The Most Exciting Thing In the World

The Most Exciting Thing In the World

by Agnes Sanford

Transcribed from the original recording; may contain errors.

Now this time we’re going to talk about the most exciting thing in the whole world. And that is about our Lord Jesus and what happened after they put Him in that tomb. They thought, okay, now we’ve got Him. But they were a little bit uncertain. And the Jews went to Pilate Trudeau. They were getting kind of panicky. And they said, “Now, Pilate, His disciples might come and steal Him away and say that He rose again. So why don’t you just do something to make sure He stays in there?” And Pilate might have sort of laughed up his sleeve. But he said, “You’ve got a guard. Go and make it safe as you can.” And they went and they sealed up that tomb. They sealed up that rock. And then the soldiers, the guard, the temple guard, stood outside.

And what happened? An angel came down from heaven and rolled away that stone. And he was so shining and so glorious that the guards, when they saw him, they just fell on the ground like dead men. And our Lord Jesus came out of that tomb.

Do you believe this? I believe this. Isn’t it fun to be in a place where people do believe it? Oh, I feel so sorry for people that don’t believe it. And they say all kinds of silly things about a symbolic resurrection. Listen, there’s no such thing as a symbolic resurrection.

Either He rose again, or He stayed in that grave and decayed and stank and became dust. But now, it’s one or the other, there’s absolutely no halfway place. St. Paul said, if we believe not that Christ rose again from the dead, then is our faith vain. We are yet in our sins. And he said, if we believe not that Christ rose from the dead, then are we of all men most miserable. Why, of course, because we’re believing in something that is a lie. You see?

We love to talk about symbolic things at Easter, like chickens and eggs and rabbits. I don’t know what rabbits have to do with it, but anyhow. I don’t blame us, really, because it’s pretty frightening. And it’s almost too wonderful to believe. And when Mary Magdalene first saw Him, you know, she just couldn’t believe it. Maybe because she was so surprised, or maybe because His new body that came out there wasn’t quite finished yet. Maybe if she touched Him, she wouldn’t have felt everything. I don’t know, this is just me guessing. This is not theology. It’s so nice to be just a woman, you don’t have to bother with theology.

But I know as surely as I know that I’m standing here, that He arose again from the dead. And it was a real body, and later on the disciples could touch that body, and Thomas was urged to put his hand right into that wound that hadn’t healed yet.

And later on, He called to the disciples and said, “Children, have you any meat?” Any food, that is? And He cooked breakfast for them. And He ate breakfast with them. And yet, when they were in the room and the door was closed, He could come right through the door and be in there. And Tommy said, the other night, I forget his exact words, but it wasn’t that the body of Jesus was kind of thin and unreal. The door was kind of thin and unreal in front of the body of Jesus. Do you know something? When you get over into the heavenly kingdom one of these days, and I do not know whether you will have fully attained the resurrection body, I just do not know about that. I believe someday we will because the Bible says so, but how and where, I don’t know. But I do know this, that when you get over there, and you look down on this earth, then the things on this earth will look kind of dim and vague. When you get over there, you are not going to be the one that is floating around in a kind of a shadowy sort of existence. This earth will look kind of shadowy. Now, how do I know this? Oh, well, you just wait. When you get real old, you’ll have little visions once in a while. You can get up there and look down and see what it looks like. A lot of fun. A lot of fun.

So now, I want to ask you this, though. You remember when we were talking about the crucifixion, and we said that Jesus Christ Himself, the Son of God, became man, and so He did. You know that there is the collective unconscious, the mass mind of the race. Jesus, our Lord, entered into the mass mind and He became man. And so, when He was crucified, we say, and truly, that Christ being dead on the cross, we also are crucified with Him. Now, what in the world do we mean? Here we sit.

