From the out-of-print book Too Much: The Filled to Overflowing Experience by William Booth-Clibborn. Used by permission.
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Too Much: The Filled to Overflowing Experience6. Rivers of Living Water
"He that believeth on Me, as the Scripture hath said,
Out of his belly shall flow Rivers of Living Water." -- John 7:38.
The Curse of Empty Wells
In all the field, there is nothing as sorry, as worthless, and even dangerous,
as an uncovered empty well.
I remember, as a boy, out beyond the school grounds, there was an enormous old
pit that used to interest us immensely. Way, way down at the bottom there was a little water all overlaid with green slime. We used to saunter out afternoons, and fool around this well by the hour. We would sit on its edge with our legs
dangling over, and pick up everything we could get a hold of, hurl it in, and
listen to the strange noises the falling objects would make tumbling into its
somber depths. Sticks and tin cans and clods of earth or rotten, old
vegetables, dead cats and everything else would go in.
Deep down there, when the sun shone just right, we could discern a snake that
must have fallen in. The boys made a rock fast to a long rope and danced it up
and down on its head, and tantalized it or tried to hit it directly with a
stone, but it was too far down there -- that wise snake would see it coming
and wriggle out of the way. There were some dead frogs on the surface of that
stagnant water, floating belly upwards to the sky. And oh, the junk that was
dumped down there! I can still see that well yawning, with a foul stench coming
up from its gaping mouth.
Empty wells are an eye-sore and disgrace to any community. They become a
receptacle for all sorts of debris and garbage. In Bible times, we even read of
people being thrown into empty wells after they were decapitated II Kings
10:14. There is nothing so horrid as a useless good-for-nothing, gaping hole in
the earth, and that is what many a Christian is like! The devil sends all his
imps around with stones and bricks and old cans and sticks, and they dump all
the trash they can find into the soul that has lost its experience of the
overflow of divine life.
Satan takes peculiar delight to thus mock the defeated Christian. Witness how
he abused poor fettered blinded Samson grinding out the Philistine corn hitched
to a beam like a mule. All the urchins in town took keenest delight in pelting
him with stones, filth and everything they could lay their hands on.
Artesian Wells
When our Lord spoke to the woman of Samaria, He pointed to Jacob's well and
said "Whosoever drinketh of this water shall thirst again; but whosoever
drinketh of the water that I shall give him shall never thirst; but the water I
shall give him shall be in him a well of water springing up into
everlasting life" John 4:14. What a marvelous promise! Think of it! To be wells
of living water forever flowing to the glory of God and the blessing of mankind
around us. What a High Calling! What a precious privilege! -- to be not only a
depository but a dispensary of the Holy Spirit of God and this is God's perfect
Will for every single Christian. Remember, it is the overflow that puts the
Christian over!
But mind you, God is not well pleased with our being merely like a bucket-well
from which the water has to be dipped -- that would be desirable but it would
not be the "too much." The Words of Christ are, "A well of water springing up";
that is, the water does not have to be brought up through our own effort, but
it comes up of its own power and pressure, as from an artesian well. So
saturated, so possessed of the Spirit of God, should we be, that these living
waters will surge and well up within us with a never ceasing flow. And this is
the promise of the Father, the fullness of the gift of the Holy Ghost, for
which reason, Jesus left His home in glory, was despised and rejected of men
and suffered on the cross.
This experience is not to be compared with any this world could give. It is the
life in which the yoke is forever easy, the burden never heavy. When once we
have attained it, we should prize it and cherish it and implore God on bended
knee to keep us in its blessing, not merely for a season, but for good. How
lamentable, how heartrending to see so many fall away from this standard.
Somewhere they have failed God in prayer and in praise, or in other ways have
grieved His Holy Spirit until Satan has been able to get the best of them. The
waters suddenly ceased running over, the flow was stifled, was checked at its
spring, and the power of God was quenched and today they are dried up and are
like old, stopped-up wells.
All the failures of others, the gossip in the church, the mean criticisms, the
sinister whisperings; all the varied evil tempers and distempers of the
congregation will gravitate towards the backslider. The Christian that listens
to tale-bearing and back-biting, is a miserable empty well to which the refuse
and dirt of a whole assembly will find its way. It is hard to explain, but
there is something about an old well that just beckons you to throw something
in. You can hardly blame the devil for casting all his trash into a
back-slidden, lukewarm heart. That empty soul looks like such a tempting,
inviting dumping ground.
The Flow Keeps the Refuse Out!
I recall when preaching the Gospel many years ago in Oklahoma, I happened to be
staying at a house where the lady had to fetch her drinking water far from
home. We moved a big barrel into a wagon and got the horses started, and over
the rocky roads we rattled all the way across the hills, to a narrow vale in
the center of which was, what seemed in the distance, a small lake. Mrs. Pahlon
drove the horses right into the center of the water and here was a wonderful
sight.
Out of a large steel pipe there flowed a gushing clear stream of water. With
the buckets we filled the barrel we had brought, while the horses stood
knee-deep to this artesian wonder which had inundated the entire hollow. They
had tried to sink an oil well there, but had struck a subterranean stream which
had proved a Godsend to the whole surrounding community. My hostess was for
starting back but I would not let the matter rest. I was filled with curiosity
and wanted to test the strength of that springing flow. I rolled up my pants,
took a rock and threw it into the gushing mouth with all my strength. The
waters threw it back at me and I only got a bath for my trouble. It served me
right! I had no business to tamper with it.
Thus when Christ fills us with His blessed Spirit, our hearts should gush forth
with such divine life and virtue that every time the Devil endeavors to throw
something in, he gets it thrown back at him, with a bath of divine power in the
bargain. Oh, get rid of the scanty rivulet of Christian professionalism that
trickles into a small reservoir from which it all too soon evaporates. Claim
the living, springing up, bubbling, sparkling, prodigal flow of Living Water
Christ has promised you! Let it burst forth in copious, unlimited abundance.
Demand this well of divine life that never runs dry! Then from your heart,
there will issue peace, gladness and cheer, sweetness, goodness and grace, and
all the fruits of the Spirit and it will gush forth so rapidly that nothing
will be able to enter from without. For out of the heart are the issues of
life, and when we have guarded the heart, we have guarded the fortress, the
citadel of our being. He promised, "I shall be in him a well of water." Insist
that the experience be yours! It should not be hard to serve God when He is the
Well, He is the Water, and He is the Flow!
Rivers In This Desert World
In Jeremiah 2:13, we read: "My people have committed two evils -- they have
forsaken Me the Fountain of Living Waters, and hewd them out cisterns, broken
cisterns, that can hold no water." That is the reason why Christianity is
drying up the world over. They have made them cisterns which can hold no water.
This deplorable state can be remedied. You remember Isaac's wells. He opened up
all the wells that had been choked up and they flowed again, full and free. So
indeed there is hope for every one of us, for the worst backslider, for the one
who has betrayed his faith and fallen into heresy and unbelief.
However, Christ holds even more before us. An artesian well is often the source
of one river, but Jesus promises us many. Oh, Glory to God! that is "too
much" multiplied by "too much"! That is floods upon the dry ground!
"He turneth the wilderness into a standing water, and dry ground into
watersprings" Ps. 107:35.
The prophets foresaw this New Testament blessing! "Behold, I will do a new
thing; now it shall spring forth; shall ye not know it? I will even make a way
in the wilderness, and rivers in the desert" Isa. 43:19.
For is it not the same God of Jacob who back there "turned the rock into a
standing water, the flint into a fountain of waters?" Ps. 114:8.
Again Isaiah predicts: "I will open rivers in high places and fountains in the
midst of the valleys: I will make the wilderness a pool of water, and the dry
land springs of water." Isa. 41:18.
Why, there is no limit to our God. That is why, during that great day of the
feast, the Last Day, Jesus stood and cried, saying: "If any man thirst, let him
come unto Me, and drink. He that believeth on Me, as the Scripture hath said,
out of his belly shall flow rivers of living water. (But this spake He
of the Spirit, which they that believe on Him should receive; for the Holy
Ghost was not yet given; because that Jesus was not yet glorified). John
7:37-39.
The Pentecostal Experience
It was concerning the Pentecostal experience that the one hundred-twenty
disciples should soon receive in the Temple, that Christ spoke. These Rivers of
Living Water were the fulness of the Holy Spirit of which they were all made
partakers, when, with the sound of rushing wind, and with cloven tongues of
fire, "They were all filled with the Holy Ghost, and began to speak with other
tongues, as the Spirit gave them utterance" Acts 2:4. The only condition was,
"He that believeth on Me, as the Scripture hath said." That is, not he that
believeth in a certain creed or conforms to a certain religious standard or
accepts a particular Christian philosophy, but he that believeth on Me
-- that is to that degree, to that extent that the Scripture instructs him to
believe, the result of that sort of faith will be that from his innermost being
there shall flow rivers of living water.
