Firebrands for Christ 👉
E. M. Bounds, a Methodist minister of a hundred years ago: 👉👉👉
“The power of Christ’s dispensation is a fiery pulpit—not a learned pulpit, not a popular pulpit, not an eloquent pulpit, but a pulpit on fire with the Holy Ghost.
This power is not the mere iteration or reiteration of truth well learned or well told, but it is the enabling force to declare revealed truth with superhuman authority. The preacher must have the power given by direct connection with God.
God does not mix this power with other solutions to give it efficiency. It is not some or much of the Holy Ghost mixed with some or much of other ingredients. This power is from the Holy Ghost singular and alone. It is the one thing to be sought and secured, the one thing whose importance discredits all other things, the one thing that stands alone unrivaled and supreme.”
Jim Cymbala, Pastor of the Brooklyn Tabernacle 👉👉👉
“I don’t know about you, but I would rather run the risk of some people even mocking me (as in Acts 2) than to short change the gospel of Christ and the Holy Spirit. I would rather be labeled a fanatic along with the apostles that to build a reputation on slickness. At least they were able to produce converts who “devoted themselves to the apostles’ teaching and to the fellowship, to the breaking of bread and to prayer” (v. 42), which is more than a lot of modern congregations can claim. We have institutionalized backsliddenness to the point that the book of Acts shocks us. Some even make up theological excuses by saying, “All that ‘power stuff’ was just for back then before they had all 66 books of the Bible completed.” What a pathetic cop-out. What a rejection of the very Bible they boast in.”
Oh GOD, give us men and women who will stand behind that sacred pulpit after, and only after, they have sat with You.
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