We find a text tonight in the book
of Judges, the book of Judges chapter 16.
Judges chapter 16 and 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.
There's an old translation of the scriptures in
Europe, and it includes an extra word that's
not in this King James version.
I like the Living Bible, the King James.
And in the European version the word that
is added is secret.
So then the text reads, Tell me, I
pray thee, wherein the secret of thy great
strength lieth, and wherewith thou mightest be bound
to afflict thee.
This is really a question of a woman
of the world to a man of God.
It will be a great day and God
hasten the day when the world asks the
church, What is the secret of thy strength?
I think right now the world thinks we
don't have any.
We're living on borrowed capital.
I think in every dimension of life that
we're living in abnormal days.
They're abnormal economically, they're abnormal geographically.
We're living in a shrinking world and an
expanding universe.
Every new aeroplane that flies shrinks the world.
You can get from here to there quicker
than we ever got there before.
And when we look through the telescopes we're
discovering there are things out in space that
we never dreamed about.
Recently there was a series, Cosmos, on TV.
I guess a lot of you saw it.
It was slanted toward evolution.
The smart young fellow there said so much
he didn't know, and he passed it on
very adequately, very eloquently.
I really think we should remove the Statue
of Liberty and put a model of a
statue there of Carl Sagan, because he must
be the oldest creature around.
He was there before creation.
And he saw the world put together and
oh, he staggered us with his statistics.
But there's only one, not one Milky Way,
you know.
There's not one galaxy of stars.
There are millions of galaxies with billions and
trillions of stars in them.
And you know, it was a kind of
a faith-destroying thing.
But before he was through, I felt I
wanted to get up and sing, My God,
How Great Thou Art.
Because you see, it doesn't matter whether you
say there are millions or billions or quadrillions
of stars, it says in the 40th chapter
of Isaiah that God knows every star by
name.
That's better than IBM.
He knows every star by name.
It's an abnormal world.
And this abnormal day demands abnormal men with
abnormal messages and abnormal methods.
If the Church of Jesus Christ is anything,
it's supernatural.
If it's not supernatural, it's superficial.
Now years ago, a tired English preacher turned
round in a swivel chair and he reached
for a book blindly and he grabbed, without
knowing it, the New Testament in Greek.
And he began to read through the Acts
of the Apostles and he got down to
chapter 5.
And he suddenly said this amazing thing.
He said, this is the Church of Jesus
Christ before it became fat and short of
breath by prosperity.
This is the Church of Jesus Christ before
it became muscle-bound by over-organization.
This is the Church of Jesus Christ where
they didn't say prayers, they prayed in the
Holy Ghost and there's a big difference.
This is the Church of Jesus Christ where
you didn't sign articles of faith, that's easy
to do, but they acted in faith which
is very different.
This is the Church of Jesus Christ where
they didn't gather together a bunch of intellectuals
to study psychosomatic medicine, they just healed the
sick.
You know millions of people come to America
for lots of reasons, I mean tourists.
They don't come to see the mountains because
there are greater mountains elsewhere in the world.
But they come to see the Grand Canyon.
That's that awful gap up there in Arizona
somewhere, where all the strange things are, up
in Arizona.
And I remember seeing that amazing hole.
Somebody said it was made because a Scotsman
lost a dime and he dug till he
found it.
But that's not the real story, but it's
an amazing thing to see it.
And you know when you stand on the
southern rim there, there's a, what they call
a legend on a rock, and it says
you're at the Grand Canyon, as if you
thought it was a cavity in your tooth
or something.
This is the Grand Canyon.
In the distance, seven miles away, you can
see the flow of the Colorado River.
If you look straight down you're looking a
mile deep.
If you're down in the canyon the walls
are a mile high on either side.
And as we stood there I thought to
myself, what would a little child of a
year or two years of age do if
it was down in that canyon?
How could it get out?
It sure couldn't swim over the Colorado River,
it's 345 feet wide, and it's very rapid.
It couldn't scale the walls on either side,
they're almost perpendicular.
What would it do?
And suddenly I saw a picture of the
Church of Jesus Christ.
Remember this, the Church of Jesus Christ was
not served up to the world on a
silver platter.
The Church of Jesus Christ was born in
a sophisticated totalitarian world.
It was born in a world under dominion
of slavery, the Roman Empire.
That little child couldn't get out of that
canyon.
How is the Church of Jesus Christ going
to get out?
It's walled in on this side with the
mighty power of the Greeks and all their
wisdom.
It's walled in on this side with the
greatest military machine in history, the Roman Empire.
It's obstructed in the front by the flow
of the river of monopoly the Jews thought
they had on God.
And yet that little bunch of people, unlearned
and ignorant, with no financial backing, with no
prestige, with no scholarship, that bunch of men
got out of that chasm, if you like,
that pit in which they were born, and
they shook the world.
Isn't it amazing in the day in which
we live?
Why?
The New York Times a while ago ran
a critical article on what it called the
electronic church, the media, the fellows trying to
push the gospel into every home by TV
and radio.
And they said it's a new phenomena, we've
got an electronic church.
The New Testament Church was not an electronic
church, it was an electrifying church.
Trinity was right when he said, when the
Holy Ghost is in residence in the sanctuary,
that is the most attractive thing in the
world.
Because the power of the Spirit pulls people
out of the world.
And when the Holy Ghost is not resident,
then the world pulls people out of the
sanctuary.
Here is a woman asking a man of
God, what is the secret of your great
strength?
Why do you do what nobody else is
doing?
You know, there haven't been many men, fortunately
for us, who wanted to conquer the world.
Alexander the Great did it by the age
he was twenty-seven and he sat down
and cried because there were no other worlds
to conquer.
In our day, some of you don't remember,
there was a little fellow in Germany with
Charlie Chaplin's moustache on his lip and one
stripe on his arm.
And he set out to conquer the world
and he nearly made it.
And in between you had a little corpulent
Corsican by the name of Napoleon.
Everywhere he went he was victorious.
He subdued his enemies.
