Nazarene A.M. Hills: we cannot consecrate alcohol to God

See also: Bible says be sober again and again.

Church of the Nazarene Manual – alcohol

A.M. Hills – early holiness preacher in the Church of the Nazarene. He wrote:

We can not consecrate our alcohol… to God.

I have two friends in Massachusetts, Brother M____ and Brother P_____.

They were at a holiness camp-meeting together. M_____ had already entered into the rest of perfect love. P_____ was seeking it. They were in the woods together in prayer, praying that P_____ might receive the Baptism with the Holy Ghost. After an hour of earnest consecrating, pleading prayer, P_____ began to shout at the top of his voice: “I’ll do it!

I’ll do it!” and the blessing came. M_____, by his side, was entirely ignorant of what it was that the Spirit wanted. But P_____ was a general merchant and among other things sold tobacco, and the sticking point was — whether he would give up selling tobacco. He immediately telegraphed to his clerks to sell no more tobacco. He took three hundred dollars worth out into the street, when he reached home, and made a bon-fire and burned it up. Obedience to the Spirit! I have never known a person to receive this blessing who used or sold tobacco. It is too vile to be tolerated by the Spirit in a body which he proposes to make a temple of the Holy Ghost.

Whatever in habit or life the Holy Spirit condemns must be abandoned in the spirit of implicit obedience or it is useless to seek this sanctifying work of the Holy Ghost in the heart. No agony of prayer can reach it while the will is not joyfully obedient.

We can not consecrate our alcohol, or our tobacco, or our opium, or our card-playing, or dancing, or theater-going to God. He wants none of these things. All actual and known sins must be abandoned, at conversion. Our consecration is for a deeper work, that is to say, for the removal of inbred sin, which, after all, is not accomplished by our consecration though that is an essential preliminary, but by the ‘Baptism with the Holy Ghost and fire.’

A.M. Hills (Church of the Nazarene), How to Obtain the Blessing 

http://www.godrules.net/library/hills/192hills_b4.htm

No sinners want to see Jesus come

(8) “They were examples to all that believe in Macedonia.” (vs. 7) [1 Thess. 1:7] This is no description of unbelievers. (9) “For from you hath sounded forth the word of the Lord,” through all Achaia, and every place. They must have been, then, a most earnest and aggressive body of believers. (10) They had “joy of the Holy Spirit.” (vs. 6.) No sinner ever had that, or ever will. (11) They had “turned unto God from idols to serve a living and true God.” (vs. 9) Oh, what grand churches we should have today, if all the members would abandon their idols — tobacco, lodges, cards, theatres, dancing, avarice, selfishness and unhallowed lusts, and serve the living God with all their heart. But that is the very kind of Christians these Thessalonians were. (12) “They were waiting for Jesus from heaven.” (vs. 10.) No sinners want to see Jesus come; that is the last thing any of them desire.

A.M. Hills (Church of the Nazarene), Sermon 9, The Second Blessing in Experience, in Theology, and in the Bible 1 Thessalonians 5:23: “And the God of peace himself sanctify you wholly.”

http://www.godrules.net/library/hills/192hills_a11.htm

Leave a Comment

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *