The whole balance of the New Testament is
to the church.
God's problem is the church.
It still is.
Individuals, because that's what the church is made
up of, obviously.
Getting men to hear God's voice, getting men
to do God's will, and the difficult thing
is that you think that God makes all
his best people in loneliness.
The proof of your love for God is
how much time you spend with him, not
how much you spend in meetings, not how
much you spend even chasing drug addicts and
all the others, and that's a great job.
I did a bit of it in New
York, tried it out myself.
My sons all went through that program, they're
all in mission fields around the world today.
But how much time do I spend listening
to God?
You see, true prayer is, it's a two
-way communication.
I speak to God, God speaks to me.
I unload on God, God unloads on me.
I don't know why God needs me to
pray.
I shared a number of times, I shared
meetings with one of the greatest Christian educators
ever in this country, I think, Dr. Edmund
of Wheaton College.
We were in a conference one day and
Dr. R.
R.
Brown said, hey, tell the people about your
experience in Uruguay.
Well, he went down as a missionary.
He's a very brilliant man, he had learned
the language, he had done studies, and he
was ready to go.
And he hadn't been there too long before
he was sick and dying.
His wife watched him.
She, two dresses, one that she was wearing
and a wedding dress.
She got some berries and a lot of
old junk and made a black dye and
she put a wedding dress in it and
hung it up to dry.
He was so near death, they dug his
grave.
She went back to her husband, he great
blobs of sweat on his brow and he
was gurgling with a death rattle in his
throat.
And her mind was spinning.
Why have we trained so many years?
Why is all this money being spent?
Why that?
Why the other?
All clouding her mind.
And she looks, she got a wet cloth
and put it on his forehead and he
sat straight up and he said, bring my
clothes.
Then she nearly died.
What in the world happened?
Oh, it's one of those lightnings people get,
you know, they suddenly revive for half an
hour.
Doctor will say that, I guess.
And then out they go.
Well, he lived many years after.
He was up in Boston telling the story
of how God brought deliverance to him.
It was this, it was a real little
old lady, not a fictional character, came up
with a little dog-eared book about this
size that she got in Woolworths or somewhere,
all beaten up.
And she said, could I ask you a
question?
And he said, yes mother, what is it?
What day did you say you were dying?
So and so.
What time?
Oh, what time was it in Uruguay?
What time would it be in Boston?
And so the little wrinkled face lit up
and she said, there it is, you see,
two o'clock in the morning.
God said, get up and pray the devil's
trying to kill Raymond Edmund in Uruguay.
And she got up and prayed.
I said to him after, you know doctor,
when you get to heaven.
And God opens the register and he says,
from that day onward, of course, you became
one of the greatest educators in America.
You trained three thousand students and a thousand
went into the ministry and through them a
hundred thousand people were saved.
Now I'm going to give you a reward.
You see, you trained three thousand men.
Fifteen hundred belong to the little old lady
and fifteen hundred are yours.
You trained a thousand preachers.
Five hundred belong to her and five hundred
to you.
Fifty thousand people were saved through their ministries.
Twenty five thousand for you.
I said, do you think God's going to
give you the whole reward?
Not on your life.
You'd have died apart from her.
She was as much to you as the
mother that brought you in the world.
She snatched you for some reason.
I don't know why God asks that.
I remember many times I prayed early in
the morning.
Usually we met at five o'clock to
pray with the dear man that had revival
in the Hebrides, Duncan Campbell.
He said one day he went to a
place and he heard a farmer praying and
this old boy, he listened.
The old man was praying about Greece.
Greece.
If you showed the man a map of
the world, he wouldn't know where Greece was.
The only Greece he knew about was something
you put in the frying pan or something.
He didn't know.
Greece?
Afterwards he said, why were you praying about
Greece?
I don't know.
I got a burden in the spirit.
God said, you pray.
There's someone in Greece now that really, really,
really isn't a bad seed.
Pray, pray, pray.
I prayed till I got released he said.
Two or three years afterwards he was in
a meeting listening to a missionary and this
man said, you know, about three years ago
I was in Greece and I was in
serious trouble.
He told the man who'd done the praying.
The man went to see him.
They copied, made, you know, checked up, found
it was the very day, the very same
day that God burdened a man away in
a little island off the coast of Scotland
to pray for a man in Greece.
He didn't even know his name.
He couldn't have pronounced it if he knew
it anyhow.
