We recognize our praises and adoration must be
very feeble compared with that of the angels.
All those beings who cease not to say
by their might, holy, holy, holy.
More and more we need to see in
your majesty, in your holiness, in your beauty.
We think of the millions who have come
to shrines today, to strange gods, even when
carvings are hurried and formidable.
They've gone with sincerity, they've gone with desires
to find answers that they'll never find.
But we thank you for our Lord Jesus
Christ.
And we call you our father because we
call you father.
And because he is the son of God,
we are permitted to be the sons of
God.
And it does not appear yet where we
shall be, but we know that when we
see him, we shall see him as he
is.
We think of that company that had gone
before us.
No computer in the world can estimate how
many millions of Christians have lived and died.
Some of them got through the pearly gates
blood-stained, disfigured, dismembered, of whom the world
was not worthy.
We think of a brief life story of
Antipas in their world.
And all we're left with of the record
is Antipas, my faithful martyr.
Lord, we think how easy it is, our
lives, compared to theirs.
We come to this house tonight well nourished,
with people who love us and care for
us.
And of all, we thank you for that
love that will not let us go.
We recognize, Lord, there was no beauty that
usually desired us.
We were disfigured and rebellious, but we thank
you for the love that drew salvation's plan,
for the grace that brought it down to
man, and for the mighty gulf that God
did span at Calvary.
Mercy there was great, and grace was free.
Pardon there was multiplied to me.
There my broadened soul found liberty at Calvary.
We thank you for all your proclaiming this
gospel tonight, even as we pray all over
this nation and other nations.
We thank you for those who have sweated
and toiled in jungles, shot dangerous rapids, lived
in an atmosphere that's almost untenable, with food
that's almost uneatable, with people strange and fierce,
and yet the love of Christ constrains them
to go and take this message of redeeming
love.
We have indeed, as the old song says,
we have a story to tell to the
nations.
We've been very tidy about it.
Two thousand years after you died and rose
again, Lord Jesus, most of us old, three
quarters of it is unevangelized anyhow.
As we come into your presence tonight, we
ask again, teach us to pray.
Give us a praying spirit, give us a
loving spirit, give us a compassionate spirit, give
us a desperate spirit.
We can say truly with the disciples tonight,
because of the need we have in the
world, as the church has, to whom shall
we go?
For thou hast the words of eternal life.
But we thank you, your more than adequate
for this generation, crooked and perverse, perverted, rebellious
and rotten it may be.
But we remember Hebrews 7.25 says, He
is able to save to the uttermost.
And we bless you for those who are
declaring that glorious message tonight.
We pray again as we return to your
word, as we sang over it.
Beyond the sacred page we seek thee, Lord.
We're not seeking a theology to fight somebody
else's theology.
We want to know thee by living power
and splendor and glory.
Whom to know is life eternal.
This is a blessed, blessed privilege.
We thank you for that happy day that
fixed our choice.
We've seen all the master we want.
There's no other Lord we want to serve.
As your word says, other Lords have had
dominion over us.
We won't even mention their names.
But we didn't pollute this atmosphere tonight.
But they have dominion over us.
Over our hearts, over our affections, over our
intentions, over our purposes.
We thank you for the day when you
snap those fetters.
As we sang in that hymn again, When
shall all bondage cease?
Because not many of us can make a
legitimate claim to bondage tonight.
Not that we want to.
But there are some who have no message
of deliverance of the heart.
We pray, Lord, that your word may live
and move in us more and more and
more each day.
Get glory out of this service we ask
in Jesus' name.
Thank you.
Be seated.
We're going to look into the Panic Gospels
recorded by Luke.
And the third chapter.
I suppose most of us can quote John
3.16 without looking at it.
How many of us can quote Luke 3
.16 without looking at it?
It's the other side of the coin.
It should be as well known.
Well, here it is.
In the good King James Version.
John 3.16 John answered, saying unto them
all, I indeed baptize you with water.
But one nighter than I come up, a
latchet of whose shoes I am not ready
to unloose.
And he shall baptize you with the Holy
Ghost.
And in this version, Holy Ghost and with
fire.
But the original says Holy Ghost fire.
Because God is consuming fire.
The Holy Spirit is a spirit of fire.
And Jesus said, I'm come to bring fire
on earth.
There's no escaping fire.
It's a kind of a cliche of mine,
but I still get a lift out of
saying it.
I believe that tonight the world is going
to hell fire because the church has lost
Holy Ghost fire.
It's as simple as that.
Again, there's an awesome gap between Malachi and
Matthew.
It's a period of 400 years of darkness
without any prophetic light.
And then like Halley's Comet.
It was mentioned Halley's Comet or Halley's Comet
which is supposed to be around.
Somebody saw it the other day.
300,000 miles above the earth.
Somebody has good eyesight.
It's streaking across the sky even now.
John Baptist came streaking across the sky that
was totally black.
He was incandescent.
The word says he was a burning and
a shining light.
Jesus, the greatest character even in history, says
there was no man comparable to John Baptist.
Not Isaiah, not Jeremiah, not any of those
towering saints.
He's a very, very remarkable character.
Again, between Malachi and Matthew you have 400
years of blackness without any prophetic light.
400 years of stillness without any prophetic noise.
And then suddenly, dramatically, unexpectedly this strange man
appears in the wilderness.
It was not only a wilderness geographically.
It was a wilderness morally.
It was a wilderness politically.
It was a wilderness religiously.
You see, you go back here and you
read in the scripture about Ezra and Nehemiah.
But actually they'd left a legacy.
Between Ezra and Nehemiah they established a governorship
over Israel made of 120 priests and rulers.
120, does that strike a bell?
No?
You don't have bells, all right.
120, they established a rule over Israel.
What about the other 120 that came up?
Untrained, unlettered, unusual men who without financial backing
or organization turned the world upside down.
I said this was a jungle theologically.
These priests and elders ruled over Israel for
150 years.
Not living that time, but with an interchange
of priests and Levites and rulers.
For 120 years, 150 years they dominated that
nation.
In 170 B.C. there was a man
with a strange name of Antiochus Epiphanes.
You need to look up his name and
his relatives.
He took Jerusalem over.
He polluted the temple.
He made the Jews sacrifice to idols.
He built a statue of Jupiter where the
burnt offering should have been on the altar
of the burnt offering.
Jupiter, remember, was the name of the Roman
god.
They changed it to Jove, an imitation of
Jehovah.
He did everything he could do to obliterate
the message of the Old Testament.
For instance, he cut the throat of a
swine on the high altar to bring condemnation,
he thought.
He burned the scriptures publicly.
And all this horrendous stuff went on.
He prohibited the worship of Jehovah.
In 37 B.C. Herod the Great came.
He betrayed the nation to the Romans.
He fostered immorality.
He massacred the noble people.
He built that magnificent temple that we're standing.
Now with this horrendous background of murder and
rape and debauchery and suffering and agony, John
Baptist steps on the stage.
Again, a remarkable character.
You see, today we try to organize.
We try to get a bunch of people
together.
God never did that.
God takes single men.
They may be married, but they're single men.
Or I should say, better, individual men.
He takes Moses to the back side of
the desert.
John the Baptist, the word here tells me
that he was in the wilderness until the
bearer of his shine falls.
30 years in the wilderness.
Jesus was 30 years.
The Son of God, who had left the
glory for 30 years in training to minister.
John Baptist, 30 years in training.