What we mean is that the principle of sin inside of us, the old temptation inside of us, the thing that used to drive us this way and that. So that as St. Paul said in Romans 7, the thing that we don’t want to do, we do. And the thing that we want to do, we don’t do. That thing is crucified with Christ. So that as St. Paul went on to say in Romans 8, you know, the picture in Romans 7 is not the final picture. So many Christians think it is. They think, well, that’s it, that’s the way I am. Oh, no. He answered his own question in Romans 8. He said, “Who shall save us from the body of this death?” He said that in Romans 7. He began again the next chapter and he said, “I thank my God through Jesus Christ our Lord.” No, that’s the last verse of chapter 7, I guess. Then he begins chapter 8 and he says, “There is therefore now no condemnation to them that are in Christ Jesus, who walk not after the flesh, but after the Spirit. For the law of the Spirit of life that is in Christ Jesus hath set me free from the law of sin and death. For what the law could not do, in that it was weak through the flesh, God sending His own Son into the world, in the likeness of sinful flesh, and for sin, condemned sin in the flesh, that the righteousness of the law might be fulfilled in us, who walk not after the flesh, but after the Spirit.”

Some people say that what we Christians ought to do is, the self, the ego ought to die. Oh no, my dear friends. Jesus died to save the ego. The ego is you, yourself, your psyche, your soul. That’s not supposed to die.

It’s only this principle of sin in you that’s supposed to die. But now consider this other thing. On Easter Sunday, we sing at the top of our lungs, “If Christ be risen from the dead, then are we also risen with Him.” Now, what in the world do you mean by that? By that, here you sit. You’re not risen, are you? Well, yes, you are. Part of you, your resurrection isn’t finished, it’s only begun.

Part of you… Now consider, if Jesus made Himself man, and He became mankind, and He became an integral part of the human race, then, when He ascended up into heaven, what did He do with you, with the human race? Did He cut that connection and let us fall back down again? Oh no! That spiritual connection that is between Christ and the human race still is held. And therefore, I like to imagine, now this is just me imagining, I like to imagine Jesus taking us up to heaven, in the spiritual body, you understand, and presenting us to the Father and saying, “Father, here is mankind. Here are these people whom I have redeemed.” And then I like to imagine the Father receiving us again into Himself. Now that’s just me imagining. But the next thing is not just me imagining, the next thing I know is true, and that is, that at that time there came to pass a new merging of the original Spirit of God, that brooded over the waters in the first place, with the redeemed spirit of mankind.

So that the Holy Spirit of God could come forth upon mankind in a new way. This is perfectly stated in the first five verses of the book of Hebrews. “God, who at sundry times and in divers manners, spake in times past unto the fathers by the prophets, hath in these last days spoken unto us by His Son, whom He hath appointed heir of all things, by whom also He made the worlds, who being the brightness of His glory, and the express image of His person, when He had by Himself purged our sins, sat down on the right hand of the Majesty on high, being made so much better than the angels, as He hath by inheritance obtained a more excellent name than they.” You see, God used to speak in a flash like lightning, now and then, here and there, through a prophet, to some one of the fathers that was smart enough to catch Him. The rest of them couldn’t hear God. They’d gotten too far away. They could no longer hear Him directly as Adam and Eve could. But then, when Jesus came, and when we are risen with Christ in a mysterious way, then, the Holy Spirit of God, through Jesus Christ, can speak to all of us, and we can hear Him.

Because our spirits, being redeemed, have access to the Father. Perhaps you think it’s very strange that I toss out little things half laughing, about how maybe someday, your spirit can take a little trip up to heaven and look around. Well, it’s not so strange.

I mean, read the book of Revelation. Read what St. Paul said, “There was a man, whether in the flesh or out of the flesh, I know not, God knoweth, such an one was caught up into the third heaven. And there beheld things which are not lawful to utter.” Read Ezekiel and Daniel. Read the Bible. Look, you are not confined to this earth. You thought you were, but you’re not.

Now, mostly, you do not know where your spirit goes. But there are mornings when you wake up just feeling good. And everything in the world looks different. And there are days when you walk outdoors, and you can almost see a halo around all the trees. And the light is glistening on all the leaves. And everything looks different. What’s happened?

I don’t know what happened. But it could be that while you were asleep, your spirit in Jesus had a little glimpse of the heavenly beauty. And then you came back, trailing clouds of glory. I don’t know, but it’s fun to think of. It’s lovely to think of. Now, if there is this new outpouring of the Holy Spirit, of God through Jesus Christ, how did it come to earth? You know how it came? It came on the day of Pentecost. Jesus said to His disciples, and there were about 120, I believe. Now, they were ones whom He had trained. They were ones whom He had taught. They were ones who had already repented, confessed their sins, turned unto the Lord, and were trying their best to live as He taught them to live. Not only that, but they were ones, I’m sure, who had done miracles. They had already used what power they had, because there was some power given directly by Jesus Christ before the Holy Spirit came, of course, naturally. So they had that preparation. And so He told them, He said, “Now go to Jerusalem and wait for the promise of His Father.” And He said to them again, “Ye shall be endued with power, after that the Holy Ghost is come upon you.”

