Five Fold Ministry of the Spirit Filled Believer

Five Fold Ministry of the Spirit Filled Believer By Paris Reidhead* You that have your outlines will note that we have now covered the first ten points. And this morning I am proposing that we should see numbers 14 through 15. I will give them to you. We’re talking today about the Five Fold Ministry of the Spirit Filled Believer. I want you to turn please to, if you have your Bibles, to Acts Chapter 1, verse 8 your familiar with it. I know that, but I still want you to see it. I begin reading with verse 5 and concluded with verse 8: “For John truly baptized with water; but ye shall be baptized with the Holy Ghost not many days hence. 6 When they therefore were come together, they asked of him, saying, Lord, wilt thou at this time restore again the kingdom to Israel? 7 And he said unto them, It is not for you to know the times or the seasons, which the Father hath put in his own power. 8 But ye shall receive power, after that the Holy Ghost is come upon you: and ye shall be witnesses unto me both in Jerusalem, and in all Judaea, and in Samaria, and unto the uttermost part of the earth.” Let us bow in prayer. Our Heavenly Father, we thank and praise Thee for the presences of the Holy Spirit. For taking the things of Christ and show them unto us. To speak to our hearts, to find us where we are, show us where we ought to move next, what the next step in our growth and development is, ah what of the great salvation we’re to appropriate for our own. As we speak to this point in the sequence we know there are many needs that will not be covered by the message that has been prepared for this hour. But Thou art El Shaddai. Thou art the God who is enough. Enough for every need, for every concern, for every aspiration, for every burden, and for every problem. And so we are asking that somehow by that marvelous ministry of Thy grace by the Holy Spirit every need will be addressed. Let this not be a service when we are just having fellowship with one another about Thee. But may we see Thy face and hear Thy voice and feel Thy touch and know that we have met with Thee. I ask it in the Name and for the sake of our Lord Jesus Christ. Amen. Isn’t interesting that when the Lord Jesus said, “Ye shall be baptized the Holy Ghost not many days hence.” His disciples were so disinterested in what He was saying, all they could ask was, and will you restore the kingdom of Israel at this time? You see you’ve got to remember who they were and you’re going to find out a lot about yourself and find out a lot about myself by understanding them. You’ll recall of course in John the 4th Chapter (verse 35) when the Lord Jesus said, You’ve been saying “four months then cometh the harvest.” Now, I don’t think He was talking about harvest of grain at all. I think these disciples were anticipating that about four more months the Pharisees would accept Jesus as the Messiah, would establish the kingdom of Israel, and would give back to Israel the glory she had under David. And the reason I say that is because you remember the mother of James and John said, Lord when Thou comest into Thy kingdom, let John sit on Thy right hand and James on Thy left. Of course, they had a fight among the boys. James wanted to be on the right hand; and wanted John on the left. You see they were politicians as well as disciples. They believed that Christ was the Messiah, that the kingdom was going to be established, and that when that happened because they had been with Him and helped Him, shall we say get elected, there were some jobs in that government they’d have to fill. And here we find it still happening, even after the resurrection. So little insight, so little understanding, so little realization, of what the Lord’s purpose was. He told them over and over again what they were to do and how they were to do it. But they still had this fixation and this tunnel vision. The kingdom was going to be given back and we’re going to get what we disserve. Well, we’re not far removed from them. How easy it is for us to be excited and interested about the first part of Acts 1:8. “After that the Holy Ghost has come upon ye, ye shall receive power.” And most of the time when we think of power, we think in terms of our interests and our activities and our plan and our program. Instead of realizing that God had a purpose in this that He wanted realized. He wanted it to be implemented and completed. What was it? That the Gospel should be preached to every creature. That everything that Christ had taught should be passed on. And the ends of the earth should hear. That every person breathing the breath of human life should not only at one time but subsequently, always those that would be coming have the opportunity of learning about God’s great gift in the Lord Jesus Christ. Now for centuries the church has been in what I call a Babylonian captive. You have to remember that the movement of modern missions as we know it is rather recent. In fact, it was the Moravians there out of Herrnhut, Germany, who first renewed the commitment to go to all the ends of the earth with the Gospel. They had a very interesting way of doing this, they sent a whole community. There would be a harness maker, and a blacksmith, and a cabinet maker, and there would a teacher, a preacher, a weaver. All the skills needed for a frontier community and they