The Apostle Paul, at least 30 years.
Moses, at least 40 years.
And we want to go to Bible school
for 6 months and come out like a
super prophet.
It's the time factor that kills most of
us.
Tell me how much time you spend alone
with God and I'll tell you how spiritual
you are.
Not how many meetings you go to, not
how many gifts you have, not how many
sermons you preach, not how many records you've
made.
Tell me what time you spend alone with
God and I'll tell you how spiritual you
are.
The word here tells me about this remarkable
man that John Baptist was in the wilderness
until the bearer of his shine falls.
Going forth at the command of God, of
course, himself.
He's a remarkable man, Jesus said.
I should think he is.
Let me tell you what it says about
him.
It says in this, which chapter?
The first chapter of Luke.
In verse 41, it came to pass that
when Elizabeth heard the salutation of Mary, the
babe leapt in her womb and Elizabeth was
filled with the Holy Ghost.
When?
When she met Jesus.
Where was Jesus?
In the womb of his mother.
Immediately she came into the presence of Jesus
Christ, she was filled with the Holy Ghost.
It says in verse 67, his father was
filled with the Holy Ghost and prophesied.
It says a bit further on, in verse
25 of chapter 2, Behold, there was a
man in Jerusalem, and his name was Simeon.
The same man was just and devout, waiting
for the consolation of Israel, and the Holy
Ghost was upon him.
And it was revealed unto him by the
Holy Ghost that he should not see death
before he had seen the Lord's Christ.
So this remarkable man, no wonder Jesus says
he's a superman.
His mother was filled with the Holy Ghost,
his father was filled with the Holy Ghost,
and his preacher was filled with the Holy
Ghost.
You young people, you get married, that's all
right.
You know what they say, marriage, love is
blind, marriage is an eye-opener.
But apart from that, you say we're considering
having a family, we go get examined.
The doctor checks us up and says yes,
we're in prime health, this is the time
to have a child.
What about it?
You go to God and ask him if
you're in condition to have one?
Very often a child takes on the nature
of its parents at the time of conception.
John the Baptist was filled with the Holy
Ghost from his mother's womb, his father was
filled with the Holy Ghost, his preacher was
filled with the Holy Ghost.
No wonder he was remarkable.
But then he was in the wilderness of
all places until the day of his showing
forth.
It says he had his dwelling amongst wild
beasts, ferocious things.
The remarkable thing to me, as I read
this again today, is this, he had no
role model.
Elijah says make me God, make me like
Elijah, but give me a double portion of
his spirit.
Joshua had Moses as a role model.
Timothy had Paul as a supermodel in front
of him.
And I've seen the scripture to find these
men that have lived with some giant and
they've become like him.
But this man has no model before him.
What are you wondering on the rocks?
He ate wild honey it says, and he
was with wild beasts, he was a wild
man.
It gives you a kind of a rundown
on the awesomeness of this man's ministry.
He was filled with the Holy Ghost.
Look in chapter 3.
This first verse is kind of amusing to
me.
I really don't know why it's here.
Luke 3.1 The fifteenth year of the
reign of Tiberius Caesar, Pontius Pilate being governor
of Judea, Herod being the Tetrarch of Galilee,
his brother Philip the Tetrarch of Arturia, and
the region of Trachonitis and Lysanias That's about
as refreshing as a mouthful of sand isn't
it?
What in the world do you do with
it?
Except it gives you a framework.
Amos and Caiaphas being the high priest, that's
illegal, they could only have one high priest
and they got two.
Then came John the son of Zacharias in
the wilderness.
He came unto all the country round about
Jordan, preaching the baptism of repentance for the
forgiveness of sins.
That's a dirty thing to preach these days.
Who preaches repentance?
There's an old hymn that says repentance is
to leave the sins I've done before and
show that I in earnest grieve by doing
them no more.
Sin is more than saying I'm sorry.
Repentance is mental.
It's something in my mind.
I'm going this way and I turn that
way.
When I'm going this way I say God's
in the wrong and I'm in the right.
When I turn around I say God is
in the right.
If he sends me to hell he's in
the right.
I repent of that.
It's not just repenting for the sin I've
done.
It's repenting about the motive that made me
do the sin.
It's going out past the fruit to the
root.
Because if the root of corruption is there
there's going to be a fruit coming out
that's wrong.
Doesn't it say in, well I didn't check
it, I think it's in Romans 7 it
talks about having your fruit unto holiness and
it's talking there about regenerate people not people
who came to the fruit of the Holy
Ghost.
And John goes out and stands and ministers
there.
And they come to any success anywhere you
count it.
Geographically they come from the north and south
and east and west.
Is it success?
If you like socially.
Here's a big difference, let me emphasize it
here.
In this third chapter, let me finish.
I missed a good point here.
Verse 6, all flesh shall see the salvation
of God and they'll bid it in his
day.
Then he said to the multitude that came
to be baptized him you generation of vipers.
Isn't that pleasant?
Does anybody that dares stand up in the
first Baptist or the last Baptist church tomorrow
morning and say you generation of vipers I'm
sick of talking to you.
They'd sure take a lot of offering for
him, wouldn't they?
To get him out of town.
Oh generation of vipers, who warned you to
flee warned you to flee from the wrath
to come.
He was not only condemning their sin there
he says there's a gate there and when
you get through it, it's eternal wrath from
God.
We've forgotten about the wrath of God.
If I told you last week, whether I
did or not I'll tell you this week
my neighbor, he's preaching, he usually sits there
Jacob, he's preaching in England tonight a friend
of his told him he'd seen the bumper
sticker and do you know what it said
on it?
Jesus is coming and he's as mad as
hell.
Sacrilege?
No, scripture.
2 Thessalonians 1 says he's coming in flaming
fire in judgment on this world Do you
know what it says?
He's as mad as hell.
It may be a bad way of putting
it, but it's the truth.
You see, we're all looking for gentle Jesus,
meek and mild.
The attitude of the average Christian today is
relax and be raptured.
But he's coming with flaming vengeance on this
world.
There's a time when his spirit runs out.
Here is a man filled with the Holy
Ghost filled with the fire of the Spirit
of God.
I was looking up there, let me look
back here a minute.
In Exodus 33 If you take care some
other time, not now you'll find fire in
the third chapter of Genesis when those wicked
people sinned in the Garden of Eden what
was put there?
A cherubim.
You know, seraphim is only mentioned once in
the scripture, that's in Isaiah 6.
The cherubim are always on the defense and
God put cherubim there at the Garden of
Eden so they couldn't get back.
He barred the way with fire.
In the third of Genesis, in the third
of Exodus, you'll find fire.
Now, I confess to you, I get angry
about this thing.
You see, the symbol of the church of
Jesus Christ is not a cross, that's pagan.
You can wear it on your chest.
It's easier to wear a cross than bear
a cross anyhow.
Stick it over a church, stick it on
your tombstone.
It is not Christian, it's pagan, it's cruel.
It was the most hideous form of death
known in the world and they put the
holiest man that ever lived on a cross
and mangled his body there.
And God watched his son being mangled and
did nothing about it.
He'd watch men put to death today in
Russia and elsewhere and he does nothing about
it.
There's going to be a day of the
vengeance of God and when God gets angry,
he has no idea what it is.
It's like a thousand volcanoes exploding.
He has appointed a day in which he's
going to judge the world and the poor
blind world doesn't know much about it and
the poor blind church doesn't think much about
it now.
