What Difference Does the Holy Spirit Make? — A.W. Tozer

The Disciples’ Commission and the Need to Wait for the Spirit

Now, our Lord had told his disciples that they had a huge job before them. That job was to preach the gospel to every creature, to go everywhere throughout the world and tell them that they could be saved by faith in Jesus Christ, and yet he forbade them to go.

He said, you are to go, and when they started, he said, no, don't go. There must have been a compelling reason for his telling them to wait. Tonight I want to talk about the difference. What difference does the Holy Spirit make?

We will look a little at who these disciples were to whom Jesus spoke, and what difference the new potency made when it came. Now when I am preaching all about the Holy Spirit, when I am thinking about the power of the Holy Spirit, I may sometimes say it.

But when I refer to the Holy Spirit himself, I can only say he. For the Holy Spirit is a person as much as Jesus is a person, so that when you hear me say it, you will know that I am referring to the power of the Spirit, but when I refer to the Spirit as such, I call him he, because the Spirit is, as I explained the first night, a person.

The Disciples’ Conversion and Preparation Before Pentecost

Who were these to whom the Spirit spoke, or to whom Jesus, our Lord, spoke? Right here, let me tell you a little trick that people have. It's the neatest little trick imaginable for getting out of the tight spot when it comes to the necessity for being filled with the Spirit.

We push conversion down and down and down, and make it to be less and less and less, to make room for the deeper work of grace. Then when we get the deeper work of grace, we don't have any more than some of our old Baptist and Presbyterian and Methodist fathers had when they had their first initial experience of being born again.

Now I don't want to do that at all. I don't want to make a lot of sinners out of these disciples, in order that I later might make room for their being converted. That's a good way to dodge. But brother and sister, one of these days you and I will be where dodges won't work.

We had better not dodge now. We had better face up to things while we can. Who were these to whom Jesus spoke? Well, they were his called and chosen disciples. Now I'm not going to stop and quote verses on this, but I'm going to give you what the scripture says about these disciples.

They had been given a long course of instruction by no less a teacher than the Lord Jesus Christ, himself. You see, we are told that these were very ignorant people, these disciples. Let me tell you that they had been graduated from the greatest Bible school in the world.

Jesus had taught them for three and a half years. Then they possessed and had received divine authority. They had an authority that very few people now would dare to try to exercise. He said, go everywhere, and when you go, cast out the devils and heal the sick and take all my authority.

He gave it to these people. And he didn't give his authority to people who had no spiritual experience. You can be sure of that. And these persons to whom Jesus said, tarry until ye be endued with power, they knew Jesus Christ in a warm, intimate way.

They knew him living, and then they knew him dead, and then they knew him living again. They had been with him three years and over. Then they had seen him die on a cross, then they had seen him after he had risen from the dead.

So they knew him living, dead, and living again. And they had shown evidence of being truly converted persons. You know, some people say they were converted when the Spirit came upon them at Pentecost.

I don't believe that at all. It's a modern twist that people have given doctrine in order to make room for their cold carnality. They had shown evidence of being truly converted men, and Christ had declared them to be so.

Now if you doubt that, let me read to you here from the prayer that Jesus made about these disciples. He said, Now they have known that all things whatsoever thou hast given me are of thee. For I have given them thy words, and they have received them, and have known surely that I came out from thee, and they believed that thou didst send me.

I pray for them, he said. Then he said, While I was with them, I kept them in thy name, those that thou gavest me, I kept, and none of them is lost but the son of perdition. Then he said in verse 14, I have given them thy word, and the world has hated them, because they are not of the world, even as I am not of the world.

These were the things Jesus said to his Father about his disciples that he had gathered around him there. Surely that didn't sound like the Lord talking about a lot of sinners. Well, Christ had outlined for them a program of world evangelization, and told them, as I read in Acts, and as you have read many times in Acts, that ye shall receive the power of the Holy Spirit coming upon you, and ye shall be witnesses unto me in Jerusalem and unto the uttermost parts of the earth.

The Holy Spirit as a New Spiritual Endowment

Now, he said they were to enter a new era. We're always praying for revival. What is praying for revival? What do we hope to have when we have a revival? I don't know what some people want, but I suppose generally we are hoping to enter a new spiritual era.

Now, God was to introduce a change of dispensation, but he was not to introduce a change of dispensation apart from a stepped-up and elevated spiritual experience. The Lord doesn't have calendars that he pulls off in January and puts up February and shift and change dispensationally like that.