would go as a body. They go as a company and establish their own life and livelihood there. And as people were brought to Christ, they’d come in and they would learn not only to read and to write, they would be taught all the doctrines of the faith, but they would also learn a trade. Because it was realized by the Moravians, that coming to Christ was the most detribalizing thing that could happen since the religion of the people was under the control of Satan. Anyone, who renounced Satan to received Christ, was going to be disenfranchised. And so the Moravians anticipated that and provided a means by which believers could care for themselves. Well, that was the method of missions up until the time Hudson Taylor1 came along. He went that way to China. The China Inland Mission was a group of people that were going to go in engage in agriculture and agro business of one sort or another, while they supported themselves in their witness for Christ. George Müller2 had been terribly impressed with Hudson Taylor. He invited him to come back to China and to Bristol, where George Müller spent several months in praying in of £100,000. Now, £100,000 in 1850 or there about was a lot of money. I think you’d have to have about $5,000,000 our present value to equal that. And this amount of money was turned over to Hudson Taylor, for the purpose of evangelism in China. And that met the mark, the change from self-support missions to being support through ones entire career by the family that sent them, the church family that sent them. So we’ve had a rather recent return to the task getting the Gospel out to the ends of the earth. I would suggest to you therefore, that in more recent years, just in the last 30 or 40 years or more, there has been a recovery of the gifts of the Spirit and enablings of the Spirit. We’ve called it, I think, the Charismatic movement. Now when I was came into the experience of the baptism of the Holy Spirit in 1953, there wasn’t any movement at that time. It was just one person with a ministering in the fundamentals evangelical churches, who committed a great act of heresy by opening his heart to receive fullness of Christ, but that was all right I’ve never been sorry about that at all. I’ve been very grateful. But during that period of time, there’s been the recovery of the gifts of the Spirit and there has also been what we called, as I have said, the Charismatic Movement. When I saw that happening, everything that I wanted from God is that I might be more effective as a witness for Christ as a missionary. You see once you’re a missionary you have a mortgage that you can’t pay any other way. You’ve just got to continue to be a missionary as long as you live and breathe. And we have been recovering principles. I’ve sometimes liken it to a great eruption like that of Mt. Vesuvius over Pompeii. When all of the truths of the early church were sort of buried. Think of an airplane that had been in certain monuments and inscriptions and the people that followed that great eruption were in the process of recovering these remnants. One person digs around scratches around and comes up with a wheel. He said, “Boy, I got the airplane.” Somebody picks up the propeller and says, “I got an airplane.” And they get a wheel to steer it. And so he thinks that’s the airplane. And each group has been sort of recovering some piece, some truth. I believe the Spirit of God wants us to recognize that is no such thing as the most important New Testament truth. Everything is. I was flying with Bill Sample out of Charlotte, North Carolina years ago, who represented ESSO at that time in North Carolina selling their fuel products at the airports throughout North Carolina. And as we were ready to take off I said, “Bill, what’s the most important part on this airplane?” And he said, “It’s the one that isn’t working. That’s makes important.” And I said, “What’s the most important” (we were in the air then). I 1 James Hudson Taylor(1832-1905) A British Protestant Christian Missionary to China and founder of China Inland Mission 2 George Müller (1805-1898) Christian Evangelist and Director of the Ashley Down Orphanage said, “Bill, what’s the most important principle about flying?” And he looked at me and he said, “The one you just forgot to obey. All of a sudden that’s the most important principle of flying.” What’s the most important truth in the Word of God for a Spirit filled believer? What’s important provision of God’s grace? That we’ve been recovering for 40 years. I’m suggesting to you, not that I have the final answer, but that this may help you. Number 11 in my outline, is the thumb. I use the picture of a hand. You see the thumb gives strength to each finger. So I am going to in the next few minutes name each of these. It is the thumb that gives strength to the hand. The thumb and the little finger. A doctor once told me that the thumb is the thenar and the little finger is the hypothenar. I don’t know what that means, but he thought it was important enough to tell me. He said, “The hypothenar or the little finger controls that bundle of muscles down the side of the hand, so that makes it the second most strongest digit in the hand.” Well, I’ve named these and we’re going to do it. If you want to trace in the back of your outline your hand. Then do it. You can or just like I’ve done put 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 