This morning, may we become loved slaves of
Jesus Christ.
That we may be able to say with
the Apostle Paul, I bear in my body
the onus brands of Jesus.
That Calvary love will mean like the one
who went to Calvary, we have to die
to personal ambitions and self-seeking.
To lay in dust life's glory dead, that
from the ground there may blossom red life
that shall endless be, so help us.
Pack these immediate moments with eternity.
Put your hand in this meeting, get out
of it, Apostles, Prophets, Teachers.
We've talked of Russia and Bulgaria and other
countries this morning.
Maybe the Westleys and Finneys for those nations
are here in this house.
The material here is beyond our comprehension.
As the world would say, we pray for
the highest stakes.
We look for the greatest trophies.
We look for thee to endure us with
power from on high.
Kindle a flame of sacred love on the
mean altar of our heart.
And there let it for thy glory burn
with inextinguishable braze and trembling to its source
returning constant prayer and fervent praise.
And we'll give the praise to him who
alone is worthy, our Lord, our Saviour and
our King, Jesus.
Amen.
Thank you.
Perhaps the best-known text in the Bible
is John 3.16, which is not my
subject this morning.
It is God's message to the world.
I guess every one of us have memorized
that verse, if we've memorized no other.
So John 3.16 is God's message to
the world and Luke 3.16 is God's
message to the church.
I'll take the core out of that verse
which is the same as Matthew chapter 3,
I think verse 11.
He shall baptize you with the Holy Ghost
and with fire.
Now I have a second text which I
can't speak to you, but I'll show you
it.
Here it is.
It's this blank page between the Testaments.
It's a white page.
It covers a period of 400 years of
total darkness spiritually for the people of God.
It has no message, there's no print on
it.
And yet it has an eloquent message because
it testifies of the silence of God.
That 400 years of darkness between the Testaments
was shattered by a man who was an
incandescent production of the Holy Spirit.
He was more radiant than Halley's Comet.
And he had a very awesome task because
in my judgment he was the only living
person in the world who had the truth
of God.
Can you imagine what it would be if
you were the only person in America or
some other country, you're the only person that
had the real revelation of God.
And the greatest character reader that the world
ever had was the Lord Jesus.
And he said concerning John Baptist, that he
was the greatest man that had been born
of woman.
That included Isaiah, Jeremiah, Zechariah, the great prophets
of the Old Testament.
And yet Jesus said he was the greatest
man that was born of woman.
Well I make a guess that there have
been many prophets, pardon me, there have been
many priests and others who had wailed at
the wailing wall.
I think they'd borrowed the language of Isaiah
64, because remember that Christianity was not served
up to the world on a silver platter.
Christianity was born in a sophisticated world with
a totalitarian system.
Now some people say John Baptist was strained
in his diet and his dress and his
doctrine for the simple reason he wanted to
be a sensationalist.
If he wanted to do that then surely
he would have attacked slavery.
There's a faithful record that there were more
than six million slaves when John Baptist came
on the scene.
He could have blasted against the Roman conquest
of the Holy Land.
But he never said a word about slavery,
neither did Jesus.
Neither did the Apostle Paul, except Paul said
be a good slave to your master.
That wouldn't go down too well with the
unions these days, but at least that's what
he said.
So I say John Baptist comes with a
background of total solid darkness.
He's a strange character, that's why I love
him.
I love strange people, that's why I love
you.
John was very strange, strange again in his
dress, strange in his diet, strange in his
doctrine.
If any man had a complaint against God,
surely it was John Baptist.
Do you remember in the Old Testament it
says of the Old Testament priest his garments
were garments of glory and of beauty.
Man he was spectacular when he went into
the temple.
I think sometimes we read the Bible as
though when folk wanted to make a suit
in the old days they went to Sears
Roebuck and sent for a catalog and ordered
the length of cloth.
Do you know they put every thread in
by hand, can you imagine that?
Imagine all those curtains in the temple, every
thread put in by hand, every thread put
into the priest's garments.
And then that lovely mitre that he wore,
and then that breastplate with 12 precious stones
and each of them had the name of
one of the tribes on them.
When he came in everybody bowed before his
dignity.
He was a king and a priest.
And if you've been going down Main Street
in Jerusalem one morning and seen him, and
then in the afternoon you'd gone down the
road and seen John the Baptist, you'd have
been awfully shocked.
