Sometime in his life prepares a message and
then when he thinks he's got it all
in shape the Lord says no.
When I have that experience I intend to
go straight into the issue of prayer or
the prayer life.
I want to speak about a prayer tonight
that maybe you've never heard anyone preach on.
But next week I hope to go right
into the story of the man who prayed
just twice and then the week after and
then the week after.
That's unless you all get frightened tonight.
I believe this is the most critical hour
in not just American history but world history.
On the theological level, when that pestiferous man
called Martin Luther was waging war, he waged
war just against the Roman Church.
He thought it was number one in heresy,
which I still think.
But now we've not only got Mormonism, we've
not only got Catholicism, we've got Mormonism, we've
got Lutheranism, we've got Moonism and we've got
Humanism.
I do not believe that the moral desolation
in America or even England, the moral desolation
in America and the spiritual stagnation is not,
N.O.T. is not due to the
strength of Humanism but to the weakness of
Evangelism.
I believe the number one enemy to revival
in America today is Evangelism.
One of the most famous preachers in the
world, I have a few like Brother Bracey,
he comes to see me sometimes.
This famous man came and I said to
him, in America today we have at least
500 evangelists.
We do not have one revivalist.
The last revivalist as far as I know
in America was a Baptist and I, unless
you're very old you won't remember him, by
the name of, what was his name?
I tell my class sometimes, I'm not losing
my name, my mind, I'm just losing my
memory now and again.
Pardon?
Moby-Cay-Ham.
Good.
You ever hear of him?
Oh, you heard of him.
A lady won't say she heard him make...
It dates them, you see.
But I, a few, I haven't been on
the road preaching for about three years.
I've been in trouble physically in the last
four years.
I'm three strokes, two heart attacks and three
more to come.
You can be sure of this, if you
enter the enemy's territory you'll fight back on
many different levels.
But after preaching one night, a brother came
to me the next morning and he said,
you know, last night you reminded me so
much of Moby-Cay-Ham.
I said, well that's a compliment.
I said, did you hear him?
He said yes.
If he came to a town, say like
Kilgore, he bought a tent holding maybe 600,
which was considered large at that time.
And he said, the third night of preaching
he had to have a police escort to
get him into the pulpit and a police
escort to get him out.
He'd troubled worse than hell.
But when he left, taverns closed and never
opened again.
Downsalls closed, never opened again.
We don't have a preacher in the country
that can preach like that today.
In fact, I said to this famous man,
and everybody knows his name around the world
really.
I said, there is no biblical foundation for
going for a one-night stand in any
city.
Supposing the Apostle Paul had done that.
Supposing Phineas had done that.
There's no such thing known in the scripture.
It may be an American phenomenon.
The number one need in America today, as
you know, or in the world, is a
real Holy Ghost revival.
There are three kinds of people in the
world.
Number one, those who are afraid.
Number two, those who don't know enough to
be afraid.
And number three, those who know their Bibles.
I could withdraw that and say there are
only two kinds of people in the world.
Number one, those who are dead in trespasses
and in sin.
And number two, those who are dead to
sin.
There's no middle course.
Dead in trespasses and in sin, or dead
to sin.
My text tonight is provided by a woman.
You'll find it in the book of Judges,
sorry, Judges chapter
16, and verse 6.
I'm reading from the Living Bible, the King
James Version.
If I didn't say that, dear Spencer and
I just shouted it out.
Verse 6, Delilah said to Samson, Tell me,
I pray thee, wherein thy great strength lieth,
and wherewith thou mightest be bound to afflict
thee.
Again, that's a question of a woman to
a man of God.
What's the secret of his great strength?
I would to God the world was asking
the church that tonight.
She figures we have no strength.
Before he retired, I don't know when that
was.
When did Carlos Henry retire?
Well he founded, he was a founder, editor
of Christianity Today.
And before he retired, he said he sent
out a questionnaire to, I forget how many,
300 preachers, and asked them a simple question.
Say this is 20 years ago.
What do you see for the Church of
Christ by the year 2000?
I've forgotten most of the answers.
I remember there's a very good answer by
Leighton Ford, Billy James, rather than him now.
There's another by Elton Trueblood, the Quaker philosopher.
And he said by the year 2000, the
Church of Jesus Christ will be a conscious
minority, surrounded by an arrogant militant paganism.
But that's racist tonight.
A shrinking minority surrounded by an arrogant militant
paganism.
The world, the flesh, and the devil, and
the press are against the Church of Jesus
Christ today.
This is the most critical hour.
And the trouble with so many Christians, they're
more troubled with who's in the White House,
than who's in God's house.
We go to the house of God.
We read the Word of God.
We sing praises to God, but where is
God?
When did you last tiptoe out of the
sanctuary?
Oh, by the majesty of God's holiness.
A very popular periodical a few years ago,
a few months ago, here in America, took
a, what do you call it, a poll
across the nation, asked, what's your greatest fear?
I don't know the rotation exactly, but it
was something like this.
Number one, I fear an invasion from Russia.
Number two, I fear an atomic war.
Number three, I fear an economy collapse.
Number four, five, I fear cancer.
Number six, I fear an accident, I travel
much, I fear an accident, leaving me with
a mangled body the rest of my life.
Do you not know one person feared God?
Jimmy Saget says the reason for this, what
I call moral desolation and spiritual stagnation, is
due to the fact that preachers have lost
sight of the rapture.
I don't believe that for one split second.
You've got people Sunday, standing and singing in
church, what if it were today and they
were planning divorce tomorrow?