and that will cover it. As long as you recognize that number 1 is the thumb. I call this the ministry of fruit of the Spirit. Ministry of fruit of the Spirit. Now we are referring to Galatians Chapter 5:22,23, when we speak thus: “the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, longsuffering, gentleness, goodness, faith, meekness, self- control.” Now, unless you have “the fruit of the Spirit,” I don’t care what gifts of the Spirit you have, what other ministries of the Holy Spirit you may have, but you must have “the fruit of the Spirit.” This must be there it’s that that gives strength to everything else that God may give us. And it’s so important therefore for us to realize that “the fruit of the Spirit” is that, which validates everything that we would say or do. If we do not have that, the then the rest of it is just words. The world says what you are thunders so loud I can’t hear what you are saying. Years ago in Sudan, when we were there we had a dear missionary family. We went to Africa with them in the MS Gripsholm in 1945. Peg Phillips, John Phillips’ wife Peg, was having great difficulty learning the Dinka language. Now the Dinka language is a difficult language. It has something like 44 phonemic vowels, just for starters. It’s a very hard language. Two methods of articulation, seven tones, just to complicate things. So no wonder we and had problems learning Dinka. I talk to one of the Dinka boys, I said, “Do you have any problem learning English?” He said, “No, that was easy.” “Do you have any problem learning Arabic?” He said, “No, that was easy.” “Well, what was your problem?” He said, “Learning the Dinka that the missionaries speak. I never could learn that. That was hard.” Well, Peg had trouble. Now, her teacher was a dear woman Ann McMillan from Australia. And Ann had a denture that didn’t fit very well. And when she would say one vowel, she would get a denture whistle. And poor Peg had a nervous breakdown trying to imitate Ann’s denture whistle, because Peg didn’t have a denture. And she was having such trouble to add that a little quality. “There is something about the way Ann says it, that’s different.” I said, “Yes, there is. She does her denture whistle.” “No, no it’s Dinka.” “No.” I said. In any rate, there came a time when the pressure was too much and Peg had to leave the field. Went to the boat, the post boat, went up the Nile River to Khartoum and that morning, some Dinka women from the nearby village, not too far away came in and saw my wife and said, “We understand that Mrs. John has been taken sick. She has gone back to her country.” “Yes,” my wife said. “Do you think she will ever come back here?” And my wife said, “I don’t know, perhaps not.” And this woman stood there, tears gathered on her ash covered face, she was almost white with it the ash she slept in. And the tears ran down her cheeks. My wife looked at her and she said, “Mrs. John couldn’t speak our language very well with her lips, she spoke with her heart. We knew she loved us.” She had a much richer ministry then many people who could pronounce the words without any difficulty. If Peg had just known that the women of the villages didn’t care how she talked Dinka, because she was talking with “the fruit of the Spirit, love, joy, peace, longsuffering, gentleness, meekness, faith, and self-control,” I don’t care the Scripture says, “You talk with a tongues of men and angels and you don’t have love your just a banging gong and a clanging cymbal,” just noise. (I Cor. 13:1) That’s this ministry and it gives strength to everyone else. The first finger, and this is arbitrary, I call the ministry of witness. “Ye shall be witnesses unto Me,” the Lord Jesus declared. After that “the Holy Ghost has come upon you, ye shall be witnesses unto Me in Jerusalem, and in all Judaea, and in Samaria, and unto the uttermost part of the earth.” I’d like to take an entire service to talk to you about being heirs of the promise made to Abraham. You know everyone that is born into the family of God through faith in Christ is indeed an heir to that promise. When God said to Abraham: “In thee and in thy seed shall all nations of the earth be blessed.” (Gen. 22:18) It was a promise that He intended to keep. Every born-again, Spirit baptized believer has a worldwide ministry for Christ. That’s what He said, “After that Holy Ghost has come upon you, ye shall receive power” and then the promise made to Abraham shall be fulfilled through you. And you’re going to have a worldwide witness. What do we mean as a witness for Christ? A witness is a person who tells what he has seen and has known and experienced. If he goes be on that it is hearsay inadmissible as evidence not effective. And if you have heard God speak to your heart tell you about His Holiness, your sinfulness, and what He did to redeem you must do in repentance and faith to be born-again, then you are the world greatest expert on you and you can tell what you have heard and you have seen and you have experience and that is what it means to be a witness. He didn’t say you’ll be my philosophers. He didn’t say you would be metaphysician. He said, “You will be witnesses.” You’ll tell what you’ve seen, what’ve you heard, what’ve you’ve experience. In II Corinthians 5, verses 17-20, you might like to turn to it. It is a tremendously important Scripture and