Seymour’s Prayer For Revival
Later Brother Parham was preaching in Texas. A black man by the name of Tom Seymour came into his meeting. Parham related his experience to Brother Tom and myself. There was a deep hunger in that black man’s soul. He worked as a waiter in a restaurant to support himself while preaching to a church of his own people. He knew God as his Saviour and Sanctifier. He knew the power of God to heal. But as he listened to Parham, he became convinced of a bigger thing—the baptismof the Holy Ghost. He went on to Los Angeles without receiving it, but he said he was determined to preach all of God he knew to the people.
He said, “Before I met Parham, such a hunger to have more of God was in my heart that I prayed for five hours a day for two and a half years. I got to Los Angeles, and there the hunger was not less but more. I prayed, ‘God, what can I do?’ The Spirit said, ‘Pray more. There are better things to be had in spiritual life, but they must be sought out with faith and prayer.’ ‘But Lord, I am praying five hours a day now.’ I increased my hours of prayer to seven, and prayed on for a year and a half more. I prayed to God to give me what Parham preached, the real Holy Ghost and fire with tongues and love and power of God like the apostles had.”
God had put such a hunger into that man’s heart that when the fire of God came it glorified him. I do not believe any other man in modem times had a more wonderful deluge of God in his life than God gave to that dear fellow, and the glory and power of a real Pentecost swept the world.
That black man preached to my congregation of ten thousand people when the glory and power of God was upon his spirit, and men shook and trembled and cried to God. God was in him.
“Blessed are they which do hunger, for they shall be filled.”
I wonder what we are hungering for. Have we a real divine hunger, something our soul is asking for? If you have, God will answer; God will answer. By every law of the Spirit that men know, the answer is due to come. It will come! Bless God, it will come. It will come in more ways than you ever dreamed of. God is not confined to manifesting Himself in tongues and interpretations alone.
When I was a lad, I accompanied my father on a visit to the office of John A. McCall, the great insurance man. We were taken to McCall’s office in his private elevator. It was the first time I had ever been in a great office building and ridden in an elevator, and I held my breath until the thing stopped. Then we stepped into his office, the most beautiful office I ever had beheld. The rugs were so thick I was afraid I would go through the floor when I stepped on them. His desk was a marvel, pure mahogany, and on the top of his desk, inlaid in mother-of-pearl, was his name, written in script. It was so magnificent that in my boyish soul I said, “I am going to have an office just like this, and a desk like that with my name in it when I ama man.”
I did not know until I was in my thirtieth year how strong that was in my nature. It almost seemed to be forgotten. I was invited to Chicago to join an association of men who were establishing a life insurance company. They said, “Lake, we want you to be manager of this association.” We discussed the matter for three weeks until they came to my terms, and finally the president said, “Step into this office. I want to show you something. We have a surprise for you.” I stepped into an office which was the exact duplicate of John A. McCall’s office, and there in the center was a desk of pure mahogany. Instead of the name of John A. McCall, it was John G. Lake inscribed in mother-of-pearl. I had never spoken of that soul-desire to a person in the world.
There is something in the call of a soul that is creative. It brings things to pass. When the supreme desire of your heart cries out to God, all the spiritual energy of your nature and the powers of God that come to you begin to concentrate and work toward that goal. Then there comes into being that which your soul calls for by the conscious creative exercise of faith; that is the creative action of faith—you and God working out and evidencing the power of creative desire.
I am a believer in the partnership of man and God. I believe there is a fusing, a symphonizing of the soul of God and man; the two become one. Not a saved man and a glorious God. But man fused into God and God fused into man, one divine creation.
When Moses stood at the Red Sea, it was not Moses and God; it was just God. God had said,
Thou shalt be as God.” Not different from God, but Thou shalt be as God.” We are continually saying, “Lord, make me a channel,” leaving ourselves separated from God in our thought, and expecting God to pour His spiritual power and blessing through us. That is not the highest thing. There is a greater experience than that in God’s Word. It is where you and God become one. Your whole body, your whole soul, your whole mind your whole heart, your whole spirit in the rhythm and fusion and symphony of the eternal God. One in heart, one in mind, one in soul—you and God as one.
When Moses stood at the Red Sea, he tried to back out of that relationship God was establishing and tried to throw the responsibility back on God. He was overwhelmed; it was too marvelous. Surely God must not have meant it! But God knew. When Moses began to recognize himself as an individual, and God as another, it was offensive to God. He thought he could back up and pray to God to do something for him, the way God used to do in the old relationship, but he could not do it.
The idea that Moses would want to leave that place of close fellowship with Him, that inner relationship, that divine symphony of Moses’ soul and God’s, was offensive to God. And God said, “Wherefore criest thou unto me?” In other words,’ shut up your praying.
“But lift thou up thy rod, and stretch out thine hand over the sea, And Divide It . . (Exodus 14:15, 16).
God did not say, “Moses, you stretch forth your hand, and I will divide the sea.” He said, “Stretch out thine hand over the sea, and divide it.”
God was saying, “Moses, you and I are one; stretch forth your hand and divide the sea. You have all there is of Me, and I have all there is of you. We are one and indivisible.” God and man become one. The heart of man, the mind of man, the soul of man enters into God, and God into him. The divine fires of the eternal Christ, by the Holy Ghost, come from heaven, and the lightnings of Jesus flash through that life. The power of Christ invigorates, manifests and demonstrates through that relationship.
God revealed that to my soul in the days when I first went to Africa, within six weeks after my feet touched the soil, and before God had given me a' white church to preach in. I said, “Lord, when you give me a church in which to preach this gospel, ! will preach the highest and holiest thing God’s Spirit reveals to my heart. I do not care if anybody believes it or sees it; I am going to preach the vision the Son of God puts in my soul.”
He put within me the vision of the glorified Christ and the glorified Christian—not a man simply saved from sin, but a man sanctified by God’s power, infilled with His Spirit, created with and in Jesus Christ. One in nature, character, and substance. And my heart began to preach it, my mouth gave the message, my soul sent forth the word, and my spirit called such that wanted to be that character of man to come to the feet of the Son of God and receive His blessing and power.
The thing that was in my soul fired Dan Von Vuuren’s soul and kindled the faith of the people. Wherever it spread it set men on fire for God. But in every new experience men have to be tested and established through enduring. Some grew very weary; others never had that high vision. But they had tongues, and because they had tongues they felt equal to those who had died to themselves. They had more nerve and less experience, and they dragged the standard down. God has led themthrough the furnace.
Friends, we need a coming up into God. This church worldwide needs to come up into God. We have been traveling around in a circle and burying our heads in the ground. We have had our eyes on the ground, instead of up in the clouds, up at the throne. Look up to the glorified One! If you want to see His bleeding hands, look to heaven where He is to see them. Do not look to Calvary to see Him. He is the risen, glorified Son of God in heaven, with all power and all authority, with the keys of hell and death! He is the divine authority, the eternal, overcoming manifestation of God in heaven. You and the glorified Christ as one are the divine manifestation of God. Come up to the throne, dear ones. Let the throne life and the throne love and the throne power and the throne spirit and the Holy Ghost in heaven possess you, and you will be a new man in Christ Jesus. And your tread will be the march of the conqueror, your crown the crown of glory, and your power the power of God.
Two months ago the fire of God descended on my soul at Spokane and God said, “Africa and the world again.” I am getting ready in my soul, not to give the old message with the old fire, but the new message with the new fire—not only to ask men to be good and go to heaven when they die, but to be God-like in character, nature, and substance and being. God is priming our souls. He is going to send forth the living waters and call by experience the new order of Knights of the Morning Star into being and action.