Okay, in Exodus 32.
Imagine, these people have been delivered again and
again and again.
God had done miracles for them.
I ask you in God's name, what did
miracles do for them?
Did it strengthen their faith?
No, they didn't believe God.
God sent them angel's food every day.
God allowed an ant to split a rock
in the water, follow them where they went.
Did he do anything for them?
Their shoes didn't wear out in 40 years,
their clothes didn't wear out in 40 years,
they didn't get sweaty either.
And yet though they ate miracles and drank
miracles and saw miracles and preached miracles, it
didn't do a thing for them, they were
still unbelieving.
God gave America its day of miracles.
When I first came to America in 1950,
all kinds of folk, A.
A.
Allen was there with a 10,000-seated
tent, packing it out.
Otto Roberts was on the road.
Miss Kuhlman was on the road.
A.
Allen, Jack Cole was on the road.
There were dozens of men with 8, 5,
7, 8, 9 and 10,000-seated tents.
God gave us miracles.
Did it redeem us?
Did it change us?
It became a form of Christian entertainment.
Well, look at this for a minute here,
please.
In Exodus 32, when the people saw that
Moses delayed to come down from the mount,
and the people gathered themselves unto Aaron and
said to him, Up, make us gods which
shall go before us, for this Moses, that
man that brought us out of the land
of Egypt, we want not what is come
of him.
And Aaron said unto them, Break off your
earrings which are on your ears, and so
forth.
Verse 3.
And all the people break off their earrings
which are in their ears.
Verse 4.
He received them at their hand and fashioned
it with a graven tooth, and after that
he made a molten calf, and said, These
be thy gods of Israel.
And they rose up early in the morning
and offered burnt offerings.
And the people sat down to eat and
drink.
Go over to chapter 33.
And verse 2.
I will send an angel before thee, and
I will drive out the Canaanite, the Amorite,
the Hittite, the Perizzite, the Hivite, the Jebusite,
and take you to a land flowing with
milk and honey.
Verse 5.
For the Lord said unto Moses, Say to
the children of Israel, You are a stiff
-necked people.
I will come up into the midst of
thee in a moment and consume thee.
Therefore now put off thy ornaments from thee,
that I may know what to do unto
thee.
The children of Israel stripped themselves of their
ornaments at Mount Horeb.
And Moses took the tabernacle and pitched it
without the camp.
Get the point?
He took the holy place out of the
midst of that crooked and perverse company.
Tell me, why didn't God Almighty give them
a system of worship?
Why didn't he give them a tabernacle?
Why didn't he give them priests?
Why didn't he give them sacrifices?
Why were they in Egypt?
They were living in slavery.
They were living in hell.
And God let them stay there.
Because you see, there is a time in
God's calendar, and he doesn't reveal it to
us always.
But what happened here?
Moses took the tabernacle and pitched it without
the camp or far off from the camp
and called it the tabernacle of the congregation.
And it came to pass that everyone which
sought the Lord went out to the tabernacle
of the congregation which was without the camp.
And it came to pass when Moses went
out unto the tabernacle, for all the people
rose up and stood every man at the
door and looked at Moses, he was gone.
And it came to pass as Moses entered
into the tabernacle, the cloudy pillar descended.
It was the pillar of fire by night,
and the pillar of cloud by day.
I said to someone this week, if you
were in London going past, where the Queen
lives, where does she live now?
Oh, she lives in Buckingham Palace.
And somebody says, the Queen's at home.
How do you know?
Because that huge flag up there has a
Union Jack on it.
When it's at home, the flag is flying.
When she's not at home, it's not there.
I believe the sign of God's presence in
a sanctuary is the pillar of fire.
Well then this person said, well I've heard
it said it's the pillar of joy.
Well doesn't it say in his presence there
is fullness of joy?
That's not eternity.
The reason our kids need so much entertainment
in churches, there's no joy of the Lord
there.
It's more than clapping our hands on your
feet and feeling sweet and sugary on the
inside.
It's the living vibration of an eternal God
who stands in the midst of something you
can't explain.
God is beyond definition.
I can't explain Him, I can't experience Him.
I know when He touches me when I'm
alone in the night, in the middle of
the night, two or three o'clock in
the morning.
I know when His living presence comes into
my office in a special, special way of
anointing.
But notice He did not come until they
went outside the camp.
There are very, very few occasions when God
Almighty has revived dead denominations.
He did it in the Welsh Revival for
sure.
But the men who stir their generation have
to go outside the camp.
Doesn't it say in Hebrews 13, 13 that
He went outside the camp?
That's fine, but when it comes to the
second half of this, you go outside the
camp and bear His reproach.
Maybe before long God will bring a cleavage
somewhere in this city, in this great town
of Tyre.
I hope He does.
And you'll have to get outside the camp.
You'll have to leave your group and go
join the people who have the anointing of
God.
Then they'll be penniless and poor, and have
no stained glass windows and no beautiful choir.
I detest going to churches where, oh, they
all come filing in in white shirts, and
I wonder if it's the Ku Klux Klan
coming in.
I'm impressed with this, you may not be,
but I am.
Dear, dear, dear.
Verse 9, It came to pass, as Moses
entered into the tabernacle, a pillar of cloudy
pillar descended and stood at the door of
the tabernacle, and all the people saw the
pillar.
Wouldn't it be wonderful?
A little boy wakes up at night and
says, Mummy, sometimes I think of those days
we were in Egypt, I think of that
terrible journey we made, and I wonder what's
going to happen.
And he said, Darling, and puts her arms
around him and says, You see that?
That pillar of fire over there?
That's the holy place.
Our holy God brands it with his presence
of fire.
Does it say in Hebrews that God makes
his angels ministering spirits, and his ministers flames
of fire?
We've got snowmen in the pulpit with icicles
hanging all around.
If ever a fire comes, there'll be some
melting.
I say again, this man, J.B. has
no pattern before him.
I'll tell you what he does have.
I'm sure his mother and father were the
most godly people on earth, filled with the
Holy Ghost.
Do you think they told him funny stories?
They did what the godliest people on earth
outside of Christianity do, the Jews, still instill
into their children who their prophets were, who
Moses was, who Elijah was.
But they have the greatest men in history.
I believe this man walked up and down
amongst the wild beasts, and there he is.
He doesn't eat much.
Some big flies, you know, a bit bigger
than these horrible things that eat my garden.
Grasshoppers, big, big things.
He caught them like that and put them
on a rock and roasted them.
And three times a day he had locust
burgers.
Nothing else to eat except locusts and wild
honey.
And the people come near to hear him.
I'll say it again for my comfort, if
not yours.
You never have to advertise a fire.
Whether it's spiritual or it's a physical fire,
there's a most self-advertising thing in the
world is a fire.
I remember getting home between one and two
o'clock in the morning in England.
I said to my wife, sweetheart, one of
the big mills in town is on fire.
Let's go, it's nearly two o'clock, there'll
be nobody there.
Everybody in the city woke up with the
same idea, so they all went.
We couldn't get within three blocks of the
place.
I said, sweetheart, we'll go round, we went
round in our little car, you know, our
tiny little things.
When we got halfway down the street it
was so fierce we couldn't even stand there.
The fire was so horrible, in its majesty,
this huge mill burning.
I wonder how many of us have ever
seen a man who's on fire for God.
I reminded you the other week again that
when the Holy Ghost came in the upper
room, how did he come?