one you really need to except for yourself. We read these words: “Therefore if any man be in Christ, he is a new creature: old things are passed away; behold all things are become new. And all things are of God, who hath reconciled us to himself by Jesus Christ, and hath given to us the ministry of reconciliation;To wit, that God was in Christ, reconciling the world unto himself, not imputing their trespasses unto them; and hath committed unto us the word of reconciliation. Now then we are ambassadors for Christ, as though God did beseech you by us: we pray you in Christ’s stead, be ye reconciled to God.” That’s the ministry of witness, of ambassadorship, because God the Holy Ghost is upon us then He is beseeching men, though us to be reconciled to be God. And thus you become a representative, if you please, of the court of Heaven. And yours is a ministry of witness. Now every Spirit filled believer is expected to be a witness. And if you’re not, there’s either something wrong with your mind, or your heart. Something is amiss. Because He said, after that “the Holy Ghost has come upon you, you shall be witnesses.” And therefore it is imperative for us to realize that every Spirit filled believer will have that first finger of ministry, that ministry of witness and ambassadorship. Now the second finger, we want to look at that. This is number 13 on your outline. The ministry of authority. I want you turn to Ephesians, the first Chapter. I want you to notice in verse 19 Paul praying for this church, writing to this church at Ephesus declares that God wants the “eyes of our understanding opened by the Holy Spirit that we can realize the exceeding greatness of His power to us-ward who believe, according to the working of His mighty power, which He wrought in Christ when He raised Him from the dead and set Him at His own right hand in the Heavenlies far above all principality and power, and might, and dominion, and every name that is named.” (Eph. 1:18-21) Our union with Christ crucified with Him to have victory over ourselves, buried with Him to have victory over the world. Quicken, raised, seated with Him in the Heavenlies to enforce His victory over principalities and powers. We must understand that this is a part of our ministry and that when we are witnessing we are preparing to enter an area that has not had a witness, it’s our responsibility as the body of Christ to enforce that victory, over all the powers of darkness that have been holding these people in darkness. The ministry of authority how imperative, it is how necessary it is, that you understand that this is part of the ministry of the Spirit filled believer, to learn how to exercise authority in your home of course, over your children, over your business, over the church, over all the interests of your heart, and your life. Many times people have been brought...why do you think the Scriptures says, “Give no place to the Devil.” (Eph. 4:27) Don’t you realize that the reason He said that is, that if you give place to the Devil, he is going to take it. And therefore it is our responsibility to give no place in our personal life and to exercise that authority that He has turned over to His body to enforce His victory over His defeated foe. I recall going into a church some years ago. We were having a Bible and Missionary Conference. They want to support...the pastor wanted missions to be part of their church life they had never done anything for it. And this was down in Dalton, Georgia and it became tighter and tighter the days of the week wore on. And finally I said to the people who were in the morning service, “Tomorrow we are going to spent from the 10 o’clock time we are going to meet for the meeting and I’m going to explain to you what I understand the authority of the body of Christ over Christ defeated foe. And we’re going to have a day of intercession don’t plan to go home at noon if you have to go for children and come right back. We’re going to have a day until we break through on this thing.” Well, that’s what we did. And you know long about 2 or 2:30 in the afternoon a great sense of the Lord’s presence and we had indeed broken through in that church. And everyone begin to praise the Lord and to rejoice that the victory of Calvary had been extended to that little church and that church was going to respond that the deacons that had been in opposition were going to change their attitude, that the church would take on the support of a missionary. And that is exactly what happens. They support a missionary for many, many years with the Sudan Interior Mission. And I believe that if I had not known truth and had shared it with them and we exercised it together, that church would have been locked up just as tight from that time on as it had in the years before. And so the secret for missions the release of people and the release of money have to be in the ministry of authority. Then I am going to name the third finger, fourth digit, and that is the ministry of intercession. The ministry of intercession. An intercessor is the sinner’s legal representative. “Unto Him who loved us,” we read in Revelation “who washed us in His blood and made us to be kings and priests unto God.” (Rev. 1:5,6) And therefore we’re to understand that part of our ministry, once we have been filled with the Spirit of God is the ministry of intercession. And because