I want to read some verses from the
third chapter, third chapter in the Acts of
the Apostles.
Now Peter and John went up together into
the temple at the hour of prayer, being
the ninth hour.
And a certain man lame from his mother's
womb was carried, whom they laid dearly at
the gate of the temple, which is called
beautiful, to ask alms of them that entered
into the temple.
Who seeing Peter and John about to enter
into the temple asked an alms.
And Peter fastening his eyes upon him with
John said, look on us.
And he gave heed unto them, expecting to
receive something of them.
Then Peter said, silver and gold, I have
none, but such as I have give I
thee.
In the name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth,
rise up and walk.
And he took him by the right hand
and lifted him up.
And immediately his feet and ankle bones received
strength.
And he leaping up stood and walked and
entered with them into the temple, walking and
leaping and praising God.
And all the people saw him walking and
praising God.
And they knew that it was he which
sat for alms at the beautiful gate of
the temple.
And they were all filled with wonder and
amazement.
At that which had happened unto him.
And as Elaine Madrid was healed, held Peter
and John, all the people ran together unto
them in the porch that is called Solomon's
Greatly Wondering.
And when Peter saw it, he answered the
people, ye men of Israel, why marvel ye
at this?
Or why you look ye so earnestly on
us?
As though by our own power or holiness
we had made this man to walk.
The God of Abraham, the God of Isaac
and of Jacob, the God of our fathers,
hath glorified his son, whom he delivered up
and denied in the presence of Pilate when
he was determined to let him go.
For a number of weeks I've been meditating
on the disparity.
Or if you like, the difference between the
apostolic church and the church of today.
I described it once in a book I
hope to write, the church that is, is
not the church that was.
We're just about as far removed from apostolic
Christianity as we can be.
And personally I'm embarrassed to be part of
a church that I think is an embarrassment
to God.
There is no way to compare the church
today with the church that was.
We can't compare it, we can only contrast
it.
For instance, if I come to my own
vocation and say the preaching of the day,
I think it's just about like candy floss
compared to a ribeye steak.
To compare the preaching of today with apostolic
preaching.
These men had come out of that dynamic
experience when the Holy Ghost fell upon them
in the upper room.
And it seems today that there are many
people who are advocating a painless Pentecost.
Doesn't cost you anything.
The only thing it does, it changes your
own poverty to plenty.
You get rich within two years.
Never have any troubles, any problems.
That is not biblical Pentecostal standard.
Pentecost meant to those people in the upper
room, eventually, it meant persecution and pain.
And it says in the fifth chapter, they
rejoiced.
Why?
Had they been to a banquet?
Sitting with a bunch of broken film stars
or football players?
Had they been sitting with rich men and
distinguished people?
No, no, no.
They had been threatened that they would go
to prison.
And it says they rejoiced and they rejoiced
greatly that they were counted worthy to suffer.
For his namesake.
Okay, here it says Peter and John went
up to the temple at the hour of
prayer being the ninth hour.
Now, why in the world they went to
the temple, I just wouldn't know.
I'm sure if either of those guys, those
preachers, really got the anointing of God, if
they began to pray in the Holy Ghost,
which is something that I don't hear too
often.
People say, well, can you tell me something
which, which I can really put my finger
on and say, listen, that is the assurance
that I'm filled with the Holy Ghost.
Is it tongues?
I don't believe in it.
I believe there's a genuine gift.
I don't believe everybody has to have it
or it's the initial sign.
Is it that somehow I'll do miracles?
No, that's not the sign.
I'll tell you one sign.
Nobody mentions it, but the word of God
mentions it clearly.
In the epistle of Jude, which is an
epitome of the whole of the Bible, it
speaks there about praying in the Holy Ghost.
And remember, it was as they were praying
the Holy Ghost came upon them.
They were seated.
They were relaxed.
They'd gone through ten tortuous days that we
know not too much about.
Do you think that Peter was saying to
Thomas, you know, if you'd only quit doubting
the Holy Ghost, you'd have been here three
days ago?
Or Thomas saying to Peter, you know, there's
still something in you, you old rebel.
And if you'd really get straightened, we could
have gone home.
I don't think they were picking faults.
They were all there slain as it were.
Not just with fear, though they were afraid
of the people and afraid of the hierarchy.
But they were there with one common need.
They had been told that there was one
who should come upon them.
You remember when Jesus gave them the news
he was going to leave them.
And as Mr. Chadwick used to say, love
in tears is petulant.
They said, we don't want you to go
away.
Well, you know, when I go away, another
is coming.
Now some people think because the Spirit came
as a rushing mighty wind that he was
a wind and he was just a noise.
Not so.
He is a person, Jesus says.
Not again, the junior partner of the Godhead,
equal with the Father, equal with the Son.
Not Father, Son and Holy Spirit, but Father,
Son, equal in majesty, equal in glory.
And Jesus says this third amazing person is
going to come and not only be with
you, but be in you.
You know what they said?
No, no, no.
Now look here, we're quite satisfied.
Don't you send anybody else.
Substitutes are never any good anyhow.
I once went to preach for a very
famous man.
He couldn't make it.
He called me and I took a train
trip and I got in a meeting late.
And and people, you know, as soon as
the door moves, they looked and somebody said,
oh, it's only Ravenhill.
Makes you feel great.
We don't want someone else.
Jesus says, but when he comes, he's coming
with power to endure you with power, power,
power.
Oh, how we've used that promise in Acts
1, 8.
He shall receive power after the Holy Ghost
comes upon you.
Again, it wasn't power just to be miraculous.
It was power to be a miracle, not
make one to be one.
But he was going to take that defeated
lives and make them more than conquerors because
the Holy Ghost was going to indwell them.
He won't just be with you.
He will be in you.
You should receive power.
They needed that power.
They needed it physically because they were going
to be beaten in prison.
They needed it intellectually because they were going
to write epistles.
They needed it spiritually because they were in
on a collision course with the powers of
darkness to the most horrible machine on the
world, which is religion.
They came to that upper room.
How?
Well, you know, the Lord said of the
wood to God, it would say eight of
us.
Did you hear the story?
What story?
Those men that disappeared for a few days,
they're going around town like a bunch of
crazy idiots.
And people said, well, what do you expect?
They've been drinking.
They're drunk.
You know, the church never does anything when
it's sober.
It doesn't.
Doesn't Paul say that in Ephesians, be not
drunk with wine, where is excess, but be
filled with the spirit.
Why does he compare being filled with a
spirit, being drunk with wine?
Because when a man is filled even with
that kind of spirit, he isn't himself.
He's released.
I remember going down the street in Glasgow
the first day of World War Two.
A preacher friend I was with, he said,
I've got to go in this in this
room here.
And I have to get a gas mask.
I told him he went because they were
free being a Scotsman.
And he said, you stand by this lamppost.
I'll come out of that room and the
light will blind me and I'll step forward.
And when you see me come, well, we'll
go on our journey.
He was in there quite a while and
a streetcar came up, stopped right in front
of where I was and a man got
off drunk.
Typical man, he got rubber legs, you know,
they wouldn't keep up one way or the
other and he staggered.
And finally, he stepped forward and he put
his arms around the lamppost and me as
well.
His breath was terrible.
He stepped back and he said, who are
you?
And I told him, I owe Scotsman.
No.
Can you sing?
No.
Can you fight?
He said, no.
He said quite a number of things.
And he said, listen, I can sing.
And he sang Maxwell Town Braves of Bonnie,
Where Early Falls the Dew.
He meant dew, but it was near enough
for a drunk man anyhow.
And he said, who's your father?
And what nationality?
