289: Alfred Norris - The Visitation at Pentecost

Automatically transcribed. Accuracy is good but not perfect, and words are sometimes wrong. Trust the audio over the text.

1. 0:13

   Welcome to Good Chris Selfie and talks. I’m Levi. And I’m Chris, and I’m Brian. Thank you for joining us this week. On this podcast, we select one talk a week to help us get the Bible in our Daily News feed. We post a new episode at the start of each week with the short intro beforehand to kind of set the stage for the talk you’re about to listen to, and now let’s talk more about. This Week’s Talk

2. 0:50

   This week’s Talk is the second class in a series by Brother Alfred Norris. The series is called The Mighty Acts of God, and this class is called the Visitation at Pentecost. Really, really enjoyed this class. It’s kind of pretty evenly divided into two parts. He even takes a pause in between them, the first part being a discussion on what it means to be made in the image of God. And there was kind of a bunch of thoughts in that first section that I’d I’d never had before, so that was very fun to listen to.

3. 1:20

   And the second part, it’s about the last 17 minutes is about the the Holy Spirit working in Acts and in the New Testament and what the the gift of tongues like, how often it’s mentioned and and what it what it might have actually meant. So very really really fun class to listen to.

4. 1:39

   This isn’t our first time obviously running a Alfred Norris talk. This is his fourth class on the show and he fits exactly into kind of an older style and I’ve I’ve talked about this in introductions before where he doesn’t quote a verse in this entire class so which feels feels so foreign to me And now as AI guess a modern day Chrysadelphian that all classes and exhorts we hear now are full of brethren quoting exact scripture.

5. 2:12

   Brother Norris obviously refers to scripture a ton and that’s kind of fun to hear. Fun to hear him kind of use quotes interwoven in his talk in his class. You know he’s he’s referring to scripture constantly but not telling you exactly where. So it’s fun as a as a listener to to hear those thoughts because then it becomes kind of a more, I don’t know a more a more conversational style I think in less of a less of a lecture feeling.

6. 2:43

   So again, really enjoyed this one, really happy to, happy to share it. So here is Alfred Norris, The Visitation at Pentecost. There’s one hymn, one of the sound paraphrases, which sums up completely the title of this series, which is, as you know, the mighty acts of God. So can we sing Hymn 24? Could I ask that we sing the second-half of verse 2 Softly and the whole of verse 4 softly?

7. 3:16

   Hymn 24. O Lord, Thou Art My God and King. There’s a good deal more yet to be said about the resurrection of the Lord Jesus, which was the theme we introduced yesterday. So the official title of this talk will occur only to the later part of what I have to say. In Acts chapter 2, Peter used the fact of the Lord’s resurrection as the basis of that urgent appeal, that irresistible appeal to all good consciences in their midst, that the people should repent and turn to God. For the man who was raised from the dead was the man whom they had crucified, or whose crucifixion they had engineered, or at the call for whose crucifixion they had applauded and said, not this man, but Barabbas. The apostles continue on the same theme, but as they do so, there arises an ever sharper division amongst the people to whom they are speaking.

8. 4:15

   At first a neutral body of people, including some friends, some enemies, some who had not made-up their mind addresses. Here’s the address of Pentecost. And then decide whether they will repent or they will not, and 3000 decide they will. And the company increases as time goes on. And a great number of the priests are added to the faith, which must have been no small surrender on the part of those priests, since the priests were primarily Sadducees, and the Sadducees say there is no resurrection, neither Angel nor spirit. Such persons must therefore have gone full circle from their original denial that there was such a thing, either as survival of the dead or as bringing the dead back to life again. And when they were converted to the faith, that was conversion indeed.

9. 5:03

   But nevertheless, in spite of the increase in numbers growing to 5000 and more, before very long there was inevitably an increase in hostility. They who were hardened in their unbelief, they who had called down the blood of the Lord Jesus Christ upon themselves and upon their children, who would grow in opposition to God to such an extent that it would indeed be needful to destroy their city. And the Romans would indeed come and take away their place and habitation.

