Derek Prince - Physical Manifestations Of The Spirit
Now, there’s one other thing we need to deal with which is physical manifestations. My opinion is most Christians are living what I call bottled up lives. They’re not free to express what God has put in them because we have this standard of dignity: you speak with a quiet voice, you don’t get too excited, you sit upright in your seat, you get up, you stand up, you sit down, you kneel down and you walk out of church. I mean, I was in it for years so don’t tell me that isn’t so. That has very little to do with New Testament Christianity. It’s got very little to do with the experience of people in the Bible. They got excited. You read the psalms of David. He roared, he cried, he wet his bed with tears. He was a man of strong emotion. Even Jesus, He groaned, He wept, He expressed His feelings.
See, I mean no one has got this background more than I. I was brought up at the very center of the old school tie tradition. If you know anything about Britain, I was educated in Eton and Cambridge. I was a bastion of the empire. But, one night God baptized me in the Holy Spirit. I didn’t know what it was. I didn’t go to church, it happened in an army barrack room. I was so ignorant I didn’t know you had to go to church either to get saved or get baptized in the Spirit. I got both of them in an army barrack room in the middle of the night. But then when I began to move in the church I discovered that people didn’t make room for God. Now, I’m not a super-emotional person. I think most of you who know a little bit about me will... But the trouble is we quenched our emotions. We haven’t given free expression to what God has done in us. I’m going to speak on Sunday night about worship. If you’re going to be here, I’ll go a little further with that. But worship is not just saying words; worship is an attitude of the body. It’s bending down, it’s falling down, it’s clapping hands. That’s the scriptural picture of worship.
We are far short of the standards of the Bible and one main reason among us Anglo-Saxons and whatever else we might be, is we haven’t expressed what the Holy Spirit has put in us. We’ve quenched the Spirit, we’ve suppressed the Spirit. We’ve tried to be dignified, we’ve been afraid of being too emotional or too excited. Now, I am not a super-emotional person but I believe in yielding to the Holy Spirit. I believe in expressing what the Holy Spirit has put in me. Let me give you just a little list of people, we have to keep going. Here’s some of the people who met God: Abraham. The Lord appeared to him and what did Abraham do? He fell on his face. How many of you would do that? Some of you would. I always smile when I hear Christians singing that hymn: Bring forth the royal diadem and crown Him Lord of all. Let angels prostrate fall.
I think those dear church members it’s all right for angels to fall but not us. No, no, no. We are much too dignified for that. And then there was Israel. When the Lord accepted their sacrifice with supernatural fire it says they all fell on their faces and shouted. They didn’t just... The Bible says, Let us shout joyfully. I want to tell you, shouting is not singing aloud. I don’t think I’ll lead you into this tonight; we might go there on Sunday night. But shouting is shouting. Some of you I’m sure go to football matches. Don’t put your hand up, you might be embarrassed, but you do. And when the right side scores a goal, what do you do? You stand up and you shout! Why? Because you’re excited. If you can get excited about football, why not get excited about Jesus and the Holy Spirit? And then Joshua. He met the Commander of the army of the Lord outside Jericho and there he was, flat on his face.
In fact, I venture to tell you that most of the great men of the Bible have been on their face before God at least once. And then God said to him, “The Lord said to him, Take your shoes off your feet, you’re standing on holy ground. Have you ever been in a place where you had to take your shoes off? We have. God moved in in a conference we were in at Jerusalem two years ago and without anybody being instructed the people just quietly began to slip their shoes off their feet because they knew they were in a holy place. The priests, when the fire of God, the presence and glory of God came into the temple, it says they fell on their faces. They couldn’t stand. I like to read Jeremiah because, after all, he was a respectable prophet. He wrote a lot of the Bible, I mean, almost more than anybody else.
Jeremiah 23:9 says this: My heart within me is broken because of the prophets [the false prophets]. All my bones shake. I am like a drunken man and, like a man whom wine has overcome, because of the Lord and because of His holy words. That was Jeremiah’s reaction to the holiness of the Lord. He said, All my bones shake. You can’t have your bones shake without your body shaking, that’s impossible. He said, I’m like a drunken man because of the holiness of the Lord. Have you ever sensed the holiness of the Lord in such a way that impacts your physical body? See, we’re living on very low rations, most of us. The apostles on the Day of Pentecost, the Holy Spirit came and they were all very dignified. No. Just the opposite, they behaved in a very strange, undignified way. They were all speaking together in languages they hadn’t heard and do you know what the unbelievers said? They’re drunk. Have they ever said that about you when you walked out of church? John the apostle encountered Jesus in a vision and he fell at His feet as one dead. There was a power that overwhelmed him.