The Real Christian –

John G. Lake
At Church of the Truth, Spokane, Washington, October 11, 1914

When I first commenced to preach the Gospel, at least after I got to the
point where I gave up everything else and gave my life exclusively to the
Gospel, a number of my friends from the city of Chicago were in the habit
of coming out to hear me preach, brokers from the Board of Trade and
other business friends who were in my circle. It was sort of a curiosity. One
day at the club one inquired from a friend, “Have you heard Lake preach
yet?”

He said, “Yes, last night.”

And the other said, “How was it?”

“Well,” he replied, “it was wonderfully apostolic. He took a text and went
everywhere preaching the Word.”

When the secretary inquired what the subject of my sermon would be

yesterday, I told her it was “The Real Christian.” I trust the Lord will let me
keep in reasonable touch with the subject. However, I would rather the Lord
would have His way than mine.

A Christian is unique. He stands alone. He supersedes all who have gone

before. He will not have a successor. He is man at his best and God’s best
effort for mankind.

When the conception of a Christian has been established within our spirits
as the New Testament establishes the ideal Christian, we will understand
then how it is that men have been ready to abandon all else in the world in
order to attain Christ, in order to attain His character, in order to become
the possessor of His Spirit.

I went to South Africa in a most unique time in the nation’s history, just after
the reconstruction period after the Boer War. On account of the great war
the native populace had been frightened practically out of the country. They
had gone far back from the war zone, and the war zone covered practically
the whole country.

The great mines were depending on the natives for labor, and it became a
great issue how it was possible to carry on the work while this condition of
fear rested upon the natives. Finally, it was proposed that they should bring
one hundred thousand men from China. They were brought on a contract
for three years. The British government senta fleet over there and brought
them all out at one time. They were a real living: colony. They brought their
teachers, preachers, priests, and prophets. Chinese are largely Confucians
and Buddhists.

At the same period the East Indian people who live in South Africa (and
there are many of them; I think in the Transvaal alone there are two
hundred and fifty thousand of them), felt that they were not receiving the
attention from the government in the way of education that they ought to,
so the British government sent teachers, both religious and secular, to
supply them there.

So the Buddha, the Yogi, and many others came there and made their
headquarters at Johannesburg. Our ministry was somewhat unique. We
were the only ones who held [meetings] and preached on the subject of
healing.
After a little time it dawned on me that here was a possibility that had never
come into my life before. IfI could get these various priests and teachers of
the various Eastern religions to come together, we might have an exchange
of thought. We would have something accomplished. It would at least give
me an opportunity to discuss it. So after some time the matter was
arranged. At the same time, we added to our company a Rabbi from
Chicago, Dr. Hearst. We had a combination, I presume, representing all the
great religions on earth. We were able by wise exchange and guidance and
much prayer to finally bring about such a condition of fellowship among
these various ones that they spoke out their hearts to each other with a
great deal of freedom. Many times we sat from sundown to sunup
comparing notes and going over the various teachings, etc.

It had this effect on me, that I left that series with this conclusion: There is
lots of light in the world, and men are groping after the light. Some possess
it in a larger degree than others, but all possess it in some degree. I said
toa man as I walked home on the last morning, “One thing surely has been
demonstrated, and that is that in Jesus Christ there is a divine life of which,
when a man becomes a real possessor, he has a richer appreciation of his
power that no other man possesses.” And I have been more of a Christian,
of a real Christian, from that day than I ever was before.

I am convinced tonight that there is a profound secret in the life and

character, teaching and virtue of Jesus Christ that when a man attains it he
is rich indeed beyond measure.

In order to have you appreciate some of the things that I trust the Lord will
let me say, I want to relate some incidents. It seems as if I can teach things
through incidents that I am not able to teach in any other way.
Among my young friends in South Africa were two young men whom I have
regarded as the brightest men I have ever known. One was a Boer. His
name was Von Shield, the son of an old-line stock of highly educated
Hollanders. The other’s name was Kritzmall. He had come from a
generation of Church of England preachers. I think his great grandfather
had occupied St. Paul Church in London. I believe he had been baptized
there himself.