One day he gathered his warlords together in
his office.
He had a great map of the world
and he ran his index finger round a
great country.
And to those restless officers he said, attention!
Look at this!
He ran his finger again round the edge
of that great country and he said, look
there lies a sleeping giant.
Let it sleep!
Because, he said, as that country wakes up
and harnesses its manpower to its mineral power,
that country will shake the world.
He said that before 1815 because he was
defeated in 1815.
On the 18th of June in 1815 he
was beaten at Waterloo.
And before that he says, there lies a
sleeping giant.
Let it sleep!
Because if that nation wakes up and harnesses
its manpower to its mineral power it will
shake the world.
I suggest you change the characters.
And instead of seeing a map of the
world, you see a map of the ages.
Instead of Napoleon pointing at something, you see
the devil pointing at something.
Instead of pointing at a visible thing, he
points, as it were, to the invisible church.
And he says to all his demons, you
see, there lies the church of Jesus Christ.
Let it sleep!
Because if the church of Jesus ever wakens
up to the resurrection power and the anointing
of the spirit, it will shake the world.
When I was in school in England as
a little boy, all I knew about America
was Indians and cowboys.
Or that loveliest poem by Barheer Wofford.
And then one day our teacher told us
a story, which is the best-known story
throughout the world of all American literature, the
story of Rip Van Winkle.
You know, he went up somewhere by the
River Hudson there, and up by the famous
Bible school.
He didn't go to the Bible school, but
he fell asleep.
And all I remember about the story is
that he went to sleep for, well, some
say twenty years, some say fifty, some say
a hundred.
And there the teacher left the story.
He fell asleep.
When he came down the hill, he found
some men and he argued with them.
When he went up the hill, there was
a sign outside of the tavern, waving in
the breeze, on it was painted the face
of George III.
That was when he went up the hill.
When he came down the hill, they'd erased
the face of George III and painted the
face of another man of English extraction, George
Washington.
And the point of the story is not
that he slept for a hundred years or
fifty years.
The point of the story is that he
slept through a revolution.
And I suggest to you tonight, that's exactly
what the Church of Jesus Christ is doing
today.
Sweeping through the most amazing revolution in history.
The foundations are being destroyed.
People say to me often, do you think
we're living in the last days?
And I say no.
Well, our preachers have just given us ten
lectures on why we're living in the last
days, why we're not living in the last
days.
The epistle to the Hebrews begins by saying,
God, who at sundry times and in divers
manners spake unto the fathers by the prophets,
hath in these last days, the last days
were two thousand years ago.
The book of the revelation begins by things
which will shortly come to pass, and that's
two thousand years ago.
We're not living in the last days, we're
living in the last moments of this dispensation.
We're living in what Hebrews 12 says, that
everything that can be shaken will be shaken,
that a kingdom that cannot be shaken may
remain.
Everything is going to be shaken, just to
prove that the Church of Jesus Christ is
the only God-glorifying thing in the world.
The world is waiting to see again the
Church anointed in the Spirit of God.
This woman comes with a question, what's the
secret of your great strength?
And he cracks a few jokes, you know.
He says, well, let me tell you, if
they bind me with new ropes that were
never occupied, there's no sweat on them.
Sweat is a sign of the curse.
Fasten me with new ropes, he says in
verse 7, and I should be like another
man.
I wish he had said that, but he
doesn't say that.
He says, then shall I be weak like
other men.
The curse of the Church of Jesus Christ
today is mediocrity.
There are too many of us who are
too much alike.
We're satisfied to get out of Egypt, but
we won't go possess our possessions in the
promised land.
We're like Lazarus, we've been called forth from
the grave.
I was with a group of people that
don't believe in any second blessing, sanctification, baptism
of the Spirit.
What have you got?
Well, I've got to get a shot in
at them some way.
So I said one night, you may not
believe in a second blessing, but Lazarus did.
Lazarus did?
Uh-huh.
Jesus said, Lazarus.
Do you know why he said, Lazarus, come
forth?
Because if he'd said, come forth, all the
cemetery would have come, and it wasn't time
for them to come yet.
And so Jesus picked him out and said,
Lazarus, come forth.
And he got up, he was dead, and
he came, how did he come?
He came shuffling with his hands bound and
his feet and a gag on his mouth.
And that's about like ninety-five percent of
the believers are today.
They gag, they're bound, they're in bondage.
He was alive.
He came out of the grave, shuffling, bound,
and Jesus says, loose him and let him
go.
And you know, the Church of Jesus Christ
is bound tonight.
It's bound by tradition, it's bound by fear.
It's bound because we're terrified of the cost
of really true discipleship.
Come on, when you look at the gap,
the grand canon is no gap.
Between Matthew and Malachi, there's 400 years of
religion, a form of godliness, ritualism, wonderful priests,
wonderful sanctuaries, wonderful sacrifices, but no breathing of
God.
And then suddenly across that midnight darkness, like
the flash of lightning at midnight, God sends
an incandescent man.
Boy, how different from the high priest.
The priest had garments of glory and beauty,
he had a mitre upon his head, he
had a golden circle that said holiness unto
the Lord, and he was as dead as
Pharaoh.
And then God brings a little rugged man
out there in the wilderness.
Man, isn't it wonderful to think what God
does?
You talk about taking the foolish things to
confound the wise, taking a nobody.
What a change from the priest whose garments
were loaded and heavy with decoration, and he
trudged through the streets and everybody bowed to
his excellence.
And here's a rugged man out there, and
he's not asking for money.
He can't have been a very good evangelist,
but he wasn't asking for money, he wasn't
asking for help, he had no mailing list.
Isn't it amazing how many gimmicks the church
of Jesus Christ has tonight, and yet the
Holy Ghost doesn't come.
Sometimes I wish I could turn the radio
back and say to some of these guys
always begging for more and more, listen friend,
God is not looking for sponsors.
You may be, but he isn't.
He's looking for slaves.
He's looking for dead men.
There are two kinds of people in the
world, aren't there?
Those who are dead in sin, and those
who are dead to sin.