Did he come as a dove?
When Jesus received his baptism, the Spirit came
as a dove upon him.
There was nothing in him to purify.
He comes to us in fire because we
need purification.
I remember a night in Jillingham, which is
maybe, I don't know, 60, 70 miles east
of London.
We rented a church.
I'll tell you who came.
If you've read The Smuggler, God's Smuggler, you
know, he talks in there about a man
called Uncle Hoppy.
Well, Uncle Hoppy hopped in the meeting that
day.
He came in the most broken-down automobile
I've ever seen.
He was nuts.
Pardon the phrase, but he was sanctified nuts.
He came in clothes that were almost worn
out.
He bought all his clothes at the Salvation
Army.
The only thing he wouldn't wear second-hand
was a hat.
He was afraid of getting some germs or
something in his hair.
This old car came wheezing up the street,
rheumatism in all the wheels and asthma in
the motor.
It was sobbing and groaning as it came
up the hill.
He stayed with us for a half night
of prayer.
One day a missionary came to see him.
It was Friday, and he said, Well, do
you have a need?
He said, Yes, I need 10,000 pounds,
which at that time was about $50,000.
Oh, I've got that in my safe.
Here it is.
Take it with you.
Because he had 200 or 300 men working
for him, he gave all their wages away.
Next morning they came for wages.
He said, I have no money.
They said, We have to pay rent and
buy food.
Oh, he said, I'll pay Monday morning.
And the money came.
He did that two or three times.
He was wild.
But I liked him.
I was so tired of seeing tame preachers
in England.
You know, they wear their collars backwards, because
they're going backwards.
You know, I used to wear my collar
like that.
You wouldn't believe it.
Once I started going forward, I took it
off and went forward.
I'll never forget that night of prayer.
There were surges of blessing.
There was a time when God so came
in power, I was afraid to open my
eyes.
We started praying at 9 o'clock.
Between 1 and 2 in the morning we
were going out.
There was an old lady sitting in a
chair at the back, a wheelchair, a white
-haired lady.
Oh, brother, she said.
She didn't know any of our names.
Wasn't it wonderful?
I said it was.
One of the best prayer meetings.
I've been in many prayer meetings.
That was one of the greatest, most powerful.
Wasn't it wonderful?
I said, Sure, I said that.
Did you feel anything different about 1 o
'clock?
I said, Yes, I felt a hand or
something came.
I felt a quickening in my...
It was just then.
Just then what?
You didn't see it?
No, no.
I was my head down praying.
She said a tongue of fire came on
the head of the first man, went to
the next, went to the next, went to
the next, went to the next, right to
the end.
It was awesome.
No wonder every one of us felt a
mighty surge of the life of God.
Or the power of God, define it as
you will.
You see, there's a great deal of difference
between revival and evangelism.
I'm so sick today.
I hardly read any reports that come to
me of meetings.
Everybody's getting half of America saved.
If you save all the lists of people
saved, everybody in America has been saved and
filled with the Holy Ghost about six times
over in the last ten years.
The whole population.
And yet we're as dumb and dead and
as damned as we were when we started
off.
Will you come?
Oh, we'll sing for you, dear.
You just, there's no one in the world
but you.
There's room at the cross for you.
So they come with tears, jerking and forget
all about God and everything in ten minutes
after.
You want to know what preaching is?
Study this third chapter in the Gospel of
Luke.
And when you've read that, read the 26th
chapter of the Acts of the Apostles, where
Paul is standing before a heathen king in
a pagan court.
And he says, God called me to preach.
This is preaching.
He summarizes it.
It's to open the eyes of the blind,
to turn them from darkness to light, from
the power of Satan unto God, that they
may receive forgiveness of sins, and an inheritance
among them that are sanctified.
People come to the altar, meet them at
the door, ask what happened.
Oh, I confess my sins.
There's not one evangelist in fifty in America
today preaching salvation.
They're preaching forgiveness.
Just come and get forgiven.
That's not salvation.
Jesus came to do more than forgive us
our sins.
He came for something more to rescue us
from hell.
He came to rescue us from sin and
from sinning.
Not just our past sins, but to stop
this damnable business that makes God so sad.
He that is born of God doth not,
and it's a big letter, N-O-T,
not commit sin.
You say it's impossible to sin?
No, it's possible for it not to sin.
They're making a fuss about getting the Titanic
up now, aren't they?
It was built in Ireland.
Sailed in 1912.
Fifteen hundred people perished on it.
Well, I've been on the greatest liners in
the world, across the Atlantic nearly twenty times,
and in some terrible storms.
The first time I looked at the Queen
Mary, I don't mean the lady, I mean
the ship.
There's the deck, eighty feet up there, and
I thought, this thing will never move.
When it got to mid-Atlantic, the sea
showed how powerful it was.
It tossed it around like a rowing boat.
Eighty-two thousand tons tossed around like that.
I knew it was possible for that ship
to sink.
Not impossible, I knew it was possible for
it not to sink.
It crossed the Atlantic more than five hundred
times.
You know, when people say, well, my pastor
says you have to sin every day in
thought, word and deed, I say, ask him
to give you a list of your sins
you can commit.
Give you a list of the sins you
can commit, and a list of the sins
you can't commit.
What can you commit?
Sins of the flesh, but not of the
spirit?
Sins of the spirit, but not in your
thought life?
You see, this is the only religion in
the world that gives a man deliverance from
sin.
John the Baptist preached, let me go back
a minute there, the tongue of fire.
What happened?
Peter preached on the day of Pentecost.
What did it say?
They were pricked in their hearts.
After that, Stephen preached.
We've had him two Friday nights, and I
don't know if you got blessed, I didn't,
in the meditation.
And when he preached, the same thing happened.
Peter on the day of Pentecost says to
the man that he ran away from, you
crucified the Lord of glory, you killed him.
Stephen says, you murdered the Son of God.
Now that's preaching.
You know, when Nathan went to David, he
didn't say, you know, some of you are
guilty.
Did he?
He said, thou art the man.
Oh, people say, I'd love to go to
a holy ghost church.
Would you?
Somebody says, hey fellow, listen, last night you
committed adultery.
You embezzled some money this week.
You've got a spirit of hatred, which God
says is as bad as committing murder.
Again, Jesus came not to save us just
from sinning, from sins, but from sinning.
When they heard these men, they were pricked
in their hearts.
I go back into the second, pardon me
again, in the third chapter.
Verse seven, the middle of verse seven, he
says, O generation of vipers, who hath warned
you to flee from the wrath to come?
Bring forth fruit meat for repentance, and quit
saying we have Abraham to our father.
Isn't this nice?
He called them vipers, and now he says
God can do as much through stones as
through Abraham.
Don't boast of Abraham.
If God wants, he'll turn those stones into
children to worship him.
That's pretty much exhausting their theology, isn't it?
And now at nine he says, the axe
is laid to the root of the trees.
Therefore bring forth good fruit, if it bringeth
not forth good fruit, it is cast down
and cast into the fire.
And the people asked him.
He didn't ask them.
They were so conscious of guilt.
They felt as though they had some serpent
or the tail of a scorpion stinging them.
They don't look back because of their sins.
They don't look forward because of judgment.
They don't look round about them.
Somebody might come pouncing on them.
And so they cried out.
This is revival.
It's not singing some sentimental chorus.
Would you like to come?
Jesus is waiting, ringing his heavenly hand.
He'll be so upset if you don't come.