The tens of thousands we have seen experience these spiritual rivers of
Divine water today attest that the promise stands good. In revivals we have
conducted all over the world we have had ample opportunity to prove that the
Promise of the Father is still every Christian's privilege. The Lord Jesus is
just the same yesterday, today, and forever! He that humbleth himself and asks
of Him with all his heart will readily obtain this experience of the "too
much," and will, like the Apostles and early Christians of old, be filled with
faith and joy, power and boldness to declare the Word of the Lord, undaunted,
steadfast, unmovable in these terrible, last days of the falling away.
Remember, Jesus promised us Living Waters, not just water, nor still or
stagnant water which remind you of an old swamp overgrown with green slime --
some putrid duck pond without inlet or outlet. Such placid, quiet waters are
never any good; for water without a flow is dead! It is living waters He has
promised! Sparkling, tumbling, foaming, rushing torrents of crystal, pure,
mountain spring water! Surging, dashing, plunging rapids of glorious
life-giving virtue! Streams from the highlands of Heaven! A whole countryside
of moving rivers! God grant you the rivers!
In the Oil Fields
Many years ago I visited the town of Taft, California. I arrived at night in
time for the meeting in a schoolhouse. Weary with the train and stage journey,
I was glad to be shown my room in a believing sister's home nearby, and
immediately retired to rest. All night long I tossed about wondering what the
unheard-of noises were that never let up. A screaming, ringing tearing see-saw
sound that set your teeth on edge. If my life had depended on it, I could not
have told you what it was. I got up with heavy eyes and asked my hostess the
cause of this disturbance. She explained it in detail to my great astonishment.
So I went out to see for myself before breakfast. Here they were -- one hundred
and one steel rods reaching away out into the old field in all directions from
different power houses. It was their joints and connections that, in singing
their metallic tune, had prevented my sleep. These rods were attached in a
continual string of action to scores of derricks and by their motion back and
forth turned the big pump wheels that coaxed the oil out of the wells. What a
disillusionment!
Standing at the foot of one of those wooden towers, I located at last the huge
spout from which there dribbled a tiny drip of oil. I was disgusted, it looked
ridiculous in the face of all that elaborate scaffolding and expensive
machinery. All that outlay of engineering skill and effort for such a puny
return. All that noise seemed so out of proportion with the yield of such a few
miserable driveling drops! I hastened to the house to discuss it with my
hostess. "Why does it not come out of itself ?" I said. She laughed at my
protests and keen disappointment. I had long looked forward to seeing a
marvelous sight, I confided to her -- a country full of wells spouting their
liquid gold in all directions! Poor ignoramus that I was! I learned that
morning that gushers are very rare, not the rule but the exception. My
impressions had been all wrong! But sometimes I think: Oh, how grand it would
be if they were all gushers!
Pump Christians
Yes! God desires us to be gushers -- every one of us. But look about you, such
Christians are rare. The common run of them are pump-Christians. At what
tremendous cost and effort they are kept at work and in unity, made to attend
prayer meeting, offer testimony or give of their carnal means. What a lot of
pumping it takes to work up a little enthusiasm. The preacher pumps himself
blue in the face, he calls for the evangelist and he pumps till near collapse!
Everybody puffs and snorts and staggers about to push things over the top to
secure a few new members, to save the church from spiritual and financial
bankruptcy. Every trick is resorted to, every scheme is worked. The people are
humored, threatened, enticed and denounced in turn. Everything creaks and
cracks, the pressure becomes unbearable and finally -- Oh! Can it be true --
What a miracle! What a wonder! Things begin to move -- Ah! A little more oil,
it becomes a steady stream. What astonishment it creates! What interest! All
hands to the pumps, is the order -- now altogether, in dead-earnest this time,
and so there is a revival of a sort, or, to quote Ezekiel, a stir among the
bones.
