Availability and Angels By Paris Reidhead*
How very appropriate that this should be the song that has preceded our reading of Acts, Chapter 11. “He giveth, and giveth, and giveth again.1” I’ll read beginning with the 1st verse. We read this morning, Chapter 10. I will not read the entire chapter. We read the report of what was done there as recorded in the 10th Chapter of Acts. So Acts 11, beginning with verse 1, through verse 18:
And the apostles and brethren that were in Judaea heard that the Gentiles had also received the word of God. 2And when Peter was come up to Jerusalem, they that were of the circumcision contended with him, 3saying, Thou wentest in to men uncircumcised, and didst eat with them. 4But Peter rehearsed the matter from the beginning, and expounded it by order unto them, saying, 5I was in the city of Joppa praying: and in a trance I saw a vision, A certain vessel descend, as it had been a great sheet, let down from heaven by four corners; and it came even to me: 6upon the which when I had fastened mine eyes, I considered, and saw fourfooted beasts of the earth, and wild beasts, and creeping things, and fowls of the air. 7And I heard a voice saying unto me, Arise, Peter; slay and eat. 8But I said, Not so, Lord: for nothing common or unclean hath at any time entered into my mouth. 9But the voice answered me again from heaven, What God hath cleansed, that call not thou common. 10And this was done three times: and all were drawn up again into heaven. 11And, behold, immediately there were three men already come unto the house where I was, sent from Caesarea unto me. 12And the Spirit bade me go with them, nothing doubting. Moreover these six brethren accompanied me, and we entered into the man’s house: 13and he shewed us how he had seen an angel in his house, which stood and said unto him, Send men to Joppa, and call for Simon, whose surname is Peter; 14who shall tell thee words, whereby thou and all thy house shall be saved.15And as I began to speak, the Holy Ghost fell on them, as on us at the beginning. 16Then remembered I the word of the Lord, how that he said, John indeed baptized with water; but ye shall be baptized with the Holy Ghost. 17Forasmuch then as God gave them the like gift as he did unto us, who believed on the Lord Jesus Christ; what was I, that I could withstand God? 18When they heard these things, they held their peace, and glorified God, saying, Then hath God also to the Gentiles granted repentance unto life.
In dealing with this important theme of fellowship, it behooves us to understand that there are principles that God has always
honored. And it is for these principles we seek. We discover, as we saw this morning those of you that were with us, that in the
centurion, Cornelius, the principle of fear of God, prayer to such God as he knew, and in such manner as he knew, and sharing
of what he possessed with those that were in need, had commended him to God; and that God, having seen this response to
the light of conscience, and to such testimony as he heard, had caused Heaven to move in his behalf. And so it is always true. I
am firmly convinced that God always respects the earnest heart, the seeking heart, the burdened heart, regardless of whether
they are in the Christian context or not; if they are prepared to walk in the light that He has given by way of conscience and
such revelation as they have, and would respond to the Gospel if they knew it, God will see to it that they hear the Gospel.
Now I know when we reached one tribe in Africa along the Sudan and Ethiopian border, we found a strange response to our
coming. There was one who was very interested. He came about, he spent time listening, opened his mind to what we gave,
and responded to what was said. We found out that he had had a dream that there would be people coming to his village, to
his tribe, and speaking in his language, that would tell him about the Lord Jesus Christ. And when the missionaries came, there
was this unusual response. He was prepared.
Now lest this should be thought exceptional, we found the same thing happening in a neighboring tribe some hundred and fifty
miles distant. A missionary went out to this little village, saying it was to establish a little rest house, a little hut really, nothing
more than a mud hut, and visit there once or twice a month; and there was one man who said, “Yes, that’s fine and you can
build your hut here, and I will bring the wood, and the grass, and make the bricks for you.” And they asked, “Why?” And he
said, “That he had seen in a vision that someone was going to come and tell him about God, the Above One, the Creator, and
1 “He Giveth More Grace” By Annie Johnson Flint
would ask to have a house built in his village, and that he was to give every possible assistance, because the words that this
one would speak would be God’s Word to their hearts.”