Jesus didn't care to have a bean whether
you come or not.
He's done everything he can do for you.
You have to do the rest.
He's not going to rip you into submission.
He's not going to demand that you sing,
love so amazing, so divine.
Demand my soul, my life, my all.
It's on your side to do it.
But notice who they were.
The people asked him, verse 10, what shall
we do?
Verse 12, Then came the publicans to be
baptized.
And they said, Master, what shall we do?
You've got them from the people to the
publicans.
Verse 14, The soldiers.
They said, Do you know Kipling's recessionary?
One of the greatest hymns ever written.
God of our fathers, none of all.
God of our far-flung battle line.
Well, he talks about the lesser breeds outside
of the law, which the Jews thought everybody
was inferior to them.
The soldiers came.
They were Romans.
They'd lived in a pagan society.
They'd never seen a man on fire for
God.
They'd never seen a priest who didn't care
a bit about his trimmings.
Remember this?
Man was born.
His father was Zacharias.
His father went into the temple in a
snow white garment with a helmet on.
And he got there to the altar.
There was an angel on the right side.
Why the right side?
Because he's on the left side.
He's going to speak to the nation.
He's going to speak to this man.
And he says to him, Fear not.
Your wife is going to bring forth a
child.
And what's he saying?
Well, you can read it when you go
home.
I can't put my fingers in chapter one
anyhow.
The child is...
Your child...
Your wife's going to bear a child.
No, no, no, no, no, no.
She's far too old.
She's another Sarah.
And God does a miracle to raise that
child up.
His father's a priest of the course of
Abia.
There were twelve courses.
And his father's a priest of the course
of Abia.
He did this once in his life only.
As we say in England, there's a long
queue.
You would say there's a line behind him
of at least two thousand priests all waiting
for the one time in their lives when
they'll go in this long white garment and
they'll go into the Holy of Holies.
Which is awesome.
When he gets in there, there's a marvelous
person by the name of Gabriel.
Fear not.
I have a message from God for you.
If you haven't had it, if you walk
with God, one day you'll go to a
meeting and you'll think God Almighty's talking to
nobody in that congregation but you.
Why is he singling me out?
Because you've got ears to hear that you
didn't have before.
Because you've got a hunger for God you
never had before.
You've heard me say this and I'll say
it again.
In the right way, I'm scared when I
get to the judgment seat and there's a
billion people looking on me that God will
say to me, Son, I had many things
to tell you down in Tyler but you
couldn't bear them.
You weren't grown up enough.
A man leaves his son millions of dollars.
He puts a caution in the will and
says you can't spend a dime of this
until you're 20 years of age.
Then you can buy yourself, if you want,
a Lagonda.
The new Lagonda is $150,000 if you're
thinking of buying me one.
You can't buy a Lagonda.
You can't buy a jet.
You can't build a mansion.
This money's all tied up until you have
enough sense to use it.
I believe Almighty God's saying that to the
church today.
We've toiled, and we've trifled with gifts of
the Spirit.
We're far more with the gifts of the
Spirit than the Holy Spirit himself.
And God has treasures beyond our comprehension.
He says he can bring out of his
treasury things new and old.
So he's moved the people.
They say, what shall we do?
The publicans cry out.
They're a bunch, aren't they?
Stony-hearted rascals.
And yet with the conviction of the Spirit,
they cry out, what shall we do?
And John gives the answer in verse 16.
He said, I indeed baptize you with water,
but one cometh after me, I'm not even
worthy to carry his shoes.
He shall baptize you with the Holy Ghost
and with fire, or with Holy Ghost fire.
We talk about the baptism of the Spirit.
It's really a baptism of Jesus.
There's nothing you can get this side of
eternity that didn't come through Jesus Christ.
My dear old principal used to call the
gift of the coming of the Holy Ghost
upon us the coronation gift of Jesus.
Jesus says, there's somebody waiting to come down,
but he won't come down till I've gone
up.
When I ascend, he will descend.
I have been with you, he shall be
in you.
When Jesus was on earth, he was tied
up.
If he was in Galilee, he couldn't be
down there.
In Bethlehem, if he was in Bethlehem, he
couldn't be somewhere else.
But he says, when I go and the
Spirit comes, he will be in you and
he will be with you and abide with
you forever while you walk in the light
he gives you.
His hand is in his hand.
He will truly purge his floor.
But he will burn the chapel with fire.
Burn up the chapel with unquenchable fire.
And many other things in his exaltation.
I wonder what they were.
I wish he'd left a list of them,
don't you?
Here is a man with no financial backing.
He has no program.
He has the favor of nobody.
He has the Roman army against him.
He has the religious army of the Jews
against him.
He has the Pharisees against him.
He has the Sadducees against him.
He has no money.
He doesn't need it.
And he doesn't have a miracle ministry.
It says very clearly, John did no miracle.
Nobody ran after him.
Have mercy on my son, he's a lunatic.
Nobody cried unclean, unclean, unclean.
Or open my eyes or I'm deaf or
something.
Nobody said that.
He didn't raise the dead.
I don't have to express it.
I wish I had a vocabulary I could
express it.
He never unstopped their faith.
He never opened blind eyes.
He never cured a withered leg or a
withered arm.
He didn't raise a dead man.
He raised a dead nation.
Single-handedly.
God has had this man in the school
of silence.
He's been talking to God and walking with
God and weeping before God.
He's lived with Jeremiah.
He's lived with the prophets.
But why does he get on?
You say he has no role model.
Because he knew what Isaiah said.
That one day a man should come in
the wilderness crying, Prepare ye the word of
the Lord.
Make straight in the desert a highway for
our God.
Isaiah 35 says that highway shall be called
the way of holiness.
And that a wayfaring man, no fool, neither
therein.
He shall baptize you with the Holy Ghost
and with fire.
God always works for the minority.
You've got a wonderful list in 1 Corinthians
15 of people that saw Jesus in his
resurrection power.
And then it ties the knot on the
end of the cotton and it says he
was seen of 500 brethren at once.
And I'm convinced in my spirit it was
those 500 he says tarried to be endued
with power.
How many went?
120, 380 of them never bothered.
It's always like that.
God uses a minority.
There's only a few people wanted outside the
camp.
There's only a few people that want to
die with him.
Again I remind you when Jesus went outside
of the camp it was a place where
the only freedom that lepers had was to
walk outside the camp.
It was a place where all the sewage
of the city went.
It was a place where they threw dead
bodies and dead animals.
It was a stink hole.
And the holiest man that ever lived went
outside the camp that you might go inside
of it.
And yet you have to whip some people
to church almost.
I don't wonder.
If I went to the church they go
to, I'd want whipping too.
Isn't it tragic, isn't it almost blasphemy to
go to a meeting and you say the
man who brought up the meeting was cold?
The meeting was so dead.
How can you have the living Christ in
a dead meeting?
I'll put it the other way.
How can you have a dead meeting if
the living Christ is there?
How can you go out?
After all our business is to talk about
eternity.
It's to talk about a time when there's
no bonds and no other stuff materialistic.
It's all vanished.
We're going to a kingdom that knows nothing
of these material things.
We're so slack and so careless about these
things.
I like flags.
I must confess that.
I like flags.
I'd like to get a flag of the
Salvation Army if they still have them.
It had a cross on it, it had
blood and fire on.
William Boole was half Jew and half Gentile.
He just about got kicked out of the
Methodist church.