Boy he looked like a super hippie.
The prodigal's father said when my son comes
home put sandals, put shoes on his feet.
Why?
Because slaves never wore shoes.
Remember the colored people used to sing those
old spiritual, I got shoes, you got shoes,
all God's children got.
They don't sing that anymore.
You see it was a sign of dignity
that you had a pair of shoes.
John Baptist is down in the hardest spot
in the world.
How in the world did he manage?
I remember Samuel Chadwick saying many things to
me and amongst others was this, listen, you
never have to advertise a fire.
You never advertise a fire.
Whether it's a building on fire, particularly if
it's midnight and some great building is burning,
people come by the thousands.
I remember saying to my wife once after
I got home preaching at one o'clock
in the morning I said, sweetheart there's a
mill on fire in town, let's go see.
You know there won't be many people around
at this hour.
Everybody in town thought the same thing.
There won't be anybody around at this hour,
so the whole town turned up.
We couldn't get within about five blocks of
the fire and it was warm enough even
there.
I was glad they didn't have a front
pew anyhow.
But you know the flames shooting to heaven
and the black background, the fire was attractive.
And John Baptist was there and Jesus said
of him, he is a burning and a
shining light.
I get disturbed about all these preachers taking
folk to Israel.
I wish they'd take them to Calvary.
People like to say I walked today where
Jesus walked.
You won't raise an eyelash if you do
that, not even a false one.
The problem is not I walked today where
Jesus walked, but I'll tell you what, they'll
curl their lips if you say I walked
today as Jesus walked.
And that's the only reason you and I
have to bear his holy name upon our
lips.
You know John the Baptist didn't do it
right.
He could have made millions selling souvenirs.
Sure, he could have gone up Mount Sinai
and chopped little lumps of rock off and
gave everybody a piece of the rock, you
know.
All right, not in insurance, that's all right.
But he could have sold a piece of
the rock for five dollars.
He could have taken a tour of people
and said this is the very spot where
Abraham offered Isaac.
Isn't it amazing that a man could turn
the world upside down in his day?
He'd no agent to go ahead of him.
He'd no bumper stickers.
You say well they'd no cars.
Well they'd camels.
He could have put them on the tail
of the camel and every time they swished
people could have said you know when they
saw, you know, you know these bumper stickers
are something.
We were in California, La Puente the other
week.
I saw signs, you know that old saying,
I think it's a bad one.
People have a sticker on their automobiles, I
found it.
Well that doesn't mean a thing.
If you put on I found him, I'd
go along with it.
But the Jews now have got the, you
know, that star of David and you know
what this sign is in California?
We never lost it.
Smile, we love you.
They've got that sign and in the middle
of the, oh in the last, they've got
a piece of marijuana painted on.
Now John the Baptist had no gimmicks.
He didn't even have a revival party with
him.
Don't mention this out of this building, but
you know he didn't even have a guitar.
I get into trouble with singing people for
the simple reason there's no ministry of singing
in the New Testament.
There's no gift of singing.
You may get offended.
Well see me after, I'll pray with you.
But there's no ministry of singing in the
New Testament.
Singing is something fun.
Look, I go down the road, we drive
down the road, we drive thousands of miles
over the country, they say, Martha, there's another
one, the Bluebell Bible Busters will sing at
your place tonight, you know.
Johnny Jones and his singing family.
Singing family.
Do you know what I'd like to see?
I'd like to see somebody with a busload
of people that says, this is a prayer
group from Agape.
We'll come and pray revival down in your
area.
Now singing's all right, but you don't need
the Holy Ghost necessarily to sing.
I've never, never seen a revival born of
singing.
Now I love singing.
I've got a library of classics.
I've got all kinds of wonderful records.
Most of them are given to me, but
it doesn't alter the fact that I like
them.
Singing is great.
Now if you want to hear hymns really,
if you want to hear the Psalms sung,
go to some Presbyterian Bible store and get
one of the old-fashioned hundred-year-old
hymns are still produced in, pardon me, Psalms,
they're still sung in Scotland like nobody on
earth can sing them.
If you've never heard anybody sing Crimmond, you
haven't heard anybody sing.
Or the 23rd Psalm to a tune called
Brother James is There.
I'd sing it to you, but I'm a
bit hoarse, and you'd all leave anyhow.
But, uh, but singing's very beautiful.
