Behold, I will send my messenger, and he
shall prepare the way before me.
And the Lord whom ye seek shall suddenly
come to his temple, even the messenger of
the covenant whom he delighteth in.
Behold, he shall come, saith the Lord of
hosts.
But who may abide the day of his
coming?
And who shall stand when he appeareth?
For he is like a refiner's fire, and
like full of soap.
And he shall sit as a refiner and
purifier of silver.
And he shall purify the sons of Levi,
and purge them as gold and silver, that
they may offer unto the Lord an offering
in righteousness.
Well, this week we've been doing a little
work on revival.
And yesterday, revival as it applies to our
own lives, and then thinking about revival in
the way that, obviously, it's going to reach
out maybe on the local level, quoting again
the, to me, very challenging and humiliating ministry
of a fellow, for instance, like Spurgeon, which
we talked about yesterday, a little fellow that
had no training and yet, within the space
of 10 years, is preaching to 6,000
people in Sunday morning and 6,000 Sunday
night.
And that thing was kept up for about,
I think, somewhere near 20 years.
On top of that, giving us one of
the most exhaustive preaching expositions, there are different
forms of exposition, that the vast volumes that
there are published right now on the Tabernacle
Pulpit or on the New Park Street Church,
again showing that it is possible for revival
to affect a local area as well as
to have a national revival, which kind of
sweeps everybody in, in a, you know, great
suction that God sends along.
Now, it doesn't matter where you think about
revival, whatever level you think of it, you've
got to do as Jesus says, if you've
any sense at all, you don't go to
war without recognizing the power of the enemy.
You need to know what's against you or
who is against you.
And I think right here we ought to
recognize this, we ought to recognize again the
fact that there is against us the world,
the flesh, the devil, our own weakness, and
a third of the heavenly hosts that fell
when Satan fell.
Now, that's quite a lot.
The world, the flesh, the devil, our human
weakness, and a third of the heavenly host.
But on our side, again, remember that the
Good Book is never wrong, and it says,
they that are for us are more than
all that can be against us.
And for us, we have the Father, the
Son, the Holy Ghost, two-thirds of the
heavenly host, all the promises of God, two
thousand years of church history, and as we
said yesterday from Romans 8, the Spirit of
God is within us, the Spirit of Christ
is within us, excuse me, the Spirit of
God is within us, the Spirit of Christ
is within us, and the Holy Ghost is
within us.
So, that's the power of the adversary.
Remember, Satan has some power, at least in
my mind.
He is, well, he's more than us, but
he's less than God.
If power is above ours, it is less
than the power of God.
So, Satan is more than man, less than
God.
He is supernatural, but he's not supreme.
That needs to get bedded down in our
minds more than ever, that Satan is supernatural,
he has awesome power.
But while he is supernatural, he is not
supreme.
That while he is mighty, he is not
almighty.
You often hear people say, you know, the
devil's been with me all day, and when
people say that, I always want to say
you're very conceited.
In any case, you ought to be very
happy if he has been, which he hasn't,
but if he had, you should be very
happy about it.
Why?
Because if he's been with you, he couldn't
be with anybody else.
He can't be in two places at the
same time.
Let's remember, the great attributes of God are
what?
Omnipotence, omnipresence, and omniscience.
Satan is not omnipresent.
Satan cannot be in this room and be
in Australia at the same time.
If he can, then you give him the
attributes of God, which I refuse to give
him.
Now, I'm not saying he won't sublet some
of his authority to demons, I think he
does that, but Satan himself.
In fact, again, when people say Satan's been
after me all day, or Satan said this
to me today, you know, it didn't dawn
on me until, I guess last year, maybe,
that the Apostle Paul, as far as I
remember, never once said that Satan spoke to
him.
On the other hand, I said this, and
I still mean it, that I believe the
greatest honour on earth is not to be
loaded with PhDs and all the other Bs.
I believe the greatest honour in the world
is that that was attributed to the Apostle
Paul when the demons, you know, the sons
of Seva decided to get the devil demons
out of a man, and the demons jumped
on the sellers, and they did quite right,
in my judgment, beat them up.
Preachers need beating up now and again, and
so they beat the preacher up.
And remember what they said, I think it's
awesome when they said, Jesus we know, and
Paul we know.
But who are you?
And almost every time I talk to preachers,
I say this, are you known in hell?
If you're not, my common saying is, you're
not worth a hill of beans.
It gets them mad sometimes.
But isn't that the greatest honour in the
world, that we're known in hell?
I say, you know, I think Satan has
a danger list.
He has the, you know, like the FBI
has the ten most wanted men.