He has always stood out in my mind as a sort of counterpart of St. Paul, for
ifI can comprehend the character of Paul, I think he was more largely
duplicated in that man than any other I ever knew.

These two men were really the only up-to-date “new thought” men I met in
Africa. Von Shield was agent for Christian D. Larson and handled his books
in South Africa. He began to attend our meetings and, one day whenI was
not present, came forward out of the audience and knelt at the altar and
sought God for the conscious knowledge of his salvation. And bless God,
he received it.

Some days after that when I was present, I was teaching at the afternoon
service on the subject of the baptism of the Spirit. And raising up in his seat
he said to me, “Lake, do you suppose that if God gave me the baptism of
the Holy Spirit it would satisfy the burning yearning that is in my soul for
God?”

I said, “My son, I don’t know that it would, but I think you would be a long
piece on the way.”

So without more ado he came forward and knelt, and looking up he said to
me, “Lay your hands on my head and pray.” And as I did the Spirit of God
descended on Von Shield in an unusual manner. He was baptized in the
Holy Ghost very wonderfully, indeed. He was a transformed man. I tell you
from that hour that man became the living personification of the power of
God, and in all my life I have never found a soul through whom such
majestic, intense flashes of power would come as through that soul at
intervals. He was not a student of the Word of God. Presently, he
disappeared. His father came to me saying, “I am troubled about Harry. He
took a Bible and went off into the mountains almost three weeks ago, and
they tell me he has gone up to such a mountain, a long piece off.I am afraid
he is going insane.”

I said, “Brother, do not worry yourself. One of these days he will come
down in the glory and power of God.”I knew what was in that fellow’s heart.

One day he returned under such an anointing of the Spirit as I had never
before witnessed on any life. Here wasa soul who had never read the
words of Jesus. He was a full-grown man, but he said to me, “I have never
looked into the Bible, unless it was in my childhood. I knew nothing of it.”
One day after that he came to me, his face radiant, and said, “Brother
Lake, did you know this was in the Bible?” and proceeded to read to me
that familiar verse in the sixteenth of Mark: “These signs shall follow them
that believe … They shall cast out demons.” Among other things it says
that the believer shall accomplish is, “he shall cast outdevils.”‘ Looking up
into my face with great earnestness he said, “My! I wish I knew somebody
that had a devil.”I believe God had planned that situation, for I was
reminded that in my mail a couple of days before had comea request for an
insane son. The mother said, “As far as I can tell my son has a devil,” and
her request was that we might come and pray that the devil might be cast
out. So I got the letter and handed it to him. He said, “Why this is only a
couple of three blocks from where I live.” He said, “I am going to find that
fellow, and then I am coming back for you.”
And all the time I said, “Here is a newborn soul just born unto God whose
vision enters into the real realm of God-power.”I realized that my own spirit
had not touched the degree of faith that was in that soul and I said, “I do
not want to do a thing, nor say a word that will discourage that soul in the
least.”

Presently, he came back and said: “Brother Lake, come on.” We went and
found a boy who had been mad from his birth. He was like a wild animal.
He would not wear clothes and would smash himself or anybody else with
anything that was given to him. He couldn’t even have a dish to eat on. But
in the center of the enclosure where he was, they had a large stone
hollowed out and they would put his food on that and let him eat it just like
an animal.

We tried to catch him, but he was as wild as a lion. He would jump right
over my head. Finally his father said, “You will never catch him out here.”
All this time I realized what the situation meant. I had been somewhat of an
athlete in my youth, and I said to V.S. “You get on one side, and if he
comes to your side you will take care of him, and if he comes to my side I
will take care of him.”

Now, beloved, this all sounds strange I know, but I’ll never forget that
afternoon as long as I live. As I looked across to the young man, Von
Shield,I could see the lightning flash of faith, and I knew that if he got his
hands on the insane man the devil would come out.

