Great Cloudof Witnesses

Session 8

Moody’s Dramatic Moment

Winter 1871-72“My heart was not in the work of begging. I could not appeal [for donations]. I was crying all the time that God would fill me with His Spirit. Well, one day, in the city of New York—oh, what a day!—I cannot describe it, I seldom refer to it; it is almost too sacred an experience to name…. I can only say that God revealed Himself to me, and I had such an experience of His love that I had to ask Him to stay His hand. “I went to preaching again. The sermons were not different; I did not present any new truths, and yet hundreds were converted. I would not now be placed back where I was before that blessed experience if you should give me all the world.”

D. L. Moody (in later years)

D. L. Moody at New York’s Hippodrome (1876)

D. L. Moody

“God has got a good many children who have just barely got life, but no power for service…. The Holy Ghost coming upon them with power is distinct and separate from conversion. If the Scripture doesn’t teach it, I am ready to correct it.… I believe we should accomplish more in one week than we should in years if we had only this fresh baptism…. “A great many think because they have been filled once, they are going to be full for all time after; but O, my friends, we are leaky vessels, and have to be kept right under the fountain all the time in order to keep full…. Let us keep near Him.”

At a British YMCA

“At length a delegation of young men from the YMCA of Sunderland waited upon the evangelists at their lodgings, and one of them [Robert Boyd] tells the story of their reception in the following fashion: ‘ … On the following Sunday night, when I got to the rooms of the Young Men’s Christian Association, I found the meeting on fire. The young men were speaking with tongues, prophesying. What on earth did it all mean? Only that Moody had been addressing them that afternoon.’”

Agricultural Hall, London

One of Moody’s Last Sermons

“I believe Pentecost was but a specimen day. I think the church has made this woeful mistake that Pentecost was a miracle not to be repeated.”

Charles Haddon Spurgeon(1834 – 1892)

Spurgeon in London’s Crystal Palace

“Ships Without Wind”

“Without the Spirit of God we can do nothing. We are as ships without wind or chariots without steeds. Like branches without sap, we are withered. Like coals without fire, we are useless.”

—Charles Spurgeon

“Take the Sacred Tide”“True prayer is ‘praying in the Holy Ghost’ (Jude 1:20). The Spirit makes an atmosphere around every living prayer; within that circle, prayer lives and prevails; outside of it, prayer is a dead formality.”

“Put out to sea in holy enterprise when the heavenly wind is with you. Take the sacred tide at its flood. Meetings should be increased when you feel the Spirit of God is blessing them. The truth should be pressed home more earnestly than ever when the Lord is opening ears and hearts to accept it. You will soon know when there is dew about; prize the gracious visitation.”

A. J. Gordon(1836 – 1895)

Samuel Chadwick (1860 – 1932)

“The work of God is not by might of men or by the power of men but by his Spirit. It is by him the truth convicts and converts, sanctifies and saves. The philosophies of men fail, but the Word of God in the demonstration of the Spirit prevails. Our wants are many, and our faults innumerable, but they are all comprehended in our lack of the Holy Ghost. We want nothing but the fire.”

John MacNeil (1854 – 1896)

John MacNeil

“Let us get back to Pentecostal methods. The trouble is that the churches have lost their way to that ‘upper room.’ Let a church only find her way back there and obtain her Pentecost; let pulpit and pew be baptized with the Holy Ghost and with fire, and the people will come running in to see the burning.”

R. A. Torrey (1856 – 1928)

“The baptism with the Holy Spirit is a definite experience of which one may and ought to know whether he has received it or not.” (Here he cites Luke 24:49; Acts 1:4; 8:15-16; 19:2.)