He has dispensations, but those dispensations have to do with people, not with calendars. They have to do with spiritual experience, not with calendars. So when they were to enter a new era, it was not only to be a differential, a changeover from one dispensation to another, but it was to be introduced by the coming down of a new fladus from above.

Something was to come that hadn't been there before, and it was to enter into them and possess them, and was to bring God to them in a way that he wasn't with them then, and was to enter them and dwell there.

Now, that's the difference between Christianity and all of the Oriental cults and the all-cult religions. The all-cult religions try to wake up what you already have, and Christianity says what you have isn't enough, I'm going to send an endowment from above that shall enter you and be to you what you lack.

There is the difference. They say, wake up your solar plexus. That's one religion. They say, wake up your solar plexus. I don't even know where mine is, I couldn't locate the thing. But then they say, stir up the thing that is in you, and they expect, what is the use?

If there were four or five lions coming, you couldn't say to a little French poodle, wake up the lion in you. Why, that wouldn't work, they'd shoo the poor little fellow up and swallow him, hair cut and all, because a French poodle just isn't sufficient for the lion.

If God wanted a French poodle to fight a lion, he'd have to put the heart of a lion and the body of a lion in the poodle. He'd have to make him bigger and stronger than his opponent, and that's exactly what the Holy Ghost says he does.

But the all-cult religions say, concentrate and free your mind and release the creative powers that lie in you, and you'll be all right. Well, the simple fact is, creative powers don't lie in us, we begin to die the moment we're born.

I've often wondered why babies cry just as soon as they're born, I don't know, possibly it could be that they don't want to die. They start to die the minute they're born, and they die right on till they die.

You and I don't have hidden potentials and creative impulses and all that kind of stuff in us. We walk around on the earth barely able to keep going, and as we get older, gravitation will pull, slowly drags us down and drags us down and humps us over, and finally we give up one day with a sigh and go back to Mother Earth.

That's the kind of potential we have. We have potential to be a corpse. So God Almighty says, I'm not wanting to wake up the power that lies in you, ye shall receive the power of the Holy Spirit coming upon you.

That's a different thing altogether, my friend. If we'd had only to be waked up, the Lord would simply have gone around waking us up. But we needed more than to be waked up, we needed to be endued with power from on high.

Well, they were to enter a new era, and it was to mark something grandly new and rich spiritual condition, and they were to have this. Now what difference did this make? What difference did it make to these disciples?

What the Holy Spirit Did Not Add to the Disciples

Now let me point out some things that it didn't do. We must rule out as evidence all the blessings that they'd had before, because obviously anything they'd had before, the Spirit didn't bring when he came.

For instance, they were true disciples, and they had a consciousness of true discipleship. They were the Lord's own loving disciples. That didn't come at any cost, that had been before. They were converted and forgiven, and they had fellowship with Christ, as I have said.

And they had something a lot of people, a lot of men and ministers now don't have. They had the gift of preaching. They went around everywhere preaching, and they had power to work miracles, and so such a power that they came back, saying, while Lord even the devils are under our power when we go out.

The Lord rebuked them for pride and told them to be glad they're named or written in heaven, but he didn't say that they didn't have the power, he knew they did, he gave it to them. So let's remember that.

Some say if you're filled with the Spirit, you'll have miracles, forgetting that they had miracles before they were filled with the Spirit. As I shall try to show in the weeks ahead, the power of the Holy Spirit is not necessary to make miracle workers.

The power of the Holy Spirit is something infinitely higher and grander and more wonderful than that. They worked miracles before the Spirit ever came. Well, now, what difference did the Holy Spirit make?

Testing the Seven Differences by Scripture

That is, here were the disciples in the book of John. Then there was a sudden change, and the disciples were in the book of Acts, and spilled over into the epistles and all over to the book of Revelation.

Now what difference was there? Was there a difference? There was a time when they were pre-Pentecost. Then came the outpouring of the Spirit, and they were post-Pentecost. What was the difference? Was there any difference?

Well, now, do you want to take down seven things that the Holy Spirit did for them and check with the word of God, eh? They want you to check with the scripture on this. I wouldn't respect you if you believed me without the word.

I wouldn't respect you, because I believe in being a good Berean. I believe, like my good Plymouth brethren and friends, in searching the scriptures to see if these things be true. And if they are true, amen.

If they are not true, then it wouldn't make any difference who said they were. I could get up here and talk from now on to the end of this century, and if I weren't preaching according to the scriptures, there wouldn't be a bit of truth in what I have said.