10. 5:34

    We’re only mustering their forces. The few thousands who joined themselves to the disciples were matched by an increasing number and an increasing determination on the part of those who would see their hostility to the Lord Jesus Christ through to the bitter end. Bitter end it would be indeed, if ever there was a case of a people turning aside from God’s ways to their own discomfiture and destruction. That was the case with the Jews from Pentecost onwards in Jerusalem, and indeed throughout the cities of the Roman Empire where Jews were to be found.

11. 6:10

    There is throughout this book a monotonous story of the people of God-given a second opportunity to hear the wisdom of God, allowed time to repent of the deeds of their fathers in putting the Son of God to death. And though they heard the message quietly for a day or so, then gathering their forces and rejecting the message offered to them, some few, of course, did accept the way of salvation. The primarily Jewish accession to the faith from Pentecost onwards, until the days when disciples first were scattered abroad, gradually, however, changed into Jews plus Samaritans, Jews plus Greeks.

12. 6:53

    Some Jews are mostly Greeks. So many Greeks that you now could begin to talk about the Jews did this, while the believers did that. And towards the end of the history of the Acts of the Apostles, we have that dreadful judgement on the people to whom Paul in particular went first to preach the way of life, that seeing they judged themselves unworthy of eternal life, lo, they would turn to the Gentiles.

13. 7:18

    Which does not mean that the Jews were disallowed so far as the fulfilment of God’s purpose for them was concerned. It does not mean that they were no longer acceptable if they would humble themselves beneath the mighty hand of God, but it does increasingly mean that there were few who would do so.

14. 7:35

    And towards the end of New Testament times, and ever since, even to our own days, those of that race who would humble themselves and accept the name of the Crucified One as that of their Saviour, went down and down and has stayed down.

15. 7:54

    Now, however, we go on to the remainder of the resurrection Witnesses in the Acts. Matthias was ordained to be a witness with the other apostles of his resurrection, and with great power gave the apostles their witness of the resurrection of the Lord Jesus Christ. God hath raised him from the dead. This to Cornelius, of which we are witnesses not to all the people, but unto witnesses chosen before of God, even to us, who did eat and drink with him after he rose from the dead.

16. 8:25

    And so first of all, in Jerusalem the apostles continued to preach fearlessly that which they had seen and heard. They had seen an empty grave. They had heard a powerful, vibrant, resurrected voice beyond the power of death. They had been witnesses of the many infallible proofs whereby the Lord had declared that he was alive forevermore.

17. 8:47

    And they knew. And so, as John, the last of them, perhaps, was later to write that which we have seen and heard declare, We unto you the enemies arose, and tried to silence them. They took Peter and John, and they put them in prison. The prisons were miraculously opened, and the apostles appeared again in public next day. And the rulers, knowing that the great work had been wrought in healing the man who’d been lame for so long, were unable to deny the great things that the apostles were doing in the name of Jesus, But unable to deny it though they were, they would quieten it if they could.

18. 9:23

    And so they straightly commanded them that they should speak no more in this name. It was then that Peter made that classic declaration of what was to be the way in which the apostles would always bear witness to their faith, which was, whether it be right in the sight of God to obey you rather than him judge ye, or we ought to obey God rather than men.

19. 9:44

    And then they rejoiced that they were counted worthy to suffer shame for his sake in the sight of the rulers. They were obstinate men, ignorant Galileans, a nuisance to the smooth running of the machinery of the subordinate Jewish state, men without visible means of support. Moreover, it should be easy to quell them.

20. 10:11

    They had been strangely forgetful of how hard it was to quell Jesus, who, despite the fact that he raised no finger to hurt any person at any time, yet could always escape them when they came. For Him, could always seem to be sacrosanct when they tried to arrest him except for the last moment, and could not be silenced when they tried to cause him to stop his preaching. If only they had listened, if only they had known, that the Christ they crucified, and was now raised from the dead, was indeed the one behind every effort of His Apostles. And that they who had received power when the Spirit of God came upon them had that power from him to whom it was given all power in heaven and in earth, that they went not alone, but in his company.

