I come this morning with a great burden
for revival among God's people, traveling to various
continents preaching the gospel, but in my own
country, God has given me no liberty to
preach evangelistically.
I believe the great need of America is
for a mighty outpouring of the Holy Spirit
by which men and women will bow before
Jesus Christ and know Him as Lord.
I said yesterday afternoon that I believe the
greatest need in this generation is for a
prayer movement, and I believe that with all
my heart, but I am also convinced that
a prayer movement alone will not bring revival.
There is a particular kind of prayer movement
that is needed.
There is the life that prays, and we
can pray and we can pray, but we
must have lives that are wholly yielded to
God.
I agree with McShane who said, a holy
life is an awesome weapon in the hands
of a mighty God.
The scripture that comes to my heart this
morning is from 2 Corinthians 16 and verse
9 that says, the eyes of the Lord
go to and fro throughout the whole earth
to show Himself mighty on behalf of those
who are completely His or whose hearts are
perfectly set on Him.
This morning, I want to say that there
is a call of God, that God is
going to and fro throughout the whole earth
looking for men and women whose hearts are
completely His.
I was in South Africa this past summer
in August and September, and I was ministering
there, and I was in the city of
Durban, and in that city, it's right near
Zululand, and I had heard and read about
the great revival that was taking place in
Zululand.
And I had read Kurt Koch's book, the
German scholar who had written on the revival
in Zululand, and I wanted to see it,
and so I asked the pastor if we
could go out there, and we went to
a place called Kwasi Zabantu, which in the
Zulu language means the place that people find
help.
And so we went out there, and it
was very interesting.
I met the leader of the revival movement,
he was a German man, and he told
me of how the revival had begun.
He said for about 15 years, he had
been praying for revival.
He had been praying for God to pour
out His Spirit among the Zulu people.
He was a missionary to those people, and
he had been wanting to see God move
among them in a tremendous way.
So for 15 years, he sought the face
of God, and yet there was no results.
And after 15 years of praying, he just
gave up.
He said, I've been encouraged, I've been exhorted
to pray, and I've prayed, and I've tried,
and I've sought the face of God, and
there have been no results.
They would hold tent campaigns, and the Zulu
people would come, and many of them would
come at the altar call, but immediately they
would go back to their animism, they would
go back to their witchcraft, and they would
go back to their false worship.
And he said, I tried, and I tried,
and I prayed, and I prayed, and there
was no effect on the Zulu people or
the ministry which I had.
He said, finally, I just quit.
I gave up.
He said, in 1969, some friends of mine
called me, and they said, would you come
and pray with us for revival?
And he said, I've prayed for 15 years,
and there is no hope.
I've called on God, I've sought the face
of God, and God has not responded.
We are just using the wrong method.
Prayer just won't work.
And so I've given up.
The man encouraged him to come and try
it again, and so he came.
And he began to meet with a small
group of German people in that community, and
they began to call on the name of
the Lord, and they began to seek God
for revival.
And as they sought the Lord, one day
they were praying in the business community in
an office, and the windows were open and
people were walking by, and so they became
a little bit intimidated because they were afraid
that people might hear them, and they didn't
want to sound too fanatical, and so they
decided to start praying quietly.
And as they began to pray quietly, the
Lord spoke to their hearts, and said, the
reason that you're afraid for someone to hear
you crying out unto me is because of
pride.
They began to confess their pride unto the
Lord.
And God, in those moments, moved in on
them.
And the Holy Spirit began to open their
hearts to see themselves as God saw them.
And as they began to get a glimpse
of God and see God in His absolute
purity, in His absolute holiness, they saw themselves
in the light of God, and they were
broken before God.
And as they were broken, God began to
manifest and reveal Himself to the community, as
those who are ministers of the gospel of
Jesus Christ were broken under the sense of
the presence of the holiness of God.
And He told me, He said, the next
day, I was at my home, and a
Zulu woman came to me, and she knocked
at the door of my home, and she
said to me, she said, sir, she said,
can you tell me?
She says, I am bound in chains, and
I am headed for hell.
Can you help me?
He was shocked.
He looked at the lady.
He said, did you hear some preacher preach?
Did someone send you to me?
Why did you come to me?
And the lady said, sir, I don't have
time for such foolish talk.
I am bound in chains, and I'm headed
for hell.
Can you help me?
The man looked at her, and he said,
no, ma'am, I can't.
But I know one who can, and his
name is Jesus.
