This is from pages 2 and 3 of the Issue March 1968 of The Pentecostal Herald
It is from a sermon preached by Robert W. Taitinger, Edmonton, Alberta, Canada at the Eighth Pentecostal World Conference, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil
Three Generations
There are some alarming tendencies in the
Pentecostal church. It has happened to every
church before it. If we are to survive the vicious
ordeal, it will be because each generation realizes that
victory and continuance must come by each individual
having a personal encounter with God and receiving
a personal Pentecost, being filled with the power of
the Holy Spirit.
According to statistical surveys, a generation is 25
years. The Pentecostal church has thus produced its
third generation. Our teen-agers represent a most
decisive generation of this Pentecostal revival.
Let me illustrate by using three interesting generations
of Biblical history. The lives of Abraham, Isaac,
and Jacob can be fittingly compared to the brief history
of the Pentecostal church.
Abraham --The First Generation
Abraham prayed for everything he received. His
walk with God was a lifetime of communion with his
Maker. He was the predominant man of prayer in the
Old Testament.
Abraham built seven altars during his lifetime. An
altar always speaks of sacrifice and selflessness. At an
altar personality differences and conflicts are forgotten
as men seek God. At an altar the Blood of
cleansing is applied, and men are clean and free and
new.
Abraham believed God, and it was accounted to him
for righteousness. So monumental was the character
of this man that Paul painted his portrait in Galatians
and declared that by faith we too are the sons of
Abraham.
Because Abraham was first and foremost a man of
prayer, he became a great man of God.
Over six decades ago God visited the earth with
Pentecostal revival. In an old mansion used as a Bible
school in Topeka, Kansas, a class studying the Book of
Acts concluded that the Early Church received its
dynamic power through the baptism in the Holy Ghost
when they were visited by the phenomenon of speaking
with other tongues. In a sovereign and salutary manner
God began to pour out of His Spirit on hungry, seeking
hearts-with revival bursting forth in every comer
of the earth.
Whether in Sweden or England, the USA or Brazil,
the Orient, or the islands of the sea, the most predominant
feature of these early meetings was the
emphasis on prayer. The fathers of the Pentecostal
fellowship were men who knew how to pray. They
had to know how to pray. They prayed for mast
everything they had. They prayed for rent money, for
fuel for the fire, for the food they ate. They had to
pray for clothing to wear and for courage to 'survive
the criticism and contempt leveled at them because
of their new-found experience. And they prayed men
through to the baptism in the Holy Spirit.
If there is anything that has made the fellowship
of Pentecostal believers what it is today, it is prayer.
It was born at an altar of prayer where the Holy
Ghost came upon men and filled them with a burning
desire to serve Christ. At those altars men were endued
with power from on high. The Word of God was like
a fire burning in their bones, as they preached and
the Lord worked with them, confirming His Word
with signs and wonders.
The first generation of Pentecostal believers set
before us an enviable example of Spirit-filled, victorious
living. They gave birth to an organization that has
circled the globe and now claims over 10 million members.
As Abraham prayed for everything he received, so
that first generation of praying Pentecostal leaders
brought forth a church that has become perhaps the
greatest force in the religious world today.
Isaac --The Second Generation
Isaac inherited what he received. In
Genesis 25:5
we read: "And Abraham gave all that he had unto
Isaac."
One who inherits a thing cannot appreciate it like
the one who has earned it. The boy* who inherits the
home his father built with his own hands can never
know its real worth. He knows nothing of the late
hours of toil and of doing without that made the house
a reality. No stress or strain, no amount of sacrifice
is required to inherit something.
Isaac was fortunate to be the son of a great man
of God. He knew the things his father stood for.
But being born the son of Abraham had not made
him a spiritual character. Isaac had inherited a spiritual
atmosphere and many privileges, yet in his life
there lingered no memory of a personal encounter with
God.
Later Isaac traversed the very places where his
father Abraham had dug wells of water many years
previously. He found the wells were stopped up, so
he dug the wells of Abraham again. He removed the
debris that had quenched the flow of life-giving water.
He drank from the wells of his own digging. There
he had his own experience.
Many of us were born as second-generation Pentecostals,
knowing little or nothing of the real worth of
the spiritual blessing we had inherited. We never had
a drunkard and a brawler for a father, and we knew
not what it means to have a socialite for a mother.
As children we were taken regularly to church where
gospel choruses and personal testimonies .were an integral
part of the service. We were never shocked when
we heard someone speak in tongues; our parents had
done it for years. They attributed their constancy and
fervency to the fire of the Spirit that they received
as they fasted and prayed and met God at an old fashioned
altar of prayer.
Then came the day when some of us discovered that
although we had inherited much, we could not claim to
be Pentecostal for we had never been to the Cross or
to the Upper Room. I was one of them. I learned a
solemn truth. You can teach a child the Bible. You
can encourage him to memorize the Scriptures. You
can take him to Sunday school. You can give him
the rich heritage of a Christian home. But you cannot
transmit or transfer a religious experience. The child
has to dig his own spiritual well. He has to make
his own personal contact with God. Only then will
he burn with such an intense glow that men will
recognize he has been with Jesus.
to be continued in part 2
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