So it is not unusual to find this. This could be duplicated many times in the experience of missionaries around the world. I think
the most classic illustration of this is from an experience that I’ve related from the pulpit before, but I think it’s appropriate and
profitable that I should remind you of it now, lest you should feel that what happened with Cornelius is exceptional. If I can
prove to you that this is happening, then possibly I will succeed in proving to you that there are other things that God is doing
that are happening today.
You see, we have a tendency always when we approach the Scripture to say, Oh, this was for that day, and we halo that time,
and we think that these were an unusual people, and these were exceptional circumstances. We talk about the good old days,
and talk about oh how wonderful it would have been to have lived then. And this we must destroy. Whenever this comes up in
your mind you must destroy it, because you must deal with it. You cannot tolerate it. It is a disavowal of that wonderful truth
that this is the day that the Lord has made. And if you feel that you came into this service tonight, feeling that some other time
was a better time to live, and some other day was a better day to live, if you are either looking ahead to a glorious tomorrow,
or looking back to a halo of yesterday, then the present is more or less barren of meaning for you. And may God save us from
this business of wishing our lives away, either backwards or forwards, and give to us a delight in the experience of the present,
the joyous now. I think of the young boys that were seen in the soda fountain corner store, and one of them sitting there all
dejected and disgusted with life and kicking their toes, the one into the heels, one said, “Boy, you should have been with us
last week.” He said, “Did we have fun. Oh, did we have fun.” Looking at him, you would think that fun is a word out of an
unknown dialect, the Egyptian. Did we have fun. That sort of an idea. And the other one said, “Oh, that’s nothing. You ought to
be with us next week. Are we ever going to have us a time.” So they are talking about the wonderful yesterday, and the
glorious tomorrow. But right there they are bored stiff. They just can hardly endure each other for another morning, another
moment.
And I think that this sometimes characterizes Christian people. They have a grandiose idea of the past, and a glorified idea of
the future, and they are living in a very barren now. May God save you from that. You didn’t live that yesterday, and there is no
prospect of that tomorrow. Your
life is going to be pretty much as it has been, so “let us rejoice that this is the day that the
Lord has made,” and that He is doing today what He has done in all the yesterdays, and He hasn’t any step children, and you
are not deprived of blessing from God because you had the misfortune of being born in the 20th century. (Psa. 118:24) He is
just the same, and His word is just the same, and His promises are just the same, and He is going to do with you, not what He
did necessarily for this period, for Cornelius, but He is going to do with you something so wonderful if you will let Him, that
your great grandchildren will talk about your life as the good old days. Wouldn’t that be wonderful? This would be making
history for them. And so if you could just bear with me to see that God is doing the same thing.
I have told you about it, and to some of you it will be familiar. Down on the northeast side of Lake Rudolf (now known as Lake
Turkana), which is in that salient, that triangle area between the Sudan, Uganda, Ethiopian Somalia, is a virtually unmapped,
un-traversed area. It is exceeding dangerous. It probably the most primitive part of Africa even yet. And maps are very sketchy;
a few parties have gone through hunting. A few governments, military surveys have gone through. For all practical purposes it
is the most primitive part of Africa.
Way down there in this trackless waste, not actually jungle, not mountain, a little bit of each, and not much of any, and very
little profit in it, or it would have been exploited before this, some wandering herds people were following their tribes, little
grass huts that they’d erect and where they would only stay a few weeks and then go on with their cattle. But seated down
there one night, late at night, in front of a few coals, burning in the center of the hut was a young man, married, 2 children,
and sitting there looking at his hands. His hands looked bloody. And he would rub them, and his heart which he seemed to see
looked black, filled with blackness. He had gone to every witch doctor. He had gone to witch doctors of other tribes, always
with the same question, “How do you get the blood off of your hands when you kill somebody? How do you get the black out
of your heart?” And no, one had an answer. They prescribed this. Bring a cow, bring this, bring that, but nothing helped. And so
late at night, he was seated there, looking into the dying embers of his fire, warming himself, and wondering how he could get
the blood off his hands; get the black out of his heart, when he noticed standing across the fire a figure in white, a man and in
white, white clothing, and white face. He said, “I have heard you ask to have the blood taken off your hands, and black taken
out of your heart.” “Yes, that is what I’ve asked.” He said, “Would you want to have that happen to you? badly enough to obey
me?” “Yes.” “Then all right. If you will follow me and go where I send you, I’ll bring you to a man whose face is like mine, and
he’ll tell you.” Now the angel did not tell him any more than the angel told Cornelius. The angel could have. But he didn’t.