you have experience the baptize of the Spirit, and are walking in the fullness of the Spirit, you will realize you can’t intercede in this effective way for everyone but you will realize the Spirit of God will lay upon your heart that mission society for which you should intercede those missionaries for whom you should intercede, those unconverted individuals or maybe just one for whom you should intercede. Now what does it mean? Intercede means to go between. Moses was a priest. Moses went from the presence of the people of Israel who had sinned into the presence of God and legally represented them before God. He has made us, “who have been washed in His blood, to be kings and priests unto Him.” Being kings relates to the ministry of authority we’ve just talked about. Being priests relates to the ministry of intercession. To intercede therefore is to go from the presence of sinner into the presence of God. We’re talking about an unconverted person and legally represent that sinner before God. Acknowledge his guilt, acknowledge the justice of his condemnation, that he desires God’s wrath, but then to ask God to work in his heart to affect awaking and conviction and repentance and to bring him to faith. You see God gives the sinner the right to go to Hell and He won’t interrupt that right until either the sinner asks for it or the sinner’s legal representative asks for it. And that’s you as an interceder. Do you have an effective ministry of intercession? Have you learned what it is to intercede? To go between on behalf of your missionary out on the field, or on behalf of the unsaved that are near you, or for the release for people to pray for missions or the release of money for the Lord’s work. Have you understood the necessity of intercession? That’s part of the ministry of the Spirit filled believer. Now all of these have a great deal more. This is just an overview and not exhaustive in any sense, but I want you to realize how extremely important they are. There is another area; I am just beginning to get interested in it. You know I’ve spent a lot of years in studying the Word, but I never spent much time in studying the ministry of angels. But I am beginning to see that intercession, intercession is a way by which angels are activated into warfare in behalf of God and for the glory of Christ. Do you remember when Peter was taken and put in prison by Herrod? And he was there and the church made intercession for him without ceasing. What happen? An angel of the Lord went down and took Peter out release him and brought him back to the people that had been praying for him. Now we are told in Daniel there is a million angels that serve God. And there is a hundred million that stand before him. And I have a feeling that a lot of that hundred million maybe unemployed if intercession is going to give them jobs to do for the glory of God. I’m going to learn how to do it. I would hate to think there are any unemployed angels that might be working to exalt the Lord Jesus Christ to help us finish this task. Well I don’t know much about it, but I do know enough so I can go to the Word and find out what it says. By the way, I found a very good book here while I was here by someone who’d by Moody Bible Institute. Now that’s has to be kosher doesn’t it. Moody Bible Institute had written a book on this and he goes around having seminar on Angelology. I won’t even try to say that again. The study of angels. But it is intercession that releases God to work. And therefore we’d better find out about it. Now leaves the little finger. And now I suppose you might say where in the world are “the gifts of the Spirit?” That’s where they are, right down there. The ministry of the gifts of the Spirit here at the little finger. I find that there are nine specific gifts given by the Spirit of God to the believer not all of them. He divides to every man severally as He wills. And it is important for you to understand what gift ministry you have. I knew of a little lady down in Ashville, North Carolina, who had a most usually ministry from the Lord. She would be worshipping the Lord alone in her room. A little widow woman lived alone. Her husband had been a minster. She just loved God with all her heart. She would wake up in the morning and God would have burdened her about someone, somewhere. That she was to go to that person. So she would walk down to the bus depot, and buy a ticket, get on the bus, go to the town that the Lord had told her about, and then walk or take a taxi up to the house person that she was to see. And she’d knock on the door. And she says, “Hello, this is sister so and so.” “Oh, I’ve just been praying the Lord would send you.” And she had a most remarkable ministry of healing. She was, oh she was a boil, and she was a sore point to the pastor, because she was always telling him how he could improve his ministry. I don’t think he appreciated it very much. But you know the Lord was pleased with her, because she just was available to Him. A strange little ministry that nobody, she’d say, “Don’t tell anybody Brother Reidhead.” I can tell you so I’m not telling, just us know about it. She is with the Lord, so she won’t mind. At any rate, the point was she knew what her ministry was and she did it. I believe every one that has been baptized with the Holy Ghost is going to have some gift ministry, some ministry they