And that was the thing that He told them to pray for. And that was the thing for which they were waiting. Power. Power for what? Power to become the sons of God. Who are the sons of God? They are those who walk the earth and accomplish miracles in the name and the power of Jesus Christ. The children of God. What shall the sons of God do upon the earth? They shall do the works that Jesus did, for so He said. “He that believeth on Me, the works that I do shall he do also.” What else shall the sons of God do upon the earth? My friends, they shall reign upon the earth.

They shall someday make peace upon the earth. “Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called the children of God.” They shall save this earth itself, this little created planet. For the very creatures shall be delivered from the bondage of destruction into the glorious liberty of the sons of God. Romans 12.

Power. So they waited. The more they waited there, the more the power grew. Some of you have told me that the power has grown a little bit here. Some of you have told me that miracles have happened and I am great to rejoice. But I’m not satisfied. I’m hard to satisfy.

They waited and the power grew. And then there came a time when the breath of God, the word breath, ruach, is also the word used for the Holy Spirit. I forget the New Testament word, but still that’s what it is. The Holy Spirit of God blew like a rushing mighty wind in that room. I wonder if you’ve ever felt that. I have not, I confess. Sometimes I think I have, but then I’m not quite sure whether there’s a window open, you know, someplace.

So I’m just not quite sure. But some of my friends have told me, yes, when they were in prayer together, they have felt a wind blowing. And I see how it can be, the wind lights the fire. In my old fireplace, you know, I have a little bellows. And I pump the bellows and the cold wind causes the flame to leap up. So the breath of God blew like a wind. And then the next thing that happened was that the actual fire, the actual light of the Holy Spirit descended upon them. And they could see this light, the cloven tongues as a fire upon their heads. Cloven tongues. Like two flames coming in. Two. I wonder why two. The Father and the Son. Or the divine and the human nature of man. I wonder. You know, I think this must have been the same appearance that they saw on Jesus when He was baptized. That was out in the full light of the sun. And it said, an appearance like a dove. Like two gray wings of a dove. Doesn’t say really a dove. There was a Japanese gentleman who wrote to the missionary and he said, “Honorable Father, very good. Honorable Son, very good. But honorable Bird, I cannot understand.”

Now, if you’d rather think it was a real dove, that’s all right. But that’s not what the Bible said. It said appearance like a dove. And it might have been the same thing. The same fire. Now, why do I say that? Well, because… In the chapel in Moorestown, around the cross, there was a light. I’ve told you that before. I wonder if you remember to look at the little picture of the light on the altar in the dining room. Well, it was like that. It was like that. And if the electric light was on in the chapel, it looked like a mist. It looked like a gray mist. Because it was a very soft light. But if there was no light, no electric light in the chapel, then it looked like a fire. Like a little glowing fire or light. And so I wondered, that was the same as they saw on our Lord Jesus. Now, we did not… I’m jumping ahead of myself just a little bit saying we. I’ll finish this very briefly, then I’d better get to we and bring all this down to earth.

I know that this fire was an actual presence and an actual energy from God that did some transforming thing in their personality. Because the power came to them. Then the next thing was that they spoke in tongues and languages that they did not know. People often say that’s the first sign of the Spirit. Oh, no, it’s not. Wind is the first sign. Fire is the next. Tongues is the third. But then the real thing that happened, I mean the culminating thing, the thing that all these others just led to, was the power. Because the power was the thing that Jesus really promised. And for which He told them to wait. And it came. And they were transformed. And Peter, who had always been sort of a blundering sort of a person, up and preached that sermon, you know. And 3,000 people were converted in one day. And they healed the sick. They brought the sick to them. And they laid them on the street. And they said, even the shadow of Peter passing by healed them. They called it the shadow. I would think it was the radiation of spiritual light from Peter that probably occupied the same space as his shadow did. So the power came upon them. That I sing until the power of the Lord come down.