Ah, there's nothing on this earth, nothing in
eternity like the church of Jesus Christ, anointed
with the Holy Spirit of God.
What's the secret of thy great strength?
And you know when you go to an
art gallery, every time you see a picture
of Samson, oh brother, he's got muscles like
watermelons.
He's got a chest like the Rocky Mountains.
He's got legs like redwood trees.
You know, the average man in Israel was
this height, and Saul the king of Israel
was head and shoulders above everybody else in
Israel, and Goliath was head and shoulders above
Saul, and Samson was 15 feet high.
Now women do some silly things, I know,
but you think a woman's going to ask
a man 15 feet high, hey buddy, what's
the secret of your strength?
You may as well ask him if he
takes Wheaties every day for his breakfast.
I think, if anything, Samson was smaller than
anyone else.
A poor fellow said the other day, I
was sick.
I had flu last Sunday, and I lay
in bed there, and we have an old
beaten up TV.
It doesn't show a picture, but it talks.
Sometimes that helps, because what you see on
TV, they're such a bunch anyhow.
And there's a man saying, you know, I
did have a vision of Christ.
My building is 600 feet high, and he
said my vision of Christ, Christ was 900
feet high.
I need a Christ bigger than my problem.
That's totally ridiculous.
Samson was not 12 feet high.
The Word of God says it's not by
what?
Not by, but by my, says the Lord
of Hosts.
And in case of any doubt, it says
in Hebrews 11, those amazing men and women
of faith, through faith they subdued kingdoms and
wrought righteousness, and time would fail me to
tell of David and Barak, and of Jephthah,
and of Samson, and through his muscles.
Huh?
It doesn't say that in the Amplified even.
Samson, Samson, who by faith, by faith, he
did what nobody else could do.
They locked him up in a city, and
he decided to go home.
And he didn't want to awaken the gatekeeper
at night, so he lifted the gates up,
and everybody in the gates, and carried them
up the hill, and put them down.
Said under his breath, you'll have a bigger
job getting them back than I had getting
them here, anyhow.
You know, men of faith can be awfully
disturbing.
And then one day they tried to arrest
him.
He picked up the jawbone of an ass.
Doesn't God use some strange things, the jawbone
of an ass?
You know, it reminds me of a modernist
preacher, and he was preaching and saying he
didn't believe the Bible in this, and he
didn't believe the Bible in the other.
And he said, you know, these stories like
Jonah and the whale are ridiculous.
And that story about Samson slaying people with
a jawbone of an ass, now that, that,
I mean, God doesn't do that anymore.
And that inevitable little old lady on the
front pew said, he does every Sunday at
our church.
Well, if he has to use a jawbone
of an ass, amen.
Do you know what I'm wanting?
Really badly in my heart what I'm wanting?
I'm wanting God to produce a Pentecost that
will out-Pentecost Pentecost.
Pentecost was a sample day.
It wasn't abnormal, it was a normal standard
for the church.
The church is back sinning today.
We've lost our power, we've lost our authority.
Oh yes, on our coins we put in
God we trust.
We don't trust in God, forget it.
If we trusted in God, we wouldn't have
an air force, we wouldn't have a navy.
You'd all be living in Cadillacs, or better
still, Mercedes.
We're taxed up to our ears, why?
To keep crime down.
We don't have policemen outside our churches, you
have them outside of taverns.
The way some churches are going, we'll still
need cops around, I think.
Oh, we talk so cheaply about God's sovereign
power and God's omnipotence in this materialistic age.
In God we trust, forget it, we don't
trust in God.
We believe in him, but we don't trust
him.
There's a lovely story in the second book
of Kings, the 19th chapter, and it says,
don't look at it, let me read it
for you.
It came to pass that night, one angel
of the Lord went out and smote in
the camp of the Assyrians, one angel smote
a hundred, four score, which happens to be
eighty, and five thousand people.
One angel killed a hundred and eighty-five
thousand people one night.
That's more than were killed in the in
the atom bomb at Hiroshima.
One angel killed a hundred and eighty-five
thousand people.
And on the cross, Jesus could have called
twelve legions of angels.
And the smallest denomination of a legion is
five thousand.
And if he could have called twelve legions,
that's sixty thousand.
And sixty thousand angels, each killing a hundred
and eighty-five thousand people, would have wiped
the world's population out that day.
If he called them from heaven, we say
we trust in God.
If we do, what do we need armies
and air forces for?
They killed, if those sixty thousand angels each
killed a hundred and eighty-five thousand people,
well work it out in your calculator.
It happens to be about a hundred, one
thousand, one hundred and ten million people.
We should take care of a few folk,
you know.
No, no, no, no.
We don't trust God.
We don't even trust him in the fundamental
church.
We don't even trust him in the Pentecostal
church.
Come on, let's come down to this beautiful
place that I've learned to love you this
weekend.
And I want to keep you on my
prayer list, but tell me this.
Do people round about?
The pastor was saying there's some inquiry.
What's happening down at, what do you call
it, Central Vida, is that it?
Is my Spanish good?
What's happening?
Oh my God, I pray that just when
God was in residence in the Old Testament,
there was a pillar of fire over the
place.
And I pray there'll be a pillar of
fire, holy ghost fire.
Our God is a consuming fire, and the
reason the world goes to hell fire is
the church has lost holy ghost fire.
It's not the liberals, it's not the Catholics,
it's not the Moroniites, it's not the Mormons
that obstruct us.
It's a lack of faith, it's a lack
of purity, it's a lack of vision, it's
a lack of power.
What's the secret of your great strength?
How do you lift the gates of the
city?
Nobody else does that.
How do you take your jawbone of an
ass and slay an army?
It's like an atom bomb in your hand.
Nobody else does that.
Two thousand men try to arrest him.
He gets rid of that bunch.
One day he catches 600 foxes.
My, he must have been able to run.
And he put a faggot between the tails
of two foxes and ran them in the
standing corner of the Philistines and burned their
crops.
You wonder if people are scratching their heads
and saying, what in the world are we
going to do?