are going to be able to perform. But it’s all going to relate to unfinished task. It all relates to witnesses, “Jerusalem, and in all Judaea, and in Samaria, and unto the uttermost part of the earth.” I close, it’s going to take me a little while to do it, don’t get up yet, by telling you about a man I had the joy of knowing and loving, who was with the Sudan Interior Mission. His name was Tommie Titcombe3. Anybody ever of heard of Tommie Titcombe? Thank you God bless you brother. Did you know him? You didn’t know him. Well, he was a great man. He was from Toronto, (originally from England). He went to one semester, I think, of Bible School Nyack and was with Dr. Simpson4 there. His heart was filled; he was filled with the Spirit. He wanted to go missionary, but he couldn’t. He had a widowed mother to take care of. He went back. He prayed through until he found a way. But he didn’t have time to finish his training. But he had gotten hold of the fact that God answers prayer and he had a ministry as a Spirit filled Christian. And he decided to go and the mission wouldn’t accept him. Well, they were not in very much of a position to. When Tommie Titcombe finally got into Nigeria and walked up to the whole missionary staff of the SIM, that by the way was Dr. Andrew P. Stirrett5. He was the other missionary. When Tommie arrived, he had increased the missionary staff by 100%. There were now two of them. And they had a staff meeting, and it was unanimously agreed that one tribe couldn’t have two, when there was a big tribe just a little way off that didn’t have any. So because Dr. Stirrett knew the language where he was, Tommie went over and they had started out together. He didn’t know anything about missions and he didn’t know the language. So that is where he went. He picked up his outfit, his whole outfit for all the time he was going to be in Africa, he carried in a knapsack on his back, and he started out. And when he came to the edge of Yogba country, there was a kind of an effective sign. There was a vine with human skulls. Some of them kind of new and some of them pretty old hanging across the path 3 Tommie Titcombe (1881 – 1968) He became a pioneer missionary to the Yogba people. 4 Albert Benjamin Simpson (1843-1919) founder of The Christian and Missionary Alliance 5 Dr. Andrew P. Stirrett (1865 – 1948) one of the most remarkable men in the Sudan Interior Mission (SIM) history. saying, We’d just assume you didn’t come and if you come be prepared to go to dinner. You’ll be the main course and your skull will be here on the vine. And He said as he went under that the top of his knapsack hit those and he had this ominous sound of these skulls rattling together. He found the main village and the paramount chief, walked in somehow; God had protected him from being waylaid on the path. He walked in, walked up to where the chief was sitting there. He could tell because he was on a little stool. Everybody else was in the ground. And he threw his pack down and said, “I’ve come to live with you. Where am I going to sleep?” He took them so by surprise, that old chief pointed and say, “Well, there is a place over there with that widow. Her husband is dead.” So she slept on the grave of her husband. He buried right in the house. There was a mound of dirt. They said, “But you can’t preach, we don’t want to hear about any other gods, we’ve got enough of our own. You can’t preach here in the village.” So at night he’d get up and go out upon the hills, the village was in a little declivity among the stones, he’d get up there. And Tommie Titcombe had a high pitched voice, really squeaky. He knew that he couldn’t make himself heard from up there down through the thatch on those huts. So he said, “Lord, You have to give me a voice.” So when Tommie Titcombe, this little man about 5’4, would start to speak at Missionary Conferences, his voice was way down, because you see he had leaned over the rocks and God had given him a great voice. And he’d go down through the thatch and the people listened. They never said they heard anything. They never said anything. But that they were listening to the Word of God. And he is telling them about Christ, telling them about repentance, telling about receiving Christ, about God’s love, and finally had twelve believers in that village. He, by this time, had built a little hut out at the edge of the village. And they would meet every morning about 5 o’clock for a couple of hours of prayer and Bible study. One morning when they were there, they heard the people of the village coming chanting war cries. And the chant was we’re going to kill the little Yen-boanby (his name was Titcombe, but they called him Yen-boanby (‘Oyinbo’ Egbe)). In Yogba, Yen-boanby means the little peeled man of Yogba. You see he was white so they figured they would peel him off in stripes to get down there. So all through his years he was a Yen-boanby. We’re going to kill Yen-boanby (Oyinbo) and all the people that believe with him. And they said, “What are we going to do?” He said, “We’re going to stay here and study the Word and pray and praise the Lord.” And they stayed there for thirteen days. And there was never a time when there wasn’t somebody shouting and screaming parading around. And then on the thirteenth day, they had all gone up to the top of another hill. And Tommie said, “Now is the time.” So they left