21. 10:56

    So they preached not defenceless men, but with the Lord by their side. And if the Lord, who had not been defended against his death, would not ultimately defend his disciples against their own, yet quicken and bear witness to their preaching, He would So they could not but speak the things that they had seen and heard, first in Jerusalem, then through Philip in Samaria, then through Peter to Cornelius in Caesarea. The first fully fledged Gentiles, not already Jews by faith, who were admitted into the fold, then through Paul in Antioch of Pisidia, to a fully Gentile audience, with a many fold repetition of the fact that the Lord Jesus Christ was indeed risen from the dead.

22. 11:43

    Using the same Psalm as we have said, that Peter used yesterday to convince the Jews of Jerusalem, then further afield, when he came to Athens, to Athens, where there were so many gods and goddesses, worshipped, so many temples, so many altars, so many shrines, so many witnesses, that this superstitious people could never be quite sure that with a multiplicity of gods they were worshipping them all.

23. 12:11

    So that in order to secure themselves against a repetition of a sad disaster which had overtaken them some years before, there was in at least one place in their city an altar bearing this inscription to the unknown God.

24. 12:25

    And when Paul went into their midst and preached unto them Jesus and the resurrection, oh Yesus Kai, hey Anastasi, they thought a new God and a new goddess were being introduced to their category. Yes, it’s the God Anastasia the goddess. And so they wished to enquire of Paul what he meant by setting forth strange gods in their midst. The unknown God should have been enough. It was.

25. 13:00

    All they needed was to be told about him, to be told that he was not likened to flesh and blood, that it was useless to imagine him, still less to depict him in the shape of carved images of man or beast or bird or creeping thing, and worst of all, in the shape of goddesses.

26. 13:19

    That he created all things, that his power surpassed everything you could see in the created universe. That he who made the earth, whom they ignorantly and superstitiously worshipped, was the one in whose hand is the life of every living thing, who controls the breath of all mankind. They should turn from their superstitions before it was too late, as Israel should have turned from their parochial their Pharisaic reliance upon being Abraham’s dead children. They should turn and worship the living and the true God, for one day it would be too late.

27. 14:03

    Ignorance, when there is no, no, no extenuation of that ignorance, when there is no information to be given, is one thing. Ignorance, when you shut your eyes to the truth which is declared, is another. This the Jews had already done this. The Greeks might also do so in those classic words we so often quote. And the times of this ignorance God winked at, but now commandeth thee all men everywhere to repent. He called the Greeks to join the faithful Jews in accepting the God of heaven declared in the Lord Jesus Christ. For he hath appointed a day in the which he will judge the world in righteousness.

28. 14:49

    Whereof he hath given assurance unto all men in that he hath raised him from the dead. To the Jews at Pentecost, the resurrection of Jesus was the call to repent and turn from their evil works, and acknowledge the misdeeds of their fathers. To the Athens, it was the call to know, to know for sure, that there was coming a time when God would intervene once more in the affairs of the earth, when there would be a judgement both of the living and the dead, where in which the one who himself had been raised from the dead would stand before them to render into every man according to his works. So to Greeks as well as to Jews, there came the same call, Repent.

29. 15:34

    This word, repent, is a word we could use more often, a thought we could entertain more deeply in our hearts, A-frame of mind into which we could more constantly find ourselves drawn.

30. 15:54

    When we receive the faith we believe it is good to believe it is indispensable. God requires that those who come to him shall believe that he is, and that he is a rewarder of them that diligently seek Him. But belief has come to mean something less than its full meaning in our usual way of describing it. I believe that there is one God means to most of us. I am sure there are not three and certainly not more. I believe that the scriptures are the inspired record of God’s dealings with men means.

31. 16:40

    I’m sure it didn’t come by the unaided work of man and that man by himself could not have done it and man was only the agent of God’s revelation. I believe that Jesus Christ will return to the earth means I’m convinced of the fact that one day he will come back. And one can believe such things as that in the spirit of a man who, like James, beholds his natural face in the glass and goes away, and straightway forgets what manner of man he was.

