Phineas F. Bresee - A Prince In Israel - Media Sabda Org

Phineas F. Bresee
A PRINCE IN ISRAEL
By E. A. Girvin
CHAPTER 25
The Way of Victory -- Reliability -- All-Day Meeting at Cucamonga -- Touches of Glory --
National Holiness Convention -- Dr. Morrison's Account of the Convention -- An Eastern Trip
-- The Meeting at Howard, Kansas
The Way Of Victory
This is the title of a very notable editorial by Dr. Bresee in the Nazarene Messenger, under date
of January 7, 1904. It is as follows:
"We are pressed by several correspondents for words in reference to the way of success in winning
souls to Jesus. It is a subject the theory of which has as little value of itself as almost any that we can
consider; and yet, if we are earnestly seeking to know the Lord's way in the matter, surely He has not
withheld the light. He has not sent us to do a work without making possible for us to know how to
secure the end for which He sends us. He has evidently sent us forth with encouragement as to
success. We are the bearers of His message to men, and He has declared that it should not return
void, but that it should prosper in the thing whereto He has sent it. And Jesus said in reference to our
going, that all power is His, and that He will be with us always. These and similar statements
encourage us to expect that something will be accomplished through our ministry. The voice which
comes to us from various sources is, sometimes, almost a bitter cry from human hearts to know why
only barrenness is round about them. If God blesses some, and souls are saved in some places, why
are they so left to struggle on without any tangible results, so far as soul-saving is concerned. In a
given case, it might be difficult to answer, and give the prescription for the removal of the difficulty,
at least without close examination of conditions, and clear knowledge of all the facts.
"But there are certain general truths which will help any earnest, honest soul to discover what the
difficulties are, and to know what would be the remedy, whether he is able to apply it or not.
"We live in the dispensation when Jesus Christ baptizes believers with the Holy Ghost, and when
the conviction of sinners, and the empowering of believers to carry on the work of Jesus Christ in
the world, depends upon their having become subjects of this baptism.
"Not only is the church's effective testimony to Jesus Christ shut up to the unction of this baptism,
but it is when He has come in that sinners are to be convinced. The general absence of conviction,
is clearly the result of the absence of the Holy Ghost in the hearts of professedly Christian believers.
"The effort to get men saved is evidently not to be man-ward, but God-ward. All human effort to
awaken sinners, is as ineffective as to preach to a graveyard. If the power of God can not be prayed
down from heaven, the task is hopeless. But it is not the power for this conviction that is to be
primarily sought, but the incoming of the Holy Spirit into our hearts to do for us what He did for the
disciples on the day of Pentecost, 'purifying our hearts by faith.' And when the Holy Ghost has come