Okay, sure, okay then.
Is it still on?
Yeah.
Oh, okay.
Before the revival, I had different evangelistic teams
come into my church, a husband and wife
team.
She was a beautiful singer.
And before his conversion, his special thing was,
in nightclubs, he used to stand on his
hands and tap his feet on a board
above his feet.
He didn't do that in the meetings, but
he was a good preacher.
And we had one fellow come, and he
was a great song leader, trombonist.
He used to train a choir every night,
40 people.
He'd train a volunteer choir every night, and
he'd preach good messages.
And so we had different people come once
or twice a year.
But when these people left, the church hadn't
been changed or altered in the slightest.
You might have a couple of people, backsliders
restored.
You might have one or two people saved.
Maybe some people started tithing.
Maybe a couple of people joined the church.
But it was certainly not revival or anything
like that.
It got to the point where I just
said, God, I'm not going that route anymore.
I'm not going to try this anymore.
We have to have revival.
And that's really what happened there.
And then we found what God could do
when we got out of his way.
And Ralph and Lucita were certainly prepared by
God and used of God in wonderful ways.
They were very transparent, too, in their testimony
to the people.
They never created any impression that they felt
they were big shots, not at all.
Sometimes Ralph might say something, and Lou might
even correct them in a meeting in front
of the crowd.
And there's no bad feeling about that.
They just did it.
They were honest and humble and pliable.
And it was such a refreshing thing.
What happened was, actually, I told a missionary
I had in my church, I told him
how I felt, and he said, try and
get Ralph and Lucita.
And I said, who are they?
I'd never heard of them.
And he told me something about them, where
they lived, and I got their address, and
this is how the whole thing, how God
put it all together.
I should perhaps point out, Saskatoon, which at
that time was a city of 120,000,
I think it's somewhere up to 200,000
now.
And I had, as I mentioned before, a
church of 175 members.
We were running, before the revival, we were
running about 300.
The church, you could pack 350 in.
We were pretty well full Sunday mornings.
But it wasn't revival.
But there's an old saying, if you ever
go through revival fire, you'll have the smell
of smoke in your clothes till the day
you die.
You'll never forget it.
You'll never be satisfied with anything less.
Okay.
My wife and I had flown down to
South America.
We had a contact who had been a
Kansas cowboy.
He was a missionary with the Gospel Mission
of South America.
And Lyle Eggleston was his name, and he
was my contact.
And so we arrived in Buenos Aires.
It's a city of 10 or 12 million,
and nobody met the plane.
And so we didn't understand.
He explained later that if you're right down
there, you want to use a small envelope
and a small stamp.
If you use a big colorful stamp, the
guy in the post office likes it, he'll
take the letter home.
So my last two letters never got to
him.
Somebody had taken them home.
So he knew I was coming, but he
didn't know when.
And so there we are sitting in this
air terminal wondering what to do, you know.
The boy said, hey, that guy looks like
an American.
So I went over and said, good day.
Are you an American?
No, he wasn't.
He was Spanish.
No, we didn't know any Spanish except C.
And then I thought, hey, that guy looks
like him.
Remember me?
That's him.
No, he was a Spanish guy.
So we gave up on that, and we
prayed.
And to make a long story short, a
fellow, a total stranger, he walked up and
he bowed and he had me slip the
paper.
And on it, it said Lyle Egglestone, 35
Amblegada.
That's the street where he lived.
And his phone number.
And he bowed and walked away.
So I phoned Lyle, and he came tearing
down all apologies.
And I told him what happened.
He said, Bill, listen.
He said, I've only been here a couple
of months.
Nobody knows me.
I said, I know that.
I phoned the Latin American mission and the
sailors' mission.
Nobody had even heard of you.
And I thought we were in a wild
goose chase.
But he said, who is this guy?
I said, I can describe him.
We were tearing all around the air terminal.
We couldn't find him.
Of course, there's thousands of people.
It's a big air terminal there.
We never did find him.
So we finally had to conclude it was
an angel sent from God.
And then my wife and I were riding
in a bus one night, and we'd forgotten
to ask where to get off.
And we didn't have a clue where to
get off.
So the bus is packed.
All the buses are packed.
If you get on when the bus starts,
you get a seat.
Otherwise, you're standing.
So we're standing along at the strap for
the longest while, you know, whispering back and
forth, what am I going to do?
I'll just trust the Lord.
So we went along for half an hour,
and then somebody leaned over in the dark
and said, please get off at the next
stop.
So we did.
And it was obligato, the street he lived
on.
A very strict, you know.
So how did that happen?
How did he know where we were to
get off, you know?
So, again, it must have been an angel,
you know.
So we had things like that happening in
traveling in third world countries or other countries.
When you don't know the language, God always
comes through.
Get many evidences of God's engineering and control
and concern.
You know, it's a wonderful thing to take
chances for God.
You don't see anything much happen until you
take some chances, you know.
And he said, prove me now herewith.
God likes to be proved.
Okay.
I have one last thing to ask you.
Could you make one statement, you know, to
the young people of today that don't have
a senior title?
They're going in the direction of, you know,
church programs and different things.
What do we need to do?
What do you feel that this generation needs
to do if they want senior titles?
One thing would be if a Christian person
wants revival, it would be a good thing
to try and find some friend that would
want revival if they could pray together, if
two people could start praying together, you know.
And maybe you might get another in three
and then maybe four or five, you know.
And get started.
Like if two of you agree upon earth
as touching anything they shall ask, it shall
be done for them if my Father was
in heaven.
And the word agree there, it's a musical
term, somphoneo, from which you get the English
word symphony.
So if two people agree together, it'll be
done.
But I would say find someone else and
start encouraging one another and praying for revival
and then try and get others in on
this.
In Steinbeck, Manitoba, there was a revival in
the Bible college there.
I was in there later on for meetings.
What happened was some girls got together and
began praying for revival.
And then more girls and then more girls
and then more girls.
It just got bigger and bigger and bigger.
And then the staff heard about these prayer
meetings late at night and thought they'd better
check it out.
So they checked it out and they could
see there was nothing wrong with it.
It was good, you know.
And so they let it go, just the
girls, and praying sometimes till 12 at night.
And then one day in the chapel service,
God came and had a glorious revival.
It swept the whole school.
And they said for years after that revival,
they never ever had any problems between staff
or this kind of thing in the school.
That was all just cleaned up, you know.
So we need, we must have Spurgeon said,
our system will not work without the Holy
Ghost.
And he was absolutely right.
He knew the power of God.
You know, when he started off at Water
Beach, it's a small town of 1,200
people and he had a church of 40
people and every second man was a drunkard.
He was 18 years of age, no training.
And in two years, the church went from
40 to 400.
There wasn't a drunkard left in the area.
And he said, we had a Holy Ghost
revival.
When he moved to London, New Park Street
Church, it was a building seating 1,200.
They only had anywhere from 60 to 120
or so on a Sunday morning, and five
in the prayer meeting.
He was there one year and there were
500 in the prayer meeting and the church
was packed to the doors.
But he said, when I got to New
Park Street Chapel, it was a small group
of people who had been praying for years
for revival.