How do you stop this man?
But you know there's a beautiful little phrase,
oh it is the most amazing thing in
this whole wide world.
You know what?
You know some people who are filled with
the Holy Ghost, they're so greedy, they're grasping
for money and everything else.
I wish they were grasping for riches of
God like they're grasping for money and social
standing.
What's wealth?
If you came in this sanctuary tonight with
a million dollar ring on your finger and
a Christian Dio suit that cost two thousand
dollars and handmade silk shirts and all the
rest, you're no more valuable than the man
that comes through the door in a sackcloth.
God doesn't look at the external, he doesn't
look at our social standing.
He looks at the heart to see if
it's pure, to see if our longings are
after God and after holiness.
I'm embarrassed to be a Christian these days
in a church that's an embarrassment to God.
I'm convinced the church of Jesus Christ embarrasses
God every day.
We're so void of supernatural power.
You can explain our success by clever business
practices, by Madison Avenue techniques, by clever presentation
on TV and all the rest of it.
But where is the manifestation of supernatural power
in the church of Jesus Christ?
I see Samson as a type of Israel.
Israel began with supernatural splendor.
God sent cereal from heaven every morning, they
called it manna.
He spit a rock and the water followed
them wherever they went.
He delivered them when their enemies were pressing
behind them.
Time and again the Word of God says
he delivered them out of their distresses, but
what did they do?
They did like we do, they forgot God
when they got out of trouble.
He's a type of the early church.
Again I say the church began in the
upper room with men agonizing and it's ending
in the supper room with women organizing.
We mistake rattle for revival and commotion for
creation and action for action.
Again I say that 99% of people
that went to the church today, even fundamental
churches, Pentecostal churches, they did not go there
to meet God, they went to hear a
sermon about God today.
We didn't expect to walk out of the
sanctuary breathless and say the one who walked
in the midst of the seven golden candlesticks
was walking in the midst.
I could feel him so near.
The church is becoming almost a social club,
a better elite club, a nicer club.
There's no drinking but it's a nice place
to fellowship and have a little kind of
Christian fun, sanctified fun.
But listen dear friend, outside there's a world
going to hellfire quicker than ever.
It's gone and what the church has had
in the last 25 years has not made
any impression.
Recently, in the Agape Fort, near where we
live, there's a young man preaching.
He's the head of YWAM in America, North
and South America, Leland, Paris.
It's about three months since he was there
and he said a few days ago, I
was in a meeting with a lot of
distinguished preachers and the speaker was Bill Bright
of Campus Crusade.
And Bill Bright said, we have just made
a survey from one coast of America to
the other to Christians.
Listen to this awesome statistic.
He said 95% of the people that
we interviewed said either I am a carnal
Christian or I'm a baby in Christ.
That's staggering.
95% of professing Christians, in other words,
say I'm immature.
I'm not facetious, but it's like checking with
the Air Force and the Army and the
fellows at sea in those great aircraft carriers
and you check them all up and say,
we've checked the Army, Navy and all the
cadets and West Point and we've discovered that
95% of them are Cub Scouts.
Would you feel comfortable living in a nation
that right now has one of the biggest,
perhaps the biggest military machine in the world
and they're all Cub Scouts?
Come on, come on, come on.
Where are we spiritually tonight?
Is the world asking of us individually or
collectively?
What's the speaker of that great strength?
Why at Central Veda do things happen that
don't happen anywhere else?
Why is God in residence there?
Yes, this man took the job on of
an ass.
Sure, he lifted the gate to the city.
Sure, he pushed 2,000 men away.
But you see, he was very normal in
one sense.
He fell in love with a girl.
A girl that lived down in Timnath and
he could go that way to Timnath.
He could go this way to Timnath, but
you mustn't go that way to Timnath.
Why?
Because there's a lion in the way.
Now listen, if Samson is a type of
a spiritual man, and I believe he is,
if Samson is a type of the Spirit
-anointed church, and I believe he is, then
the lion in the way surely must be
a type of a devil that goes about
seeking whom he may devour.
And Samson goes that way and instead of
being nervous about it, he says to his
father and mother, you sit down here a
minute.
I've a little business to do around the
corner.
And the lion sees him coming and says,
boy I'm going to have a good lunch
today.
Ha ha.
And the lion springs at him and he
catches it by the jaws and he rips
it in two as though it were a
kid of the goat.
Just destroyed it.
Well I think that's wonderful.
I think the more wonderful thing is this.
It says that after he destroyed that lion,
he said nothing about it.
Well we'd have photographed the thing at least,
wouldn't we?
We'd have measured it from the first whisker
on its nose to the last one on
its tail, and it would be the longest,
strongest, fiercest, heaviest terriblest lion that ever lived.
And we killed it.
I'm looking for a revival where no man
will get the glory.
Such a sovereign act of God, you can't
say we be not.
You can't organize revival.
Revival is not organized.
It's agonized.
It cannot be nationalized.
It cannot be denominationalized.
It cannot be predicted.
It's a sovereign act of God that there's
a preparation for that revival.
I've been reading a book recently and I
want to reread it.
It's about a Lutheran pastor who in the
end of last century, he read this Word
of God.
He read about these fantastic things that happened
in the early church.
And he said, well then, the church I'm
in can't be in the apostolic succession.
You know the Roman Catholic Church says it's
in the apostolic succession.
The Church of England says it's in the
apostolic succession.
The Baptists say they're in the apostolic succession
because John Baptist was the first preacher anyhow.
And some other groups say we're in the
apostolic succession.
Listen, I'm not very clever, but you know
what my definition is?
It's this.
There's only one way to prove that you're
in the apostolic succession.
Do you know what it is?
Have apostolic success.
I'm not concerned that you found a bit
of old paper that has somebody's definition of,
you know, that some some old guy three,
two thousand years ago came out of the
upper room and he anointed somebody else who
anointed somebody else who anointed somebody else or
what.
The world out there, a critical karma world,
more cynical than ever it's been.
Do you know what the state of the
world is?