32. 17:10

    When we see our faces in the glass, we ought, at least at 1st, to see a strangely disfigured image of God. God has made us in his likeness, but the likeness of God has been overlaid with the likeness of sinners, with the lines of sin and mortality, with the distortions and the hardenings and the flabbiness’s of engaging in the lusts and desires of the flesh. When we who know that there is a God who created man in his own image after his likeness, look inside the glass, we ought to be able to tell that there is that even in that distorted, bloated, lined, and sin stricken image, that which tells us we are more than beasts, more than blind creatures, obliged to do the things that instincts make them do. We should know that God put in US better than that, but that we have not done so well as He put in us that the deeds of our sinning Father we have done with all too great eagerness, and the deeds of him whose image and likeness we bear have come hard to us to perform.

33. 18:27

    And whether we are murderous Jews at Pentecost, or well lived Gentiles at Caesarea, or curious philosophical idolaters Athenians at the Ariopagus. Whether we are good living proselytes like the Ethiopian eunuch or terrace stricken prison keepers like the Jenner of Philippi. Whether our lives have been as the world counts such lives upright, honest, respectable, esteemed by others.

34. 19:03

    Whether they have been brutalized, hard, callous. Whether they have been wicked, wanton, abandoned, well, there have been stiff, proud, Paris sake. Whether our lives have been any of these things, from the simply respectful to the dreadfully stained with nameless sins. God hath commanded all men everywhere to repent, because he hath appointed a day under which he will judge the word in righteousness by that man whom he hath ordained.

35. 19:42

    Whereof he hath given assurance unto all men in that he hath raised him from the dead. The assurance is the assurance that Jesus can judge because he’s alive. To do it. God hath raised him from the dead. The assurance is the demonstration that he is alive, for so can the resurrection of Jesus be set out convincingly before us.

36. 20:11

    And so we all know he can judge the assurances that Jesus is entitled to judge, because in righteousness was the way he lived, and for righteousness was the way he died. And everlasting righteousness is fixed upon him with his grant title, the Lord Our Righteousness, which now He bears. And He can and will judge the world in righteousness, having been raised from the dead.

37. 20:43

    Because the resurrection came after the spotless living itself, the fruits of a lifelong battle between the man with man’s instincts and man’s temptability, and the way that God wanted him to live, and the rightness God wanted him to show, and the sinlessness it was essential that he should reveal. And the Lord did it, And the Lord could look, had he been so vain as to look in a glass that revealed his own face, and know that no act of his had lined that image?

38. 21:27

    Puffed those cheeks, coarsened that tender glance, the Lord could bid them, give him a coin, show to them Caesar’s image, and say, knowing that they would look straight at him as he did so render unto Caesar that which is Caesar’s, and bears Caesar’s image, and unto God that which is God’s, and bears his.

39. 21:53

    For surely that is what the Lord was saying when he said, Render unto God the things that are God’s. And the outcome of that should have been and should be that when they went. And when we go to our own place and look in our own glasses again, it is not purely for the purpose of brushing our hair and powdering our nose and making the none too perfect image look better than it is.

40. 22:25

    But seeing the image as it is seeing in the face of the Lord Jesus Christ, which we also behold in the glass what it ought to be like. And repenting, knowing how much worse the one is than the other. How much deformed is the image of God in US? Seeing what God would like it to be and repenting, turning aside from our own way and walking in God’s ways, leaving behind us our own sins and seeking God’s righteousness, leaving behind our own pattern of worldly behaviour, and seeking that godly direction of life which was exemplified perfectly only in one, but is now evidently set forth in him who was crucified amongst us.

41. 23:21

    And that is how Paul puts the resurrection before the men of Athens. He will judge because he can, righteously because he is righteous at the appointed day because he is God’s servant, and so now is the time to repent.

42. 23:45

    There were some who did, not many. It seems the odd man here and there. Some noble women joined Paul in Athens, but we don’t hear of any church founded there, so it looks as though there perhaps wasn’t one for ourselves. We have turned our minds to admit us through the things we believe, to confess faithfully the first principles of our statements.