Presently, he landed on my side of the bed, and in an instant Von Shield

sprang over the bed, laid his hands on his head, and commanded that devil
to come out. In two minutes that man was absolutely transformed and was
a sane man. The first moment of sanity he ever knew.
Sometime later the family moved to another section of the country, so I
have lost track of him.
One more incident in the man’s life will help you to realize this thing.
Among the Boer people, especially in the Transvaal, they werea pioneer
people. They had moved from Cape Colony and lived among the natives
there many years. Finally, they succeeded in establishing their own
community and later a republic. They did not have the advantages of good
schools. In fact, about the time they passed into the hands of the English,
education was becoming a real factor. About the only educated person in a
community was the Dutch Predicant. He is a real old aristocrat. The
firstborn of houses is the Predicant and everything else likewise. He is the
lord of all he surveys and some more. I believe they were people with all
authority that the priests of Ireland exercise over the people there.

I wanted to leave you with the conception of a Dutch Predicant and then
you can understand how a young fellow, unrecognized as a preacher, is
situated when he begins to preach the Gospel of Christ in a different
manner, than the Predicant.

One day when Von Shield was conducting a service with a couple of
hundred people present, the Predicant was there. He arose when he was
teaching and told the people that they were being misled, etc., and that
these things Von Shield was talking about were only calculated for the days
of the apostles.

The young man, naturally, if he had been an ordinary young man, would
have been somewhat nonplussed. But presently he said, “I will tell you how
we will settle this thing. There is Miss LeRoux, whom we all know. She is
stone blind in one eye and has been so for four years. You come here, and
I will lay my hands on you and ask the Lord Jesus to make you well.” And
picking up his Dutch Bible he said, “And when He does, you will read that
chapter,” designating the chapter she was to read.

God Almighty met the fellow’s faith. The woman’s eye opened right then
and she stood before that congregation and covering the good eye, read
with the eye that had been blind, the entire chapter. I know her well; visited
at their home a great many times.

Now I will return to the other young man, the most extraordinary incident
that I have known in the life of any otherhuman being, unless it was the
history of St. Paul when he was on his way to Damascus, when suddenly
there shone around about him a light, brighter than the sun, and he says,
“When we were all fallen to the earth.” They were probably on horseback, I
heard a voice speaking unto me, and saying in the Hebrew tongue, Saul,
Saul, why persecutest thou me? it is hard for thee to kick against the pricks.
And I said, Who art thou, Lord? And he said, I am Jesus whom thou
persecutest.”

Kratzmall was visiting one night at the home of some friends,a few doors
from my home. These young people with whom he was visiting had just
recently been baptized in the Spirit themselves, and they were very anxious
about this friend and had been praying a great deal about it. This same
night he was in the tabernacle and his friends said, “Come down to our
home.” So he went.
These two men, Kratzmall and Von Shield, were the highest developed
men.I believe Kratzmall was the strongest man, physically, I ever met. He
was an altogether unusual character. And here was a dealing of the Spirit
of God such as I have never known with any other individual.

After a time, I believe it was suggested that they pray. He was going to stay
all night. Harry said in speaking of it afterwards, “It was not my custom to
kneel. As I sat in my chair I began to realize that a peculiar power was
taking hold of me.I said, `This must be some sort of a psychological
condition that I am not familiar with. Anyway, I will have nothing to do with
it.”‘ And he sat up in his chair and shut his teeth and endeavored to resist.
The Spirit of God intensified, and he said, “I will not yield.”

For two hours and a half he sat there while the perspiration poured off his
person, until there were little pools of perspiration oozing from his shoes.
But at the end of two and a half hours as this battle was going on,a voice
spoke within him and said, “I am Jesus.”

And instantly he said, “If You are the Christ, You can do anything You like.”
The next moment the Spirit of God deepened upon him, and he began to
speak in tongues by the power of God.

Kratzmall, after that anointing, became the most remarkable preacher of

the Gospel I have ever known anything about. He traveled that country
from end to end when he didn’t have a cent. I met him once when he had
no shoes and his feet were cut and bleeding. But he established
congregations of Christian people for three hundred and fifty miles down
through the wilderness. Bless God.