But the pastor is prostrate -- the evangelist must recuperate, and the
Christians all! Well! Things have got to slow down now, this break-neck pace
cannot be kept up the year through. Everyone would die of heart-failure! But
the pumps must be kept going at all costs. Pump! Pump! Pump! Without the pumps
everything would come to a standstill. Things are already at a stalemate in so
many places with such helplessness and half-heartedness manifest as to become
the despair of the most wide-awake. With all their complicated program, their
diversified extensive interests, their slow-moving machinery most of our
churches are like so many pump houses working night and day to secure the
merest excuse of a stream from their following. The ministers pet and pamper,
cajole and indulge the caprice of their crowds -- anything to keep a show of
activity for the good of the cause. Oh! It is positively sickening!
God's Gushers
Is this God's best? Can we be satisfied with such insignificant returns? Come
to Venezuela's Bonanza -- the richest oil field in the world -- and I will
show you what a gusher looks like. Go to Mexico where they number thousands. In
my clipping book I have a picture of a Mexican well called Cerro Azul No. 4,
from which there shot a column of oil six hundred feet high that drenched the
country with a rain of oil for two miles around and flowed a million barrels a
week before they capped it. Look at that stupendous display! What unlimited
prodigality!
There is the best representation of the "too much" in nature. There is
spontaneity for you. There is resourcefulness and initiative -- there are the
very qualities the church languishes for. No need of pumps here! Listen to it
roar -- noise a-plenty but not the cheap, tin-panny grinding, vexing racket of
machinery. A deafening noise -- yes, the glorious, deep, earnest formidable
roar of concentrated life and power. When gushers come in they are always noisy
but when finally capped, their rushing flow silently pours its fullness into
the reservoirs. The power is under control -- even so with us, our first
breaking through to the overflow experience gives place to the calm and
continued current of power. But there is plenty of oil and it springs up of
itself.
Oil is the greatest type of the Holy Spirit in Scripture. This modern
last day world has been permitted purposely of God to become so oil
conscious that we who await His return might be well aware of its necessity
in quantity and of our need of having not only oil in our lamps but in our
vessels besides as the wise virgins in the parable, Matt. 25:1. It was in Taft
that I also heard a good story concerning a certain man who could not be
dissuaded from an idea of sinking an oil well away out beyond the limit of all
other prospective ground and staked property.
Tom the Fool
We will call him Tom the Fool. He was obsessed by this hunch of his that he
could strike oil way out there, and he simply risked everything on it. It cost
him a small fortune to make it a go. His bit broke time and time again, and
other things went wrong. Everyone endeavored to discourage him, and thought it
a wild-cat scheme. He finally ended bankrupt. It was the same old story at
every corner: "Ha! ha! I told you so." But Tom was not to be outdone. He took
to begging. He went everywhere: into the grocery stores, into the hotels, up
and down the markets, into barber shops and along the busy street. They had
given him up as hopeless. As he entered, they would tap their heads, and wink
at each other. But he got a little here and a little there. Some old friend he
had written to, sent him a hundred. Another relative, maybe two hundred. An
occasional five-dollar or ten-dollar gold piece began to mount until, slowly
but surely, he secured quite a considerable sum.
Tom started operations again. He was determined and stopped at nothing. Any
time of the night or day, you might see him or his two sons away out there in
the sand hills, toiling at the old derrick. He had quite established himself as
a quaint and almost legendary character. One bright day, a barefooted, hatless
boy galloped furiously into town, shouting at the top of his voice the one word
that will electrify an oil town -- "GUSHER!" Everybody scrambled into the
open. Business, trade, work -- everything was thrown to the winds, and a
tremendous mob dashed down the main street as fast as they could run. You did
not have to tell them where the gusher was. Everyone guessed and they could
hear it roar for miles. Away over the sand and through the brush they
ran and crowded around the grandest sight ever.
The well had "come in" with lightning suddenness. With a thunder-like roar up
went the derrick, the machinery and everybody with it, catapulted into space.
And when they dragged Tom out, dripping with the liquid gold, he was not much
the worse for his ducking. He wore a ten-million-dollar smile. Everyone that
had loaned him anything made sure to remind him of it, and they got it back,
let me tell you, with the "too much" added! I do not know, but maybe he said to
one, "You loaned me five; there'll be a thousand for you!" To another, "You
loaned me ten; there'll be five thousand for you!" Tom had risked everything.
He had dug deep, and staked all he had, and he did not have as much assurance
of the outcome as you have, O Christian, that the promises of God are steadfast
and true, unchangeable and sure. But, like Tom the fool, we must dig deep,
stake everything, be determined to go through and get the "too much," the
life more abundant, and its Rivers of Living Water.
-- THE END --
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