Some of my friends, good-humoredly and some a little bit severely, have called me a mystic. Well, I'd like to say this about any mysticism I may suppose to have, be to have. If an archangel from heaven were to come and were to start giving me, telling me, teaching me and giving me instruction, I'd ask him for the text.

I'd say, where does it say that in the Bible? I want to know. And I would insist that it was according to the scriptures, because I do not believe in any extra-scriptural teachings, nor any anti-scriptural teachings, or any sub-scriptural teachings.

I think we ought to put the emphasis where God puts it and continue to put it there, and to expound the scriptures and stay by the scriptures. I wouldn't, no matter if I saw a light above the light of the sun, I'd keep my mouth shut about it till I checked with Daniel and Revelation and the rest of the scriptures to see if it had any basis in truth.

And if it didn't, I'd think I'd just eaten something I shouldn't, and I wouldn't say anything about it, because I don't believe in anything that is unscriptural or that is anti-scriptural. Well, now, number one is a sudden, brilliant consciousness of God's being actually present.

A New Awareness of God’s Immediate Presence

They had this. They knew Jesus and they loved Jesus, but now when the Holy Spirit came upon them, they had a sudden consciousness, brilliant consciousness, of God's being actually present. A veil was riven and they felt God, and a sense of acute God-consciousness was on them from that time on.

They knew themselves to be in immediate contact with another world. And, my brethren, that's just exactly what the average gospel church doesn't have today. We're not in contact with another world. In fact, they're very happily in contact with this one.

But those disciples were otherworldly. Now, that hyphenated expression, otherworldly, a lot of liberals have made fun of that. They say, you're so everlastingly good you're no good, you're so heavenly you're no good on earth.

And they've done a lot of talk like that. But they'd better be doing something else, for the day will come when God will judge every man out of his own mouth. And I believe in being otherworldly. That is, I believe that a sense of God and heaven ought to be upon us.

We ought to live in that, day by day, whether we're businessmen or farmers or schoolteachers or whatever we are, housewives, we ought to have this sense of heaven upon us. Now I can tell you that only the Holy Spirit can give and bring and impart and maintain that sense of the divine presence.

There was a sudden freshness of seeing and hearing and feeling that came on these disciples, as if a cloud had been rolled back. And the city of God, before unsuspected and unseen, now suddenly becomes clearly visible before their eyes.

And there was a word that entered then, and is found in the book of Acts, and it's the word wonder. So they wondered. The word wonder occurs so much. The Church these days hasn't got any sense of wonder.

Have you noticed that? No sense of wonder, men. You can explain everything, as I tried to say once before, but there's a constant note, a joyous surprise in the book of Acts and on over into the epistles.

They were being surprised by God. Surprised. There was a note of wonder. The Lord was doing, they were amazed at what God was doing. He was blessing them to a point where he was amazing them. One dear man said, God is so good to me that it scares me.

That was Dr. R .R. Brown. I'm sure he's been here at some time, rather, and preached to you. There's only one Dr. R .R. And that was an expression he used once in my presence. He said, God's so good to me that it amazes me and frightens me.

He said the word frighten rather than amaze, but that's what I mean. That came to these disciples and it is a spirit, it is a quality that lies upon them from that time on. Then the second difference the Holy Spirit made was it gave them the joy of the Holy Ghost.

The Joy of the Holy Ghost

That is, a change of emotional tone came at once. In the four Gospels there isn't too much joy there. There's instruction and there's a lot of subdued and quiet joy, I suppose, or at least peace. But there isn't the joy there.

But when they got over into the book of Acts, they changed from the minor key into the major. Have you ever heard the old Jewish songs sung in a major key? I like to hear them, incidentally, I like to hear them sung in the minor key, I mean, minor key.

They're kind of sad and gloomy, and if you sing them long enough I suppose you'd break down. But the point is that they're joyless, they groan and moan and plead and long, but they never arrive at anything.

I'm thinking about God's dear people always praying for joy and praying for light and praying for every benediction, and yet they don't get it. They will want to pray for it on Sunday all day long, and then Sunday night go home and sigh and go to bed and give up and come back and do the same thing over again.

And the nearest thing that illustrates that is a story the old Greeks told. They said that, what was that fellow's name now, was it Tantalus? No, it couldn't have been, no, I don't remember his name, it doesn't matter.