I think Satan has the ten most wanted
men in America.
I hope I'm one of them.
I'd rather be the last, the tenth, than
be the first on any other list.
I snap my fingers at all the honours
of men, all the glories of men.
After all, they're men.
And what are men?
But the Apostle Paul had conflict with the
powers of darkness, and his name was registered.
Maybe the letters were ten feet high in
hell.
P-A-U-L, Paul.
Jesus we know, and Paul we know.
As I remember it, the voice of Satan
occurs only three times in the scriptures.
And in the first place, he misrepresented God
to man.
In the Garden of Eden, when, you know,
when Adam said this, and Satan says half
God said, so he misrepresents God to man.
In the second place, he misrepresents man to
God.
God dares to put an exhibition.
Do you think he dare you do it
with your life and mine?
He puts an exhibition, the life, of that
amazing man, Job.
And Satan says, well, do you know why
he's so high in his piety?
Because he's so high in his wealth.
His piety is level with his prosperity.
But if you shoot his prosperity down, his
piety will go down like that.
And so God says, and Satan says, why
don't you try him out?
And God says, I'm too busy, you try
him out.
Well, that's something.
Do you think Satan, God could say that
of your life and mine?
Well, I'm very busy holding up the universe,
busy doing this.
You go and do a little work on
Job for me.
And you remember, he tried.
The first thing he did was send him
bankrupt.
The second thing, he sent him bereavement.
The third thing, he sent him boils.
And yet, he didn't shift.
Whatever was happening, he said, listen, as the
psalmist says, my times are in thy hands.
I believe with all my heart that before
Satan can ever attack your life, that is,
if your life is cleansed and the Spirit
is there, and you can say as Jesus
said, the Prince of this world cometh and
he findeth nothing in me.
Every area is being cleaned out.
If there's still carnality in self there, Satan
has a toehold.
He can work on it.
If it isn't there, he can't work on
it.
The Prince of this world cometh and he
findeth nothing in me.
Okay, Job says, when everybody else is saying,
you see, you see what's happened?
What's it going to be in righteous?
He went to bed a multimillionaire.
He wakes up broke.
And right after that, his children died.
And right after that, he has another problem.
And now his body's all sick.
You see, you see, doesn't pay to serve
God.
I believe that before ever Satan can make
any attack on your life, he has to
go to God and ask for a license
to do it.
Because this is what, this is what Satan
says, you put a shield in front of
him.
Isn't that something?
Got pretty good theology, old Satan, you know.
He says, he says, I can't get near
to Job.
You put a shield in front of him.
Take the shield away.
Well, God never takes advice from Satan anyhow.
But he acknowledges there is a shield that
God puts before the redeemed and he can't
get through it.
Now, if that was known in the days
of Job, since Calvary is already accomplished, there's
another protection around us.
There's the omnipotence of God.
There's the blood of Jesus Christ, God's Son.
And there are all the exceeding great and
precious promises.
How in the world can the devil get
to you?
Unless, again, there's some place in there of
weakness or fear where he has ground.
But the prince of this world cometh and
he findeth nothing in me.
Now, when this empire is collapsing like that,
what did, what did Job say?
Oh, he said, I had more cattle than
anybody.
I had more prosperity than anybody.
The Lord gave and the devil took it
all away.
That's what people usually say.
I've heard people say, we opened a shop
and everything went well.
We opened another one, it was all going
well.
We got another branch, it was going well.
And then the whole thing came.
You know, the Lord was so gracious and
the devil came in and...
Oh, no, no, no, no.
Job didn't give Satan any credit for that.
Job says the Lord gave.
And the Lord has taken away.
If he gives the plus, he gives the
minuses.
The child of God isn't a football for
the devil to take away.
He can kick around as he wants.
He's the personal property of God.
Now, in England, if you did some damage
to certain things, you might get away with
it.
But if it happens to be the Queen's
property, you're in real, real trouble.
It's esteemed far more valuable, far more, almost
sacrosanct because it belongs to Her Majesty the
Queen.
Now, if you're God, if your spirit, soul
and body is His, if you fulfill Romans,
what is it, 12 and 1 and 2,
if you've presented your body, a living sacrifice,
wholly acceptable unto God, which is your reasonable
service, Satan isn't come barging in on your
life any time that he wants.
He has to get a permit to do
it.
It doesn't alter the fact, again, that he
does have awesome power.
I think we're seeing it right now, aren't
we, in this...
If there's a man sanctified to the devil,
if you can use such contradictory terms, surely
it's this Ayatollah Khomeini right now, a man
totally committed, a man that's drunk with hatred
and bitterness.