In Leicester I think it was in England.
Walked out of the church.
They wanted to appoint him to a certain
church.
They read from the register.
The clerk said, William Boole is appointed to
so-and-so to be pastor.
And his wife got up and shouted above
the top of the crowd, He's not going!
Poor William.
He wasn't William the Conqueror then, was he?
William you can't go, that's not for you!
And he walked outside and put his arm
around her shoulder.
She had a curvature of the spine.
And he said, He said, Darling, we're going
to raise up an army.
From where?
We'll take all the cast-offs or drop
-outs from the churches.
We go to the gutter.
And he wrote a wonderful hymn, Thou Christ
of burning, cleansing flames, send the fire.
We ought to learn that.
Thy blood-bought gift today we claim, send
the fire.
Look down and see this waiting host.
Give us the promised Holy Ghost.
We want another Pentecost.
I'm not sure we do, but we need
it.
To make our weak hearts strong and brave,
send the fire.
To live a dying world to save, send
the fire.
O see us on thine altar lay our
lives, Our all this very day to crown
the offering.
Now we pray, send the fire.
Again, make our weak hearts strong and brave.
The only way you can get dross out
of gold is to put it in a
crucible.
Today they put it in an induction crucible.
You press the button, the heat comes up,
the gold slab.
The gold goes to the bottom, it's heavier
than lead, it's heavier than iron.
And it sinks to the bottom of the
crucible.
And a man sits there with a sieve.
And he takes the scum off the top
and throws it out and throws it out.
And he's there half an hour, then he
quits.
Are you tired?
No.
Why do you quit?
It's pure.
How do you know?
Because I can see my reflection in it.
Doesn't Malachi say when he comes he's a
purifier of silver?
Who shall abide the day of his coming?
Dear God, we talk about one year revival.
If we have a Holy Ghost revival, maybe
you won't sleep for the first ten days
of it.
God will do such a refining, such a
purifying.
Maybe not on your husband or your wife,
on you.
Fifty years ago the most popular chorus was,
Let the beauty of Jesus be seen in
me, all his wonderful passion and purity.
O thou spirit divine, all my nature refine
until the beauty of Jesus, the refiner sits
there, he has me in the fullness, and
he heats it and he heats it and
he heats it.
And it feels like hell sometimes.
And he throws out what he doesn't like.
My pride, my ambition, my secret lust, my
temper, my unforgiving spirit, my stubbornness.
We don't think much of that.
Stubbornness is a sin of witchcraft in the
word of God.
And he purifies until he looks in me
and sees his reflection.
He won't be satisfied.
He doesn't come to see and make me
a great preacher, or a great writer, or
a great singer, or a great organizer.
He comes because he wants to reflect his
beauty in my life.
Gentleness and meekness and holiness.
The self-life goes out, self-interest goes
out, self-glory goes out, self-seeking goes
out, self-righteousness goes out.
Do you think it's easy?
We've lived with it so long that we
like ourselves.
And God long ago stopped liking us.
And the word of God talks about the
word of God being a mirror.
You know, and when Revival comes, he holds
a mirror up and you see yourself.
Remember the old story of Cromwell?
An artist begged, could he paint him?
And Cromwell had a great big wart on
his chin.
And the artist painted it, minus the wart.
When he went in, he said, what do
you think?
He said, paint me, wart and all.
It's part of me.
Lord, paint me, but don't show me my
wart.
Don't show me I'm basically selfish.
I'm full of self-interest.
I'm full of self-seeking.
I'm full of pride.
I'm full of anger.
I'm full of bitterness.
I have an unforgiveness.
Don't show me that.
I'm as ugly as the devil.
The smart boys today, if you listen to
Schuller tomorrow, the lost soul that he is,
he'll tell you, your trouble is your self
-image is so poor.
You're such a pure image of yourself.
Your trouble is you're too good an image
of yourself.
Paint me, wart and all.
Okay, as usual, I've run out of time.
He shall baptize you with the Holy Ghost.
William Booth put up this slogan, Blood and
Fire.
In the news this morning, they said, we're
going to show the automobiles for the last
hundred years.
About 19, let me see, 34, 35, 34,
35, Studebaker made a wonderful automobile.
It had a torpedo nose.
It was a marvelous looking thing.
I remember there was one on show in
our city.
Crowds went, look at this Yankee thing, look
at this Yankee automobile.
Does it fly?
No, no, it keeps on the ground.
It's got a nose, a bullet nose.
Studebaker stood in Newcastle, Pennsylvania one day, in
the late 1890s.
He was saying goodbye to a young man
who was the most brilliant orator in the
University of America.
His name was Brangle.
Studebaker shook hands with him and he said,
Brangle, I wish I were as sure of
becoming the President of the United States as
I am that you become the Archbishop of
Canterbury.
Studebaker and this fellow had been buddies in
a college.
Studebaker, poor soul, all he did was become
a millionaire.
This young man with his oratory went and
laid at the feet of Jesus.
He got to London tied out.
Remember, he went on a boat.
It took four weeks to get there.
He's doing it in three and a half
hours now.
William Booth said, bring the young man in,
in the morning to see me, the young
man from America.
Well, who are you?
He said, I'm Dr. Brangle.
Dr. Brangle?
They didn't need doctors.
Their theology wasn't sick.
What have you come for?
I heard the Holy Ghost is here.
I've crossed the Atlantic.
I want to be filled with the Holy
Ghost.
I don't depend on my theology, my learning.
I have a lot of scholarship.
But I need fire, I need fire, I
need fire.
William Booth said, you get it tomorrow morning
at five o'clock.
You'll polish the shoes of fifty students.
And none of them had one leg.
A hundred big high-top boots.
Not spray-polished.
We used to have polish when we were
kids in England.
It was black clay.
And you took it to the tap and
ran water on it and then took the
brush.
My mother wasn't looking, you spit on it.
And you made the clay and put it
on the boots.
Oh, my dad's big, big boots.
They took hours to dry.
I had enough strength to polish them.
But he said it was there God taught
me a lesson of patience.
They didn't open the door and say, we're
waiting for a talented man like you to
teach on the book of the Revelation.
We'd like you to lead the prayer meeting
tomorrow.
They said, stick your nose down there.
Brangle did.
And he waited on God and God filled
him with the Holy Ghost.
They established an office in the Salvation Army
that they'd never given to anybody in its
history.
They called it the Spiritual Special.
He preached in Sweden to a crowded house
of about fifteen hundred people and people came
to the altar and somebody went to this
woman and she did this.
So they found somebody who could speak the
sign language.
And the lady said, would you ask her
why she came to this altar?
Did she hear a word?
No, no, no, no, no.
No, no.
Why did you come to...
I was in the gallery.
Yes, yes, yes.
Why did you come to the altar?
Because I could see what I'd never seen
in a preacher in my life.
What?
What was it?
I saw the beauty of Jesus in him
while he was preaching.
I don't know what he was saying, but
I knew there was something in him I
didn't have.
Come on, parent, are you living so your
children will want something that's in your life
that's beautiful?
That they can't see in school and they
can't see in the magazine and they can't
see in church maybe?
My mother was a role model for me.
My daddy was a role model.
The best thing he ever did, he took
me to a prayer meeting when I was
fourteen years of age.
And I remember that night.
It comes back to me often, often, often.
We've got the idea that the only reason
you have to be filled with the Holy
Ghost is you're going to be a missionary.
The greatest breakdown in America is not in
brothels tonight.
And it's not in abortion.
The greatest breakdown in America is in the
home.
The daddies are no longer the king and
the priest.
And if you're not, you're a failure.
I don't get how many millions you have
in the bank.
Somebody loaned me a tape of this message
I preached years ago.
I wish I could preach like that and
have the energy now.
But I was preaching in the head church
of the Nazarenes in Perth, gorgeous city of
Perth in Scotland.
And the pastor said, Len, on Saturday I
want you to come with me to Dundee.
Oh, I know Dundee.
It's famous for Dundee cakes.
Fruit cakes.
Famous all over the world.
It's famous for its architecture.
It's famous for its whiskey.
I'm going to preach at the Cherryfield Mission.
I said good.
We came out of the train station which
was just at the back of the church.
And there was a huge sign across, Dr.
James Baxter McLagan will be preaching here at
the anniversary service three o'clock on Saturday
afternoon.
He's only a little guy.
I said, you know, the poster's bigger than
you are.
I can't wait to hear you preach.
I'm not preaching this afternoon.
Who is?
He said, you.
I said, forget it.
He had a wonderful voice.
He played a concertina.
He got them all singing.
And he said, we're going to sing one
more song and then my dear friend Leonard
Raven is going to preach.
I thought, oh, I didn't think Christians were
as mean as that.
Well, I preached about the Holy Ghost.
And then they said, how many of you
today want to really be filled?
You want God to burn up everything in
you which is unlike him.
Burn it, burn it, burn it.
Not repair it, not clean it up.
Burn it, destroy it, root and branch.
We're going to sing it in a minute.
Breathe on me, breath of God.
Twelve people raised their hands.
I said, I have five minutes to get
off this platform around the corner for a
train.
We've got to get back to the city.
But thirteen isn't unlucky.
Any thirteen?
And the lady went like this, like that.
And I said, fine, I saw it.
And she smiled.
So that was it.
We got the train and shivered all the
way back.
The River Tay was frozen with ice blocks
bigger than this table.
I guess eight, ten years after, dear Martha
and I were in a meeting in Manchester.
An afternoon meeting.
And boy, it was stuffy.
No ventilation.
People were saying, you know, the Spirit isn't
here.
The devil's here.
Forget it.
It's not the devil.
It's a janitor.
He overheated the place.
And no ventilation.
What do you expect?
The preacher couldn't get through.
He sat down.
A little lady at the end of the
platform was there swinging her legs like this.
And I thought, she's wishing she could reach
him and kick him and get him moving.
The president of the class knew, meeting, knew
it hadn't gone very well.
He says, now we do have ten minutes
before we have tea and cookies.
I'm going to ask so-and-so to
give a testimony.
Boy, she jumped up like a kangaroo.
Run through the platform.
She said, I want to tell you something
happened one day in the Terryfield Mission away
in Scotland.
I went to a meeting one afternoon to
hear J.B. MacLachlan didn't preach.
And I was at the back and I
ducked down anyhow.
I ducked down more and more, you know.
I thought, what's coming?
I was a Christian, nervous, timid, afraid.
The most timid girl in the whole of
Scotland.
I couldn't even look at a man.
I blushed.
She got rid of that before too long,
of course.
And I was terrified.
I'd never worked this out.
Here's a woman weighing 125 pounds.
Here's a thing that weighs less than half
an ounce.
And she jumps off the chair in case
it tosses her over his head or something.
What you're nervous about.
She said, I got filled with the Holy
Ghost.
And that day I wrote a letter to
Birkenhead to the holiness people there and asked
them, I want to come to your school.
I want to be a missionary.
God wants me to be a missionary.
I was in the top ten of students.
Before that I had no education.
I'd just swept up the debris in a
factory.
And every time I went to a meeting
and said, Oh God, I wish I'd gone
forward and let you really do something.
The devil said, it's only for scholars.
It's only for preachers.
You're no good.
You're backward.
You're retarded.
Well, not retarded, you're dumb.
And I listened to the devil.
But that afternoon, Brother Edna said this, If
you'll come here, He quoted a hymn.
I will praise him, I will praise him,
Praise the Lamb for sinners slain.
When God's fire upon the altar of my
heart was set ablaze, My ambitions, plans and
wishes at my feet in ashes lay.
And he said, let God take the ashes.
He'll do more after the ashes than you
can do with a whole life or a
hundred lives.
And I trusted him to fill me with
the Holy Ghost.
They accepted me.
I was hoping they wouldn't, but they accepted
me at the Bible school.
I was in the top ten of students.
They have a school in Paris, France.
They have a school for prospective missionaries to
learn whatever language you want to learn.
I went to the school there, and I
came out in the top ten of the
students there.
After God quickened my mind.
Present your body a living sacrifice.
Holy, acceptable to God, which is your reasonable
service.
And your spirit, soul and body be preserved.
Blameless.
And she said, he touched my mind.
And she smiled a bit surprised.
She said, and I went to Africa.
I'd just come back.
I went right in the heart of the
forest.
Where the men are somewhere up there.
Big, big men.
At night, somebody knocks on my door.
Missy, Missy, Missy, please come.
Wife very sick, wife very sick.
He has a lamp.
And she goes to the river, and there's
a log.
No bridge, just a greasy log.
And he's balancing with the lamp.
He takes my lamp, and he's like this.
And I'm looking at his feet going over
a log.
And there's a friend down there.
He's only got one cavity.
And he's ready to feel it.
If I slip, I'm right in the mouth
of that octopus, I was going to say.
What do you call it now?
No, it wasn't alligator.
No, it wasn't.
Come on, you're as ignorant as me.
It was a hippo.
Hippopotamus.
He said, I go and deliver a baby.
And the man says, I come back with
it.
No, stay with your wife.
She needs you for the next hour or
two.
I take my lamp, and I come to
the river.
And there are friends waiting.
On the way, I hear the roar of
a lion.
I look, and I see one of those
monstrous boar constrictors wriggling around a branch, ready
to grab me.
And she said, I walk across that little,
narrow, narrow, narrow, looks narrow and narrow all
the time, log.
And there I'm singing Blessed Assurance.
And I sure need it.
I get home, and I haven't been in
my little bed.
It's made of leaves, she said, and a
cloth.
And I hear something scratching at the door.
It's a friendly lion that's around the neighborhood.
I just say to him, sir, you can
go away.
I'm not on the menu tonight.
Just laugh at the whole thing.
Timid, frightened of a mouse, not afraid of
lions, I walk through the forest by myself.
God hasn't given me the spirit of fear.
He's given me the spirit of love and
of power and of sound mind.
I don't fear men.
I don't fear the future.
I don't fear the devil.
Has God got any fear in him?
How in God's name can you say you're
filled with God if you're nervous and afraid
about something?
There's no fear in God.
That precious little one went on to write
pages of history.
It's not what you have that you can
bring to God.
It's what God can give you.
We don't have men like we used to
have.
I say, some of you fellows need to
get down to business.
Need to read Acts 2 and Acts 3.
Read Acts 26.
There are two big volumes written by a
little Baptist guy, Arnold Dalimore.
I talked with him.
Two big volumes on the life of George
Whitefield, maybe the greatest preacher England or America
ever had.
When he came to England, the population of
Boston was 12,000 and he drew 14
,000 a night without black tops, without restrooms.
One man says, I put my wife on
the back of the old mare and I
got up but the snow was so deep
we struggled up hills and valleys and finally
I got off and just led the horse
and I was soaking wet.
