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Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9780883684269 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | Whitaker House |
| Publication date: | 04/01/1999 |
| Pages: | 208 |
| Sales rank: | 171,985 |
| Product dimensions: | 5.25(w) x 8.45(h) x 0.50(d) |
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Chapter 1
The Power of the Name
All things are possible through the name of Jesus (Matt. 19:26). "God also has highly exalted Him and given Him the name which is above every name, that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow" (Phil. 2:9-10). There is power to overcome everything in the world through the name of Jesus. I am looking forward to a wonderful union through the name of Jesus. "There is no other name under heaven given among men by which we must be saved." (Acts 4:12)
Speaking the Name of Jesus
I want to instill in you the power, the virtue, and the glory of that name. Six people went into the house of a sick man to pray for him. He was a leader in the Episcopal Church, and he lay in his bed utterly helpless. He had read a little tract about healing and had heard about people praying for the sick. So he sent for these friends, who, he thought, could pray "the prayer of faith" (James 5:15). He was anointed according to James 5:14, but because he had no immediate manifestation of healing, he wept bitterly. The six people walked out of the room, somewhat crestfallen to see the man lying there in an unchanged condition.
When they were outside, one of the six said, "There is one thing we could have done. I wish you would all go back with me and try it." They all went back and got together in a group. This brother said, "Let us whisper the name of Jesus." At first, when they whispered this worthy name, nothing seemed to happen. But as they continued to whisper "Jesus! Jesus! Jesus!" the power began to fall. As they saw that God was beginning to work, their faith and joy increased, and they whispered the name louder and louder. As they did so, the man rose from his bed and dressed himself. The secret was just this: those six people had gotten their eyes off the sick man and were taken up with the Lord Jesus Himself. Their faith grasped the power in His name. Oh, if people would only appreciate the power in this name, there is no telling what would happen.
I know that through His name and through the power of His name we have access to God. The very face of Jesus fills the whole place with glory. All over the world there are people magnifying that name, and oh, what a joy it is for me to utter it.
Raising Lazarus
One day I went up onto a mountain to pray. I had a wonderful day. It was one of the mountains of Wales. I had heard of one man going up onto this mountain to pray and the Spirit of the Lord meeting him so wonderfully that his face shone like that of an angel when he returned. Everyone in the village was talking about it. As I went up onto this mountain and spent the day in the presence of the Lord, His wonderful power seemed to envelop and saturate and fill me.
Two years before this time, there had come to our house two lads from Wales. They were just ordinary lads, but they became very zealous for God. They came to our mission and saw some of the works of God. They said to me, "We would not be surprised if the Lord brings you down to Wales to raise our Lazarus." They explained that the leader of their church was a man who had spent his days working in a tin mine and his nights preaching, and the result was that he had collapsed and contracted tuberculosis. For four years he had been a helpless invalid, having to be fed with a spoon.
When I was up on that mountaintop, I was reminded of the Transfiguration (see Matthew 17:1-8), and I felt that the Lord’s only purpose in taking us into the glory was to prepare us for greater usefulness in the valley.
An Interpretation of Tongues: "The living God has chosen us for His divine inheritance, and He it is who is preparing us for our ministry, that it may be of God and not of man."
As I was on the mountaintop that day, the Lord said to me, "I want you to go and raise Lazarus." I told the brother who had accompanied me about this, and when we got down to the valley, I wrote a postcard. It read, "When I was up on the mountain praying today, God told me that I was to go and raise Lazarus." I addressed the postcard to the man whose name had been given to me by the two lads. When we arrived at the place, we went to the man to whom I had addressed the postcard. He looked at me and asked, "Did you send this?" "Yes," I replied. He said, "Do you think we believe in this? Here, take it." And he threw it at me.
The man called a servant and said, "Take this man and show him Lazarus." Then he said to me, "The moment you see him, you will be ready to go home. Nothing will keep you here." Everything he said was true from the natural standpoint. The man was helpless. He was nothing but a mass of bones with skin stretched over them. There was no life to be seen. Everything in him spoke of decay.
I said to him, "Will you shout? You remember that at Jericho the people shouted while the walls were still up. God has a similar victory for you if you will only believe." But I could not get him to believe. There was not an atom of faith there. He had made up his mind not to have anything.