Maybe there's some ground for it.
Nevertheless, you see again, he's dedicated to this
one thing.
And apparently he doesn't care that today there's
all the flagellants, you know, they're beating themselves
with chains and as a sign they're ready
to die.
I thought, man alive.
Would everybody in an agape march through these
grounds clapping their hands and say, Hallelujah, we're
ready to die today, we're eager to die
for Christ.
You've got 500,000 men, maybe more, between
half a million and a million, say, we're
ready to die, Khomeini, we're ready to die
for you and the cause of Islam.
They look on the Christians as heathen.
Again, in so many cases you discover that
the zeal of unsafe people is greater than
that of safe people.
I remember my son David going to an
island in the South Pacific.
He got on a boat one day that
should have held about 30 people.
There were about 60 on it.
Oh, well, it's not long.
It's only eight hours and they'd no food
on board.
They'd no toilets, they'd no anything and it
was an eight-hour trip.
But they hit a storm and it took
30 hours without food.
They were tossed and sick and every few
minutes thought they were going to drown.
And David said, well, you know, when we
get to this island, maybe we'll be the
first to get there with the Gospel.
There's 300,000 islands right across the South
Pacific.
Not 300,000 people, 300,000 islands during
the whole of the South Pacific and up
into the northern, north, north, north, northeast of
Australia.
Where you get New Ireland, New England and
New Scotland and so forth.
When they got to the island, there was
a path.
He said, let's go up that path, up
that hill.
And they went and there was a man,
he was living in a hut, made of
leaves and bamboo and whatnot.
And when they talked to him, he spoke
in broken English.
Ah, yes, yes, I show you book.
And he came showing a green-backed Bible.
Well, who makes a green-backed Bible?
Jehovah's Witnesses.
They'd been there years before the Gospel got
there.
There are some parts of the Amazon in
South America where the Gospel hasn't got.
And the missionary wondered how he'd make it.
And then he discovers a Texaco sign hanging
outside.
And surprise, he'd got there before evangelism.
You see, when people get full of zeal,
when they get drunk with an idea, then
there's almost in one sense no stopping them.
And Jesus said himself, the zeal of thy
house hath eaten me up.
We need a sanctified zeal.
I'm glad now that Gappy, I think last
week, was down at Van there, door-to
-door knocking.
And now they've decided not to have big
crusades, but knock on every door in the
community and talk.
Not just say, give a track, come to
church, but talk, have a personal encounter.
See, that's why the Jehovah's Witnesses, they don't
have crusades.
They go door-to-door.
They bring literature.
They go back again, shut the door in
their face, they'll come again, shut the door
in their face, they'll come again.
Doesn't worry them.
We're all heritage.
The kingdom of God is coming.
The church isn't walking in the light and
so forth and so on.
But there you have that, you have that
zeal.
All right.
We say that Satan is a formidable foe.
Look what James says in chapter 4 and
7 of James.
Chapter 4, verse 7.
Submit yourselves therefore to God, resist the devil
and possibly he'll be upset.
What does it say?
He will what?
Oh, he might flee?
Oh, he should flee?
You're hanging on there, that's good.
Trying to shake him, he won't move.
Doesn't say he could or he should or
he might or it's a possibility, he says
you.
What do you do?
You see, some people submit but they don't
resist.
Some people try to resist without submitting.
And then you're doing it in the energy
of the flesh and nothing works.
But they say there's a promise, it's guaranteed.
Submit yourself.
Pardon me.
Submit yourselves therefore to God, resist the devil
and he will flee from you.
Now again, we don't have time to go
into it but remember again the scripture that
if a man has a house full of
treasures, you don't run in the house and
pick up a million dollar vase.
They were showing yesterday the Shah's old shack
where he used to live.
And it showed a beautiful vessel there, just
kind of two curved pieces like that with
a flower on top.
And it was all solid gold and the
flowers were made of diamonds and I don't
know, maybe it's worth half a million dollars.
Now, he had treasures all around the house.
Jesus says you don't rush in at the
door and grab this and grab that and
try and get out.
First you deal with the man there.
You deal with a big shot.
You first bind the strong man and gag
him.
Now, a friend of ours had that recently
a few months ago down in Houston.
Somebody called him in the morning and said
I want to go to your jeweler shop
and I can't come other days.
I know you're closed.
And as he came out of the door,
they bound him and gagged him and robbed
his home.
Took about five years of savings that he
transferred into gold.
Took him down to his office and stood
over him with a revolver while he emptied
the safe and took out his treasures.
First of all, they got the man and
they bound him and they gagged him and
bound and gagged his family.
Jesus says by the same token, if you're
going to steal those precious things that Satan
has, you first bind the strong man.
Now, I had a man used to come
to a church I pastored.
He was very poor and he was fairly
illiterate and his clothes were not good and
his health was surely a lot to be
desired.
But you know, I said to that man
one day, Brother Furnable, don't bother to come
and hear me preach.
I couldn't teach you anything.
You've already had 50 years of experience before
I came in the world.
He belonged one of the most dynamic prayer
groups.
As a matter of fact, we went in
that city and had a revival and raised
a church of 800 people in two months.
In eight weeks, we had a revival that
left us a church of 800 people and
that church is still going on and we
established that church in 19, well, 32, 1934.
It's almost 50 years.
And then I found, as I've said, in
all these revivals behind them, there's a period
when somebody has conceived this thing.
Somebody's born the baby in natural birth.
You've conception, gestation and birth.
And in the same thing in revival, there
had been a prayer group in that church.
This man was one of them.
The old lady with the bonnet over there
in my church was another of them.
And for 40 years, they had prayed for
revival.
They didn't see it.
We went in and the whole town was
shaking in a matter of two weeks.
Headlines in the newspaper, gossip in all the
factories, gossip in the mills, street meetings, everybody's
talking.
God did miracles of healing.
But all because somebody had prayed.
And this little man was one of the
key men.
And I said to him, you don't need
to bother, come and hear me preach, but
please, please, oh, I'll go on my knees
and beg you.
Never miss the prayer meeting.
And you know, everybody would almost wait for
old Furnival to pray.
You could almost sense, well, come on brother,
get it out and let's hear what you're
going to say.
And he'd come with someone with a dew
of heaven upon him, but always somewhere, whether
it was number two, or number four, or
number five, or number three, or number one,
somewhere in his prayer, at the beginning, the
end of the middle, he would pray this,
Lord, teach us what is flesh and what
is spirit.
And he would pause and then pray, teach
us how to bind and how to loose.
I'm more convinced than ever, in every church,
you need a couple of people, or four
people, or five people, that know how to
bind and how to loose.
They prepare the way of the Lord.
John Baptist prepared the way of the Lord.
The people who bind and loose prepare the
way for the preacher.
It's infinitely easier to preach.
I preached two weeks ago, three weeks ago
in a church that had been saturated in
prayer for three weeks before I went.
And after the morning session, we had our
meetings, not at this time, we had our
meetings, our lunch, we have lunchtime meetings now,
twelve o'clock to one, people bring a
brown paper sack lunch, and we got, we
got scores and scores of people.
Sometimes we get hundreds of people.
And right after that, these women went to
pray, they went, they had a period of
intercession in the back room.
You know, when you went in that meeting
at night, you could feel the glory of
God.
The meetings began at seven o'clock and
finished at half past eleven or twelve o
'clock at night.
There was no need to beg and squeeze
and put pressure on and sing some emotional
thing and wear that record out that's almost
worn through ten times over just as I
am without one plea.
I get so weary of it.
If I preach an hour, and that's short
measure if I do, but if I preach
an hour or a bit longer, if people
don't know what they want when I preach
an hour, I'm not going to squeeze them
for five minutes and try and make up
their minds for them.
Either God has dealt with them or He
hasn't.
And again, one of the secrets of revival,
one of the great men in revival, one
of the best men I ever met was
the great Irish evangelist W.
P.
Nicholson.
Now, he was as rough.
The last time I preached in Ireland, he
said this to me, Ravenel, where are you
going?
So I told him, Bah!
He said, Bah!
I said, Well?
He said, Ravenel, when I was your age,
this was 19, when?
19 49, I think.
And he said, Ravenel, at your age, I
could go to any town, any city in
this country and turn it upside down in
three weeks, and he could, and he did.
But he said, We're living in a different
day.
We're not back in the 1920s.
He said, There's not a man on earth
can go to a town now and turn
it upside down in three weeks.
Now, this is what you do, he said.
I haven't done it.
I got near it once.
If they invite you to preach, you go
for six weeks.
The first three weeks, you forget there's a
sinner going to hell, you blister the Christians,
he said.
And then after three weeks, you've got them
into shape, forget there are any Christians, you
go after the sinners and preach hellfire and
get them saved.
You know, when we talk about discerning of
spirits, we think about, Oh, there's a man
came in, he's got an unclean spirit, he's
got a lustful spirit, he's got a jealous
spirit, he's got a proud spirit, he's got
a covetous spirit.
Well, that may be right.
I'm not saying it's wrong.
But I'm quite sure of this, there should
be, as I've said repeatedly this week, there
should be a sensitivity in interest of what
the spirit is doing.
Now, you could go in a meeting where
this man will preach hellfire till it scares
you to death.
It scares the believers, never mind the sinners.
And they say, Stand up!
Everybody stand up.
He'd wave his hands and sing, God save
our gracious King, long live...
What?
A friend of mine said to him one
day, he did that in a men's meeting,
he said, You've got those men eating out
of your hands.
And you finish a meeting that God is
on like that, you finish a meeting with
singing, God save our gracious King.
What are you doing?
Oh, well, he said, You'll see tonight.
Oh, you'll see it during the week.
You know, there's a saying, if an old
hen is sitting in a corner and she's
got 12 eggs under her and she hatches
11 and she doesn't hatch the other one,
well, all you do, you go along and
you stick a pin in the egg, just
like that, and you'll crack it.
And the chick will come out, but it
will limp for the rest of its life.
Why?
Because you didn't let nature have its way,
you didn't let nature have its process.
And very often in our meetings, we have
big crowds come to the altar.
Why?
Because we stick a pin in the egg,
that's why.
Now, Nicholson said, Listen, you know what's going
to happen?
You let the Word of God.
Did I speak to the people?
Yeah.
But did God speak?
Oh, he spoke.
Well, do you think anything that God ever
does is lost?
That seed has gone down into the minds
and hearts of those men.
For instance, he preached on a Thursday night,
on John 3.16, a tremendous message.
God so loved the world.
He said to the congregation, Stand back.
How many have come into Christ that loves
you like this?
A God that loves you like this.
Walk down the aisles now.
Nobody move.
He walked off the platform, wouldn't pronounce a
benediction.
Said, What?
You preachers, he said, you ask God's blessing
on a bunch of rebels.
They've rejected His truth and you ask God
to bless them?
Forget it.
So he walked off the platform and left.
Next night, he preached on hellfire.
A friend of mine was on the platform
and afterwards, he said, Ray Mill, you've never
heard a message in your life like that.
He said, I saw men there with their
hymn books like this on their laps and
they worked on them till they were shredded
on the floor.
They didn't even know they'd torn the hymn
book up.
They were so nervous.
I saw drunken men there and they'd sit
and laugh at some of his jokes and
then, oh, hang on the seat and then,
oh, they'd be looking.
And he said, you'd see the sweat run
off the end of the nose and off
the end of their chin.
As I say, there used to be preachers
that could hold the hell bound, spell bound.
Not anymore.
They disappeared.
Mordecai Aham could do it.
Billy Graham was saved under Mordecai Aham.
An old man told me, I went to
Mordecai Aham's meetings.
He brought a big tent to our town.
After the third night, he needed a police
escort to get in the tent and he
needed a police escort to get out.
He'd roused all hell in that town.
The brewers, the prostitutes, the gamblers, everybody in
town was blazing mad.
Don't get preaching about that anymore, eh?
Knowing the terror of the Lord, we persuaded
men.
The Apostle Paul said, well, Nicholson knew that.
He preached this night on, again, on hell.
At the end of the meeting, he said,
stand up.
They stood up.
He went to the back of the platform,
he took a running kick and he said,
get to hell the whole congregation.
To hell with a lot of you.
And he walked off the platform, had his
hat and coat on, was down the street
before they recovered from shock.
He'd offered the best preachers in town and
everybody else there.
And my friend said to him, Nicholson, you
kicked 1,200 people into hell.
Well, he said, you know what I said
to them?
Last night, I offered you God's love.
You wouldn't take it.
There's only one alternative.
That's God's hell.
So off you go to it and he
kicked them in.
My friend Peter said to him, we've no
meeting Saturday.
Just one meeting Sunday night.
It's a good thing we're at the end
of the crusade.
Why?
Well, he said, you don't talk to intelligent
people.
Church members, many of them.
Best people in town and you kick them
all into hell?
They won't be insulted like that.
They won't come back.
In fact, the church won't be half filled
on Sunday night.
Old Nicholson laughed, that big horse laugh of
his.
You know, oh, they won't.
He said, no.
Son, he said, you can tell me some
things, but you can't tell me how to
preach.
I've been around the world.
He'd been around the world about eight times.
Then he went around the world ten times
altogether.
They tell fantastic stories.
I heard them in Australia when I was
there about the meetings of Nicholson.
And he said, son, you say the church
won't be half full.
Let me tell you something.
You're wrong on two counts.
Number one, the church will be packed to
the doors.
And number two, when I make that altar
call on Sunday night, there'll be over 120
come to the altar and more than half
of them will be men.
And do you know how I know?
No.
Did I preach an awful message?
Oh, he said, you made me shiver, never
mind the sinners.
And what did I do?
You kick them into hell.
OK, son.
He said, if they stay in hell from
Friday night till Sunday night, they'd be glad
to get out the next time I preach.
And you know, everything happened as he said.
Now he has a sensitivity of what God
was doing in a meeting.
You see, the modern evangelist, his name hangs
on how many come to the front, his
reputation.
One of the top three evangelists called Harry
Conn.
Some of you know Harry Conn.
A few years ago, about one o'clock
in the morning, they said, Harry, I'm pacing
my bedroom.
I find that only 1% of my
converts are abiding through.
Could anybody else would stay in business with
a track record like that?
You see, there is a place where that
awesome work of the Spirit comes.
We don't see much of it anymore.
Do you know any evangelist wants to go
to a town for six weeks?
Didn't Finney say he didn't give an altar
call for 28 nights?
He didn't preach mercy, he preached judgment.
He didn't preach the love of God, he
preached the wrath of God.
He didn't preach grace, he preached the law.
He didn't preach heaven, he preached hell.
He preached everything they didn't expect to hear.
Until by the second week or the third
week, they were saying, well, why doesn't this
man give us a chance to get saved?
Why does...
oh, no, no, no.
He was there to produce panic, not peace.
See, we try and give people a sedative.
God loves you.
Just relax.
Everything will work all right.
You just say you're sorry and that's all.
Oh, God ass.
Oh, pure nonsense.
Pure nonsense.
Nicholson was not only a great preacher, but
listen, he was a great man of prayer.
In the later part of his life, he'd
go home at night.
Do you know what?
And I started doing this.
I did it in Nacogdoches.
Now, instead of letting somebody come, if they
want to come and pray with them, all
right.
But I stand at the pulpit and I
say to everybody, you make open confession.
You stand right here, be unashamed.
Everybody's messed up somehow.
You stand there and confess and I'll pray
after you.
So it meant I was getting on my
feet at half past seven at night, and
I was still on my feet at half
past eleven or twelve at night.
I prayed after every believer there.
And Nicholson used to take a chair and
say, get out of here, you folk that
just came to see the show.
You're not interested about God.
Get out.
And he'd say, oh, you fill all these
pews.
Now, you start.
What's your trouble?
What's your sin?
Pride, jealousy, secret lust, what is it?
You pray, I'll follow you in prayer.
And he prayed behind every person.
The result was he had the most abiding
fruit of any evangelist that's ever been in
that country.
Unless you go right back to Gideon Newsley,
who was in a sanctuary before that.
But you see, he had an awesome prayer
life.
He not only roared at men, and he
roared.
I tell you, talk about the bulls of
Bashan.
When that guy roared, he roared.
He'd shake the building there.
But he not only roared before men on
behalf of God, he roared before God on
behalf of men.
And a man needs to spend more time
before God on behalf of men than he
spends with men on behalf of God.
And that's the secret of the whole thing.
Let's look here before we pass on to
1 Peter 5.
And where is it?
Somewhere there, about verse 8.
Be sober.
You notice how often Paul says that?
He says it to Timothy, is it?
Or Titus, over and over again.
Be sober, be sober.
We live in an age of silliness.
It was interesting when, I think it was
China, is going to adopt some of the
American TV stuff.
And they said about a couple of girls,
I won't mention the names, they might sue
me.
But they said, don't listen to them, they're
just American lunatics.
They're not funny, they're lunatics.
But they're one of the top rated shows.
Everybody laughs.
Dr. Joseph said to me 20 years ago,
Len, in our country, we're laughing our way
to hell.
Everything's silly.
Who can be, it's more stupid.
Some guy comes along and for a few
weeks, he captivates everybody with his idiocy.
And then he's thrilled to death.
He's number one or two on the chart.
And then he does a plunge like that,
gets down to 38 or 39 or something,
and immediately is shattered.
If there's ever a day that called for
soberness, brethren, sisters, surely it's the day in
which we're living now.
Again, a sick church in a dying world,
to me, is a greater tragedy than Khomeini
or the rape of Cambodia or some of
the other devilish things going on.
I believe again, this is the greatest tragedy
in the world today.
A sick church in a dying world.
But Peter says here, be sober, be vigilant,
because your adversary, that's his name here, your
adversary, the devil, is a roaring lion seeking
whom he may devour.