But he didn't know the name of the
man.
He could always say, Greece, I've got a
burden for Greece.
That's how God works.
I don't know how the spirit makes communion.
I know I get some strange things but
I don't care.
I'd rather be strange than be like most
folk anyhow.
But why not be strange?
The Lord tells you things, carry on with
what God tells you.
But notice again will you hear that this
woman, well we could spend a lot of
time, we wouldn't do that, but the barren
women brought forth the most wonderful sons.
Samson's mother was a barren woman.
Remember, can you imagine a man going into
his wife and he says, hey I've got
something to tell you.
She says, darling we're not moving again are
we?
And he says, no no dear, no no,
I know it's a job being a preacher.
No we're not moving this time, I've got
better news than that.
You know I've just got over that last
move we had, just wore me out.
Well I've got better news than that.
Well what is it?
Now don't laugh when I tell you will
you?
No, you're going to have a baby.
I'm going to what?
I'll be 80 next week and I'm going
to have a baby.
I mean oh come on, now don't fool
like that.
I mean you're 100 years old and I'm
80.
Wait till I write and tell my mother
this, what's she going to say?
She'll say, you see I told him, never
should have married a preacher, they're nuts, they're
crazy.
No no no no.
It's easy to read it isn't it?
She laughed.
Laughed what?
The laugh of faith or the laugh of
unbelief?
She brought forth a child.
Did you notice afterwards when God said, take
thy son, he was very careful about it
because Abraham had another son.
She said, my darling look here, I mean
I know you're a wonderful man, you spend
a lot of time praying but this vision
you have now is nuts.
I mean I'm having no baby.
But I'll tell you what the custom is
you know, you can take one of the
servants here, which was quite a custom in
those days, choose the nicest girl, let her
have a child by you and as soon
as the baby's born, put it on my
knees and legally that baby's mine, which was
the way it was done in those days.
Isn't that stupid?
Have you ever noticed that there's a lapse
from the time that Sarah spoke, God didn't
talk to him for 14 years, you ever
notice that?
You better watch who you listen to.
Oh we're going to have a baby.
You know later when God said, as I
said recently before, remember God doesn't ask you
to worship without sacrifice.
I would have said, I'm going up there
to offer my son.
Abraham didn't say that.
Pardon me, he didn't say, I'm going to
sacrifice, he said, I'm going to offer my
son.
God says, I don't want your son.
Have you noticed God never recognized what is
of the flesh, he never recognized Ishmael.
He said, take thine only son.
Normally it was the first son that got,
the first son didn't inherit anything.
Why?
Because he was a product of the flesh,
that's why.
And God totally ignored him, I don't want
Ishmael.
Boy he's caused some trouble, that Ishmael hasn't
he?
You ask Henry Kissinger.
Those Arabs are still going to be our
biggest headache, don't you worry about that, we've
got some problems coming up.
Just one son, saddle the whole universe with
the Arabs.
Yeah, God says, I'm going to give you
a son.
And then God says, I'm going to take
him back.
If you want a good book on prayer,
read mine, it's one I didn't write, it's
the one I composed of the writings.
A Treasury of Prayer by Dr. E.M.
Bounds.
E.M. Bounds said in one place, that
God, E.M. Bounds said yes, in one
place he said, God killed Stonewall Jackson, because
he knew how to pray.
Now don't argue with me about it, argue
with him when you see him.
Stonewall Jackson learned the science of prayer.
Every major prayer he prayed, God answered, exactly
as Stonewall wanted it.
Well he prayed that the South would win
against the North, they didn't, I don't know
why, but there it is.
And he said God had to do one
of two things, either break a law, not
give, or give what he didn't want to
give, or he had to kill Stonewall Jackson.
So he killed him.
You know God answers prayer, and sometimes he
gives you what you want.
He did that with Israel, didn't he?
They prayed, they were mad, they wanted a
king, they wanted lots of things, he gave
it, but he sent leanness into their souls.
God will give way to your flesh sometimes,
you insist, you cry, you mourn.
I know a man that spent a whole
night and a day in prayer, fasting prayer,
fighting with God at the side of his
bed, because the doctor said that the child
wouldn't live.
He hurled every promise of God, he vowed,
he got angry, wouldn't sleep, his wife thought
he was going demented, and the child lived.
