by Dr. Vance Havner
THE NEED FOR
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answer. Some don’t even know what the question is. Who is praying with Isaiah today, “0 that Thou wouldst rend the heavens and come down?” Only a divine visitation can meet our need. At Pentecost, the Holy Spirit came with a sound from heaven, as of a mighty rushing wind. The word for “wind” and “spirit” are the same in Hebrew, Greek and Latin. Only a Wind from elsewhere will clear out our theological and spiritual smog. The Lord said, “The wind bloweth where it listeth.” The problem is, we are trying to work up something in our churches that isn’t there. We have all kinds of bellows these days blowing hot air into the assembly. All our puffing, however, cannot clear the smog; it only adds more. We must bow to the sovereignty of the Holy Spirit who divideth severally as He will. “We cannot kindle when we will, the fires which in the heart resides; the Spirit bloweth and is Still, in mystery the soul abides.” This doesn’t mean that we are to sit with folded hands. While we can’t produce or control the natural wind, yet we can set our sails and put up our wind mills, getting in the path of the pow er. Even so, we cannot produce the winds of God but we can pray for a visitation of the Holy Spirit on the Church, as well as on our own lives. One reason why a lot of people don’t go to prayer meeting is that most of the things we are doing to day we feel we can do anyhow with out God; why bother Him ? When we come to the place where we will cast our all in desperation upon Him, we will pray. To pray down the winds of heaven will take more than some little formal day of prayer where everybody mumbles the same worn 3
I T was interesting to read the newspaper accounts at our home in North Carolina about the unusually bad spell of smog in Los Angeles. An official was quoted as saying, “Only a sweep of winds from else where can relieve the pollution.” We live in a blinding haze with the world smog-bound politically, morally and spiritually. Men are groping in dark ness. A college in the east, advertising its facilities and recommending it self, made a slight typographical er ror stating, “We have three thousand students in our ‘mist’.” The “d” was left out. Too many people find them selves in just such a position today. Only the breath of God can dispell this pressure gripping mankind. Experts abound, waiting for the wind to blow. No one really knows what to do, and Washington is help less. No one seems to look beyond the cloudy covering to heaven for the answer. The smog has blinded too many who will not admit that they are blind leaders of the blind. All sorts of experiments are being tried; social reforms, political projects, leg islation, education, reformation but the smog doesn’t lift. The winds of God must move in before the plague is conquered. The real problem is sin. Science and sociology don’t have the answer to man’s iniquity. It is a sad comment to report that the Church is smog-bound, too. The religious world has never been in greater confusion. There are even those who say, “God is dead.” Such has been said down through the cen turies.. The old Book comes to life in the midst of the funeral, outliving all the pallbearers. Experts sit in symposium where they mutually pool their ignorance, but they have no
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