43. 24:10

    But to believe is to have faith, to have trust, to place ourselves in God’s hands, to turn aside from vain trust in the mortal things of this worldly life. For the world passeth away on the lust thereof and place our confidence in God through the Lord Jesus Christ.

44. 24:35

    Many wonders and signs were done by the apostles. This touches in a different kind of way upon a life problem of today. Not much to do with our behaviour, though it has something to do with that, but rather to do with our defences against the constantly attacking winds of doctrine that confront us in the world in which we live. In a new upsurge of Neo Pentecostalism, In a world where the spirit gifts are claimed again and increasingly and aggressively with the new charisma matter that men are begging for themselves and claiming to receive, we are not infrequently confronted with the problem. How far are these things true?

45. 25:30

    How far should they affect ourselves? How much should we follow them? Should there be an earnest coveting of the same things in our minds, or should we bring down all the shutters and close down our minds even to thinking of the matter and battening down the hatches, decide that this is not for us? Well, of course, the right way at all times is to say what is written.

46. 25:55

    How readest thou both, if you like? What did they experience in the 1st century? And is there a promise 1/2 promise, an open-ended promise, or no promise of corresponding events in our own day?

47. 26:13

    And in the period when the mighty acts of God were most manifest of all subsequent to the resurrection of the Lord Jesus Christ? We do, at least it seems to me, have the top end of what God might have done, and therefore might conceivably be going to do again.

48. 26:30

    What did He do in that 1st century, by way of Spirit endowment and mighty gifts and miraculous manifestations? Well, He gave the visitation of Pentecost. He called the apostles, at least perhaps at most, to speak with other tongues as the Spirit gave them utterance. He caused a promise to be made that if they would repent and be baptized every one of them, then they should receive the gift of Holy Spirit, whatever that implies.

49. 27:03

    And the promise was to extend to them and to their children, and to all that were afar off, even as many as the Lord their God should call. And he caused 3000 to be baptized that day and be joined to the faith.

50. 27:18

    And then what? Well, we’ll come back to Then what in a moment. For that was Pentecost, the next public manifestation of widespread Spirit gifts, however widespread they were, would, I suppose, be at Samaria when Philip had preached the Gospel with his own mighty works in the presence of the Samaritans. And they, having believed, awaited the time when Peter and John would come down from Jerusalem. And when Peter and John came, they prayed for them that they might receive the Holy Spirit.

51. 27:47

    And in what manifestations we hardly know. The prayer was granted, and the gift was put upon Samaritans also. And then there was Caesarea, when Cornelius the Gentile was preached to, when it was anticipated from above, and understood by Peter that it might be very difficult to persuade hardened Jews to accept the Gentiles without first becoming Jewish, by faith, could be introduced into the Christian fold.

52. 28:13

    And so while Peter was yet speaking to them, behold, the Holy Spirit fell upon them, and they began to speak with tongues and glorify God. And Peter was then empowered to say who we can forbid water, that these should not be baptized, which have received the Holy Spirit as well as we.

53. 28:30

    And it occurred in Ephesus, when in the 19th chapter of the Acts, when Paul had gone there following the mission of Apollos, and had found there certain who are called disciples, obtained an unsatisfactory answer to the question, Have you received the Holy Spirit since she believed, being told that they had not so much as heard, that the Holy Spirit was given, proceeded to tell them about the limitation of John’s baptism, about the promise of John, that they or some of them would be baptized with Holy Spirit not many days hence. And from that point on, well, the gift of the Holy Spirit came to these people too, a small number, and they were convinced that God’s gift was given.

54. 29:11

    Now outside those four. Is it public? Examples At Pentecost in Samaria in Caesarea, as in Ephesus, Acts is just about silent about widespread gifts.

55. 29:29

    Not merely is it just about silent about widespread gifts, but the implications are that they weren’t widespread anymore. Though there might have been these outsurgings of the Spirit gifts, but they didn’t last, Save that many wonders and signs were wrought by the apostles, and the words are emphasized. Many wonders and signs were wrought by the apostles, and with great power gave the apostles their witness, and miracles occurred. The Lord wrought special miracles by the hand of Paul. They gathered together, if perhaps the shadow of Peter passing by might fall upon some of them, and their sick ones be healed.

