The sad truth is what a “sinning religion” says abut the sacrifice of Jesus’ death. He did not die to cover our sins but to cleanse our sins. His sacrifice was perfect and is provided to set the obedient sinner free. We cannot be saints and sinners at the same time. When someone says I am a “saved sinner” they are blaspheming the death of God’s Only Begotten Son. The Holy Ghost said, ” Follow peace with all men, and holiness, without which no man shall see the Lord…” (Hebrews 12:14)

Over and over again I have heard condemnation of Biblical Holiness or preaching against sin called legalism, puritanical, negative, and other critical names. Many leaders in Pentecostal, Charismatic, and Evangelical circles can have spiritual fellowship with almost any religious group all the way to the Catholics, but the Holiness crowd is repulsive to them. This alone will give you a good gauge of the source of this compromise. Watch what’s happening in the PTL-type churches. Fornication, as well as divorce and remarriage, used to be almost non-existent in our Pentecostal and Evangelical church world. Now, our church denominations are full of preachers, who have changed wives since being in the ministry. The Presbyterian, Methodist, and Baptist revivals of the past would close down the theaters, dance halls, beer joints, etc., but now our church members (even the Pentecostals) have decided these things are okay. These are the reasons we can know that old-time Holiness is still right and Biblical. The crowd that hates it is our best witness to its reality.

It is important to understand the Biblical doctrines of purity and freedom of sins. The repentant sinner is instantaneously delivered from sins of the external flesh life. Lying, cheating, drinking strong drink, and habits of tobacco are gone. Fornication or breaking God’s commandments is stripped from the life of a truly “Born Again” person. Paul said plainly, “Therefore if any man be in Christ, he is a new creature: old things are passed away; behold, all things are become new.” (II Corinthians 5:17)

The next step for a young Christian is the surrender of the inner will so Christ can manifest His life in that soul. This is the growth in Holiness called in the Bible “Sanctification.” Changing us from glory to glory is a work of the grace that prepares the life for service and brings conviction to every person this new life of Christ’s nature touches. “But we all, with open face beholding as in a glass the glory of the Lord, are changed into the same image from glory to glory, even as by the Spirit of the Lord.” (II Corinthians 3:18) The testimonies that follow are a picture of these transformed lives that begin the pursuit of a Godly testimony and mighty power in prayer and testimony.

Let’s read some testimonies of past greats who learned the joy of Holiness and became soul winners in the process. All of these testimonies come from a book, Holiness and Power, by A.M. Hill. Catherine Booth (Salvation Army) gives an address on Holiness, “I think it must be self-evident to everyone present that it is the most important question that can possibly occupy the mind of man, How much like God can we be? How near to God can we come on earth preparatory to our being perfectly like him, and living, as it were, in his very heart for ever and ever in heaven? … The mystery of mysteries to me is how anyone, with any measure of the Spirit of God, can help looking at the blessing of holiness and saying, ‘Well, even if it does seem too great for attainment on earth, it is very beautiful and very blessed; I wish I could attain it.’ … And yet, alas! We do not find it so. In a great many instances the very first thing professing Christians do is to resist and reject this doctrine of holiness, as if it were the most foul thing on earth.”

Hannah Whitall Smith writes: “I was converted in my twenty-sixth year, in Philadelphia. Never since that time have I doubted my conversion, or had a moment’s fear about my acceptance with God, or my present possession of eternal life. My guarded education in the Society of Friends has separated me from the vain fashions and amusements of the world, and my chief interests were all centered around the religion of Jesus Christ as the only object really worthy of serious thought or attention.

“But my heart was ill at ease. That I grew in knowledge I could not deny; but neither could I deny that I did not grow in grace; and, at the end of eight years of my Christian life, I was forced to make the sorrowful admission that I had not even as much power over sin as when I was first converted. In the presence of temptation, I found myself weakness itself. It was not my outward walk that caused me sorrow, though I can see now that was far from what I ought to have been; but it was the sins of my heart that troubled me – coldness, deadness, want of Christian love, intellectual apprehension of truth without any corresponding moral effects, roots of bitterness, want of a meek and quiet spirit – all those inward sins over which the children of God are so often caused to mourn. I could not but see that sin still had more or less dominion over me, and I did not come up to the Bible standard. The Christian life contemplated there was a life of victory and triumph; my life was one of failure and defeat. The commands to be holy and blameless, the sons of God without rebuke, seemed almost a mockery to me. At times I went through agonies of conflict in my efforts to bring about a different state of things. I resolved, I prayed, I wrestled, I strove; I lashed myself up into the belief that all I held most dear in life could continue to be mine only as I attained to more faithfulness and devotedness of walk. But all was vain, and it seemed worse than vain. ‘When I would do good, evil was present with me.’ I could see no hope of deliverance but in death. At times a new discovery of truth would seem to carry me above temptation, and my heart would rejoice at the thought that now at last I had found the secret of living. But after awhile, as the truth became familiar, I found to my bitter sorrow, that is seemed to lose its power, and I was left as helpless as ever … I would redouble my efforts, and go through the same weary round of conflicts and struggles again, only, of course, to meet with the same bitter defeat. I felt that my life, in spite of earnestness and devotedness, was a failure. Often I said to myself that if this was all the gospel of Christ had for me, it was a bitterly disappointing thing.” (Forty Witnesses, pp. 144-48.)

Dwight Moody tells of being sanctified and made holy. Moody said, “Let it be the cry of your heart day and night…Young men, you will get this blessing when you seek it above all else. For months, I had been hungering and thirsting for power in service. I had come to that state I think I would have died if I had not got it. I remember I was walking the streets of New York. I had no more heart in the business I was about than if I had not belonged to this world at all. The blessing came upon me suddenly like a flash of lightning, right there on the street. The power of God seemed to come upon me so wonderfully that I had to ask God to stay his hand. I was so filled with a sense of God’s goodness, and felt as though I could take the whole world to my heart.

D. L. Moody continued “I remember I used to take a pride in having the largest congregation in Chicago on a Sunday night. Two godly women used to come and hear me. One of them came to me one night after I had preached very satisfactorily, as I thought. I fancied she was going to congratulate me on my success. But, she said, ‘We are praying for you.’ I wondered if I had made some blunder, that they talked in that way. Next Sunday they were there again, evidently in prayer while I was preaching. One of them said, ‘We are still praying for you.’ I could not understand it, and said, ‘Praying for me! Why don’t you pray for the people? I am all right.’ ‘Ah,’ they said, ‘you are not all right; you have not got power; there is something lacking, but God can qualify.’ I did not like it at first, but I got to thinking it over, and after a little time I began to feel a desire to have what they were praying for. They continued to pray for me, and the result was that at the end of three months God sent this blessing on me. I want to tell you this, I would not for all the world go back to where I was before 1871.” (Forty Witnesses, pp. 269-270.)

Rev. J. O. Peck, D.D., writes: “God never left me a single year without a gracious revival, in which many souls were given as the seals of my ministry. Never had my pastorate been more favored with the divine blessing than at Springfield; but in the summer of 1872, a deep heart hunger that I had never known began to be realized. I had not lost spirituality, as far as I could judge my condition. I longed for, I scarcely knew what. I examined myself and prayed more earnestly, but the hunger of my soul grew more imperious. I was not plunged in darkness, or conscious of condemnation; yet the inward craving increased. The result of these weeks of heart-throes was a gradual sinking of self, a consuming of all selfish ambitions and purposes, and a consciousness of utter emptiness. Then arose an unutterable longing ‘to be filled.’ I had been prejudiced against the National Camp-Meeting Association. But a conviction was borne in upon me, as clear and unmistakable as my identity, that if I would go to that meeting, and confess how I was hungering, I would be filled with the Holy Spirit. I went, frankly told my errand there, and sought the prayers of all, I told that I wanted ‘the fullness’ that night, and felt it was the divine will to give it that hour. I then descended to the altar and knelt before the Lord. By simple faith I was enabled to take Christ as my sufficiency to fill and satisfy my hungry soul. The instant I received Christ as my ‘wisdom, righteousness and sanctification,’ the stillness and emotionless of absolute quiet permeate my whole being. The tempter seductively suggested: ‘The Spirit is withdrawn, and you are doomed to disappointment.’ As quick as thought came my reply: ‘With or without feeling, I here and now take Christ as my all in all.’ I knew that moment he was my complete savior. At once the most delicious experience was mine that I can conceive! No joy, no rapture; but something sweeter, deeper than anything before now—‘the peace of God that passeth all understanding!’ It settled in upon me deeper and deeper, sweeter and sweeter, till I seemed ‘filled with all the fullness of God.’” (Forty Witnesses, p. 296.)