And he led that lady to Jesus.
He said, the next day, there were 50
Zulu ladies who came to him.
Not only was this lady a witch among
the Zulu people, but she was a trainer
of witches among the Zulu people.
And this lady came to him.
These ladies, 50 ladies came and said, sir,
we want what our teacher has found.
She is a free woman.
Can you tell us how to be free?
And he told those ladies about Jesus, and
as he was discussing this with me, he
said, Sammy, for years, for years, I have
been going to the Zulu people.
I have been trying to take the message
of Christ to them, and it made no
effect on their lives.
He said, but when I got right, and
when God broke me, when I saw God's
holiness, and I saw myself in the light
of the absolute purity and holiness of God,
I was so stripped of self, God brought
the Zulu people to me.
And these 50 ladies gave their hearts to
Jesus.
He said, about a week later, I woke
up one morning, and there were 200 Zulu
men standing in front of my house.
And he said, I went out there.
He says, I was trembling.
I didn't know what was going to happen.
And I asked them, I said, what do
you want?
And those men said, we have new wives.
Our women are different.
They're changed.
They are not the same women that they
were two weeks ago.
And we want to know what you have
shared with them.
Would you share it with us?
We want what they have.
And those 200 Zulu men gave their hearts
to Jesus Christ.
He began a Bible study three times a
day, ministering to the Zulu people.
And as he began to teach the word
of God to the Zulu people three times
a day, they began to come from all
over Zululand.
And since 1974, until this day, there have
been between 1,500 and 5,000 Zulu
people who have come to Kwasi Zabantu every
single day to hear the word of God.
They are building the largest auditorium in the
nation of South Africa.
It's almost complete right now.
They are building an auditorium that will hold
10,000 people.
And the amazing thing about that is that
where I'm talking about is 40 miles from
the nearest city.
I was asked to preach there.
I went there.
And you must understand that among the Zulu
people, or among all of the African people,
they are very emotionally expressive in their worship.
And personally, I kind of like that.
I don't know how you feel about it,
but I kind of like it.
And I enjoy it.
But I want to tell you something.
When I got to Kwasi Zabantu, there was
a sense of stillness and quietness.
And there was a holy hush over the
place.
As a matter of fact, when I got
up to preach, I had to calm down.
Because of the sense of the presence and
the awesomeness and the majesty and the glory
and the holiness of God.
God was there.
Those Zulu people began to sing.
And as they began to sing, the spirit
of God began to well up.
And do you know that people are coming
from all over the world to Zululand?
When I preached that night, there were people
from West Germany.
There were people from Holland.
There were people from Austria.
There were people from France.
There were people from Switzerland who were coming
to that place because they had heard that
they could find help at that place.
I believe what the church today needs to
become in America is like Kwasi Zabantu.
A place where people know that they can
find help because the absolute glory of God
is dwelling upon the church.
The problem today in America, we've heard of
all of the sin that's in the life
of the church.
We've heard of all of the things.
But folks, what we need, what we need
is God's glory.
And when the glory of God comes on
the church, the people, the people will desire,
they will know that they can get help.
And I tell you, with all of the
things that are going on in our world
today, the church today needs to be a
lighthouse, a place where there is a manifestation
of God's glory.
But in order for that to happen, I
believe biblically, I believe historically, I believe in
our contemporary society.
It has been consistent all the way through
that where the glory of God is dwelling
is where there are men and women who
have tasted of the holiness of God.
And we don't hear much preaching today on
the holiness of God.
And the reason is, it's threatening or we
have a misconception or a wrong concept of
what the holiness of God is.
Isaiah chapter 6, the Bible says in the
year of King Uzziah's death, Isaiah said, I
saw the Lord sitting on a throne, high
and exalted and lifted up and His robe
began to fill the temple.
And the angels cried out in verse 3
and said, Holy, holy, holy is the Lord
God Almighty.
The whole earth is full of His glory.
I find it very interesting that three times,
three times that the angels say, Holy, holy,
holy is the Lord God Almighty.
Everything about God is holy.
The Father is holy.
The Son is holy.
The Spirit is holy.
How in the world can we be the
people of God without being a holy people?
How can we go to heaven where everything
is holy if we're not holy?
What we need today is we need a
fresh view of a holy God.
Now I know when I talk about the
holiness of God so many times we think
that holiness is the way we wear our
hair or the way we dress and holiness
is defined as some outward attribute.
And holiness is not an outward attribute.