He didn't exist anyhow, he was only a figment of their imagination. They said that old Zeus punished him by sending him to limbo, or whatever kind of hell the Greeks had. And they said, here's what he had to do down there all through eternity.

They gave him a great big rock and told him to roll it to the top of the hill. And he rolled it, sweating and struggling and pushing and bruising his shoulder. He rolled the rock up just within an inch or two of the top, and just when he got near the top he slipped and fell and the rock rolled back to the bottom and he had to go back and do it all over again.

And they said he would have that to do through eternity as a punishment for his sin. Well, brother, it seems to me that the fellow that thought that out had a little preview of hell. For the frustration, the disappointment, the labor without reward that must be there, surely they must have had some vision of hell.

But I hate to think that it gets among the Christians, we ought to know better. Christians work themselves up on Sunday and then go back down and start all over down on a lower level on Monday, and perhaps they work themselves up a little Wednesday night.

But the point is, it just never seems to stick. The bell loses its tongue, its clapper, it doesn't ring anymore. Well the happiness of these disciples was the happiness of the Holy Ghost. I said this morning that God sang, and the scripture says that we are to be filled with the Spirit singing.

Now do you remember that, you choir members, ought to remember that. Be filled with the Spirit singing and making melody in your hearts unto the Lord. Choirs oughtn't to sing for churches, they ought to sing for the Lord, and that's the church here.

It's the way it should be and that's the way it is when the Holy Ghost is in control. We are to be filled with the Holy Ghost singing unto the Lord, and then the people here, you see, then they're blessed while we sing unto the Lord.

Now that won't cost you anything at all, that was just a little thought I had there. But it's scriptural. And the happiness of these people was not the happiness of Adam, it was not the happiness of nature.

You know, when we try to work nature up to happiness, a child can be happy. We have a little, well, excuse me, I ought not to mention my grandchildren, it gets boresome. But number 16 is named Tommy, and he's about eight months old and he hasn't got a tooth in his head yet and he can't walk.

He stands up and then cries because he can't remember how to sit down, but he is the most joyful little fellow outside of that experience, he's the most joyful little fellow in all the world. You look at him across the room and he breaks out into a smile you wouldn't believe one eight-month-old could produce a smile that big and broad and juicy and full of fun.

But he has it. But when he gets a little older and troubles begin to come and he grows up and gets married and pays taxes and has troubles, brother, that fades away. And we work up a joy of some sort, we try to get joy in our hearts, and we try it.

We try it, you know, in dance halls, we try it in rock and roll sessions. A few times I've looked at television, I don't own one, but when I'm around the hotel I look at one, because you always have them, and I've seen some of those young people rocking and rolling, and I never saw a happy face yet.

Have you? Never a happy face. There's always, they seem to be in a cold trance of some sort. Well that, that is the effort to work Adam up into joy, and Adam isn't basically happy because Adam has to die and go back to earth again and go to hell unless he's converted through the blood.

So the human race is not basically happy. We're anything but happy, so we work ourselves up. But the joy of the Holy Ghost isn't worked up. The joy of the Holy Ghost is that which comes to the heart, it's a post-resurrection joy.

You see, Christ came out of the grave and the spirit of the risen Christ comes back to his people, and the joy we have is the joy that looks back on death. Not the joy that we have in spite of the fact we got to die, but the joy we have as a result of the fact that in Christ we already died and rose and there's no death out there for the true child of God.

The Holy Spirit’s Power to Penetrate Through Preaching

Well, there was the joy of the Holy Ghost, and then there was the third, the power of their words to penetrate and arrest. Now I don't have to tell you that there's a difference between the penetrating power of words.

Even the same words, the same sentence spoken by one man will put you under conviction spoken by another man and leaves you completely cold. That is the difference, the Holy Spirit's difference. He said, Ye shall be endued with power, and the word power there, as I tried to explain, I think the first day means ability to do.

Now when Peter preached at Pentecost, they were stricken in their hearts when they heard him. They were pierced, they were stricken through in their hearts. And they said, Men and brethren, what shall we do?

Now if you look at the second chapter of Acts, you will see what is said in their hearts and said unto Peter, Men and brethren, what shall we do? Now that pricking in the heart, I don't quote Greek very often because it bores the audience and gives the impression a man knows more than he does.

But when it says in the book of John that the soldier pierced the heart of Jesus, the word they used, pierced, is not as strong a word as the word pricked. It's a stronger word in the original. In other words, the words of Peter at Pentecost went further into the hearts of the hearers than the spear went into the heart of Jesus.

