closed the door softly, and walked the same, scarcely speaking to one another, and then only in whispers. Another night, we were held in adoration and praise for hours. We seemed to be looking into the very face of God. There was no boisterousness in these meetings.

Another night we were all broken up by the love of God. We could do nothing but weep for a whole hour.

Traveling Ministry

Every meeting was different, and each seemed to go deeper. Two or three whole nights were spent in prayer. One night the Spirit fell upon us like an electric shower. Several went over on the floor, and God was Master for the time. Such singing in the Spirit, the "heavenly chorus," I have seldom heard. A number came through speaking in tongues. But again our battle was with the leader. He opposed me fiercely. He was not right with God and would not yield. His wife was now under the power, seeking the baptism, but he carried on in the flesh until the Spirit was terribly grieved. The Devil often gets into a preacher's coat. Satan used him persistently in the beginning of the meetings, but God finally got the victory, in spite of him. He did not yield. It is amazing the hold the Devil has on some preachers.

I preached one night at Akron, Ohio, with much blessing. We then had five services at New Castle, Pennsylvania, with the CM .A. again. God greatly blessed there also. Then we went to Alliance, Ohio, for the Pentecostal camp meeting. It was June 13. We had a wonderful camp. It was the first one of its kind in the Northeast. I led the preachers' meetings. The first Sunday morning I was given a message, but the leader asked me to speak in the afternoon instead. I said nothing, but prayed. In a few minutes he came back and told me to preach in the morning. In those days men did not get far without God. I preached with great help from the Lord on, "Jesus Christ in Worldwide Evangelism in the Power of the Holy Ghost." Everything centers around Jesus. We may not put the power, gifts, the Holy Spirit, or in fact anything ahead of Jesus. Any mission that exalts even the Holy Spirit above the Lord Jesus Christ is bound for the rocks of error and fanaticism.

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This was a very important camp in the inception of the work in that part of the country. We remained two weeks, and I preached eleven times in all. We had a powerful time and a large, representative attendance. Four hundred camped on the grounds. Often meetings lasted all night. Missionary enthusiasm ran high. Meals were on the free-will offering plan. God bountifully provided and a precious spirit of unity prevailed. We were brethren, baptized "by one Spirit...into one body" (1 Corinthians 12:13). Thus Jesus' prayer was answered, "That they all may be one" (John 17:21). The harmony between the preachers was especially blessed. Such a spirit of love we have seldom seen displayed. Those were wonderful days. It could be truly said that in honor we preferred one another (Romans 12:10).

No organ or hymnals were used. The Spirit conducted the services, and there seemed no place for them. Hundreds met God. Many received a call to foreign fields, to prove God along real faith lines. The rapid evangelism of the world, on real apostolic lines, was the goal set. The present generation must be reached by the present generation. The altars were seldom empty of seekers day or night. Men who had been in both the Wales and India revivals declared this to be the deepest work of all. We determined to fight nothing but sin and to fear nothing but God.

I asked the Lord for a certain amount of money, which we needed in order to continue east. The committee gave me exactly the amount I had prayed for, without a single hint from me. God did it. Praise Him!

At Forty-second Street Mission, New York City (Glad Tidings Hall), we had powerful times. A young

Traveling Ministry

girl came under the power, and her spirit was caught up to the throne. She sang a melody, without words, that was so heavenly that it seemed to come from within the veil. It seemed to come from another world. I have never heard its equal before or since.

A. B. Simpson was there himself that night and was tremendously impressed by it. He had been much opposed to the Pentecostal work. Doubtless God gave it as a witness for him. Several were slain under the power. Toward morning, the presence of the Lord was simply wonderful. I went to leave the hall just at daybreak and shook hands with a sister hungry for the baptism. The Spirit came upon her, and I could not turn her loose until she fell at the altar and came through speaking in tongues. I shook hands with another hungry sister as I started to leave the hall again. The Spirit fell upon her also, and she received the baptism right there on her feet, speaking in tongues before I could turn her loose. That was a wonderful night.

It was now time for us to start for California again. The Lord had blessed me much at Indianapolis. I was so glad I had obeyed Him and gone there. I was there by His invitation purely, but I seldom, if ever, had felt such a wonderful flow of the Spirit before. The message seemed to be actually pulled out of me in preaching. In fact, I felt almost drawn off the platform by the hungry desire of the people. I could not talk as rapidly as the thoughts came to me and almost fell over myself trying to speak fast enough. At one meeting, when I was through speaking, the "slain of the Lord" (Isaiah 66:16) lay all over the floor. I looked for the preachers behind me, and they lay stretched out

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on the floor, too. One of them had his feet tangled up in a chair, so I knew they had gone down under the power of God. I stepped over near the piano, among the people. My body began to rock under the power of God, and I fell over onto the piano and lay there. It was a cyclonic manifestation of the power of God.

At Colorado Springs I preached six times. The Spirit flowed like oil. I have seldom found such liberty anywhere. Oh, the possibilities that exist where purity and unity reign!

We had sent our trunks on to Los Angeles, not knowing where we would find our next home. But before reaching Pasadena, the Lord showed me we should get off there. We did not expect anyone to meet us, though I had written Brother Boehmer that we would get back on that train. When we reached Pasadena, with no place to go, we found Brother Boehmer at the depot waiting for us. He took us to a mission home on Mary Street that had just been opened in connection with the Alley Mission. So God had it all arranged for us, without our knowledge. We were weary pilgrims indeed, needing rest. We arrived December 5,1907.

I found the work had fallen back considerably. The saints were badly split up. The Spirit was bound also. The outside opposition had become much more settled and determined. It was the same condition in Los Angeles. The saints at the Alley Mission had suffered greatly under the tyranny of a leader who did not himself have the baptism. I now helped them to pray him out of the mission and the home, and they were delivered. He had imposed himself on the work. He was a regular "dog in the manger." A larger mission

Traveliog Ministry

was opened on Colorado Street, and I had some ministry there also. I found the power had been greatly dissipated. There was much empty manifestation. A great deal of it was simply froth and foam. This burdened me deeply. The spirit of prayer had been largely lost. In consequence, much flesh and fanaticism had crept in. Prayer burns out the proud flesh. It must be crucified.

We now moved into a little cottage next door to Brother Boehmer. The ministry of intercession was heavy upon me. I preached a number of times at Her-mon, Eighth and Maple, and Azusa Street. One evening at Azusa Mission the spirit of prayer came upon me as "a rushing mighty wind" (Acts 2:2). The power ran all through the building. I had been burdened for the deadness that had crept in there. The temporary leaders were frightened and did not know what to do. They telephoned for help. They had not been with us in the beginning. Brother Seymour was out of town.

I was upstairs in the hallway. Others joined me in prayer. We went downstairs, and the fire broke out in the meeting. But the leaders in charge were not spiritual. Other rulers had arisen that "knew not Joseph" (Exodus 1:8). They did not understand it. God was trying to come back. They seemed afraid someone might steal the mission. The Spirit could not work. Besides, they had organized now, and I had not joined their organization. And so it is largely today: "Sign on the dotted line or we cannot trust you. We affiliate only with those carrying our papers." Pentecost took that out of us! Why go back to it? All who belong to the different divisions in the Pentecostal work today do not have the spirit of division, but God would hold us to the ideal of the "one body."

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The Lord showed me my place of hiding. I determined to follow Him. That is the place of power. Fear nothing but God, and obey Him. I spoke many times at Eighth and Maple, at Azusa, and also at the Alley Mission in Pasadena, exhorting them to more earnestness and to walk in the Spirit. I had suffered much in prayer in the bringing forth of this work and felt I had a right to admonish them. Our great battle from the beginning was with fleshly religious fanatics, purporting to be of the Spirit of God.

On March 11, 1908, I received a letter from Brother Sawtelle, leader of the Christian Alliance work in Portland, Oregon. He a.sked me to come north and hold some meetings for them. God had shown me that we would be called out again, and I recognized His call. We were to go north and east again. Brother Boehmer had received the baptism by this time and decided to go with us in the work. I felt we had come back to the coast largely to get him out.

I was exhorting the saints all winter to push out in the spring for God. About a dozen followed us to different points as we started out again. I began to feel the worldwide call heavily upon me, also. The Lord seemed to show me the oceans must yet be crossed for Him. And this we realized later on. Like Peter the Hermit,' I felt at times like stirring all Christendom with my cry for a revival.

[Brother Bartleman spent the year of 1908 ministering again throughout the United States. In 1909 he made a trip to the Hawaiian Islands.—Editor]

* Peter the Hermit, born about 10.50 in France, was the founder of a monastery and is considered one of the chief stimulators of the hiunching f^f'thf; J''irst Crusade.

