CHAPTER XXXV
SERMON ON VISIONS AND TRANCES
“Where there is no vision the people perish.” (Proverbs 29.18.)
This fact has been proven all through the Bible. When the people of God were true and faithful, the Lord made known his presence by visible signs, and revealed himself and many things to them in visions.
Then they always prospered in every way, and the fear of God fell upon the heathen nations and they fled before them, and cried out, “There is no God like the God of Israel,” and God’s cause was glorified in the earth.
But when they were backsliders and disobedient God hid His, face. There were no visions and the people perished in every way. They went on from one sin to another, substituting form and solemn feast and the outward, and offering polluted sacrifices, and trusting to human wisdom, and works, instead of the Power and Spirit of God.
Then He took away His Spirit, and visions, and signs of His presence. They were left in darkness over three hundred years, till Christ came, and then they did not know him. They crucified the Lord of Glory and turned loose a murderer on helpless women and children. Nearly the whole Jewish nation perished. All this happened because they would not be led of the Spirit of God.
When the new and living way was ushered in the Lord gave many visions to show that Christ had come; that the Son of God was on earth; that no one need perish, but whosoever would be born of the Spirit, Christ would come and dwell in them, and abide with them forever, and manifest and reveal himself to them through the Holy Ghost.
The Holy Ghost would glorify him by revealing the things of God to us and by showing us things to come.
On the day of Pentecost, when the Holy Ghost was seen, heard and felt, thousands were brought into the spiritual kingdom
of God. Peter stood up in a blaze of Holy Ghost power and
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