And he went around a whole string of
questions and then finally put his hand in
his pocket and he had a lot of
silver there.
He pulled this great handful of silver out
and he offered it to me.
And you know if a Scotsman offers you
a handful of silver, he's surely drunk.
And you know, immediately I thought about that
man.
Everything was characteristic of the man who's really
filled with the Spirit.
He's a liberated soul.
The son of the soul set free.
You see, the church is still in Romans
chapter 7.
We're still living in that dirge.
Romans 7 is a funeral march.
Romans 8 is a wedding march.
Romans 7 is bondage.
Romans 8 is liberty.
The law of the Spirit and life in
Christ Jesus had made me free from the
law of sin.
These men had gone through that amazing upper
room experience.
Sure, Pentecost was going to mean persecution and
pain and privation and prisons, but also it
meant purity.
And love that is pure is passionate.
Here are two God intoxicated men.
They come out and here is a man
at the temple gate.
The next chapter says that he was 40
years of age.
And if I know anything about professional beggars,
I could go to some countries now and
find a man at the same place he
was at when I was in that country
10 years ago.
They get a place and there's honor amongst
them.
They won't steal each other's place to beg.
I suggest to you that this man had
been at that beautiful gate of the temple
30 years.
What was wrong with him?
He was crippled.
Why was he crippled?
Because the church was crippled, that's why.
Why?
How in the world did he sit there
year after year?
I said yesterday, I think.
It amazed me when I consider this recently.
Jesus must have passed this man a hundred
times when he went into the temple.
He'd been there for years.
Peter and John must have passed him many
times.
The high priest had passed him and taken
his money out and ostentatiously thrown him a
silver or a gold piece.
It says he was carried daily.
So they brought him from home to the
temple.
Temple, home, twice a day, 365 days in
a year.
That's what, 730 times he was carried.
If they carried him 10 years, he was
carried, what did I say now, 730 times.
10 years would be 7,300.
30 years would be somewhere around 22,000
times he was carried but never cured.
He was helped but he was never healed.
And when he saw Peter and John coming,
of course he was quite sure that since
they'd a revival a day or two before,
that they were loaded with money, they got
some big love offering and he wanted a
share of the pie.
And he cried again, silver and gold, he
wanted them to give him gifts.
Peter said, silver and gold, I have none.
Do you need any other proof that he
wasn't the Pope?
Do you need any other proof that the
Pope today is not in apostolic succession?
Why don't people take them to the Pope
instead of going to Lourdes?
If God has put all his invested, all
his power in a man like that, he
ought to be moving around as a peacemaker
and doing the miraculous every day.
He does nothing.
Here is a crippled, twisted, tormented man, day
after day, living as he lived yesterday, anticipating
tomorrow, in the same chronic condition.
And there's a great monstrous system of religion
that let him stay there.
And as far as I'm concerned, the man
at the gate, beautiful, is the world, and
the Church hasn't the power to heal him.
And tonight the Church hasn't the power to
do it either.
There's a gulf between apostolic Christianity and the
Christianity today, far greater than the gulf of
the Great Grand Canyon.
God never designed his Church to backslide.
God never intended the Church to stand at
the side of the road while Communism and
others paraded in the middle of the road.
The cost was too much.
The hymn writer says, the Church's one foundation
is Jesus Christ, our Lord.
She was his new creation by water and
the blood.
From heaven he came and sought her to
be his holy bride.
And these men are intoxicated because they had
witnessed the most amazing thing the earth had
ever seen.
You remember when they had trouble in the
first chapter there?
Peter always got something to say, and he
says it again a little later in the
same book.
He says, you crucified the Lord of glory,
but him hath God raised up, whereof we
are witnesses.
And in case you want to isolate that
and say, well, that just belonged to, to
the days, you know, it all ended at
the end of the Bible, which is a
nice alibi.
I want to tell you tonight, Almighty God
doesn't need any alibis.
I want to tell you tonight, God is
not looking for sponsors.
The guy you listen to on TV maybe,
but Almighty God isn't.
He is a crippled, tormented, distorted body.
How did he get deliverance?
He got deliverance through two simple, consecrated, cleansed,
committed, concerned disciples.
That's how he got it.
They were totally yielded to Jesus Christ.
They obeyed the commandment, ye shall receive power
of the Holy Ghost coming upon you.
Peter no longer runs away when a girl
points a finger.
He points the finger at the whole nation
and says, you crucified the Lord of glory.
We don't do that so much in the
days in which we live, do we?
Everybody comes up with the same idea.
If you say anything that's a little disturbing,
well, they say, well, of course, you know,
we're not to criticize.
Or if you want it scripturally, we're not
to judge.
But I read here in John 7, it
says we're to judge righteous judgment.
You know, I read the scripture, I almost
feel an orphan.
I'm not disagreeing with my brother talking about
liberty and joy, praise the Lord for it.
But when it comes down to the nitty
gritty, how much of it gets under the
door into the world?
How far can we touch a world that's
lost and never, never nearer to judgment and
never, never nearer to another bloody war than
the moment in which we live?
But what does the church do?
If you want a history, the thing in
the finest summary that I've ever read of
this amazing church was given by J.B.
Phillips, an English preacher, not just because he's
English, who one day, a little weary, turned
round on his shriveled chair and grabbed for
a book.
It happened to be the New Testament in
Greek.
He happens to be a brilliant Greek scholar.
He read Acts chapter 1, Acts chapter 2,
Acts chapter 3, and about to chapter 5,
and the book exploded like a bomb in
his hand.
He made this amazing summary.
This is the church of Jesus Christ before
it became fat and short of breath by
prosperity.
Now think a minute.
Is the church, are the organized branches of
the church, Baptist, Methodist, Pentecostal, are they fat
and short of breath by prosperity?
This is the church, he said, before it
became fat and short of breath by prosperity.
This is the church of Jesus Christ, he
says, before it became muscle-bound by over
-organization.
We talk about liberty and now they get
liberty in any denomination these days.
You have to tow the line, you'll get
a letter from headquarters.
Somebody spoke in tongues in your church, they
think it was the end of the world
and the devil had invaded the place.
One of these days we're going to be
smart enough to let God do the teaching
instead of us do it.
The church before it became muscle-bound by
over-organization.
This is the church, he says, before, another
before, not only before it was muscle-bound,
muscle-bound by over-organization.
This is the church, he says, where they
did not sign articles of faith.
You know, you go to a church usually
and they give you a sheet of paper
and say, well, if you, if you can
say yes, yes, tick it all off, sign
at the bottom, we'll take you in.
Well, that doesn't demand any moral power or
spiritual power, does it?
Philip says, this is the church where they
did not sign articles of faith, they acted
in faith.
This is the church where they did not
gather together a group of intellectuals to study
psychosomatic medicine, they just healed the sick.
This is the church, he said, where they
did not say prayers, but they prayed in
the Holy Ghost.
And I've heard the greatest preacher in the
world in the last 50 years, and yet
the outstanding experiences of my life are not
in hearing these amazing men who can do
a juggling act and almost blind you with
their theological science.
The greatest memories I have are of praying
with men who were anointed by the Spirit
of God, and we prayed until two or
three or later hours in the morning.
Do you think you can find a church
on earth that fits into that pattern?
Huh?
Does your church rule in that liberty?
Not in bondage to headquarters, not studying psychosomatic
medicine, but having power.
He looked on Peter and John and said,
will you help us?
He was asking for arms, A-L-M
-S, phonetically it sounds like this arm.
The Sunday school teacher was teaching a class
of girls, and they read this scripture that
this man asked for arms, and one of
the girls said, why did he ask for
arms when he needed legs?