And so he woke his wife, said, I am leaving. He took some dried food that was there, some water, spears, staff, dog, and
started off. And the figure stood outside of his house and said, “Take that path.” Now remember where he was. On the
northeast side of Lake Rudolf (now known as Lake Turkana), 360 degrees of the compass. I want to eliminate the possibility of
change. He went for several weeks. He would follow a trail alone. Then he would come to a fork in the trail and he would say,
“Which way should I go?” He would start down a trail. If it was the wrong one, the figure in white would say, “No, you take the
other fork.” The figure never came, never appeared except to correct him. As long as he was going properly in the right
direction there was no visible message.
And he went on like this day after day, week after week, till finally he stumbled into the perimeter posts of the Sudan Army,
Sudan Defense Force, way down in the southeast border of then the Anglo-Egyptian Sudan, now the Sudan. If you had asked
the Government in Khartoum where Dick Lythe was, they would have said, “We don’t know. He is somewhere here.” No
communication, no telegraph. Dick Lythe was the district commissioner for this whole area for the Pibor Post area, stationed at
Akobo. He had been a missionary with the Church Missionary Society over in Equatorial Province, and studying the map,
studying the location of missionaries he saw this vast area without a Gospel witness. So he had applied for government service
to the Sudan Government. Under one condition, that they would allow him to be permanently stationed at Akobo and give him
the privilege of learning the language and staying there long enough to use it. And he also stated, I am a missionary, and I go
for the purpose not only of preaching — administering, but also of making known the Gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ, and I am
expecting to have your recognition of this.
So he had gone in. He had translated the Gospel into the Sudanese that is colloquial Arabic, very colloquial, and he had learned
the Murle language. Now he was the only white man in the world that knew the Murle language, and he was a born again
Christian, well taught in the Scripture whose father-in-law incidentally was Mr. Smith who was one of the missionaries down in
Kenya that was very much part of the Kenya-Uganda revival for many years.
Now this man who has been weeks on the way stumbles into a sentry on the perimeter outpost of this encampment of the
Sudan Defense Force, probably half or three quarters of a mile away. And so he asks— they, of course, had taken him by
bayonet thinking perhaps the army across in Ethiopia had sent him in, and he is a spy. But he doesn’t know their language, they
are speaking Arabic, and they take him into the sergeant who would be in charge, saying, “We have found him, he is here.” He
didn’t apparently understand a word they said. Finally one of the soldiers spoke in Murle and he replied. He said, “I know that
language. When I was a little boy these people came down and found us and I was taken as a slave and I escaped when I was
about so many years.” But he had learned the Murle language, which wasn’t his language at all. And then he gave his story in
Murle. He said, “I have blood on my hands, and black in my heart, and I knew not how to have it taken away. A figure in white,
whose face is like the sun in the morning when it rises told me that if I would follow there would be someone whose face was
like his that would tell me how the blood could be taken off my hands and the black out of my heart.” Here were all of these
Africans. He said, “Have you ever seen anyone whose face is like the sun in the morning?” They said, “Why yes, he is here in
that tent.” “Is that right? Could he tell me how to have the black taken out of my heart, and the blood off my hands?” And one
of them said, “Yes, he told me. I was like you are, and he told me. We’ll take you to him.” And so they escorted this man that
had been weeks on the path up to the tent, and Dick Lythe had the joyous and privilege of pointing him to the Lord Jesus
Christ.