There were no pews, no shelter.
I stood there in the snow and heard
the man who was blazing with God.
I never thought about creature comfort.
I never realized till I moved that my
trousers were almost stiff with frost.
They were wet through and then they were
sniffing in the frost.
We went home.
The poor old mare was tired out next
day when we got home.
But we turned round and came back again.
Why did they go all that way?
Preachers don't have to do that now.
You just get enough money and you get
a TV program on Post 12.
Let these guys think that's turning the world
upside down.
And we were far lost down the pit
as we were before they started.
God isn't looking for organizing.
He's looking for agonizing.
And he talks about praying in the Holy
Ghost and I want to learn more of
that.
It's beyond praying in tongues.
And I'm not knocking tongues.
Well let me go back here a minute.
Well as I said John Baptist was filled
with the Holy Ghost.
The first day he was born did he
speak in tongues?
He didn't speak anything.
I'm not knocking tongues.
I'm saying people are making a fetish of
them.
They think they're superior.
When I was young you were scorned if
you spoke in tongues.
Now you're scorned if you don't.
God is looking for men he can totally
possess.
It's painful.
It's fire.
I'll say this in a sentence.
I was trapped in a fire in 1951
in Chicago.
Three stories up in a burning, a burning,
burning building.
Something will burn to death.
I suffer, I'm suffering now.
I'm in pain now.
I've been in pain all my life since,
since 51.
I've got healings in other areas but some
areas have no healing.
It's a thorn in the flesh as far
as I'm concerned.
It can stay there as long as God
wants it.
It doesn't trouble me.
God has many left to me.
Maybe I need something to keep me down.
But let me say this now as I
finish.
What we've had in the last 25 years
with all the Pentecostal churches we have and
everything else we haven't moved this nation to
God.
Jimmy Swigert we preached at his school a
while ago.
Nearly 2,000 students but nobody knows we're
in town.
Assembly of God headquarters at where?
Springfield.
Nobody knows we're in town.
Oral's always saying we've 4,000 students.
Well how is it 120 turned the world
upside down?
They had no money.
They had no screen.
They couldn't throw what they were saying into
a million homes.
I'm sure in my own heart disagree if
you like you're right to do that.
What God is looking for is to take
total possession of some men.
Their spirit, their soul their body, their mind
their wills.
I went to a little college Cliff College
he only had one revival I wasn't there.
A friend of mine was up in years
in the 1930s two or three.
He'd been in World War I he was
a drunkard a blasphemer and everything else.
A very precious gorgeous lady led him to
Christ and he fell in love with her.
And they had fixed a day for the
wedding.
They went to an all holiness meeting and
they were singing I think it was a
hymn the same hymn I will praise him.
No it wasn't another one.
But when he came to the stanza here
I give my all to thee friends and
time and earthly store soul and body thine
to be only thine forevermore and he sang
it here I give my friends she's the
only friend I have in the world.
We're going to be married in three months.
I have a house stored with new furniture
and the Lord said you want to fill
with the Holy Ghost cost you everything.
Postpone your wedding for three years.
Give him all your time.
Your earthly store is all the furniture you
have for the future.
Sell it and buy it pay to go
to Cliff College.
He went to Cliff College.
There were about thirty five students there as
there were when I was there thirty five
men.
He woke up one morning about two o
'clock with a craving for God.
Dan Phillips was his name.
We had one, two, three lecture halls number
three lecture hall was the most popular one.
He came down in his pyjamas into the
third lecture hall at one o'clock in
the morning between one and two and started
crying to God.
And he just roared Lord I'm a preacher
Lord I win souls but my heart is
not full of holiness it's not full of
love it's not full of the power of
the Spirit it's not full of humility it's
not full of gentleness it's not even full
of peace.
Send a fire down to this heart of
mine.
And he cried for about half an hour
and every man in the college left his
bed and they were all there in that
room in their pyjamas crying to God.
And the Spirit of the Living God came
on them.
And the Holy Ghost swept through the college
for weeks.
He didn't think when he yielded his life
and I was going to say his wife,
she wasn't his wife yet and all he
had in Manchester the result would be that
the whole college where we had some of
the most brilliant preachers Samuel Chadwick was there
Joe Bryce was there some of the outstanding
preachers of England were there but it wasn't
through their preaching it was when a man
who begged God and tossed the bedclothes on
one side and came down in a room
that was cold and said God I need
just the fire of the Holy Ghost not
for tonight but for all my life I
want to refuel my life continually with the
Spirit.
It's not enough to be filled with the
Holy Spirit ten years ago I don't care
whether you were baptized.
The question is are you filled tonight?
Are you filled with God tonight?
Are you filled with love tonight?
Are you filled with power tonight?
Are you filled with passion for the lost?
Come on in God's name God's going to
baptize us.
If God doesn't do something in time I'm
going to move.
So I don't want to.
God wants me here.
Nobody will know till eternity the precious browns
what that lovely home of theirs meant.
We've met there first.
Martha and I and Dale and Betty one
afternoon we had some cookies and tea I
think Betty said would you pray before and
I prayed and I said God make this
house a house of prayer for all nations
which he did.
Men in Africa say right to me big
George remember big black man I can't forget
those meetings in the browns.
One night in a meeting where the Holy
Ghost comes you never forget it.
You can't erase it.
We have been praying for eight years in
the rest of the community.
Is God going to forsake us?
One day the pillar of fire is going
to come and you know what we won't
need to advertise.
There will be such a meekness such a
sweetness such a holiness such a gentleness such
a loving kindness.
The fruits of the Spirit they never scream.
You may scream if you are guilty but
don't scream for the fruit.
It's not easy.
God will wreck your career and wreck your
lifestyle.
You think that little girl young lady about
this size in that meeting that afternoon in
Cherryfield Michigan in a dream she would go
to Africa and write a new chapter.
She would never get fear.
God would take away her fear and give
her boldness.
God would give her to pray revival into
that area of Africa without anybody with her.
John Baptist had no prayer partner even.
No financial backing.
I had a man being after me for
two years.
We want to set up a tax free
foundation for you.
You have an idea if I do that
God will quit providing my needs.
I'd rather somebody give me a dollar out
of love than give me a thousand dollars
for tax exemption.
Maybe you don't like that.
That's all right.
I do.
You've got to sing Mr. Hatch's hymn.
A brilliant English preacher.
He had a packed church.
He had stacks of money.
He was a favorite preacher in town.
But one night he said I went into
my office and said Lord I'm not satisfied
with popularity.
I'm not satisfied with the favor of men.
I'm not satisfied with my eloquence.
Breathe on me breath of God.
And he snatched a piece of paper and
he wrote this hymn.
We're going to sing now.
H-160 said maybe you want to meet
God in some new way.
If you do, why don't you kneel at
your chair while we're singing.
Let others sing it.
Or if you want to, kneel somewhere and
say Lord I want something tonight I've never
had in my life.
I want the destruction of my self-life,
my self-interest, my temper, my pride, my
fear of man, my fear of the future,
my fear of what the relatives will think
of me.
Destroy it.
All hell is looking into this meeting at
this moment.
All angels are looking in.
And Jesus is waiting to save the tribulation
of his soul.
What was it?
174.
Would you stand and sing or if you
want to kneel, kneel?
Put your hymn book on your chair and
sing it.
Sorry, 167.
Thank you.