Ever Increasing Faith - 3. The Power of the Name

Scripture Reading-Acts 3:1-16

All things are possible through the name of Jesus. God hath highly exalted Him, and given Him the name which is above every name, that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow. 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 none other name under heaven given among men, whereby we must be saved.

I want to instill into you a sense of 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 an Episcopalian vicar, and lay in his bed utterly helpless, without even strength to help himself. He had read a little tract about healing and had heard about people praying for the sick, and sent for these friends, who, he thought, could pray the prayer of faith. 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 might have done. I wish you would all go back with me and try it." They went back and all 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 arose from his bed and dressed himself. The secret was just thus, those six people had gotten their eyes off the sick man, and they were just taken up with the Lord Jesus Himself, and their faith grasped the power that there is in His name. O, if people would only appreciate the power that there is 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 O, what a joy it is for me to utter it.

One day I went up into the mountain to pray. I had a wonderful day. It was one of the high mountains of Wales. I heard of one man going up this mountain to pray, and the Spirit of the Lord met him so wonderfully that his face shone like that of an angel when he returned. Every one in the village was talking about it. As I went up to 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 assembly 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, gone into consumption, and for four years he had been a helpless invalid, having to be fed with a spoon.

While I was up on that mountain top I was reminded of the transfiguration scene, and I felt that the Lord's only purpose in taking us into the glory was to fit us for greater usefulness in the valley.

Tongues and Interpretation; "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 mountain top that day, the Lord said to me, "I want you to go and raise Lazarus." I told the brother who accompanied me of this, and when we got down to the valley, I wrote a postcard: " 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 in the place 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 card. He looked at me and said, "Did you send this?" I said, "Yes." 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 hold you." Everything he said was true from the natural viewpoint. 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 like 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 hearken to human plans. God can work mightily when you persist in believing Him in spite of discouragements from the human standpoint. When I got back to the man to whom I had sent the post-card, he asked, "Are you ready to go now ?"

I am not moved by what I see. I am moved only by what I believe. I know this-no man looks at appearances if he believes. No man considers how he feels if he believes. The man who believes God has it. 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 Ghost has right of way, the gifts of the Spirit will be in manifestation; and where these gifts are never in manifestation, I question whether He is present. Pentecostal people are spoiled for anything else than Pentecostal meetings. We want none of the entertainments that the churches are offering. When God comes in He entertains us Himself. Entertained by the King of kings and Lord of lords! O, 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, "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 with me for the poor man's deliverance. I said to the two people who were going to entertain us, "I will count on you two, and there is my friend and myself, and 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 are 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 in the bed. When I awoke I had a cough and all the weakness of a tubercular patient. I rolled out of bed on to 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 victory, and I got back into bed again as free as ever I was in my life. At 5 o'clock the Lord awakened me and said to me, "Don't break bread until you break it round My table." At 6 o'clock He gave me these words, "And I will raise him up." I put my elbow into the fellow who was sleeping with me. He said, "Ugh !" I put my elbow into him again and said, "Do you hear? The Lord says that He will raise him up."

At 8 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 that that. He always gives the exceedingly abundant above all we ask or think.

I shall never forget how the power of God fell on us as we went into that sick man's room. O, it was lovely! As we circled round the bed I got one brother to hold one of the sick man's hands 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 person who was in the bed was unmoved. Two years previous 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."

The 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, nor 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 Thy glory." As he said this the virtue of the Lord went right through him.

I have asked the Lord to never let me tell this story except as it was, for I realize that God can not bless exaggerations. As we again said, "Jesus! Jesus! Jesus !" the bed shook, and the man shook. I said to the people that were with me, "You can all go down stairs right away. 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 noised abroad that Lazarus had been raised up and the people came from Llanelly and all the district round to see him and hear his testimony. And God brought salvation to many. This man told right out in the open air what God had done, and as a result many were convicted and converted. All this came through the name of Jesus, through faith in His name, yea, the faith that is by Him gave this sick man perfect soundness in the presence of them all.

Peter and John were helpless, were illiterate, they had no college education. 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. Peter had often to be rebuked, but Jesus manifested His love to Peter through it all. Yea, He loved Peter, the wayward one. O, He's a wonderful lover! I have been wayward, I have been 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 you will see Him as God's Lamb, as God's beloved Son who had laid upon Him the iniquity of us all, if only you will see that Jesus paid the whole price for our redemption that we might be free, you can enter into your purchased inheritance of salvation, of life and of power.

Poor Peter, and poor John! They had no money! But they had faith, they had the power of the Holy Ghost, they had God. You can have God even though you have nothing else. Even though you have lost your character you can have God. I have seen the worst men saved by the power of God.

I was one day preaching about the name of Jesus and there was a man leaning against a lamp-post, listening. It took a lamp-post to enable him to keep on his feet. We had finished our open-air meeting, and the man was still leaning against the post. I asked him, "Are you sick?" He showed me his hand and I saw beneath his coat, he had a silver handled dagger. He told me that he was 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, "Get you down." And there on the square, with people passing up and down, he got saved.

I took him to my home and put on him 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: and, where enmity and hatred had been before, the whole situation was transformed by love. God made that man a minister wherever he went. There is power in the name of Jesus everywhere. God can save to the uttermost.

There comes before me a meeting we had in Stockholm that I shall ever bear in mind. There was a home for incurables there and one of the inmates was brought to the meeting. He had palsy and was shaking all over. He stood up before 3,000 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 round 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.

Someone said to me, "Will you go to this Home for Incurables?" They took me there on my rest day. They brought out the sick people into a great corridor and in one hour the Lord set about twenty of them free.

The name of Jesus is so marvelous. Peter and John had no conception of all that was in that name; neither had the man, lame from his mother's womb, who was laid daily at the gate; but they had faith to say, "In the name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth, rise up and walk." And as Peter took him by the right hand, and lifted him up, immediately his feet and ankle bones received strength, and lie went into the temple with them, walking and leaping and praising God. God wants you to see more of this sort of thing done. How can it be done? Through His name, through faith in His name, through faith which is by Him.

REVIVALS IN SCANDINAVIA

The writer had the privilege for three months one year of being in the center of Mr. Smith Wigglesworth's meetings in both Sweden and Denmark. It was a time of visitation from on high. I dare to say that hundreds of people received Jesus as their Saviour, thousands were healed from all kinds of diseases, also thousands of believers awoke to a new life, and many, many received the Baptism of the Holy Ghost as on the day of Pentecost. For all thus we give glory to Jesus. Here are a few examples of miracles my eyes have seen.

It was in Orebro (Sweden) where at that time there was held a Pentecostal Convention. I came to seek help myself, being worn out with long, unbroken service in the Lord's work. The next day there was a meeting for healing. After the preaching service I went forward into the other hall and I was surprised to find in a few minutes a crowd following. The hall was soon full with hundreds of men and women patiently waiting for a touch of God through His servant, and, glory to God, we were not disappointed. As hands were laid upon me the power of God went through me in a mighty way. I was immediately well.

It was wonderful to notice, as the ministry continued, the effect upon the people as the power of the Lord came over them. Some lifted their hands, crying, "I am healed! I am healed!" Some fell on the platform under the power of the Spirit, having to be helped down. Others walked away as in a dream; others as drunk with new wine, lost to everything but God; but all had faces as transfigured with the glory of the Lord and magnifying Jesus. A young blind girl, as she was ministered to, cried out, "Oh, how many windows there are in this hall!" During the three weeks the meeting continued the great chapel was crowded daily, multitudes being healed and many saved. The testimony meetings were wonderful. One said, "I was deaf, they prayed, and Jesus healed me." Another, "I had consumption, and I am free." And so on.

At Skofde, in the smaller hall, set apart for those seeking the Baptism of the Holy Ghost, I shall never forget the sight, how the people with eyes closed and hearts uplifted to God waited. Did the Holy Spirit fall upon them? Of course He did. Here also many were healed. At another place there was a young man whose body was spoiled because of sin, but the Lord is merciful with sinners. He was anointed, and when hands were laid on, the power of God went mightily over him. He said, "I am healed," but being broken down, he cried as a little child, confessing his sin; at the same moment the Lord saved him. Glory to God! He went into the large hall and testified to salvation and healing.

At Stockholm, long queues waited for hours to get in. The hall held 1,800 people. At nearly every meeting crowds were unable to enter the building, but they waited on, often hours and hours, for the chance, if any left the building to step into the place. Here a man with two crutches, his whole body shaking with palsy, is lifted onto the platform. (Behind him five or six hundred more are waiting for help.) This man is anointed and hands laid upon him in the Name of Jesus. He is still shaking. Then he drops one crutch, and after a short time the other one. His body is still shaking, but he takes the first step out IN FAITH. Will it be? He lifts one foot and then the other, walks round the platform. The onlookers rejoice with him. Now he walks around the auditorium. Hallelujah!

During this meeting a woman began to shout and shout. The preacher told her to be quiet, but instead she jumped up on a chair, flourishing her arms about, and crying, "I am healed! I am healed! I had cancer in my mouth, and I was unsaved; but during the meeting, as I listened to the Word of God, the Lord has saved me and healed me of cancer in my mouth." She shouts again, "I am saved! I am saved! I am healed of cancer l" She was quite beside herself. The people laughed and cried together.

Here was another woman unable to walk, sitting on a chair as she was ministered to. Her experience was the same as hundreds of others. She rose up, looking around, wondering if after all it was a dream. Suddenly she laughed and said, "My leg is healed." Afterwards she said, "I am not saved," and streams of tears ran down her face. They prayed for her, and later she left the meeting healed and saved and full of joy. We have a wonderful Saviour; glory to His Holy Name!

Out of many many miracles in Norway, I quote two taken from Pastor Barratt's paper, "Korsets Seir" (the Victory of the Cross). A man and his son came in a taxi to the meeting. Both had crutches. The father had been in bed two years and was unable to put his leg to the ground. He was ministered to. He dropped both crutches, walking and praising God. When the son saw this he cried out, "Help me too," and after a little while the father and son, without crutches and without taxi, walked away from the hall together. That word again is manifested; the same Jesus, the wonder-working Jesus is just the same today.

Now Copenhagen, my homeland! During three weeks thousands daily attended the meetings. Each morning two or three hundred were ministered to for healing. Each evening the platform was surrounded. Again and again, as each throng retired another company came forward seeking salvation. Here many were baptized in the Holy Ghost. The testimony meetings were wonderful.

Now I will close with a vision a brother had who attended these meetings. He was lost in intercession for the hundreds of sick waiting to be ministered to for healing. He saw an opening from the platform, where the sick were, right into the glory. He saw wonderful beings in the form of men resting who, with interest, looked on. Again he looked at the platform and saw a heavenly Being clothed in white, who all the time was more active than any other in helping the sick, and when HE touched them the effect was wonderful. Bent forms were made straight, their eyes shone, they began to glorify and praise the Lord. A Voice said: "Healings are the smallest of the gifts; it is but a drop in the bucket in view of what God has in store for His children. Ye shall do greater works than these."Anna Lewini in "Confidence."