When I saw the man he had been a Christian for about
8 years. He’d start out when the rains were over and the dry season
began, and he would take a piece of cord about six
feet in length, and every time he would witness to someone who opened
their heart to receive the Lord Jesus, he would tie a knot in the cord. He wouldn’t come back until the cord was so that he
couldn’t tie any more knots in it. He had knots. Then he had knots on knots. And then he had knots on knots. And when he
came back he would sit there in the presence of Mr. Lythe, and he’d tell about each knot, who this person was, and where he
had met them, and what they did, and he would say, “Now these 5 right here close together were the sons of a man that
received Christ when I was there last year, and now when I came his sons were waiting to receive the Lord.” And he had been
led all the way for nearly 400 miles, 300 miles and more, up and around, and across, to stumble into the camp of the only
white man in the world who knew the language that he had learned as a slave boy, and who knew the Lord Jesus Christ.
It is my firm conviction that sovereign God who knows the hearts of all men is doing today what He did with Cornelius. And I
would have you remember that.
But I would also have you remember, dear friends, that He will do with you what He did with a Dick Lythe. And just as He found
Peter and Peter was prepared to go, if you are available, He will use you, because the angel could escort him, but the angel
couldn’t witness to him. And I am wondering if the angel of the Lord has often brought prepared people right by me and by
you, because you were too busy to take time to tell someone how to have the black taken out of their hearts and the blood off
their hands. Peter was busy. We saw last Sunday night, Philip was busy, but not too busy to be available to God.
Have you been that busy? Is there, as you approach this week, a sense of adventure and a sense of excitement, a sense
of
delight? Have you committed to Him all you are and have, and are available, and perhaps He is going to allow the Spirit of God
or some angel of the Lord to escort to you that one to whom you can explain how to have the blood taken off his hands, and
the black out of his heart. For there is the ministry of God in His sovereignty. There is the ministry of God by angels. Are there
angels today? Oh, yes. Certainly. Unquestionably. “For angel of the Lord encampeth about them that fear Him,” and this is
certainly not just a figment of imagination. (Psa. 34:7) This is a delight and truth to the tender heart that walks in fellowship
with God.
You say, “I have never seen one.” Very good. That is not important. The fact is as long as God can see him that is all I am
worried about. When He loses sight of them, then they will be a matter of concern, but I am not necessarily... The thing I must
see to is that I am living in fear of the Lord, and in constant trust and submission and obedience, because then He said He
would care for His Own. I do recall, speaking to this point, for a moment, driving down one Saturday night, very late, through
Georgia on one of those lonely, lonely, lonely roads where you can go 15 miles straight as a dye, and never see a town. The
only thing you might see is a wandering deer or a loose cow, and head lights periodically. Well I had worked all day, driven
most of the night before, had to be in Winter Haven, Florida, to speak at 11 o’clock, and I couldn’t leave Chattanooga until 8
o’clock at night, and I had to drive every minute. I got to the church yard just about 5 minutes before I was to go into the
pulpit.
And I was tired, so tired I could taste it, like acid in my mouth. And I was asleep, sound asleep, going down the wrong side of
the road in Georgia at Georgia’s limit of 60 miles an hour. And a car was coming directly at me, when I felt a hand on my
shoulder, as definite as that. And I turned to see who it was, and saw the lights, and pulled the car in time to avoid a
calamitous accident.
Now you can say, “Who?” I don’t know, but I only know that I awakened because a hand on my shoulder drew my attention,
and brought me out of my drowsiness and I turned to see whose hand had awakened me. You say, “It couldn’t have
happened.” Well it did. It did.