I wonder sometimes if the Lord doesn't wonder
the same thing about us.
We ask about something secondary instead of asking
about the real thing.
But remember this, if we are going to
have another Pentecost, it's going to mean persecution,
it's going to mean hardship, it's going to
mean sacrifice, it's going to mean that we're
rejected and considered maybe fanatical even by the
nearest and dearest.
And I think when the scripture says that
a man's friend should be those of his
own household, it means spiritually as well as
physically.
For time and time again God has come
on people, and what happened?
There's a split in the church.
For what reason?
Because some of the old rascals want to
stay there and they did it grandfather's way.
But listen, we're living in a new age.
There has to be something come on the
age in which we live or we're doomed.
And every political society and every other society
is leaving no mark on this generation except
a mark for evil.
Peter and John went up to the temple
at the hour of prayer, the ninth hour.
The man fastens his eyes on Peter and
Peter said something very wonderful, I think.
He said, I've no silver or gold.
Look on us, look on us.
Can your church say that in the region
you live in?
Not being arrogant about it, but friend you
won't get your problem solved, you won't get
an answer to your situation anywhere else but
you come to us, look on us.
And he not only saw the man's need
but he reached down, he touched him and
immediately touched him.
I'm sure that man felt as though he
had, he touched an electric current.
The resurrection life of Jesus, the power of
the spirit, went into that twisted deformed body
and immediately his ankle bones received strength.
Well then they got a crowd round.
This was at the beautiful gate of the
temple.
The high priest had passed, a thousand times
passed the man.
Jesus must have passed him many times.
But you see there's a timing in the
affairs of men.
Even Shakespeare said there is a tide in
the affairs of men which if taken at
the flood lead on to higher things.
And there was a timing here, it was
for the glory of God that this man's
body was going to be miraculously delivered.
Every bone that was locked would be unlocked.
He's going to stand and leap and praise
God.
And do what the apostles didn't do apparently,
go running through the sanctuary.
Now I reminded you last night that temple
held more than six thousand people.
You see Christianity is something you can't really
bottle it up, you can't get it into
shape, you can't squeeze it into a theology.
We said last night that Jesus on the
last day, the great day of the feast,
he stood in that temple, he had no
right to be there.
For six days the priest had stood there
in his gorgeous garments of beauty.
And they'd remember the time when the rock
was split.
And Jesus stood in that very place and
said, listen I'm going to tell you something.
If any man thirsts, let him come unto
me and drink.
And they were celebrating the feast of tabernacles.
I think this is one of the most
courageous things Jesus ever did.
He's got six thousand enemies, he's got high
priests and others around him.
He's got six thousand pairs of eyes upon
him.
He stands there sublime and majestic in holiness
and authority.
The eyes of the multitude are upon him
and then he stands and delivers that word.
If any man thirsts, let him come unto
me and drink.
They'd hardly got out of that situation when
this other bunch of Christians come along and
start upsetting things.
You know people pray for a revival.
They say, well of course we don't really
want to be disturbed.
Well why don't you order an earthquake from
a Sears Roebuck and see if the, well
they wouldn't have one, but could you have
an earthquake without being disturbed?
You can't have a revival without being disturbed.
You can't have a revival without some people
being cut down.
Peter and John stretched forth their hands, or
Peter did, and touched the man, and his
ankle bones received strength.
And the multitude came around with their, oh,
oh, and wonder, and Peter said, look not
on us.
He said to the man with his knee,
look on us.
In other words, we've got the answer to
your problem.
But when they wanted to glamorize those two
men and give them praise and adoration, he
stepped out of the way and said, no,
no, no.
Don't put any halos on our heads.
Don't attribute any greatness to us as though
by our power, our own holiness, we have
made this man to walk.
Listen, you may be the greatest saint on
earth, but there's no power of holiness through
you to someone else.
It must be the Spirit of God.
He's jealous.
The Holy Spirit of God has the power.
He has the authority.
I'd like to have been in that situation
and seen that man.
Sure, one thing, he's not going to be
just a pew dweller.
He's not going to sit down and just
be very rigid and careful.
No, sir, he's received the wonder-working power
of God.
It's evident to everybody else round about.
As Wesley says, my chains fell off, my
heart was free.
I rose, went forth, and followed thee.
From that day forward, he became a fanatic,
I'm sure.
But who in the world wouldn't be when
he sat there for 40 years, he heard
somewhere the temple, he could hear the old
priest chanting away, when he is come, the
eyes of the blind shall be open and
the ears of the deaf unstopped.
Maybe many times he said to people, where
are you going?
Oh, the miracle worker Jesus is up there,
and he unplugs the ears of the deaf,
and he puts sight in blinded eyes, and
he straightens with the limbs.
And the poor fellow must have thought for
years and years, the three years in the
life of Jesus, why did he do it
to me?
Why did he leave me here in my
bondage sorrow night?
Why didn't I come out of sickness into
his health and out of my poverty into
his wealth?
Because there was a timing in the situation,
that's why.
This was going to bring more glory to
God, than if he'd been healed with a
multitude who were healed one day.
Yes, it's going to get these men into
trouble, all right.
After all, it's very rough to shatter the
religion of your father or your grandfather, isn't
it?
What did they do with Peter and John?
Well, they just got them together and said,
uh, we've had enough of this.
We're going to have a high court tomorrow.
So in the next chapter, you'll find that
they gather together, the intellectuals and the hierarchy
of the church.
And Peter and John are brought up to
give an account of what they've done.
And these poor fellows were trying to get
out of it one way or the other,
and they couldn't get out of it.
And so they whispered to each other, and
then they said, well, ladies and gentlemen, and
this distinguished company, there's no way we can
get around this.
This is the man that sat at the
beautiful gate.
We all know him.
And not only that, we know he's been
liberated.
We don't know how it's been done.
It's got us pretty shot, and it's burst
our theology open at all ends.
And we can't sleep at night for thinking
that he's been at our doorstep all these
years, and we could never do anything but
give him a bit of money.
The thing he didn't need, we could not
supply his need.
And then came along these two men.
But we wanted to know this.
Number one, they're not ordained preachers.
Not one of them, neither of them has
a preacher certificate.
And they're not well trained, and they're not
good theologians.
And we're kind of figuring that this thing
might die off.
We do hope your trouble doesn't come back
to you, old fellow.
But this man, we wanted to know this.
But both these men, by our standards, you
know, we've got certificates, first-class certificates in
paralysis.
We can't do anything.
We can't say anything with any life.
And this fellow's come on like a streak
of lightning.
You see, these men were filled with the
Holy Ghost.
Oh, they're not only filled with the Holy
Ghost.
It says they filled Jerusalem with their doctrine.
It says that they were filled with joy.
We just want to say this before we
dismiss.
These men, Peter and John, they come from
a working class.
Really, they're good fishermen, but bad theologians.
And all we have to say to you,
watch it.
Watch it.
Because they're both unlearned and ignorant men.
Well, they missed it by about a million
miles, didn't they?
Dr. Coffman says the Gospel of John, or
rather says John was the Plato of the
New Testament.
He's the most profound thinker.
Ninety-two percent of the Gospel of John
has not been mentioned by Matthew, Mark, or
Luke.
He introduces us to new characters.
He had an intimacy with Jesus Christ that
no one ever had.
He was there on the Mount of Transfiguration.
He was there on each occasion when Jesus
raised the dead.
But keep this in mind, that Jesus fellow's
gone anyhow.
And these fellows are trying to live in
the afterglow, and they're trying to work something
up.
But listen, we want to warn you, they're
unlearned and ignorant.
And John gave us what?
