Dew On Roses
Walter Beuttler

Dew on the Roses is one of the best message series that Walter Beuttler spoke on, I am seeking the full transcription of this 5 part message preached in Oakleigh, Virginia in the 1970's.

Now then yesterday morning we started to speak in the realm of worship, which really had its beginning in our chapter the other day in Acts 13 where various men came together.  The Word says that they ministered unto the Lord.  It’s really from there that we had developed this, the Lord led in this.  So very few people know anything at all about ministering unto the Lord.

I think that most of you will have observed most people seem to go to church to be blessed.  Well that’s all right, but it is not all right enough.  God likes a blessing too.  Another thing that distresses God is this: Many people go to church in order to be made to feel better.  That’s all right too, but not all right enough.

We should assemble ourselves, not merely that we might feel better, but that we might be made better.  Do you get it?  God is always at work to bring us into the likeness of His Son.  That is God’s great objective, not to make us happy, not to make us yelp like a dog, but to be made like unto His Son.  If we would keep that objective of God in mind all the time, many things would be different.  That’s right.  Now let’s go back to yesterday.

I talked with you yesterday about noise, noise making and worship.  We’ll gather up the fragments from there and move on.  You know there are far more noisemakers than there are worshipers.  There are far more noise makers than worshipers.  Of course there’s a reason.

In the first place, noise is cheap.  Anybody can make noise, but worship is expensive.  Did you know that?  True worship is costly, just like real perfume.  You can buy perfume in the Five and Dime for a dime a bottle, but that is a cheap synthetic concoction.  That’s right, a cheap synthetic concoction, but real perfume is something else.

Just a few weeks ago, I was in a town in France, Grasse, down by the Riviera where flowers bloom all winter long.  In December and January, the roses bloom, and they’re making their real perfume, not a synthetic concoction, but real flowers.

Large tracts of land are given altogether to the raising of flowers.  They bring flowers in by the truckload every morning, and those flowers get crushed.  They get oils and their perfume is extracted.  Then it is taken off the distilled water with a silver spoon.  Then you work up to a little bottle like this.  In the Woolworth’s Store you can get a concoction something like this size for a quarter.  You ask, “How much is this perfume?”

They might say, “$15.00 or $6.00.”

You say, “Ouch! 20,000 francs, 30,000 francs, 40,000 francs.  What’s the difference?”  It costs something.

Do you know what?  I learned it takes 9,000 rosebuds to make one pound of essence of roses.  Think of it, 9,000 rosebuds make only one pound of essence of roses.  The rose pickers must go out early in the morning and pick the buds.  The dew must still be on the roses.  The bud must be picked before sunrise because as soon as the sun rises, the perfume, the scent begins to evaporate.  They get the greatest yield of perfume from roses picked before sunrise.  Think of it!

The roses weren’t blooming when I was there, but it looks as though I’ll be coming through there over the Christmas holiday.  If I can possibly spare the time, I want to stop off for a few hours, and walk through the rose fields on the Riviera next December early in the morning while the dew is still on the roses and watch the pickers at work.  I want to get up with the pickers, and go out with them if I can possibly arrange my schedule so I can squeeze it in.  I might make it.

I’d love to smell the roses.  Do you know why? For the finest perfume, you must get up in the morning before sunrise while the dew is still on the roses.  While the rest of the people still roll around in their bed, you’re up like Jesus: “And a great while before day, he arose and went out into the mountain to pray.”  There is where you gather the perfume for real worship.  Hallelujah!  Don’t you smell it?

How much nicer where you just sit as the case may be.  David used to sit before the Lord.  You sit in that quietness, you worship God.  Praise God (softly).  That’s the real thing, but that costs something.  You get this hip, hip hurrah from all kinds of people.  They make a big noise and think they’ve done a lot of worship.  I’m sure many a time the Lord puts His finger in His ears and walks out until they get done with it.