All I am concerned about is this, now. I have no question about the fact that angels can minister, that they are the ministering
servants of God, to perform His will and purpose. This creates no problem with me. As I have said, and have said often, I only
had problem with four words in the Bible and when I saw those four words then I have no trouble with the rest of it. And what
were those words? “In the beginning God...” (Gen. 1:1) And as soon as I could adequately make my peace with these four
words, I have had no problem since. And I think that anyone that will approach the Bible and read it from the beginning, and
will actually consent that there is One who was before the beginning, and by whom the beginning began, then he won’t have
any trouble at all with the rest of the Bible. It is this preexistent One who is the cause of all that is, and the organizer of all that
exists, that causes trouble, and as soon as you have made peace with the fact that God is, then you have no problem with the
fact that God does.
But the problem isn’t with God. I have no difficulty there or with an angelic ministry. The concern of my heart tonight Are you
responsive? Are you prepared to overcome your prejudices? Are you prepared to overcome the natural lethargy of your heart?
Are you prepared to overcome your preoccupation with tasks more interesting perhaps than those that you feel He’ll give? Do
you recognize that there is a glorious adventure of obedience to God
that is your privilege to enjoy tomorrow? Oh, that
somehow you could enter into tomorrow, realizing that every step is a step into adventure. Do not be like the man who looks
at the gray sky and the rain and says, “My, isn’t this a wonderful day to be only half alive.” This I am afraid is too frequently the
attitude.
People approach just half alive. They have got to go through the drudgery of succeeding with this task and the other, but oh
that tomorrow you can say that God has some hungry Cornelius, God has some burdened man or woman, and I am here
available to Him, willing and ready to be used where and when and how He chooses. This I see as tremendously important.
But the next matter that is of great concern to me from what we have read is this, that Peter had to learn that God was
prepared to deal with others the same way that He had dealt with him. Perhaps this is one of the most difficult lessons that
you are going to have to learn. There is always a sense in which we are inclined to think we are the people, God has found in us
more than He found in others, and blessed us more than He has blessed others, and taught us more than He has taught others,
done for us more than He has done for others. This smugness can grip us, this complacency can lay hold upon us and cripple
us, and if I find it is a tendency into which my heart can fall, and in which it can fail and sin, I am confident that you share it.
Peter was quite prepared to go, and I think he was quite prepared for God to save Cornelius from hell but the idea that
Cornelius was going to have something happen to him similar to that which had happened to these that had been with Christ
for the 3 years of His public ministry was just stretching his expectation. And so God had to settle the fact that He has no
stepchildren. And there is nothing that He has ever done for anyone that He is not prepared to do for everyone. And in the
house of Cornelius, he raises his voice, in sweet testimony to the Lord Jesus, we are witnesses of all that He did, and how that
He was hanged upon the tree, how God raised Him up, and showed Him openly, commanded us to preach unto the people, to
testify that Jesus Christ is the One whom God hath ordained to be the Judge, he is willing to say this.
But you know, when God just opened heaven, and poured out of His Spirit upon Cornelius, and his family, and his servants, and
his friends, baptizing them in the Holy Ghost, and wonderfully signifying to Peter that it was, as it had been on Pentecost, then
Peter was forced to say that God made no difference. He fell upon them as upon us at the beginning. And this is the truth that I
want your heart to grip tonight, that God is meeting you to the degree to which you are prepared to be met by Him, as He has
met people in the beginning.
We live in the dispensation of the Holy Ghost. This is the period of His ministry. G. Campbell Morgan2, that great homiletician
and British preacher, stated over and over again in his book, Acts of the Apostles, that Pentecost was not the day; it was dawn
of the day. This is the day of Pentecost. That was the dawn. It dawned back there, and this is the day. Rather than speaking of
that as the day, and this as something else. It had a dawning. But now Peter witnesses the Spirit of God fall upon Cornelius, and
this company of Gentiles in identically the same way as he had in the Upper Room on the day of Pentecost.
Now, incidentally, this is the only time that it happened just this way other than at Pentecost. This is the only occasion. And I
think there is a real reason for it, for your heart as well as for Peter’s. I think in Peter’s case, he had to know that there was no
difference between Jews and Gentiles. They were all on the same basis, and it was necessary for God to have witnesses. Six
men went with Peter. It was necessary for Peter, who was in some sense, the leader of the apostles, to see and to participate
in this visitation of the Lord in order that there might be no prejudice about the Gentile believers.