Now then I will return. I have told you these incidents in order to
demonstrate to you that there is a force in the Christian life that mankind
has not gotten hold of in any great degree. But the thing that interests me
most, andI endeavor to present to you the facts of a Christian life, is the
inquiry that comes to me day by day from souls thatI deal with in the
healing room, “How can I enter into the consciousness of the presence and
power of Christ?”
That is the real issue in all our hearts. We see the thing that was burning in
the heart of Nicodemus when he came to Jesus in the nighttime, and
said, “Rabbi, we know that thou art a teacher come from God: for no man
can do these miracles that thou doest, except God be with him.” John 3:2.

But Jesus, disregarding all that, said, “Except a man be born again, he
cannot see the kingdom of God…. That which is born of the flesh is flesh;
and that which is born of the Spirit is spirit. Marvel not that I said unto thee,
Ye must be born again.” John 3:3,6-7

The birth again of God, the conscious incoming of the Spirit of God into the
life and being and personality, lifts mankind out of the condition of the
professing Christian experience into the place of divine consciousness and
power.

The baptism of the Holy Spirit was the common experience of New
Testament times. The New Testament was written by men who had the
baptism of the Holy Spirit. It was written to churches that possessed the
baptism of the Holy Ghost. Indeed, in my study of the New Testament the
disciples seemed to consider it essential that each”Have ye received the
Holy Ghost since ye believed? And they said unto him, We have not so
much as heard whether there be any Holy Ghost. And he said unto them,
Unto what then were ye baptized? And they said, Unto John’s
baptism.” Acts 19:2-3

And then he explained what John’s baptism was. He said,

John verily baptized with the baptism of repentance, saying unto the
people, that they should believe on him Which should come after him, that
is, on Christ Jesus.” Acts 19:4.
Then He laid his hands upon them and they received the Holy Ghost and
began to speak with tongues and magnify God and prophesy, etc.

There are only five cases on record in the New Testament of persons
receiving the baptism of the Spirit: The church at Jerusalem, one hundred
and twenty, in the second of Acts. The church at Samaria under the
ministry of Peter and John. That is the case of Simon, the Sorcerer. When
he witnessed the manifestation of power that occurred at the hands of the
apostles, he offered them money, saying, “Give me also this power, that on
whomsoever I lay hands, he may receive the Holy Ghost.” But you
remember the answer, “Thy money perish with thee, because thou hast
thought that the gift of God may be purchased with money.”

The next case is in the tenth of Acts, where the Gentile church was
baptized in the Holy Spirit, the household of Cornelius, as Peter preached
the Word. No altar services there. No laying on of hands. There the Holy
Ghost fell on all those who believed.

And I tell you it is my conviction to this hour, that is the real manner in
which the Lord desires to pour out the Spirit in these days. We had mighty
few altar services or prayer services, but the power fell upon the people as
they sat hearing the Word of God. I have witnessed the Lord baptize fifty
people in an ordinary service like this on a Sunday evening.

There is a consciousness, that seems to me by the Word of God and by my

own personal experience, that must be possessed where any individual
can enter into the direct presence of God and receive the baptism of the
Spirit. That is the consciousness of sinlessness. The consciousness that
your sins are gone. You can classify sin in any way you like. There is this
much about it, that in our own inner soul we know that sin is offensive to
God, because it is offensive to our own spirit.
So as I said before, the consciousness of sinlessness seems to he God’s
requirement for those who would seek the baptism of the Spirit. Indeed, I
remember in my own experience when my heart began to he stirred along
this line, and I definitely began to seek God for the baptism of the Spirit,
that as the illumination of the purity and holiness of God began to dawn
over my soul, instead of going on boldly, there was an inclination to draw
back as I realized the awful extreme between my own heart and the heart
of God. And I was compelled to cry out, yea not once, buta thousand times,
“Lord God, by the divine process of God cleanse my soul from this
condition.” And I remember, bless God, how that one night I was present in
a friend’s home. An ordinary meeting was going on, conducted bya little
Quaker woman, but she outlined what seemed to me to be the method of
cleansing the soul.