Well, Peter gave us two epistles.
Man, I get so much out of the
first epistle of Peter, the first chapter.
I think it's a fantastic—it's worth the whole
Bible in itself.
How many millions of people have been blessed
through Peter's writing?
He wrote one epistle, he wrote two epistles.
He didn't gather any royalties for them yet.
Gonna get those when he gets up there.
And this fellow John, he wrote the Gospel
of John, the first epistle of John, the
second epistle of John, the third epistle of
John.
And then to really prove that he was
ignorant, he wrote the book of the Revelation.
Well, who would you like to be?
Would you rather be the high priest that
sat there in splendor and lived like a
king just for a few years, and then
you don't even know his name?
Or a man like Peter and John, endued
with power from on high, but having authority
over the power of sin and the power
of death, and liberating a man who'd been
a captive all these years?
What do you want to settle for?
The Church has never had more intellectualism than
it has today, and I'm not knocking it.
Scholarship on fire, as in the case of
Wesley and some other men, is a marvelous
thing.
That scholarship by itself, when it sits there
just splitting theological hairs and deciding to call
a few cronies together and have a conference,
which of course the poor and needy are
not invited to, I'd rather keep it.
Peter looked on this man, he not only
looked on him, he touched him.
He put his hand down and immediately it
seemed as though life was transmitted into the
body.
And a man jumps up and he leaps
and he praises and he magnifies God.
And the whole of Jerusalem heard about it.
And again I say, they passed it almost
as it were a sentence of death.
Give me some money.
It seems safe to say that when the
Church is rich, financially, she's always poor spiritually.
And usually when she's poor financially, she's rich.
The greatest revivals in the last ten years
have not been in cultured, civilized countries as
we think of it.
They've been in Indonesia and other places where
the New Testament has been relived again in
every manifestation of the power of the risen
Son of God.
We sit in our comfortable pews and we're
so satisfied with our portion.
Silver and gold I have none, but such
as I have give thy own to thee.
What a difference between the apostolic church and
the church today.
You read, if you read it as I
read it, the whole book is full of
the supernatural.
It's branded right through.
There is no explanation except that God works
through men.
They heard his voice.
They moved in the power of the Spirit
of God.
Now, the end of the hedonism.
Again, let's get out of our minds the
idea that we're the most, you know, we
deserve more pity because we live in such
a terrible age as communism, Mormonism, Moonism, all
the other devilish things.
This monstrous monolith of a thing called communism.
I remind you tonight that Christianity was not
served up to the world on a silver
plate.
Christianity was born in a sophisticated totalitarian age.
There were 60 million slaves in the Roman
Empire.
Jesus never spoke about slavery.
The apostle Paul never spoke about slavery.
And yet these men unlearned and ignorant.
Reminding you again, as my wife and I
and a friend stood on the southern rim
of the Grand Canyon, I read the legend
there, maybe you've read it.
That yellow ribbon across there, seven miles away,
is the Colorado River.
It gives you the statistics.
I think it's 450 feet wide and about
45 feet deep.
It's seven miles away.
It doesn't look so far.
The floor of the canyon is a mile
deep, so that if you're down there, you'll
have rocks to climb a mile high on
any side.
And you can't get up that way because
there's the river.
And then there's a great, tremendous cliff.
As I looked at that, I thought to
myself, or the Lord reminded me of it,
say, how would a baby get out of
that canyon?
A one-year-old child, a two-year
-old child could never get out of it.
Sure couldn't swim the river, it goes so
fast.
It couldn't climb the crags, they're far too
steep and difficult.
And just as I thought of that, I
thought of the early church.
It was walled in on this side by
the greatest military machine in the world up
to that day.
It was walled in on this side with
the intellectual greatness of the Greeks.
It was obstructed away there by the Jews
who believed they alone had a monopoly of
God.
Remember that they were shedding bloody sacrifice every
day.
There was a given hour when the priest
went in his royal rogues there into the
temple.
And they believed he alone could speak with
God and he alone spoke with God once
a year to one people.
Do you know what?
I think the marvel and the mystery and
the majesty of prayer has escaped us.
Because if you had been a Jew in
that dispensation even today, only one man could
meet God.
And you and I could meet him anywhere
at any time that we want to go.
He is made as a kingdom of priests
unto God.
And Peter and John are exercising their royal
prerogatives.
Not only did Isaac Watts write when I
surveyed the wondrous cross, I guess his best
-known hymn.
But he also wrote the hymn, Jesus shall
reign where'er the sun doth its successive
journeys run.
His kingdom stretch from shore to shore till
moon shall wax and wane no more.
Blessings abound where'er he reigns.
The prisoner leaps to lose his chains.
The weary find eternal rest and all the
sons that want are blessed.
And then he goes on, he finishes it
by saying, In him, Christ, the tribes of
Adam boast more blessings than their fathers lost.
You can tell me as much as you
like and butt it in my ears a
million times a day, if you like, about
the total depravity of man.
And tell me about sin and tell me
about the tide of iniquity running against us.
And I will just shout back in your
face that greater is he that is in
us than he that is in the world.
But the thing is we don't switch on
that power.
All we need is a bit of grace
to get through today.
Lord, don't let anybody hurt us while we're
driving.
And don't let us hurt anybody else.
And isn't it awful?
Gasoline's going up five cents.
We can say all those things and forget.
Do you know what?
We lie.
We lie the way we live.
We try to tell God we believe him.
We kneel in front of him.
We believe he's your Lord God omnipotent that
reigneth.
We believe that Jesus Christ is the same
yesterday and forever.
And the church is in a state of
bankruptcy tonight.
The glory doesn't fill the temple anymore.
As I asked the other night, did you
come here tonight to meet God or hear
a sermon about him?
Can you remember the last time the glory
of God came in the temple and you
couldn't speak going on?
And you felt the cloud upon you for
days and days and days after that divine
invasion.
That's what happens in, that's what happens in
revival.
Do you think Jerusalem is different?
Every time people look at that spot, they
say, you know, that's where he used to
sit.
That's where he used to sit.
Have you seen him now?
He's a healthy man.
He has a family.
He has a business.
He has this.
The very empty space was a rebuke to
the emptiness of the sanctuary.
The early church, I say, was a supernatural
church and we're a superficial church.
It began in the upper room with men
agonizing.
My God, I'd love to have heard them
pray those ten days.
Not merely praying because they were delivered, but
praying that they would have the strength and
the wisdom because Christ was going to invade
their lives.
And he has made unto us wisdom and
righteousness and sanctification and redemption.
And I say to some people, if I
preach in Pentecostal places, I say to them,
well, look, let me remind you of this,
that there are no gifts of the Holy
Spirit.
Oh boy, that makes everybody say that.
You say, well, prove it.
I can prove it easily.
Because it says in his resurrection, or in
his death and resurrection, what did he do?
He led captivity captive.
And he gave gifts unto men.
There are no gifts except gifts that have
been purchased by the blood of Christ.
The Holy Ghost is the executive of the
Godhead.
It's like a man who has left a
will and you go and sit in the
office and some man officially, he says, well,
listen, this has been left to you, and
that has been left to you, and this
has been left to you.
They're not his gifts, but he dispenses those
gifts.
And the Holy Spirit dispenses the gifts.
They were purchased by the blood of Christ.
The hymn writer says, the purchase of thy
death divide, give me with all the sanctified
the heritage of love.
So this early church, shining brilliantly with the
power of God, persecuted.
Why, these fellows spent more time in prison
than they spent free, at least some of
them.
So it was a supernatural church, and now
it's a superficial church.
It was a living church, now we have
a languishing church.
It says that they went, and when they
went, they were all amazed.