Traveling Ministry

The ^vork had gotten into a bad condition generally by the time we returned to Los Angeles (from the Hawaiian Islands). The missions had fought each other almost to a standstill. Little love remained. There ^vas considerable rejoicing, but all in the flesh. A cold, hardhearted zeal had largeh' taken the place of the di^dne love and tenderness of the Spirit. The missions, I found, ^\'ere ven' zealous for doctrine, as usual. I began to preach at Eighth and INhiple, Azusa Mission, and Hermon. Azusa had lost out greatly since we left. "How are the mighty fallen" (2 Samuel 1:19) came to me most forcibly. But the Spirit came upon three of us mightily in prayer one evening there. He assured us He was going to bring the power back to Azusa Mission again as at the beginning. We felt we had prayed through. (And the ans^^•er came a little over a year later ^vhen Brother Durham came from Chicago. The place was then once more filled with the saints and with the gloiT of God, although onh- for a short time.)

But at this time old Azusa Mission fell more and more into bondage. The meetings had to run in appointed order. The Spirit tried to work through some poor, illiterate Mexicans, who had been saved and baptized in the Spirit, but the leader deliberateh- refused to let them testiiS', crushing them ruthlessly. It was like murdering the Spirit of God. Onl>- God kno\vs what this meant to those poor Mexicans. Personally, I would rather die than to have assumed such a spirit of dictatorship. E\'eiy meeting was now programmed from start to finish. Disaster was bound to follow, and it did so.

I now began to feel the Lord was calling me to girdle the globe on a missionaiy trip for Him. It was to be

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by faith, and I had not a cent in sight. I had really felt the call to make this trip for years, and the time had now come. It looked like madness to attempt such a thing in the natural, as I was just at that time up against a very severe test both physically and financially. However, the conviction became an assurance. After a time, in which it seemed almost impossible to get even as much as a dime, the Lord opened the way for me to start. I believe God allowed me to be thus tested in order to prove me for the journey. It looked almost like actual starvation faced us just before the way finally opened up.

I left home March 17, 1910, and circled the entire globe by faith, visiting Europe and most of the principal mission fields. I spent six delightful weeks in Palestine, returning home by way of Egypt, India, Ceylon, China, and Japan, and across the Pacific, via Honolulu. I was gone eleven months and one week. My family trusted God fully and were better cared for than they had ever been while I was with them. I returned with about one dollar in my pocket. My wife had fifty dollars in the bank. "Faithful is he that calleth you, who also will do it" (1 Thessalonians 5:24).

Chapter 5

The Wave Contimiie^

Just about one week before I arrived home, Brother Durham began meetings at old Azusa Mission. He was sent by the Lord from Chicago. The Upper Room Mission refused him a hearing, so he went to Azusa Street. Brother Seymour was absent, having traveled east. Brother Durham started meetings, and the saints flocked back to the old place and filled it again with the high praises of God. This was what the Lord witnessed to three of us while in prayer more than a year before. God had gathered many of the old Azusa workers back to Los Angeles from many parts of the world, evidently for this. It was called by many the second shower of the "latter rain" (James 5:7). On Sunday the place was crowded, and five hundred were turned away. The people would not leave their seats between meetings for fear of losing them.

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With this, the bottom dropped out of Upper Room Mission overnight. The leader had abused his privilege, and also the saints. He had failed God in other ways also. The Lord will spare any man or mission if there is repentance. We cannot persistently abuse our privileges, destroy the prophets of God, and finally get away with it. Great was the fall of Upper Room Mission. The leader had at one time been much used by God, but God had another place, man, and message ready. He never deserts His true flock. The "cloud" moved on and moved the saints with it. (See Exodus 13:21-22.)

The fire began to fall at old Azusa as at the beginning. I attended these meetings with great interest and joy. The Lord also blessed me much at Eighth and Maple, which was still running in spite of the outstanding meetings at Azusa.

Then, on May 2,1 went to Azusa Street and to everyone's surprise found the doors all locked, with chain and padlock. Brother Seymour had hastened back from the east and, with his trustees, decided to lock Brother Durham out. It was his message they objected to. But they locked God and the saints out from the old cradle of power also.

In a few days, Brother Durham rented a large building at the corner of Seventh and Los Angeles Streets. A thousand people attended the meetings there on Sundays and about four hundred on week-nights. Here the "cloud" rested, and God's glory filled the place. Azusa became deserted. The Lord was with Brother Durham in great power, for God sets His seal especially on "present truth" (2 Peter 1:12) that needs to be established. He preached a Gospel of salvation

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by faith and was used mightily to draw anew a clear line of demarcation between salvation by works and faith, between law and grace. This had become very much needed, and it is certain that such a revelation and reformation are needed in the churches today almost as badly as in Luther's day.

"Learn from me," said Luther, "how difficult a thing it is to throw off errors which have been confirmed by the example of all the world, and which, through long habit, have become second nature to us."

"Men were astonished that they had not earlier acknowledged truths that appeared so evident in Luther's mouth," said the historian D'Aubigne. And so with Durham's message. But it received great opposition also. Some abused the message, as they do every message sent by God, going to the extreme of declaring that because the work of redemption was fully accomplished on the cross, it was of necessity finished in us also, the moment we believed. This was a great error and hindered the message and work considerably.

Man always adds to the message God has given. This is Satan's chief way to discredit and destroy it. Both Luther and Wesley had the same difficulties to contend with. And so has every God-given revival. Men are creatures of extremes. The message generally suffers more from its friends than from its foes. "We have this treasure in earthen vessels" (2 Corinthians 4:7). The truth can always be abused. Some even went so far as to fight the principle of holiness itself, pretending to justify themselves by Durham's message. But they had either misunderstood it or, what is more likely, seized a pretended opportunity to fight the principle that their own hearts refused to yield to.

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We had a wonderful year in Los Angeles in 1911. The battle was clearly between works and faith, between law and grace. Much of the old-time power and glory of the Azusa Mission days returned to us. I had much liberty and joy in Brother Durham's mission, especially in the beginning. God had prepared me beforehand for the message. I had been brought completely to the end of self-dependence. Works had no further place with me in meriting any phase of salvation. "For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus unto good works" (Ephesians 2:10). We were called to humility again, so that the power of God might rest upon us.

So determined was I to take no chances of "self surviving in my life that I burned no less than five hundred personal letters I had received in the early Azusa days from leading preachers and teachers all over the world inquiring anxiously about the revival that was then in our midst. Some of these inquirers were in very high positions officially. They had read my reports of the revival in various papers. I was afraid these letters might someday prove a temptation to me to imagine that I had been a person of some importance, since many begged an interest in my prayers. I almost wish at times that I had kept these letters, as they would be of much interest now as historical evidence to the widespread influence of the revival. No doubt the Lord could have kept me humble without this sacrifice, but at the time I was determined to take no chances.

We feared nothing more in those days than to seek our own glory, or that the Pentecostal experience would become a matter of past history. In fact, we

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hoped and beheved that the revival would last without cessation until Jesus should come. It doubtless would, and should, if men would not fail God, but we drift back continually into the old ecclesiastical concepts, forms, and ceremonies. Thus history sadly repeats itself. Now we must work up an annual revival. We go to church on Sundays, just like the nations (churches) round about us. (See Deuteronomy 17:14.) But in the beginning it was not so. In the early Azusa days, you could hardly keep the saints off their knees. Whenever two believers met, they invariably went to prayer. Today we can hardly be dragged to prayer. Some make as much fuss about it as the old camel does in the East in kneeling to receive his load. He fusses and bites and groans before the driver can bring him down.

I am glad I did not destroy my diary, however, or the articles I wrote all through those early Pentecostal days. I have preserved between five and six hundred separate, printed articles, besides more than one hundred different tracts. From these I have been able to draw a large amount of most reliable information for the present book. Had I destroyed these, this book would probably never have been written.

The opposition against Brother Durham was tremendous, and he was finally tempted to strike back. This I felt was not the Spirit of Christ, though he had great provocation. Possibly few have been able to stand such a test successfully. I left the platform finally, not willing to stand for a spirit of retaliation. I felt I must keep clear of carnal strife and controversy. However, the Lord had wonderfully used dear Brother Durham. He was sent by God to Los Angeles, and possibly his work was done. To have remained much

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longer might have destroyed his victory, for his word was coming to be almost law in the Pentecostal missions, even as far as the Atlantic coast. Too much power is unsafe for any one man. The paper he instituted in connection with his work began to take on the nature of a carnal controversy, fighting the old "second work of grace" theory. The Lord showed me He was about to stop this spirit.

Brother Durham wrote the following observations on the work some time before he died. They are of such vital importance I feel led to reproduce them, as follows:

A great crisis is now on. Men do not see the plan of God in the present Pentecostal Movement. Such a complete revolution is necessary that it staggers them. They are unwilling to see that which they have labored so hard to build up thrown down; but before God's plans can be carried out, man's plans must be set aside. They fail to see that God, having set aside all the plans of man, is beginning to work after His own plan. He is revealing His real plan to so many that they will never consent to having the present work turned into a sect. God's people are simply not going to be led into the snare of human organization again.

The Father has poured out His Spirit again so that Jesus may be glorified. All past movements have resulted in the promotion to positions of honor for one or more men. The present movement will honor and exalt Jesus Christ. The Holy Spirit always exalts Jesus and His precious blood. As He is exalted and faithfully preached, God is restoring the old-time

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power. But it is not all restored yet. Not seeing the plan of God, men have not met the conditions and therefore have not received all that God has for them. Many have run ahead of God.