Have you been around here a hundred years
ago or more?
Maybe you'll be walking down the street, if
there was a street, or down the path
and oh, oh those wicked Indians, somebody shot
in the back.
Savages that they are.
Now we're not savages, we're refined intellectuals.
We don't take an arrow and shoot it
in the back.
We go drop a bomb on a city
and burn the thing to a cinder.
That's education, that's science, that's progress.
How kind can you be when you're so
full of scientific achievement?
We're the cruelest and most ruthless species in
the world.
Right now we're not concerned too much about
detente.
And if detente went through, all they're doing,
they're not suggesting we abolish war, they're trying
to find what degree to roster that.
That's all they're doing.
If Russia will use smaller bombs, we'll use
smaller bombs.
If you promise not to kill more than
a million people, we won't kill more than
a million people.
Modern life is a hell.
It is becoming more and more obvious that
it is not starvation or microbes or cancer,
but man himself who is the greatest danger
to mankind.
The dance of death, the dance of violence
goes round about us, on round about us
endlessly, says Paul Taumier.
And another man whose name I don't know
said the world is a theater of the
absurd.
You see, when the storms don't cry out,
and when the preachers don't cry out, God
has to touch men in the world outside
to let us see the absurd situation in
which we live.
This Lutheran preacher said the glory of God
has departed.
I say again, there's one reason we don't
have a Holy Ghost revival.
And I don't mean a good meeting.
I mean the descent of God on an
area where the lights don't work in the
sanctuary for months.
Where meetings last 24 hours a day.
This is Gopal said about the meetings in
China in the great Shantung revival there.
It was awesome to go into the meeting
house because people would stand and praise God
for six or seven hours without sitting down.
And all the praise of God's people was
shattering.
And you'd go another day and people would
pray five or six or seven hours, hundreds
and hundreds all praying at the same time.
And the agony was like the waves of
the sea that roared.
Sometimes it was like a clap of thunder
when people were anointed in the spirit praying.
And then she says some days you would
go and you'd be there for hours and
hours and hours and nobody would sing and
nobody would speak.
And God was there.
You see there are two kinds of stillness.
A stillness that kills and a stillness that
creates.
And she said the most awesome thing was
not the majestic singing.
It was not the awesome prayer.
It was the stillness of God in the
sanctuary.
And then there would be an outburst of
confession.
It would last for hours.
People who had hidden sin in their lives.
Men that you thought were ideal men would
confess that years back they'd been living in
adultery or they'd stolen money or they'd done
some other thing.
Oh when revival comes the sewers open up
and all the corruption that's been hindering God
comes out.
And revival begins in the sanctuary amongst God's
people.
Revival is a divine invasion of God's people.
Evangelism is those people illuminated and cleansed and
freed and going out and saying I don't
care what's in your life God is able
to set you free from it.
Somebody came to this Lutheran minister and said
well why don't you perform what Jesus said
going to all the world preach the gospel
heal the sick cleanse the leper raise the
dead.
There's a girl down the road there and
she's in a bad state of demon possession
and he went and God mercifully answered his
prayer.
The girl was delivered and before long it
became noise abroad that this man had a
kind a real deliverance ministry.
And one day they called him up a
mountainside and said there's a girl there you'll
not get healed.
She must have a demon in hell inside
of her.
He went up and prayed.
If I remember correctly he knelt eight hours
eight hours at the side of that bed.
He had someone else in the room so
that nobody could say there were wrong things
going on.
And all the girl did was tear her
flesh and pull her hair and and and
and make herself naked and and foam would
come out of her mouth and she'd use
every obscenity you would think that she had
the vocabulary from hell itself.
And her face was livid and her eyes
were like lamps.
And she cursed and raved and cursed God
and cursed the Holy Ghost and cursed people.
And he would come out of that room
wringing wet and tired and the devil would
say there you are.
If I remember correctly he went and knelt
at the side of that bed eight hours
every day for ten months.
One day he said I felt a special
anointing of the Spirit and I knew this
was the day.
And he stood over that girl as he'd
done before and the devil mocked and said
you're going to say the same things.
It's only a recitation.
It's only a scripture.
It's only words.
But he said I felt that divine authority.
And he stood over that girl and said
in the name of the Christ of God
who died who led captive and he captive
and gave gifts unto men in the power
of the blood of Jesus rise.
And they delivered.
And the girl's face changed like that.
Instead of living red and flaming eyes she
was normal.
And she talked about the peace and the
joy and the rest that she had.
There's an old warehouse.
This is an old warehouse I understand.
In the middle of the city I think
the city was called Bliss.
When the German government heard about it they
said well all right we want to help
this preacher.
The Kaiser gave him a donation.
The government gave a donation.
And in those days when you couldn't slip
across the Atlantic in six or seven hours
you had to go in a boat that
took two or three weeks, an old slow
boat.
They put people in America in straitjackets and
took them across the Atlantic.
And he had a house of derelict humanity.
We don't heal the sick, we send them
to psychiatrists.
This is a very serious situation.
Jesus didn't do that did he?
That's why I say I'm longing to see
a Pentecost but without Pentecost.
Listen the fires gotta fall somewhere Pastor Joe.
Why doesn't it fall here?
Before this generation falls into the abyss.
I say Samson is a type of the
church militant against the power of the devil.
And do you know what the greatest honor
in the world is?
You know I made up my mind years
ago I wouldn't let anybody, I won't let
anybody flatter me.
And I won't let anybody flatten me either.
I don't care a hill of beans what
you think about my preaching whether it's good
or bad, better than most, worse than most.
I don't care about that.
All I have to do is deliver it
the way I know.
But I've still got an ambition.
I remember walking through Westminster Abbey there's a
great disc on the wall and you have
the profile of two of the most amazing
brothers that ever lived Charles Wesley and John
Wesley.
Charles Wesley's hymns have been sung all over
the world today.
These you lover of my soul and love
divine all love excelling.
And John Wesley he got booted out of
the church of England.
You know the last 600 sermons he preached
he only preached six inside of a building.
