Power to Save
By G.T. Haywood
Written November, 1923
There are many things in the Word of God over which men are stumbling and walking in darkness. When they meet people who are supposed to know and inquire of them concerning the meaning of the scriptures, they get no satisfactory answers and therefore decide that here is nothing to it. But we are glad to know that there is power in Jesus Christ, and that God is moving in the land today. Nothing but the power of God can save a man. It actually saves and delivers, too. Many imagine they have been delivered when they really do not know what deliverance is. Some are brought up in a good family, and because they are trained well they think they are all right. But salvation is of God, and not of training. When God does it you know it, and something else is added to it, namely boldness to tell about it. People have their own manner and method of expressing what God has done for their soul but however crude that may be, God get the glory out of it.
There are thousands of people today who think when you go back to dust that is the end of you. They do not know God and the power of the gospel of Jesus Christ. No exterior work of man can save his soul. It takes the gospel of Christ, preached in the power of the Holy Ghost sent down from heaven, and not taught to a man from an intellectual point of view. The Lord from heaven never attempted to preach the Gospel until anointed form the Holy Spirit at the River of Jordan. Immediately He hid Himself away for forty days, and afterward came up to the city where He had been brought up, and standing up in the synagogue said, “The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because He hath anointed me to preach the gospel to the poor; he hath sent me to heal the brokenhearted, to preach deliverance to the captives, and recovering of sight to the blind, to set liberty them that are bruised; to preach the acceptable year of the Lord.” Luke4:18-19. O, the millions of despondent and broken-hearted, who are lying along the wayside today, not knowing what to do, because of having tried everything, and found them all a failure! But, thank God there is a Gospel preached in the Holy Ghost which will do the work and will bind up the broken hearts. Every man and woman has a soul, which must meet God and pass through that long lane of eternity. Yet great and wise people who are looked up as somewhat, will not stop to consider this thing. Hear old Brother Job say, “Man that is born of woman is of a few days, and full of trouble. He cometh forth like a flower, and is cut down,” Job 12:1-2. It is high time to away and consider. Many are going on and on in sin when their very hair is blossoming with age.
I do not care in the least about intelligence if it does not assist me to find more of God. I desire to have my heart right in His sight. I want to keep a conscience void of offense toward God and men. I wish to meet Jesus just beyond the veil and go with Him all the rest of the way through the ages to come. Jesus wept with them that wept, he bore their infirmities, and had compassion on their sick, and we must be like Him. I am glad to know that though we walk through the valley of the shadow of death yet if Christ be in us we need fear no evil. Thus saith the Lord, “Fear not: For I have redeemed thee, I have called thee by thy name; thou are mine. When thou passest through the waters I will be with thee; and, through the rivers they shall not overflow thee: when though walkest through the fire, thou shalt not be burned, neither shall the flame kindle upon thee.” Real salvation is what the people need today. Society is not salvation. There is no kind of system know that can take sin out of the human heart. It requires Christ in the Holy Ghost to save a man in this present evil world. I pray constantly that, not only those seeking God, but those already filled with the Spirit of the Lord will stand up and prove to the world that there is power in the gospel of Christ.
People are not mean in sin because they want to be, but because the devil has them bound and they cannot help it. The most foolish man, who is worse than the worst fool, is that man who is not wise enough to save himself from this untoward generation. We are anxious about the salvation of others. It is for the benefit of the sinners that services unto the Lord are constantly held to show them the way of life, and the Power of God to Save.
The sermon “Power to Save Lord” by G.T. Haywood was taken from the book The Lost Works of Bishop G.T. Haywood: Unpublished Anthologies from Bishop Haywood’s Early Years, written by J. Laverne Tyson, Volume 1, 1914-1926.