the house, they went down into the village right under the sacrifice tree. And there they stood and waited. And the people with him said, “We’re going get in trouble.” Tommie said, “The Lord is with us. The Lord is with us.” And they started running back. Here they came. They went by the house and it was empty. The doors were open. And then they went running into the village, following the footprints. And they saw them under the spirit tree where all the skulls and bones of sacrifice were tied. And they rushed and Tommie waited until they were just about a spear length away they could throw their spear and reach them. And he stood up and he raised his hand and he said, “In the Name of Jesus Christ, Son of the living God, stop!” And it was as though a cable were stretched across the road. They were leaning over it like this, but they were stopped in a row. A straight row. And there they were. And Tommie took up the chant that they had been making and he gave it Gospel words. And he started to chant the Gospel. He said, “You like that. You like it, open your mouth like a crocodile.” Open their mouths. The witch doctor came up. He had been a little behind he didn’t want to get hurt if there was a fight. The witch doctor came up and he said, “You go!” And Tommie said, “You go. You’re finished here. You couldn’t, thirteen days you couldn’t touch us. Now you go and don’t ever come back.” And he went. And Tommie for about three hours preached the Gospel to them. “Now,” he said, “if any of you would like to receive Christ, tomorrow morning when the sun comes up you be at my house. Wait in the yard until I’m up and I’d talk to you.” He thought maybe a few; he had twelve and thought a few more would come. Listen. When he awaken not at sun up, but about 4:30 before the sun had come up. He heard voices. When the sun was up enough to see, there were over 400 people in his yard. A little group of five. A little group of ten. There was one man alone. There was another. And all he did for the next several days and weeks was to talk to people and find out where they were encourage them, lead them, help them listen to their testimony and the church of Jesus Christ in the Yogba land increased from twelve to 1,500 in six weeks. “After that the Holy Ghost is come upon you, you shall receive power.” Tommie said to me, “Paris, I am going to go back and this will be my last visit. But the mission said I could go back.” He went back and he preached in all the churches. The last Sunday morning, a service like this, he preached to the church. He went over to a missionary’s house to have dinner. Then in the middle of the afternoon he would have to catch his plane back to the States. After they had finished dinner they went out and said, “Well, it’s time to go.” What Tommie didn’t know was the people had started walking. Some of them in the distance areas on Friday, some on Saturday, and some that morning and they had come into this village. And when he went out there, there were almost 20,000 believers. So that he wouldn’t know what was happening, they pushed a truck up against the porch of the mission house where he was. They’d put a chair down there. Tommie came out. A strong man picked him up and set him in the chair. They wouldn’t let the truck start. They started to push it. And 20,000 voices took up the song: “All Hail the Power of Jesus’ Name! Let angels prostrate fall; Bring forth the royal diadem, and crown Him Lord of all.6” Why? Because a little boy/man in Toronto dared to believe that after that “the Holy Ghost upon you, you’ll receive power and you can be a witness for Jesus Christ.” Where you are? Everything this book has to say about so great salvation focuses on WITNESS, until the Gospel has been preached to the ends of the earth. So here we have it, so great salvation including the ministry of the fruit filled life, the ministry of witness, the ministry of authority, the ministry of intercession, ministry of the gifts of the Spirit. Did you hear how many gifts of the Spirit were in operation with Tommie when he went to Yogba land? I’m sure you did. Heavenly Father, the potential in this room this morning three, four times the number that were in the upper room on the day of Pentecost is absolutely enough to totally change the world for Thy dear Son. If we dared to believe that the Lord Jesus met what He said when He declared after that the Holy Ghost has come upon you and you shall receive what went out of Me to heal the woman with the issue of blood. And “you shall be witnesses unto Me the out most part of the earth.” So Father of Jesus, we ask you now that somehow this will all be brought into focus again for us. And we’ll understand that so great salvation was never devised in Thy heart and purchase by the life of Thy dear Son just for our comfort or our convenience. But that we might be to the praise of glory of His grace. May that be realized in this company. For Jesus Sake. Amen. * Reference such as: Delivered at Bethany Fellowship, Minneapolis, MN on Sunday Morning, June 14, 1987 by Paris W. Reidhead, Pastor. ©PRBTMI 1987 6 “All Hail the Power of Jesus’ Name” Words by Edward Perronet, Music by Oliver Holden

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Five Fold Ministry of the Spirit Filled Believer

Paris Reidhead

Paris Reidhead (1919 - 1992)

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