56. 30:19

    And it is so throughout the book. Peter works miracles, Paul works miracles, and Philip and Stephen also work miracles. But Philip and Stephen are special men chosen at the behest of the Apostolic Council of Jerusalem, to look after the problem of the unequal distribution of relief to Grecian and Jewish widows with the apostles hands laid upon them, with a special discernment given unto them, with it seems, that special endowment still in them as they lead the solution of that problem, and set about preaching work in earnest. And Stephen full of the Holy Spirit and power, wrought great signs, And Philip wrought mighty miracles in the neighbourhood of Samaria.

57. 31:03

    So much then is the Acts concerns with mighty signs wrought by apostles and by special apostolically appointed delegates, that it doesn’t have anything to say in general terms about other people being workers of miracles. Tongues come and tongues go, but we hear no more of them in the Acts. And if those who are not forewarned, as some of you have been, I know we’re asked the question. And how often do we hear about tongues outside the Acts and of Mark chapter 16?

58. 31:35

    The answer would be how many books of the New Testament? You’re quite right. Not to commit yourselves, but it’s one just one place outside the axe are the gift of tongues referred to, and that one is in First Corinthians, and it occupies essentially the basis of three chapters there, chapters 1213 and 14. And the urgency which Paul has in dealing with the problem of tongues in Corinth is not to encourage the gift, though he does, say, forbid not to use it, but to regulate it. Not to incite them into speaking with tongues, but to ensure that if they do, they’ll do it right, in the right way and in the right place, and to the right people. But they shall not privately, in their prayer meetings or in their closed ecclesial assemblies behind doors, which shield them from the public, engage in paroxysms, ecstatic utterances, and do it for their own supposedly spiritual delight.

59. 32:35

    But you remember that tongues are for a sign, not for them that believe, but to them that believe not that they will deserve the accusation of being mad, if in their private enjoyment of these luxuriating gifts the door happens to open, and a stranger comes in and rubs his eyes with astonishment. And there coming one of them that believe not.

60. 32:53

    Will it not say that you are mad? He says so. It would seem that Corinth was exceptional in the way it used the gifts, possibly unusual in having the gifts to any large extent at all, and certainly warned that this was the way in which such gift, if they were claimed, should be regulated, controlled, and evidence provided for the speaker, and for the listener, that the gift is indeed come from God, with an interpreter to explain to the others what the words mean, if the words are not spoken in the language understood by all For the rest.

61. 33:26

    Corinthians is concerned with coveting earnest and the best gifts, with recognizing that not everybody has all of them, that not everybody has any of them, that there are some who have one, some another, and many who enjoy the results of the administrations of those He gets some apostles, some prophets, some ministrations afterwards, gifts of healing and tongues, and so forth. Apart from that, when you go through the other epistles, you get the occasional indication that God has by miraculous divine appointment attested that some are His special servants with special gifts, and they are spoken of in such a way that the Apostle Paul calls them the signs of an apostle. The signs of an Apostle were wrought in me, that I could speak to you with power and wisdom, with mighty works. And when we learn in the letter to the Hebrews that they had received the faith because they were visited with mighty miraculous works by those who had conversed with the Lord Jesus Christ after he rose from the dead again, you have the impression that the Hebrews heard the words, saw the miracles, but received the words, and understood the miracles and didn’t do them in their turn. When Paul writes to the Galatians and warns them against accepting the blandishments of Judaizers, who would have their men circumcised before they could be baptized, or at least have both if they thought themselves Christians at all, he says, He that ministeth to you the Spirit, and worketh miracles amongst you doeth it by the hearing of the law, by the Word of Faith.

62. 34:58

    And again, the Galatians were witnesses of miracles, spectators of the Spirit’s mighty Acts. They knew that God was with them, but only some, and perhaps only few, did these things themselves. You knew a prophet when you met him, and he was a rare thing. There was a prophet called Agabus. There were as Antioch certain prophets as Barnabas and Saul prophets. Messages were inspired messages.