How often have you been to church and
had to rub your eyes when you went
out saying, was I really there, or was
I dreaming?
It was a suffering church.
We're a sufficient church.
Peter stood up, lifted up his voice, spoke
to the man.
The man stood up, and there was a
whole chapter written, and they started in a
new sphere of power and authority.
Silver and gold, I have none.
I have none.
But such as I have, I give.
He didn't even sell healing cloths.
He didn't ask you to subscribe to his
magazine.
Freely you have received, freely give.
I can't give you any money.
You know, there's a great joy in having
nothing.
One thing, if you have nothing, you can't
lose anything, can you?
If you have no opinion of yourself, nobody
will ever hurt your feelings, because you've already
got ahead of them.
See, I'm a nobody.
As soon as you respond to something, it
shows there's something alive in you.
You know, it's somebody that rubs your nose,
and immediately you resent it.
Oh, well, well, well, then you've got something
in there that causes the resentment.
If I give three men a glass of
water, a glass of milk, a glass of
oil, and I tell them to run, and
one of them stumbles, what comes out of
the glass?
Well, obviously, if he's got oil in it,
he's going to spill oil.
If he's got water, water will spill.
If he's got milk, milk will spill.
Jesus said, the prince of this world cometh,
and he findeth nothing in me.
And then the scripture says, as he was,
so are we in this world.
Now, listen, what's your weak spot?
What's your vulnerable spot?
When you go down and retire and feel
hurt and miserable, because somebody kind of punched
your nose, you know, said she's not very
smart, or, you know, I don't think he's
so spiritual, or that fellow's arrogant, or this
woman has temper.
Again, I say there's a great advantage in
having nothing, because you can't lose anything.
There's a great embarrassment in having nothing.
There's a story there where in Luke 11,
the story of a man whose friend came
at midnight, and he knocked on the door,
and he said, well, well, well, you told
me to come any time.
Remember, I did you a favor, and you
said, now listen, you've got me out of
the hall, I don't care where I am.
I went, yeah, I did, but the wife's
in bed, you see, and we haven't been
for groceries.
Well, but come in.
And the man goes down the street, and
he knocks at the door.
Gets no answer.
He knocks.
He persists.
Finally, the guy up there opens the window
and says, what do you want?
He says, a friend of mine has come
on his journey.
And this on earth, and I've nothing to
say before him.
And I believe, speaking generally right now, the
church has nothing to say before the world
in which we live.
We can't display our power.
We can't display authority.
The scholarly Francis Schaeffer says, I believe that
in this day, the preachers are not saying
as much as they could.
Well, brother, if Pentecost meant anything to these
men, it meant that they lost their fear
of man.
For the fear of man brings us near.
And God hath not given us the spirit
of fear, but the spirit of power and
love, and of a sound mind.
We need to display that we're intoxicated to
the world.
Let them think we're idiots.
If only God's glory fills the temple, if
only again people come in and say, listen,
there's a man down the street, the biggest
rogue and liar and thief we have in
town, and he's been marvelously changed by the
grace of God.
You see, this man's healing was delayed because
God was going to get glory.
Peter and John were not going to get
glory.
Surely Peter would, people would say, well, I
remember Peter, boy, he used to be a
bad tempered, roaring fellow.
And there's something very different about him now.
But the ultimate was that Jesus Christ was
glorified through the healing of this man, who
for all these years had been there in
bondage.
Samuel Chadwick said, when he was a young
man, he spent all his time making sermons
of exegetical exactitude and homiletical perfection, and they
were grammatically correct.
And he erased certain words and put better
words in till they shone, you know, like
a diamond flashes, and people were saying, this
man's going to be one of the greatest
preachers in England.
But there was no breeding of God in
the sanctuary.
He said, one night I knelt down in
my little room and it had a fireplace
just about that size, that's all.
A bedroom fireplace in England isn't more than
two spans wide.
And late at night as he prayed, he
said, God, I'm sure my theology is correct.
I wouldn't do anything to grieve your spirit
by a false interpretation, but the atmosphere isn't
instinct with God.
People don't tiptoe out of the sanctuary saying,
God is in this place.
The disciples went to the upper room and
the Holy Ghost came upon them.
I want the Holy Ghost to come on
me.
And God said, burn your idol.
Burn my idol?
What's my idol?
Your sermons.
The monuments of perfection, theologically, grammatically, exegetically, and
you glory in your own ability, burn your
idols.
He said, I got them all out of
a drawer and I put them on the
fireplace and I set fire to them.
And he said, they did burn.
They were so dry.
And he said, as the smoke went up
the chimney, the fire of God came down
on my spirit.
Now, Lord, he said, there's a key to
revival in this area.
What is it?
And the Lord said, read a certain scripture
and he read it.
They came not, N-O-T, not to
see Jesus.
But to see Lazarus, whom Jesus had raised
from the dead.
They'd seen Jesus very often.
But here is Lazarus.
He was bound and there he was.
Remember, Jesus says, you take away the stone.
You see, there's something we have to do.
We want God to send us a painless
Pentecost.
Something that I don't have to fast for
and weep for and pray for and disorganize
my life.
God says, no.
You roll away the stone.
I'll bring him to life.
They rolled away the stone and Jesus stood
with a loud voice and cried, Lazarus, come
forth.
And he came forth.
Oh, he was alive, all right.
I'll show you how much alive he was.
He was alive like this.
Why?
Because he was still bound.
Ninety-five percent of our church members in
the country, if they're saved at all, they're
still bound.
He was alive, otherwise he couldn't have moved
out of the grave.
And he's coming out as slowly, with a
cloth over his face and over his hands
and over his feet.
And Jesus says, loose him and let him
go.
His brother mentioned that earlier in the meeting
tonight.
To be loose, to be free from all
the bondage.
The Lord said to Chadwick, you find a
Lazarus in town, a man that everybody knows.
He's not only dead, but he stinks in
his death.
He's corrupt on top of his death.
You go find him.
Get everybody to target their prayers on him.
That's exactly what they did.
They all ganged up in prayer.
A few weeks after, Chadwick went to see
the man.
Now, he doesn't say, Lord, you send Gabriel
and let somebody.
He went to see this man who was
notorious for fighting, drinking, and his wild living.
And he said, I want to tell you
something.
I'm the pastor now at the Methodist church
down in town there.
And I believe that God wants you to
become a Christian.
You're the worst man in town, and God
wants you to be the best man in
town.
And the man told him to go to
hell.
Get out of here.
Chadwick says, well, I'll go, but I want
to tell you something.
Every day before you get up, I'll have
prayed for you.
You're going to be one of the outstanding
men in this community, ransomed and redeemed and
liberated by the power of God.
The man again cursed him.
But one night, to the surprise of everybody,
in came this ragged man, this rude, rough,
rebellious man.
And as soon as Chadwick told him he
could be delivered, that men could be delivered,
emancipated, he staggered down the aisle.
He knelt there and cried out in his
sin.
Do you know what happened?
Next Sunday, the church was packed.
There wasn't a seat empty.
God fulfilled his word.
They came not to see Jesus, but to
see Lazarus, whom Jesus had raised from the
dead.
They came not to hear Chadwick with his
brilliant, marvelous oratory.
But they came to see the miracle.
They came to see the man who had
been delivered from his bondage and sin and
his uncleanness, and now was restored and in
his right mind.
The power of God unto salvation.
Isn't it embarrassing that we have nothing to
say before the world right at this time?
If we didn't put signs up outside of
our churches, folk wouldn't know they were churches.
When they legislate in Washington, do you think
they take notice and say, now what should
we do?
