Our text tonight is in the 16th chapter
of the book of Judges.
Judges, the 16th chapter, reading verse 6.
And Delilah said to Samson, Tell me, I
pray thee, wherein thy great strength lieth, and
wherewith thou mightest be bound to afflict thee.
One of the old European versions of the
scripture has an extra word in this text,
and the extra word is secret.
So then the text reads, Tell me, I
pray thee, wherein thy great strength lieth, and
wherewith thou mightest be bound to afflict thee.
One to accept that word secret.
You say it's not there by inspiration, and
that's true, but it's there by influence anyhow.
This is a question of a woman of
the world.
It will be a great day, and God
hasten it, when the world again begins to
ask the church, What is the secret of
thy great strength?
And the world has a suspicion that the
church has no strength.
About 400 years ago in England, we had
a breed of men, a very unusual breed,
most Englishmen out, but they were a very
unusual breed.
By any standard they were giants, morally, spiritually,
intellectually.
And history has classified them as a Puritan.
Quite a number of them, but I think
the tallest of them, theologically, spiritually, was John
Owen.
John Owen left us a massive volume on
the Holy Spirit.
That is my interest right now.
My interest is this, that he criticized men
this way.
He said the sin of men in the
Old Testament was against the Father.
The sin of men in the New Testament,
he said, was against the Son.
And the sin of men in my day,
he said, 400 years ago, is against the
Holy Spirit.
I think if he came back he wouldn't
need to modify that criticism in any way.
I've said, I shall say tonight, say of
the night, that I believe that this is
the most perilous hour in the history of
America.
In the last two or three years I
have been at the National Convention of the
Southern Baptists, at the Florida State Convention, at
the Texas State Convention, and at each of
them I've said, I would like to give
all the preachers a sheet of paper and
a pencil, and ask them to write on
that piece of paper what or who they
think is the greatest threat to America today.
And I've said, and still say, that I
don't think 10% of them could give
me the right answer.
They might start off with the devil and
finish with the Democrats, and in between have
drink and dope and I don't know what
else.
Divorce?
But I believe the greatest threat to America
tonight is God.
If you haven't read any books by Francis
Schaeffer, who is a full-blooded American in
one sense, I think one of the great
spiritual intellectuals of our time, he's running the
Liabri Fellowship there in Switzerland.
It's a rescue station for intellectuals.
Some kids from the richest homes in America,
kids that have had the very best of
everything.
They've done his own planes and yachts.
They lived in millionaires' homes.
They've had the finest of education, but they
hit the gutter.
They got caught in the vortex of modern
life.
And they've made their own pilgrimage there to
the Liabri Fellowship in Switzerland, with a language
something like this, look, for our last hope.
If you don't have the answer, we can't
find the answer in the churches in America.
But I'm interested in this observation he makes
in his book called Death in the City,
which is only about a dollar and a
quarter, and if you want something to upset
you, read it.
He says, remember this, that God has given
up on the cities of America.
They rejected him and God has rejected them,
on the basis of the first three chapters
in Romans.
But then he says this more disturbing thing.
He says, remember that in China 800 years
ago, eight centuries ago, every leading town and
city in China 800 years ago, had a
thriving evangelical church.
Where is that church tonight?
God said that he was married to Israel.
God said he divorced Israel.
God says ultimately he'll remarry Israel.
In between, God hasn't bothered with Israel for
2,000 years.
She's been the football that every nation has
kicked around.
Five times in history they have been almost
annihilated.
Bothered with Israel, the people he married for
2,000 years.
What makes you think he didn't walk out
on America or England?
You don't legalize abortion.
You don't take living babies out of living
mothers, and where do the babies go?
Mind your own business.
Maybe your dog ate them this week, so
dog me.
And I'm not facetious.
Nevada has legalized prostitution.
England has legalized homosexuality.
We have nine million alcoholics.
We have roughly 30 million people on some
kind of drugs.
We have an all-time high in venereal
disease amongst kids under 15 years of age
this past year in America.
And England is very much the same.
You see, you only shake your finger at
God and break his laws so long, and
God walks out on nations.
Just like he does on men, he says,
my spirit shall not always strive with man.
And one of the terrible things about preaching
is that while some people come forward and
say they'll take Christ for eternal life, there
are others who say no, not openly, secretly.
In that very moment they say they're dead
as long as God lives.
Because there comes a time when God knocks
at the door of the heart for the
very last time, and then he goes.
This story of Samson to me is a
story of a superman.
To me, Samson is a type of a
spirit-anointed man.
He's a type of a spirit-anointed church.
The two most elusive things in the world
tonight, what are they?
While we've been in the Bahamas the last
three years, there was a, there was a
scare.
The newspaper articles, they thought they'd rediscovered the
lost island of Atlantis, but discovered they hadn't.
And right now for some reason I don't
know.
There are two expeditions on the Himalayan ranges
trying to find the abominable snowman.
If they were trying to find the abominable
showman, I could give them the names of
six evangelists.
But they're trying to find the abominable snowman.
Are these the most elusive things in the
world?
The abominable snowman and the elusive lost island?
No, no, no, no, no.
The two most elusive things on God's earth
tonight are, number one, personal anointing by the
Holy Spirit, and number two, Holy Ghost revival.
In every other area you can energize, organize,
get money, and you just sweat in your
labor when it comes to it.
God won't anoint you because you're a millionaire,
and he won't refuse you anointing the supper.
God won't send blessing because you have this
gorgeous church, and I think it's very beautiful.
He won't bypass it either because you have
it.
You see, God is sovereign, and there are
certain things that men must do if God
is going to come and bless.
I suppose it's fortunate for mankind that only
once in maybe a thousand million men do
you get a man who wants to dominate
the whole world.
We've had a few of them in history.
Remember they told you at school perhaps that
Alexander the Great at 27 years of age
conquered the world, and sat down and wept
because there were no more worlds that he
knew of to conquer, and he was only
27 years of age.
And then in my day almost conquered the
world.
His name was Hitler.
Proud of him.
A small, copulant Corsican by the name of
Napoleon, one of the greatest military strategists in
history.
Almost conquered the world.
And one day he gathered up his warlords.
On the wall of his office he had
a great map of the world, and he
snapped these men to attention, and he plunged
his index finger down the ridge of the
great country.
And then he said to his generals, gentlemen,
there lies a sleeping giant.
Let it sleep.
He said this before the battle of Waterloo,
which happens to be on June the 18th,
which is tomorrow, and it's my birthday.
You know where I'm staying.
But on the day of the battle of
Waterloo, with his ambition to the world, he
ran his finger around that country.
There is the sleeping giant.
Let it sleep.
He said if that country ever wakes up
and discovers its mineral wealth and harnesses that
mineral wealth for its manpower, let the rest
of the world look out.
That giant will shake the world.
If you're interested, the country that he outlined
was China.
America's biggest headache tonight.
Russia's biggest headache.
Doesn't the Book of the Revelations say somewhere
around about the ninth chapter that one day
200 million men will come marching from the
east?
From where?
Well, they don't have 200 million in Japan.
The only country could be China.
Do you remember you being taxed up to
your ears to make atom bombs and hydrogen
bombs?
Wasn't it Mr., uh, who was the president?
Wasn't it, uh, that Baptist president, Truman?
No wonder he had so many mistakes.