(During a visitation of God in Green Lane in the late 1950’s) One time we had meeting after meeting in which the Spirit of God just came down. (The revival began up in the girls doem because of one female student that had come from Japan for only one year and she  -- Ellen Yamato was determined to meet the Lord, and she fasted and prayed and sought the Lord for months and one day the Lord came,  and the Spirit of God soon completely overwhelmed the girls dorm, the Lord came with a powerful scent of perfume [Wade Taylor described it as if God had poured out buckets of channel #5] And as this scent of perfume of the Spirit poured out from the girls dorm the revival took over the entire school for two entire weeks,  during which time Wade Taylor writes, there was deep repentance, students crying out and weeping before the Lord, sins were publicly confessed, as God brooded and worked on these students lives in cleansing and preparation for what was to come.)  Oh, such a fragrance. (One the students were cleansed and God had opened their spiritual capacity a fountain of new wine sprang up in the middle of the chapel and any student that went their to drink received a powerful, powerful imbuement, infilling of the Holy Ghost that was absolutely life transforming – however if the students had been allowed to sing and worship conventionally in this atmosphere, had they been allowed to march and dance, these acts would have dissipated this vision of God into a praise and dance fest and or a prophecy party – and the deep working that the Lord came to do in response to one student’s ardent prayer and seeking of the Lord – would have been thwarted.  The kind of visitation of God and this humbling, and prostrating  one’s self before his mighty presence in deep repentance and cleansing does occur in scripture but it is hidden in the Greek I will only mention the passage here – It is when the 120 were in the upper room.  – The Lord led me to this passage by the Spirit of Revelation just a few years ago  -- and I was amazed at what God revealed and opened unto me.  This is exactly what God desired in Pinecrest – but those that were instead focused on the manifestations of the spirit on worship, dancing, marching, and prophesying when the Lord would pay a visit to Pinecrest prevailed and thus the students were robbed, and deluded into believing that these things were the purposes of God in a visitation – and that some temporary joy and happiness were what was to be gotten in preparation for future workings and dealings of God in their lives.  How terrible this all is not that after decades the Lord has given me a firm grasp and understanding of these things, which understanding was completely  beyond me in those days – nevertheless the Lord separated me and led me apart to Him and He graced me with private manifestations of Himself, and a private visitation that lasted weeks in 1980. which I will note here had I understood then what I know now I and my friends that partook of it in private would have acted and received of this visit of the Lord quite differently.)

By the way when you walk through the town of Grasse, you can smell the town before you get near it.  After you come out of those factories, the scent of that perfume stays on your clothes for many hours.  People can tell, “I know where you were. You were down in the scent factory weren’t you?”

“Umh.  How did you know?”

You just get into that presence, you linger there, you walk around, and they take you through and show you how they make things.  When you come out, the scent is on your clothes.  Do you wonder why the Lord calls us into His Presence, and let you there to sit, and sit, and sit, and sit, and sit and sit so when you walk into a meeting, His fragrance that attaches itself to you permeates your being.  Somebody brought it. (Beuttler had a saying about this: If you have something in God [Through what he is speaking of here] people will smell it, and beat a path to your door. Because when you sit and linger long in God’s presence in awe waiting upon Him – you receive something of Him, that others can sense and feel.)

If ever you were in that meeting and the Presence just settled down.  In fact, I’m going to jar you.  In fact, all you could do was (softly in a whisper), “Praise God, Hallelujah.”  We were there quite awhile with “Praise God.”  We didn’t dare say it out loud.  It was too sweet.

Up jumps a sister, “All right folks, let’s get the victory. Onward Christian soldiers, marching on to war.”  And one fool always finds a bigger one to admire him.  Another she followed her and they put on a Jericho march.  Do you know what they did?  I would say within a few seconds the entire atmosphere was completely dissipated.  I got up, told the people to stand and dismissed the meeting.

Here we were worshipping and along comes a dumb mule who thought she had to make a big racket because nothing was doing.  Oh the colossal jewels of ignorance!  Don’t we know yet that God doesn’t like wool?  Did He not tell the priests of the Old Testament they were not to wear wool?

“What’s that got to do with it?”