I'm not knocking it.
But you see, if you put a concert
on and don't read the Word of God,
you've cheated God.
I don't care how well you sing.
Faith cometh by hearing.
The choir, no.
Faith cometh by hearing, and hearing the Word
of God.
There is no substitute for the Word of
God.
There is no substitute for prayer.
There is no substitute for anointing.
I thank God many times when I pray.
I pray and seek, and I pray and
I weep, and I thank God for the
incorruptible Holy Ghost, that you could write a
check for a million dollars, and he won't
anoint you with the Spirit because you give
a million dollars to missions.
Let's keep this very clear.
The Holy Ghost and the gifts of the
Spirit cannot be bought at any market in
the world.
They're bought by humiliation.
They're bought by my constant consciousness of my
own bankruptcy outside of Him.
Let's get back to John Baptist.
He was a marvelous man.
He was a dropout.
His father was a priest of the Cross
of Abbia.
Read the story.
The priest did one thing once in his
lifetime.
It was a kind of graduation.
And in that great temple, and remember it
was so great, that once there was a
riot in the temple, and 6,000 people
were killed in the precincts of the temple.
It was so large.
And the priest came down that center aisle,
just once in his life, to minister holy
things in this way.
Outside of the temple there was the, what
was called Herod's Porch, because King Herod financed
it.
And at nine o'clock in the morning,
three trumpeters with long silver trumpets gave a
blast over the city.
And at the same time that the blast
was made, the doors were open and people
came in, but they followed the priest.
He came down that aisle nervous, wearing his
heavy garments.
It was unrehearsed.
He'd never done it before.
And there were thousands of people to come
in and see what he was going to
do.
He wore a long garment, he might have
fallen over it.
But as he came down this time, Zachariah
came down that aisle.
And as he came down the aisle, behold,
it says that there was a, an angel.
And it's very specific there in Luke chapter
1.
It says that as he came down the
aisle, that there was standing before him, there
appeared unto him an angel of the Lord,
standing at the right side of the altar
of incense.
And when Zachariah saw him, he was troubled.
Good night, he'd enough trouble going through this
business without rehearsing.
And now he's troubled, and on his trouble
he has fear, it says.
Fear fell upon him, and the angel said
unto him, Fear not, Zachariah, thy prayer is
heard.
Thy wife Elizabeth shall bear a son, and
many shall rejoice at his birth.
This great person was none other than Gabriel
himself.
When Zachariah saw him, he was troubled, and
fear fell upon him.
The angel said, Fear not, Zachariah, thy prayer
is heard.
Thy wife Elizabeth shall bear a son, and
thou shalt call his name John, and he
shall be great in the sight of God.
Now, will you notice some other wonderful things
here?
It says in the 41st verse, it came
to pass when Elizabeth heard the salutation of
Mary, because Elizabeth had gone to see her
cousin Mary.
Elizabeth was filled with the Holy Ghost.
It says in verse 67, his father was
filled with the Holy Ghost.
It says in verse 25 of the next
chapter, Behold, there was a man in Jerusalem
whose name was Simeon.
The same man was just and devout, waiting
for the consolation.
And the Holy Ghost was upon him, and
the Holy Ghost revealed unto him that he
should not see death.
And he came by the Spirit into the
temple.
Man, that's better than saying Rockefeller is your
father.
His father was filled with the Holy Ghost.
His mother was filled with the Holy Ghost.
His pastor was filled with the Holy Ghost.
Now, I'm not facetious here, but I'm just
saying this, if John Baptist was filled with
the Holy Ghost, the day he was born,
could he speak in tongues?
He couldn't speak in anybody's language.
I believe there is a genuine gift of
the Spirit.
I do not believe everybody filled with the
Holy Ghost has to speak in tongues.
Now, I'm making myself clear here.
You're going to tell me a towering figure
of a man who changed history, a man
who was used of God to abolish slavery
before ever he was abolished in America, that
Wesley wasn't filled with the Holy Ghost?
That those men who were with him were
not equal to him intellectually, they were equal
to him spiritually.
You have some books here that my friend
Shmuel reprinted, Daniel Steele's and Samuel Chadwick's.
He's also reprinted those lives of the early
Methodist preachers, and they're fascinating.
And when men tell you they were pulled
down from a chair in the street, and
they were kicked until their ribs were broken,
and they got up and sang the doxology,
well, I think a man like that can
take all that surely is filled with the
Holy Ghost.