The churches may rise up against us.
Oh no, they know the teamsters will rise
up.
They know the union leaders will open their
voices, but all the church won't say a
single thing.
They'll just hide in corners and have prayer
meetings.
There's a time when we've got to stand
and be as brave as lions and stand
up against the powers of darkness.
It's embarrassing to have nothing.
The man has come at midnight.
Well isn't it midnight now?
Doesn't darkness cover the earth and gross darkness
the people?
We're caught in a web of unclean spirits.
I read in a paper today that the
pastor takes, I think it was Jerry Falwell's
paper, that 60% of the fellows who
meet, who are joining the Hare Krishna cult,
are Jews who are dissatisfied with the Jewish
religion.
40% of the Mooniites are young Jews,
intellectual Jews.
I don't know how they get trapped.
But the question is, why hasn't Christianity fascinated
them?
How is it that somehow we haven't displayed
that power?
That people know that we're ransomed and healed
and restored, forgiven, that we don't love the
world, the flesh and the devil.
That we become habitations of God by his
spirit.
Come on, narrow it down.
What has your church got to offer in
your community?
Do people ever say, well if you want
to know what apostolic Christianity is, did you
ever read the Bible and think it's a
kind of a museum piece?
Can you tell people to go to that
church?
Because if there's somebody in bondage, you have
a group of people who get together.
And I'm convinced with all my heart, if
we had spent the time training people in
prayer, like we spend them for training the
choir, and I'm not against singing.
I believe there should be departments in the
church, different departments of prayer.
Some people have a gift of faith for
money.
And if they have, you don't need to
beg.
Some people have a gift of faith for
one particular disease.
There are healings.
And I think of a man that I
knew in England, who almost every time he
prayed for a cancer patient, that cancer patient
got delivered.
I have an old friend in England now,
every time he prays for somebody with deafness,
they get delivered from their deafness.
Well, you can say I don't think every
gift should operate in every church.
I believe it should operate in every community
anyhow, if not every church.
I believe we should go to some Methodist
brother and say, you have the gift of
wisdom and boy, we need some wisdom in
our church.
And say, pastor, could we have this brother
come to us for a month?
And they come to you and say, you
have a man who has a particular gift
for people who are demon possessed.
Would you loan him to our church for
a month?
You see, Paul says that my preaching is
not in word only.
Oh, we excel in words.
These boys pour torrents of words over the
radio.
But he says, my preaching is not in
word only, but in power and demonstration of
the Holy Ghost.
But somehow there's a bottleneck.
That power is not coming through.
That demonstration is out there.
Why?
Is it because we're fat and self-satisfied?
A man is coming in his journey.
It's midnight and I have nothing to set
before him.
We watch the world crumble.
We watch these systems go down.
We see Africa falling like a bunch of
dominoes.
We think of the rape of Cambodia.
We think of the hellishness that Laos has
gone through and Vietnam.
We're told now what a million, more than
a million men on the Chinese border with
Russia and, you know, if they get into
a jam, somebody's going to release one of
those atom bombs.
That's all they're going to do, in my
judgment.
It's a terribly late hour.
When Jesus said, I give you power, he
said, I give you power over all the
power of the enemy.
Poor David spoke on it this morning.
Binding the strong man.
You know, in the early days of the
Salvation Army, they had some fantastic meetings.
I talked with a man who was 80
some years of age and that was in
1930, let me see, 30, 31, 32.
He'd been the right hand man of William
Booth in the Salvation Army and he told
me about those early days of revival.
You know, I wish I'd had a tape
recorder.
They weren't out in those days.
It was the most exciting thing I think
I've ever heard of.
But a condition of being in the Salvation
Army was every Salvation Army core, as they
call each church they have, I'll call it
the Salvation Army Church, it was a law
that they had a prayer meeting Saturday night
until midnight or after.
And as that man told me of the
power of God that used to come over
communities.
You see, revival changes the moral climate of
a community.
We don't have revivals.
We get some guy to come in and
give us a little pep talk.
Somebody to come in and sing nicely for
us.
And a week or two after, we've gone
back to the old routine, as cold and
lifeless and unconcerned as we were just before.
I'll tell you what, when these men, when
the Holy Ghost came upon them, I don't
find Peter running away from anybody else.
They run away from him.
I don't find him warming himself at somebody
else's fire.
He got the fire.
And I don't know where that 120 went
out of the upper room, but I know
where some of them went.
And they said about them, these men have
turned the world upside down.
There's no way of measuring their power.
We can't find out their secret, but this
we do know.
But they're more than conquerors.
Let's take it down to a church.
In the book of the Revelation, the third
chapter, there's a church.
The church is always revealed as a woman.
Man has a hundred sheep.
A man has two sons in between.
There's a woman and she's digging in the
dirt type of the ministry of the church.
And she's got a man in the middle
of the church in the filth.
You know, a lot of us are afraid
to get our hands dirty.
I've said, and I say it wherever I
go, I say if there's 30 buses, and
some of them have 30 buses outside of
the church.
I don't believe any church needs a bus
to gather people on Sundays.
How would we get them there?
Fill all the empty seats in all the
cars that come.
I see big cars come with one person
in.
Another car comes with two.
They could get three or four or five
other folk in if they like to do
it.
we don't need all that money.
We're draining money that could be used for
other things.
Compassion.
The Salvation Army used to sing, Except I
am moved with compassion, How dwelleth thy spirit
in me?
In thought, word and deed, Burning love is
my need, And I know I can find
it in thee.
And if we're going to reach the twisted,
deformed and despised, we're going to have the
compassion that Jesus had.
And those who can't go out and reach
them can stand behind and be in prayer.
And pray the power of the Spirit of
God on the ministry.
The early days of the Salvation Army were
some of the most sensational days in the
history of the church.
Maybe I mentioned it before, I think it's
in the first volume of Begbie's Life of
William Booth.
He said when the old general had preached,
and boy he roared his head off, and
then at the end of the meeting he
would say, Buy a head!
Everybody ducked down nervously, you know, when he
shouted that.
And then he'd start telling them to come
and leave their sin.
Come on you prostitutes, get up to the
altar, come on you thieves, come on you
liars, come on you drunkards, come on you
wife beaters, he named them.
He said some nights the meeting was like
iron when he finished.
And then he'd say to the officers behind
him, Pray!
They'd all start praying.
And Begbie says the Spirit of God would
take men off the back row, nearly all
the old drunks and thieves went on the
back two or three rows, and the Spirit
got all of them by the back of
the neck, and carried them all over the
congregation, and dropped them at the altar.
My goodness, if that happened in our churches,
we'd beat it to the door, we'd say
this is demon power, wouldn't we?
You know, God is welcome to come as
long as he doesn't disturb us.
As long as he doesn't do something we
can't explain to our children.
I mean, we're going to lay a track
down like you lay a track for a
train, and then Holy Spirit, you come down
there, you see, because in our church we
don't happen to believe in gifts of the
Spirit, and our pastor says he doesn't believe
in healing.
A lady told me that one day.
I said, I saw your pastor in hospital
the other day praying for somebody.
Was he praying she'd die?
Every preacher in the country prays for the
sick when it comes to it.
He may not anoint them with oil, but
he prays, that's part of his job.
We all, when the church of God is
healthy, it's productive.
When the church is healthy, she has power.
When it's healthy, she has authority.
And these men exercised it, but here is
the church like a woman, beautiful woman.
She says, there never has been a church
like me.
I'm the most perfect, beautiful church, and I've
etched it before.
She paints a picture of herself.
Wavy hair, lovely eyes, lovely cheeks, lovely teeth.