A whole lot. God did not want the priests to perspire in their worship.  They were not to wear anything that causes sweat.  God isn’t interested in the product of human effort.  He doesn’t want a generation of that human flesh, so to speak, to get things going and get a meeting down somehow.  He doesn’t want sweat.  What we need is mum.

Let’s get effort.  Get things going.  Now everybody clap.  That’s right sister, brother, clap (spits on hands to get things going).  Come on, everybody yell.  Um, umh, yell.  Boy did we have a time!  Thank God that’s over.  Hallelujah.

“Hallelujah nothing. It’s a pain in the neck.”  You won’t get me to go along with that because I know what worship is.  Go on with your circus as long as you want to, but leave me sit in worship.

Do you know what God says in His Word?  When you come into the land that you are going to possess, that land will not be as the land of Egypt where you have to tread water.  That isn’t the exact term now, but that is the thought.  Do you know how they water Egypt and do with their foot in some sections?  I’d like to see that sometime.

They have a big waterwheel, a huge waterwheel that sits down into a ditch.  They have to tread the wheel to keep the wheel going and on the other side the water comes up and dumps it into irrigation ditches and down into the field.  There they worked.  (Demonstrates pumping sounds working to get water into the fields.)  Boy is this work.  So much work to get the water pumped.

And God says to Israel, “I’m going to send you into a land where the clouds rain down the rain, where you need no more water wheel.  I’ll send you rain.”  Folks, this Pentecost we’re in is not a land of water wheels.  If there’s lots of wheels, something’s wrong.  God wants to give us the rain of heaven where you can sit with uplifted hands as God sends down the rain, no work, no wheels.

When I see somebody wheeling I say to myself, “Poor brother, you’re working so hard to get down a few buckets.”  You’ll get a couple of buckets, a bucket and a half-sure.  When we are properly aligned with God, He will send us so much rain that no wheels should ever kill us.  Why don’t we go back to Pentecost where we seek God, walk with God, worship Him and just allow Him to do the saturating of His people?  We do that in school.  Ask fellow students.  We never work on a meeting.  We never sweat it up.  (Grunts and groans trying to get something going.)  We don’t get it anyhow, just a big racket.  The truth is a true worshiper cannot even worship in that atmosphere.  Some people make a fool all by themselves.

Do you know what Hattie Hammond said to us down in school?  She said, “I was in a meeting where they worked the meeting so hard that I got up and said, ‘Jesus come on, let’s get out of here.’”  I’ve walked out of more than one meeting.  I could not take it anymore.  They call you backslid.

It takes 9,000 rosebuds for one pound of essence of roses.  Why don’t we learn the secret of worship from nature, from the Word of God and from the Spirit of God?  Like we said yesterday, “Those that worship him must worship him in spirit and in truth, for God seeketh such to worship him.”  Why does He seek them?  The answer is because they are so hard to find.

Of course, children love noise.  They’re just noise boxes.  A few years ago I was on a ship, a French boat, a relatively small boat.  I was sitting on deck enjoying the ocean, you know, just relaxing.  You need that too once in awhile.  One afternoon, did I hear a racket!  Along comes the children.  They had those noisemakers; you know those rattles they use on New Year’s Eve.  They swing them around.  I don’t know what they’re called, just noisemakers, all kinds of noise.  The children were running all over the deck.  I said to a man next to me, “What is this?”

He said, “The Captain has given a party to the children and they gave out gifts.”  Whew!  And they gave them noisemakers.  That’s one way to advertise the ship isn’t it?  A lot of people have been on the way a long time, but they still prefer an old rattle to the real worship.

By the way I think we missed a message in tongues a while ago.  Perhaps I should have waited a bit.  Praise God!  I rather think that should have come earlier when we were on the roses there in Grasse.  It’s all right. I don’t know why I didn’t pause, but I’ll tell you something.  I might as well insert something here so we can learn.