But anyhow, wasn't it Truman that said after
that bomb was dropped on Hiroshima or Hiroshima
at 16 minutes to 8 on the 6th
of August 1945, if there's another war, if
the war is threatened, we'll drop the bomb
the first week and get it over.
About 50,000 bodies, the nicest American bodies
in Vietnam that tell you that was a
lie.
You've been taxed your ears to make atom
bombs.
We don't use one of them.
Why?
Because when America dropped that bomb, as I
say, at 16 minutes to 8 on the
6th of August 1945, she had the big
stick and she was telling the world what
to do.
But remember tonight, China, that has no conscience,
has atom bombs.
You don't need aircraft.
All you have to do is to make
an intercontinental ballistic missile and put a warhead
in it and shoot the thing and boy,
they can blast us to smithereens.
Interesting, isn't it?
Mr. Breesniff, Leonardo Breesniff, he's going to have
a political reception tomorrow with pomp and circumstance
and soldiers and drums and bugles.
And he hates us like the devil.
And Nixon doesn't hate him much less anyhow.
But we play hypocritical games.
Did you nearly roll out of bed the
other night?
Was it Tuesday or Wednesday?
They shot the thing off across the water
there, one of those rockets.
At 3.30 in the morning it rocked
your house from the windows.
And it was a new gadget that's going
around in space right now and it's specially
put there to listen in for anything that
Russia sends over and relay and release a
message within seconds.
Once Russia starts firing these missiles, which they
know we have and we know they have,
for the last 12 years some men under
the mountains there in Colorado have marched down
under an area that's thicker than this place
with concrete and they simulate pulling a switch.
They never pull the right one because it
has a bit of wire on it so
they won't, but if they pull the right
one, rockets would shoot out from all over
America to blast everything in the sky.
And the article I have on that says
the men who are waiting for Armageddon.
China's our biggest headache.
Napoleon said over a century ago, century and
a half, there lies a sleeping giant, let
it sleep.
If China ever decides to yawn and stretch
and go on the march, let the world
look out.
All right, you don't like politics, let's change
it.
Instead of seeing a map of the world,
see a map of the ages.
Instead of seeing Napoleon see the devil.
And he brings all the demons out of
hell and he's Malaya.
There, see that?
He runs his finger around the ragged edge
of something.
What is it?
The church of Jesus Christ.
And he says there is the church of
Jesus Christ asleep.
Let it sleep!
Because if the church of Jesus Christ ever
rediscovers the power of the Holy Ghost and
harnesses what it already has to the power
of the Spirit, let the earth look out
and let hell look out.
For the church anointed in the power of
the Holy Ghost is the greatest power after
the power of the Triune God.
Tell me where in the secret of thy
great strength lies.
I first heard about America when I was
a little boy in a school in England.
I had a teacher I didn't like.
I never had one I did like, as
a matter of fact.
But this one I particularly didn't like.
She didn't like me either.
I don't know why.
I've always been attractive.
But anyhow, she didn't like me.
And she thought I didn't know much and
I knew she didn't.
And she told us a story.
The best known story, I don't care whether
you go to Russia or Africa or wherever
you go around the world, there's one story
that's known above all of the stories in
America, about America.
You know what it is?
The story of I don't know whether he's
a Democrat or Republican, but he's very famous.
And she told us about this man who
went up a hill and he fell asleep
and when he came down the hill he
got involved in argument with a group of
people.
All I know she said he slept for
20 or 50 years, she wasn't sure.
And that's all I learned about the man.
And that's exactly what the story is, which
proved her ignorance anyhow.
You see the story is this, that when
he went up the hill there was a
sign hanging outside of the tavern.
On it was painted the head of the
Earl of England.
England had a lot of money in America
at that time.
When he came down the hill they had
painted out the face of George III and
they had painted the face of another famous
Englishman.
Do you get his name?
George Washington.
Who didn't know he was English?
How ignorant can you get?
But anyhow, they had erased the face of
George III, they painted their face of George
Washington.
What's the secret of the story?
Is the story secret that he went to
sleep for 20 years?
No!
The secret is this, he slept through a
revolution.
And I tell you with all the power
of my being tonight, I believe that's what
the Church of Jesus is doing in this
very moment.
Sleeping through the greatest moral, spiritual, social, economic
revolution in history.
And they can't hold together five more years,
nor can mankind under the present systems that
we have.
A week tonight I'm going to preach, God
willing, on the second coming, the King is
coming.
Tomorrow night I want to preach on revival
praying.
Tuesday night I believe on vision.
Wednesday night, if the Lord gives me permission,
on the judgment seat of Christ.
Thursday night maybe on the cross.
Friday on problems in the Christian life.
Saturday night, there'll be no preachers unless these
boys do it.
I'm not preaching twice a day, every day.
So six days shut down labor, and they've
already put me on for Saturday morning.
That could cost you a thousand dollars, but
that's all right.
And in case you are giving me anything
this week, let me tell you this, you'll
give me all that you can, because I
won't take a penny of it.
I got three sons on the mission field,
I've got one that also comes in this
church.
Even if you give me $10,000, I
give you a good penny.
I won't take any expenses on it, for
eating or traveling or anything.
It's all on the mission, so you and
I won't get a dime.
All right.
The Lord asked the question, what is the
secret of thy great strength?
Abnormal days demand abnormal men, with abnormal methods
and abnormal messages.
And Samson is one of the most abnormal
men in the Bible.
You know, we got this man kind of
mixed up in our thinking.
Wherever you find a picture of Samson, you'll
find him a kind of colossus.
You know, he's got muscles like watermelons, and
muscles on his chest like a range of
mountains, and that's exactly what he wasn't.
Of course, he's read mythology, maybe a half.
Then about us carrying the world on his
back, Hercules kicking a range of mountains over.
Or if you're not so well educated, Jack
and the Beanstalk, let me come down to
your level.
But every man is different.
He's a Hercules, he's a colossus.
Now, I don't think women are stupid, always.
Can you imagine a woman looking up to
a man 19 feet?
You see, here's the picture.
Here is the average man in Israel, and
here is Saul, head and shoulders above the
average man.
And here is Goliath, head and shoulders above
the man who's taller than the rest of
them.
And here is a colossal Samson up there.
Now, you can't imagine a woman going to
a man and saying, I say, buddy, what's
the secret of your great strength?
It's pretty obvious that you'd think a man.
I'm not going to suggest he was no
bigger than the staff here, that wouldn't be
right.
But by the same token, I don't think
he was six feet six or six foot
ten.
He was a normal man doing abnormal things,
and everybody asked the question.
You lock him up in a city, cut
his half the city away with him.
He leads a line and destroys it.
Two thousand men come from West Point.
He picks up the jawbone of an ass
and slays them.
When I said in one meeting, the Lord
doesn't use the jawbone of an ass anymore,
one of those nasty little ladies on the
front seat said, he does a dark church
every Sunday.
But the jawbone of an ass?
Why are you so sure he wasn't a
giant?
I always thought he, I have a Bible
and it has a picture of Samson.
He's a huge man.
I'll tell you why, because the sign is
written outside of your church there, not by
might, nor by power, but by my spirit
self, the Lord of hosts.
Again, the word of God said, the lame
take the prey, and to those who have
no might increase the strength.
Again, the word of God says he takes
the things of the lost to bring to
naught the things that are that no flesh
should glory in this present.
He was a normal man doing abnormal things.
He's an embarrassment to his enemies.
He's a very epitome, he's a very answer
to that text that says, that when you're
walking in the spirit, no weapon that is
formed against thee shall prosper.