Shortly after God filled me, His Spirit rested mightily upon me one morning, and He said to me, "If you were only small enough, I could do anything with you." A great desire to be little, yea, to be nothing, came into my heart. But it has been oh so hard to keep low enough for Him to really work through me. And He only really uses me when I am little in my own eyes and really humble at His feet. When I feel that I must do something. He always lets me fail. But when I stay at His feet and feel that I am nothing, and that He is all, and so just trust Him, He does His work in such a beautiful way that it is wonderful to me.

God is not trying to build up something else, or to do something for men that will make them great and mighty, but rather to bring all men to nothing and to do the work through the power of the Holy Ghost. The call of God to His people now is to humble themselves, to recognize their weakness and lack of power, to get down before Him and wait till His power is restored. The great question is. Will men see the plan of God and yield to it? Will men get down in humility at Jesus' feet and pray and wait till He restores His full Pentecostal power? Or will they continue to run ahead of Him and fail in the end?

Let God's people everywhere begin to seek in deep, true humility. Then He will reveal Himself and His plan to them. One man with the real power of God upon him can do more

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than a thousand who go on their own account. Only those who are true and loyal to God and His present-day message will share in this great victory. The people who really humble themselves and stand the test, God will use to do His work.

The fact is when a man gets to the place where he really loves obscurity, where he does not care to preach, and where he would rather sit in the backseat than on the platform, then God can lift him up and use him, and not very much before.

The old Upper Room, 327 South Spring Street, was opened up again about this time under the leadership of Brother Warren Fisher, Brother Manley, and Brother Allen. I delivered a message there one Sunday, and two received the baptism of the Spirit. God wonderfully anointed me. The presence of the Lord was very near. I had asked Him for a witness, so I now shifted my ministry to the Upper Room Mission.

After I left Brother Durham's platform, he seemed to mistrust me. Perhaps he thought I would work against him. I spoke many times now at Upper Room Mission, where the Lord greatly blessed me. Soon after this. Brother Durham went to Chicago to hold a convention where he was wonderfully used by God. It was in the winter, and he contracted a cold that led to his death soon after returning to Los Angeles.

By this time, the Lord was speaking loudly to me about getting out into the field again. I felt strongly drawn to Europe. I had had conviction of this when passing through Europe in 1910. The time had come, and the Lord began to touch hearts in a marked way on our behalf.

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We left Los Angeles and started to work our way across the continent once more, this time en route for Europe. The account of our "Two Years' Mission Work in Europe," with labors in England, Scotland, Wales, Holland, Switzerland, France, Germany, Norway, Sweden, Finland, and old Russia itself—where I had to preach in secret, although almost under the czar's nose—was published in a separate booklet. We did not want to return to America so soon, but were obliged to in safety to the family, because of the war. Besides, the whole effort of the nations now became one of filling their people's hearts with hate and murder. There seemed no place for the spirit of the Gospel. You are expected to do all you can to hate, curse, or kill the enemy in wartime, certainly not to love him. Let others do this, however, if they will; but as for me, the Gospel is just the same in peace or war. "Jesus Christ the same yesterday, and to day, and for ever" (Hebrews 13:8).

In all my writings, for at least twenty-five years, I have labored for the unity of the body of Christ. Everything I've written is full of the sentiment of John 17:21. Dr. Philip Schaff, the well-known scholar, has happily declared,

The divisions of Christendom will finally be overruled for a deeper and richer harmony, of which Christ is the keynote. In Him and by Him all problems of theology and history will be solved. In the best case, a human creed is only an approximate and relatively correct expression of revealed truth and may be improved by the progressive knowledge of the church.

The editor of The Friend of Russia wrote,

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God's people can never get together on human creeds and discipHnes. They are too narrow and changeable. We have a foundation that is broad enough to hold all. Christ Himself is this foundation. In Christ, all God's people are one, irrespective of race, color, social standing, or creed.

A certain preacher of standing in a prominent church outside the Pentecostal ranks, while addressing the baptized saints not long ago, said,

As we look upon the church divided, upon the sect-ridden multitude, none of whom can see alike, how our tried souls cry out for that original love. And we will never win the world on any other plane. It was said of the early Christians, by the heathen themselves, "Behold how these Christians love one another!" While we are breaking up into sects, creeds, isms, and doctrines, our love is dying. Our churches will be empty and our people lost. Your beautiful Pentecostal work, so full of promise, where God has designed to come in and fill souls and wonderfully baptize them in the Holy Spirit, is broken and peeled and ruined for lack of love.

Someone has recently written as follows:

It is a common thing to read in the daily papers such words as these: "Only union men need apply." And it is becoming a common thing to read in church papers: "Affiliating brethren are invited." What is the difference? No difference, except one is a secular union, the other is a religious union.

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Every fresh division or party in the church gives the world a contradiction as to the oneness of the body of Christ and the truthfulness of the Gospel. Multitudes are bowing down and burning incense to a doctrine rather than Christ. The many sects in Christendom are, to say the least, evidence to the world that Christians cannot get along together. Written creeds only serve to publish the fact that we cannot understand the Word of God alike and get together on it. Is the Word of God, then, so hard to understand? They who establish a fixed creed bar the way to further progress.

It is said of the mighty evangelist, Charles G. Finney, that he "forged his theology on the anvil of prayer in his own heart." He was not bound by the systems of his day.

The Spirit is laboring for the unity of believers today—for the "one body"—so that the prayer of Jesus may be answered, "That they all may be one;...that the world may believe" (John 17:21). But the saints are ever too ready to serve a system or party, to contend for religious, selfish, party interests. God's people are shut up in denominational coops. "Error always leads to militant exclusion. Truth evermore stoops to wash the saints' feet." "By one Spirit are we all baptized into one body" (1 Corinthians 12:13). We should be as one family, which we are, at home in God's house anywhere.

We belong to the whole body of Christ, both in heaven and on earth. God's church is one. It is a terrible thing to go about dismembering the body of Christ. How foolish and wicked the petty differences between Christians will appear in the light of eternity. Christ is

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the "issue," not some doctrine about Him. The Gospel leads to Him. It exalts Christ, not some particular doctrine. To know Christ is the alpha and the omega of the Christian faith and practice.

D'Aubigne, the historian, said, "The church was in the beginning a community of brethren guided by a few of the brethren." "One is your Master, even Christ; and all ye are brethren" (Matthew 23:8). We have too many who have a "leadership" spirit. These divide the body, separate the saints.

Now, however, we are coming around the circle, from the early church's fall, back to primitive love and unity, in the one body of Christ. This is doubtless the church for which Christ is coming, "not having spot, or wrinkle, or any such thing" (Ephesians 5:27).

Chapter 6

The Deeper Significance of Pentecost

Frank Bartleman was a man of passion and deep burden. His prayers literally opened the heavens, and his messages were withering to all that was of the flesh. Everything that stood as an obstruction to the full exaltation of Jesus Christ as Lord of all became the object of his travailing prayer and was ruthlessly exposed by his fearless pen and tongue.

But Frank Bartleman was more than an intercessor and more than a dauntless revivalist. He was a man of vision—a prophet! He perceived the deeper significance of what the Holy Spirit was after in revival and called upon God's people to go on to that ultimate. His voice, although so long silent, now once again goes forth. The following message was

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delivered in about 1925 shortly before Bartleman's death.

The world is the field; the true church is the treasure—like a kernel in a shell. But the great nominal church, the ecclesiastical body in each generation, is also like a field in which the true spiritual church— the living church—like a treasure, is hidden.

But even this true, spiritual church is far from being the treasure of divine life and power originally planned and provided for in the purpose of God. Ever since the early church fell from New Testament purity and life, she has been like a backslider, fallen from the summit of apostolic days—though destined to return and yet enter into the full blessing of the Father's house.

I refer to the true, spiritual body of Christ. It is a prodigal son, wandered from the Father's house, but since the Reformation gradually returning. Nearly five centuries have now passed since the Reformation. The route back has been devious and long, with many a dark valley, as well as many a glorious summit. But steadily, relentlessly, the mighty Spirit of God has been moving on, restoring that which was lost and heading things up toward that great prophetic revelation of the body of Christ in unity and fullness—even one body, fully matured "unto the measure of the stature of the fulness of Christ" (Ephesians 4:13).

Beloved, unless we understand this, we will not be able to move on with God and understand the different stages, experiences, and various standards and operations in the church's history during this dispensation. That is why most Christians have failed to

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move on with God and to accept His cumulative un-foldings in the restoration of revelation, light, and experience, once lost, but now being restored to the true church.

If you do not fully see this, or if it seems to differ from your present idea of things, do bear with me. Before I am finished, I believe you will understand; and, if so, it may well transform your life, giving new and vital direction to your prayers and ministry.