Only don’t do it now. We’ve already done it enough for one night. Now, all of this is very great and seems very far away. So now I’ll tell you my own first little experience of a tiny weenie little Pentecost. It was after I had done healing and so on for, oh, years. About 20 years or so. And I was frightfully exhausted. Oh, all kinds of things were wrong with me. And I was just tired up. Some of you have heard this, but forgive me, I’ll say it again. And I was traveling on the train. And I thought, nobody knows me on this train. I’m not going to make any effort. I’m just going to relax. I’m just going to… I’m not going to put on any lipstick. I’m not going to smile. Just going to have me a nervous breakdown in peace.

So a lady said to me, “You look very tired.” And I said, “Yes, I am very tired.” And she said, “I know a book that would help you a great deal. It’s called The Healing Light.” Well, I didn’t tell her. I just said, “Thank you very much.” But you know, the thing is, I was doing all it said in The Healing Light. When I wrote The Healing Light, I didn’t know the Holy Spirit.

I’ve learned a whole lot since I wrote The Healing Light. You all would come up to me and say, “Oh, I’ve read your books.” Sometimes Satan had it written me and I’d say, “Which one?” In a savage tone of voice.

Because I’m delighted that you found The Healing Light helpful, but I’m not satisfied. Because I’ve learned a whole lot since then and you’ll find it in the other books. In fact, you’ll even find some of it in the novels, if you can stand to read novels. There’s a psychiatrist I know who buys Lost Shepherd by the dozen. And keeps them on his office table, not saying a word. It’s a novel about a minister and his problems with healing and all. And it disappears. And the doctor is glad for them to have it. He doesn’t say, “Bring back that book.” He just puts some more on the table. And he gets them by the dozen.

So if you don’t know it, Let’s Believe, my little book for children. Lots of Sunday school teachers use it. And even school teachers… well, not lots, but some do. Well, anyway, that’s… I better cut the commercial and get on, hadn’t I?

So… So when I got to my friends in Tucson, I found that my two friends were in the same condition I was in. And they also had been doing healing and carrying other people’s burdens. And they also were just utterly exhausted and sort of falling apart. You know, the sawdust coming out most everywhere. So, we prayed for healing. And we did not receive healing. And we prayed for strength. And the Lord didn’t give us strength. Now, why?

People are inclined to say right away, well, I suppose it’s not God’s will. That was not the answer. It was God’s will, as you will see. But He withheld it because He had a bigger thing He wanted us to pray for. So finally, after three days of this, we had sense enough to lay aside the prayer for healing and pray the prayer for guidance, which is a good idea. So we said, “All right, Lord, what do You want us to pray for?” And the Lord said inside of us… Now, in those days, I didn’t hear words very often. But I heard the words, and so did the other two. And He said, “Pray for the Holy Ghost.” Now, that was very surprising to us. Because we assumed that whatever the Holy Ghost was, we had it naturally. I mean, we were good Christians. And we did that time and confirmed that weren’t we doing this healing? And where did the power come from? It’s not from the Holy Ghost? Now, that’s true, it did. But there was a difference. However, we didn’t argue with the Lord. We said, “All right, Lord, we don’t know what You mean by this. But whatever it is You mean, we’ll do it.” Now, the Lord sent us a man to visit us, to talk to us that morning, who gave us a feeling of expectation.

He was a medical doctor. I’m not even sure that he was formally a Christian, although he was interested in all kinds of mysterious things. But he said something that gave us a feeling that a great thing could happen. I have this in my book, Behold Your God. But my son made me cut it out because he said it was too confusing for ministers. But…

But I don’t think it is, so I’ll tell you anyhow. I don’t know whether it’s true or not, but I will just tell you that it gave us a feeling of expectancy. Now, this doctor was a specialist in cranial work. And he said he believed that inside the head there were the glands of spiritual perception. And after all, we do know we have bodies. And they do have glands. And the glands have a lot to do with our emotions and feelings. But he said he believed that in modern man these glands of spiritual perception in the head were not round as they should be, but were sort of flattened. And he believed there was a canal or channel between them that should be opened and it had shrunk. And all of this, he believed, was due to the over-rationalizing and under-spiritualizing of systematic religions. You see, for generations and centuries, the church had tried to teach that you do not have to believe anything that you cannot see with your own eyes. You know, or cannot reason out with your own brain. You know, science has exploded that childish theory. Who has ever seen an atom?