It is a blessed thing to learn that God’s Word can never fail. Never listen to human plans. God can work mightily when you persist in believing Him in spite of discouragement from the human standpoint. When I got back to the man to whom I had sent the postcard, he asked, "Are you ready to go now?" I replied, "I am not moved by what I see. I am moved only by what I believe. I know this: no man looks at the circumstances if he believes. No man relies on his feelings if he believes. The man who believes God has his request. Every man who comes into the Pentecostal condition can laugh at all things and believe God."
There is something in the Pentecostal work that is different from anything else in the world. Somehow, in Pentecost you know that God is a reality. Wherever the Holy Spirit has right-of-way, the gifts of the Spirit will be in manifestation. Where these gifts are never in manifestation, I question whether He is present. Pentecostal people are spoiled for anything other than Pentecostal meetings. We want none of the entertainments that other churches are offering. When God comes in, He entertains us Himself. We are entertained by the King of Kings and Lord of Lords! Oh, it is wonderful.
There were difficult conditions in that Welsh village, and it seemed impossible to get the people to believe. "Ready to go home?" I was asked. But a man and a woman there asked us to come and stay with them. I said to the people, "I want to know how many of you people can pray." No one wanted to pray. I asked if I could get seven people to pray for the poor man’s deliverance. I said to the two people we were to stay with, "I will count on you two, and there is my friend and myself. We need three others." I told the people that I trusted that some of them would awaken to their privilege and come in the morning and join us in prayer for the raising of Lazarus. It will never do to give way to human opinions. If God says a thing, you have to believe it.
I told the people that I would not eat anything that night. When I got to bed, it seemed as if the Devil tried to place on me everything that he had placed on that poor man on the sickbed. When I awoke in the middle of the night, I had a cough and all the weakness of a man with tuberculosis. I rolled out of bed onto the floor and cried out to God to deliver me from the power of the Devil. I shouted loud enough to wake everybody in the house, but nobody was disturbed. God gave the victory, and I got back into bed again as free as I had ever been in my life. At five o’clock the Lord awakened me and said to me, "Don’t break bread until you break it around My table." At six o’clock He gave me these words: "And I will raise him up" (John 6:40). I elbowed the fellow who was sleeping in the same room. He said, "Ugh!" I elbowed him again and said, "Do you hear? The Lord says that He will raise him up."
At eight o’clock they said to me, "Have a little refreshment." But I have found prayer and fasting the greatest joy, and you will always find it so when you are led by God. When we went to the house where Lazarus lived, there were eight of us altogether. No one can prove to me that God does not always answer prayer. He always does more than that. He always gives "exceedingly abundantly above all that we ask or think." (Eph. 3:20)
I will never forget how the power of God fell on us as we went into that sick man’s room. Oh, it was lovely! As we made a circle around the bed, I got one brother to hold the sick man’s hand on one side, and I held the other, and we each held the hand of the person next to us. I said, "We are not going to pray; we are just going to use the name of Jesus." We all knelt down and whispered that one word, "Jesus! Jesus! Jesus!" The power of God fell, and then it lifted. Five times the power of God fell, and then it remained. But the man in the bed was unmoved. Two years previously, someone had come along and had tried to raise him up, and the Devil had used his lack of success as a means of discouraging Lazarus. I said, "I don’t care what the Devil says. If God says He will raise you up, it must be so. Forget everything else except what God says about Jesus."
A sixth time the power fell, and the sick man’s lips began moving, and the tears began to fall. I said to him, "The power of God is here; it is yours to accept it." He said, "I have been bitter in my heart, and I know I have grieved the Spirit of God. Here I am, helpless. I cannot lift my hands or even lift a spoon to my mouth." I said, "Repent, and God will hear you." He repented and cried out, "O God, let this be to Your glory." As he said this, the power of the Lord went right through him.
I have asked the Lord to let me never tell this story except the way it happened, for I realize that God can never bless exaggerations. As we again said "Jesus! Jesus! Jesus!" the bed shook, and the man shook. I said to the people who were with me, "You can all go downstairs now. This is all God. I’m not going to assist him." I sat and watched that man get up and dress himself. We sang the doxology as he walked down the steps. I said to him, "Now tell what has happened."
It was soon told everywhere that Lazarus had been raised up. The people came from Llanelli and all the district around to see him and to hear his testimony. God brought salvation to many. Right out in the open air, this man told what God had done, and as a result, many were convicted and converted. All this occurred through the name of Jesus, "through faith in His name" (Acts 3:16). Yes, the faith that is by Him gave this sick man perfect soundness in the presence of them all.
