A New Unction Of The Holy Spirit

By Lois J. Stucky (1928 - 2014) 

    E. E. Shelhamer was a deeply spiritual brother used greatly by God in a preaching and writing ministry.  Some of you have read his articles in Herald of His Coming.

    He once shared that he was powerfully converted as a teenager.  So compelling was the Holy Spirit’s call on his life that the lad sometimes jumped up on a box and preached to the logs and the corn stalks.

    In the Christian college where he went to prepare for his life’s work, he was a leader of religious services.  Gradually and almost unnoticed by himself, he began to lose the fire of the Holy Spirit.  The lightness that characterized the students around him crept into his own spirit.

    His second year in college his friends told him, “You don’t get us under conviction as you did the first year.”  He had to confess to himself that he had lost the “keen edge” which had made him “a reproof to worldlings and compromisers.”

    At a little church altar, with holiness saints praying with him, he repented and met God anew.  The unction of the Holy Spirit was restored to his life.  Back at school he met with ridicule, but by the grace of God he bore the isolation.  God soon thrust him out to preach the Gospel with a holy boldness that brought many souls into the kingdom of God. 

Have We Lost the Fire?

    How many of us need to find a humble altar and pray through to a new unction of the Holy Spirit?  This is an age of lightness.  It is more pleasing and popular to soothe and console and to entertain than to warn people to flee from the wrath to come.  All around us are lovely people, apparently successful people, seemingly satisfied people – yet they are LOST!  Who cares?  Who has the holy boldness to witness and to preach the Gospel to them instead of merely passing the time of day or chatting in idle conversation with them?

    Crucial conditions exist in many places around the world.  Yet multitudes go on their light-hearted way with no concern for preparing for the eternity that lies ahead.

    Christians, what an hour to preach the Gospel “with the Holy Ghost sent down from heaven!”  Some of us ought to pray more for our families, for those with whom we work, for our neighbors and friends.  We ought to witness more to them.  In addition, we can unite our efforts and through the printed Word, we can go far and near urging people to lay hold on eternal life.