Dr. Alan Holden

“And the same day there were added unto them about three thousand souls,” Acts 2:41.

For a church of three thousand members to take in one hundred and twenty more would be almost phenomenal these days. But here a fellowship of one hundred twenty was suddenly augmented by three thousand. What a revival if that rate of increase were maintained!

How was it done? Through the preaching of Jesus Christ in the power of the Holy Spirit. There are additions and additions today, but how much of them is the Lord adding daily such as should be saved?

There is addition from without, like barnacles on a boat. There is addition from within, like grapes on a vine. It is to be feared that the church has encumbered herself with a lot of excess baggage, not members of the body of Christ, but names in an organization.

You will observe that the Lord did the adding. He uses His appointed means, but He must do it if it is to be the genuine fruit of Pentecost.

Have you been added from without or from within?

“I in them, and thou in me . . . ,” John 17:23.

“We are in him,” 1 John 5:20.

God is in Christ, Christ is in us who believe, we are in Christ–glorious identification that overflows all our figures to describe it! The Head and the Body, the Vine and the Branches–we are partakers of the Divine Nature.

Our poor little word images cannot say it. Sometimes we try with illustrations from daily life. The iron is in the fire, we say; then the iron grows red and we say the fire is in the iron. But all such efforts fall short.

“Your life is hid with Christ in God”–that is one way of looking at it. Those two precious words, “In Christ,” lie scattered like jewels all over the New Testament. “Christ liveth in me,” “Christ in you the hope of glory”–that is another facet of this gem. And what a red-letter day it has been for many a soul when “Christ liveth in me” gets translated from theology into reality!

Anyway you look at it, this Interchangeable Triad is something to shout about. “Thou in me, I in them, we in him”

“If thou shalt confess with thy mouth Jesus as Lord, and shalt believe in thine heart that God hath raised him from the dead, thou shalt be saved,” Romans 10:9.

Here is the key to the sad state of many a Christian soul and many a church. There has been a cheap easy profession of Christ as Savior, but no real confession of Christ as Lord. The lips claim Him as Savior, but the life shows no evidence of His Lordship. We love the same things we have always loved; we do not abhor that which is evil, we live our own lives, Christ has no say in the matter.

A.T. Robertson said, “No Jew would do this who had not really trusted Christ, for Kurios in the Septuagint is used of God. No Gentile would do it who had not ceased worshipping the Emperor as Kurios. The word Kurios was and is the Touchstone of faith.”

It meant everything in those days to say, “Jesus ios Lord.” There is one absolute test: Is Jesus Christ the Lord of your life? Or are you “fearing the Lord and serving your own gods?”

When our “believers” became real “disciples,” then they will be “witnesses.” You cannot willingly take Jesus as Savior and wilfully deny Him as Lord. “Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, and thou shalt be saved.”

“If ye know these things, happy are ye if ye do them,” John 13:17.

Our Lord conditions true happiness not on knowledge alone but on knowledge of His Word plus obedience.

Coleridge says: “Truth, of all others the most awful and interesting, are too often considered as so true that they lose the power of truth, and lie bed-ridden in the dormitory of the soul, side by side with the most despised and exploded errors.”

Here lies a fearful peril to us all, that we take for grantede the very things God never meant should become a matter of course, and because we know them so well and have heard them so often, we assume that what is a fact in our heads is a force in our hearts. May it not be that this is why we never finish the verse, “Be ye doers of the word and not hearers only,” by adding the most terrific part of it, “deceiving your own selves?” We pleasantly assent to a Gospel we ought powerfully to assert. How it needs to be rescued “from the neglect caused by the very circumstance of its universal admission!”

What great truth lies bed-ridden in the dormitory of your soul?

“Wherefore I give you to understand, that no man speaking by the Spirit of God calleth Jesus accursed: and that no man can say that Jesus is the Lord, but by the Holy Ghost,” 1 Corinthians 12:3.

Dr. G. Campbell Morgan says Paul is here stating the central verity of the church, the absolute Lordship of Christ. Both the cult of Caesar and the cult of Christ used the term Kurios. It was “Nero Kurios” (Nero Lord) or “Kurios Iesous” (Lord Jesus)–”the battle cries of the spirit of error and the spirit of truth.” Polycarp the martyr paid with his life because he refused to call Caesar Lord, and said each time, “Lord Jesus.”

Of course, it is easy to call Him, “Lord, Lord, and not do His commands” (Matthew 7:21-23). Only the Spirit of God can make real to the soul the Lordship of Jesus Christ. Just because Nero is dead makes no difference–there is still the cult of Caesar, and a man cannot have two Lords. A day of cheap discipleship, with churches filled by baptized pagans, needs to be startled into taking seriously the battle cry, “Jesus is Lord.”

There are too many religious Sauls who need to become regenerated Pauls, asking, “Lord, what wilt thou have me to do?”

“Thou wilt keep him in perfect peace, whose mind is stayed on thee: because he trusteth in thee,” Isaiah 26:3.

We have mastered many diseases of the body. Some of the worst plagues have been conquered and others may be on the way out. But now we are going crazy by the thousands and the mental hospitals are crowded. The devil is majoring on the mind. Too often mental sufferers are advised to lay up their Bibles, give religion a rest, and go to the movies.

Is the Lord not able to help us when we need Him most? If He can save and keep the soul, is it the best we can do to turn body and mind over to the wisdom of man? Is there no balm in Gilead for us here and now and grace to help in every time of need?

The average unstrung individual will find his inhibitions, complexes, neuroses, and other ailments straightened out by getting right with God and man. The stayed mind is a sound mind and belongs to him who trusts in God. Such a man is kept in perfect peace, not by tensely maintaining a certain mental attitude. God keeps him. And he lets God do it. “He careth for you.” Then let Him!

“Call unto me, and I will answer thee, and shew thee great and mighty things, which thou knowest not,” Jeremiah 33:3.

We are inclined to pray as though this world were in the grip of cold, fixed laws, with only the remote possibility that God might occasionally break through. We timidly whisper a few feeble petitions barely hoping, but certainly not believing that we shall receive. But God is not a prisoner in His own universe. Jesus is Lord of all creation, King of kings and Lord of lords. The devil can go only so far as God allows him to go.

God is waiting to show Himself strong in behalf of those whose heart is perfect toward Him. He invites us to prove Him. He longs to demonstrate what He can do, exceeding abundantly above all we ask or think, great and mighty things which we know not.

“Let us therefore come boldly unto the throne of grace, that we may obtain mercu and find grace to help in time of need.”

This is our Father’s world. God is still on the throne of creation. Call on Him and He will answer.