The word is put in Greek, the Holy Spirit penetrated, he penetrated. And that is one of the works of the Holy Spirit. He comes and he penetrates, he sharpens the point of the arrows of the man of God.

Moody said he preached the same sermons after he was filled with the Spirit. He said, I didn't change sermons, but oh, what a difference, because he had now the power that penetrated. Before he simply tried to reason people, beg them and coax them to come.

Now there was a divine penetration that went straight through, past their reasoning power and to their heart. Now they had forth a clear sense of the reality of everything. You notice that in the four Gospels they were asking questions, and in the book of Acts they were answering questions.

That's the difference, and that's the difference between a Spirit-filled man and one that isn't. The man of God, the preacher, that isn't Spirit-filled, makes a great deal, and one of his phrases is likely to be, and now let us ask ourselves this question.

Have you ever heard that in the pulpit? Now let us ask ourselves, I've often wondered why the Reverend wanted to ask himself a question. Why didn't he settle at his home before he came to church? But always asking questions, and now what shall we say?

Always asking questions. But brother, God never put a preacher in the pulpit to ask questions, he put a preacher in the pulpit to answer questions. He put him there with authority to stand up in the name of God and speak and answer questions.

Back in the four Gospels they were always asking questions. Lord shall it be, Lord how shall it be, Lord who, Lord what? But when they got to the book of Acts, that is the second chapter, they began to answer questions.

And they stood with authority, and the same Peter that sneaked around and warmed his hand at the world's fire and lied to the little woman that recognized his accent, why, he was standing boldly to preach the word of the Lord.

It was the difference, you see, there was authority there. That's our trouble. Nowadays, I don't want to be unkind, and I know that we can't all be like Billy Nicholson or Finney, but also I know there ought to be a lot more authority in the pulpit than there is.

A preacher ought to reign from his pulpit as a king from his throne. Not by law, not by regulations, or not by board meetings and annual meetings only, though I believe in them too, but he ought to by moral ascendancy.

When a man of God stands to speak, he ought to have the authority of God on him so he makes the people responsible to listen to him. And when they don't listen to him, they are accountable to God for turning down the divine word.

Instead of that, we have a lot of tabby cats with their claws carefully trimmed in the seminaries, and they can paw over their congregations and never scratch them at all. They've had their claws trimmed, and they're just as soft and sweet.

I'll never forget, I was a working young fellow, and I joined a church. I was converted, as I told you, from hearing a fellow preach on the street, and then I joined the nearest church. I didn't know any better.

And the first time I shook hands with a pastor, what was like shaking hands with a three-month-old baby. He hadn't done a lick of work since he was 18, I'm sure of it, because he had a soft hand. Remember, he was preaching one time about a harp.

There was a harpist there, and he took for his text or took for his subject a harp of a thousand strings. And so he talked a while and didn't say much, but he said it beautifully. And then he ended up by saying, So I am sure that the soul of mine is the harp of a thousand strings.

And I went home. And I didn't hear any harp. I heard that one that was up there, but I didn't hear any authority, I didn't hear any authority. I sat down in the church one time with a sweet, smooth, gentle brother with soft hands off, you know, the Italian balm rubbed in.

And he came over and he said, I thank you for looking in on us tonight. I was just, I couldn't amount to anything, you know, and he was a hypocrite. He didn't. He didn't care whether I looked in or not.

Well, no authority there, no authority. I believe in the authority of God, and I believe if a man doesn't have it, he ought to go away somewhere and wait until he gets the authority, and then stand up to speak if he has to begin by preaching on a soapbox on a street corner, or go to a rescue mission and preach with authority.

Separation from the World and Spiritual Authority

They had it in those days. When they stood up, there was authority there. And then a sharp separation between them and the world, I suppose I ought to skip that, because on their part they were seeing another world, you know.

They were looking at another world, they really saw another world. Nowadays, evangelical Christianity is trying to convert this world to the Church, and bring it in head over heels, world and all, unregenerated, uncleansed, unshriven, unbaptized, unsanctified, bring the world right into the Church.

And if it can just get a big shot to say something nice about the Church, they rush into print, usually in bad English, and tell about this fellow, what nice things he said. I don't give a hoop about big shots, because I serve a living Savior, and Jesus Christ is Lord of Lords and King of Kings, and he picked up a farmer from the hills of Pennsylvania and anointed my head with oil, and said, Go out and tell them what I've been telling them.