63. 35:28

    The greatest of the temporal prophets at that time was Saul himself. Paul now that if a man think himself to be a prophet or spiritual, let him acknowledge the things that I write unto you are the commandments of the Lord. The Lord confirmed the word with signs following. But the great majority of those who believed confessed their repentance, accepted the faith, went down into the waters of baptism, had good and sufficient evidence that the gospel they were accepting was the true gospel indeed, which might in some areas and at sometimes include seeing mighty science, hearing the exercise of the gift of tongues. But in the case of only few of them would it involve them in doing the science, speaking the tongues, making the prophecies, carrying out the healings.

64. 36:16

    And that was how it was in the days when the mighty Acts were most manifest, when there was the most frequent and powerful exercise of the gifts, when the Lord confirmed the Word in such a way that they could not deny. And it seems to me that when Mark’s Gospel was written, he describes the events of those days as though perhaps they were already on the way out.

65. 36:36

    They went everywhere, says Mark, preaching the Word, the Lord confirming the Word, with signs following as though to say that’s what they did and that’s what happened. As though to say the preaching goes on, but the Lord’s confirmation of the Word has got as far as it needs to go. Now, you can’t expect much more of this.

66. 36:57

    This is what they did not, and it would be Needless to say it if it were the case, what they are doing, as everybody knows.

67. 37:06

    So it seems to me. We have, apart from the evidence we would normally adduce, very good New Testament evidence that the gifts were given to few, given for a short time temporary in their duration. Whether it will please God to visit the world with such gifts again before His Son returns, It seems to me we should humbly wait and see.

68. 37:34

    Not sure that Joel’s prophecy might not be fulfilled twice before another great and dreadful day of the Lord. Because it looks in Joel as though it might be so not certain that God would not when He sends His disciples out in their last message to the world before the Lord comes back and bids them preach again before many peoples and nations and kindreds and tongues. As Revelation tends as He will that He won’t in that case to make the world so totally aware that this is a divine work, that it will be totally responsible for its rejection of it, and therefore not in the mood to be too surprised. If before the Lord comes back, we do find that He Himself takes a hand in bearing witness to the last decisive testimony to His gospel before the Lord comes in flaming fire, taking vengeance on them that know not God and that obey not the gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ.

69. 38:32

    When He shall come to be glorified in His Saints and admired in all them that believe as our testimony among you was believed in that death. But not being sure, not doing silly things to try to make it happen.

70. 38:50

    Not whipping up guitar strummed enthusiasms, not trying by pop engendered paroxysms to force God’s hand for him, but waiting soberly, knowing that the gift of God by grace is the thing we need. That His presence with us to influence our hearts in ways unknown to us, when we surrender ourselves to Him, is His mighty act for us and content to wait, almost fearful in waiting, in case the time should come when He will take other steps, unmistakable other steps, steps that can’t be controverted to make the world know that this is His last appeal to them. I’m not saying He will do that.

71. 39:41

    I’m saying we should wait and see. And if He does, there won’t be any doubt. Shall we sing Him. 154 And I think the sentiments of this hymn are such that a restrained volume is what we need throughout. We’re not shouting about things of praise and power now. We’re pleading for things of grace and goodness. Lord, speak to me that I may speak in living echoes of thy tone.

72. 40:20

    Oh Lord our God and Heavenly Father. We have thy family, who are joined to thee through Jesus Christ our Lord, who is not ashamed to call us brother and sister. We thank thee that thou hast revealed to us the light of the knowledge of thy glory, and the face of Jesus Christ, both in the face of him that suffered and died, and in the face of him risen with glory from the grave.

73. 40:50

    May we keep that image and likeness of thine before our face at all times. And so, as we trust in thee and the work of the risen Lord is continued in US, be changed after the same image from glory unto glory, even as by the Lord the Spirit receive us. In this we ask thee, hear and answer our prayer and open our hearts to receive the answer through Jesus Christ our Savior. Amen.

74. 41:43

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75. 42:13

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76. 42:29

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