That night as I knelt in Fred Bosworth’s home, that consciousness of the

cleansing power of Jesus Christ went through my being, and I realized
something of what I never realized before. That the battle between my spirit
and my soul had ceased and that God reigned, not only my spirit, but in my
flesh too. The war that had been in my spirit for years was all gone, and I
entered into Beulah land. I really felt that I had crossed the Jordan and
everything was new.

I tell you, beloved, that the external evidences of God and the power of His
Spirit, no matter how wonderful, area small matter compared with the
consciousness of the Word of God in the human heart; in your heart and
mine, bless God.

In the 17th verse of the fourteenth chapter of John there is this one verse.
While Jesus was discussing this subject with the disciples, He said, “He is
with you,” that is, the Comforter. “He is with you, and shall be in you.”
There is a definite possession of the Spirit of God by which the individual
becomes the conscious possessor of the Spirit of God. Indeed, the Word of
God puts it in this forceful manner. “Know ye not that your body is the
temple of the Holy Ghost which is in you?” ( 1 Cor. 6:19 paraphrased) It is
God’s purpose, as outlined by Jesus Christ and this Word from cover to
cover, that man shall be the conscious possessor of the Spirit of the living
God, the Holy Ghost.

That is the “Real Christian. “That is the thing that has been lacking in the
Church throughout the centuries that are past. It was that consciousness of
God’s presence and God’s power in the disciples and the Church of the
first centuries that wrote across the pages of history the wonderful,
wonderful record of Christianity of the first four hundred years. There were
thirty million Christian martyrs, those who were slaughtered in the Christian
wars, etc. Thirty million gave up their lives for the Christ. There was a spirit
that made it so intense, so powerful, that had such a power of induction
that the world got out. Bless God.

But there camea day when the Church traded the communion of the Holy
Ghost for the smile of the world, and then the long, long night of the middle
centuries followed. (Ah, yes, and then the Holiness movement did the same
in such a gradual manner that only the sanctified hearts noticed. See the
“Dancing With Ichabod” page. TP)

But bless God,I tell you we are living in a day and hour when the Spirit of
God has come into the world afresh, when the consciousness of mankind is
opening up to God in a manner that they have never opened before. There
is an awakening in the world from ocean to ocean, from pole to pole, as
there never was before. And I believe, bless God, that God Almighty’s
outpouring of the Spirit upon all flesh is at hand. And though we are
receiving the droppings and our hearts are being warmed under the
impulse of the Spirit, the day is not far distant when the flame of God will
catch the soul of mankind. And the Church of the latter day will close this
era with a place of divine glory excelling that of the early Church.

This is according to the prophecy of the Word. “If the former rain was
abundant, shall not the latter rain be more abundant.” Bless God.

If the disciples, without the train of Christian history behind them that you
and I have, were able to enter into the divine consciousness and power of
the Holy Spirit in such a way that they left a stamp upon Christianity, how
much more shall men and women who have the advantage of two
thousand years of Christian record enter into a diviner consciousness than
ever the apostles possessed?

(Tongues and Interpretation)

The eternal God hath ordained that mankind, being united with Him as one
heart and as one soul, shall glorify the Lord Jesus Christ in manifesting His
life and character, His person and being.

(Tongues and-Interpretation)
If then, God’s purpose for mankind is to receive the Christ, shall we not
yield ourselves body and soul and spirit to the conscious control of the
Spirit of God and let Him manifest Himself in us in humbleness and
meekness, bowing lowly at the feet of Him whose we are and whom we
serve?

Down in the human heart

Crushed by the tempter,
Feelings lie buried that grace can restore.
Touched by a loving heart,
Wakened by kindness,
Chords that were broke will vibrate once more.

Our God, we ask Thee tonight that Thy Almighty power shall be upon each
soul. That as we endeavor to yield ourselves to Thee for the conscious
cleansing of our nature from sin and its effects, that Thy power shall lift us
into that consciousness of oneness with God whereby from Thy soul to our
own will flow the divine unction of God. That we, being cleansed from sin,
may manifest God to mankind that the hungry world and a dying race and a
wandering world may be brought back into oneness with God. Amen.