The Heart of Our Trouble

The human soul is ever lazy toward God, and no one generation has seemed to be able to travel very far on its way back to God and His standard from which the early church fell. It is true that human error or understanding continually satisfies itself with a part instead of the whole, but the real fact is that men are not willing to pay the full price to come back fully to God's standard, to be all the Lord's.

The early church came forth from the Upper Room fresh in her "first love" (Revelation 2:4), baptized with the Holy Spirit, filled with God, possessing both the graces and gifts of the Spirit, and with a 100 percent consecration for God. This was the secret of her power. She was all for God, and God was all for her. This principle will apply in all ages, both individually and collectively. No sacrifice on the altar means no fire. The fire of God never falls on an empty altar. The greater the sacrifice, the more the fire.

When the prodigal gets home, and the church becomes 100 percent for God again, we will have the same power, the same life—and the same persecution from the world. The reason we have so little persecution now

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is that the Spirit cannot press the claims of God home on the world through us. When that happens, men must either surrender or fight.

"Jesus Christ, the same yesterday, and to day, and for ever" (Hebrews 13:8)! God never changes. We have changed. We are not waiting for God. God is waiting for us. The Holy Spirit is given; we are still in the dispensation opened on the Day of Pentecost. But God can only work when we are willing, yielded, and obedient. We tie God's hands.

The history of the church has been the same. Each company that has come forth in the line of restoration has run the same course. That is human, fallen nature. It is human failure, not God's. When everything dries up and dies out, we call upon God. This alone makes it possible for God to come. He must have some place to put His Spirit, and only empty vessels can be filled.

When we are filled with our own ways, think ourselves "rich, and increased with goods" spiritually (Revelation 3:17), God can give us nothing. "To the hungry soul every bitter thing is sweet" (Proverbs 27:7). The crumbs tasted good to the Syro-phoenician woman, but well-fed children despise even dainties. (See Matthew 15:21-28.) They will throw the food across the table at one another. Like the children of Israel, they despise even "angels' /ood" (Psalm 78:23).

The best preacher in the land cannot preach with liberty when his message is not desired or received. The oil ceases to flow as soon as there are no more empty vessels to be filled. This will often explain why good preachers sometimes have liberty and at other

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times have no anointing. Criticism will stop the flow of oil through any preacher. Oil will not flow when frozen.

How It All Began

The early church ran well for a season. Everything went down before it. But by the third or fourth century, they had compromised to escape the cross. They sold out to the Devil, backslid, and went down into the Dark Ages. They lost the Holy Spirit anointing, the gifts, the life, the power, the joy, everything. The church became a prodigal, left the Father's house, and went to feeding swine.

The Devil found he could not stamp out the early church by killing them. For every one he killed, two sprang up. Like the children of Israel, "the more they afflicted them, the more they multiplied and grew" (Exodus 1:12). The early Christians vied with one another for a martyr's crown. They exposed themselves purposely, recklessly, for this reward. Someone has said the greatest call that ever came to man is the call to suffer in a noble cause.

Heaven was real to the early church—far more real than earth. In fact, they seem to have lived only for the next age. That was their longing, their goal, to be delivered from "this present evil world" (Galatians 1:4). It was the sole relief they looked forward to. This present life, after all, is the true saint's purgatory. It is the sinner's heaven—his only heaven—and that is sad beyond words to express! But, glory to God, it is our only hell! We are in the Enemy's country, running the gauntlet, with foes lined up on all sides—but we're just passing through.

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Without question, it was God's desire to restore the backsUdden, prodigal church at once, when she fell, just as He must have desired at once to restore the human race in the beginning, when they fell. But He could not. Human, fallen nature was too weak.

God also wanted to take the children of Israel right into Canaan from Kadesh-Barnea when He brought them out of Egypt. It was only a short journey, but they frustrated His purpose and desire. They grieved God and "limited the Holy One of Israel" (Psalm 78:41), just as it has ever been. In consequence, they stopped going forward, went to "milling around," and their "carcases fell in the wilderness" (Hebrews 3:17).

Beloved, whenever we stop going forward, we go to milling around. When an individual stops going forward for God, he begins to go in a circle, just as a man when lost in a forest ceases to go straight forward but wanders in a circle.

So it was with the early church. When they ceased to go forward, they started wandering in a circle and became lost in the Dark Ages. The Devil had found he could not destroy them or stop their march by persecuting and killing them; so he removed the cross, offering them titles, positions, honor, salaries, profits of every kind—and they fell for it.

They no longer needed to look to God for their protection and support. They were "like the nations round about them," just as the children of Israel when they rejected God as their King. (See Deuteronomy 17:14.) And so it is with our great church bodies of today. History repeats itself in every movement through human weakness and failure.

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The Reformation and Subsequent History

Out of the Dark Ages came the great ecclesiastical, Roman hierarchy, which in time dominated the whole world, both political and religious. And the same condition has developed out of every fallen movement. An illegitimate, hybrid monster has come forth.

This was the condition of the formal church in Martin Luther's time. However, the living seed of the true church had remained buried in this mass, even through those long, dark centuries. This seed now began to spring up and germinate—the church within the church. The prodigal backslider began to come to himself at last and desire to return home. The church had fed on swine long enough!

Through the labors of such men as Huss, Wycliffe, Luther, Foxe, Wesley, Darby, Miiller, Moody, Evan Roberts, Wigglesworth, and a host of others, the prodigal church has been coming home. But each company that God has been able to bring forth and give a fresh deposit of the Spirit and of the truth once lost, has sooner or later stopped short of the full goal. Although often gaining much ground and experiencing tremendous blessing, each group has ceased to go forward as a body and completely return to the early New Testament standard and realization.

Again and again the church climbed from the depths of some sectarian stranglehold, with its various stages of formalism and spiritual darkness, only to fall again, within perhaps only a generation, into sometimes an even worse state. Fortunately, each time, some new light and understanding of truth and God's ways were given upon which the next revival company

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could build. But in it all, it is the failure of man, not God's failure. Each company has only gone so far. It was certainly God's desire to fully restore the early church to her first estate and love at once, as it is true with every backslider. To think otherwise is to charge God with sin. But the church would not.

A backslider does not get back to God in a moment. He generally has more or less of a battle to get back, according to the light and experience that he has sinned against. The early church had great light and experience. If it were too easy to be fully restored, it would be too easy to backslide.

There is a natural law that is similar to this. Faith has been broken down. It is like a case of tuberculosis, where the tissues of the lungs have been destroyed. It is a hard fight back, even under favorable circumstances of rest and climate. To return to the "lowlands" generally means a return of the disease. So it is with the restored backslider. He must keep away from temptation ground and aggressively walk in obedience.

Today we can look back and see the different companies that, in the line of restoration, God has brought out in the church since the Middle Ages. We can see where they ceased to go forward with God, where they began to mill around in a circle, and where their carcasses fell in the wilderness as a body—Lutherans, Anglicans, Congregationalists, Methodists, the Salvation Army, and so forth. They ceased to be a forward company.

Whenever we cease to go forward and keep on the offensive for God, we stop and die as a people. In fact,

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a movement is no longer a movement when it stops moving—be it the Hohness Movement, the Pentecostal Movement, or any other movement. It may continue to increase both in numbers and in wealth, but that is not necessarily a sign of life and power with God. All anti-Christian movements can show that kind of growth. No movement has ever recovered itself, as a body, when it has once gone on the skids.

God's Movement

We do not have to leave movements. We simply move on with God! As long as a movement moves, we move with it. The different movements in the history of the church, although part of His true restoration, are only incidental with God. God has one great movement we should all belong to, and that has never ceased moving. It is God's move through the ages to redeem a fallen, lost world and carry that great blood-washed assembly on to His eternal purpose. It began when "the Lamb [was] slain from the foundation of the world" (Revelation 13:8) and will end when the last saint gets safely home to glory.

We must work for the kingdom of God as a whole, not for some pet individual party, organization, or movement. That has been the curse and cause of hindrance to our going on with God to full restoration in all generations. We have worshipped certain doctrines, party standards, partial experiences, and blessings, all fine as far as they go, but abnormal in themselves and only a part of the whole.

Most of these have been unbalanced, exaggerated misstatements of truth at best. In the end, they have generally brought bondage in place of blessing. They

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have broken fellowship, divided the children of God, and put the church in bondage to men and their ideas, standards, understandings, and opinions.

We must keep moving! The clearest light on truth and experience has not yet come. We still wait for the full restoration of the "pattern shown in the mount," that of the early New Testament apostolic church as a whole.

The great mistake has been to stop with sectarian, partial, abnormal revelations. We must keep our eyes on God, not on a party. Keep free from a party spirit. That is indicative of a respect of persons. Seek only God and His plan as a whole, His church as a whole.

Every company, in time, repeats the experience of the early church. They compromise to escape the cross and accept positions, salaries, titles, and ecclesiastical power. An ecclesiastical hierarchy arises, just as it did in the early church during the second and third centuries.