And I don't care whether people listen, but they know a prophet has been among them. And I believe every man ought to have this authority, this separation that will make him see another world. And if there's any converting, it's going to be a one-way street.

Prayer, Love for Scripture, and the Spirit’s Illumination

The world is going to come to us, we're not going to the world. Say it loud, say your amens loud. I want people to know that I've got a few on my side. And then another thing. They took a great delight in prayer.

You know, the only one that could stay awake praying in the Gospels was Jesus. Others prayed or tried to pray, and they came to him and said, Teach us to pray. But he knew you couldn't teach anybody to pray.

They're giving courses on how to pray. How ridiculous. Utterly ridiculous. It's like giving a course on how to fall in love, a course on how to pray. No, when the Holy Spirit comes, he takes the things of God and translates them into language our hearts understand.

And even if we don't know the will of God, the Holy Ghost does, and he prays with groanings that can't be uttered. And these disciples were praying people. They're always praying somewhere, always off somewhere praying, these disciples.

Before that, they'd fall asleep, but now nobody was sleeping. They had a great delight in prayer and a passionate love for the scriptures. Now that's the seventh thought. They loved the scriptures. Did you notice that Jesus quoted the scriptures in the Gospels, but the disciples quoted the scriptures in the Acts?

That was the difference. That was it. Ah, I remember a dear Saint of God, she said once years ago, she said, when I was filled with the Spirit, she said, I loved the scripture so much that if I could have gotten more of the word of God inside of me by eating it, I would have eaten the book.

She said, I literally would have taken and eaten it, leather and everything, if I could have gotten more of the book inside of my heart. Well, you don't get it by eating it, although Ezekiel was told to eat a roll, you remember.

So the woman had some scriptural authority over what she said. But the word of God is sweet to the Spirit-filled person because the Spirit wrote the scriptures. You can't read the scriptures with the Spirit of Adam, for they were inspired by the Spirit of God.

The Spirit of the world doesn't appreciate the scriptures, it's the Spirit of God that appreciates the scriptures. Give you more inward divine illumination on the meaning of the text than all the commentators that ever commentated.

Yet I have commentaries. I'm not talking against things, I'm only trying to show you that if you have everything and have not the fulness of the Holy Ghost, you're nothing. But when you have the Holy Spirit, then God can use anything and everything.

He uses boards and ladies' praying groups and commentators and all the rest. But we try to get along without the Holy Spirit, and that's the terrible thing. How different it is today, the contrast. We live by hearsay, a vague sense of reality, and the wonder is missing.

The Moravian Revival and the Loving Nearness of Christ

I want to tell you a little story. I'm not a story-telling preacher, as a rule. But this is history. I don't have any books on 1921 stories that use your sermons. I don't have them. I got one one time and sent it to me to be reviewed, and I reviewed it unfavorably and gave it away.

But I'll tell you, this happened back in the days of the Moravians, oh, you've heard about it, how in the days of the Moravians they were just quiet people like you and me. But they waited one day, one morning, and suddenly, suddenly as they waited and prepared their hearts, something came which they called a sense of the loving nearness of the Savior instantaneously bestowed.

A loving nearness of the Savior instantaneously bestowed. And do you know that when the Holy Spirit is allowed, when he does have particular intimacy with a human soul, he never talks about himself, he talks about the Lord Jesus Christ.

For he came to reveal Jesus, and though it was the Holy Ghost that fell on that Moravian crowd there in 1727, they said not a sense of the loving nearness of the Spirit, they said a sense of the loving nearness of the Savior instantaneously bestowed.

Zinzendorf said that group, 75 of them, that group of German Christians arose and went out from that building so happy that they did not know whether they were on earth or had already gone to heaven. And the historian says that the result of that was that in 20 short years that bunch of Spirit-filled Moravians did more for world missions than all the Church put together had done in 200 years.

They made missionaries out of them. And in Herrnhut they went up and had a prayer chamber and they divided it into, was it four hours? I've forgotten the length of time, but they had enough people so that they kept prayer going 24 hours a day for 100 years.

Somebody says, what happened? Well I'll tell you what happened. Moravians got a man converted by the name of Charles Wesley, and they got another man converted by the name of John Wesley. John Wesley was crossing the ocean from the United States to England, and they came into a storm and even the sailors got scared.

But he said there was one little group that wasn't scared. They huddled together and sang hymns with shining faces. They were the Moravians. And he said to them, why aren't you praying, why are you so happy?