Whom?
Resist.
Well, wasn't that the word we had in
James?
Submit yourself to God.
Resist the devil.
Now, we've got to do this.
He's our adversary.
He's coming after you, he's coming after me,
and you have to resist with what?
What we mentioned yesterday, the adequacy that we
have with the protection of the blood, with
the protection of God's omnipotence, that, that's the
divine side on our side.
Again, we have to put on the, what?
Whole armour of God.
Protection for the head, the helmet.
Did the head ever need more protection than
it needs now?
With all the cults, all the twisted theology,
all the powers of Satan that are around,
the head, the mind, that's what Satan's attacking
in these days.
Again, it's an awesome thing that so many
people are being just, just caught in the
web of, of the, where Hare Krishna, for
instance, or, amazingly enough, in, in, in the
Muni stunt, plus all the old cults, Mormonism
and other isms, Seventh-day Adventism is maybe
the best of the bunch, but you've got
Mormonism and Jehovah's Witnesses and Spiritism and these
other things, and the head needs the, it
needs the defence of the helmet of salvation.
We, we need to know what we believe
and we need to know why we believe
it.
And then you can counter the omnipotence of
the devil and then you have to have
the shield of faith.
This is the, this is the impenetrable thing,
really.
The shield of faith because there are fiery
darts from the wicked.
All right, that's, that's, it's almost a negative
side, but not too negative.
We've got to sit down and count the
cast.
We're up against pressures, I'm sure today, that
the church, even 50 years, didn't know a
thing about.
Nakedness, nudity.
Again, you've got a church over there in
California, Levi's Church, the Satan Church, where I
understand they begin at midnight and the meetings
last from midnight till about six and they
go through all the blasphemies and they have
an imitation of the Lord's Supper.
Uh, they have oaths against God and uh,
they have a 10,000, uh, I think
it's 10,000 members in that church with
a, with a waiting list of some thousands.
And I think that they're not supposed to
give less than $10 a night when they
go to those meetings and, and, and it's
attractive.
In fact, there's a bookstore on the edge
of one university campus and it's, they claim
that they, they sell 10 Satan Bibles to
every one Bible that they sell in, in
any version, whether it's King James or NEB
or any other.
There's an appetite to read the Satanic Bible.
They, they, the awesome thing, again, that God
said, and it's true in all generations but
more in our generation, that the whole world
lies in the lap of the evil one.
You know, I, I do not understand, honest
to goodness, I don't, I do not understand,
I do not understand why so many people
find a prayer meeting unattractive unless it's a
dead church with a dead prayer meeting.
I think that prayer meeting, if I could
only go to one service a week, I'd
go to a prayer meeting.
We had a great prayer meeting last night.
How many were at a prayer meeting last
night?
None of you?
Terrible.
We had a great prayer meeting last night.
You were there, no?
You bad boy, you missed.
All right.
We had a great prayer meeting.
I don't know where all the guys came
from.
In fact, a pastor called me from Nacogdoches.
He was going to drive up 100 miles
to the prayer meeting and three young ladies
were coming up, but they thought the prayer
meeting was tonight.
They couldn't come.
And yet people are coming now because they
know that the fire of God was sure
there last night.
I felt His nearness.
I, I just felt, you know, the, the
sudden influx of divine power there.
And again, God is bringing down.
He's bringing them from Oklahoma.
I don't know why.
At least one, two, three, four people with
the spirit of intercession are coming from Oklahoma
to live down in this area.
A young pastor from Fort Worth has given
up a church.
He's going to, he called me two days
ago.
God told him to come and live in
this area.
What's going on?
We're starting a prayer meeting with Dave Wilkerson
and the, the Agape, at least with Tony
and with, who else?
Keith Green and Barry McGuire and a few
others in the leadership around here in the,
instead of being little islands, we're putting a
bridge over and we had a meeting on
Monday afternoon.
And we're going to have one every week,
as far as I know.
And there's a buildup.
You see, this again, why, why it's essential,
you, that, that every, every, um, revival has
been preceded.
It's just as though you had a, oh
my, if I was an artist, I'd do
a better job.
But here we are.
Yeah, you know, I used to wonder when
you, when you see a wall like that,
holding a billions of tons of water like
you see the Boulder Dam there.
Well, actually, of course, there's a road on
here.
You know, the road goes around like this.
But, you know, actually that road is, that
bank isn't that way only, it's that way.
And in any case, water doesn't push its
weight this way, water pushes its weight that
way.
There's really not much pressure against that wall.
But the fact is, it's holding back millions
and millions of tons of water.