Neck like a pillar of marble, teeth like
a flock of sheep coming up from the
washing, the Word of God says.
And then when she's got that picture painted,
she writes underneath it.
And as she moves off, I shout to
her and say, come back a minute.
She says, haughtily, why?
I don't care what you think.
I say, you don't need to care what
I think for sure, I'll tell you that.
But you better take notice of what God
says.
Sit down.
Let me unveil this picture, and I unveil
the picture.
What do I see?
What does she see?
A beautiful woman like the one she's painted?
No, there's an old hag.
Here, the hair is wavy.
There, the head is nearly bald.
There, the eyes are blue.
There, the eyes are bloodshot.
There, the face is round.
Here, the face is shrunken.
There, the face has color on it, lively
vitality.
Here, the cheeks are shrunken and hollow.
There, the teeth are flawless.
Here, the teeth are rotten and yellow.
And underneath, she says, I'm rich and increased
in goods.
I have need of nothing.
And God says of the same person now,
naked and wretched and blind and poor and
miserable.
The church never had as much organizing as
she has now.
She never had less agonizing.
We've office equipment and duplicators.
And we were in a church not long
ago, I was amazed.
The staff, the staff, the staff they had
there.
It's almost like an insurance company.
There are churches now with computers in them.
And they say, oh well, we're really up,
we're really efficient.
Efficient?
Dear Lord, they're as deficient as anybody on
earth.
They've got everything which is spectacular to the
eye.
And it's making the mechanism of the church
go.
And they know your name and they know
your number.
And they know your social security number.
And heaven knows they've got your tabulated as
a church member.
They know your income.
They know your tithing amount.
They know, know, know, know, know.
Oh, they know so much.
What they don't know is they're bankrupt.
What they don't know is that while they're
preening their feathers, the world is going to
have fire.
A simple thing.
Very shortly, we're rushing quickly to Easter.
The week before Easter, obviously, is Palm Sunday.
You remember they spread their garments in the
way.
And then Jesus finally went out of the
city.
We usually say T.E. It was a
triumphant entry.
I changed that round.
I don't think it was a triumphant entry.
I think it was a tearful exit.
They didn't want him.
And he wept and he said, Oh, Jerusalem,
thou that killest the prophets, how often would
I have gathered thee as a hen doth
gather her brood under her wings.
But ye would not.
Your house is left desolate.
They didn't kick him out of the city.
He left them.
Two thousand years ago and they haven't had
a prophet since.
They haven't had a revival since.
Do you think Almighty God dare not leave
America?
Do you think our books are keeping the
kingdom of heaven together?
We've had more light, more gospel broadcasts.
We've got more Bible schools than the rest
of the world put together.
The rest of the countries in the world
put together.
We five thousand gospel broadcasts every day.
We've had more than a hundred thousand hours
of broadcasting through the week.
And yet tonight we're drunken and immoral and
broken.
We flaunt our sexuality.
We boast of our immorality.
We put in God.
We toss in our coins to hell with
his commandment.
We've abolished the death penalty.
We've legalized prostitution.
One state, Nevada, has it.
We've legalized abortion.
We're more drunkards at this moment than ever
we've had.
We've more kids, more girls under 16, pregnant
last year.
Unmarried girls than ever in our history.
Wouldn't you think that somehow we'd go and
say, listen, this machine's running wrong.
And we're only operating on two cylinders instead
of eight.
What in the world's wrong with us?
But we're just about too proud to admit
that.
You know, the road to revival is paved
with tears.
Paved with groanings and sobs.
And my fear is this, that we say
so often, oh, God keeps all his promises.
Well, there's one promise he made to the
church, and that was this, because she was
in that state, and she would not come
and repent and seek his face.
You know what he said?
I'll spew you out of my mouth.
And people say, you know, oh, they get
in big conventions and get thousands of people
and raise money.
They've been doing that for years.
What have you done?
We put millions of dollars on the mission
field, and we don't move them one inch.
Scarcely.
Why?
We're trying to do it in the energy
of the flesh.
That's why.
We're trying organizing instead of agonizing.
God says, I'll spew you out of my
mouth.
He said to Israel, your house is left
desolate.
I was in a meeting a good while
ago, and I quoted this scripture.
God says that he spews out of his
mouth.
An old man, an old preacher on the
front row, said in a stage whisper, I
don't know if others heard it.
He said, I think he's already done it,
and we don't know.
He's already done it.
Does your church have any sign of supernatural
power on it?
Are there times when we drop everything and
say, listen, because it's true of all of
us here tonight, not many of us need
new light.
All we need is obedience.
We've enough light, brother, to deliver a thousand
times more folk than we have here.
With all our obedience, we're so stiff-necked
and hard and rebellious.
And when it comes down to the issue,
a man has come on his journey and
had nothing to set before him.
Sunday school teacher, do you really set something
before those children that will make them think
and stir their hearts?
Are you just a storyteller?
Father, have you anything in your home to
set before your children?
A godly life?
A praying life?
A devotional life?
Peace?
You say, I have nothing in that line.
Power?
I have nothing in that line.
Prayer?
I have nothing in that line.
This won't take me a minute to say,
my daddy, in his early days, he moved
around with society in England, with dukes and
lords and ladies.
And I remember this was being discussed once
at dinner, after he'd married, of course, and
we youngsters were around.
And I remember plainly my daddy saying to
some folk who were at dinner with us,
I'm glad I wasn't born to nobility.
The castle where he lived, the king used
to come and they had solid gold dinner
plates and solid gold knives and forks.
And all the waiters wore their knee breeches
and pure silver buckles on their shoes.
And they served everything with white gloves, lest
they should defile your dinner, your plate.
And everything was done, you know, bang up
to the last law of etiquette.
My daddy said, I'm glad I wasn't born
in society like that.
And somebody said, why?
He said, because all the years I was
there, I never heard the gospel.
They live in that artificial realm of, we've
got everything, we wear the best clothes.
They went to Paris to get the gents'
suit hand tailored.
The ladies wore the latest fashion, the biggest
rings, everything else, it was all show style.
Our yacht is bigger than your yacht.
Our castle is bigger than your castle.
Our estate is bigger than your estate.
And he said, they never, never once put
anything out in the way of the gospel
to the family that met around the table.
I'm glad my daddy came out of there.
He was the first challenge to my Christian
life.
And then he told me about a man
called C.T. Studd.
And then he took me one day.
I went to hear C.T. Studd.
They told me about the Salvation Army.
And I guess I, I just remember faintly
seeing a man with a beard who I'm
sure was William Booth.
And I remember other men came along, Paddock
Wilkes and some of these men who founded
missions.
And I began to stir inside, even when
I was a youngster.
There was never any sports magazines in the
house.
All the literature in the house was spiritual.
Every bit of it.
And if I picked it up, I got
to read something about some missionary.
I got to read something about somebody in
Japan with the Japan rescue mission.
I got to read about somebody up the
Congo.
And the books all on the shelves were
all books of spiritual matter.
Daddy set things before us.
And he not only told us, he did
it.
He put a ragged coat on on a
Saturday night and went out down by the
tavern and waited till men came out staggering
and put his arm in them.
And he took them down in the basement
of the church and gave them hot coffee
and led them to Christ.
And the next night we had no automobile.
Next night we, daddy would go off and
I'd say, where's daddy gone?
Or he, he, he met a man last
night and he'd bring the man into church,
you know, scruffy and his collar all torn
and disreputable.
My dad would go and see him during
the week and he'd go for him the
next Saturday night, next Sunday night.
And about two or three weeks, the man
came with a clean shirt and a new
suit and everything else.
And I'd say, well, who was the man
you came with tonight, daddy?