The backslidden church is still in an abnormal condition. It will continue to be so until it becomes fully restored to the first standard of apostolic Christianity from which it fell. No experience or revelation in the line of gradual restoration has been perfect in itself. All is abnormal, both in understanding and experience, until the perfect whole is realized and restored.

We need a readjustment of all our doctrines to the full, clear light of God in the Word. All past experiences must be examined and redefined in the light of the perfect whole.

Someone has said that every reformation is at its best and highest tide when it first comes forth. This

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would seem to be so, but at the same time the true church is ever moving on to maturity. I speak of the church within the church, the kernel in the shell, not the surrounding movement. Just as the individual believer who goes on with God gradually matures, so the church within the church is maturing toward the end of the age when she will be a full-grown church. The goal is not just the standard lost by the early church but that toward which they themselves were pressing—"a fully matured man," even "the measure of the stature of the fulness of Christ" (Ephesians 4:13).

Apostasy and Recovery

As with Israel in the Exodus, the "mixed multitude" (Exodus 12:38), the exterior shell of every movement with which it loads itself and in which it later becomes buried, falls to lusting for "flesh." One can usually judge the progress of this process by the things the movement comes to demand. Instead of delight in the pure Word, prayer and worship, a love for souls, and zeal for good works, there come entertainment, programs, musicals, sensationalism, and orator>^ These things have no place in essential, true Christianity, but are professionalism—flesh! O God, deliver us from fleshly substitutes for the Spirit.

Most meetings can only be kept alive now by continuous entertainment, professional evangelism, and a strong social spirit. And this is all too true in Pentecostal, Holiness, and interdenominational circles, as well as in the older denominations. Where is the Life itself to draw the people and bring God to them as in the beginning? This is not New Testament. It is abnormal, grieving and limiting the Holy One of Israel in our midst.

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Each movement seems to run its course faster than the one before it. Like the Niagara River, it flows downward more swiftly as it approaches the falls, the end of time. These are the last days of apostasy.

The fight gets harder as we get higher up in our restoration from the early church's fall. When Adam fell, the Satanic powers intervened between the fallen race and God. God removed the seat of His presence with man from earth to heaven. So when the early church fell, she again lost the image of God that had, in a sense, been restored in New Testament days when the body of believers became the temple of the Holy Spirit. In a higher sense than Adam had known, the "spiritual wickedness in high places" (Ephesians 6:12) intervened between the church and God again. Now, the prodigal church, coming up out of the Dark Ages, has had to fight her way back through these evil powers. Each movement, as we go higher toward full restoration, has to meet a higher order of these wicked, spiritual powers and intelligences and hence must fight harder.

Each step forward necessarily requires a deeper preparation and greater spiritual equipment for a greater measure of restoration.

It was never God's decree that the experience of the church should be so long and drawn out in recovering the normal standard and going on to fullness. But we have ever sought to call our present abnormal understanding and experience normal. We must see that all has been abnormal since the early church's fall. Experiences, understanding—everything has been partial, unbalanced, and abnormal. Nothing has been perfectly understood, and all the different

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truths and experiences have only been parts of the whole.

We have not understood these truths and experiences, just as no machine is properly and clearly understood in detail except as we understand the whole. We have been recovering the whole in parts, without seeing the whole—thus we so often distort and overemphasize the truth or experience that our particular movement has recovered. I trust you grasp this, for it is very important.

The New Testament church in the book of Acts entered normally into the fullness of the Spirit immediately at its inception, as for instance at Cornelius' household in the tenth chapter of Acts. The different phases of our salvation were all viewed as just so many parts of one glorious, normal whole. But all the various movements in the restoration, since the early reformers, have ceased in their turn to go forward to full realization. They have established their party standard of a partial, abnormal revelation, putting a part for the whole. Then, in human vanity, they have each contended they had it all.

This is sectarianism, and it is like a lot of dams holding back God's people from flowing on toward the vast ocean of God's fullness. God cares little for these partial standards of men—their names, sects or parties, slogans or standards. All is only partial, distorted light that finally becomes the enemy of the real truth as the Lord marches on to glory.

Each oncoming wave of the sea toward high tide must fight its way through the last receding one. So it is with the different movements toward a final restoration

of the church. The immediately receding one especially hates and opposes the next oncoming one. What fools the Devil has made of us! Oh, that we might see it! However real and good, as far as they have gone, these past revivals and movements are each but faltering, uncertain steps toward the final goal.

Let's Go Oe!

God has but one church, whether in heaven where most of it is, or here on earth. And there is yet very much land to be possessed before we realize the divine purpose to which we are destined. We must recognize the whole body of Christ. In our human thoughts, we fail to recognize God when we meet Him. Those who dare to go further with God toward the full restoration are denounced and opposed by others as if they were of the Devil. And this was not just true of Luther and the Catholic Church—it was also true of Wesley and the Anglican Church, of Booth and the Methodist Church, and so on. And it is still true today. But, beloved, we must face it—the backslider has not yet been fully restored; the prodigal has not yet reached home. We must keep moving on!

Elijah's rain came out of a clear sky, without even the sign of a cloud to begin with—the result of faith alone. So the Pentecostal outpouring came in 1906. And this has been the case with every revival. Revival is the property of faith, not sight. There is nothing for sight to see in fallen nature but hopelessness. Revival and restoration must come from God, out of a clear sky. We are earthly and fleshly, but God is Spirit. God's Word is spirit and life (John 6:63), and faith in that Word brings the living God on the scene regardless of circumstances or outward prospects.

The Deeper Significance of Pentecost

Will God visit His people again? Why not? As surely as He has done it in the past, He will do it again. God's skies are full of Pentecosts. He only waits for us to claim them. Do we not need one? Then we can have it, when we are willing to pay the price of obedient faith.

The church is not fully restored. No past group, after it has waned, has had the faith and vision to move God to visit them again. If they had, they would not be strewn along the way as more or less dead movements, their bones bleaching in the wilderness. None of them had future faith. They stopped short of the goal. None of them went clear through. They "limited the Holy One of Israel" (Psalm 78:41), just as we do today. They would not pay the price. That was the trouble. But worse than this, they justified themselves in their abnormal standards and opposed and condemned others who would go further. And still they do so.

The sin of the Jewish high church in Jesus' time was the same. They refused to go further themselves, and set themselves in their backslidden condition to oppose all who wished to go forward. That spelled their doom, and it will bring down the judgments of God on any denomination, movement, or group that follows in their steps.

But a Gideon's band is forming again today. Faith is rising. Another visitation from God is coming. It is only the Gideon's band that can ever bring or receive it—only a praying, consecrated, pilgrim band. They of the "mixed multitude" (Exodus 12:38) will not be in it, for they are too many and too fleshly. "Upon man's flesh," the Lord said of the precious

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anointing oil in the tabernacle, "shall it not be poured" (Exodus 30:32). God usually has to work with the little things, the weak things—the small, consecrated groups.

"I will pour water upon him that is thirsty, and floods upon the dry ground" (Isaiah 44:3). Dryness is a condition that invites rain. At such times men cry for rain. It is a cause for encouragement when we thirst for God. "Blessed are they which do hunger and thirst ...for they shall be filled" (Matthew 5:6). It was after an awful drought that Elijah's rain came. The rain is ready, beloved—when we want it, and when we are in a condition to receive it.

We must have the spirit of Caleb and Joshua, a different spirit from the multitude. They "wholly followed the Lord" (Numbers 32:12); therefore, they entered Canaan with the next company to go forward. They had their portion in it, while the old crowd died in the wilderness. No movement, as a movement, has ever gone all the way through to full restoration for the reasons I have explained. Hence, we must never become the property of, or limit ourselves to, a party or a movement. Worship only God. Join God in His great movement. Keep moving!

The End Is Nearing

We are rounding the corner toward complete recovery. God is again pressing His full claims upon His church and upon the world in this, the end of the age. But the Devil is also pressing his claims with great vigor. Whom will we serve? It is either 100 percent for God or for the Devil—there is no neutral ground. We are nearing the awesome climax of this deadly war

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between the kingdom of God and the kingdom of Satan. Each must be at his best for his side.

A normal church is always 100 percent for God. There can be no flirting with the Enemy. The church has no other business than to carry the Gospel to the world and press the claims of God upon His own. All its energies and resources should be used with that one object in view—"Then shall the end come" (Matthew 24:14). God waits for this.

Nothing but the zeal and the 100 percent consecration of the early church, both in laboring for the salvation of the nations and in building up the one true worldwide church, will or can satisfy God. He will accept no substitutes or compromise with our ideas and fleshly plans. There simply must be an utter abandonment to His full will and His great eternal purpose in His own children! Nothing short of this can clear our conscience and responsibility in the day of judgment. We could have done this long ago—if we had willed to do so—but we have not. Oh, let us not delay longer, but at once go right up and storm the Enemy's citadels, vowing never to withdraw our sword until Jesus comes and the whole land is ours!

We are rapidly approaching the last days. I am convinced that God is going to put the church through the fire to destroy the dross. Judgment begins at the house of God (1 Peter 4:17). And, believe me, nothing but 100 percent reality will remain! A theoretical salvation will not do.