There has never been a great revival but that Holiness of life and total surrender to Jesus Christ was at the very center. Phoebe Palmer was used of God to prepare the church for the Revival of 1857. These words describe her surrender and service to the church. “In this spiral of spiritual, social, moral, and political degeneracy of the decade preceding 1857, God looked for a man, but he found a woman, Phoebe Palmer. She was the wife of a Holiness Methodist physician in New York.

“For years she had been cloistered away in her Prayer Closet and study until she was so filled with the Spirit she ‘spoke the Word of God with boldness,’ Acts 4:31. She had become skilled in all doctrines of the Bible, especially in soteriology, the doctrine of salvation, which she insisted, must include sanctification ‘for this is the will of God, even your sanctification,’ I Thess. 4:3.

“She initially convened a Tuesday Meeting in her home for the promotion of Holiness, which continued for many years, and became a ‘catalyst for a movement which changed the shape of American Protestantism.’” (Hardesty, Great Women of Faith.)

Here is the prayer for revival that was published before the Revival of 1904-1906. This was printed in a publication, called OLD TIME RELIGION. Let us turn from excusing our sins and embrace His Righteousness and then pray this prayer, as we believe for a sovereign move of God in our day,

“God, thou are greatly in favor of Revival. Thou are not stirring up the sainthood to pray for what you do not favor. Our every other need sinks into insignificance compared to the need of a deep and widespread old-time Revival that causes the professing Christians to turn from their sinning and even worse, justifying their sinning.
“God, send us a Revival that will turn the people of God back from their worldliness and idols to serve the true and living God – back from ‘broken cisterns’ to the ‘Fountain of living waters;’
“A Revival that will take away every desire for worldly amusements and abolish every ungodly scheme for raising money for the support of the gospel;
“A Revival that will sweep away the pride that prompts all worldly conformity and extravagance in dress and manner of life;
“A Revival that will take the people out of their worldly clubs, and societies and secret lodges and put them into the ‘secret place of the Most High,’ where they will ‘abide under the shadow of the Almighty;’
“A Revival that will save the people of God from covetousness, and love of the world and all uncleanness of spirit, mind, and body;
“A Revival in which professors of religion will have their eyes opened to see and feel their responsibility for souls, and in which they will confess with broken hearts their former backslidings, their carelessness and indifference and in thousands of cases their actual transgressions of the moral law;
“A Revival like a flood that will ‘sweep away the refuge of lies’ and ‘overflow the hiding places’ of all them that would hide away from the light of God’s Spirit; “A Revival that will unearth and uncover every device of Satan for deceiving souls, whether found in the church or outside of it, ‘For the secret of the Lord is with them that fear Him; and He will show unto them His covenant;’
“A Revival that will make both the Church and the world to realize the shortness of time and the importance of eternity;
“A Revival that will make heaven and hell, Calvary, and the resurrection, salvation from sin, cleansing through the blood and the gift of the Holy Ghost living realities by the revelations of the Spirit in harmony with the Word;
“A Revival in which the sinfulness of sin will be so revealed that instead of excusing and pleading for it, souls will turn from it in utter loathing, and cry out, ‘O wretched man that I am! Who shall deliver me from this body of death?’
“A Revival that will sweep away selfishness, and narrowness and all sectarian spirit and bring those that now spend their time in criticism of each other down on their faces together before the Lord, crying out for salvation of lost souls;
“A Revival that like a tornado will sweep away all the old dried-up sermons, and all the cold formal prayers, and all the lifeless singing and like a whirlwind will carry everyone that comes in its path heavenward;
“A Revival that will fill the hearts of saints with holy love, and so burden the hearts of God’s ministers that the Word of God will be like fire shut up in their bones;
“A Revival that will help the people to honor God with their substance, and so have their barns filled with plenty;
“A Revival in which the presence of God will be so revealed that multitudes will fall under the power of God and cry for mercy as they did on the day of Pentecost;
“A Revival that has so much of Heaven and so much of God’s glory in it that all the world will be compelled to see and feel its mighty influence;
“A Revival that will gloriously defeat the powers of darkness and hell, and make earth and heaven ring with shouts of victory over a multitude of souls snatched from the eternal burnings, and run for God and heaven –
“Yea, a Revival that will never need to be revived! But, that will sweep on like a mighty wave of the sea that nothing can hinder, until time shall be no more!
“For such a Revival, O God we pray.”

“Sinning Christians(?)” are hopelessly lost and will cause the church world to continue its decent into apostasy.

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