Are you going to try and persuade me
that they believe in a momentary rapture?
There's millions of people believe in Jesus coming
instantly, but they skip prayer meeting every Wednesday
night.
Well, people alert for God don't do that.
The problem is not that we've lost sight
of the rapture, the problem is we've lost
sight of the judgment seat.
I'm trying to write a book on that.
If you pardon the phrase, I've been pregnant
with a thing for 10 years, and I
should have finished it last year, but if
I had, I'd have lost so much of
the book.
That's why the Lord didn't let me have
it.
It's the most awesome thing that's coming, that
you individually, whether you're a saint or a
sinner, you have to stand personally there before
the judgment seat.
No longer gentle Jesus meek and mild, we
like to sing that famous hymn of restlessness,
gentle Jesus meek and mild, but he also
wrote the hymn, lo he comes with clouds
descending, once befavoured sin of flame, thousands, thousands
saints attending, throughout the town.
Every eye shall now behold him clothed in
dreadful majesty, those who set at naught and
pierced him, deeply wailing on the tree.
They're going to stand before him too, Pontius
Pilate, Herod's going to stand there.
He doesn't know a word about it, his
priest or his pope won't tell him.
Kennedy, Teddy Kennedy is going to stand there,
and I have to explain the death of
that woman in that car with him.
Everybody's going to stand there, not a single
person is going to get by.
It's the most awesome event that's yet to
come.
When all the people, all the nations of
the earth are coming to the great rightful
judgment.
All believers are coming to the judgment seat,
which we call again the beamer seat.
Let me go back a minute there.
Okay, I'll
pick up here then.
Try and cut some out.
You all want a stage at midnight, I
suppose.
The first story I heard about America was
in England, if you don't know, and it
was a story about a very famous person
that lived here, Rip Van Winkle.
Come on you smart people, who wrote that
story?
Who wrote that story, Rip Van Winkle?
Nobody knows, but good for you.
You went to school.
Washington Irving wrote it, that's right.
He also wrote Little Orphan Annie, didn't he?
Oh yes, he didn't know, he's not so
educated.
I anticipated too much.
Anyhow, the story as I heard it from
my teacher, you know my teacher had a
real, what was her saying, complex, and she
was very dull.
She thought I was dumb and I thought
the same thing about her.
But she told me the story about Rip
Van Winkle.
He went up the Hudson, I remember going
up there years ago, and he went to
a place you remember called Sleepy Hollow.
And he fell asleep.
And he slept, well, when you get the
authorized version or revised it makes all the
difference in the world.
Some say he slept a year, some say
he slept 20 years, some say he slept
100.
And that's all I ever learned about the
story, and that isn't the story at all.
When he went up the hill there was
a sign outside of the tavern, and there
it was, well like my Bible, it was
swinging in the wind, and on it he
had the face of George III painted.
Well he went to sleep, and when he
went down the hill he found a bunch
of people arguing, and he got involved in
the argument.
And he forgot to look at the sign
because they'd rubbed out the face of George
III, and they painted the face of another
George there who was partly English, by the
name of George Washington.
And the point is not that he slept
10 years or 20 years, the point is
he slept through a revolution.
And that's what the church is doing tonight.
People say, oh I get phone calls from
over the country, I'm going to live in
this city, I'm going to live there.
Can you tell me a church that's really
burning for God?
No I can't.
Oh the church is dead.
Jesus never said the church is dead, he
said something worse than that.
He describes it in Revelation 3 doesn't he?
He says of his own church he's poor
and wretched and naked and blind and miserable.
That's what he says, not what the press
say.
He says of the Laodicean church, and you
know guys argue about pre-trib, mid-trib,
post-trib, but they all seem to agree
this is the Laodicean period.
And it sure is.
And the church is blind, she's blind to
the judgment seat, she's blind to 5 billion
people lost without God and without hope.
She's blind to her own individual responsibility.
The church is sleeping.
She's sleeping through the greatest revolution.
Did you ever dream in your lifetime that
gay people, that's a rotten name, gay, for
a leprous disease like they have.
Did you ever dream that they'd march down
Main Street claiming their rights?
Would you ever dream that some churches are
actually giving ordination to homosexuals?
You couldn't have dreamt that in a thousand
years.
But we have it now.
Wilkinson sent a bunch of his people a
few years ago to the Metropolitan Church in
Dallas and he was staggered.
When they went in they gave them a
brochure of naked men inside and it gave
them contacts they could make gay bars to
go to.
This was a church.
And the preacher said well go home now
enjoy, well I know you speak in tongues,
speak in tongues, go home enjoy yourself and
enjoy your partner tonight.
God has made us free.
And this is a presentation of the so
-called gospel?
You know there are more slaves in America
or England tonight than ever have been in
history?
Voluntary slaves to sexual perversion, slaves to nicotine,
slaves to drink, slaves to TV, some of
you preacher boys.
You don't pray through the night like the
old Pentecostals do, you're watching TV till you're
stupid.
If you'd like to know my birthday I'll
tell you the 18th of June.
But on the 18th of June in 1845,
that's not when I was born, that's yesterday,
18th of June 1845, Napoleon fought a very
decisive battle.
He had squashed a lot of other nations
round about him and he was going into
battle and on the wall he had a
great map of Europe.
And the officers were not being attentive so
he snapped them to attention.
And of course when he did that they
thought he'd be angry and he had a
volcanic temper.
And he looked at the map and he
mentioned various countries.