And the mighty works of God were demonstrated
in and through those amazing men.
But John was filled with the Holy Ghost,
right from his mother's womb.
And I don't care how you measure this
man, you can measure him socially, you can
measure...
If you measure him theologically, and you do
a little homework, you'll discover that in his
own right, John the Baptist was a theologian
because he preached 29 different points of doctrine.
To him was given the greatest honor of
any man that ever lived.
I tried to preach the other day, since
there's such a big interest these days in
being born again.
Jimmy Carter says he's born again, but he
says also he prays for the dead, and
I don't understand that, that's not in my
reckoning.
But I noticed this, that when Jesus comes,
when we come to that third chapter in
John, and Jesus deals with a beautiful character,
a man of impeccable morality, a scholar, a
gentleman.
He never did a dirty deed in his
life, he's respected as a towering figure in
Jerusalem, and yet Jesus says to him, you
must be born again.
Do you notice he omits one word, he
does not say anything about repentance?
Do you know why?
Because, you see, John did something that was
totally unacceptable.
He came at the wrong time, in the
wrong place, and said the wrong things, and
you can't be much more off-center than
that, can you?
The trouble with him, he didn't belong out
of our denomination.
I nearly said abomination, it's the same thing.
But he didn't happen to belong our denomination,
and so, do you know what they did?
They said, he's not genuine.
He's not genuine.
Do you see, people have gone to church,
and they've heard all the shibboleths.
Do you know one thing that angers me?
The Holy Spirit is neglected in a charismatic
generation.
The Spirit, the baptism, slang phrases.
But you put the accent on holiness, you
won't get too much acceptance.
Now, if you're not a holy people friend,
you've missed it.
Yeah, if God tells me to come and
live here, I'd be happy to come and
live down the road there.
But I'll tell you what, if I came,
my accent would be holiness.
Because God is holy.
There used to be an old preacher in
this country, and every time he opened his
Bible, he preached on holiness.
And one day, he started, and somebody jumped
up and said, every time you open the
Bible, it's holiness.
He said, brother, I don't have to open
it.
Said, on the back, it's the Holy Bible.
And if you're not holy, I don't know
where you're going, but you won't get to
heaven.
And since you could die on the next
beat of your heart, the grave won't sanctify
you.
There's no sanctification in the sepulchre.
People say, well, I may die this way
or the other, but you know, I shall
wake up all right in heaven.
Well, who's going to change you, the worms
that eat you?
They get indigestion of some of you anyhow,
but apart from that.
No, sirree, the emphasis needs to be put
there on the Holy Spirit.
When Saul, the king of Israel, had an
evil spirit, he did evil things.
Jesus says, when a man has an unclean
spirit, he does unclean things.
Therefore, logically and biblically, the man who has
the Holy Spirit will have holy fruits in
his life, holy desires in his life, holy
aspirations in his life, holy fruit in his
life.
Oh, I don't hear too much.
I hear a bit about the fruits of
the Spirit, but most people are overboard on
the gifts, and they shouldn't be.
As I've told you before, the Spirit came
as a dove, and a dove has nine
feathers on one wing and a nine on
the other.
And there are nine gifts of the Spirit,
and there are nine fruits of the Spirit.
And even in an energy crisis, doves don't
try and get off the ground with one
wing.
Have you noticed that?
They still use two.
But you go to some meeting, it's gifts,
gifts, gifts, gifts, gifts, gifts.
You go to another, it's fruits, fruits, fruits.
And they're all going round in circles.
Now, if they used both wings, they'd get
off the ground and get somewhere.
But you see, we're so lopsided.
We're more devoted to doctrine than we are
to the word of God.
Now, another thing about John Baptist, I like
this.
John did no miracle.
Isn't that something?
Nobody ran after John and said, have mercy
on my son, he's a lunatic.
Nobody ran after John and said, listen, my
child is blind.
Nobody ran after John.
He never cured a withered arm.
He never touched anybody's blind eyes.
He never spoke deliverance to anybody.
He never raised the dead.
He did infinitely more than raise a dead
man.
He raised a dead nation.
They flocked to him from Jerusalem and Judea
and Samaria.
He preached in the power of the Holy
Ghost.
Oh, I agree, there are some meetings that
an hour and 45 minutes is enough.