Quite a few times in this camp meeting here, I have been calling for utterances.  Now that’s not an altogether healthy situation.  I never do it until I’m quite sure that I’m right, or really sure.  But the tendency is that people begin to rely on that.  Actually, when I say there is an utterance down there that is more or less an emergency statement.  You ought to act on your own and not wait for the leader to say something.  I don’t always know.  Sometimes it takes me by surprise.  When you have the quickening, especially you who have learned the thing, you should not wait for me to stop and to ask and wait for it.  You wait until I finish a sentence or so and get the thing in on your own.  I hesitate to do that too often because folks begin to rely on it, and as I said, it’s only to help the situation out.

Yesterday morning when I dismissed the meeting, I did not feel that we had all God wanted to give us.  When I stopped speaking around 11:20, the Spirit suddenly drew a curtain over my speaking.  Up to that point I was just floating along with the Spirit.  Suddenly it just seemed like a curtain drew over my speaking.  I had nothing more to say whatever.  Then why talk?  There are too many people already who have nothing to say and insist on saying it.  Did you get that?  (Laughter)

As we were sitting in that Presence, I almost said, “I feel somebody is holding back on the Spirit.”  But I didn’t say it.  I was very weary, and when I’m weary, it interferes with my discernment, so I didn’t want to run the risk because to date I have never been wrong when I make a statement, “I feel there’s an utterance.”  To my recollection, I’ve never been wrong, but I’ll be wrong sometime.  That can happen.

But after the meeting somebody came to me and said, “Brother Beuttler, I had an utterance and didn’t give it.”  I was so sorry because I felt the Spirit was going to give us the cue and it didn’t come.

So I said to the party, “Why didn’t you?”  It was a person who has given a number of utterances here and has always been reliable.

The party said, “I had already given one, but I did not know it was permissible to give a second utterance.”

Well now you see, we are in school.  We are in school.  Do you see how necessary it is to have meetings like these?  So people learn.  Now the party could have known.  I’ll tell you why.  The party had been with us for quite a little while.  Now I do not know whether from the beginning.  They could have observed that we have had folks here who gave more than one utterance in the same meeting, the same people, and could have learned from that, but how slow all of us are to learn and observe.  I said to the party, “Now the next time, will you know?”

“Yes,” they answered.

We’re in school.  “But Brother Beuttler,” you say, “wait a minute. Before you talked on worship, and now you’re talking about gifts of the Spirit. How come?”

“Quit it. We’re in school.”  Down at school we discuss a subject and somebody asks a question or a problem comes up.  We deal with that problem so we’ll get a greater benefit from the teacher, the Spirit of the Living God.

You know even people who know not God, who have their own god, so to speak, like to give them worship.  Just about two months ago now, I walked through the city of Tunis in Tunisia, North Africa.  Somebody took me to the Arabian Quarter, a narrow street, very narrow, selling all kinds of wares.  There was an Arab shopkeeper.  Do you know what I saw him do?  He had something there, and all of a sudden I saw a cloud arose from what he had.  He had a copper plate, or something like that.  We had a lady with us to interpret from French into the Arabic.  I asked her, “What’s he doing?”

Do you know the answer that I got?  “He’s offering incense to Mohammed believing that if he offers incense, he’s going to have more sales. Business will be better.” I bought some of the incense, but I do not have it with me.  It’s on the way now from Europe.  I believe they have sent it by now.  If I think of it, I’ll bring you some next year and show it to you.  It has a strange but very pleasant fragrance.  They take it, pound it to pieces, and put it on coals from wood - charcoal, and up goes the incense.  There he stands and looks up to his Mohammed and worships before him believing as the incense rises, he’s going to get a blessing in his business.

Friends, how about our incense?  Do you know God just looks around in a meeting, as it were and says, “There isn’t much worship there?  No.”  But then He says, “I’ll tell you something. It’s 5:30. Let’s go over to Mt. View Camp. They’re down in the tent by now.”  And He comes around and sees a dozen or two people huddled together.  There they sit, “Hallelujah, Praise the Lord” softly.

(Sarcastically said) “God can’t smell.  Is that so?”  My Bible says that when Noah offered an offering the Lord God smelled a sweet savor.  God can smell, and God takes it all in.

