So we’re going to start rolling the internet in just a moment. And so that announcement then for that Sunday, what you want to bring is the kind of food that halfway through the meal you’re going, OK. I love that kind of stuff, gooey stuff.
But nothing that’s going to require a fork or a spoon. That just complicates things. So I know you can figure something out.
For those of you who were not here last Sunday, it would only be fair that I do a little reminiscing of the message that I shared with you last week. So for some of you, it’s going to be sort of a re-report somewhat. And so just be patient with me just for a moment.
Isaiah chapter 64, verse 1. Oh, that you would rend the heavens and come down, that the mountains would tremble before you. Another translation, as the prophet cries out toward heaven, oh, that you would burst from the heavens and come down, how the mountains would quake in your presence. And then I read the story of Jacob, Genesis 28, of how he fell asleep out on the desert floor.
And in his sleep, he suddenly saw heaven opened and a stairway. At some point, we’ve called it a ladder. I think the idea is stairway.
A ladder sounds a little clumsy. And angels were ascending and descending. And I made an effort last week to speak of what I interpret the angels ascending and descending.
The idea that heaven is opened, that the angels are demonstrating for us that it’s a two-way thing, that the Lord is coming down among us. And the invitation is the angels are going back up. And you’re welcome.
It was a prophetic word that the day is coming when heaven’s going to be open. Because to the people of that day and of that time, heaven was a closed thing to them. They had to wait upon the Lord.
And the Lord to them was fierce. He made tremendous demands. He laid out all of these laws.
And the word of God tells us, especially in the New Testament, that those laws were a schooling for humanity to help us to come to understand. He’s holy, and there’s such a gap between the Lord and us. Because we are desperately wicked, and he is holy.
And so heaven was really a closed thing to the people. And the Holy Spirit would come upon certain individuals by times, but only for a very short season, only for a short time. When Moses was instructed by the Lord, gather 70 elders.
And I’m going to do something special among them. The word of God says that the Lord took that which was in Moses. So Moses’ anointing was not depleted.
The anointing that was put upon the 70 elders was extremely similar to the anointing that was on Moses. So it says that the Lord took of the anointing that was on Moses and put it upon them. And for that very short time, those elders prophesied, and there’s no record of them ever prophesying again.
So we have this great chasm between heaven and humanity. And by the way, when Jacob awoke out of that sleep, realizing that he had experienced something that seemed so real, to him it wasn’t really a dream. It was a reality, a reality to the point where he said, this wasn’t just a dream.
This is none other than the house of God. This is the gate of heaven. And that was a prophetic word that comes about later on in the New Testament when Jesus said to Nathanael.
Nathanael was very, very taken up with the fact that Jesus said when he met this man named Nathanael, Jesus said, now there is a man that I appreciate, a man in whom there is no guile, no arrogance. And Nathanael says, how do you think you know me? Well, I saw you under the fig tree there a bit ago. And I repeat this, that Nathanael was not close by.
It’s not like, because Nathanael was very surprised. He said, you saw me? You saw me? In other words, I wasn’t close enough for you to see me. He had been some distance away.
But he was so impressed with the fact that Jesus had seen him as Jesus saw him in his spirit, he said, you’ve got to be the Messiah. Jesus replies, you’re taken with the fact that I announced that to you of what I know about you. The hour is coming when the heavens will open, and you’ll see the angels ascending and descending because of the Lord Jesus himself.
So we know that what Jacob saw back in Genesis was a prophetic picture of this, the church age, because now the heavens are opened and the angels are ascending and descending that we’re aware now from the word of God that we’re surrounded by angels. I don’t tell too many people this because just because to some people, this is outlandish. A very lovely lady who’s now under specific doctor’s care in the city of Toronto.
I’d love very much to go and see her. Just a wonderful woman of God. She was on staff at the Queensway Cathedral for some years, virtually adored by anyone that knew her.
And I was preaching at Brayside Camp, if you know where that is. And it was a meeting where the presence of God was, can I use the word so thick? It was so magnetic. It was so powerful.
I felt that I was in a very special place as I was preaching to this great crowd. And I invited the whole crowd to come around the altar and without hesitation, they came, they gathered and their spirit of God, what was profoundly doing transformation in people’s hearts and minds. And that night, it just happened as I was walking in the cool of the evening, the service was over and June spotted me and she came running over, Pastor David, Pastor David.
She said, I believe you’ll appreciate this. She said, I had a vision during that altar time. She said, there was an angel at every corner of that building in that sanctuary.
And she said, their wings were stretched over like this. And she said, there was a cloud of glory just hanging over the church. Now to people who are not accustomed to talking about the Holy Spirit, and they have no sense that he’s the same Christ yesterday, today and forever, and that he has not withdrawn his presence and he’s not withdrawn his power.
He’s not withdrawn the sense of what God can do in his word. That the day of Pentecost was a foregone conclusion that the Holy Spirit descended upon the church that day and he is not withdrawn. So the Holy Spirit today is still powerful and still moving.
I didn’t doubt what June saw. And well, how many people saw it? It doesn’t matter as far as I know that she was the only one that saw this. Why would she be allowed to see that? Maybe for her encouragement.
And as it turned out, it was my encouragement. The heavens have been opened. I believe that I, maybe not everybody was here at the time.
I told it recently about people who got saved on a Sunday morning in a church service in London, Ontario. I happened to be at their house the following week. It was a family of five adults.
And they wanted to know how it was that me and the church leadership had managed to get a beautiful, sweet-smelling fragrance to float among the people. These five adults literally talking on the way home said, I wonder how they did that. And there was no question.
All five of them had an aroma experience. And so when I went to their house, they had just given their hearts to Christ. I went to their house to talk to them.
We need to know, how did you do that? That was such a wonderful thing. I said, I don’t know what you’re talking about. Well, we all smelled that wonderful fragrance.
I said, maybe it was perfume on somebody nearby. Oh no, no, it was everywhere. It was in that whole room.
Didn’t other people tell you about it? I said, nobody said a word. And then one of them, I think it was the mother. She said, did we smell the aroma of his presence? I said, I can’t argue that.
They said, we’ve got to tell everyone. I said, don’t do that. But people should know.
I said, no, we don’t want people coming to our church looking for an aroma. You know, they tell us that there are enough fragments left over of the ark to rebuild it. Hello? That people believe, I’ve got this little fragment.
Look at it. People have gone to church services clear across this country because they heard in a certain church that there was gold dust floating in the air. Another church said, somebody reported that they were in a church service and there were feathers floating around.
Had to be the angels’ feathers. No, that whole story is nothing but feathers. We’re not looking for that kind of stuff.
We don’t need that. We have the reality of an open heaven where the Lord comes and he ministers among us. And I have experienced this where people have come to me and said, this was my very first time in this church.
And the moment I walked into the entrance of the church, I sensed something magnificent and wonderful. I sensed the presence of God. What is that? Heaven is open.
You don’t hear stories like that in the Old Testament where common people, just the everyday peasants whom we are, you know, you had Daniel and the lions then. There was only one Daniel. You had Moses who cast the rod upon the sea and all of the other people saying, you brought us out here to die, didn’t you? Like the presence and the power of the Lord was imposed on certain individuals.
But Joel prophesied and said, there’s coming a day when the Lord will manifest himself in such a glorious way that a spirit will come upon everyone. It was indicated it’ll be in the last days when the spirit of God will be poured upon. The terminology there is upon all flesh.
Even your sons and your daughters will prophesy. Heaven has been opened. This is a glorious hour.
I do have stories. I’m sure I told you the story about David Krakana and his auntie, whatever her name was. I just got an email from her this week.
Mina Boshaw. And how David had come from Kirkland Lake, come to our little church, a tiny, tiny church, about 30 people, and he got gloriously saved. The next Sunday night, we took him to Manitoulin Island to a camp meeting, and there God baptized him with the Holy Ghost and power.
Now, there are churches in this town. If they heard the rest of this story, they’d say, that’s why we have no use for the people in that church. They’re all cornflakes.
But I was there. I know, I know, I know. This man gets baptized in the Holy Spirit, and he began to speak a language that he had never learned.
So he got so excited, and he thought, I’ve gotta tell my wife, whatever her name was, I’ve gotta call her, and I’ve gotta tell her what Jesus has done, because you see, they were raised Greek Orthodox. And he went out to the phone. Now, you gotta picture this.
This is Manitoulin Camp in the 1960s, and here was a phone on a post outside. I tell my grandchildren, and they think I knew Noah. You get out to the phone, you picked up this thing, you go like this, and you turn this crank.
And all of a sudden, you hear a crank at the other end of the phone. Take them all, how may I direct your call? And David tried to tell her what he wanted her to do, but he couldn’t speak English. He’s talking in tongues.
I was there. And finally, he got control, and he said, honey, he said, I’ve got Jesus in my heart. And then he starts rambling off in tongues.
She booked passage on a bus. She raced to her little town, Espanola, from Kirkland Lake to rescue her husband. She figured that these crackpots in the little Pentecostal church had done something nuts to him.
No heaven had opened. And on a Sunday night, the very Sunday she arrived, they got to the church before I did. I had left the building open.
In that town, you could leave everything open. Just leave the keys in your car. Somebody might need to borrow it.
And so I left the door open. When I got to the church at 20 minutes to seven, Margaret, I just remember her name, Margaret is just inside the door. This was backwards for me.
When heaven opens up, your theology sometimes gets set aside. She’s kneeling at a little, the place only sat 60, as long as they were all skinny people. Sorry.
And here’s little Margaret. She’s got her chubby little arms like this. And she’s talking in tongues.
I thought, I didn’t give the altar call yet. The choir didn’t sing yet. You gotta say they’re sinners, but this can’t happen.
She was speaking in tongues. And before the service was over, there was a lady from the town. Her name was Lucy Shepherd.
That was an English name that she had adopted to. But her real name, I never learned it. You see, she was pure Ojibwe.
And she had been taught and trained that people like us are cornflakes. And her brother, White Owl, who was a pastor of a church just down the road, it was a brethren church, wonderful people. They think we’re cornflakes.
And so he had said to her, don’t you dare go near that church, they’re crazy. She came into the building. I was swept off my feet by hearing David praying at the altar, Margaret praying at that door.
April came, I never saw her again that evening. She left me, everybody left me. And at about 11 o’clock, I came out of my little place.
The prayer of the place is empty. I never started a service, I never finished a service. Open heaven, the whole thing happened.
But I remember as I was kneeling and praying, I heard this David, suddenly his language changed, just like that. He’s speaking a language you’d never known, but suddenly his language changed. And to me, it sounded like it was Mandarin.
I didn’t know. But the next day, a man from the church called me and said, can we meet for coffee? I went to see him. And he said, that little chubby guy, he was at the altar.
He sure was crying up a storm there. I said, yeah. He said, all of a sudden his language changed.
I said, I noticed. He said, what language was he speaking? I said, we were in a Chinese restaurant. I said, I’m pretty sure it was Mandarin.
He said, oh, I wouldn’t know. I said, I eat a lot of Chinese food, I know. He said, by the way, Lucy’s been on the phone to my wife.
She’s crying all day. She wants to see the pastor. So I went to Lucy’s house and I found her sitting there crying.
She had the Bible laying open in front of her. She’s been reading Acts chapter two. And I said, Lucy, are you okay? No, I’m not.
She said, I was told by my brother White Owl, don’t you ever go near that church. How am I ever gonna tell him what I did? I said, what’d you do? I went there last night. I wouldn’t have known.
My head’s buried up here praying through. And I said, what happened? She said, who was that little man at the altar? I said, his name is David Krakana. He’s from Kirkland Lake.
Is he a churchman? I said, well, he’s Greek Orthodox, that’s all I know. And he’s afraid he’s gonna have to tell the priest up in Kirkland and he’ll get, I don’t know what they’ll do to him. And she said, where did you learn Ojibwe? I said, no, no, no, he’s from Kirkland Lake and he’s Greek.
No, she said, he spoke Ojibwe. I said, what did he say? She said, he called me by my secret princess name that was given to me because my father was the chief of the Ojibwe tribe. I have a princess name.
She said, nobody knows that name. But that little man suddenly started speaking my language. She said, not like you would if I trained you and taught you Ojibwe.
She said, you’d never learn, you’d never lose your English twang. But she said, he spoke Ojibwe just like my brother White Owl would. I said, what did he say? She said, he spoke to me and said, now go your way and tell the good news.
This is of me. She said, I came home, the phone was ringing. I picked up the phone and it was White Owl.
He said, Lucy, I have to tell you something. I have to apologize. This afternoon in our three o’clock service, he said, I was teaching them out of the book of Acts.
I was in Acts chapter two. I warned the people, no, don’t get excited. This doesn’t happen anymore.
And he said, I’d known sooner said that. And all of a sudden I was, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And he said, I started weeping uncontrollably.
He said, Lucy, I think I’m Pentecostal, please forgive me. I was with Tom Murphy at the back. We were on a motorcycle trip a year, well, a year ago last fall.
And we’re running along highway 17. I stopped in the town of Massey with the group. I said to everybody, the next town is Espanola.
God just spoke to me. I got to stop in that town. Tom, when I peeled off from that trip with you guys, I said, I’ll catch up to you in Sudbury.
I rolled into that town. I found Mina and Lynn Boshaw, the auntie of the story. And she said, as I sat in their quaint cottage sitting out on Lang Lake, she said, Pastor Dave, please tell me you still tell the story of my nephew who spoke in Ojibwe and how the revival up in this part of the country began at that altar in our church.
The heavens are open. And Jacob said, I found it, I found it, I found it. This is it, the gates of heaven.
I got so much in my notes. I’m learning how to preach all over again and I’m using notes. And this is rather scary because I’ve got how many pages.
I’m trying to learn a new way to do it. Jesus promised the Holy Spirit to us. This is New Testament.
This is gate of heaven message by Jesus. He said, if you love me, keep my commandments. And if you do that, I’ll talk to the father and he will send you someone just like me.
Even the spirit of truth. He’ll not just be with you, but he’ll be in you. But don’t be worried and don’t be careful for this because you already know him.
Jesus had told somebody on another occasion, you know me, you know the father. He says, when he, the Holy Spirit comes, you’ll feel like you’ve known him all along because to know me is to know him. Jesus said, the spirit of God will come.
It’s intriguing to me that on the day of Pentecost, they’re all in that place. And this never occurred to me till recently. There’s a couple of phenomena that happens there.
Something that we can’t wrap our heads around. This is the birthday of the church, truly the birthday of the church, right? Now, Jesus had already said after he rose again from the dead, before he died, before he went to the cross, he had said on a day, a special day of celebration. They were celebrating with a drink offering.
And as the drink offering is being celebrated in a very historical manner, Jesus said, if anybody thirsts, it says he cried out in the temple, if anyone thirsts, let him drink of me and out of his innermost being will flow rivers of living water. Folks, how do we take that and bring it into 2025? Jesus said, if any man, what did he mean? Any man that was in the temple, any man that was around in the first century, and if any man and any woman in 2025 is in the church on Victoria Avenue, if anyone thirsts, let him drink of me and out of their innermost being will flow rivers of living water. And it was the apostle Peter on the day of Pentecost who said, this promise is unto you and to your children and to your grandchildren and for as many as the Lord our God shall call to the cross.
Heaven is opened. I’ve never preached on this in my whole life. You never heard me preach like this, this message at Crossroads Cathedral, Betty.
This is a new phenomenon to me. I’m just so taken. So there were two elements that happened.
Suddenly, suddenly there was a wind and a fire, Genesis, there lays a man that the Lord God had just configured out of the dust of the ground, but he was not yet a living soul. And God, this is so graphic to me. I see Adam laying there and all of a sudden there’s the Lord’s face.
And as God comes down closer and closer, God breathed a wind and as God breathed out, Adam breathed in. And at that moment, because of that wind from God, that creation became a living soul, the wind of God. The Pentecost, a wind.
What was the source of that wind? Well, what was the source of the wind when Moses and the children of Israel looking at the Red Sea? I’ve seen this commentary on scholars, people who dig and question, they go there with cameras. And when you see the very place, they know where this chariot’s crossed. They know where the children of Israel crossed the water.
It isn’t any wonder that they fell trapped because there’s a break in the mountains there. So the children of Israel have come to the end. On the left is a mountain, on the right is a mountain.
Behind them is the chariots coming from the Egyptians and there they stand. And Moses raises up that great rod and he goes like this toward the water and God breathed. God breathed.
The same breath that caused Adam to become a living soul was the breath that caused Israel to be saved that day. But there’s another day, isn’t there? There’s another day and it’s found in the book of Ezekiel where the Lord God says to the prophet as he’s looking at this big desert place and it’s covered with the bones of men that had died there in the battle and their bones have been picked clean by the vultures. There’s these bones scattered upon the ground and the Lord God says to Ezekiel, let me pause for a moment.
This pile of bones is indicative at the time. This is how God spoke to prophets. It’s how he spoke to his people.
The bones represented the dry bones of the Israelites who had departed from the ways of the Lord. And so the vultures of the world had picked their bones clean. And so the Lord God says to the prophet, prophet, do you believe these bones can live? They were an army, now they’re dry bones.
God asks Ezekiel this question about Israel. Can these bones live? The hand of the Lord came upon me and brought me out of the spirit, in the spirit of the Lord and set me down in the midst of the valley. It was full of bones.
He caused me to pass by them all around. He had me survey, he had me look at all over. Son of man, can these bones live? I answered, oh Lord God, only you know.
Again, the Lord speaks to the prophet. Prophesy to the bones, like the bones have ears. Prophesy to these bones.
And here’s what you’ll say, oh dry bones, hear the word of the Lord. Thus says the Lord God to these bones, surely I will cause breath to enter into you and you shall live. What’s God done to Israel already? They had no land, scattered all over the world.
They’d been butchered. They’d been baked alive in ovens. They’d gone through terrors.
Was there any hope? They’re the one nation who lost their property, who lost their country and they never gave up. They were crying, Lord God, where are you? We’re the chosen people. And that little singer on, fiddler on the roof, says to the Lord, oh Lord God, you’ll call us the chosen people.
Just for a moment, maybe you could call somebody else the chosen people. Can these bones live? Surely I will cause breath. This is what the prophet was told to say to the bones.
I will cause breath to enter into you and you’ll live. I will put sinew on you, that’s muscle. I’ll put flesh on you.
I’ll cover you with skin, put breath in you. Why does the Lord go through all of this? Because this was not a cartoon. This was not a Hollywood drama.
This was real. I’m gonna cause your bones to rise. I’m gonna put muscles to control those bones.
I’m gonna put flesh, I’m gonna cover you with skin. And you shall live. And then you’ll know that I am the Lord.
So I prophesied as I was commanded. And as I prophesied, acts two, there was a noise. Acts two, suddenly there was a sound.
I’m gonna put my own word. Suddenly in Acts chapter two, there was a sound that I believe Adam heard when God breathed into his nostrils. Suddenly there was a sound, a noise, a rattling.
The bones came together bone to bone. Indeed I looked and there was muscle and flesh and then skin, but there was no breath yet. He said to me, prophesy to the breath.
Prophesy son of man, say to the breath. Thus says the Lord God, come from the four winds, oh breath and breathe on these slain that they may live. So I prophesied as he commended me and breath came into them and they lived.
And they stood on their feet, an exceeding great army. Breathe on me breath of God. There are churches nearby, I’ve spoken to their board.
I will not reveal to you which church. I had an opportunity, it was an invitation. I won’t say the exact words because that doesn’t matter but I indicated to them.
I know you’re going through a discouraging time. Your congregation, this is going back about three years ago. I said your congregation is old, just like our congregation.
I said we’re all made up of white hair. I said our denomination tried to close our church. But those 12 or 15 people at the time said, no you don’t.
I’m gonna put some new words in here okay. That congregation and there’s a couple of people here today who were part of that. Those people as much as said to the PAOC.