He was as ordained as a bishop of
Canterbury.
But they wouldn't let him in because he
had a strange message about being born again
of the spirit of God, being radically changed,
becoming a new creation.
And there in Westminster Abbey they have his
profile.
Well brother Amiel do you want your own
picture there?
No.
Is there a hall of fame for preachers?
I don't know and I couldn't care less
and I wouldn't want to be in it
anyhow.
I'm very particular about the company I keep.
You say well you're getting old.
I'm getting old.
Don't say I'm old.
I'm only 64.
74 I was 64.
Missed it there by 10 miles.
75 this year that's all right.
Still lots of energy.
I've got an ambition.
What is it?
To be known as a great preacher.
To be known as a great author.
Oh I used to think I'd like to
write a good book and now my books
are translated in about 10 languages.
They've sold millions and I haven't made a
penny out of them.
It all goes to mission.
Well brother Amiel what's your ambition?
I'll tell you what it is.
I'd like my name in letters about us.
Oh this isn't much of a wall.
Try to try that.
Letters 15 feet high.
L-E-O-N-A-R-D Ravenhill.
I'm saying that in case you need to
want to write a check.
Big letters Leonard Ravenhill.
Where?
On top of the Empire State Building.
No.
I want my name in big capital letters
in a place you spell H-E-L
-L.
Hell.
You mean that?
Sure I do.
Remember the man that said one day we'll
cast demons out of this person and they
tried to cast demons out and demons have
a little bit of self-respect.
And they jumped out and beat the preachers
up.
And then they said this amazing thing.
Jesus we know and Paul we know.
That's the greatest son in the world to
be known in hell.
Preacher if you're not known in hell you're
not worth a hill of beans.
You say I've got degrees.
You can have 32 and still be frozen.
Isn't this what it's all about?
Isn't this the conflict that's on right now?
We're not fighting flesh and blood.
We're not fighting communism, Romanism, Mormonism and other
rhythms.
We're fighting mysterious powers in the heavenlies.
And I'd like to see in this church
that you had a prayer meeting 24 hours
a day every day and every night.
Because it's costly to have the anointing of
God.
Surely Samson is a type of Israel in
the beginning.
Surely he's a type of the early church.
And I believe that the church of Jesus
Christ tonight is a terrible disappointment to Jesus.
I say again I think it's an embarrassment.
I don't think it's worth his agony, his
hell in the garden of Gethsemane and his
suffering and being deserted by his father and
all the other things that were involved.
For the church are weak and effeminate today.
We're not a thorn in the side of
the world.
Never mind a thorn in the side of
the devil.
We've got people always casting out demons.
You know I believe the devil enjoys that.
He likes us to chase demons because while
we're chasing demons we're leaving him alone.
I think one of the most awesome scriptures
is the word that Jesus gave, I give
you power over all the power of the
enemy.
You know I think the trouble with the
church today is, speaking generally, the church is
so predictable.
I was in one big fashionable church and
the preacher said to me, just before I
preached he said, take your liberty.
That's a dangerous thing to tell me to
do but anyhow.
He said take your liberty.
He said you know the spirit has his
way in this church.
I said he does.
He said he sure does.
I said well why did you mimeograph his
program last Wednesday in the church office?
They got service starts at 11.
The choir will come in.
You stand up and sing.
You do this.
You sit down.
You stand up.
You sit down.
It's like doing your calisthenics for music and
the offering will be taken and you've got
to be through by 12 o'clock.
What's the secret of your great strength?
Fasten me with new ropes he gets out.
Fasten me with green whips he gets out.
Pin my hair to a beam and he
shakes it and nearly pulls the house down.
Do you know why this man was successful?
He was successful because he was obedient.
One of the greatest old hymns, always a
lot of new hymns, one of the greatest
old hymns in my judgment is trust and
obey for there's no other way.
And if you don't trust and obey you'll
rust and decay anyhow.
So you better trust and obey.
There is no other way.
He was a Nazirite and the Nazirite had
a vow.
He could not drink wine, a sign of
worldly pleasure.
He could not touch anything dead, a sign
of worldly people who are dead in trespasses
and in sin.
He had to wear his hair in a
roll at the back of his neck and
bear reproach for being citified.
He's famous and weak and whatever he kept
his vows Samson was more than conqueror and
that's where God expects the church to live
always more than conqueror.
But he didn't tell me the truth.
The green whip didn't keep you in bondage.
The rope didn't keep you in bondage.
Taking your hair in a beam didn't keep
you in bondage.
What is it she gives thy great strength?
And then she came with that devastating weapon
people have, women have.
You don't love me.
Boy that could get you a fur coat
any weekend couldn't it?
You don't love me.
He says listen I do love you the
reason is this that I've never broke my
vows and that's right there's never been a
razor on my head and as quick as
I knew but listen no man backslides by
one act.
Each time the ropes run him she said
the philistines be upon thee and he ignored
it the philistines be upon thee ignored it
the philistines be upon thee ignored it and
then she said darling you know you keep
tearing lines up and lifting buildings up you're
going to get awfully tired why don't you
take a little nap just kneel down and
put your head on my lap you know
if it stayed on his knees he'd never
have got on hers.