He was three years of age, they lived
in a small town, he was one of
the most respected men in town, he was
considered a great Christian, 18 years of age,
his daughter came home pregnant and told him
a very sad story.
He went back to the same bedroom and
spent as much time crying and telling God
he was sorry he made a demand on
him.
I wish he'd gone to heaven as a
pure little babe, rather than live and disgrace
me and the family and the church and
everything.
He granted his request, he sent leanness into
his soul.
You see the Spirit is such a gentle
person that he'll warn us, but you can't
trample on him, he'll go, you don't have
to trample on him.
And one of his offices again is, he
is the spirit of prayer, as it says
again in Jude, praying in the Holy Ghost.
Now there are three things about natural birth
that you have about spiritual birth.
The first is conception, the second is gestation
and the third is birth, you can't change
the order.
Now the woman is concerned, she must have
a child and she prayed and she was
in bitterness of spirit.
Well tell me, do you ever get bitter?
I mean apart from anybody hurting your feelings?
Again to me, one of the outstanding things
in the life of Paul was the 17th
chapter of Acts, where he went down the
intellectual capital of the world and the roads
on either side were lined with temples to
strange gods and it says in the sleepy
Elizabethan English of the authorized version, his spirit
was stirred, it isn't strong enough.
The Greek implies and the Amplified says he
was angry.
At what?
At all these temples.
First of all the people are all deluded
and going to hell, secondly look at their,
look at the cost of them, thirdly look
at their devotion.
I preached at the great Curacao conference in
Japan a few years ago.
About two years afterwards, we were in Rockford
Illinois where our good friend Harry Conn lives
and I went to a church to hear
a man speak.
He was the man who chaired the missionary
conference in Curacao.
After the meeting I said to him, well
it's nice to see you again and where
have you been and he said, well you
know these days of travel.
He said, I was in Japan last night,
I caught a jet and I'm here.
I said how are things and so forth
and so on and then I said to
him, you had quite a haircut.
He said, yeah I got it in Japan,
things are cheaper in Japan you know.
So I decided to have a haircut while
I was there and he said, but boy
that was an experience.
I said, why?
Did you cut your ear or something?
No, no, no.
He said, the man got me all toweled
up and whatnot and started working and he
said, you're a Yankee.
He said, well I'm an American.
Oh, you're an American.
You're a tourist?
No, not a tourist.
Oh, businessman?
No, not a businessman.
Well, what?
Well, he said, I'm a missionary in your
country.
Oh, you're a missionary.
Ah good, I am a missionary too.
Oh, I thought you were a barber.
Barber, they have eight in the morning till
five at night.
Go home, take supper, bathe.
Six o'clock I go out, pockets filled
with this new coat they have.
It was new anyhow.
Zagagaki, which is a combination of religion and
politics.
We're going to sweep Christianity out of Japan
and out of this area.
We're going to conquer the world.
You go out at seven o'clock at
night?
Yeah.
Oh, I'm out by seven.
Oh, how long do you stay out?
Well, I get home for two in the
morning.
Two?
I go in houses.
I give, like you give Bible lectures.
I give instruction.
I leave them a record.
I leave them literature and I go out
every night from seven till, well, I get
home at two.
No, no, no.
You don't go to bed till two o
'clock.
I didn't say that.
You did.
I didn't.
What did you say?
I said, I get home at two.
And then I have a shrine in the
corner of my room.
I pull the curtain and I fall before
my God to renew my strength.
Sounds a bit like Isaiah 40, they that
wait upon the Lord to renew their strength.
And he said, I need from two o
'clock till four o'clock to compose myself
and draw my energies from God.
I go to bed at four and I
get up at seven thirty.
The missionary said, I felt as I was
going down in my chair, it missed the
top of my head.
I felt so embarrassed.
Then I said, well, listen, how long have
you done this anyhow?
He said, oh, I'm in my seventh year.
Seventh year?
You mean you've kept that up?
Yes, sir.
This is a thing that's going to change
the world.
Man, it's worth living for or dying for.
We look down our noses and say, we've
got the best thing in the world, but
we sleep on it half the time, don't
we?
You wonder that Jesus says, there are some
people that they're so zealous, they'll come to
sea and land to make one more convert,
sevenfold more a child of hell and themselves.
But they're breathless doing it.
I can't find any trace in history where
revival has come.
It has to come through, first of all,
through conception.
That's why I said last night, I believe
the Apostle Paul was spiritually pregnant.