Then he put his finger on a little
red spot which happened to be England.
And he made this statement.
He said, there lies a sleeping giant.
You've heard that phrase often enough.
There lies a sleeping giant.
He said, let it sleep.
Because he said it's that country.
No pardon me.
He had talked to them about England and
then he went to China which right now
has what a thousand million people, a fifth
of the world's human family.
He ran his finger around the ragged edge
of the country and he said, there lies,
and plunged his finger in the center.
He said, that's China.
A sleeping giant.
Let it sleep.
If it ever marshals its mineral power to
its manpower and gets on the move it
will shake the world.
Well instead of seeing Napoleon, see the devil.
And he comes to the church of Jesus
Christ and he runs his finger around it.
And he says, the church of Jesus Christ
is asleep.
Let it sleep.
Because if it ever discovers the power of
the Holy Ghost it will ransack this world.
We've got shibboleths.
We talk about the Holy Ghost.
We hardly know that much about him.
I believe the true Pentecostal message, and you
know, I've said it, you may not let
me back.
You know, Pentecostals hang on very tenaciously to
Acts 1-8, ye shall receive power.
And they hang with the same tenacity on
to Acts 2-4.
The Holy Ghost and speaking in tongues.
That's all right.
They'll be consistent.
Consistency is a rare jewel.
Why not hold on to Acts 6 for
your deacons?
Could you round the deacons of any of
your churches up and say, these men are
full of faith.
They're the Holy Ghost.
And they do signs and wonders and miracles.
Could you go into the 8th chapter of
the Acts of the Apostles?
People say sometimes, there's no revivalist mentioned in
the New Testament.
No.
But it's implied.
Because Paul says, in the 21st chapter of
the Acts of the Apostles, he took a
party of people and he says, we stayed
in the house of Philip, the evangelist.
It's the same Philip mentioned in Acts 6.
And Philip didn't go with an invading party,
God help us.
He didn't put up a million dollar crusade.
Gentlemen, if you could forget anything, remember this.
Mr. Chadwick, our blessed president, did this in
my mind 50 years ago.
I went to school in 30, 31, for
7 months.
And he used to say to his gentlemen,
you never have to advertise a fire.
When you advertise, it's a sign God isn't
there.
When God was there, there was shafts of
fire over the temple, over the tabernacle.
It wasn't a million dollar building.
It was made of badger skins and all
kinds of junk.
But the presence of God was there.
And when the fire wasn't there, there was
a pillar of cloud there.
But where's the fire now?
People say, have you had the baptism?
Oh, that's a terrible thing to say.
Ask them, are you baptized with the Holy
Ghost and fire?
Did he come and burn up your selfishness,
burn up your pride, burn up your uncleanness?
Did he purify you?
You see, the weakness of modern Pentecost isn't
the stress is all on power and not
on purity.
But everything in the Old Testament had to
be pure.
The lamps, they had oil.
No, they had pure olive oil.
The desk was made of gold.
No, it was made of pure gold.
The garments of the priest must not have
any linen, any wool in them, only linen.
Do you know why?
Because wool makes you sweat.
And that's the only thing the priest would
have brought from that day to this.
They refused to sweat.
But I'll tell you when the fire of
the Holy Ghost, I told somebody today, you
know, the last few months, I feel as
though I've got a volcano inside of me.
I'll tell you how to get into shape.
Maybe you need to kick the teddy out.
I go to bed between nine and half
past at night.
I get up at midnight and stay in
my office two or three hours or longer,
whatever God wants.
You see, with all the money in the
world, you can't buy more time.
Preachers don't usually have enough money to waste,
but they waste a lot of time.
And if you love this man of God,
and I love him, and he is a
man of God, deacons do your job, visit
the sick, visit the hospitals, take care of
the poor, leave him time to pray.
Any Baptist preachers here?
Let me see your hands.
Good for you.
Wonderful.
How dare you stay in this place?
Do you know when Alexander McLaurin went to
Manchester, and I had the privilege of having
a meeting in his church.
It holds over 2,000 people.
And he met the deacons, bearded old guys,
and they told him this and that and
the other.
And they said, will you accept our offer?
This is the wage.
We'll buy you a new carriage and horse
or horses.
We'll get you a new house.
And they went down the list of things.
I'll accept it.
Oh, thank you.
Just a minute.
He said, if you accept my conditions.
What?
You see, the deacons thought they were hiring
a donkey.
You've got conditions, yes.
He said, look gentlemen, and he stood at
the side away from the table.
He said, you can have my feet or
my head, but not both.
If you'll do the visiting, go to hospitals,
care for the sick and do everything else,
I'll guarantee, I'll spend all my time with
my head and my heart in the hospital.
You can buy his expositions now.
Alexander McLaren's about as good as anybody.
And he preached right through the word of
God there.
Because he had one thing to do.
You see, the secret of the Apostle Paul
is this.
This one thing I do.
Dear Lord, he went to heaven for a
vacation.
It would have been on TV every day
for a year, wouldn't it?
It would have written six books on it.
How I went up and how I came
down.
And yet he says nothing about it.
You see, why I'm happy I'm here tonight,
if I did as others say, I've been
to six different countries.
I'm here tonight because I believe I'm in
God's will, that's why.
If the offering's only $10,000, it will
help, but every penny of it will go
to the mission field.
I don't take a dime.
I'll tell you a miracle.
I've got two sons, both Pentecostal preachers.
One has just retired, resigned from the church,
1500 Sunday mornings, with 500 simultaneously in Sunday
school.
And he set off preaching around the world
without any financial backing.
My other son has been down in Paraguay.
He'd been in Argentina and Paraguay about 25
years, never once asked for a penny.
I never asked for a dime.
Got my boys through school, college, university, and
God has met every bill.
And all I owe is something to General
Motors, but they can wait.
Pay the rest on my car.
Did somebody say you'll do it?
Okay.
No.
You see, the devil is terribly afraid of
the church of Jesus Christ and nothing else.
He's afraid of anointed men.
He's afraid of men who walk with God.
So the world is asking this man.
You see, you can say three things about
Samson.
You can think of his own life.
It began miraculously.
It fell down in the middle and it
finished in greater triumph than it began.
It's a picture of Israel.
She began with a supernatural.
I'll ask Brother Bracey after.
You know, in Aaron's, no, what was it?
In the ark.
What did they put in the ark, Brother
Bracey?
I forgot now.
The ark of the covenant.
The tablets, the Ten Commandments.
Yeah.
Of who?
Aaron, I'm sorry.
Well, that's the point.
I wonder why they didn't make a relic
of Moses.
When he, what would he do?
He took out his rod and divided the
sea.
But they weren't after worshipping a thing like
that.
The Ten Commandments were there.
Remember again, a smart American.
There are some smart Americans, you know.
And a smart American preacher said years ago,
they're not ten suggestions, they're ten commandments.
You can run any country in the world
on the ten commandments and no country in
the world without them.
And they've got to come back.
Boy, we've sung amazing grace till we're stupid.
It's time to bring the law back as
well as grace and have a balance.
Well, here's a man moving in the realm
of the supernatural all the time.
And I don't care whether it's a denomination
or an individual church.
If it hasn't a supernatural, it has a
superficial.
And you see, the great tragedy, you're going
to learn a lot tonight.
Do you know why the world's in the
mess it's in?
Because we exported American Christianity and British Christianity,
not Bible Christianity.
We went to China with a set of
laws that we'd learned in school.
And all we did was give lectures about
the Bible while they were giving lectures about
Confucius.
And you can't fight that, you've got to
have life.
Not just lectures, not just intellectualism.
Well this man's moving anyhow in the power
of the Spirit.
And so what did they do?
He was a terror to evil doers.
They were afraid of him.
So it says in verse 5, the lords
of the Psilistines came to this woman Delilah,
entice him.
Then verse 6, Delilah said to Samson, tell
me I pray thee, where on thy great
strength lie, and where wilt thou mightily be
bound to think thee?
Listen to his answer, it's awesome.
Where wilt thou mightily be bound to think
thee?
Verse 7, Samson said unto her, to her,
if they bind me with seven green wrists
that never dried, then shall I be weak.
Dear God, that's bad enough, but listen, I
shall be weak like other men.
He knew it was abnormal, she knew it
was abnormal, and his enemies knew abnormal.
But the last thing America's afraid of is
the church of Jesus Christ.
They're far more concerned getting a man in
the white house, than getting the right man
in God's house.
And politics has sunk, they're bad that day.
This is the greatest opportunity that has been
for a century in America.
Let men of God arise in the power
of the Spirit, and forget the devil and
the deacons and anybody else.
And say, listen, I'm going to preach God's
word, come hell or high water.
And the world again will begin to say,
what's the secret of that church down there?
Why do people slog to it?
There's a book out right now called, Seven
Pentecostal, is it Seven Pentecostal Bioneers?
Read it, the middle story is about Stephen
Jeffries, a little Welshman.
He came 50 miles from my home, he
rented a building holding 2,000.
By the end of the week, they turned
1,000 a night away.
Do you know his face?
Read the story, two weeks he was there,
924 people went through the inquiry room, and
were dealt with personally.
I told the popular evangelists in my office,
I said, blast away as much as you
like against abortion.
But I said, you evangelists are abortionists, you
bring a crowd of young people to the
front, and all they do is just about
say, God be merciful to me a sinner,
go back.
I said, listen, the woman that aborted that
baby, is going to see that baby's face
at the judgment seat, and the baby's going
to, the woman that aborted that baby, is
going to see that baby's face at the
judgment seat, and the baby's going to see
it's mother's face for the first time.
And you're going to see everybody that you
came to the altar and let them go
away.
They were damned when they came, they were
damned when they left.
The new birth is a miracle.
The great revivalists had a back room where
people went.
Sure it took till 2 or 3 o
'clock in the morning to see them through.
But this is a supreme miracle, it's greater
than a baby being born.
It takes all the redemptive power of Jesus
Christ, the power of the Holy Ghost, and
the power of the Father to forgive.
And yet we get them to nod their
head, and off they go.
Then shall I be weak, as are the
men.
Do you know what I'm sick of, dear
brother Bracey?
In the church of Jesus Christ, even amongst
the preachers, I'm sick of mediocrity.
I'm tired of living amongst dwarfs.
Where are the towering men that the Baptist
used to have, like A.B. Earle?
After he was born again, he received an
experience of being filled with the Holy Ghost,
so the Baptists don't quote him.
But he went to cities and they shook
under the power of God.
There were no signs and wonders and miracles.
In the Welsh revival, there was no physical
manifestation.
What happened?
The Holy Ghost came, and they were crazy
about soccer.
The soccer stadiums are empty, the taverns are
empty, the dance halls are empty.
But listen, there's a price.
The little fellow that God used in the
Welsh revival was Stephen Jeffreys.
He was 26 years of age when God
opened the heavens on him.
But the record says he had prayed for
13 years.
What's your 13-year-old doing?
You're leading him to hell.
He reads, sees anything he wants on TV,
and things he doesn't want to see.
And then he watches his stupid father.
Daddy's so full of sport, and the kid's
full of sport.
The greatest thing my daddy ever did for
me, he took me to a half-night
of prayer when I was 14 years of
age.
When I saw my big strong daddy take
his coat off, about two in the morning,
his shirt stuck to his back with wrestling
and prayer.
And to other men, boy, once I'd been
there, I was ruined forever for entertainment.
And you see, entertainment is the devil's substitute
for joy.
The church that has the less joy has
the best entertainment program.
Oh, it's the only way to draw young
people, it sure is not.
When the Holy Ghost is resident, you've no
trouble keeping young people.
They're silenced in the presence of the eternal
God.
We're afraid of silence today.
Everything as soon as you get in, it's
clap your hands and all the rest of
it.
And God is, I'll speak about that next
week, partly.
Tell me where in thy great strength, well,
what she say, bind me with seven green
withs that were never dried, then I shall
be weak as another man.
Look at verse 11.
In verse 11, he said, if they bind
me fast with new robes, were never occupied,
I shall be weak and be as another
man.
That's two warnings.
Look at verse 17.
He told her all his heart and said
unto her, there is not a razor come
upon my head.
If I be shaven, then will my strength
go from me, and I shall become weak
like any other man.
Can you think of a man being worn
three times and walking into the trap?
This enticing, fascinating woman, the enemies were afraid
of him.
The Philistines were afraid.
She wasn't brazen as she was.
She comes up to this spirit anointed man.
And yet, foolish man, he couldn't discern this.
I was horrified.
I think it was Christmas Eve, listening to
the news at six o'clock.
And I like the fellow that gives the
news there.
What's his name?
Peter.
Peter Jennings.
And he talked about the things, the folly
of the past year.
And he talked about Gary Hart and a
few others.
And then he showed a painted doll.
He said, this is Tammy May of PTL.
She taught the nation how to make up.
I thought that was rotten.
And then, you know what he said?
He showed a picture of Oral Roberts like
this.
He said, Oral Roberts presented God as a
terrorist.
Could you think a spirit-filled man being
accused of that?
Presenting God as a terrorist?
I borrowed Shakespeare's terms and say, he made
God into a super Shylock.
Give me your money or I'll take your
flesh.
But these are holy men.
Do you know, he did a terrible thing
taking that million dollars.
Do you know what he'd done before that?
They were trying to get into Oklahoma.
They were trying to get horse racing in
Oklahoma.
Horse racing.
You're off your horse just now.
He saw Christ 900 feet high.
That's a lie.
He visualized him.
Two men have seen Christ since the early
days of the resurrection.
One was Saul on the Damascus road.
Another was John on the Isle of Patmos.
One fell at his feet as dead.
And the other saw the blazing majesty.
I don't believe he ever recovered his eyesight.
Physically, yes.
Spiritually, he was blind to the world.
That's why he became the most reckless man
that's ever lived in the gospel.
He out-preached everybody.
He out-prayed everybody.
Out-fasted everybody.
And he made less money than anybody.
He gives his back to the smiter.
195 lashes.
Thrice, three times suffered shipwreck.
Once he was stoned.
And he does it all joyfully.
He says, I glory in tribulation.
Boy, you get three deacons like that in
your church, you'd have a revival.
Glorying in tribulation, in necessities, in reproaches.
We pray, oh God, I think I may
lose a bit of money.
People don't like me.
Oh, we howl in God's prayer.
He delighted in it.
I believe that hell had a day's holiday
when Paul died.
He'd given them headaches so long.
And they said, nobody will come up like
him anymore.
There have been so many in history like
that.
But Oral Roberts turned his back on the
900 foot Christ.
And this book says, talks about filthy lucre.
And the filthiest filthy lucre is that that
he got a million dollars worth of tear
-stained, beer-stained, sin-stained, death-stained dollars.
And called it an answer to prayer.
That's blasphemy.
I'll tell you why Roberts failed.
I'll tell you why PTO failed.
Because both of those men were apostates.
Now, wait a minute.
If you have G.
Campbell Morgan's wonderful expositions of scripture, you should
have them.
They're $100 on sale for $39.95 right
now.
They're the best set of books, I think,
almost, that are for exposition.
I mean, if he says an apostate is
not a man who continues to spread heresy,
he's a man that came up to the
light and backed off from it.
I heard Roberts preach in 1951 in Klamath
Falls in South Oregon.
He preached that night on the fourth man.
He tries to preach it now.
It's an empty bag of wind.
But that night when people came forward, he
said go straight past the platform into a
room at the back, a tent at the
back.
And then he had over 2,000 people
knelt down and prayed, Holy Ghost, come on
these people.
He said the next 50 minutes is the
most vital time in the life of these
people.
They're going to be born again of the
Spirit of God.
Let's pray them through.
They never do that anymore.
Become rich and increased in goods.
You know, the Church of God has need
of nothing today except the Holy Ghost, that's
all.
With all the trimmings, with all the show,
with all the fancy bits.
But where is the power of the Spirit?
Fasten me with green twists, I shall be
as another man.
Fasten me with new ropes, I shall be
as another man.
And what happened?
He got nowhere.
She got nowhere with him.
You see, here's a man, he's a menace.
