"So I gave them up unto their own hearts' lust: and they walked in their own counsels.

" Psalm 81:12 "And end they said one to another, Go to, let us make brick, and burn them thoroughly And they had brick for stone, and slime had they for mortar and the said, (To to, let us build us a city and a tower, whose top may reach unto heaven; and let us make us a name, lest we be scattered abroad upon the face of the whole earth." Genesis 11:3 & 4

"And They Said..."

Babel has long since crumbled to ruins, but the selfish ambitions that were in the hearts of the human race have lived on. The builders of Babel trapped the potentials of unity and channeled it into one tremendous ambitious effort. This ill-directed unity disturbed all Heaven and called for divine interference "for the Lord said nothing will be restrained from them." The spirit of that building era lives today; the cry of this Babel age is "Let us build". All of Christendom is possessed with a desire to do something, and that desire is channeled into their vision. Out of this desire to do something, has come a civil religion that believes the kingdom of God can be produced through the schemes and idolatrous programs of man. Hence you have this drive for unity with a total disregard for truth. Out of this have come the shameful so called church growth programs. High school cheer leaders used to draw a crowd. Decorate the youth hall like a bar to attract the young people. You may become the poster boy for the organization by multiplying the tares, but heaven will remain unmoved. Only as the people catch a vision of God's purpose to meet the needs of the world will their efforts be directed to fulfill that vision. When men are filled with the Spirit of God and are lifted out of their selfishness into the emotions of God, there will be a unity upon which God will command His life. Psalms 133 Be not deceived, we can only reap what we sow. If we sow our fleshly religious programs they will only add to our problem. Only the "light of God's Life" can dispel the awful darkness of Hinduism and Islam. The self life has to be denied if the Life (light) of Christ is to possess us. All that we are by nature is contrary to this divine life, so a death to self is the only cure, and nothing else can make it subservient to good. Just as darkness cannot be altered or made better in itself or transmuted into light, it can only be subservient to light by being lost in it and swallowed up by it. "For God, who commanded the light to shine out of darkness, bath shined in our hearts." That is the contrast to what precedes. "The god of this world bath blinded the minds of them which believe not, that the light should not shine upon them." There are two thousand million humans, on this planet. who have never heard the name of Jesus. Satan, the god of this world, has blinded their minds, and that darkness can only be broken by the Light of God. The only source of that light is you and I, who have been filled with the Spirit of Life. Without this life it is impossible to break the darkness of Islam, or any of the other isms of darkness. Life is what our message and actions must be about. Our message is, you must become before you can do. The School of Christ is not just another analytical Bible study, it is a light that shines into the darkness, and the darkness comprehends it not. We, The School of Christ, well understand that we must demonstrate that Jesus is alive, else the darkness will mock us. The light that shined out of the upper room in Jerusalem broke the powers of Rome. That same light will break the powers of Islam, Hinduism and all the other anti God religions, but to do so it must be allowed to shine. For that light to shine it must come through the redeemed. Man was created to manifest the glory of the uncreated life, just as nature reflects the glory of created light. We know how light manifests its own beauty by the different objects on which it rests. This is the sum and fullness of all blessings, the light of God in Christ being manifest through redeemed humanity. This is Christianity. The redeemed of God can form no higher conception of its calling than that of allowing God to shine

into our heart and to shine through us on the world around. If the true Church of Jesus Christ is to prevail over the darkened reprobate mind of our time, her light must break forth as the morning. That means it must break forth suddenly with awesome brilliance and power. To break the powers of this demon ridden age, this final generation of the Church must experience, a Pentecost equal to the Pentecost of the first generation. We must have a repeat of that moment in history, when, "suddenly there came a sound from heaven," and thousands were converted instantly. This is the only answer in our effort to reach Islam. We can convert a handful, and for the most part they will arrest them or kill them, but if we could see thousands converted at once we will see the darkness broken. Since "Jesus Christ is the same yesterday, today, and forever", and since God has promised, in these last days, "to pour out of His Spirit upon all flesh (all humanity)," we have every right to believe for, to pray for, and to expect such an out pouring in this end-time. The effect of this Pentecostal fire cannot be overstated. Two thousand years ago God allowed the Wind of His Spirit to blow upon one-hundred and twenty people in an upper room, and through them He brought an empire to its knees. We must pray and believe that God will allow that same wind of the Spirit to blow upon this last generation. We must not allow ourselves to be deceived into believing that anything other than the Holy Spirit can break this darkness. We are cursed with programs, we have a program for every category of the human, and the world goes to hell while we labor to make these man made schemes work. The fruit of our labor is a generation of tares that has no reverence for God. To illustrate this truth, that the effect of Pentecost cannot be overstated, we are going to look at the effect of Pentecost on the Apostle Peter. If we can see the effect upon Peter we will have a true idea of the effect of the outpouring upon the entire Church. God uses illustrative and comprehensive parts to show us things that are too great to be seen in their completeness. A careful study of Peter's sermon in answer to the mockers, will help us to see in one man, the effect which would follow if the Church would lay aside all of her Hagars and once more return to Pentecost. Peter is not an egotist in this case; he is but a passive instrument through which the Holy Ghost delivers new and powerful messages to the Church. Let us fix our minds upon this fisherman for a moment; we know what he has been, up to this time, ardent, impulsive, unbalanced, enthusiastic, and cowardly. Look at him now and discover the real effect of Pentecost. Notice his eloquence, He is not only a speaker; he is a burning speaker. This man is not only speaking words; he is speaking them with unction, with fire, with emphasis never heard in his tone before. This great sermon of the fire baptized fisherman carries everything before it like a fire marching through dry stubble. He has always been an ardent man, but now he burns. It was not only eloquence, it was reasoning on fire. Peter speaks like a philosopher; he delivers us from the torment of daily details, and sets us in the currents and movements of the divine purpose. Think of the fisherman uniting these, and calling upon prophecy as its own witness, and pointing out how life is a development, a growing upward and onward. When the Church is inspired, it will be eloquent and Bible wise, she will not only be able to read the letter she will be able to decipher the spirit. All these features should characterize a revived Holy Ghost filled Church. She shall be eloquent, profound in Bible knowledge, profound in the interpretation of prophecy. Her message will be unanswerable in all Christian doctrine and truth when the Holy Ghost possesses her as He did the fisherman. We have in Peter a standard by which we can measure ourselves. Let the Church return to Pentecost and she will go to the Bible with new reading power, and will see wonders and miracles where before she saw nothing because of Spiritual blindness. As God has made the earth to owe nothing to any other world but her light, so God has made the new creature carry everything in itself but its own inspiration. We cannot inspire ourselves; the Holy Ghost is the gift of God. The new creature is created in the image of God; we have wonderful faculties as the earth has wonderful treasures, all these are the gift of God. All these treasures we hold in stewardship for God. These gifts are not toys to be used by man to manipulate the sheep. They are under the absolute control of the Holy Spirit, "But all these worketh that one and self same Spirit, dividing to every man severally as He will." Their soul purpose is to glorify God, edify, and lift up saints. We must remind ourselves that all these will be weights, burdens, and curses rather than blessings, unless it is

all baptized in the mighty Pentecostal Holy Ghost. Why don't we try Pentecost? It won't be easy, all hell is against it. There are no short cuts; God gives the Holy Ghost to them that ask Him. For Jesus to ask for the heathen He had to die. In the same sense, for you to ask for the Holy Ghost you must die to what you are. The way to Pentecost is set forth in 1 Peter 5:6; "Humble yourselves therefore under the mighty hand of God, that he may exalt you in due time."