The Holy Ghost came on him and conceived
those churches that he was going to birth
afterwards.
The church at Corinth, the church at Rome,
Epictetus and so forth, Galatia.
He conceived them.
They were born in him, as well as
those epistles.
Now the problem with the ladies, no, this
is, we men don't know a thing about
this.
Somebody said almost facetiously, if a couple got
married and a woman had the first baby
and husband had the second, there'd never be
a third.
Well, maybe that's true.
You see, the scripture God uses, he uses
it of Israel.
She traveled in birth.
Now the obvious thing, and this is where
we go wrong.
Oh boy, there'll be more miscarriages in revival
than any or all the women in the
world put together.
You see, once that woman has conceived that
child, she's got to carry that child a
certain period.
And you know what?
The nearer she gets to birth of that
child, the more her life gets out of
kilter.
She doesn't want to eat what she usually
eats.
She wants to eat something she didn't eat.
We used to read in the newspaper in
England, the queen has canceled all her engagements
for the next six months.
Oh, oh, she's pregnant again.
She likes to ride horses, but if she
leaps over that fence and she falls, she
might injure that child.
Jacqueline Kennedy, you remember that thing, that woman,
and she used to like to go water
skiing, but she gave up water skiing because
she was going to have a child.
She said that, I might have a collapse,
the water, you know, I may spill over,
that ski hit me, the child may be
deformed, so forth and so on.
And so she stays with the child until
the time of birth.
The nearer she gets to the child being
born, very often she doesn't sleep well at
night.
The old guy there, you know, night after
night, and she can't sleep.
He says, are you all right dear?
She said, yes.
He knows she isn't, he doesn't say, I'll
go help you, I'll get you a drink
or something, forget it.
She's pregnant, so what?
And the longer she, the more she gets
towards the time of that child being born,
it becomes obviously increasingly more painful.
That's why somebody said, if a man had
the second child and knew what travail is,
of course now there's a lot of stuff
goes around, it isn't as bad as it
used to be, I get, but by the
same token that's not true in the spiritual
realm.
You see, it's carrying that child, it's the
burden that comes.
Every revival, I think every revival without exception
has been birthed amongst young men and women.
There's a town called Ahochal in Ireland.
An old Irishman says you need a bad
throat to say it.
Ahochal, Ahochal.
I went to Peter the Conference there and
they show you with reverence, you see that
hedge over there, where that hedge meets that,
that's where those four young men met night
after night after night praying for revival.
You go into Wales and they show you
a place up on the hills where about
three or four young men met night after
night.
They were only 18, 19, 20, something around
there and they prayed night after night after
night.
Wouldn't let God go, would not take no
for an answer.
They prayed as far as humanly possible, they
prayed that revival into birth.
But I'll tell you what, if you're thinking
of revival at your church without any inconvenience,
forget it.
Revival dislocates everything.
Dr. Torsey used to say, you know Len,
we've never had revival in our country that
anybody remembers.
I'm sure he was right in his definition
when he said that revival changes the moral
climate of a community.
It isn't that it gave us six new
members in the church and five hundred dollars
extra when we finished and a few more
people sitting there, that's not revival.
Maybe blessing, maybe help, it is not revival.
Revival changes the moral climate of a community.
You know nowadays it's nothing for a group.
Some of the big groups spent a million
dollars on a crusade.
I remember the time when they were almost
terrified that they spent two hundred thousand.
But now they spend a million, don't bat
an eye, a million and a half.
They go on tv for a night, three
nights cost you a million dollars.
These big shops do it.
I don't know what good it does, maybe
help some old folk in bed and whatnot,
bless them and they need it.
But I don't see any lasting results out
of that kind of thing.
You see God is only, God is only
honored, God is only obligated to bless what's
in his word.
And he has, he has, he has laid
down the condition.
The condition is that the body, the church
which is his body.
Why didn't Jesus come down in the clouds?
He's going to come down like that soon.
Why didn't he come the first time?
He came through a body, a virgin, a
pure woman.
Revival came through a body, a bunch of
men.
And I guess women in the upper room,
about a hundred and twenty.
Jesus says, a body is thou prepared for
me.
So you find a body.
I'm going to pray, I don't tell, tell
me this if you see him.
But I'm going to pray, God will give
you a bunch of real praying people here,
intercessory people, that don't want to go out
on the streets, to uphold those who are
on the streets.