So, at any rate, he made this statement. Now, I do not know whether it’s true or not. But this I do know. The power of Him coming in made an actual physical change. I tell you this for your comfort. If you have prayed for the Holy Spirit and you haven’t received after one time or two or three, that’s nothing surprising. This is a tremendous change. It may take longer than that for your psyche, your soul, to accept it. So, anyway. We went into the Marian’s prayer room and we were used to the laying on of hands for healing. So, two of us laid hands on one and two laid hands on one and two laid hands on one. And we said, “Now, Lord, You told us to pray for the Holy Ghost. And we don’t know what You mean by that. But anyway, we have to have the strength to do Your work. So, whatever it is, why are we going to stay right here until You give it to us?” We did not pray for the Holy Spirit, which maybe was not very liturgical, a form of prayer. But we did make our meaning quite clear to the Lord.

And you know, I think that in our ignorance, our total ignorance, I think our prayer just happened to be exactly right. We were not praying for a spiritual experience. We were not praying for any gift. We were not praying for anything whatsoever for ourselves. We were only praying at the direct command of God. And the only purpose that we knew of the prayer was to receive power, to do His work.

And so it came immediately, in the most marvelous way. Now all that came was inside. If you’d been there, you would not have seen anything, you would not have heard anything. It all came inside. But it was a tremendous transformation. I’ve had many spiritual experiences in my life. And some of them later on have included the receiving of this gift or that gift. But no experience has equaled this one. One thing that happened was that all three of us felt the burning of the heavenly fire within their heads. Oh, I’m here to tell you, it really burned. It burned so much that night, we couldn’t sleep anyway. And yet we were so happy, we didn’t want to sleep anyway. And we were so filled with new strength that we didn’t need sleep. And somehow, in spite of the fact that it was an active, real burning, it was a happy sort of a burning. It made you feel good. Now what that burning was, I don’t know. But to my mind, that is the surest sign. I feel it. And I still, from time to time, feel it. But not always. Oh, not always. I can feel all kinds of other things and exercise all kinds of other gifts. But the others are all more or less under my control.

But that heavenly burning, I can’t cook that one up. And when that comes, then that’s the surest sign that I know of a new outpouring of a spiritual power. Incidentally, this is not the first time I had felt this burning. Ten years before, while meditating all alone on a cold October day, lying down, taking a sun bath on the pine needles in the woods, not thick woods, the leaves had fallen, and meditating on God’s light coming into me from the sun.

I felt this… a different type of a spiritual experience. Really rather frightening. I felt such unbelievable ecstatic bliss that I thought, if this doesn’t stop, I’ll die. But then I thought, but I don’t want it to stop. And then it did stop. I have no idea whether it took a second or… half a second or two minutes or… maybe even longer because one seemed to be out of time. And after that thought, for two weeks, I felt there’s been this burning in the head and I didn’t know what it was. I thought maybe I was getting brain tumors or something. And it was just the Holy Ghost the whole time.

So all of us felt this burning. But the gifts that we received at this time, if I may analyze them, I didn’t exactly analyze them then. But afterwards, as I think about them, I believe that the gifts we received at this time were the three primary gifts that Jesus Himself promised, out of which all the other gifts are made.

In the name of the Holy Ghost, the Comforter or the Strength Giver. And we were all three of us instantly, immediately healed of all these things that had troubled us. Instantaneously and immediately. And the only time in my life that I ever felt the radiation of the Spirit all the way from the top of the head to the soles of my feet was this time. And for years afterwards, people who hadn’t seen me for a long time would say, “What’s happened to you, Agnes? You look ten years younger than you did ten years ago.”

And I would say, “Well, I must have looked awfully old and bedraggled then,” and they would say, “Yes, you did.” So in addition to this complete and instantaneous healing, you see, the Lord wanted to give us healing all along, but He withheld it until we prayed according to His will. Remember the verse that says, “Ye ask, and ye receive not, because ye ask amiss”? That doesn’t mean you ask in sin or anything. It just means that’s not the thing God wants you to ask for right then. Get your guidance clear.

Well, anyway, the three other gifts were the ones that Jesus promised. He made some weird promises. In St. John 14, 15, 16 and 17, that was His last discourse just before the cross, and He knew exactly what was going to happen, and what did He promise them? He promised them joy. He said, “Joy I give unto you, that your joy may be full.”