We are reaching the culmination of this age, and nothing but a practical application of the Gospel can hope to survive. All else will be destroyed by the fires

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of worldwide persecution. God can only defend obedience to His Word. Never fear—He is going to have a church without spot or wrinkle (Ephesians 5:27). But do you and I want to have a part in it? A sectarian, competitive, selfish, self-seeking church cannot survive. The church must return to the spirit of the early church in the book of Acts. She must yield to God and press into His "present truth" (2 Peter 1:12) for this last hour—or perish in the fires of persecution and in her own blood. "Our God is a consuming fire" (Hebrews 12:29)!

Let us go on!

Revival and Recovery

Arthur Wallis, of Exeter, England, is a son of the late Captain Reginald Wallis and author of the well-known books. In the Day of Thy Power and God's Chosen Fast. This article is taken from a booklet entitled, "Revival and Reformation of the Church," which in cooperation with the author we have adapted and expanded.

It is one thing to be right with God and enjoy a real measure of personal communion with Him. It is quite another to understand His greater purposes and let our personal experience be properly related to that all-inclusive end. —John Myers, President

Voice Publications

"Remember not the former things nor consider the things of old. Behold, I am doing a new thing.

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Now it springs forth, do you not perceive it?" (Isaiah 43:18-19 RSV).

In relation to this theme of revival and spiritual recovery, let us first survey the past, then view some of the significant trends of the present, and finally say a word about the prospects of the future.

The Past

If we are to understand what God is doing in these days—if we are to perceive His "new thing" for our day—we need to study the past. Not merely from history books, with their limited human viewpoint, but we must study history as we have light cast upon it by the Spirit through God's Holy Word.

Let us take a brief panoramic survey of the work of God's Spirit in the years that are past. As we scan the centuries, let us try to discover the principles on which God has been operating. What has He really been after during the years of the church's history? This is important, for what God is doing today can only be rightly understood as we grasp the pattern of what He has been doing down through the centuries.

Obviously, this is a large subject that could occupy volumes, but here we wish simply to point out what has been the master strategy behind the successive quickenings of the Spirit that have blessed the church in the past. In a word, we want to show that every wave of spiritual blessing has had in view not only the immediate renewal of spiritual life in that generation, but also the recovery of spiritual truth. That is, in all the great spiritual movements through the years, the Lord has been seeking to recover lost truth and bring His people back to original apostolic Christianity.

Epilogue: Revival aod Recovery

This reformation, or "recovery," aspect of God's moving through the centuries is unmistakable—and usually has been a balancing thrust in one or the other of two directions. Since truth and experience are inseparable and must be in balance if either is to reach its divine objective, we see the Lord moving to emphasize either doctrine and principle, or purity and fullness of life and power.

But whatever may be the emphasis or particular truth or phase of experience involved, in the mind and purpose of God there has always been but one final objective in view. That objective is a church—washed by the water of the Word of God (Ephesians 5:26)— that will fully experience and fully express Christ, not only in the earth, but also in the whole universe.

But let us go back and trace through history this principle in action.

The Early Church

In the New Testament we have a clear picture of the early church. It wasn't a perfect church because it was composed of human beings, and they are never perfect. However, the early church was perfect in constitution, perfect in the revelation of God's mind, received through His holy apostles and prophets. They had complete light and thus had no need to progress into fuller revelation in the ensuing centuries.

Through the apostles, the early church received in that first century a complete revelation of the mind of God. This revelation is, of course, contained in our New Testament. And, as they walked in the light of this revelation, not only the revelation but they themselves became a model of God's intention.

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But alas, they did not always walk in the light that they had received, and things often went wrong. However, when this happened, the situation was dealt with in a way directed by God, and that also constitutes a pattern for restoration. Thus, not only in doctrine and principle, but also in practice, we have been given a perfect guide in the pages of the New Testament.

As the years went by, the church, which had been born in persecution, thrived in persecution. As with Israel of old, in bondage in Egypt, the more the church was persecuted the more she flourished and multiplied. The blood of the martyrs was then, and ever has been, the seed of the church.

The Fourth Century

Finding that this persecution was hastening God's purpose, the Devil changed his tactics. In the fourth century A.D., Constantine became the Roman emperor. He officially embraced Christianity. Whether he was genuinely converted to Christ is unknown, but nevertheless, Christianity became the legalized and accepted religion of the Roman Empire.

Instead of suffering the persecution of the state, the church now enjoyed the patronage of the state. She was taken off her guard. The people of God, who had been watchful, prayerful, and faithful in the time of opposition, were now lulled into a false sense of security.

Without doubt, imperial favor brought the world into the church, and what Satan had failed to do by persecution he achieved by patronage. As Dr. Edwin Orr has said, "It is one thing for the ship to be in the

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sea, but a different matter when the sea gets into the ship!" It is one thing for the church to be in the world, but when the world gets into the church a spiritual decline has set in.

Thus the "conversion" of Constantine, with the changes that this brought about—the introduction of practices of pagan origin, the rise of an ecclesiastical hierarchy based on the world system rather than Scriptures, and so on—led to a swift decHne. The church descended into the dark Middle Ages, and the light of true Christianity was almost extinguished.

However, even through those dark centuries, as E. H. Broadbent shows in The Pilgrim Church, the light of testimony was kept burning here and there. A few men, like Francis of Assisi, arose as mighty giants of life and revelation, but the refreshing glow of their lives did not change the basic structure of things. There was no widespread movement, no general turning of the tide; and century after century, for a whole millennium, the tide of spiritual life continued to recede.

A thousand years from the time of Constantine brings us to the birth of a man destined to be one of the first great instruments in the turning of the tide. He was an Englishman, and his name was John Wy-cliffe. In the fourteenth century, England's only Bible was the Latin Vulgate. The common people, utterly ignorant of its contents, were living in abysmal spiritual darkness, until this brilliant Oxford scholar gave to England a version of God's Holy Word in the tongue of the common people.

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This was God's first strategic move to bring back His church to New Testament faith and practice. A return to apostoHc Christianity must of necessit\' be a return to the Word. Thus the foundation was laid. With WycUffe there began that stirring of opposition to a church that had become so hfeless. A great preacher as well as a great scholar, Wycliffe soon made his voice heard. His position and influence gave him the ear of the people as he began to question the unscriptural practices of the church of that day. In the providence of God, a mighty wave of spiritual life began to roll in upon the shores of Christendom—the Recovery had begun!

The Fifteenth Century

Following Wycliffe, we have the spiritual movement knov^Ti as the Lollards. They were the "poor priests" that Wycliffe sent out to take the simple message of the Gospel from place to place. They were humble itinerant preachers. And in the century following Wycliffe, so successful was this movement that at the height of its power 50 percent of the population of England were either Lollards or in sympathy with them—a remarkable movement of the Holy Spirit.

The preached Word, whatever its shortcomings may have been, contained the message of life, and hungry people received it. The Lollards were even more outspoken than Wycliffe. God was paving the way for the great movement that took place in the following century.

The Sixteenth Century

The sixteenth century saw the raising up of Martin Luther, John Calvin, and other great leaders. Under these Reformation giants, the church arose from

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its awful bondage, and set herself free from the ecclesiastical tyranny of centuries.

The glorious Reformation broke over Europe, bringing into clear light the great truth of justification by faith. People began to understand the genius of the Gospel of God's grace that had so long been obscured by a doctrine of salvation by works.

The work of reformation, however, was by no means complete. Although the reformed churches had abandoned much that was plainly contrary to Scripture, they still retained very much that was traditional—things that belonged more to the old order from which they had been delivered than to the New Testament Christianity toward which they were groping.

The Seveeteeeth Century

In the century following the Reformation, we have the great Puritan movement. God raised up expositors, men mighty in the Scriptures. They utihzed and expanded the light that had come through the Reformation. The emphasis, of course, was on the importance of believers being well-grounded in the great doctrines of Scripture.

The hearts of God's people were expanding as God was giving them more truth, more light, and more understanding. More things that belonged to the past were put away, and earnest hearts began to grope forward again to a true position in the light of the teaching of God's Holy Word.

Out of the Puritan Revival came two strategic church movements that were significant developments in the move back to apostolic Christianity.

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The Congregational Movement was a reaction against interference in the affairs of the local church from an ecclesiastical hierarchy. They had recovered the truth of the autonomy of each local church, its right to order its own affairs under the direct Headship of Christ.

The Baptist Movement, which was closely connected, also stood on this ground, while going a step further in emphasizing the truths involved in the believer's baptism by immersion.

The Eighteenth Century

The force of the Puritan Movement was spent as the eighteenth century dawned, and things seemed to be going from bad to worse. Too much emphasis on doctrine had no doubt caused a neglect of the "life" factor, and death was once again setting in. Religion was at a dangerously low ebb. Those who were supposed to be spiritual leaders had become corrupt and licentious; the common people were immoral and blasphemous.

It was then that God raised up two great men. They were Anglican clergymen; one, John Wesley, the other, George Whitefield. They were the two instruments in His hands for the great evangelical awakening that saved England from the horrors of the French Revolution.