I'm praying, do you know I'm praying?
You don't have to pray this.
It's my ground anyhow.
But I'm going to pray that God will
put a pillar of fire over this agape
place.
That you won't have to go a hundred
miles, people will come a hundred miles, two
hundred miles, three hundred miles.
When the Holy Ghost came on, on the
people in Wales.
Or if you like to go further back
when the, no a little further forward as
we think of it now.
When the Holy Spirit came on that group
of people in Azusa Street in California in
1907.
You know some of the most distinguished people
in England went to see the fire burn.
You never have to advertise a fire.
Every time you announce in your church, in
the newspaper, somebody's coming to your church, all
you do is advertising your bankruptcy.
You don't have to advertise a fire.
You let the glory of God come and
fill this place.
You get some men with, that don't want
to be considered prophets, but they are prophets.
Men that don't want to be considered apostles.
Men that don't want to be considered outstanding.
Let them come.
And if they come, the biggest men are
always the easiest to live with.
They're always the lowliest men to live with.
Let them come and settle in a place
like this.
Folk will come from the ends of the
earth and I mean that.
Revival costs a lot.
Do you know there's, I can give you
a simple reason why we don't have a,
I give you one simple sentence and tell
you why we don't have revival in America.
Do you know why we don't have it?
Well I'll tell you, because we're content to
live without it, that's all.
As soon as we get like this woman,
what did she do?
She wept, she was grieved, she fasted, she
prayed.
She says, I have a complaint.
Well I say before God, what else could
she have?
She's got almost the very pains of hell
upon her.
I want a child, I must have a
child, I fast for the child, I pray
for the child, I weep for the child.
Now isn't it beautiful that this woman prayed
and never said a word?
That's the highest form of prayer there is,
just like worship.
The highest form of worship is you don't
say a word.
You gaze on his holiness, his majesty, his
beauty.
It's speechless.
You don't go to sleep over it either.
Well you know the hard thing, I mean
what does Psalm 1, it talks about blessed
is the man that walketh not in the
counsel of the young God, nor standeth in
the way of sinners, nor sit in the
seat of the scornful and so it goes
on.
And what?
Standeth in the way of sinners.
And well of course, the scripture says you're
to stand the contradiction of sinners.
That's not difficult, it's a criticism of the
saints that gets you down.
They're better at it than the sinners.
They can criticize and ridicule and scorn better
than any old sinner you ever heard in
your life.
Hannah came to church and she prayed.
And Eli said, you know what that woman's
been coming for months now.
I'd like to know where she gets the
liquor because every time she comes in she's
drunk.
She mutters never says a word, never asked
me any advice.
Me?
A great preacher and she never asked for
my opinion, never says anything to me.
Eli marked her mouth, her lips moved but
a voice was not heard.
There's a poem, it's a secular poem but
I think it's right on target, on this
very subject where a poet says what am
I?
An infant crying in the night.
An infant crying for a light with no
language but a cry.
Mother's getting back into bed, father said, who
are you of?
Yes I was of.
Why?
Oh I heard him cry.
What did he want?
Darling he was hungry, want it feeding.
Ah is he all right?
Yeah he's all right.
Half an hour after he decides it's time
to rehearse for the choir or something and
he sings out the dog of his voice.
Mother says, he's crying again, is he hungry?
Mother goes and attends to him and said,
no dear he wasn't hungry, he was uncomfortable,
he needed his diaper changing.
Ah is that him crying again?
Yes.
What does he want now?
Changing?
Is he hungry?
No he's frightened.
I put the light on and he stopped
right there.
They call it what?
A woman's tuition.
The poet got it straight, what am I?
An infant crying for a light.
Wouldn't it be something if your six months
baby shouted, mom I'm hungry.
He'd say, oh what in the world is
wrong?
Huh?
So what does he do?
He does all he can do.
He cries away and you say, oh he's
hungry, boy I'll have to get up, it's
cold but I'll go feed him, he's hungry.
Huh?
He yells a bit later, I'm wet through.
No he doesn't, he just lays there and
you go and you say, oh wow, he
was swimming, man he's a mess.
Let's get him changed and you change him.
You go another time, he doesn't yell, I
want a light.
But you know for somehow he's nervous, you
put the light on and he stopped.
He has no language but a cry.
You see that's why you read about men
like Moses.