He's quite a joker, isn't he?
They put him up at the Holiday Inn,
which was built over there, as it is
in some countries.
You go up the pillars that hold the
gates up and he stayed up there somewhere.
And in the night he couldn't sleep very
well, so he got up and he carried
the gates away and the whole shebang.
Put them at the top of the hill.
I guess he said, well, it was easy
for me to get them here.
I guess you won't get them back as
easy.
So the city was upset.
He upset them.
He took the gates with him.
So they got mad.
So they sent 3,000 men after him.
What did he do?
He picked up the jawbone of an ass.
That's a pretty humiliating weapon.
Do you know what it was in his
hand?
Yes.
Atomic weapon.
One man against, was it two or three
thousand, and he threw them.
I heard of a, somebody in England, where
a lady said, well, our pastor doesn't believe
in that old-fashioned stuff, you know, where
the whales, where John has swallowed the whale.
And he doesn't believe about that man, Samson,
picking up the jawbone of an ass.
He says, God doesn't use jawbones anymore.
She said, he does at our church.
The jawbone of an ass?
Do you think hell trembled when he picked
up that jawbone?
Do you think the critics said, hey, that
man's mad.
We thought he was a lunatic.
What's he going to do with it?
Is it a souvenir?
And he picks it up and he goes,
boy, he might as well have had a
twedged sword.
Finally, a twedged sword.
The jawbone of an ass in the hands
of God is better than an atomic bomb
in anybody else's hands.
But you see, we can't trust God.
We have so many gimmicks and gadgets and
everything else.
We think the only way to get revival
is to raise funds and go to a
city and pluck it out.
Let me tell you something.
I may forget next week.
Do you know what?
Lots of evangelists, Graham admits many times his
crusades cost a million dollars.
A million dollars and there's nothing left two
weeks after.
Holy Ghost revival doesn't cost a cent.
Not one cent.
It's not dependent on props.
It's not appeal to the eye.
It's when people go home and can't sleep
for four or five nights.
Do you know when Spurgeon was in London,
he was only 20 some years of age.
I used to visit a lady 95 years
of age and heard Spurgeon speak.
Do you know the 20 years he was
in London he never once made an altar
call?
There are no altar calls in the New
Testament.
A dear pastor told me the other day,
he came to see me yesterday I guess,
and he said, Sunday morning before I finished
preaching, people were coming to the altar.
I said, that's a sign of breathing of
God.
You see, we get an emotional little song
at the end.
There's room at the cross and they come
through emotion.
Most of those people have been at altar
tramps.
They've come time after time after time.
But to be born again is a miraculous
thing.
A man becomes a new creature.
He has a new nature.
He has new desires.
He has a new vocabulary.
He has new interests.
All things pass away.
They stink of the world.
And if he's born, really born well, and
he should be.
After all, there are no cripples.
Nobody's born again blind.
Nobody's born again lame.
Every birth, new birth, is a new creation.
And all heaven rejoices.
Not when 10,000 people come to the
altar, when one person comes.
When one man wants to get rid of
his sin and his lust, and he gets
up and the psychologists can't help him, and
education can't.
And he comes out and he kneels at
the cross, and a miracle takes place.
All heaven goes into ecstasy.
You know when a baby comes in your
home, what a difference there is.
Spencer brought his present.
She loves to hear me preach.
She's only about, what, three months old.
So he brings her home.
But oh, how delighted they were when they
got that baby, he and his precious wife.
And you know, that's why there's so little
joy in the sanctuary.
You can't say, you see, that man there,
a week ago, was the worst man in
town.
I'll tell you how Mr. Chadwick got revival.
He found out who was the most drunken,
blaspheming, wicked man in town, and the church
concentrated.
They said, look, we're going to pray for
you to be born again.
And he said, I don't know what you
mean.
I don't want to go to church.
I'm not asking.
Would you like to be a new man?
Yes.
Would you like a new vocabulary?
Oh, I'm a profane.
I'm a filthy speaker.
If you get a new heart out of
these issues of life, you'll become a new
man, a new creation.
You won't lust after the things of the
world anymore.
We're not getting people born like that.
Churches are growing.
You know, the disgruntled go out of this
church and join that church, that's all.
The modern church is a cave of the
dullard, where the debtors and all the bankrupt
middles go.
There's nobody rubbing hell today.
So what did she say?
You see, it says this man was what?
He was a what?
It begins with N.
Any Nazarenes here tonight?
Oh no, they wouldn't come, but anyhow.
It says he was a Nazrite.
There were three things a Nazrite, when he
took a vow.
One thing, he couldn't touch anything that was
dead.
That's why he messed up and went back
and touched the lion.
He got into trouble, that he killed.
He can't touch anything dead.
It's a type of the world.
You are think we can do a dead
in trespasses and in sin.
I'll bring that into my message next week
about the evangelist side revival, the dead were
raised.
Both physically and spiritually dead.
So number one, he couldn't touch anything dead.
It was a type of those who are
dead in trespasses and in sin.
He couldn't drink wine, which is a sign
of worldly pleasure.
You know, most people would get rid of,
I have a TV, I'll tell you that.
Well, my boys have been on three different
continents until a few weeks ago.
I want to know the news, good night,
don't know what's happened within an hour, never
mind the day.
But I like it for news.
But worldly pleasure, no, I'm not interested.
And once a person gets well, Wesley used
to have his people sing, there's love and
life and lasting joy, Lord Jesus found in
thee.
Again, a Christian's joy does not depend on
happenings.
Happenings depend on happenstance.
Whether the weather's good or bad, the economy's
good or bad.
A man asked Christ, Jesus says, I give
you joy and no man taketh it from
you.
No man can steal your joy, not even
a devil can steal it, you give it
up.
A famous preacher sent a tract out recently
and he said the trouble with most of
you, you've lost your first love.
There isn't a script in the Bible that
says that.
You say it says that in Revelation, it
doesn't say they lost their first love, it
says you left your first love.
That loyalty, that love you had for him,
you're putting it out to some idol on
the TV maybe.
Or that ball game, you get excited about
it, your neighbour's going to hell, it doesn't
trouble you, God pity you.
Why should a sinner weep for his sin
if I don't weep for them?
I have a little slip I put in
some letters, if your preacher doesn't weep over
the pew, tell the pew to start weeping
over the preacher.
You see, well after midnight I was in
my office a few weeks ago, I was
looking through reading Revelation 20 and I suddenly
stumbled on that verse there, the second death.
And just like that I thought, well I've
been preaching 66 years, I've been going to
services for 75, I've preached round the world,
different groups, I've never heard Brother Bracey, I've
never once heard a sermon on the second
death.
I've heard about the second coming, I've heard
about the second birth, I've heard about the
second blessing, I've heard about the second Adam
and there isn't one, it's the last Adam.
But I've never heard a sermon on the
second death.
And just as though a voice behind my
chair, I turned my chair like that, and
a voice said to me, hell has no
exits.
Ever think of that?
A million roads into hell and not one
out.
Then last year, as I did last Saturday
or Friday, I went to speak at Calvary
Commission, I hope some of you support that,
it's a wonderful ministry, a very godly little
Penny Castle fellow.
And they'd allowed I think eight or ten
parolees to come and they came in the
white suits and sat down and as they
did, boy I just cracked up.
Because I remember God had said to me,
hell has no exits.
Then I looked at these men and the
voice said, hell has no parolees.
Nobody gets a week off in hell.
I understand Sing Sing Prison used to have
over the door, Abandoned Hope, or you enter
here, or was it Alcatraz, one of those
two prisons.
You see in hell, do you know they
pray in hell?
But they're not heard, they're not heeded.
There's no prayer in heaven because it's not
needed.
But it was in hell a man said,
oh interfere, God interfere.
Don't let my brothers come to this place.
You know we've got this silly stupid thing
now, people trying to escape responsibility now.
What a fellow, what's that fellow called, Sylvester
Salonen.
What's that stupid woman called?
Oh there's too many of them but, that
stupid woman in Hollywood, Shelley MacLean.
Do you know what they say?
Oh I lived 300 years ago, my head
was chopped off 300 years ago.
Well they prove that by the joke they
talk about.
But the tragedy is this, Stallone says I
was somebody, I was a knight or a
king or somebody and she has something, I'd
lived before.
I'd love to talk with her and say,
listen you're not even living now.
You may have a million in the bank,
you may have the best mansion in Hollywood,
you may have six Rolls Royces, you're not
living now, you're dead.
There's an area in you that's vacant and
only God can fill it.
Popularity can't fill it, fame can't fill it,
money can't fill it, achievement can't fill it.
It's a reserve in the being of every
man where God wants to take up residence.
A man isn't a Christian because he gives
up lousy sins.
I don't ask anybody if they're saved anymore,
everybody's saved from the White House to the
Jailhouse.
I look them in the eye and say
does Christ live in you?
What?
Well the Bible says Christ in you the
hope of glory.
You see one of the curses in modern
preaching is we leave people in, in, in,
in Romans 7 as a cover-up for
our own carnality.
And we say Paul finished up in Romans
7, the mighty apostle finished saying it's not
I but that's a lie from hell, he
did not say that at the end of
the trail.
At the end of the trail he said
it's not I, it's Christ living in me.
You can't have an indwelling devil and an
indwelling Christ.
We get people to the cross, that's not
the problem, it's getting them on the cross.
And then when you get on the cross
the devil mocks you and says come down
from the cross and save yourself.
Pastor you don't need to fast while other
pastors are feasting, you don't need to pray
while other pastors are playing.
Well God's making you not then.
But you see every pastor should be a
role model for the young people.
And I get some terrible calls about churches,
I don't ask the name but my cup
of sorrows fill to overflowing of other churches
today.
They're so spiritually bankrupt.
You couldn't drink wine, a sign of a
worldly pleasure.
Wilkinson wrote an article in about sipping saints,
there's an awful lot of them these days
too.
Worldly pleasure they're lost.
You get preachers who can't, I talked with
a fellow not long ago, came in my
office and I said well where are you
going?
Oh I'm going duck hunting.
I said a few weeks, no no months
ago you went deer hunting.
Three days deer hunting, flying to a place,
three days duck hunting, three days, when did
you last take nine days off to be
alone with God?
You're afraid of stillness.
We're afraid of the stillness because it's then
when God speaks.
He can't speak while that blaring radio TV
is going on.
You get in the car, a church in
a car, boy they turn the radio up
and let it blow your ears off.
Our generation's afraid of stillness.
And yet he says be still and know
then God.
Let me go back to, if you get
bored get up and walk out.
Let me just quote a scripture and go
on to another one.
In the 13th chapter in verse 1 it
says, the children of Israel did evil in
the sight of the Lord and the Lord
delivered them into the hand of the Philistines
40 years.