A Lame Man Healed
Let us read a passage from the book of Acts:
Now Peter and John went up together to the temple at the hour of prayer, the ninth hour. And a certain man lame from his mother’s womb was carried, whom they laid daily at the gate of the temple which is called Beautiful, to ask alms from those who entered the temple; who, seeing Peter and John about to go into the temple, asked for alms. And fixing his eyes on him, with John, Peter said, "Look at us." So he gave them his attention, expecting to receive something from them. Then Peter said, "Silver and gold I do not have, but what I do have I give you: In the name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth, rise up and walk." And he took him by the right hand and lifted him up, and immediately his feet and ankle bones received strength. So he, leaping up, stood and walked and entered the temple with them; walking, leaping, and praising God. And all the people saw him walking and praising God. Then they knew that it was he who sat begging alms at the Beautiful Gate of the temple; and they were filled with wonder and amazement at what had happened to him. Now as the lame man who was healed held on to Peter and John, all the people ran together to them in the porch which is called Solomon’s, greatly amazed. So when Peter saw it, he responded to the people: "Men of Israel, why do you marvel at this? Or why look so intently at us, as though by our own power or godliness we had made this man walk? The God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, the God of our fathers, glorified His Servant Jesus, whom you delivered up and denied in the presence of Pilate, when he was determined to let Him go. But you denied the Holy One and the Just, and asked for a murderer to be granted to you, and killed the Prince of life, whom God raised from the dead, of which we are witnesses. And His name, through faith in His name, has made this man strong, whom you see and know. Yes, the faith which comes through Him has given him this perfect soundness in the presence of you all." (Acts 3:1-16)
Peter and John were helpless and uneducated. They had no college education; they had only some training in fishing. But they had been with Jesus. To them had come a wonderful revelation of the power of the name of Jesus. They had handed out the bread and fish after Jesus had multiplied them. They had sat at the table with Him, and John had often gazed into His face. Jesus often had had to rebuke Peter, but He had manifested His love to him through it all. Yes, He loved Peter, the wayward one. Oh, He’s a loving Savior! I have been wayward and stubborn. I had an unmanageable temper at one time, but how patient He has been. I am here to tell you that there is power in Jesus and in His wondrous name to transform anyone, to heal anyone.
If only you will see Him as God’s Lamb, as God’s beloved Son, upon whom was laid "the iniquity of us all" (Isa. 53:6). If only you will see that Jesus paid the whole price for our redemption so that we might be free. Then you can enter into your purchased inheritance of salvation, of life, and of power.
Poor Peter and John! They had no money. I don’t think there is a person in this building as poor as Peter and John were. But they had faith; they had the power of the Holy Spirit; they had God. You can have God even though you have nothing else. Even if you have lost your character, you can have God. I have seen the worst men saved by the power of God.
Dealing with a Potential Murderer
I was preaching one day about the name of Jesus, and there was a man leaning against a lamppost, listening. He needed the lamppost to enable him to stay on his feet. We had finished our open-air meeting, and the man was still leaning against the lamppost. I asked him, "Are you sick?" He showed me his hand, and I saw that inside his coat he had a silver-handled dagger. He told me that he had been on his way to kill his unfaithful wife but that he had heard me speaking about the power of the name of Jesus and could not get away. He said that he felt just helpless. I said, "Kneel down." There on the square, with people passing back and forth, he got saved.
I took him to my home and clothed him with a new suit. I saw that there was something in that man that God could use. He said to me the next morning, "God has revealed Jesus to me. I see that all has been laid upon Jesus." I lent him some money, and he soon got together a wonderful little home. His faithless wife was living with another man, but he invited her back to the home that he had prepared for her. She came. Where enmity and hatred had been before, the whole situation was transformed by love. God made that man a minister wherever he went. Everywhere there is power in the name of Jesus. God can "save to the uttermost." (Heb. 7:25)
An "Incurable" Man Healed
There comes to mind a meeting we had in Stockholm that I will always remember. There was a home for incurables there, and one of the patients was brought to the meeting. He had palsy and was shaking all over. He stood up in front of three thousand people and came to the platform, supported by two others. The power of God fell on him as I anointed him in the name of Jesus. The moment I touched him, he dropped his crutch and began to walk in the name of Jesus. He walked down the steps and around that great building in view of all the people. There is nothing that our God cannot do. He will do everything if you will dare to believe.