This isn’t to put down the PAOC. People who watch something from a far away lose a sense of their reality and the possibilities. They came in their nice cars with their laptops and they said it’s time to sell this.
You people can go somewhere. We’re gonna put the money from this place where it’ll do some good. And I said to this little group of leadership of nearby church, I said we’re not giving up and I hope you won’t.
I said God is still the same yesterday, today and forever. I didn’t use these words but I wanted to. But out of respect I didn’t get into it but I wanted to say to them.
Acts chapter two, they were in one place and they were of one accord. You know it’s hard to get people, it’s not hard to get people all into one place. You can fill a football stadium but to get them all into one accord ain’t gonna happen.
The people on this side of the stadium are wearing red shirts. They’re shouting for the red team. Ones over here are shouting for the blue team.
They’re all in one place but they’re not of one accord. They’re not of the same opinion. They’re not of the same desire.
But on the day of Pentecost there were 120 people. It’s hard to get a board of 10. I’ve been there to get 10 men together in a room and decide something that is really, really, really important and there’d be one stick in the mud who’d say, nah, I’m against it.
I’d say, you’re against everything. We were all in the boardroom together and one man said, no, it’s not time to build a new church and the rest said, we gotta go ahead. We went ahead and built a church and within six months we had to go to two Sunday morning services.
The guy dragged his feet, hello. It’s hard to get everybody not just in one place but become one accord. 120 people were gathered in an upper room and they were of one accord because the spirit of God was about to birth something.
And suddenly there was a sound came out of heaven. God was blowing on the new army of bones. And I have a message I wish I could share with every church in this community as far as we could go.
Get somehow of one accord and pray that God will breathe into your church. It’s not time to close churches. It’s time to open churches.
It’s time to not believe what now the federal government wants to believe. They want us out of business. They want us finished.
It ain’t over, it ain’t over, it ain’t over. God’s gonna breathe life and he is breathing life. Hope I’m not scaring the visitors today.
Is this kind of like an anomaly that means unusual? Does he always rant, scream? Y’all see his vein sticking out of his neck? Somebody’s gonna say, he’s not feeling very well today. He’s usually crazier than this. Oh, I gotta quit.
Okay, okay, okay. I’m gonna tell you a story that was told to me by a man who’s gone to be with the Lord and his name was Moses. Truly, Moses Vae, V-E-G-H.
Moses Vae had invited me and a few of my friends to go and visit him in his church in Finley, Ohio. We went and he told us this story. He said, I was preaching in a little church just outside of Windsor.
He said it was a very small church, wooden floors, quite antique-ish. And he said, I was relating a story that I got from my relatives who at a time were living in Minneapolis, Minnesota. So he said, David, I was telling this story to a group of people in a little church just outside of Windsor.
He said, I was relating to them the story that I had heard. As he unfolded this story, I wept like a baby. I’ve cried and said, oh God, send a revival.
Oh God, breathe life into your church. Restore unto us the joy of salvation. Teach us again to drink of Jesus so that out of our innermost being.
That’s a promise, you can’t write it off. Oh, that was just for that. No, it’s for now.
Drink of me and out of your innermost being will flow rivers. Not one river, Siegfried, rivers, a multitude of rivers. And one of those rivers is divine healing.
Woo! We don’t believe in the rivers, brother. Here we do. Here we do.
Moses told the story as it was related to him. It isn’t that long ago, within the last 100 years. I can’t pinpoint it for you.
I heard this story in the 70s, 1970s. He said that some people had rented this auditorium, a beautiful big place that usually was for concerts, symphony orchestras, wonderful choirs. It was renowned.
Somebody had rented the place to have meetings. And the story went on that the power of the Holy Spirit, this was not denominational. These were people from the Methodists and the Baptists and the Presbyterians and the yeses and the no.
They all came and something began to happen in this place to the point where they weren’t shutting the doors. The meetings were going 24 hours a day. The people were singing in that place.
There was no song leader. Tim, they did not have a guitar. They did not have an owl to say, we need to do this, we need to do that.
