© 19 Colin Melbourne, Transcribed and annotated from The Pentecostal Evangel 1923
One day, I went up a mountain to pray
I had a wonderful day. It was one of the high mountains of Wales. [Mount Snowdon in Caernarvonshire (Gwynedd). Ed.]
I heard of one man going up this mountain to pray, and the Spirit of the Lord met him so wonderfully that his face shone like that of an angel when he returned. Everyone in the village was talking about it.
Mount Snowdon where Smith prayed.
As I went up to this mountain, and spent the day in the presence of the Lord, His wonderful power seemed to envelope, and saturate, and fill me.
Two years before this time, there had come to our house two lads from Wales. They were just ordinary lads but they became very zealous for God.
They came to our mission and saw some of the works of God.
Lazarus of Llanelli
They said to me, “We would not be surprised if the Lord brings you down to Wales to raise our Lazarus.”
They explained that the leader of their assembly was a man who had spent his days working in a tin mine, and his nights preaching, and the result was that he collapsed, went into consumption, and for four years he had been a helpless invalid, having to be fed with a spoon. [1]
When I was up on that mountaintop I was reminded of the Transfiguration scene, and I felt that the Lord’s only purpose in taking us into the Glory was to fit us for greater usefulness in the valley.
Tongues and Interpretation:
“The Living God has chosen us for His divine inheritance, and He it is who is preparing us for our ministry, that it may be of God, and not of man.”
As I was on the mountaintop that day, the Lord said to me, “I want you to go and raise Lazarus.” I told the Brother who accompanied me of this, and when we got down to the valley, I wrote a postcard;
When I was up on the mountain praying today, God told me that I was to go and raise Lazarus.
I addressed the postcard to the man in the place whose name had been given to me by the two lads.
A view of Llanelli, South Wales where Lazarus lived.
When we arrived at the place we went to the man to whom I had addressed the card.
Unbelief Looks
He looked at me, and said, “Did you send this?”
I said, “Yes.”
He said, “Do you think we believe in this? Here, take it!” and he threw it at me.
The man called a servant and said, “Take this man and show him Lazarus.”
Then he said to me, “The moment you see him you will be ready to go home. Nothing will hold you.”
Everything he said was true from the natural viewpoint.
The man was helpless. He was nothing but a mass of bones with skin stretched over them. There was no life to be seen. Everything in him spoke of decay.
Faith Shouts!
I said to him, “Will you shout? You remember that at Jericho, the people shouted while the walls were still up. God has like victory for you if you will only believe.”
But I could not get him to believe. There was not an atom of faith there. He had made up his mind not to have anything.
It is a blessed thing to learn that God’s word can never fail.
Never hearken to human plans
God can work mightily when you persist in believing Him in spite of discouragements from the human standpoint.
When I got back to the man to whom I’d sent the postcard, he asked, “Are you ready to go now?”
I am not moved by what I see.
I am moved only by what I believe.
I know this: No man looks if he believes.
No man feels if he believes.
The man who believes God: Has it!
Every man who comes into the Pentecostal condition can laugh at all things, and believe God. [2]
Continue reading… Smith Wigglesworth on The Power of The Name
[1] went into consumption: Consumption is a term used to describe the wasting away of flesh caused by tuberculosis of the lungs. A very common disease of the working class in 20th. century Britain.
[2] I am not moved by what I see: Meditate long on Smith’s words here, they encapsulate what believing the word really means.
© 19 Colin Melbourne, Transcribed and annotated from The Pentecostal Evangel 1923
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