Our heritage may be divided into two legacies: our inheritance from divine sources, and our inheritance from human sources.
We are all aware of what the glorious Holy Ghost outpouring means to our lives. The divine gift of God is an experience in one sense of the word. But the experience is only an entrance into an intimacy of communion and an association with the divine that is beyond description.
The demands of God are sacred and great. It is only through the help of the Holy Spirit that we can meet the demands of God and of this hour. If we would be representatives, ambassadors, of the Most High God in the fullest sense, we must continually be Spirit-filled, Spirit-dominated, Spirit-controlled men and women.
The perpetuation of this testimony depends on the Holy Spirit having access to our lives and every chamber of our being. Quickening the thoughts of our mind, inspiring us, stirring us emotionally, using us as instruments on which He can play a hymn of praise and through whom He may sound out fearlessly the Word of the living God. It is not we who use Him; it is He who uses us. There is no place for pride or pomp or display of the natural, but in all humility we say that what we are, what we hope to be, God does through the agency of the Holy Spirit.
The person of the divine Holy Spirit himself has brought forth doctrinally the truth of His ministries and granted us an experience and given us a message. This, our spiritual heritage, is the distinct and accentuated supernatural manifestation of the eternal God.
I have a firm conviction that we are called to be a people for a specific service in a specific hour. We are made for a designed purpose to the glory of God. The apostles felt it so keenly that they were willing to become martyrs.
Our latter-day leaders received and have left for us not a tradition but a testimony. God grant that every one of us may be able to pass on the fullness of the testimony to every succeeding generation that shall rise until Jesus comes. All the fullness of the experience that was the privilege of the 120 in the Upper Room on the Day of Pentecost is our privilege. This is what our forefathers contended for.
I am glad I don’t have to read the Bible as history and say, “This is what our fathers possessed; this is what took place in the generations past.” I can say, “Jesus Christ the same yesterday, and today, and forever.” The faith of God imparted to us—faith to believe that God will not only perform miracles and confirm His Word but faith to believe that God will supply every need.
God grant us the courage to be true to our conviction, to let nothing sway us from our purpose—that we may stand true to God [until] the trumpet sounds.
Wesley R. Steelberg was general superintendent from 1949–52. In his early years of ministry, he organized youth rallies and is given credit for helping originate a youth program in the Assemblies of God. When Revivaltime was created in 1950, Steelberg became the speaker. This address is from the 24th General Council in Atlanta, Georgia, August 1951. It is adapted from the September 9, 1951, issue of The Pentecostal Evangel.