Well, now, two things happen.
In the mercy of God, there's a holding
back of judgment.
But before long, that wall breaks.
And when the wall breaks, well, obviously, you
know what happens here.
The water comes rushing through like this.
Now, the same picture can be used for
prayer.
That every revival has been preceded by, if
you want to call it a banking of
prayer or a reservoir, that's a better word
here, a reservoir of prayer, which for some
reason in God's infinite wisdom is held back.
And then suddenly there's a breaking.
We're going to come back in the next
session because we're nearly through this one.
But you see, there's always an enormous deposit.
I think I mentioned yesterday where David says,
store my tears in thy bottle.
You know, it's going to be an awesome
thing in eternity.
We're all going to be found out how
terribly poor we are spiritually, how we've got
misdirected, we've got fascinated with modern ideas of
evangelism, which are so spurious and empty.
You know, there's one authentic book on revival.
Do you know what it's called?
The Bible.
Somebody once said to Spurgeon, what is the
best commentary, a commentary on the Bible?
Let me think a minute.
He said, I would think, wait a minute,
shall I get a note?
Yes, yes, then what is it?
He said, the Bible.
The Bible is the best exposition of itself.
The Bible gives all the authentic, all the
necessary things for true revival.
And again, in every revival, preceding every revival,
I don't care where it is, there has
been a buildup of prayer.
Revelation says, what are these under the altar?
The prayers of the saints.
My, how effective prayer can be.
And sometimes how irritating prayer can be.
Remember D.L. Moody after he felt the
call of God and he thought he was
getting on and these two little ladies pursued
him and said, we're still praying for you.
All right, thank you.
We're praying for you, Mr. Moody.
Oh, you've told me that before.
We're still praying for you.
And so when he saw the old ladies,
he didn't want to go.
Mr. Moody, we're still praying the Holy Ghost
will come on you.
On me, I'm a good preacher.
And he said how he resented it.
You know, prayer can be pretty irritating.
But he said, when I sought God and
the Holy Ghost came, what happened?
Didn't turn him into a Bible scholar.
Didn't give him any knowledge of Hebrew or
Greek.
He gave him a tremendous knowledge of God.
His mind was still darkened.
There was a sudden illumination.
I remember a very famous person, I won't
tell you his name, came to see us
when I was working with Dave Wilkerson at
Teen Challenge.
And he said, you exaggerate your claims.
You haven't had all these people.
And these people can't live on drugs, although
some of them had a hole through the
nose this way.
You know, they'd snuffed so much junk that
it had eaten the nose away.
And others of them, they were in shocking
states when they came.
Filthy, unclean, physically, every other way.
And he said, you exaggerate your claims.
My office was opposite David's.
He said, ask Brother Ramiel to come.
So I went in and there were these
big shots.
One of them was one of the chief
detectives in the New York police force too.
And he said, Len, he said, these fellows
are challenging us and do you have an
answer for them?
I said, well, talk a little.
And as I talked, God gave me that
word again in Romans 12, 1.
First of all, present your body a living
sacrifice, holy, acceptable unto God which is your
reasonable service.
And be not conformed to this world, conformed
but transformed.
Or as Phillips puts it nicely, don't let
this world press you into its mould.
And I think that needs to be taken
notice of in the church.
If you're going to be an evangelist, get
pressed into the mould of every other evangelist.
If you're going to be a teacher, be
an original teacher, don't get pressed into the
mould.
But be transformed by what?
By the renewing of your mind.
We had one boy came in about six
feet high, sloppy, dirty with a girl and
she looked as though she'd done her hair
with oil out of the rear axle of
an automobile or slushy oil out of an
engine.
She was filthy and stinking and horrid looking
and wizened and her teeth had gone.
And he said, listen, can't you do something
for my wife?
Oh, I said, this is your wife.
Well, no, she's not my wife.
I've lived with her for three years.
But she's on drugs.
I got her on drugs.
I can't get her off.
Do something.
I said, all right, we'll do something.
She has to go in the ladies' section,
you'll go in the men's section.
Why?
Because you can't live together while you're here.
That filthy, horrible looking girl went in that
place for two or three days.
She was restless.
She wanted a drug.
She couldn't get them.
She went in the prayer meeting one day.
Now, I never knew whether they were praying
in tongues or praying in Spanish.
Most of them prayed in Spanish anyhow.
It was a whale of a meeting, I'll
tell you.
It was noisier than when the cowboys get
a touchdown and that's pretty noisy.
They really roared.
Do you know that girl came out with
an angel, with a face that thinks somebody's
done a piece of plastic surgery.