Remember He said to the woman at the well in Samaria, He said, “Whoso drinketh of the water that I shall give him shall never thirst again. For the water that I shall give him shall be within him, like a well of water, springing up into everlasting life.” Now that was the kind of joy that came to us. And you know, I just love it here when we shout and sing and have such a glorious time together. And yet, somehow, it was even more wonderful for three little women in a room alone with just a rough wooden cross, and no singing and no shouting and no laughter and no tongues and nothing, to feel this joy. And it was just like that. It came bubbling up from inside like a well of water.

And it has remained ever since now. Life has not been easier. As Tommy said, the old devil, he’s not going to like this. And the more power you receive, the more he’s going to bite you. So life has not been easier, but rather otherwise. But in spite of that, this joy has never been lost in. Sometimes, it burns kind of low. If it burns too low and I can’t light it by myself, the good Lord will send somebody else to light it for me. By the time, I tell you about that sometimes.

But that was an absolute direct gift. Now, I told you that I came out of eight years of mental depression. And I did not have anyone then to pray for me, for the healing of the memories, because I’m the gal that sort of figured that out.

And I worked my way out. And I could succeed in feeling real happy. Sometimes, when I was with people, I’d feel real happy and gay. But then, when I was all by myself, the old sorrow would always come back. Oh, not as bad as it had been, but there was still a kind of a heavy feeling inside. I wonder if you know what I mean. I hope you don’t, but I bet you do.

And then, sometimes, when I’d go to bed at night, I’d feel real good. I’d have worked myself up into a real fine mood. When I’d wake up in the morning, here would be the old heaviness inside. Now, that has been removed from lots of people, praise God. Through me, praise God, by a prayer for the healing of the memories, and through lots of my friends in the same way. But the way that it was removed for me was when we prayed for the Holy Ghost. And it was removed instantaneously in miraculously. You know, they say, “Cast your burdens at the foot of the cross,” but how can you? You know. But the Lord just simply reached in and took it.

And then another gift that was given to all three of us at this time was the gift of peace. Jesus said, “Peace I leave with you, My peace I give unto you. Not as the world giveth, give I unto you.” It’s not the kind of peace the world thinks. The world makes fun of Christians that talk about peace. They think, oh, it’s just an escape. It’s just a crutch. Oh, listen here. This peace is no crutch. This peace is a weapon. This peace is the sword of the Spirit. This peace is a tool.

This peace is a kind of a center of quiet inside, even in the midst of high activity. Sort of like an electric fan that goes so fast you can’t see it go, you know? And I think I can understand now, I didn’t then, how it was that there was this peace. I knew the peace first by the signs of it, and the signs of it were real funny. The signs of it were that I was so much better coordinated.

That everything I did, I did in about a half the time and about a third of the energy. And I noticed this first in physical things, and I noticed it immediately, the very next day. No effort on my thought. I found I could get a meal in half an hour instead of an hour and a half. Of course, I’ve gotten older, I’ve slowed up a little now, but not too much. I can still do right well. Now that was the work of the Holy Ghost. I found also that I could write and I could think up a talk about half the time and about a third of the energy. I found that I could memorize the scriptures. You know, you heard me say some verses. Oh, I wish I had a whole lot of the little pamphlet in which I wrote down how to memorize and how to train the subconscious mind to work with the conscious. It’s called How to Learn, gotten up by Forward Movement. I didn’t really do it on purpose. I gave these suggestions to a young man whose son was failing in college, and he said, “I wish you’d write that out because every college student should have it.” So I wrote it out and he got Forward Movement to publish it, but I always forget to lug it around with me.

But if you find you can get the address from Forward Movement, it’s called How to Learn. Anyway, that’s one of the things the Holy Spirit made me see more clearly. And I found that although older, I could memorize just as well, if not better, than I used to. And listen, girls and boys, with no effort, taking no time. You get that little book and it costs 10 cents. And read it. If you can. Oh, you can. Well, anyway. I believe that how come, how that happened was this. Now, I wish I had a blackboard to illustrate this with. I’ve done it in Behold Your God. This is old to some of you, I guess.