For me, some of them, for me, five
minutes is enough.
I'm worn out after five minutes in some
meetings.
But I'll tell you what, when revival comes,
you don't get two hour meetings or three
or four or five.
You get five and six hour meetings.
I spent years on and off preaching with
Duncan Campbell.
You'll tell his books here.
You'll hear that man talk about revival.
Man, they went in churches, they won't even
have a piano.
They just had somebody present the music, sing
a song, and they sang those amazing songs.
And yet God came down.
I told you before about the young boy
that was asked to pray in one meeting
where Duncan couldn't get going.
He preached always in Gaelic, Scottish Gaelic, which
differs from Irish Gaelic, which differs from Welsh
Gaelic.
But he preached always in Gaelic.
One night he preached 15 minutes, the heavens
were like brass, and that's a scriptural phrase,
remember, it talks about the heavens being like
brass.
And he stopped and he called to a
boy to pray.
A 16-year-old high school boy.
And the boy prayed 20 minutes, 30 minutes,
40 minutes, 45 minutes.
But before he prayed, he quoted Psalm 24,
which became the key to revival.
Who shall ascend in the hill of the
Lord?
You know, we make prayer the simplest thing.
Just fall on your knees and tell God
a problem.
Forget it.
If your lips are stained with gossip and
slander, you may as well pray to this.
Because God will not hear when there's sin
between us and him.
He says, cleanse your hands.
Psalm 24 says, who shall ascend into the
hill of the Lord?
He that hath clean hands and a pure
heart.
And a little later, he that backbites us
not with his tongue.
Prayer is the most demanding thing this side
of eternity, that's why we do so little
of it.
And I'm convinced of this, that if you
really get filled with the Holy Ghost, one
of the first signs that you're filled with
the Holy Ghost is, your prayer life will
be revolutionized.
I have an old friend, he wrote to
me recently, maybe I mentioned this before, I
don't know.
He's 95 years of age.
And in his last letter he said, Brother
Ravenhill, no, not next to the last either.
But he said, Ravenhill, you know, I find
it most difficult to pray between midnight and
five in the morning.
I wrote back and said, everybody in America
has the same problem.
Praying between midnight and five in the morning.
Oh God, I met a little man just
two weeks ago in La Puente there.
He's in his 90th year.
He spends about six hours a day in
intercession.
He's a massive man, weighs about 90 pounds.
He was in China in the days when
they had revival, when God just came on
cities.
You see, the tragedy of our day is,
we've no revivalists.
We've so many evangelists, we could ship a
thousand, ten thousand of them out of the
country, never miss them.
If they go, I'd sing the doxology all
day.
But anyhow, there it is.
But oh, I'll tell you what, if God
said to me, Ravenhill, you can pray one
prayer and after that you die five minutes
after you prayed.
You know, I pray, I pray God give
every city in America to John the Baptist.
Now you're Quakers.
Well, that's all right.
They love silence too, but that's all right.
John did no miracle.
People say, if all the miracles were restored,
we'd shake this country.
Listen, there's no country on earth in history
had more miracles than America has had in
the last 50 years and we're nowhere near
revival.
I spent a lot of time with Miss
Kuhlman and Dave Wilkerson too.
Preached for her in auditoriums, took her Bible
classes in the Carnegie Hall in Pittsburgh for
weeks.
And I thank God for her ministry.
But now it's gone, I don't see any
trail of revival.
You see, what excites me about young people
is this, that the promise is to you,
not to us.
We old boys missed it.
We've had it for 50 years.
Graham, Ordon Roberts, all the rest, sure.
They've had millions of dollars, but no revival
has come.
There's been some blessing.
There's been no city-wide transform.
To use the phrase of Dr. Tozer, revival
changes the moral climate of a community.
Do you know that happened in Finney's day?
Do you know that happened in the days
of the man through whom Billy Graham was
converted, Mordecai Ham?
Do you know when he went to a
city with a tent about this size?
That after three days there, one of his
friends told me, that three days after Mordecai
Ham started preaching, he needed a police escort
to get in his own tent.
And he needed a police escort to get
out.
Nobody blasts the brewers any longer.
Nobody talks about sin in the White House,
none of the places anymore.
I think one of the tragic revelations of
Nixon's fall, I believe at the judgment day
you'll discover it wasn't economic or political, it
was spiritual.
Do you know why?