The emphasis of the Methodist Revival, as it has sometimes been called, was at least threefold:

First, a bold assertion of instantaneous salvation by faith, accompanied by the inner witness, or assurance, of the Holy Spirit. This was followed, second, by

a strong emphasis on the subjective side of the Christian hfe—hoHness of heart and hfe. God was bringing His people back to the doctrine of heart purity and sanctity of walk. Third, there was the recovery of the truth—startling to the people of those days—that it was not necessary for a man to be formally educated and ordained to preach the Word. Any man who knew the commission of heaven could go forth as God's ambassador.

The requirement of a "consecrated building" in which to preach was also exposed as a dead tradition-why not preach in the open air as the Master did?

Thus Whitefield, Wesley, and their followers, under the open canopy of heaven, preached to vast throngs, and multitudes were swept into the kingdom. Another great step in the Recovery was consummated!

The Nioeteenth Century

But by the turn of the next century this wave also had spent itself, and again the spiritual tide had receded. The need of revival was great. Here and there in the early part of the century there were stirrings and outpourings of the Spirit, but in 1858 God mightily poured out His Spirit in the United States, followed the next year by a similar outpouring in Ulster and in Wales almost simultaneously.

The revival in Ulster spread quickly to Scotland and soon was making its impact felt in different parts of England. God had again come in gracious power.

This century witnessed a number of significant movements in the great purpose of God to bring His people back to apostolic Christianity. One preceded

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the mid-century revival by a number of years; others were the products of it. How different these movements were, and yet each made its own contribution to the progress of spiritual recovery.

The first was the Brethren Movement, commencing about 1830, emphasizing the sufficiency and not merely the infallibility of the Book. They recovered the truth that the Bible reveals all that we need to know for both our daily walk and the ordering of our church affairs. They saw that the truth of the one body of Christ, as composed of all true believers, was the antidote to sectarianism. They also recovered the practical implications of the truth of the priesthood of all believers. Here was a serious attempt to return fully to New Testament Christianity.

Unlike many of the other recovery movements, the Brethren, to a very large extent, embraced all that had previously been recovered, besides adding the deeply significant points listed above.

However, again there came to be too much emphasis on doctrine, and out of the great revival of 1858 and 1859 there came further sweeping waves of refreshing heavenly life. These could be viewed as a divine reaction to the Brethren tendency to overemphasize objective teaching, thus supplementing the objective truth of what we are positionally, with the subjective truth of what we should be experientially.

The 1859 Revival in England brought a great wave of evangelistic fervor and missionary enterprise. Believers broke through denominational barriers and demonstrated in home evangelism and missionary outreach the oneness of the body that the Brethren were teaching.

Epilogue: Revival aod Recovery

In the midst of this wave of evangeUsm, the Salvation Army was born. A child of Methodism, the Salvation Army reemphasized Wesley's teaching on holiness and grasped what most of God's people had missed—the social implications of the Gospel. They had a concern for the underprivileged, the down-and-out, the underdog. With dauntless courage, heroic zeal, and challenging self-sacrifice, they preached the simple Gospel of God's grace and ministered to all who were in need.

Another wave of heavenly life focused on developing the great truths governing the personal victorious life, and especially the emphasis on the New Testament doctrine of the behever's union with Christ in His death and resurrection while the believer was still on this earth.

The Keswick Movement was no doubt the principal expression of this life-giving wave of blessing, as is expressed in the writings of Hannah Whitall Smith, Andrew Murray, Jesse Penn-Lewis, and a host of others.

Failure in Unity and Balance

Both this Keswick, inner-life emphasis, and the emphasis on the fervent preaching of the Gospel to all classes, with a practical ministry to the needy, were vital supplements to the waning Brethren Movement— though, sad to say, all these were never fully integrated.

As so often before, prejudice, sectarian pride, with its bondage to tradition, coupled with ignorance of the divine overall strategy, again prevailed to limit God and keep the one body of Christ broken up into variant

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doctrinal emphases and phases of Christian experience.

As expressed in the apostle Paul's heart-cry, "Whether Paul, Apollos, or Cephas...all things are yours" (1 Corinthians 3:22), God intended that all these waves of recovery blend together into one glorious whole with a balance of doctrinal truth and a dynamic spiritual life. Instead there was limitation of vision, each thinking that the part he held was the whole.

The Twentieth Century

The twentieth century commenced with a gracious movement of God's Spirit in the principality of Wales—the great 1904 Revival. Out of that revival came the worldwide Pentecostal Movement with its special emphasis upon the fullness of the Holy Spirit as a distinct experience, and its affirmation that the supernatural gifts of the Holy Spirit bestowed at Pentecost have never been permanently withdrawn from the church. This movement we could view as another supplementary reaction to the great recovery principles of the Brethren Movement.

Although orthodox in doctrine and successfully evangelistic from its inception, certain excesses and separatist tendencies in its early years alienated the Pentecostal Movement from the main body of evangelicals.

One regretful result of this alienation—strengthened greatly by the early Pentecostal tendency to substitute special enduement and revelation for thorough Bible study—has been a lack of the depth that characterized both the rich Keswick deeper-life teaching, as

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well as the Brethren emphasis on thorough Bible exposition, which had been carried over into general evangelical circles.

This lack of depth, however, had nothing to do with the basic doctrines of the movement. It was the natural result of separation from the deepening influences of the rest of the body of Christ.

It is true that a sort of Pentecostal pride—based on a sense of superior revelation and experience—played its part in the separation from other aspects of truth; but this also was not the fault of the new Recovery itself, but due rather to the Pentecostalist's application of the truth involved. Most reformation movements have had their share of this weakness.

It is necessary to stress this point, for it is still being much used by the Enemy to discredit what the Lord has done in this recovery wave, which is even now washing the shores of evangelical Christianity.

To illustrate this point: the Anglican Church was a product of the Reformation. The fact that it tends toward a ritualistic form of worship does not discredit the great Reformation principles that gave it birth and that are still enshrined in its charter, "The Thirty-nine Articles." There was a vital, even if only partial, recovery despite the atmosphere and accompaniments of its worship. These latter were a result of what they did not receive, and do not nullify what they did receive. Even so with the Pentecostal Movement.

At any rate, many of these excesses have been corrected, and thoughtful Christians who are not blinded by prejudice are coming to recognize increasingly that the Pentecostal Movement, in the providence of God,

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has come to make its special contribution to the great unfolding of God's truth.

It may be a surprise to some to know that the Pentecostals have the fastest expanding missionary movement in existence today. Their churches are springing up all over the world. One of their missionaries, associated with the founding of the Congo Evangelistic Mission, reports the establishing of a thousand assemblies of simple, baptized believers in the Congo. We cannot discount a movement that has been so manifestly blessed by God, though it may have been accompanied by blemishes—what movement has not?

Our Present Position

As we see what God has done in past centuries, it becomes obvious that we should not think that any movement has recovered everything, or has consummated the process. The attitude of "we have it all" has all too often characterized the more enlightened of God's people. In fact, the more light we have, the greater the danger of falling into this trap. This is spiritual pride and inevitably results in the halting of further spiritual progress. We must see each movement as part of a divinely instituted spiritual process that must go on until the consummation of the age. Our attitude should be that of John Robinson, who said in his farewell address to the Pilgrim fathers on their departure for New England in the Mayflower,

If God reveals anything to you by another instrument, be as ready to receive it as ever you were to receive any truth by my ministry; for I am persuaded that the Lord has more truth yet to break forth out of His Holy Word.

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In the midst of all the decay and confusion around us, both in the world and the church, may God help us to look heavenward and catch sight of His great purpose—even a church in the purity, power, and principles of New Testament Christianity!

When we turn from the church as we generally know it today and reexamine that stirring record of the early church, we seem to be in another world and to breathe another atmosphere. Does not the zeal, the courage, the power, the authority, the effectiveness, and the simplicity of those early Christians challenge us? What a long way we still have to go! Yet there are significant signs today that God is working—and Satan, too. Let us notice two significant trends.

The Movements toward Unity

The False: There is a trend that one feels to be dangerous. It has come to be known as the ecumenical movement, a movement toward unity among the churches. It is being hastened on by the threat of totalitarianism and an easy-going attitude toward biblical doctrine and practice.

Church leaders of differing communions are beginning to talk like this: "We may not agree about many things, but at least we must face the facts: totalitarianism and the cults are rapidly advancing in a world in which we make no progress. Let us sink our differences, emphasize the points on which we are agreed, and unite against the common foe. Unity is our only hope of survival."

Therefore, we are seeing a coming together of denominational leaders, the activity of the World Council of Churches, and other movements. The danger of

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this trend is that it is encouraging a unit\' that is based on compromise instead of comiction, a unit}' that is organizational instead of organic.

There is a spiritual unit}', of course, that the New Testament teaches. We do not have to create it—God does that. We have only to preserve it. It is an organic unity, a unity of life, a unit}' of the Spirit that \italizes the body.