It is an inward quality whereby our hearts
are set apart.
You see, holy means set apart, sanctified in
another category altogether.
And God is holy because He's not creation.
He's the Creator.
God is holy because there's no impurity in
Him.
He is absolute purity.
He is absolute goodness.
He is perfect in His goodness.
There's no evil in God.
What we need to see is God.
And you see, revival comes as we see
God in His holiness.
Then we will be broken.
The holiest shall be the humblest.
I hear this saying all the time.
I don't like those holier-than-thou brothers.
Well, I want to tell you something.
It's impossible to be holier-than-thou because
true holiness of heart understands this, that holiness
does not compare itself to someone else.
Holiness only looks to the holiness, the one
who is absolute holiness, God Himself.
And as we see God, we're going to
be broken.
You see, the first step towards revival and
this is what happened to Isaiah when he
saw God in His holiness, he cried out,
Woe is me!
For I am a man of unclean lips
and I live in the midst of a
people of unclean lips.
And he saw himself in the light of
a holy God.
Now, humility is the first step towards revival.
And humility, where does it come from?
We quote that verse all the time.
If my people which are called by my
name shall do what?
Humble themselves.
And before we begin to pray, there must
be that spirit of brokenness.
There must be that spirit of humility.
But where does humility come from?
I was asking Titus and another friend of
ours by the name of Radu Gica.
He's a young physicist in Romania.
And we were discussing this one day and
I said, How do you get humility?
The Bible says God's opposed to the proud
but He gives grace to the humble.
How do you get humility?
If it's so important, how do you get
it?
And Radu made this statement.
He said, Sammy, humility is a strange thing.
The moment I think that I have it,
it seems to escape me.
You see, you can't wear your humility.
I don't know if you heard of the
man who received the award for being the
most humble man in his church.
They gave him a button but they had
to take it away because he wore it
all the time.
You see, you can't show your humility to
everyone else.
I mean, you can't go around and look
humble.
Humility is an attitude of the heart and
where does it come from?
And then Titus made a statement.
He said, Humility comes as I get to
know God.
As I see God and as I see
Him in His holiness, in His absolute purity,
I see myself in the light of God.
And you see, the problem today that we
have, listen, the reason for the scandals across
our denomination, across evangelical Christianity in America today,
the reason there are so many scandals, I
believe at the root of it is pride.
Augustine said, Humility is the mother of all
virtue.
And I believe just the reverse is true
also, that pride is the mother of all
evil.
And what happens is, we get caught up
in the ministry doing our thing for God
and we become spiritually arrogant and we lose
the sense of the absolute purity of God
Himself.
What we need, instead of comparing our churches
to one another, we need to look in
our churches at God and see Him.
And when we see Him, we're going to
see ourselves in the light of God and
something's going to happen.
The greatest thing that's ever happened in my
ministry happened when the Lord told me to
get out of evangelism.
When I first got saved, my wife and
I were in evangelism for about nine years,
ministering all over the world.
And God showed me something.
God spoke to my heart.
He said, Son, your ministry has grown bigger
than your character.
And He said, Get out.
And I knew I needed to quit building
a great ministry.
And I'll tell you what, the great need
today in America is we have a lot
of empire builders and few kingdom seekers.
And we need people who are not building
empires today.
We need people who are seeking the kingdom
of God.
And God said, Son, you get about seeking
My kingdom.
And let me tell you where His kingdom
is.
His kingdom's built in your heart.
And it's His will that you be conformed
to the image of Jesus.
And God's more interested in conforming you into
the image of Jesus than He is in
building some empire for you and building some
great big ministry.
And God just dealt with me.
He dealt with me.
Listen, I began to read some of the
testimonies of the men of old.
And as I read the life and diary
of David Brainerd, I was amazed.
I couldn't believe it.
Why, we would say that he had a
bad self-image today.
And man, he'd fall on his face and
say, Oh, I'm so pitiful.
I'm so pitiful.
And I'd say, Why, David, you shouldn't be
talking like that.
You know, in your diary, I mean, don't
you understand who you are in Christ and
all of this good positive thinking and positive
speaking we have.
But I want to tell you something.
Brainerd saw himself in the light of a
holy God.
And the problem today is we have men
and women who have not seen God.
He's holy.
And oh, as we see Him in His
holiness, and God began to show me, Oh,
I said, God, I don't know anything.
I don't understand what Brainerd's talking about.
As I read Isaiah 6, I said, I
don't understand, Father.
I really don't understand what Isaiah's talking about.
I said, God, put me somewhere where nobody
knows me, where nobody's heard of me, where
I'm a nobody.
And let me meet with you.
I received a call to be the pastor
of the Han Baptist Church in Han, West
Germany.
An English language church.
The word Han is a short for the
German word Hänchen, which means chicken.
I became the pastor of the Chicken Baptist
Church in Chicken, West Germany.
Out in the boondocks.
But I want to tell you what.
My wife and I have talked, and I'm
so thankful that God made me the pastor
of the Chicken Baptist Church.
I got out there, and I met with
God at the Chicken Baptist Church in Chicken,
Germany.
Our church began to grow.
We began to break the records in evangelism
and baptisms.
Oh, the Lord was moving in our church.
We had to go to multiple services.
We had to move into another auditorium, another
building.
The Lord was working mightily.
But in the midst of that time, something
else happened.
You know, I asked a pastor.
I said, Pastor, I've never pastored before.
I asked an older pastor.
I said, What do I do?
I've been in evangelism all this time.
And oh, how I thank God for pastors.
I mean, if nothing else, God showed me
the needs and the hurts of the pastor
during that time.
And I said, Oh, thank you, Father.
I mean, the first month, I resigned three
times.
I mean, it was so good traveling from
one place to another.
And you didn't have to put up with
the problems of the people and all this
kind of stuff.
And then, boy, I tell you what, the
first Sunday morning I got there, the church
almost split right after my sermon.
And I said, Oh, God, what have I
gotten into?
And so I began to preach through Genesis.
The pastor told me, he said, Just start
preaching the Bible.
Stay with the Bible.
Stick with the Bible.
And preach expository through the Bible.
So for three years, I preached through the
book of Genesis.
And oh, how I loved Genesis.
And man, I fell in love with the
Word of God.
We had people get saved when I'd preach
on the baguettes.
Oh, God just moved.
And God worked.
Oh, the Word of God, all of it's
true.
All of it's true and all of it's
spirit and all of it's life.
But I want to tell you something.
I got to that place where I was
preaching on Abraham, offering Isaac up as a
sacrifice.
I was scheduled to preach on Sunday morning
and on Friday evening before that Sunday morning,
we had all gone to bed.
And I heard something in my son's room.
I went running in there.
His eyes had rolled back into his head.
His arms and his little legs were just
convulsing.
I yelled for my wife.
She came in there.
We prayed for him.
We rushed him to the hospital.
There was a medical doctor that I was
discipling at the hospital.
He was paralyzed in one side of his
body.
For the next year and a half, I
have to say to you that we went
through a literal hell.
The doctors gave him medication and he would
react to that medication.
The people of our church prayed for him.
He would wake up in the middle of
the night screaming with these tremendous headaches.
And for a year and a half, we
suffered.
On one hand, we saw the glory of
God moving in our church.
But on the other hand, oh, our son
was hurting.
Our son was hurting.
And I didn't understand it.
And one day, at the dinner table, my
wife said to me, she said, Sammy, she
said, today, she began to weep, and she
said, today, I was having my time alone
with God.
And as I was studying the Scripture, I
was studying the attribute of His holiness.
And as I was studying His holiness, she
began to cry, and she said, God spoke
to my heart and I need to talk
to you.
And so after dinner that evening, we sat
down in the living room and we discussed
it and she said, Sammy, I was studying
the holiness of God and God showed me
how unholy I am.
And she said, I've been seeking God for
days.
Our son's healing and there's been no healing
and God showed me how just impure I
am in my life.
She said, you know, there have been some
attitudes I've held towards you for little things
you've said and little things you've done.
And she said, I need to ask you
to forgive me.
Something happened when she did that.
You see, we had a good marriage.
Don't misunderstand me.
Our home life was good.
We had compared to other people.
I mean, we had a good marriage compared
to everyone else.
But God opened my eyes to see His
holiness in those moments.
And it so devastated me.
I have to be honest with you.
I didn't think I'd be able to preach
again.
I went to the chairman of our deacons
and said, I don't know, you may need
for me to resign.
I am so unholy.
I need some time off.
I need to get with my wife and
we need to meet with God.
And we left and we took a few
days off and we went and rented a
hotel in Luxembourg.
And in Luxembourg, that first night, I didn't
sleep a wink.
We sat up and we talked and we
prayed and we talked and we prayed.
And God opened my heart to see myself
in the light of His holiness.
And when I saw myself in the light
of His holiness, I was so devastated.
I didn't think I'd ever be able to
preach again.
And God broke me.
You see, I've been comparing myself to the
other churches.
We're the fastest growing Baptist church in Western
Europe.
And I want to tell you something.
So what?
If in the end, you end in divorce
with your wife, you can lose your ministry,
but if you have your character and you
have your family, you can rebuild it.
But if you lose your character and you
lose your family, you've lost your ministry.
Because our ministry is an outgrowth of who
we are on the inside.
And who we are comes from the knowledge
of God and His holiness and His absolute
purity.
And the great need of this generation is
for men and women who have beheld Him.
And you see, when we see Him, we're
going to be changed.
And folks, there is a power of evil
over our society.
There is a power of evil over our
churches.
There is a power of evil that has
pervaded this generation.
And I am ashamed to say it, but
my generation adopted the philosophy of we will
reject the traditional values of our forefathers.
And it is my generation that brought in
the new morality and I'm ashamed of it.
But folks, I want to tell you something.
There is only one thing that will dispel
the power of evil in the land and
that is the knowledge of a holy God
among His people.
And as we get to know Him and
His holiness, those forces will be broken.
Revelation 12, 11.
Brother Rowling quoted verse 9 this morning, but
verse 11 says this, And they overcame Him.
Talking about the battle, that final battle with
Satan.
It says, And they overcame Him by the
blood of the Lamb and the word of
their testimony, and that they loved not their
lives even unto death.
I want to tell you what broke the
power of the forces of the evil dictator
Nicolae Ceausescu in Romania.
It was not the might of the arms
and the weapons of the people for they
had no arms and they had no weapons.
Do you know what broke the power of
the evil forces in Romania?
Small children stood in front of tanks and
shed their blood.
And the blood of the martyrs reached all
the way to heaven.
I was in a country, I cannot name
the country because I promised the man I
would not mention it.
But I was in a country and I
met a dear old saint of God who
was a powerful man of prayer.
He had prayed his four sons into the
university.
When he went to prison, they would not
allow his sons to go to the university
and he prayed them in.
I said, how did you do that?
He said, I prayed for them every day
in that prison cell.
And in that prison cell, my first son,
my oldest son was like the valedictorian of
his class and consequently they would not allow
him to go to the university.
But they put him in the factory to
work because I was in prison.
But he said, I prayed for him and
I prayed for him.
And he said, one day, the head of
the communist party in that factory came to
him and said, you would be of more
benefit to our nation if you studied in
the university and so I'm going to recommend
that you go to the university.
He not only studied in the university, but
he studied in one of the foremost universities
in the western world.
Today, he is one of the leading scientists
in that nation.
He interpreted for me when I was in
that country.
And this old man prayed every one of
those boys out of high school into the
university while he was in that prison.
And I'll never forget what that old man
told me.
He said, young man, he said, a lot
of people come to my country and they
want to make a big fire for God.
He said, I don't want to make a
big fire for God.
I want to be consumed by God's fire
until I am ashes.
And when I am ashes, then I will
see the glory of God.
He said, and we were speaking in German,
he said, Verstehen Sie mich?
Do you understand me?
And I thought he meant, do you understand
my German?
And I said, ja, ja, I understand you.
And he said, no, do you really understand
what I'm saying?
When I am so much nothing that God
is everything, then I will see His glory.
When I am so much nothing that God
is everything, then the glory of God will
be released.
And that's the need of the hour.
I close by sharing with you one story.
I was in Belfast, Northern Ireland, preaching.
And while I was preaching there, I heard,
I had written about a man by the
name of W.P. Nicholson, a great evangelist.
In his evangelistic meetings, he preached and there
was so much restitution made in the revivals
there that there was not room in the
church for all the stolen goods that had
been turned in.
And so, they had to bring them down
to the shipyards and put them in the
shipyards.
And there, W.P. Nicholson had preached so
mightily that the churches would not hold the
places.
One church, they pushed in the walls people
trying to get in in the early 1900s.
So I told the pastor, I said, pastor,
could you bring me to the graveyard, to
the cemetery?
I want to see Nicholson's tomb.
And we went there and on his tomb
outside of Belfast was just this verse.
John 3.30 I must decrease that He
might increase.
And that's the key to being mighty in
spirit and the glory of God.
So much nothing that He is everything.