The presence of the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit was the leader. You ever been in a service like that? The Holy Spirit just moves like a gentle breeze.
And as the breeze goes across the grain, the grain has moved and another move and another move. I saw that graphically visiting a farmer’s field in London and the Spirit of God said to me, that’s what happens when God’s people worship. The Holy Spirit causes the people, hallelujah, hallelujah.
You see, the Holy Spirit is the conductor of his people who are a symphony as we worship the wind of God, breeze and flows. So these meetings were going on, Nick, 24 hours a day. And the story went on.
People were getting healed, people were getting saved, thousands were now trying to get in. And the story went on. Moses said that as people be walking along the street, they hear this wonderful music and they’d say, oh, there’s a big symphony orchestra.
Listen, there’s a choir. I never heard there was something going. And as they came close to place, they became magnetized by what they heard.
They walked in and as soon as they stepped in, the people were just singing and worshiping Jesus and tears began to flow. People were getting saved. Nobody was preaching.
The power, the presence of the Lord Jesus was so powerful. It was like the day of Pentecost. Suddenly there was a sound from heaven as of a rushing, mighty, Moses told us in Finley, Ohio.
He said, I was telling this story. And he said, I paused and said, please don’t doubt this. I met people who claimed that they had experienced it.
And he said, suddenly there was a man sitting halfway back in this little pine board floor church who started banging his cane on the floor and speaking with a Scandinavian accent with tears running down his cheeks as he stood to his feet, trying to get everybody’s attention. Bang, bang, bang. And he waved his cane in the air.
He said, I were there. Betty, 91 or 90? You are not. You don’t look a day over 90.
Betty, it’s not too late. I were there, the old boy said. I experienced it.
I was in that little church in Espanola when David Krakana, the Greek guy, spoke pure Ojibwe. And a revival started spreading across Sudbury, Espanola. It was in that same time that something happened in the big Pentecostal church in Sudbury.
The pastor was Homer Cantillon. I don’t think I told you this one. A student from Laurentian, I’m gonna finish.
I don’t want to finish. A student came from Laurentian. He was somewhat a piece of notoriety in that school because the kid was so brilliant.
He already knew seven, something like seven languages and he could speak them fluently. And he was a linguistics student. So he studied languages, the languages of the world.
I don’t know where that takes you. But he heard about a church, Pentecostal church, where people speak new languages that they’ve never learned and they do it simultaneously. And they claim that the spirit of God is.
So he’s intrigued. He thought somebody learns a language. I have to study for months to learn a language and they just get it like that.
So this guy, I almost said his name. I can’t remember it, old age. He showed up in the church and he brought his notepad and he’s got a pen.
He’s thinking, I don’t know how this works, but I want to know. So all the songs that he were singing, he’s scribbling down some of the words. There’s gotta be some magic here.
Well, how’s this work? How’s this work? And then the preacher got up and he preached and he’s writing down the essence of what he’s picking up. And then the preacher said, come forward, let’s pray around the altar. I don’t know all the details, but I got this from the pastor, Homer Candelon, who’s gone to glory now.
I would trust this guy with my bank account and my wife’s earrings. I would trust him with all of it. Well, I don’t just give my bank account.
You have to give your earrings. This guy walked forward amongst the people, just pretending like, I’m here, I’m part of the deal. He comes up and he’s moving around.
He noticed the pastors going along and coming down close and praying with people. So, oh, he can do that. And he’s coming along listening.
You can hear these languages. He grabbed his clipboard. He starts scribbling down what this person was saying.
He’s a linguistics expert, right? So he can phonetically write things down, write things down. He got all excited. All of a sudden he thought he had enough, dashed out the door, raced back.
He spent the night, this is his story. He spent the night in the university, Laurentian University, in the library, looking linguistics, looking through books, trying to find something that matched what he’d written down. He couldn’t find anything.
In the morning, the librarian came, who was a linguistics professor of that place, walked in, sat down and said, what are you doing here? I’ve been here all night. Well, what’s going on? Well, and he told the story. Let me have a look at your clipboard.