I believe it’s something like this. Here is the conscious mind inside the brain doing the best it can. Then there is the subconscious mind, the storehouse of the memories, that also controls the body. And then there is the spirit or the spiritual body, as I told you the first day. But with most of us, the spiritual body is not fully integrated with the conscious and the subconscious. If I have a blackboard, I draw it sort of off to one side. A symbolic little dotted line triangle off to one side, because that’s the way it is. It’s not really integrated. So that we are not using all of our energy. We are only using about two thirds. We are like automobiles made to run on six cylinders, and we are running on four. No wonder we get tired at times. You see? So I believe that what happened was, that with this prayer, that the Holy Spirit entered in, lit up, set on fire my own spirit, brought about a closer integration between the spirit and the physical, including conscious and subconscious mind, and therefore, every activity was quickened. Every mental ability was sharpened.

And that’s… praise God! That’s the way it can be. That’s the way it should be. That’s the way He does. And then the other gift that was given to us was the other one that Jesus promised. In that same discourse, He said the Holy Spirit is the Spirit of truth who will lead you into all truth. And that’s another thing we noticed all three of us right straight away, was that guidance became so bright and so clear, it was only after this that I could hear, you know, talk to the Lord and get an answer almost immediately. Usually immediately. Inwards, it was after this. Because it brought one nearer to God.

So now this is the kind of great thing that can happen. And I rejoice being here with you wonderful people. Well, some of it has already happened to one’s here and one’s there and one’s there. And I reckon nearly all of you have one or two or three of the gifts of the Spirit. And praise God for that. The one that I sought for so many years was the gift of healing. The one that some of you have sought and received, praise God, is the gift of tongues. And there’s also prophecy and discernment. You know, you don’t hear so much about the most important ones of all. I think, well, perhaps one should not compare them. But they are certainly the ones that are first mentioned in Corinthians, if that means anything, which I don’t know. Gifts of wisdom and knowledge. The illumination of the mind by the Holy Spirit. I delight in being here with all of you good people who have received different gifts now and again. And yet, I’m not satisfied. I’m hard to satisfy.

I have sort of waited for years for the time when, sometime, somewhere, in a meeting perhaps such as this, the breath of the Spirit will blow through that room. And the fire and the light of the Spirit will be seen. And some of you have seen it. A lot of you have told me you’ve seen a little bit.

But do you suppose the time can come again? I don’t see why not. When the fire and the light of the Spirit can actually be seen filling the whole room. In Isaiah, you remember when Isaiah had a vision in the temple, he said, “The temple was full of smoke.” That’s what it looks like sometimes. Like a bluish smoke. It changes. Changes its color. Changes its quality.

That’s what I wait for. Not that one has to see those signs. And yet, I’m just childish enough, so I sure would like it. I would like to feel the breath of the Spirit. I would like to see the light of the Spirit. But most of all, if the Holy Spirit would descend upon a whole room full, a whole church full of people, so that they would receive the promise of the Father, the Son of God. Which is the promise of power to become the sons of God.

Now, I think we have grown nearer to it here at this camp. Tomorrow in my talk, I’m going to talk further along this line. I don’t want to make this talk tonight too long, because it will be followed by a communion service.

Mr. Carter will come and give you the directions as to just how that will be managed. He will give you a sort of a program for it. But suppose I end my talk by giving you a prayer program for it.

Shall we use this communion service as the time for repenting, not just for our own sins, but for the sins of the world? That’s a big subject, but we might as well start on it. Then tomorrow we will talk more about the world, and how the power of God through the sons of God can go forth into the world. And then having done that, shall we use the communion service as a time of daring to believe that the Holy Spirit of God will enter into us anew through that service? You know that’s one of the ways. Do you know that? Do you realize that? You know our Lord preached a great sermon on this subject in St. John 6. And the text that He used was, Five Barley Loaves and Two Small Fishes.

There was all the multitude following Him and listening to Him and so fascinated they didn’t go home to eat. And the disciples said, “Oh, send them home.” And He said, “It’s late. They’re tired. They’re hungry. They’ll faint on the way. Give ye them to eat.” And the disciples said, “We haven’t got anything. Five barley loaves and two small fishes.” So Jesus took them. You have to put together all the four Gospels to get all that He did. One of them mentions one. One mentions another. He took those loaves and He held them up to God. I know He was asking God’s blessing to come upon them. He break them.