All our backsliding begins in a devotional place
we we we get weak in our devotion
we get weak in our prayer and he
snipped the locks off his hair and then
she said the philistines be upon thee Samson
and then you've got one of the most
awesome texts in the scripture he says I
will go out as at times and he
knew not that the spirit of God had
departed from him and you know in many
churches even pentecostal churches we're keeping up the
motions we're keeping up the action and we
go out and say there wasn't much there
really today no no no no we try
and present and make ourselves believe the spirit
is brooding when he's not there he wished
not that the spirit of God had departed
from him in Cornell University some years ago
they did a very simple experiment they had
an ordinary gas stove like you may have
and they put a dishpan there and they
boil the water and they put a dishpan
here of cold water and in the dishpan
of hot water they threw a frog and
man he no sooner got in that boiling
water than boy did he scream and yell
and kick and try to get out he
knew he'd die if he stayed there in
the dishpan of cold water they put a
frog and they lit the put the light
on underneath and they turned it up just
as little as they could and every five
minutes they turned it up turned it up
turned it up turned it up turned it
up the water got hotter and hotter and
hotter and the frog adjusted to it he
adjusted to it and he died would you
tell me what you adjusted to that crippled
your prayer life if you've been thrown into
it you would have backed off like the
frog and said no this is not my
natural habitat but the but the serpent's wiser
than that and he gradually chilled your zeal
for the word of God he gradually dragged
you down in your prayer life your vision
got blurred you kept on giving your offerings
and saying to the pastor you're best preacher
in town and you put your tithes in
there regularly but all that winsome presence of
the spirit of God that authority you used
to have that passion that fervor the tears
you used to have are gone at the
bottom of my notepaper i have a saying
God gave me a few years ago are
the things you are living for worth Christ
dying for now i could have rolled all
this story into a few simple phrases i
could have said these these people captured this
superman of God and what did they do
the first thing they did was bind him
the second thing they did was blind him
the third thing they did was grind him
you see when they got in they put
his eyesight out and then they took him
in the basement and then they put him
there on a treadmill and they made him
grind out the corn that he destroyed when
he set fire to their crops are you
going to suggest that man goes round day
after day day after day are you going
to suggest the groaning of his spirit wasn't
louder than the groaning of that machine i'm
going to suggest that those eyes never spill
with tears i'm going to suggest he didn't
wake up at night remember the time when
armies looked clear from him when he could
tear a lion when he could lift a
building when they did a supernatural supernatural acts
of God and now he's a slave are
you suggesting he had no misery no memories
i read this book and i want to
cry and say my God why do i
live in this century that's such artificial christianity
we try to dress it up and make
it acceptable we try and make it theatrical
and the world outside laughs at us i'm
sick to death of listening to men who
sit on paper thrones with little plastic crowns
they've made for themselves denying the word of
God the world outside is not waiting for
a new definition of christianity it is waiting
for a new demonstration of christianity and God
is looking in America for a womb in
which he can conceive it pastor and normally
until all these modern gadgets came women used
to go to the valley of the shadow
of death to bring forth life it's the
most costly painful thing in the world for
a woman to bring a child into the
world and you know what we're looking for
in this day we're looking for a painless
pentecost pentecost in the new testament was married
to poverty persecution and prisons and today we're
trying to marry pentecost to prosperity personalities and
popularity it won't work it won't work we
can only have revival one way and that's
God's way okay let's have the man he's
in prison he's he's fettered he's thinking of
past glory and suddenly hears footsteps and he
turns and says hey who's there and someone
says uh i'm just a boy what kind
of a boy i'm a philistine what are
you doing down here i've come to take
you to the temple of Dagon Dagon was
a fish god half half fish and half
man oh that must have gone into the
heart of samson just as though you're taking
a dagger and stuck it right through his
heart what one one boy is gonna take
me captive into the into the temple of
a strange god why a while ago two
two two thousand men tried and they couldn't
capture me and now one boy is going
to do it and he says to the
boy now while you take me and be
careful and if you read the scripture carefully
it says in the gallery there were 3
000 men all the women and children below
maybe 10 000 people in the building and
samson says be careful now i think there
are some steps yes sir i'll take you
up the steps i think there are some
pillars yes there are pillars put me between
the pillars now i said the other night
and i say again that no man is
greater than his prayer life and that goes
for samson though we never emphasize it when
samson found he was a captive when he
heard the enemies of god were laughing and
saying where is the god of elijah where
is the god that does a miraculous where
is the god that delivered israel he felt
how much he'd failed and embarrassed god by
his failure and he prayed what did he
pray he prayed one of the most remarkable
prayers and ever prayed and i've never heard
anyone preach on it he prayed one of
the most daring prayers ever prayed this is
his prayer lord strengthen me just once did
he mean it yes he did why because
he said strengthen me oh once oh god
that i may be avenged of the philistines
for my two eyes and samson said even
if i die with the philistines listen if
you live the next 12 months as you've
lived the last 12 months and you think
you'll be known in hell i want the
glory of god on my life even if
i die i'd rather live the next six
months in the anointing of the spirit than
live six years without the anointing of the
spirit strengthen me just once he says even
if i die i say sometimes that god
does not answer prayer he answers desperate prayer
and he comes so easy to god in
our language this man has his back to
the wall all the enemies of god are
laughing like the mormons laughed at us last
year and said we've won more people to
mormonism from the evangelicals and the evangelicals have
won from the mormons into their groups in
the last 23 years in england the mother
of the salvation army revival the mother of
the wesleyan revival the mother of the methodist
revival in the last 23 years in england
they have built 300 mosques muhammadan mosques when
we left there in 1958 there wasn't one
there are 350 mosques in england today and
at the same time that they built their
350 mosques the church of england closed 650
of its churches in the nation no let's
forget the economy for a while the need
of america is a visitation of the holy
ghost a divine intervention a people are prepared
to say give me a lord i i
want i i want one more anointing on
my life even if i die and god
answered his prayer he pushed the pillars out
and the house came down and this blessed
book says that in the final moments of
his life samson killed more in his dying
than in his living and that's why i
believe there's going to be a holy ghost
revival that's going to shake the world god
is not willing that any should perish there
are more lost people in the world at
this moment than any period in history and
what the church has at this moment is
not adequate for the situation we're like samson
looking back at our past record again the
methodist revival the salvation army what happened at
azusa street what happened a few years ago
when when a fellow came to tell us
you know about what had happened in the
south seas there and now what's happening in
northeast india in the nagaland revival which is
a repetition of the acts of the apostles
daniel says in his blessed book there that
in the last days when wicked men do
wickedly the people that do know their bible
shall be strong to exploit does it say
that no it doesn't no it doesn't we're
stuffed with bible knowledge we never have more
people with bible knowledge but the scripture says
in the last days when wicked men do
wickedly the people that do know their god
and again there's all the difference in the
world between the knowing the word of god
and the god of the word the people
that do know their god shall be strong
to exploit samson killed more in his dying
than in his living i believe the next
super outpouring of the holy spirit of god
is going to be greater than all the
revivals not just any revival in history but
all the revivals in history put together one
great last act of mercy before he comes
in flaming fire it's so easy to say
to people relax and be raptured jesus is
coming ah but we're careful not to say
what it says in thessalonians that when he
comes down from the sky he's coming in
flaming judgment to take judgment on those who
reject god and the church is a buffer
between those situations the last single thing jesus
is coming for a or what it begins
with b coming for a one not a
widow he's not coming for a broken down
church like we have today he's coming for
a pure church a church that has no
selfish ambition the church isn't just wanting to
build its own little kingdom or denomination a
church which is totally madly in love intoxicated
with him i'm through with this a year
a few years ago my dear wife and
i were in a certain place and i
was asked to take part in a wedding
well i said i'll take part in the
wedding sure enough and as we stood at
the altar waiting for the bride to come
i i knew she'd be spectacular her daddy
is a multi-millionaire she's the only child
she inherits everything they have at least two
mansions they're a beautiful yacht and when this
girl came in at the door my did
she look beautiful you know she had that
blush that these girls have and gorgeous gorgeous
gorgeous wedding dress and as she came down
the aisle it was just as all the
lord said to me look at the bride
and then this thought came to me i've
seen so many brides tall ones small ones
fat ones thin ones wise ones otherwise and
she's walking down the aisle in all her
beauty and the bridegroom kind of half turned
his head like that and smiled oh here
she comes isn't she beautiful isn't she richly
endowed oh my what a girl and again
i said to myself i've seen all kinds
of brides tall ones small ones fat ones
thin ones rich ones poor ones but i've
never seen a dirty bride i've never seen
a bride who got a sandwich just before
she was coming to church and said i'm
so hungry i'm coming down the fella put
the brakes on and the mustard was running
down one side you know and down the
other side oh mercy mercy tomato juice and
and then she spilled the coffee on her
dress and she takes her flowers and tries
to cover the whole mess up and he
wonders what's wrong with us standing like this
all covered up no he sees it oh
mercy he's coming for a cure bride the
thing that obstructs revival is filthiness in the
church of god our our individual pride our
individual pettiness our individual laziness our individual covetousness
after all i do give 50 bucks a
week to the church let the pastor take
the sweat no no no no we're all
made a kingdom of priests unto god the
holy ghost didn't fall on one man he
fell on about 120.
we're trying to run the church financially no
no no that won't do i long to
see this glory come back on the church
i long to see people who daringly say
not just come to an altar week after
week for a kind of a repair job
but come and say lord i'm prepared to
die die to my ambitions die to my
own plan die to my self-seeking let
me die but give me the anointing as
i finished preaching that not this message but
same text but not the same message some
years ago in chicago the auditorium held about
2 500 and when i finished i sat
down the pastor came and he snatched the
microphone from the from the stand and he
said good night everybody i'm not coming to
the door good night come back to the
meetings tomorrow and he's a big husky man
and he threw the microphone down and he
fell full length the mic was still on
and i heard him saying oh god strengthen
me just once give me one more chance
i've made so many vows i've made so
many starts and i've never gone through with
them just give me one more chance even
if i die ah yes meetings are very
solemn maybe i don't know maybe it doesn't
mean much to you it's just sunday night
let's slip in church it doesn't mean that
to me you see god has something more
than a videotape he's got us all pictured
he's got everybody here who's in this meeting
tonight he knows every position that we stand
in or we don't stand in and one
day this this this service is going to
be replayed in eternity and i suggest to
you in all seriousness right now that angels
are looking on into this meeting and demons
are looking on in this meeting and the
world outside is waiting to see what this
meeting will produce it can be just like
every other meeting and you go back to
work tomorrow and say there wasn't much to
it but i'll tell you what i'll tell
you what if you come to a place
where you die to self and self-seeking
and self-interest and self-pity and self
-glory and all your self-made plans and
say god i don't care what you do
so long as you anoint me with the
holy ghost and make me part of a
living fire here in this sanctuary it's costly
you can't find where some men that followed
jesus were saved as we say i don't
know where some of the the twelve apostles
started but i can tell you where they
were all filled with the holy ghost there's
a marker where they were all filled with
the holy ghost in the upper room when
the children of israel crossed out of egypt
into the and crossed out of egypt what
happened they sang a hymn and it way
it went away on the breeze but when
they crossed jordan they made a pile of
stones a permanent record and i have found
people who can't really clearly remember remember when
they were saved i've never met a person
who didn't know when they really went to
the cross not to go to the cross
but on the cross and said lord i
want to die and then rise in resurrection
life this is the most critical hour in
america's history and we're part of the game
and god is looking for honest people who
say i want to be cleansed of all
my pride and all my inward bondage and
all my selfishness and all my bad temper
and all my corruption i want to be
alive in god i want to pray in
the holy ghost i want the world outside
to take knowledge that god has come and
restored in his glory the former glory the
church had i'm convinced the fire is going
to fall somewhere sometime i'd like to see
god do that tonight could you pray samson's
prayer honestly you can't do it of course
if you're fooling with the world if you're
still drinking if you're still fooling around you
still find more joy with ungodly people he
had to keep his vows clear could not
drink wine a sign of worldly pleasure are
you more fascinated with worldly pleasure you know
what i find this that the more joy
we have in the holy ghost the less
entertainment we need and if the joy of
the holy ghost isn't there brother you need
entertainment 24 hours a day and the more
the more you walk with him you don't
care if his friends let you down you're
living above that poor level oh god he's
wanting to find some people he can fill
with his spirit from the top of their
head to their feet where he can anoint
them and control them and direct them and
speak through them he wants to restore the
glory of the church to people who won't
tamper with it and make it a gilded
thing that they can get money out of
and or project their own personality but want
christ to be glorified let's pray shall we
pray