He looked at it and he said, hey, hey, hey, see that one? I know that one right there. And it tells this young guy, that’s the language of such and such a tribe. Oh, and this one here, you check that out.
And so this guy starts flipping through the manuals, the book, whatever they’ve got, and sure enough, there it is. He went again the next Sunday. And that Sunday, he goes in and he’s watching all this.
And he had a couple of friends with him saying, watch, watch, you’re not gonna believe this. And so you know how that went. He went to the altar that Sunday night and he surrendered his life to Christ, sat down and told the pastor into the evening hours that night, what did he experience in the church? The pastor had no idea that these people at this altar were praying in languages that the Lord had inspired and they were somewhat understandable.
Like the pastor was blown away. And this guy saying, you don’t know this. He said, I just preached the word of God.
He said, all it says in Acts chapter two, that there were others present who understood what was going on. I don’t have any other explanation than that. This guy’s blown away.
The next Sunday, he brought a whole bunch of carload. And the thing ends up, that church called Glad Tidings in Sudbury started sending a school bus over to the university. Whoever wants to go over and be a part of the circus at the Glad Tidings church.
And so now there’s a busload of students. Every Sunday night, they’re going to the altar. They’re getting saved.
Linguistic students or math students or historical students. They were all experiencing the open heaven. The wind was blowing.
You know what? I’m inspired enough. I think I said expired. I meant inspired.
I am inspired enough to go till supper. But you don’t pay me to preach that long. So I’m going to quit.
Would you come again, Linda? Are you there? Where are you, sweetie? And can we have that song up again? Breathe on me. The breath that I’m experienced with. The breath of God.
When the waters parted at the Red Sea, it could have happened any which where. At the risk of sounding rude, Moses could have spat into the water and God could have used that. I know that sounds rude.
I’m just saying, what was it about the wind? It’s consistent. The wind of God. The breath of God.
And people are meeting in churches all over this town and all through this valley. They walk in, they sing us a couple of old hymns. The preacher gives a nice little story about three things you need to know about.
Frosty the snowman, I don’t know. And they leave. They leave the same way they came in.
That’s not an accusation, that’s not an accusation. It’s just reality, it’s just reality. What draws them to the church? Well, my grandmother came here, my mom and dad came here.
It’s what we do. And it gives people a sort of a sense of comfort that at least they’re acknowledging the creator. There’s some value in that.
But there’s great value. Old hymns like this, old hymns like this are deep and special. Stand with me.
♪ Breathe on me breath of God ♪ ♪ Fill me with life anew ♪ ♪ That I may love with your perfect love ♪ ♪ And do breathe on me breath of God ♪ ♪ Fill me with life anew ♪ ♪ That I may love with your perfect love ♪ ♪ And do ♪ Could we sing it one more time and then we’ll close. ♪ Breathe on me breath of God ♪ ♪ Fill me with life that I may love ♪ Gracious father, I think the majority of the people in this service have heard better messages than this about the Holy Spirit. More profound, more deeply sought out.
And yet here we are. Help us Lord not to become so acquainted with Sunday morning at 11, so acquainted with 12.15. I cry, breathe on me. Oh, breath of God, help me to acknowledge what prophetic vision Jacob saw and then how Jesus said, the hours come when you will see angels ascending, descending upon the sun.
This is that hour Lord, heaven is opened. Angels may very well have been standing in the four corners of this room today. We don’t understand, we don’t perceive necessarily the true value of angels attending and being nearby.
It’s enough to know, it’s enough to know. He sends his angels and gives them charge over us. Ministers of wind and fire, ministers of wind and fire.
I wanna say a holy reverend, wow, ministers of wind and fire. We do not pray to the angels. We feel forbidden to do such a thing.
We don’t need a mediator, we can speak directly to the Christ, the Lord Jesus, the risen one seated at the right hand of the father. Dear Jesus, you said, I’ll talk to the father, he’ll send the comforter. Comforter, we know that you’re here today.
You’re with each and every one of us. Thank you, breath of God, holy spirit. Holy spirit, paraclete, helper, the administrator of the church of the Lord Jesus Christ.
Thank you, holy spirit. Now be with us as we go from this place. Amen.