This man-made organizational unit}- may well lead to what the Word of God predicts in Revelation 17, even a harlot church, that travest}' of the pure \1r-gin who is to be the bride of the Lamb. She is depicted as a woman riding a scarlet beast and is called "B.\B}XON THE GREAT, THE ^MOTHER OF HARLOTS" (Revelation 17:5).

Under the terrible pressures of the end times, with Christendom fighting for its existence, the meek and tolerant ecumenism of today could quickly harden into a religious despotism. A modern "Act of Uni-formit}'" could force uncompromising evangelicals out of their churches. Apostate Christendom may then become again, as down the centuries, the greatest persecutor of the true body of Christ.

The True: God, however, has anticipated this stratagem of Satan. "Behold, I am doing a new thing. Will you not receive it?" (See Isaiah 43:19.) Yes, a new movement is under way. Though at present it appears to be di\dded into tvvo distinct aspects, seemingly unconnected, it is in fact one move of God's Spirit in line with His principles of recover}'.

First, He is stirring hearts all over the world with vision and faith for a true unity—even that spiritual

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unity of the one body of Christ—and at the same time He is also moving in nearly every circle of Christian life creating a thirst for Himself, for revival, for the Holy Spirit.

In regard to the aspect of the movement emphasizing spiritual unity, little needs to be said here. Like the Brethren Movement of old, the vision is the spiritual unity of the one body of Christ, encompassing all the various truths and experiences already recovered in past centuries.

Although still rather scattered and obviously in a formative stage, several amazing demonstrations of the strength of this movement are demanding the serious attention of the Christian world. Many firmly beheve that it will not be too long before the eyes of thousands of restless, thirsty Christians the world over will be opened to see the significance of what God is doing, and a sweeping revival of New Testament Christianity will burst upon us.

Perhaps one of the important factors needed to detonate this glorious explosion is the blending of the two aspects of this movement. At any rate, let us consider the other aspect now.

The Thirst for the Spirit

"Blessed are they which do hunger and thirst...for they shall he filled" (Matthew 5:8).

This is exactly what God is doing today all over the Western world. He is filhng His hungering and thirsting ones, as He said He would. Many are coming into a new experience of the Holy Spirit. They may have known His gracious work in their hearts and lives

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for years, but they have come to a strange state of spiritual dissatisfaction—a state surely created by the Spirit Himself.

These are beginning to long for something more than they have yet known. They notice that the early Christians knew a liberty, a joy, a power, an authority, a fruitfulness, and an effectiveness that seem in these days to be rarer than "the gold ofOphir" (Job 28:16). They say to themselves, "Why doesn't my experience at least approximate what these men knew in the Book? God hasn't changed, nor have the resources of the divine Spirit been expended. The difference must be in me, in my hardness of heart and my unbelief!"

Perhaps we have been brought up to believe that we had it all when we got converted. However, it is clear from the New Testament that the apostles and the early Christians did not have it all when they were converted. When we start to study this question in the Word with open minds and hearts, we discover that this being filled with the Holy Spirit of which the New Testament speaks is something definite and d>Tiamic. It is something that makes a revolutionary difference in a person's life and witness. He knows when he has it, and very soon other people know also. How different this is from the rather vague and mystical thing that so many people think is being filled with the Spirit of God.

Dear reader, God wants to restore to the church all that she knew in New Testament times of His grace and His power. What we see in the New Testament is surely available to us. But are we open for it?

We may be interested in revival. We may believe that revival is the only hope of the church today. We

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may even be praying for it. But are we ready for what God may be about to do? Are we saying, "Lord, I want revival, but not revival with that"?

How would we feel if a gracious movement of the Holy Spirit should break out in our midst that was marked and accompanied by signs and wonders? What would we think if the Spirit of God was poured out as at the beginning, and there were tongues and prophecies and healing? "Oh, we want revival. Lord, but not that!"

Beloved, who are we to tell the Almighty how He should do His work? The sovereign Lord works as He will. Of course we must test the spirits. Of course we will want to be sure that what comes is truly from heaven. But we can be cautious without being critical. We can be discerning without being destructive. Oh, let us have an open mind lest we be among those who cling to tradition and miss God.

God is meeting with Christians today from churches and independent fellowships having no connection with the Pentecostal Movement. He is filling them with His Spirit as in apostolic times. Many testify to the transformation of life and service through the experience that God has given them.

We do not insist that supernatural signs are an essential ingredient of this fullness, but we are saying that God is sovereign. He works as He will, but we need to recognize the way He is working and be open and ready for Him to do what He will.

The Future

What does the future hold? We know it holds the blessed hope and glorious consummation of the age

Azusa Street

and the return of the Savior from heaven. But before that, the church should be prepared for two things: revival and persecution. As in apostolic times these two went together, so surely it will be in these end times. And to the prayerful and watchful, there are significant signs that both are on the way.

It is certain that at present we could not stand bitter or prolonged persecution. The church today would crack. It is only a revived, strong church that could be entrusted to withstand this fiery ordeal. Let us not hoodwink ourselves by thinking that it will never come to us—many of God's saints are going through it right now in countries under totalitarian rule.

Surely we must believe that God will revive us before we are called to go through the furnace of affliction. And believe me, brethren, in that hour we will need all the grace and depth of life and all the power and gifts of the Holy Spirit that God is willing to give.

One significant difference between the early church and the church today is this: they believed in the Holy Spirit while we are afraid of the Holy Spirit; they knew the Holy Spirit experientially while we so often know Him only theologically and theoretically. Will we at last let Him have His way? This is the pathway to revival.

Before closing may I ask, Is your life making an impact where God has put you? Are you a channel through which the rivers of living water are flowing day by day? If the answer is "No," are you willing for it to become true? Are you prepared to get on your knees and say, "Lord, whatever it may involve, make my life

a channel for those rivers of Hving water! Continue to recover Your church, according to Your great purpose, and let me be a living part of that glorious recovery"?

On the far reef the breakers

Recoil in shattered foam, Yet still the sea behind them

Urges its forces home;

Its chant of triumph surges

Through all the thunderous din—

The wave may break in failure.

But the tide is sure to win.

O mighty sea, thy message

In changing spray is cast:

Within God's plans of progress

It matters not at last

How wide the shores of evil,

How strong the reefs of sin—

The wave may be defeated.

But the tide is sure to win.

About the Aethor

orn in a rural Pennsylvania town in 1871, Frank Bartleman grew up on his father's farm. His first job was to work the plow, though he suffered from relatively poor health all his life. He left home when he was seventeen and was converted in 1893, at the age of twenty-two, in the Grace Baptist Church of Philadelphia. Bartleman's desire to preach led him to enter full-time ministry the following summer. He was ordained by the Temple Baptist Church. Although he had the opportunity to be put through college and to one day have a paying position as a pastor, he chose instead "a humble walk of poverty and suffering," working in the streets and slums.

In 1897, the young minister left the Baptist ministry. He joined with the Holiness Movement and afterward spent some time with the Salvation Army, the Wesleyan Methodists, and the Peniel Missions. He rarely stayed at one address or in one church for very long. Bartleman's wandering lifestyle had a tendency to depress him, even to the point where he contemplated suicide in 1899. Yet he was not entirely despondent, for in 1900 he married Anna Ladd, the

Azusa Street

matron of a school for fallen girls in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.

Soon after he was married, Bartleman joined the Wesleyan Methodists and was assigned to a pastorate in Corry, Pennsylvania. Yet this ended up being a bad experience for him, as the church was far from moving toward an emotional and expressive Holiness religion, which was Bartleman's spiritual focus. So Bartleman headed west toward California, with his wife and the first of their four children, Esther, in tow.

In 1904, when the Bartlemans reached California, Frank was appointed as the director of the Peniel Mission, a Holiness rescue mission in the heart of Sacramento. From there he tried to reenter the church pastoral ministry, but when this failed he had to turn to odd jobs in order to keep his family alive. By December, he and his family had headed to Los Angeles, where hardship and tragedy awaited them. The death of their first child, Esther, in January 1905, threw him into a spell of grief; however, this loss ultimately caused him to strengthen his commitment to ministry.

Throughout 1905, Bartleman worked largely with the Holiness churches in Los Angeles, but he was always looking for the latest work of God. This led him to the Methodist and Baptist churches in the area, especially those connected with the revival going on in Wales at the time. For a time he supported the New Testament Church, pastored by Joseph Smale. He also attended the mission at Azusa Street and established another at Eighth and Maple Streets. Bartleman's wandering lifestyle as a young man had prepared him for following God's work throughout his life, for he

About the Author

preached as a traveling evangelist for forty-three years.

Bartleman's more than 550 articles, 100 tracts, and 6 books served as a complete and reliable record of the revival at Azusa Street and throughout Los Angeles from 1905 through 1911- Bartleman's reports were pubhshed and republished for hohness papers around the nation, and his reputation grew as a man who had a passion for increased unity and spiritual renewal among Pentecostals.

Frank Bartleman died on August 23, 1936, and is buried in Burbank, California.

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