I must go back to Grasse for a moment.  Naturally they have all kinds of scents, all kinds.  In some of their perfumes they use a combination of 30, of 40 and 50 different flowers.  The perfume, the scent, the essence is an oil.  The perfume is an oil in the flower and it’s extracted.  They mix it in such a manner as to get different blends, and of course, different perfumes.  You go from place to place smelling the different scents.  Um, does that ever smell good; I’ll try this one. Ah.

They asked, “Do you want some on your clothes?”

“Sure,” I always said, “Yes.”  I went from table to table spz, spz, spz.  The next table, “Like some?”  I answered, “Sure.”  Spz spz.  I don’t know what I smelled like, but it was wonderful. (Laughter)

Hallelujah!  I dare say every one of us, I’m sure, has a different fragrance in the nostrils of the Lord.  And bless your heart; I dare say He likes us to worship.  And when we sit together and worship Him, He’ll come around, “My! Something smells nice.”  And He goes to another and smells saying, “To tell you the truth, we just don’t know which one smells the best.”  I don’t think that’s too much overdone.

There’s so much in our lives that He uses to turn into a peculiar fragrance.  And do you know what?  There was one ingredient used in the incense, I forgot which.  It’s either onycha or stacte, one of the two, an ingredient of perfume that’s extracted from a crab from the Red Sea, a deep-sea crab.  That ought to be an encouragement to some of you!  (Laughter)  They take an extract from a crab.

Folks, God has many children who are crabby and yet God manages to get an ingredient out of them that is used in the worship of God.  You know this incense in the Old Testament was a composite of 4 different ingredients mixed with olive oil.  They had an ingredient called frankincense.  Frankincense was a gummy substance that was taken from that bush.  Do you know how they got it?  In the evening they would go to the bush, and make an incision with a knife, and then the juice, the gummy substance, would ooze out during the night.  It would flow out because of the incision.  In the morning they collect it and use it as an ingredient in their worship.

Sometimes to make a real worshiper, God has to put them in the dark.  Then comes along a severe ecclesiastical critic and makes an incision, not with a sharp knife, but with a sharp tongue.  You wonder why something out of you begins to ooze – you’re hurt, you’re bleeding, and God uses that very substance as an ingredient for His worship.

There was another ingredient called galbanum.  They drew substance from that.  In order to get it they would bruise the tree with a stone and then it would flow freely.  Sometimes we get bruised and we wonder what it is all about.  Why do people hit us over the head?  Ah!  It’s to give us an essential ingredient in our worship that we might worship God with a broken spirit and a contrite heart.

Do you know what the Word says, “A broken spirit in the sight of God is of a great price.”  Do you know why?  Because it costs so much to have a broken spirit, and it’s so rare.  (It is worship and prayer offered from a broken and contrite spirit that is a sweet savor unto the Lord -- Jesus even comments on this in the prayer offered by the pharisee and the prayer offered by the publican.) Then with that spirit of worship, you get into a meeting where they’re only bent on noise making, where you think you’re in a gymnasium, or a circus, or Times Square, New York City on New Year’s night at midnight. How can you flow with a thing like that?  You can only shut yourself in with your God and in the temple of your own spirit, worship God in spirit and in truth.

Noise is cheap; worship is costly.  But, are we willing to pay the price of being a true worshiper?  Jesus paid the price.  It is portrayed in the Old Testament: its scent went up to God when those animals were burned.  If we’ll go on with God in the school of His Word, in the school of the Spirit and in the school of divine providence, you will find God will make of us souls who can worship Him effectively in His sight.  There are many noisemakers, but there are few worshipers.

“God is a spirit, and those that worship him must worship him in spirit.”  That doesn’t mean you can compel worship.  You never can compel worship.  Mechanical means are useless.  It doesn’t mean worship can be compelled.  It only means if we’re to worship God at all, we must worship Him in Spirit because on no other plane is worship, worship.  God seeks those who will worship Him on the plane of God in Spirit, for God is Spirit.