Oh, oh, it was the man that came
last week.
No, no, no, no, no, you came with
a nice man tonight.
Not, not the ragged man, the, the dirty
man, the smelly man, the man with the
rags, the same man.
You see, that's what Jesus does when he
comes into, into the life.
Somebody said, you expect me to believe Jesus
turned water into wine?
He said, I'll tell you something he did
better than that.
He turned beer into furniture in our house.
Do you know why we put on so
many programs in the church and so much
entertainment?
Because we've no real joy.
And you know what?
Even angels get excited when folk are redeemed.
And brother, if they get excited, we ought
to get excited about it.
And when the Holy Ghost comes back on
the lives of the individual, that's one thing
for not, you, you, you like a thing
that's boring to most people now is the
prayer life.
But you know, the day's too short for
the man who wants to pray.
It's the greatest engagement in the world, this
side of eternity.
To wrestle in prayer, to set the captives
free, to pray for people that you've no
idea who you're praying for.
God will lay maybe China one day on
your heart or somebody else or somebody else
or somebody else.
I was in a meeting with Raymond Edmond
and he, he talked about going to South
America as a missionary.
He was a president, you know, of, of
Wheaton.
And when he got down there, he had
a chronic illness and he was dying.
They dug his grave.
His wife was mopping his brow.
The sweat was there and the death rattle
was in his throat.
And she died a wedding dress and hung
it on a tree because she hadn't a
black dress to go to the funeral.
And she said, I was puzzled.
Why should my husband, a brilliant mind, knows
his Greek and Hebrew and Latin and language
down here and ready to start the missionary
work and here he's dying.
And she said, I mocked his brow and
he sat up straight.
He said, bring me my clothes.
And she nearly died.
He never turned back.
Years after in Boston, he told me this
himself, years after in Boston, a little old
lady came after he testified and said, could
you tell me the date?
He said, yes, so and so.
And he said she had a little notebook
worth about 10 cents.
It was all ragged around the edges.
And she opened it and went back a
bit and said it was the year so
and so on a certain day.
What time would it be in Uruguay?
I think he was in Uruguay.
What was the difference in the time?
And he said, so and so.
She said, that's right.
That's right.
What's right?
I was in bed and the Lord told
me to get up and pray for Raymond
Edmund.
The devil wanted to kill him.
Why did God lead a little old woman
to help him?
After all, he's omnipotent.
But he says, I want you to pray
for a little woman, for a man thousands
of miles away.
A little old lady prayed and she'd made
a note, got into bed in victory.
But not only was he in victory, she
was in victory.
The spirit of discernment, the spirit of wisdom,
hearing his voice, obeying his command.
Peter and John unlearned, an ignorant man.
Do you know what?
If Jesus had said, ye shall receive brains,
the Holy Ghost coming upon you, there'd be
a line from here to New York of
young guys wanting new brains.
And they sure need them.
But anyhow, he didn't say that.
If he'd said, ye shall receive the miraculous
church, they would be lining up for it.
But he said, ye shall receive power.
And power is preceded by purity.
And purity is preceded by repentance and sorrow
for sin.
Look, there's nothing in your hands you can
bring.
As the songwriter says, nothing in my hands
I'd bring.
He's looking for brilliant men.
Somebody asked Hudson Taylor, why did God choose
you to go to China and establish the
China inland mission?
He said, because he'd been looking for years
for somebody weak enough to use.
And at last he found me.
They were unlearned and ignorant men.
The Holy Ghost came upon them.
And the world hasn't yet seen what's going
to happen as a result of that.
I can paint a picture as black as
hell, I sure can.
And you can contradict it if I gave
you a lot of statistics and stuff tonight.
But I'm not hanging my harp on the
willows.
God's going to bypass organized religion and systems
before very long.
I believe that many denominations are breathing their
last right now.
They're struggling to try and plug the hole
up and stick the hole up here and
stop something else.
And the world says, but you've got nothing
real and vital and living and powerful.
So what's he going to do?
He's going to fulfill his word like he
always does.
Pour out his spirit on all flesh.
Your sons and your daughters shall prophesy.
So it's young people, not the old greyheads.
We've had our day.
We missed it.
Your sons and your daughters shall prophesy.
Your young men shall see visions.
And all men dream dreams.
And on my servants and handmaids.
Not intellectuals and bishops and presidents of colleges.
But he says that young men see visions.
And all men dream dreams.
And on my servants and handmaids.
Where did he go the first time?
Did he not come and go to the
Sanhedrin and say, hey, have you some very
likely prospect?
I want a man with a sharp intellect.
Did he go to the high priest and
say, well, who do you think is a
fine-ish young priest you've got around?
He ignored the whole bunch.
He went to some smelly fisherman and said,
come on, follow me.
He went to a man making insurance out
of a tax thing.
And the shadow fell.
And he looked up.
And the man heard Jesus say, follow me.
And do you know what?
I think that's one of the greatest acts
of faith in the New Testament.
Nobody talks about it.
He just looked down.
And Matthew said, all right.
And he dropped his pen and left the
master.
And he didn't know that much about him.
And you and I know this story from
beginning to end.
And yet we hesitate to be obedient.
We hesitate to go out on a limb,
as we say.
We hesitate to say, Lord, come and burn
out of me all my selfishness and all
my pride and all my weakness and all
my excuses.
Then shall all bondage cease, all fetters fall,
and I shall find my peace, my all
in all.
Let's sing a verse of a hymn before
we close.
Do we know?
Spirit of God descend upon my heart.
Do you know that?
No?
Oh, OK.
1 3 8.
Let's sing 1 3 8.
I rise to sing.
The altar is open.
If you want to come, I'm not going
to beg for you to come.
Spirit of God descend upon my heart.
We need from us through all its
pulses move.
Stoop to my weakness, mighty as thou art.
Then make me love thee as I ask
no dream, no prophet ecstasy, no
sudden rending, no
angel visitant.
We thank you that you've not cut us
off either as individuals or as a nation.
We surely test your patience.
You said your spirit will not always strive
with man.
Lord, maybe if we knew the alarm signal
is already ringing out for this nation.
Maybe we're almost at the end of our
tether, as it were.
Maybe you said for us as a nation,
the harvest is passed and the summer is
ended and you're not saved.
But yet, Lord, we would stand in the
gap tonight and plead as thy servants of
old.
We would plead like the man whose tree
was to be cut down.
And he pled, Lord, you'd give just another
year that he might fertilize it and get
it all in good condition.
And then if it bear not fruit, then
he said, then cut it down and take
it away.
Lord, some of us tonight have very unfruitful
lives.
We have nothing to offer to our children.
We have nothing to offer to our church.
We have nothing to offer to our community.
And yet there are all these riches in
glory by Christ Jesus, which can be ours
if we're obedient to thee.
Oh, God, we know that the cripple at
the gate is the world.
We can't bind up its wounds with politics.
We can't heal its diseases with any intellectual
power.
It must come through the body of the
church of the living God.
As we have sung this week, revive thy
work, O Lord, revive every heart here tonight.
Grant, O Lord, that nobody should leave this
house in bondage.
Nobody should leave it fettered.
Nobody should leave it in failure.
But Lord, we may touch that spring which
is in thee and invite the fire of
God to come in consuming power, and burn
out the draughts, and burn off the fetters
that hold us, and liberate us that are
going out like this man who is leaping
and praising God.
There'll be something so different in our spirits,
in our attitudes, in our words, that they'll
have to say a verse as they said
with them.
They took knowledge of them that they'd been
with Jesus.
And for this, we'll give you praise in
Jesus' name.
Amen.