But I think it was necessary for you that this should have happened just this way, that God could encourage your heart to
believe tonight that He is just the same today as when He went away. There is nothing changed. What has changed? You say,
“Well, He is not doing as He did then, is He?” Of course, He is. Maybe not to me or to you, but He is. There is almost everything
that He has ever done is doing. You say, “Well, are the dead being raised?” Well, our missionaries tell us of experiences. We
2 G. Campbell Morgan (1863-1945) British born Preacher and Teacher
think of that thing that took place in the Balim Valley, when that dear godly Kona that had gone down with them took the son
of the chief that had been brought out of the house, taken away for burial, and he just held him in his arms and groaningly laid
hold of God. He didn’t know what he was even praying for, but he just was pleading the Name of Jesus, and the child was as far
as everyone was concerned dead, and after a little while the child began to whisper and cry, and was brought back to his
father. You say, “Well, you haven’t any clinical proof, have you.” No, we only have the fact that the tribe pretty well turned to
Christ. That is all the proof we have, that God was working there.
You say, “Well, what about...:” All right, we can raise a hundred problems, and a hundred questions. You can cite a hundred
distortions, and a thousand this and more of the other, but the point for your heart is that you are hungry for God, and you
need to know Him, and you need to be able to come to His Word and say, All right, Lord. What about me? What about me?
And so you have this wonderful testimony that the Spirit of God is prepared to meet the need of hungry hearts. If it is true, and
I have sought to satisfy your minds, and certainly mine is, that God is leading by angels people to hear of Christ, and He is
leading men out of their darkness and blindness into repentance and faith, that salvation is in every case supernatural, then I
think we can just simply approach this Book as a living Book, and say, Lord, speak to my heart through it.
You say, “Won’t this lead to fanaticism?” My dear, fanaticism does not come from truth. Fanaticism does not come from the
Bible. Fanaticism comes from hearts that are unwilling to accept the balance whether of the Word of God, or whatever it may
be. And you do not find that fanatics are confined to the religious interests at all. Do you know why we speak of baseball fans?
Do you know what ‘fan’ is the short of? Well, it is just the short form of fanatics. And if you hear 10 thousand fans and really
what you’ve said are 10 thousand fanatics. And it is from this source that it comes. And fanaticism, therefore, is not implicit in
truth. You can become a fanatic on anything that you are desirous of committing yourself to. I believe in another sense,
however, that every Christian is in one particular or another, a fanatic, and properly so. Sometime I would like to bring a whole
message on what I call Balanced and Useful Fanaticism, because I believe that it is very, very important. The person that
commits himself to Christ has so oriented his life around a Person, the Person of the Son of God, that from that time on he
lives every breathe in the interests of that Person, and if this is not what you might call a fanatical orientation of one’s life, then
words would fails us to express it.
And so there is a disciplined, proper, and wholesome fanaticism, with the directing of our lives in accord with the will
of a
Person.
Now I recognize that one can become overbalanced on any doctrine, on any truth. This there is no debate, there is no
argument, but I do not believe that anyone has ever become over-balanced in his love for the Lord Jesus. I do not believe that
anyone has ever been pressed out of measure by his commitment to the will of the risen Christ. I believe that if you will accept
the Word as the rule of your life, the whole of it in its full balance, that you can take everything in the Book, without hesitation,
without fear, without question. I would like to disabuse your mind tonight, if it’s possible, of the fact of fanaticism. I would like
somehow to make this Word appear in its proper light so that you aren’t going to be afraid. You are going to be afraid of this,
however; you are going to be afraid of getting out of balance with the will of God. Oh, that somehow your heart can come to
rest in this, that you do not need to be afraid of the Lord. You do not need to be afraid.
I have asked myself over and over again, “Why is it that there are some people who become — what shall I say — out of
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