There's a scripture, I didn't look it up,
but isn't there a scripture that God says
I'll give them eyes but they won't see.
I'll speak but they won't hear.
I had a man came to see me
last week, a delightful guy.
He called me from a nearby town 13
miles away, Lindo.
Brother Abel, the Lord, told me to come
and see you.
I thought oh another of them, I guess
he's from all over the world.
I said well then, okay.
And my wife was on the phone, she
said well sir if you take number 16
road.
He said I don't have a car.
I said well how did you get there?
He said I just dropped off the bus.
I'd been on the bus three days and
two nights from Fresno, California, just to talk
with you.
If you talk with me two hours I'll
be satisfied.
And that precious man came in and he
said Mr. Ramiel, we're living in a terrible
day.
I said sure, I don't need confirmation there.
And he said read the I think 23rd
chapter of Jeremiah verse 13, where it says
there are some running but I didn't send
them.
There are some speaking but I didn't inform
them.
And we've got guys all over the country.
I could give you a whole list of
things that four or five years ago, God
wants us to do this.
They put millions of dollars in and they
abandoned it.
They didn't refund the money and people that
had money don't have no money now.
I know at least two or three in
my office today, worth stacks of money a
few years ago.
My dear wife and I talked with a
lady who at last year at this time
was worth millions.
She hasn't a dime today.
A million dollar home won't sell.
It's having to go down to a terrible
price.
And suddenly the world has shrunk.
So this little man comes.
Boy he hadn't been in my office five
minutes before I knew this man knew God.
He's an old type.
If ever you see one get hold of
him and bring him to this church.
He's a curio.
He's called an old-fashioned Pentecostal.
There aren't many left.
If you see one bring him even if
you make him the janitor or the pastor.
But anyhow.
He got talking about God.
And I talked about blessing it as though
heaven opened the Lord came down.
He said brother Raymond I was pastor of
a church for 14 years.
And in that 14 years one person out
of the church ever went to a hospital.
In Albuquerque.
Because of his walk with God his wife
walked out.
Married a rich fellow.
Then the daughter followed the mother.
He sleeps in a tent on the hillsides
in California.
He said to get two or three or
four days with God.
And then I moved my tent.
He said I'm here because God sent me.
I said I'm glad you came.
And then he told me normally about that.
He said you know people weren't even sick
in our church.
And if somebody was sick I would say
brother Smith pray for sister Brown.
I didn't leave it to me unless they
put a halo on my head.
He said I shared it.
You pray for that person.
We bore each other's burdens.
Again for 14 years nobody ever went to
hospital.
A lady called him one day in panic.
She said oh please come please come.
My baby's dead.
He couldn't get there for three hours and
the baby was lying as stiff as this.
And he prayed over it and laid hands
on it.
The little thing sat up.
She said I didn't think that was phenomenal.
You know we say sometimes Lord we'd like
to go back to Pentecost.
Pentecost in the Bible is marriage to poverty,
privations, pains and prison.
Do you want Pentecost like that?
Do you think anyone's going to church where
the pastor says just before we sing this
wonderful hymn holy holy holy I'm going to
kill some hypocrites here.
The best known deacon and his wife Mr.
Ananias and Sapphira who always wears the best
clothes.
You know that's Pentecost.
You know one thing about a Pentecostal church
in the Bible it was unpredictable.
Now we we print orders to the Holy
Ghost in the church office Wednesday and give
them all a copy coming in at the
door so the Holy Ghost comes home.
Hang on to your shibboleths.
Hang on to your outlines.
Well anyway it says they've been in captivity
for 40 years.
That's a time of testing as you know.
Verse 25 says the spirit of the Lord
began to move him at times.
You see this wasn't one one thing.
It was regular.
It was intervals but it was a regular
operation.
He more often had anointings and not have
anointings.
Now look at chapter 14 and verse 5.
Then went Samson down and his father and
his mother to Timnath and came to the
vineyards of Timnath and behold a young lion
roared against him.
The spirit of the Lord came upon him
mightily and he rent it.
What does the scripture say about the devil
he was?
He's a what?
So here you have a Holy Ghost filled
man facing a physical lion.
He doesn't run away.
He doesn't send out a prayer letter.
There's the demon.
There's the lion.
I've got to preach in.
I don't go out preaching much.
I came because I think the Lord wanted
me to come with my precious brother otherwise
he wouldn't be here.
But the 17th is it?
17th?
17th of January I go to a church
in a in Fort Worth called Common Ground
Church and the pastor said there'd be an
awful lot of young.
He said right across the road from us
is the largest seminary or cemetery in the
world.
Southwestern.
So put a ring around that on your
calendar.
17th and pray for the poor old boy
has to go.
I'm going to say to say this.
You know some of those young men are
itching to see old people old guys like
old guys old brethren like Dr. Criswell or
somebody else.
They're almost standing in line to jump in
this pool thing.
And they want to be esteemed.
Oh somebody said to one young man you're
a second Billy Graham.
He didn't sleep for a fortnight I guess
after that.
There's only one thing in this world I
want.
I've had plenty of honors.
I've had plenty of uh wonderful tags to
my name.
There's one thing I'm still have an ambition.
You know the greatest thing in the world?
Let me stop here a moment.
This man saw a lion.
He rented it.
The anointing came.
Oh did he care about the death of
the lion?
Of course he didn't.
He raped it as though it were a
kid of a goat.
The greatest honor ever bestowed on any man
apart from Jesus was it put on the
apostle Paul.
Why?
Because he cast demons out.