Oh, but in all things we are more
than conquerors through him.
You see, over and over and over again,
it says in his life, the most precious
thing you can say of any man this
side of his, and I would rather have
this than you give me a check for
ten billion dollars tonight.
But it says, it's whatever this man does
what nobody else could do.
It says in him, the spirit of the
Lord rested mightily upon him.
And you can't get that by college or
seminary.
It's still God's prerogative to give it to
those who are hungering and thirsting after righteousness,
and so desperate that they'll do what this
man did, end of the story and find
out.
The woman says, what is the secret of
thy great strength?
What do you have that nobody else has?
What's the mystery?
When you have this energy, this supernatural power.
You see, the church began by being supernatural,
she's ending by being superficial.
She began in the upper room with a
bunch of men agonizing, and she's ending in
the subtle room with a bunch of women
organizing.
The world doesn't ask us this question anymore,
does it?
What is the secret of thy great strength?
He gives the answer, he says, if you
fasten me, verse seven, if you fasten me
with seven green whips that were never dried,
then I shall be like another man.
No, I wish he didn't say that, he
didn't.
What did he say?
He said, if you fasten me with some
of those vines that climb around the trees,
if they're green and they're not brittle, scrap
me up with them.
And if you fasten me with seven green
whips, I shall be a rebel.
No, no, no, he doesn't say that.
He says, then I shall be weak like
other men.
You know, the greatest curse of modern Christianity
is that there are too many of us
that are too much alike.
We second to normality.
All who reach for the stars in business,
a fellow says, I'm not going to sit
behind this desk all the time, I'm going
to own the business.
A fellow goes to university and says, I
want to graduate with honors.
The absolute will give all his time.
Look at that fellow Mark Spitz.
Oh yes, he may be earning five million,
he has his own yacht and everything now,
but I notice he says for the last
four years particularly, eight years in all, I
spent no less than eight hours in the
water every day.
I was determined.
I'd do what no other man did.
And I tell you this for nothing, an
experience of God that costs nothing, is worth
nothing, it does nothing.
If you're going to get this anointing by
the Holy Ghost, then keep it.
You'll have to wade through blood and fire
to get it.
You'll have to face hell to keep it
after you've got that anointing.
For the devil doesn't fear organizing, he fears
agonizing.
He doesn't mind our brilliance, our genius, our
intellectual power.
He fears that somehow we link our impotence
to omnipotence.
And that won't cost you a penny except
a broken heart.
It may cost some of you boys a
few silly hours with your girlfriends.
The other night God moved on that church
in Merritt Island and many young people came
for, maybe sixty people came out one night.
There was a moonlight madness sale, and the
lady with us at the time, they wanted
to get some bargains, we went along.
This young lady came up to me breathless
in the mall there, and she said, by
the way you know the devil's doing all
he can to keep me from praying.
I met a lady the next day, and
she said, you know, just met one of
our young kids, a girl sixteen, that trusted
God to fill her with the Spirit last
night, and she went home and prayed the
whole night through.
At sixteen years of age.
Does that sound foreign to you?
Sixteen never did that.
And the boy said, indeed, he said, Reagan
said, this is the first time in my
life I've invited the Holy Ghost to take
full control of my life.
I met another teenager joyously and he said,
my, this is transforming, God has come into
my life as never before.
I went to get a hair trim the
other day, doctor, I got my lady.
As we came out, my wife and I
met a fine looking man, he said, Brother
Reagan, man, he said, I could shout and
leap down this mall, I've been looking for
answers, and I found the answer to spiritual
power and anointing this week.
I'm a new man, I'm energized by the
Spirit of God.
Fasten me with seven green ropes.
They fasten him, he gets out.
That's not the secret.
No, he says, fasten me with seven new
ropes.
And they fasten him and he gets out,
because he said, if you fasten me with
ropes, I'll be weak like those other guys
around here.
But they fasten him, he gets out.
Now, he did have to wear long hair.
He was a Nazirite.
A Nazirite had three things incumbent upon him.
He could not drink wine, a sign of
worldly pleasure.
He could not touch anything dead, a sign
of people who are dead in trespasses and
in sin.
He could not have his hair cut.
Now, just having long hair isn't the secret
of power.
If it was, many of our churches would
explode.
No, no, it's not a case of long
hair.
What's the secret?
Somebody asked me that in the office.
I'll tell you what the secret is of
the Christian life for tonight, next night, every
night of your life.
Trust and obey, there's no other way.
I don't care if you go to theological
seminary, or I don't care how much learning
you have.
The whole secret is this.
Trust and obey, there's no other way.
What celebrity says to you, do it.
When I was youth leader in the church
I went to, we had a tremendous time.
We had many people saved, we had fantastic
meetings.
And I remember asking God to take full
control of my life, but it meant partying
company with girlfriends and boys.
Or you've read about Sherwood Forest and the
fellow that used to go around there on
and on.
Well, I didn't go robbing anybody.
I went into Sherwood Forest to pray that
night.
Took my mother's little pedigree dog, I walked
over the golf links, I got down under
the wildbracken, the wild fern.
I got up in the particularly Sundays, while
everybody else slept.
I went across into the forest, got under
the bushes and prayed.
And if I've had any secret in my
life, the only thing I know is that
I'd given God time, all the time I
could, to talk to me as well as
me to talk to him.
Fastening with ropes?
No.
Fastening with weeds?
No.
Unlock my hair and fasten it to a
beam, and then when you get my hair
fastened there, I'll be powerless.
And they did that, and he shook his
head and nearly pulled a hamster.
And then she said, now that's not the
secret, and he said, no.
And you know what she did?
It's an old trick women have if they
can't get their own way.
She pulled these stops out.
You know, she said, you don't love me.
And of course he said, oh yes I
do.
Oh yes, I'll tell you what my secret
is.
My secret is I'm a Nazirite.
I've kept every vow that God has asked
me.
I haven't touched wine, I haven't touched anything
dead, I haven't had my hair cut.
And with the instinct that women have, she
knew right there she'd got his secret.
Now she had said repeatedly to him, the
Philistines will be upon me.
You know that you can cut this man's
life down into three simple things?
First, what did they do?
They dined with him.
Secondly, what?
They'd blabbersized.
Thirdly, they'd been in the basements and making
trade round and round and round and round
and round, finding time for the Philistines.
But wait a minute, there's something else.
If Samson is a type of a spirit
-filled man, and I'm persuaded he is, if
Samson's a type of a spirit-anointed church,
and I'm sure he is, then we're in
the chapter it says that he was going
to Timnath.
Now he could go that way to Timnath,
or that way.
Didn't make any difference, the road was just
as short, because he was going to see
his girlfriend.
The road's never long when you're going to
see her.
But he must not go that way.
Why not?
Because there's a lion in the way.
Now if Samson is a type of a
spirit-anointed person, the lion must be a
type of the devil, who goeth about as
a roaring lion, seeking whom he may devour.
And when Samson went down the road, the
lion thought, boy my, I'm going to have
a good lunch today.
Look at this fellow coming.
I'm just going to tear him up.
And Samson thought the same thing.
He's going to tear the lion up.
He had his mother and father with him,
and he said, mommy, daddy, would you sit
round the corner, I've just got a little
bit of business to do.
And when they went round the corner, he
took hold of the lion as though it
were a kid of the goats, and he
ripped it apart, and he threw it down.
Now that's wonderful, but the next statement in
the verse is more wonderful.
It says that after he destroyed the lion,
he said nothing about it.
I'm sure a woman couldn't have done it
like that, but anyhow.
Samson destroyed the lion, and he said nothing
about it.
Oh, if we'd destroyed the lion, we'd have
photographed it.
We'd have stretched it out.
It was the longest, strongest, heaviest, fiercest, terriblest
lion in the whole world.
And I killed it all by myself.
He slew a lion.
He pushed that devil back, and he said
nothing about it.
I'm looking for a revival, and I'm sure
it's coming.
A holy ghost by the way that's going
to engulf the whole world, and they're going
to have such a revival that no man
will steal the glory.
He slew the lion.
Let me ask you a simple question.
Not so simple.
All right.
Do you push the devil around, or does
he push you around?
When I was in Australia, a lady said
to me after one service, Mr. Ravenhill, I've
had a terrible day today.
I said, you look, I've never seen a
more miserable face.
Mr. Ravenhill, do you know what happened today?
I said, no, I couldn't guess.
When I got out of bed this morning,
the devil was standing on the rug on
the side of my bed, and he's never
left me all day.
I said, lady, how conceited can you get?
After all, if the devil's been in your
home all day, he hasn't been anywhere else
in the world.
Satan can't be in two places at the
same time.
God can, Satan can't.
Demons might be.
He might sublet certain areas, but Satan can't.
I looked her straight in the eye, and
I said, lady, you say Satan's been with
you all day, I seriously doubt he even
knows you're living.
Does he know you're living?
I got saved when I was 14 years
of age.
I never doubted it.
I've never been ashamed of it.
Talked round the world about it.
And according to this book, when I was
born again, my name was written in the
book of life.
I'd like to get it written somewhere else.
Not in Westminster Abbey.
I've never been a competitive preacher.
I don't think, care whether you think I'm
the worst you've ever heard or the best.
It won't move me either way.
I say what God wants me to say.
But I'd like to get my name written
somewhere.
Do you remember in the days of the
Apostle Paul, he cast demons out of some
people?
Jesus did that.
Everything that Jesus did, Paul did.
And one day he cast demons out of
a person.
Do you remember the time when Jesus cast
demons out of a man that had a
legion of them in him?
And if you take demons out of a
person, you must put them somewhere.
They can't live disembodied, they can't float in
the air.
They have to occupy something or somebody.
And you remember that Jesus took a legion
of demons out of a man.
And if you think pigs aren't smarter than
men, tell me this.
When he put the demons in him, they
committed suicide in about 40 seconds.
The man had had the devil in him
for years and he wasn't smart enough to
commit suicide or bad enough.
But the pigs would leave by the devil.
And hell is so bad, the demons said,
don't send us back from whence we came.
Now, one man one day said, I'm not
getting on, I'd like to be famous, I'd
like to do something.
And somebody said, you found a man with
a demon in him, cast the demon out.
This is what you do, you say in
the name of Jesus Christ, if Nazareth come
out of him, the demon will come out.
The man tried it and it worked.
The demon came out of the man.
But he never sent the demon anywhere.
So the demon turned around and he beat
up the preacher.
Kicked him, bruised him, and finally he came
back and he said, listen preacher, Jesus I
know, and Paul I know.
And who are you?
I never heard of you.
I think the most embarrassing thing of all
the embarrassments, to quote Dr. Tozer again, I
remember him saying to me one day, Len,
not many of us are going to stand
erect at the judgment seat of Christ with
all our talk and all our boasting.
Not many of us will lift our unblushing
heads.
Most of us will bow our heads in
the presence of a holy God.
I think the most terrible moment of trembling,
when we stand there alone without your pastor,
without your wife, without your husband, you stand
there as an individual.
Remember you've had as big a Bible as
I have or anybody else that ever lived,
and you should give an account to God
for this word that he gave you.
The most embarrassing thing will be when God
calls Satan to bear witness.
I wonder, I wonder what do you say?
I wonder if you say, Jesus I know,
and Paul I know, and Rachel I know,
or Benno, will you say he knows you?
Did you ever draw a line and take
your rights in Jesus Christ and draw a
line by the precious blood and then put
the promises of God against it and the
power of the Spirit and say, yes Satan
you shall not pass that line.
When I was a boy in a little
church I attended in England they used to
talk a great deal about Pastor Fetler of
Latvia.
Latvia got absorbed in the United States of
Soviet Russia.
They used to talk to some degree about
a German, Pastor Blumhart.
Blumhart was reading the word of God one
day, read that terrible statement.
You see we're always asking God to do
something, God says do it.
And you say, Lord tie up the powers
of Satan, and Jesus says listen I give
you power over all the power of the
enemy.
And they sent to Blumhart and said there's
a girl down the road there, she's demon
possessed.
She sits up in bed, she'll tear her
clothes, pull her hair, she uses the most
obscene language, she vomits some green stuff out
of her mouth, and she's the most terrible
person we've ever met.
And he went along and stood over that
girl and demanded her deliverance and nothing happened.
He went to second bed like that, she
was delivered.
He became famous for casting out demons.
One day they asked him to go to
a girl many miles away and he went.
The girl sat up in bed and laughed
and screamed the most devilish hideous noises he'd
ever heard in his life.
And everything he said the demon counteracted.
And every time he said you come out
the demon said I won't.
And every time he pled the blood of
Jesus the demon said some obscene things about
Jesus Christ.
Because a long story short, this man was
so determined that he'd exercise his authority over
all authority, that he went to that girl's
bedroom eight hours a day for two years.
Every day he had a woman sit outside
of the bedroom so nobody could say there
was anything wrong going on.
And he'd decide that demon and the demon
and all the demons in hell laughed at
him.
He took toll of his body, he would
sweat, he would almost bleed.
Another preacher said why don't you give up,
this girl's beyond hope.
Well you think it doesn't happen.
Listen I spent two years in the subculture
of New York with David Wilkerson editing his
paper.
I've seen some of the most beautiful girls
in America.
They used to sing in the choir and
they could recite scriptures.
When I saw them they could sing hymns
without a hymn book.
It became a thousand dollars a weekend.
I remember a girl we had there, demon
possessed.
She'd been to one of the great school
smiths of Athens.
She had more culture and refinement and dignity
than any girl I've seen practically.
And she played around, acted with sex, acted
with drugs.
Demons got a hold of her.
And one day as we talked to her,
David Wilkerson said to her, said to her,
does your mother know you live this way?
Where do you live?
Well I don't live at home anymore.
My mother's old fashioned.
You know, just wants to live at home
with servants and cars and all the legwork.
I've given that up.
Where do you live?
Anywhere.
Who do you sleep with at night?
Anybody.
Black men, yellow men.
You're a prostitute?
Some guy.
I'm also a lesbian.
I've taken drugs, I've been to hell and
back.
Wish my mother could get liberated.
A few weeks after we were having breakfast
with a bunch of cutthroats and murderers and
jailbirds and prostitutes and the vilest of the
vile.
One boy leaned over the breakfast table, he
said, oh you know that kid that's in
that film that Ragnhill and David Wilkerson interviewed?
She went berserk in a, in a coffee
house the other night.
Somewhere down 111th street.
Boy, she thought even the cops couldn't control
her.
Finally they tied her up with the belt.
She's in the nuthouse.
A few weeks after, the boys were talking
again.
They said, you know that kid that went
to the nuthouse?
She's come out.
We saw her downtown the other night.
She looks a bit weird.
A few weeks after we were having breakfast,
one of the boys said, you know that
kid that went to the nuthouse and got
out?
Mm-hmm.
Boy, she was a, she was a charming
girl.
Oh, she could show her jewelry and she
could pose.
She had the most amazing eyes.
She'd culture.
Oh, she could quote Latin and French and
all the stuff.
Boy, she was some doll.
Well, what about her?
They pulled her body out of the East
River.
She didn't need help.
She got personality, culture.
I think she was under the, I never
found a prostitute that was going to be
a prostitute anyhow.
I could show you new girls in New
York tonight that look like the Queen and
Sheba.
They're dripping with diamonds and they can't be
out there.
You don't have to approach them.
They'll approach you, sit in any hotel in
New York.
Go to the Americana on 8th Avenue.
Go to some of the super hotels.
Some pretty girl come up beside you, tell
her a price, and before you know she'll
follow you to bed if you don't chase
her.
But I'll tell you this, there's not one
of those girls when she comes home at
three or four o'clock in the morning
that doesn't cry herself to sleep and call
herself the dirtiest dog in the country.
Let me tell you just this other thing.
I went in the office one day.
Here's a tall black boy like a beanpole.
He had a girl with stringy dirty hair,
her nose was eaten away with drugs, her
teeth were all taken, her eyes were hollow,
her temples were in.
And I said, Hi, can I help you?
I don't want to help her, help my
wife.
She's just on drugs.
She's gonna die.
Is she your wife?
No.
We've lived together three years, she's not my
wife.
But I gave her the first shot.
And she's hooked, she can't get off it,
we can't get the money.
And he lulled her with big snakey looking
eyes and they spanked the pad of them
like a polecat.
What are you gonna do?
Pray.
Pray?
She needs something more than prayer, she needs
help, she needs a doctor.
You need to get her in an institution,
she's gonna die.
We don't have any doctors.
What can we do?
Well, there's one thing you can't live together
here.
She can go in the girl's room over
there, you'll go upstairs to a boy's room
and we'll take her.
Two days after that girl walked in a
prayer meeting.
The picture of death.
Wobbling hair, sunken jaw, dirty, smelly, bleary eyes.
She came out half an hour after as
though she had been to heaven and her
so-called husband was lulling her by the
world.
Hmm, half asleep.
She came out triumphant.
His nickname was Bobby.
She said, Bobby, Bobby, it's happened.
What's happened?
I'm a new creature.
I just knelt down there and said, Jesus
Christ, I'm rotten, I'm a sinner, I don't
even know where you are, I don't know
how to pray, but oh God, I'm in
a mess, what the hell, let's get you
back and go, will you do something?
And somebody said, believe that Jesus Christ died
for your sins and ask him to come
and cleanse your heart, and she did just
that, and as quick as that he changed
her.
Then he said to me, will it last?
Will it last?
Will she die?
I said no, she lived.
Two days after he went in the same
prayer room.
He came out just as transformed.
I used to teach the staff there two
mornings a week, Tuesday and Thursday, and he
said, I'd like to come in every Tuesday
and Thursday.
I said, you get Mr. David Wilkerson's permission,
you can come.
He came.
That boy now, that boy who was a
despair to the police, despair to everybody, that
boy who was eaten with drugs and devilry
and dope and vice, he had lived with
when they'd lived all the rottenest lives by
our moral fear, sir.
And Jesus Christ got hold of them and
changed them.
People said, you won't do much with them,
they don't have any brains.
I'll tell you what he did, that boy
went to Bible school at the end of
the first year they asked him to leave,
because he was asking the professors questions they
couldn't answer.
He took Greek as extracurricular work, and his
wife said, you know, it's amazing.
We used to be out till two or
three in the morning on drugs and dope
parties, but now there he is at two
o'clock, three o'clock in the morning,
studying the Bible, getting a concordance, finding some
Greek wisdom, and he devours the Word of
God.
And you know what he's been doing for
the last, what, three years now now, I
guess, four years, four years, that man has
been hidden away in a little prayer retreat
with a bunch of people, soaking himself in
the Word of God.
He was a desperate man, he was a
desperate devil, he was a desperate everybody.
But there came a day in his life
when he said, look, I'm not going to
play at Christianity.
If Jesus Christ is going to have everything,
he's going to have everything.
If you take this life of mine and
cleanse it and organize it and quickly begin
to have me.
What power do we have over the power
of the devil?
The greatest battle in the world is going
on right now, the greatest battle in history
would get 70.
The second greatest battle is going on now
in the heavenlies.
And if America doesn't have revival, she's rotting
her own sin.
And that goes for England too.
I'll talk tomorrow night about revival and the
price of revival.
It's an awesome price, but it can be
paid and revival can be had.
You think that there's no power in prayer?
You think there are not men who almost
single-handedly can put barrels up and Satan
cannot pass?
Let me quote one.
When the great plague was sweeping over Scotland,
about 1550, a Presbyterian minister got up one
morning.
He was reading the Word of God, I
give you power over all the power of
the enemy.
Submit yourself to God, resist the devil and
he will, or he shall, or he could,
or he might, he will.
He put on his perical collar, his three
-quarter coat, and in the gray light of
that awful morning, and I've been in Scotland
in summer at four, five o'clock, when
you're shivery from a summer's day.
At five o'clock he marched down the
boundary line of the city and pushed, pushed
and said, Satan you shall not enter this
city.
Death you shall not enter it.
Plague you shall not enter this city.
In the name of the Father, Son and
Holy Ghost, I resist you.
People opened their bedroom windows and looked and
said, oh, oh, it's the, it's the clergyman,
something must have gone wrong with him.
He walked down the boundary line, he walked
down the other boundary line, he couldn't walk
down that boundary line because there was no
sea, and he couldn't walk down this because
it was a river chair.
He walked down that boundary line and defied
the devil while people laughed at him.
The plague rolled on and rolled on and
rolled on until it came to that boundary
line, and everybody inside the boundary was saved,
and everybody outside of the boundary perished.
You know why the devil keeps you so
busy with trifles, little things?
Because he's afraid you might discover the riches
in Jesus Christ, that you have a right
by yourself or with some other one to
stand against the power of the enemy.
But he doesn't run because you say boo,
and he doesn't run because you pray for
five minutes.
It means getting together and declaring war on
the powers of darkness.
There's a lion in the way.
Did that worry Samson?
Did he, did he organize a committee?
Did he suggest they got some weapons, swords?
He went up in the strength of God
and he tore the lion.
The devil is devouring this age at the
speed he's never devoured any other.
There are more heathen people in the world
tonight than any Tudor in history, and this
generation of Christians is responsible for this generation
of heathens.
I don't care if that heathen is a
film star going into a Waldorf or Story
Press living with diamonds.
And the people I saw, they're in the
heart of Papua.
My boys just come out of Papua.
I've been there.
They have wall-to-wall dirt in the
homes.
This is not sunny.
I got pictures of this.
People say don't show it anymore.
Here is a woman, they're naked anyhow.
There's no sex appeal about them.
And she has a baby on her breast,
and there are pigs all over the house.
And this little pig can't feed on its
mother, so she rolls the baby on the
floor and picks the pig up and feeds
it.
You go in another home, there's a woman
suckling a dog, because her little puppy is
sick, or its mother died.
When you see films like that, you don't
say, oh let's see them again, they're so
funny.
Isn't it appalling that a people 2,000
years after Jesus Christ came and they'd never
heard that blessed name?
Isn't it appalling that God has given us
this book, the greatest treasure in the world,
and our feet are wet underneath, and the
man watered to the ankles and knees, and
loins of waters are swimming.
And the devil wants to keep us somehow
occupied with lesser things.
Because he knows that if he can move
on, he's going to strangle our generations.
I remind you tonight that two-thirds of
the world right now is under the dominion
of communism, and the wreck they're going.
They're going to trap us as well.
The answer isn't in politics.
The answer isn't in finding out who's the
guilty party in the Watergate.
The answer is, is the Church of God
and Jesus Christ going to revive?
Is he going to put on the whole
armor?
Is she going to ask for this endowment
of power from on high?
Let me say this in case I forget
tomorrow, that if perhaps if we were as
spiritual as we think we are, you and
I would have come to church tonight in
sackcloth with a handful of ashes to put
on our unworthy hands.
Maybe the choice is simple.
Either we concentrate in prayer or we pray
in concentration camps, which way do you want
it?
We've had our seven years of cleansing.
Most of you have a nicer home than
the Queen of England.
You've air-conditioned everything.
She has a big air-conditioned house.
The wind blows through it everywhere.
You can turn the heat on, you can
turn the cold on.
Your children cry if you get Pepsi instead
of getting the real Coke.
Poor darling.
You don't have twenty-eight varieties of ice
cream and twenty-eight varieties of doughnuts.
Mother doesn't know what you're shopping for.
I have an idea there are some bread
lines coming up the road, but I won't
talk about that.
Talk to her tomorrow night rather than stay
at home.
There was a lion in the wet and
he slew it.
Go back just ten chapters briefly.
Ten chapters in this book.
It's a lovely book, Judges, isn't it?
Do you remember the other story there?
We always tell the children these stories.
The story of a little fellow, I think
maybe seventeen or eighteen years of age.
His name was William.
He was threshing corn, and while he was
threshing it, an angel came.
And the angel said, God is with thee,
thou mighty man of valour.
You know, if the angel had said that
to me in the same circumstances I'm in
prison, I would have said to the angel,
so you tell jokes too, eh?
God is with thee, thou mighty man of
valour.
Just a minute, angel.
You see that cave up there?
That's where I live.
You see the next cave?
My uncle lives there.
You know what?
He said that Israel was in bondage to
the Midianites.
And they never saw any supernatural manifestation.
And you know the greatest tragedy of our
days is this.
While your children may have seen rockets going
up to the sky, and they know all
about so much science.
They know more science than the scientists knew
a hundred years ago.
What they learned at school.
But they'd never been in a Holy Ghost
revival.
They'd never seen God come and put a
fence around a community and plague that community.
Oh, and men can't swear, and men can't
drink, and men can't fish.
God is with thee, thou mighty.
Wait a minute, God is with us.
What am I up at night, at midnight,
threshing corn for?
I should do this at midday, but he
didn't do it at midday.
Why?
Because we were in captivity to the Midianites.
He said, if God is with us, where
be his miracles that our fathers told us
of?
That would be a pretty stiff yardstick to
measure most of our meeting today, wouldn't it?
Where be his miracles?
My grandfather told me that he remembers walking
through the greatest aquarium in the history of
the world.
They waved to the fishes as they went
through, when they were delivered through the Red
Sea.
He told me at night, when he was
nervous, he lifted the edge of the sentence.
There was a fiery, cloudy pillar, the pillar
of God's Holy Presence.
He told me he had a pair of
shoes he wore for forty years that never
wore out.
He had a suit that he wore for
forty years, it never smelled.
Every morning God opened the windows of heaven
and sent the man and he spit the
rock and water followed them.
Those people lived on miracle.
They ate miracle.
They walked on miracle.
They saw miracle, and yet they never promised
man.
We've got thousands of people that will go
thousands of miles to see miracles, but they
don't want a life of holiness.
They want to see God operate, but they
don't want God to operate on them.
Do some divine surgery and circumcise their hearts
and take away their evil spirit and take
away their bad temper and take away their
carnality, that he might make them the dwelling
place of his spirit.
The book of Daniel is the book of
revelation of the Old Testament.
Do you remember what God said when he
gave Daniel the vision?
He said, seal it up, it's not for
today.
When he gave John the vision in the
New Testament, he said, don't seal it, it
shall shortly come to pass, and that was
two thousand years ago.
So we must be very near to the
coming.
But God said to Daniel, in the last
days, are we living in the last days?
I don't think so.
We're living in the last minutes of this
dispensation, not the last days.
But in Daniel it says, in the last
days, when wicked men do wickedly, the people
that do know their God, will they know
this there?
Not the people that know their Bibles.
You can get Bible notes this height.
You can know the word of God without
knowing the job of the word.
You may know the word of God because
you have that kind of mind.
You like statistics and dividing chapters and penetrating
words.
You can be loaded with the word of
God, and yet hardly know the God of
the word.
The scripture says, in the last days, when
wicked men do wickedly, not the people that
do know their Bibles, but the people that
do know their God, shall be strong and
do exploit.
Are these the last days?
Are wicked men doing wickedly?
Let me telescope history.
In my day there have been three outstandingly
wicked men.
Stalin, Hitler, Mussolini.
Forget Mussolini, forget Stalin, what about Hitler?
He lent them the thrones than anybody else.
Do you remember when he stood there with
more machines and weapons and airplanes and tanks
and devilish things than any man in history?
And he raised his hand and he said,
the Third Reich will live a thousand years.
The Third Reich.
The first Reich, you may or may not
remember, was the Holy Roman Empire.
When they built shrines to the Caesars, where
if you wanted to save your life, you
went to an image of Caesar and you
put three grains of incense there and said,
Caesar is God.
And Hitler longed for a day when men
would worship him.
And he said, the Third Reich, with his
clenched fist, will last a thousand years.
It didn't last a thousand weeks.
But he lent them the coastline of Germany,
a thousand miles.
He pushed kings off their thrones.
He said, I'll make Germany the master nation
of the world, or I'll pull the world
to the edge of hell.
And he did that.
And the world has never recovered financially from
that time.
I don't believe it ever will.
When wicked men do wickedly.
Oh, they've done it.
He liquidated six million Jews.
Read that marvelous book.
It used to cost ten dollars.
It's that thick, fifteen hundred pages on the
Third Reich.
One man!
Not a man linked to God, a man
that sold himself to the devil.
He didn't go to bed at ten o
'clock and watch brainless Johnny Carson, either.
He read Napoleon.
He was determined to be a greater military
strategist than Napoleon himself.
He went to bed at three and four
o'clock in the morning after being guided
by a spiritist medium who made every move
for him correctly until the last one.
And you can win battles, wars, and that's
what he did.
That little man who just had a Charlie
Chaplin mustache on his lip and a stripe
on his arm, and everybody laughed and said,
what will he do?
He said, I'll conquer the world.
And they sneered at him.
But he came within an ace of doing
it.
And if a man dedicated to evil, if
a man dominated with selfish desires, can make
America give its finest funds and rape Europe?
If you fail to pay thirty dollars income
tax, they'll send you to jail.
But remember that world war from the last
two wars.
Russia owes America one point five billion dollars.
England owes America eleven point billion dollars.
France owes America seven point five billion dollars.
If you got that twenty million dollars back,
the dollar wouldn't be so easy.
They'll hand you to jail if you don't
pay your thirty dollars.
But we don't make nations do that, we
don't.
We're poor dupes, aren't we?
They do what they want with us.
They've got us on a string, we're puppets.
Don't care whether you call the Democrats or
the other crats or anybody else.
They've just got us where they want us.
We're not going to straighten this thing out
economically, socially, financially.
The only way we can restore the balance
in America is a purging holy ghost revival
that sends people from the politicians in the
White House right down to the jailhouse and
the brothel house and the ale house.
All right, I'll tie it up.
In the last days when wicked men do
wickedly, you don't remember too much of Mussolini,
I could tell you a lot I won't.
Stalin, but Hitler.
And God says when you see the devil
put his supermen out, keep watching them.
I'm going to send my supermen and he's
going to send them as sure as that's
my hand.
I'm not sure he's going to Dallas Theological
Seminary to get him or even the Pentecostal
Seminary, but he's going to get his men.
He always has, he always will.
They got Samson.
He's a menace.
He embarrassed them.
He lifts the gates of the city, he
destroys their chosen men.
He sets their stock of food on fire.
He catches 600 foxes.
This man, you can't do again anything.
The anointing is on him and no weapon
that is formed against him can prosper.
And it was like that with the early
church.
All right, they got his secret.
The woman said you must be tired chasing
foxes and lifting gates of the city.
Put your head on my lap, have a
sleep.
And he did.
That must be the most expensive haircut in
the world I think.
The next thing he hears is the same
sweet, no, wicked lady saying, come on, wake
up Samson.
The Philistines be upon me.
And he woke from his sleep and he
wasn't any smaller than when he went to
sleep.
He forgot to put his hair hands up
because they cut his hair off.
He'd given his secret away.
But he says I'll go out as I
did at other times.
And here is one of the saddest texts
in the Bible.
He wished not that the Spirit of God
had departed from him.
He didn't know God had left him.
A couple of simple things.
In Cornell University a while ago they did
a very simple thing.
They had an ordinary gas stove like you
have at home.
They put a dish pan of cold water
here and a dish pan of cold water
here.
And they lit the jet and they got
this water boiling and they put a frog
in it.
And suddenly he, it was boiling.
As soon as he hit it he swore
and he kicked and out he got.
He said if I stay here I'll cook
to death.
They lit the jet on the other water
at the very lowest point.
And two professors sat down and watched the
frog for five minutes.
Then they turned the jet up once and
they sat down five minutes.
They turned the jet up again and sat
down five minutes.
They turned the jet up again and sat
down five minutes.
And you know as it got hotter he
wriggled and wriggled but he adjusted and settled
down.
Then it got hot and he wriggled and
he settled down.
He adjusted except for the last time.
And he just did.
He didn't adjust the last time.
When they dropped the frog in boiling water
he says get out of here I'll die.
When they turned it up just progressively.
Killed him all right.
What killed your spiritual life?
What killed your prayer life?
What killed your bible reading?
Was it Johnny Carson?
Was it your love for sport?
What was it?
Oh Satan didn't get you drunk.
You didn't commit adultery.
You didn't steal money from the business.
Satan didn't get you a little bible.
Satan turned the jet up and he got
you exactly where he wanted you.
All right here we are.
They got the man.
They bind him.
They blind him.
They put him down in the basement.
They put some bracelets of brass around his
arm.
They made him go round and round and
round and round and round.
Grinding corn for the philistines.
Are you going to suggest if you got
in that basement you wouldn't have heard that
man crying?
Don't you think he might have been saying
rather angrily God why didn't I die after
I slew that lion?
Why didn't I die after I lifted the
gates of the city?
Why didn't I die after I did my
exercise?
I'm dying in misery and spiritual bankruptcy.
And while he's there they put him down.
He turned his sight aside and said who
art thou?
I'm a boy.
A philistine boy.
What are you doing down here?
I have come to take you.
God must have been like a dagger in
his heart.
At a time when a thousand men couldn't
take him and one boy is going to
take him now by the fingers and take
him away.
Where are you taking me?
I'm taking you into the temple of David
and the fish gods.
They're having a conference.
Everybody's saying you know God is dead.
Doesn't that sound familiar?
The God of the children of Israel.
He used to do miracles.
But he's out of business.
He died of old age.
And we are the kings of the earth.
Our religion is the religion of the day.
Where is the God of Israel?
The man who could destroy a lion and
destroy an army and lift the gates of
the city.
Now he's taken by the fingers and he
says son steady steady.
Can you take me on the platform?
Some steps up but go cautiously.
Now I'm blind.
Do you know what it says?
It says there were 3,000 men in
the gallery.
The gallery usually holds a third of the
auditorium.
So I'm going to guess there were 10
,000 people there.
And they bring Samson in and they laugh.
Oh that must have cut him to bits.
They scorn.
They say the God of Israel is dead.
The God of the finished times.
The God of sensuality.
The God of lust.
The God of materialism.
The other God is out of business.
And the sightless eye began to feel tears
in that heart that had been crushed for
so long.
Did something it hadn't done for a while.
But I don't care who the man is.
I don't care how brilliant he is.
How famous.
How well he preaches.
No man under God's heaven is greater than
this prayer line.
When Samson realized he was in this jam.
Do you know what he did?
He says oh Lord God remember me I
pray thee and strengthen me.
I pray thee strengthen me just once.
Isn't it amazing that while he believed in
the God of Israel he didn't say give
me my eyes back now chase the enemy.
He didn't say take me back and make
me one of the leading kings of the
earth like I was.
He didn't say give me liberty.
I didn't pray for restoration.
He was jealous of God.
He says God will you please come.
Strengthen me once while I'm dying on earth.
I pray you in mercy touch me.
Do you know why I know he meant
business?
Because he says strengthen me and touch me.
Verse 30 says even if I die with
the finished time.
And when a man can look up into
the face of a holy God whose breath
is in his nostrils and he knows God
can stop his heart beating like that and
the next second he can be a corpse
and he says God I mean business so
much that I want this anointing.
I would rather live just a few hours
with the anointing of God and live the
rest of my life blind and helpless and
useless.
Strengthen me I just once.
God doesn't answer prayer.
God answers desperate prayer.
This man is more than his life.
He says God give me this anointing even
if I die.
That anointing came.
He pushed out the pillars and the house
came down and the word of God says
he killed more in his dying than in
his living.
Do you know what we're going to have
before long?
A holy ghost revival.
Do you know who the evangelists are going
to be?
Your sons and your daughters shall prophesy.
Your young men see visions.
Your old men dreams are not my servants
and handmaids.
Not on my preachers and theological seminary professors
but on my servants and handmaids.
That's what Jesus did when he started.
He didn't go to Caiaphas and take him
to the upper room.
He went to fishermen.
He went to tax gatherers.
He went to poor men and he trained
them for three years and filled them with
a holy ghost and sent them to turn
the world upside it was in the beginning
even now it shall be in forever and
forever.
God's going to pour out his spirit.
God's going to let this wicked materialistic sex
perverted damn generation know he's God.
Whatever the philistines may say or do.
He's looking for somebody that's desperate to get
cleansed and filled with the holy ghost.
My last word.
If you live 365 days like you've lived
the last 365 will the devil have any
worries about you?
Will he know you're around?
Is your life on the altar for everything
that God wants to take out of you?
Does anybody say you know I don't understand
the secret of that man in our church.
He's different from other men.
He has more power all when he prays.
He has authority.
He can command them between spirits to come
out.
We were in a place just the other
night a lady sent for me in a
in a hotel.
Holiday Inn.
Some millionaires.
She's got everything but she was sick.
She called my dear wife.
Martha said would you pray for Mrs. So
and So.
I said yes.
I went in the hotel and prayed for
her.
She said I'm nearer death than I've ever
been.
She's had serious trouble.
We went in and just simply laid hands
on her and prayed and came out and
we hit the road to come up here.
She's gone back to the Bahamas but her
daughter-in-law was speaking to her.
I tried to get by the radar.
I tried to find him.
I couldn't find him in Florida.
I wanted to tell him that that when
he prayed that night I woke up a
new creature in the morning.
The pain had gone.
The sickness had gone.
I was completely delivered.
I travel amazingly.
We have choirs.
Well that's all right.
And we have choir leaders.
That's fine.
And we have education ministers.
I wonder why we don't have a prayer
minister.
We've got bus ministers.
I don't know how many more ministers you're
going to get in the church.
Minister of the church, minister of music, minister
of education, minister of blessing.
I wonder this afternoon as I meditate why
don't we have a why don't we have
a prayer minister?
Is it because most of us have faith
in prayer but not many can pray the
prayer of faith?
Look you forget everybody outside of this building.
Forget your wife, your sweetheart, your friend right
here.
Do you want to come to spiritual maturity?
Do you want to die like Samson, spiritually
bankrupt?
Or do you say tonight better aid me
more than anything on God's earth tonight?
I want to be cleansed and filled with
the Holy Spirit.
And I'm prepared to challenge your holy God
in the presence of this congregation.
I'm prepared to pray Samson's prayer.
Spend for me just once.
If God will give me that anointing, I
don't care whether I live six days or
six years, but I want that anointing.
Samson never lost it.
He died with it.
He died in the greatest revival he'd ever
had.
And you know we're going to have a
Pentecost soon, but without Pentecost, Pentecost.
God is looking for the men and the
women.
You know if my program had gone around,
we would either be in Australia or New
Zealand tonight at some of the greatest conventions
in the world.
And God said no.
And I didn't know when your pastor asked
me why.
I said to my sweetheart, darling we're not
going.
I'd like to have gone to New Guinea
to see our son and his wife and
the children there.
I'd like to have gone to these big
conventions.
There'll be hundreds of minutes.
And God said no.
And then they said come to Merritt Island
for one night.
We stayed four.
And then your good pastor said well if
you're coming that way, why not come in.
Now I don't carry secrets.
I'm just telling you this is how God
orders things.
So I don't know where you are, but
I know I'm writing God's will tonight.
I brought the message God wanted you to
hear.
And I'm not responsible for a single soul
after this moment.
There you pray, some of you 16 year
olds.
You could be God's anointed for the next
generation.
I don't think there'll be a generation.
I don't think, I think Jesus will come
within the next 10 years anyhow, maybe five.
But he's going to shake the world before
he comes.
He's not coming for people.
Who is he coming for?
He's coming for a bride, not a widow.
He's not coming for a little lady shuffling
to the grave with bunions and cataracts on
her eyes.
He's coming for a young beautiful bride, robed
in white, robed in holiness, strength, strong, victorious.
Are you hungry and thirsty for him tonight?
As he looks at your shabby prayer life,
as he looks at your palaces, he looks
at your dry eyes, as he looks at
your lack of love for souls and concern
for a lost world and for his coming.
Our father, we're glad that you look down
from heaven at this moment.
You remember him that said, for those who
have sought thee, thou never setst none.
There's not an angel or an archangel knows
every heart.
You know every grief over our failure.
You know every obstruction that we've allowed to
come in between.
A life fully, totally yielded to thee.
A life dominated, controlled entirely by the power
of the Holy Spirit.
I pray for each one of these dear
ones here.
If there are some unsaved, bring them into
a conscious knowledge of this moment, at this
moment of sin is forgiven.
Who is a pardoning God-like being?
Oh, who has grace so rich and free?
But Lord, we believe that most of these
know thee and are longing for that deep
inner cleansing that the blood at this moment
shall cleanse them through and through, and the
Holy Spirit invade them from the crown of
their head to the sole of their feet.
Lord, as we've sung in this hymn, this
gorgeous, wonderful expression, until my heart is cleaned,
purify every heart there before thee.
Whether it be sin, whether it be doubt,
whether it be fear, whatever it is, I
pray just now, Heavenly Father, by the Holy
Spirit and through the precious blood of Jesus,
you'll cleanse every one of these hearts.
But Lord, every person here at this moment
will say, come in Holy Spirit, take full
control of my life.
I pray thee tonight, Lord Jesus, get some
bond slaves out of these people.
Get some prayer warriors, get some mishrays, get
some scroll winners, get some Sunday school teachers,
get people who from tonight shall know what
it is to be constrained and restrained by
the Holy Spirit.
We're conscious of this desperate hour in which
we live.
We know that money cannot reach lost men
and women.
We know that human organization cannot do it.
But oh God, we thank thee that all
power is thine.
And as you came on those men in
the upper room, they were unlearned, they were
ignorant, they had no prestige in the world.
But when they came out, they were filled
with the Holy Ghost, and they went out
to bear fruit and bring glory to thy
great name.
I pray that homes will be transformed here.
Homes that don't have a family altar, that
from tonight husband and wife will get together
and read the word and pray.
Those who have no passion for the lost
will find tonight that tears of compassion come,
as if they were still in darkness and
in the shadow of death.
I pray for men whose lips are being
sealed in the office, where men tell dirty
stories and they're arrogant in their sin, that
they'll have grace and power to testify, to
witness boldly to the Lord Jesus Christ.
We thank you for the breathing of your
Spirit tonight.
Lord, you said the evening and the morning
were the first day.
I beseech you in the name of Jesus,
not for my sake, not for the sake
of this lovely church of Pastor Peter, Lord,
that I ask for your glory.
You start a fire here in this church,
that the whole community will know that God
has come, that a fire will spread right
through Florida and through America tonight, with all
its need, as needy as America is, as
needy as England is, as needless as other
countries are, that it will please me to
make this house the birthplace of a revival
that will shape this country for a holy
God, and save us not only from communism,
but save us from the devil and his
power, that will save our young people, that
will save the teenagers, that will save the
children in school.
Give us expecting hearts.
Bless us, we come in the morning sessions
to meditate over our Lord.
As we consider tomorrow night, the mighty possibilities
of being linked to a holy omnipotent God
in prayer.
Oh, that thou wouldst this week rend the
heavens and come down.
Show us what it's like when God walks
down the aisles, when God broods over the
atmosphere, when God is allowed to have his
way.
Do that, Lord, which we'll be conscious of
as the power of God, not the work
of the flesh, not the work of men,
but the work, the mysterious, marvelous, miraculous work
of our Holy Ghost.
We covenant with you tonight that we'll give
you every bit of the praise, we'll give
you all every bit of the glory.
We say thank you for presencing yourself with
us.
Thank you for convicting us.
Thank you for cleansing us.
Thank you for purifying us.
Thanking you for invading our personalities tonight with
your spirit.
May we go out in the power of
the risen Son of God to live on
an elevation of spirituality we've not known before.
Since this is with thy blessing, we pray
in the name of the Father and the
Son and the Holy Spirit.
Amen.