The World on the Verge of a Great Crisis
The best things in life are not things.
For those familiar with the three angels’ messages, what is the best thing on earth we could ever imagine receiving? What is the most wonderful experience we could ever enjoy on this fallen planet? Would it not be to partake of the Holy Spirit in its fullness and receive the latter rain - to meet the stupendous challenges and crises of the last days in a great spiritual victory? We are encouraged to “covet earnestly the best gifts” (1 Corinthians 12:31). What is the best gift we could ever receive for ourselves and our children? “If ye then, being evil, know how to give good gifts unto your children: how much more shall your heavenly Father give the Holy Spirit to them that ask him?” (Luke 11:13).
In general, how often it is that we seek to obtain blessings by using wrong methods. The Bible gives some examples of this type of mistake:
The children of Israel rejected the message of the two faithful spies who had been sent out to view the Promised Land. They chose instead to listen to the doubting ten who had brought a dismal report. As a result, Moses informed them that they would have to wander in the wilderness for the next 40 years.
What did they do then? They “rose up early in the morning, and gat them up into the top of the mountain, saying, Lo, we be here, and will go up unto the place which the Lord hath promised.” “We will go up and fight, according to all that the Lord our God commanded us” (Numbers 14:40; Deuteronomy 1:41). Suddenly they decided it was time to believe God’s word and claim His promise. There was one small problem, however. They were refusing to believe the other part that God had told them the day before. They were determined to try to snatch the blessing in their own strength, and by their own method. The result was a disaster. Do we sometimes do the same by picking and choosing which parts of God’s word we want to believe while casting aside other aspects of His plain utterances?
“Now when the apostles which were at Jerusalem heard that Samaria had received the word of God, they sent unto them Peter and John: who, when they were come down, prayed for them, that they might receive the Holy Ghost: (For as yet he was fallen upon none of them: only they were baptized in the name of the Lord Jesus.) Then laid they their hands on them, and they received the Holy Ghost. And when Simon saw that through laying on of the apostles’ hands the Holy Ghost was given, he offered them money, saying, Give me also this power, that on whomsoever I lay hands, he may receive the Holy Ghost. But Peter said unto him, Thy money perish with thee, because thou hast thought that the gift of God may be purchased with money” (Acts 8:14-20).
Simon longed for power. He had money, and he wanted more power and influence - and the greatest power seen on earth at that time was the power of the Holy Spirit. But it can never be acquired by wrong methods and means.
The Bible tells us clearly what we should not covet: “Thou shalt not covet thy neighbour’s house, thou shalt not covet thy neighbour’s wife, nor his manservant, nor his maidservant, nor his ox, nor his ass, nor any thing that is thy neighbour’s” (Exodus 20:17). But it also tells us that we should: “covet earnestly the best gifts.”
Much instruction is given on how not to obtain the desires of our heart. But this same verse which starts with saying we should covet the best gifts concludes with the writer telling us he will show us “a more excellent way” (1 Corinthians 12:31). How does he do that? He immediately proceeds with 1 Corinthians chapter 13. There is the method.
“The Lord desires me to call the attention of His people to the thirteenth chapter of First Corinthians. Read this chapter every day, and from it obtain comfort and strength. Learn from it the value that God places on sanctified, heaven-born love, and let the lesson that it teaches come home to your hearts. Learn that Christlike love is of heavenly birth, and that without it all other qualifications are worthless.”1