And He gave them to the disciples. And the disciples passed them to the multitude. Passed them out great long loaves. You know, I reconciled like I saw in France. You know, they go through the streets for the great long loaf of bread this long. So they’d have to break them to give… Break off a chunk to give to each person. If you’d been a disciple, would you dare to keep on breaking? Start off to feed 5,000 people and would you dare to keep on breaking that bread? I suppose there wasn’t any left to break. Do you believe this, Dary? Oh, this is a toughie.

And yet all four of the Gospels say this. Now, how in the name of sin could He do that? And why in the name of sin? How He could do it, I do not know. But I do believe it.

I’ve seen little teeny weeny miracles like that. Not big ones, just little teeny weeny ones. I know I told you before about the time the gas in the car increased. And we had no gas and we were driving home. And my husband said, “We better stop at the first filling station.” They didn’t have… it was after the war and they didn’t have much gas, you know. The first fill… we found one that said they had gas. We’d driven for two hours. So my husband stopped and said, “Fill her up, please.” And the boy came around and he said, “Mister, what made you think you needed gas? It’s running out of your car now.”

Then my husband worried you all the way home. ‘Cause he was afraid if gas acted that way, it might blow up. This is a hard thing to talk about. I see that some of you are looking at me as though I’m crazy. Well now look, girls, I didn’t make this up. Matthew, Mark, Luke and John made it up.

And so therefore, if little things like that happen nowadays… Well, you don’t have to believe it. I know of a lady in Washington who entertained her youth club. She was a great old prayer. And one night she had 40 young people there. And she was going to give them cocoa and cookies. When the time came, she remembered she’d forgotten to order the milk. And it was too late to go get some. And she didn’t have any canned milk. And she only had one quart of milk. So she shut the kitchen door and she cried and said, “Oh,” she’d done this kind of thing before. So she used her one quart of milk and she made cocoa. And as she poured it out, it increased. And as she poured it out, it increased. And it fed 40 young people, not only one cup, but two cups.

Now don’t test the Lord to see if He’ll do that. Because He won’t. He gets right mad if He’s tested. Scribes and Pharisees said, “Oh, come on, make us some more bread. Give us a sign.” No. Mm-mm. But if you get in a real jam sometime, who knows what the Lord may do. There’s a story of Corrie ten Boom in the concentration camp, who kept a number of prisoners alive with their one little bottle of vitamins. It was this liquid kind, you know. She doled it out and it never was empty, like the widow’s cruse. She doled it out and it would fill again. She doled it out and it would fill again. I don’t know how the Lord did it, but I just simply am childish enough to believe He did it. But now, why did He do it? That’s another tough one. He did it most of all for the most important reason of all, and that was He was just sorry for those people. They were hungry and tired. But then He had another reason too, which He explained in St. John 6. The other ones didn’t dare write this down. This was going too far. But in St. John 6, what He said was, He said, “The bread that I will give you is My body given for you.”

My body given for the sins of the world. Now, you are familiar with the thought, “This is My blood.” And you can take that any way you want to. Symbolic of the fact that the life of Jesus is increased in it, or in some mysterious way the life of Jesus is increased in it, I don’t really know what the difference would be. I just take it that the divine human life, the blood of the Lamb, in some mysterious way enters into us as we partake in faith of the cup. But did you ever think of this? His body cannot be His physical body from the tomb, because His physical body did not stay on the tomb. And His physical body does not remain on this earth. Then when He said, “This is My body given for you,” when He broke the bread, at the Last Supper, what did He mean? He explained in St. John 6, and He showed in St. John 6 the tremendous power, this bread increasing and increasing and increasing and increasing. All right. What He means is, I’m sure, His spiritual body coming down from heaven. And what is His spiritual body? The Holy Spirit of God through Jesus Christ. Now I’m only saying what’s in the creed. And I believe in the Holy Ghost, the Comforter proceeding from the Father and the Son.

So I believe that there are two different currents of the life of Jesus that come to us in the communion service. Two different currents. One from earth and one from heaven. Now this may mean nothing to you, but think on these things. St. Paul once wrote to the Corinthians, and he said they were doing for good. He said, “Many are sick and weakly among you, and many sleep, because you don’t discern the body of Christ.”

Because you don’t know what it is that you’re receiving. A life-giving emanation of the very body of Jesus Christ our Lord, arisen into the heavens, the Holy Spirit. Thank You, Lord. We’ve been talking about things far too great for us, and far too high away.